Here's someone who likes this weather
Siouxland a good fit for pastor raised in Alaska
By Judy Hayworth, Journal correspondent | Posted: Tuesday, February 27, 2007
BATTLE CREEK, Iowa -- After growing up in the Alaska outback, the Rev. Andrew Carlson considers his small-town triple-parish in Northwest Iowa a good fit.
Now living in rural Battle Creek, Carlson serves St. Paul Lutheran Church as well as Grace Lutheran in nearby Correctionville and Trinity at Anthon.
Carlson, along with his parents, Joe and Nancy, and siblings moved to Alaska in 1974, when Carlson was 5.
"My dad served during the Vietnam War and was out of the Navy. He and my mother moved to the Minneapolis area where he grew up. But, having been in the service, Dad didn't want a 9-to-5 job, he wanted adventure," he said. "They bought a 1951 bus, took out the seats, made it into an RV and headed to Alaska, where we were going to 'live off the land.'"
There were seven children at the time, four of them adopted in California and one from Japan, and Carlson and his sister, Cherie.
In Alaska, Carlson's father worked in metal fabrication, and later construction and oil drilling, saving money for the cabin they would build.
"We met a homesteader who was willing to sell us some land near Livengood, north of Fairbanks, as we didn't qualify for the Homestead Act," he said. "We bought 40 acres from him, plus a billy goat to go with our goats."
Their cabin had no plumbing and was erected 80 miles from the nearest power line.
The family did live off the land. "We always had a vegetable garden of a couple acres, and we'd can like crazy because we had no refrigeration," he recalled. "We also raised chickens, ducks, geese and hogs that we butchered. And we milked our goats."
Carlson hunted grouse, moose and bear.
"Black bear is good eating," he said. "I'd take my snowshoes and go through the woods to my trap line in winter for squirrels and rabbits, which I sold to trappers as bait."
Loved winter
Despite the frigid weather and mountains of snow, the children loved winter.
"In the four months of summer, we worked 16-hour days, always building something or working in the gardens.
When the snow flew, it meant we could take a break," he said. "We would sled for four hours at minus 40 degrees and then climb into the igloos we built to get warm. We piled up snow and hollowed it out to make an igloo. Sitting in the snow was like sitting in a beanbag chair. The Northern Lights were so intense you could hear a buzzing sound. They were green, blue, and pink -- like a rainbow that dances, huge curtains that blazed across the sky."
Wintertime in Alaska, temperatures occasionally dipped as low as minus 70 degrees. "At minus 50, coffee freezes before it hits the ground," Carlson noted. Summer temperatures averaged a mild 73.
The number of children increased to 23, with 18 adopted over a 30-year span. "We were like a small orphanage, with no more than 16 of us at any given time," he said. "My youngest sibling now is 16 (Carlson is 39), and all have been hard-to-place children, older or minority children." Carlson's parents and some of the children still live on the original homestead. Sister Cherie, who wrote a book of their life in Alaska, "Homestead Kid," lives in Casper, Wyo.
Carlson started college as a business major at Baptist Bible College in Alaska, and finished with a masters of divinity degree at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.
"I knew ever since I was 12 that I was going to be a pastor or missionary," he said. "I was baptized Nazarene and went to a Southern Baptist Church and a Quaker Bible Camp. Then I met a Lutheran, and I talked her out of leaving the church."
In 1987, at 19, Carlson married his wife, Dana, when she was 18, a native of North Pole, Alaska, 20 miles south of Livengood.
After serving a dual parish in South Dakota and working several years in the U.S. Naval Reserves as a chaplain during the Gulf War, he and his family, which also includes son Andrew II, 18, and daughter, Kristin, 17, accepted the call to the triple parish in June 2004.
"Originally, I didn't want to live in the Midwest, but I can really connect to the members of the congregation," he said. "The people who grew up before the 1950s, I grew up the same way. I love being in the country. It's actually a little crowded here. In Alaska, I could drive for an hour and not see a house.
"I raise chickens and have a garden for nostalgia sake. I tell the farmers I farm 600 out by Midway -- 600 feet."
Gardening and ministering has treated him well in Siouxland.
"When you grow up in rural Alaska, you don't pretend to be something you aren't, and that has really helped me in the ministry. This parish has been a good fit," he said.
But Alaska still beckons the family. This summer Carlson plans to take off three weeks to start building a cabin in Alaska. Next fall his son will go to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and live with his grandparents.
