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Miki Collins photo

“OHH!” Miki shouted, emerging from the basement door.

I looked up from the strawberry patch in our front yard. “What?”

“Certo!” she called, holding up three boxes of the pectin we use to help our jam jell nicely.

“Hurrah!” I shouted, looking at the three quarts of berries in my bowl. Because of the cold, late season, we’d been picking currants, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries practically all at once. Without the pectin, making jam to preserve the berries wasn’t an option, but we weren’t about to spend nearly $400 for a round-trip flight to a grocery store to buy more.

We’d thought we were completely out of Certo, but Miki finally found it deep in the basement pantry, shoved behind a big bag of canning lids.

“Every year we run out of something,” Miki grumped. “We need to start another List. Things to Buy For Every Season!”

Our home is full of lists, mostly “Have to Do” and “Ought to Do.” The longest list is the Master List that we refer to before the big trip to Fairbanks for winter supplies that might be the last shopping we do until April or May of the next year. The Master List started out as a food list that I gave my mother one Christmas back when she master-minded the household. It was something I could print out each time she needed to do a food count to make sure nothing important, like Certo, got left out when she went to

town for shopping.

Starting with different soaps, it ran through canned goods, baking supplies, camp foods, drink mixes, spices, and fresh products like fruit and butter.

Later, when my sister and I took over, we began adding to the Master List. We included everything we might want for the winter, from socks and gloves to oil for the chain saw, generator and snowmachine; sled-building and veterinary supplies, and all the feed and supplements we might want for our animals. The dogs needed straw and commercial feed, but also rice, fat, protein meals and sometimes blocks of frozen meat. The horses required pelleted feed, oats, com oil, and as much hay as we dared ask the Post Office to mail, that being the cheapest way to ship goods.

As we get more forgetful, we see the need for more diversified Lists. The List of Things to Get in the Spring would include seeds, fertilizer, row covers, com gluten, tiller parts and other gardening supplies, and also supplies like the Certo and sugar that we need for jam and canned rhubarb.

The List of Things to Get in the Fall would not be the Master List that we consult in late fall; it would be more of an August List because we need gear for moose hunting, a harvest ticket, ammunition, tarps, game bags, stove fuel, and certainly some cheap paperbacks to blow time in moose camp.

We also need supplies for putting up the fall harvest: Freezer wrap for meat, pork fat for moose sausages, bacon to cook with moose liver, vinegar for pickling beets, and canning lids for putting up jars of fish, moose, beets and other food. Perhaps more importantly, we need ice cream for our September birthday cake. I’m still in the doghouse for forgetting that last year.

We already have a Moose List. It started out as a one-page list back in the 1980s and has grown to two full pages. It includes a hand winch, rope, knives and whet stone, ax, bone saw, ammunition, gun cleaner, and other hunting paraphernalia along with the standard camping list of sleeping bags, tent, lantern, camp stove, extra clothes, rain gear and two-way radios.

The Moose List includes a small moose antler for calling in moose, razors for making swift work of half-inch-thick hide and flagging tape for reIocating downed bulls. One of the more recent options is a battery-operated jig saw. It’s too small to cut the backbone, but makes fast works of cutting ribs. Another addition is a plastic sled because in our area it’s often easier to drag moose quarters out than to carry them.

And, of course, those stupid paperback novels; we mustn’t forget them.

All winter, another List sits on a comer of the table for quick reference: the Trapping Master List. The items compiled here include critical gear such as the ham radio, extra foot gear, ax and fire starter: things that can save a life when Miki or I spend two weeks at a time alone on winter wilderness trails.

The first aid and repair kits are listed, as are the pistol, skis and boots, headlamp, sleeping bags and the heavy parkas that go everywhere but are worn only in extreme weather. One edge of this list covers extra items necessary for the rare occasions that we travel by snowmachine instead of dog team: The hand winch with lots of rope and a snow hook for anchoring the rope on glare ice; mixed gas and a fuel funnel, alcohol fuel additive in case ice gets in the gas, a tool kit, and snowshoes or skis along with snacks in case we break down and have to retreat 10 miles on foot.

An Inventory List records stuff left in the room we keep at our brother’s home in Fairbanks. It details how many finished crafts and books are stored there for craft shows. Otherwise I might bring in too many Little Beavers but not enough Beaver Mitts, and Miki might end up with lots of Size Large Fox Hats and only one Lynx Hat, Size Small. We might haul to town a case of our "Trapline Twins" books, when our sales booth really needed more "Riding the Wild Side" and "Dog Driver" books.

We should also have a Hazmat List. These items cost extra to ship so we try to haul them in our own little plane to avoid the $15-plus airline hazardous materials fee. Rifle ammunition, matches, lantern fuel and pressurized cans like bug spray all travel in our plane. We try to also load up with items that mayor may not be accepted by the Post Office, such as alcohol fuel additive, two-cycle oil and motor oil.

The last time I tried to mail a case of motor oil, the postal clerk said, “What’s the flash point?”

I said, “Huh?”

We’d been mailing oil for years, but it turns out you can only mail such items if it won’t catch fire below a certain temperature. That information is not handily marked on the label so now we try to add motor oil to our Hazmat List.

Other things like cooking oil, vinegar and grocery items packed in glass jars can be mailed if packed properly, but I prefer to fly them home because of the grief when they break or leak in the Post Office.

We also need a Charter List for when the community charters a big plane like a C46 to fly ungainly, overweight or hazardous materials. This would include cement, plywood and other building supplies, batteries for our electrical system, lawn mowers, storage drums, hay, straw, sled lumber, windows, pallets of dog or horse food and bulk groceries; if we forget something it might be a year or two before another charter.

While we’re at it, let’s have a List for Horse-Trekking Trips, Dog-Sled Journeys and Berry Pickin’ Jaunts. Or for Spending Breakup in Spring Camp, where supplies are not an option and if we forget an ax that’s pretty inconvenient.

I haven’t been keeping track, but I guess we have or need a dozen different lists. And you know what that means. Now we need one more ... a List of Lists!