Fairbanks is already white in November and the days are short. Mid-November, the sun is visible above the horizon only between 9:00 a.m. and 3:40 p.m. At the winter solstice, December 21st, it is less than four hours. There is enough darkness and an excellent opportunity to observe the northern lights. And not only that, during the winter months the sun moves low above the horizon, and the little light it provides, immerses the landscape in a diffuse yellowish depression. Even if the sun appears on the horizon very shy, the sky is not blue, but rather gray and when it disappears, it leaves an orange strip as a goodnight-kiss and the promise of coming back tomorrow, even if sometimes it will not be visible.
When the small single-engine plane landed in Fairbanks, it was light, but that day was not sunny. Just before there was light snowfall, the temperature was… Alaskan, -16,6F.
Padmé and Anakin were dressed warmly, there was special clothing for such expeditions, but they found it to be icy.
As planned, they were expected, and the equipment began to be loaded, under Padmé's attentive eye. Nothing was allowed to be forgotten or damaged. The bed of the pickup was filled, as was the trailer, where were the snowmobile and the accompanying sled trailer. Everything was covered and secured. They found space in the front of the car, next to the driver Bill. Padmé sat in the middle, and they began to move.
Via Airport Way, University Ave, Johanes Expy and Steese Hwy, they reached the intersection where they switched to Route No.6, headed towards Chatanika, and after ca. 45 miles, they turned left to take this Jeep Trail, to ride a snowmobile a few miles to the end. The path was marked with poles so you couldn't get lost. Luckily, there wasn't much snow, maybe a foot deep.
Anakin helped Bill to get the snowmobile down by extending a loading ramp from the shop floor and letting it slide down. The trailer was attached to the sleds, and they put the load on it. It was a lot of weight to pull, but Anakin resolved to go slowly.
"Thanks, Bill. We can handle this alone now. As we mentioned before, you will come back within five days, but we will notify you.
"Good luck, bye."
Bill jumped in his pickup, turned around and drove away. Anakin fumbled through the items in the trailer until he pulled something out.
"What is it that you need right now?"
"This is my Remington 700. I just click on the 5-shot magazine and then…"
"Do you need this?"
"Nothing may happen to you, of course I need it ! Dr. Naberrie-Palpatine, we're on our own now. We must manage everything ourselves."
"With your abilities...I have nothing to worry about."
"Thank you for the appreciation."
"Why are you always so sarcastic?"
"I'm not at all. Sit down and hold on to me."
"I know how to do it." She put her arms around his waist and squeezed.
"A little bit deeper."
"Would you like to, huh?"
"I can try." and laughed.
So they drove off. The snowmobile was very loud, so it was impossible to talk, but it was not really necessary.
The trapper's cabin, which will be their home for the next few days, was located forty yards from the point where the path came to its end. They only had to cross a creek, which was frozen. It was important to put everything in the cabin as soon as it got dark.
The trapper's cabin was modest. A room, approximately twelve by twelve feet, one folding table between two narrow beds, more like cots, and a stove, the exhaust pipe of which went horizontally through the wall of the cabin into the tiny room beside. This room served as a toilet. So it wasn't cold there like it was outside when you lit the stove. There was only space next to a bed where they could stack their equipment. Anakin placed the bag of personal belongings under his bed.
"What's that? I don't have space for my bag."
"Let me see," he pulled the thing out, "It is a wooden tub. This is supposed to be used for bathing…"
"Bathing? I cannot take a bathe while you are sitting here."
"Should I wait outside at -22F for two hours while you take a long bath. Forget it."
"Then I won't bathe."
"Are you going to stink around here?"
"You are beyond impossible."
"I think we will get along great," he said, giggling.
"You better bring the wood, we should start the fire as quickly as possible."
"Yes, boss," he smiled and went out to bring as much as he could, so that there would be enough for the whole night.
While he was outside fetching wood, Padmé cleaned the table, beds and floor with a small broom that stood next to the stove. When no one is in the cabin, the devil knows what crawls and runs there.
The wood was stacked along the cabin wall and served as insulation as well. The trapper, who spent the time here setting the traps, really thought of everything. Anakin thought, nice and romantic in the wilderness if you only spend a few days there, with that annoying woman in the cabin…...who he loved so much.
After half an hour, it became noticeably warmer, but it would take another hour before they could take off their thick jackets.
"Our supplies are in this aluminium box, I suppose. We'll have to eat canned food, hopefully there'll be enough...considering your appetite."
"You make me look like a wolverine. Do you really think that way about me, do you?
She looked at him, he seemed a little offended. "I am sorry. It was meant to be a joke."
"It is okay," he said, unconvincingly. "I had some fresh groceries packed up. They are in this blue insulated box."
"Oh, that is great. Can I see what is in there?"
"Of course."
She opened the cooler, which now served as a warming box. "Vegetables, fruits, eggs, cheese, butter, milk, bread … water is also here, and everything for five days."
"The meat and sausages are frozen standing next to it, and stay frozen. The bottles with water stay inside. "
"Can you cook, Dr. Skywalker?"
"Yes, I like cooking."
"Me too…but we won't fight over who does what, we have to share all the work, including cooking. Since you also thought about taking the tea, I don't mean tea bags, we will now have tea time and discuss the matter further."
"Preferring tea time is OK. We have not eaten anything since this morning."