But, he's happy here in Siouxland. Said Carlson: "Iowa is the next best thing to Alaska."
Now living in rural Battle Creek, Carlson serves St. Paul Lutheran Church as well as Grace Lutheran in nearby Correctionville and Trinity at Anthon.
Carlson, along with his parents, Joe and Nancy, and siblings moved to Alaska in 1974, when Carlson was 5.
"My dad served during the Vietnam War and was out of the Navy. He and my mother moved to the Minneapolis area where he grew up. But, having been in the service, Dad didn't want a 9-to-5 job, he wanted adventure," he said. "They bought a 1951 bus, took out the seats, made it into an RV and headed to Alaska, where we were going to 'live off the land.'"
There were seven children at the time, four of them adopted in California and one from Japan, and Carlson and his sister, Cherie.
In Alaska, Carlson's father worked in metal fabrication, and later construction and oil drilling, saving money for the cabin they would build.
"We met a homesteader who was willing to sell us some land near Livengood, north of Fairbanks, as we didn't qualify for the Homestead Act," he said. "We bought 40 acres from him, plus a billy goat to go with our goats."
Their cabin had no plumbing and was erected 80 miles from the nearest power line.
The family did live off the land. "We always had a vegetable garden of a couple acres, and we'd can like crazy because we had no refrigeration," he recalled. "We also raised chickens, ducks, geese and hogs that we butchered. And we milked our goats."
Carlson hunted grouse, moose and bear.
"Black bear is good eating," he said. "I'd take my snowshoes and go through the woods to my trap line in winter for squirrels and rabbits, which I sold to trappers as bait."
Loved winter
Despite the frigid weather and mountains of snow, the children loved winter.
"In the four months of summer, we worked 16-hour days, always building something or working in the gardens.
When the snow flew, it meant we could take a break," he said. "We would sled for four hours at minus 40 degrees and then climb into the igloos we built to get warm. We piled up snow and hollowed it out to make an igloo. Sitting in the snow was like sitting in a beanbag chair. The Northern Lights were so intense you could hear a buzzing sound. They were green, blue, and pink -- like a rainbow that dances, huge curtains that blazed across the sky."
Wintertime in Alaska, temperatures occasionally dipped as low as minus 70 degrees. "At minus 50, coffee freezes before it hits the ground," Carlson noted. Summer temperatures averaged a mild 73.
The number of children increased to 23, with 18 adopted over a 30-year span. "We were like a small orphanage, with no more than 16 of us at any given time," he said. "My youngest sibling now is 16 (Carlson is 39), and all have been hard-to-place children, older or minority children." Carlson's parents and some of the children still live on the original homestead. Sister Cherie, who wrote a book of their life in Alaska, "Homestead Kid," lives in Casper, Wyo.
Carlson started college as a business major at Baptist Bible College in Alaska, and finished with a masters of divinity degree at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.
"I knew ever since I was 12 that I was going to be a pastor or missionary," he said. "I was baptized Nazarene and went to a Southern Baptist Church and a Quaker Bible Camp. Then I met a Lutheran, and I talked her out of leaving the church."
In 1987, at 19, Carlson married his wife, Dana, when she was 18, a native of North Pole, Alaska, 20 miles south of Livengood.
After serving a dual parish in South Dakota and working several years in the U.S. Naval Reserves as a chaplain during the Gulf War, he and his family, which also includes son Andrew II, 18, and daughter, Kristin, 17, accepted the call to the triple parish in June 2004.
"Originally, I didn't want to live in the Midwest, but I can really connect to the members of the congregation," he said. "The people who grew up before the 1950s, I grew up the same way. I love being in the country. It's actually a little crowded here. In Alaska, I could drive for an hour and not see a house.
"I raise chickens and have a garden for nostalgia sake. I tell the farmers I farm 600 out by Midway -- 600 feet."
Gardening and ministering has treated him well in Siouxland.
"When you grow up in rural Alaska, you don't pretend to be something you aren't, and that has really helped me in the ministry. This parish has been a good fit," he said.
But Alaska still beckons the family. This summer Carlson plans to take off three weeks to start building a cabin in Alaska. Next fall his son will go to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and live with his grandparents.
But, he's happy here in Siouxland. Said Carlson: "Iowa is the next best thing to Alaska."
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Bob wrote on Feb 27, 2007 6:40 PM: