Photo credit: Dano Michaud – on Mt. Eva, Alaska
“Alaska is definitely a good fit for certain people. Some people come up here and just don’t like it. Others just fall in love; you can’t get them to leave.”
Dano retired at age 50 from the state of Alaska. His wife Joy had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and given a 5% chance of surviving. They each had difficult health challenges to face.
While dealing with their health issues, Dano continues to enjoy Alaska’s rich outdoor life, with mountain trails right out his back door.
Dano and his wife show how to deal with health challenges while appreciating those things their Alaska community has to offer.
Right now, I’m eight years into retirement. I retired at the age of 50. It’s like a whole new era, the way I look at things.
My family moved to Anchorage, Alaska in ’70, when I was in second grade and I hated it the whole time. As soon as I turned eighteen and I was able to leave, I moved to Arizona. I moved there and I learned that Alaska wasn’t that bad. It was a difference in how people were. I moved back again. I started looking at things in a whole different way. I started getting into the outdoors. I see the world through a whole new pair of glasses, and think, “Man, what a huge, huge world.”
I started working for Alaska during the time of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline. The state was flush with oil revenue. The health and retirement benefits were just phenomenal. I could retire at either age 55 or 30 years of service.
We married in 2002. In 2003, Joy was diagnosed and treated for esophageal cancer and was told she had a 5% chance to live. Three years later her condition had improved significantly so we took a gamble for a life in a small Alaskan town and moved from Eagle River, AK to Seward, AK.
Two years into our new location, the repercussions of the cancer treatments began to raise their ugly head. Joy started having issues with her back and neck, requiring 10 hours of surgery. That was followed by multi-level degenerate disc disease which required 3 more surgeries. In addition, she would be held down to bed rest by other complications that seemed to feed off each other. The list seemed endless.
So, when time came around that would allow me to retire with 30 years of service, I thought to myself, “Why not go now and spend the remaining time together? With all of her health issues, how much further on could she go?” So, without much more thought than that, I retired at age 50.
She started getting better. She’s back, doing better than could be expected.
Time has a way of turning things around. It was Joy’s turn to be a caregiver. I was going through some physical and mental issues which led me to discover this ADHD. Unknowingly, ADHD had held me down from growing mentally. I knew I could learn and perform; I just couldn’t retain the knowledge needed to obtain the academic credentials necessary to move up “the ladder.”
I’ll need to go back to school again and learn how to learn and retain information. That is one of the great benefits of retirement; it allows me to re-do the parts of my life that I always thought were missing. It feels very good to find out about it. It’s almost like I found a lost father. The fact that I’m identifying the ADHD allows me to understand coping with this issue as a gift to better my life.
We’ve actually looked around for winter homes in Arizona. Then we found that living here is just so mellow and so quiet. Anchorage is two hours away, and that’s a quarter million people and city stuff to do there. Then we fly out every year for a month and we can get all the excitement we need and come back. We just keep looking around, and we seem to always keep coming back. I think that mainly it’s the beauty, tranquility and the quietness. We’re not really missing anything. We think we need to go find something, but it’s all here.
Seward’s about 1200 people in the winter. In the summer, it doubles in size because of the tourism from halibut charters, whale-watching and sightseeing tour boats. Tourism has really taken off. That brings in the restaurants and the hotels. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, it’s full-on, then after that, it’s like lights out. It just dies and it’s pretty mellow.
Currently I am working part time for Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery. A lot of my work is general maintenance and energy upgrades. I’m fortunate that my boss just says, “Put in the time whenever you can. We’re just happy to have you.” My job is only a block from home. I can go down and put some time in, or if an emergency comes up, I’ll run down there and work on it. Now I can do it whenever I want.
I actually started this outdoor activity late in my life. Since late adolescence I was heavy into the partying life of drinking and drugging. In 1996 I sobered up and got into recovery. I picked up the outdoors enthusiasm basically where I left off when I started that crazy behavior. There are so many different challenges and people I’ve met along the way. Amazingly, there’s folks in their 70’s and 80’s doing some of this stuff.
A day in the mountains with a fellow climber usually starts with a call or a text saying “Hey, let’s get out there.” Usually, we’ll plan a certain route or a peak that we haven’t seen for a while. If it’s snow, we might bring our snowshoes or skis and actually get to a peak and then ski out.
This country is so rough and challenging that a lot of times just getting there is a lot of fun. You can basically get into some serious stuff right out the back door.
Some of the trails are historic trails from the railroads, trappers or miners. We also make our own route. Some trails haven’t seen anyone on them since the last time we were on them.
There are many styles of climbing. My nephew is really big into rock climbing and wrote three Alaskan rock-climbing guidebooks. That’s very technical with the gear, rope, harness, anchor devices etc.
A lot of times existing trails will just get us started. Then we just go for it and take the safe route up to wherever we’re trying to go. There are times in the winter where we might need a rope. There are cornices to contend with. That’s when the snow builds up over the edge and can stick out as much as 20 feet. You can be stabbing on them and they’ll literally just break off and you’ll go with them. We will rope up when we are on those. And there are certain challenges like glacier travel. We all have been trained in glacier travel and crevasse rescue because of the certain ways to travel on a glacier. If someone falls through a crevasse, you’ll have to rescue your fellow traveler.
There’s a mountain in Seward’s city limits, and every year on the 4th of July, the city hosts “The Mount Marathon Race.” It’s a mountain race, not an actual 26 mile marathon. It starts in downtown Seward and contestants run through town to the mountain base, up 3000 feet and return back to a finish line on Main Street. A crowd of about 30,000 people show up in this little town. We’ve been doing it for 80 years and is the second oldest foot race in America.
The scenery in the Seward area is phenomenal, and at times, I’m overwhelmed it’s so big. I was on a hike to a local high point where I met this fella from Colorado. We got to talking and I asked him what he thought as we looked out over the mountains and Resurrection Bay. He said, “Well I like Colorado, with all the mountains, but this is more like Colorado on steroids!”
It’s just huge and from some of the high points you can see two large icefields and hundreds of glaciers. Being where we’re at and with these glaciers in our back yard, we actually see global warming effect “in our face.” I can see an effect within the last few years that is just very alarming. It’s mainly the glaciers receding. All last year, it just rained all winter until about February. We finally got a snow that stuck. That’s how the years have been.
Alaska is definitely a good fit for certain people and some people come up here and just don’t like it, while others fall in love; you can’t get them to leave. You’ve just got to look at it a little different. Things are going to be as smooth here as they are in other places.
We just keep doing this retirement thing. Why? One thing led to another and then we just stayed here. It just seems to be working. Now I’m 58 and I’ve been retired for eight years. My part time job is just a block from me. My wife has returned back to me. It’s just phenomenal. Life for me as a retired person living in Seward, AK is a life second to none.
For my wife and I, everything seems to just be failing into place. And when I question my decision to retire so early, I have to remind myself of what I said then. “Dude, go do it, just live in the now, man.”
Follow Richard on twitter @richardhaiduck. His blog is at richardhaiduck.com. Find his new book on Amazon: Shifting Gears; 50 Baby Boomers Share Their Meaningful Journeys in Retirement.
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