"Even I am hungry. I will make some sandwiches for us and you prepare the tea. There will be no cooking tonight."
"Yes, Boss."
"You are making fun of me."
"Oh, no, I'd be too frightened to tease my boss."
He put the tea on and let it steep, while she made a few sandwiches and even cut them into triangle shapes. She wrapped foil around the table and laid out two white napkins on it.
"I see you even packed two porcelain plates, two saucers and two teacups. I am impressed. Are you so fond of table culture?"
"My family is actually from England, going back a long time..."
"Don't we all come from England in some way, generations ago…"
"Yes," he laughed, "...when I finished my third year of high school, my parents sent me to England to complete my high school graduation. This is how I fell in love with English traditions and lifestyle. I always celebrated my tea time in the Marriott lounge in Ithaca for years…"
"If I had known that…"
"Would we have had tea time together then? Perhaps then, we would have become even closer." and grinned.
"Maybe, but at Marriott you definitely made, how should I put it… certain acquaintances that you were able to deepen in one or another room of the hotel."
"It was like this. Yes. Are you OK. with me having a sex life as well?
"Damn, Dr. Skywalker, how do you keep our conversations always turning into sexual topics?"
"Maybe because it is the topic that concerns us the most?"
"I am married and, in this regard,..."
"Satisfied?" he asked smiling at her.
"We close the topic...off-topic, OK.? TIF or MIF?"
"Tea in first, please."
"I like it the same way. "Funnily enough, and even though the ingredients are the same, it tastes different from MIF." She wondered as she poured the tea into the cups and added milk. "Please, your tea."
"From your hand it is like an elixir of life."
"Stop flirting, I am married."
"How could I have forgotten about that?"
"Neither should you. Good. We have to discuss tomorrow. We have decided what we will do on which day...but we can change the order and do the more difficult two tasks first. What do you think about it?"
"You are the boss."
"How about a little more initiative, hmm?"
"Should I take the initiative?" and smiled mischievously.
"You can't get out of flirting mode at all. Dr. Skywalker, please get yourself together. We are not teenagers.
"Unfortunately, but OK. I am one hundred percent here and completely serious. How about we do the two new stations, for which we have planned two days each, first, and the last station with checking and calibration on the last day?
"Perfect. So, the foundations were concreted in the summer, the rail for the elements was also installed and well covered, we will find it using GPS. They're 180 degrees apart, each 2.5 miles from the middle station…but you know that."
I hope that our screwdrivers won't fail in the cold. It would take longer if I had to manually tighten every screw.
"Hopefully not. We have five and a half hours of daylight right now."
"… and then there is a lot of time left for nothing to do.
"We will be busy with tea time and cooking. Do you enjoy reading books, Dr. Skywalker?"
"Oh yes, but not on the Internet or e-books. I prefer a real book in my hand. I am currently reading The Round by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio."
"Oh, less pleasant stories about the lives of people who are not so lucky in life."
"You know it?"
"I know almost all the Nobel Prize winners for literature, at least those of the last fifty-seventy years. I've read almost all of them."
"Which one is your favorite?"
"It is difficult to say. I think that a literary work which deserves to be called as such one, must present an analysis of the socio-political landscape of the time in which the action takes place, a detailed description of the protagonists and antagonists, analysis of their characters and personality and must have a provided exciting and interesting plot. Not to forget an excellent writing style...like Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, for example...even though the novel was published more than a hundred years ago."
"WOW, demanding…but this monumental work doesn't end happily either."
"Novels and stories with happy endings are easy to read, and you won't feel depressed afterwards, but experience shows that they obviously cannot claim literary value."
"And what about Anton Tschechow?"
"That is true. I read somewhere that he was denied the Nobel Prize because his works were too realistic and not moral enough for the time they were written."
"I see we won't run out of things to talk about. Do you also love music, and which one?"
"Classic rock like Rolling Stones, but also classical music. I love Beethoven and Berlioz and enjoy listening to Baroque: Vivaldi, Corelli and Hendl."
"I would never have believed that we had so many of the same preferences…" and began to sing:
Ach, ich habe sie verloren,
all mein Glück ist nun dahin!
Wär, o wär ich nie geboren,
weh, dass ich auf Erden bin!
"This is Christoph Willibald Gluck. You have a wonderful voice, I love baritones."
"Uh…thanks….would you like some more tea?." He said, thinking how these few lines of the aria fit his suffering. If she only knew.
"Good. I will prepare the equipment for tomorrow."
When all the work was prepared for the next day, they set an alarm clock to wake them up every three hours to add some wood to the fire. They snuggled up, each in their own sleeping bag, and tried to read, it was only 9:00 p.m.
After an hour of reading, Anakin put his book on the table, turned off his battery lamp and tried to sleep.
Padmé also got ready to sleep and pulled the edge of the sleeping bag up to her chin. She stayed quiet for a while, but not long. He was lying next to her, so close, all she had to do was reach out her hand and he would definitely take it. But she was not allowed to. She was a married woman, a deadly unhappy married woman. It was driving her crazy, she started to turn from side to side; left, right, on the back and vice versa...
"Can't you sleep, Dr. Naberrie-Palpatine?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Probably because I would be more comfortable at home...in my husband's arms."
"I don't believe a single word."
Best regards from Germany