For residents of the most remote parts of Alaska, who cannot simply walk to the nearest store to buy something for lunch or dinner, the traditional Thanksgiving meal, turkey, sometimes falls from the sky.
For the third year in a row, Esther Keim from Anchorage has been flying her small plane low over rural areas of Alaska, dropping frozen turkeys, packaged in bags, to the residents of remote cabins.
Alaska is mostly wilderness, where normal roads connect only 20% of the territory. Residents of inaccessible areas usually rely on snowmobiles or small planes, and frozen riverbeds often serve as roads.
When Keim was growing up on one such rural homestead in Alaska, a family friend would throw turkeys from a plane for Thanksgiving to her family and nearby neighbors. Sometimes, he would also drop newspapers, and occasionally, there would be packs of gum inside for Esther.
She later moved with her family to a more urban part of the state. Using a small plane she repaired with her father, she revived the “turkey bombing” mission a few years ago after hearing about a family living nearby in the wilderness who had almost nothing to eat for the holiday.
“They told me that a squirrel for dinner wasn’t really enough for three people. At that moment, I thought, I’ll drop them a turkey from the air,” Keim said.
She decided not to stop there. Her mission became well-known among people and on social media. This year, she decided to drop 32 frozen turkeys from her plane for families living in areas without roads. To date, almost all of them have been delivered, but Alaska’s unpredictable weather prevented the drop of the last two.
Each year, she delivers 30 to 40 birds, on flights within a 165-kilometer radius to the base of Denali, North America’s tallest mountain. Sometimes, while piloting, she has a “turkey thrower” to assist, while at other times, she handles the drops herself as her friend Heidi Hastings flies the plane.
She obtains the turkeys through donations, usually from people who reach out to her on Facebook. Thanks to the cold Alaskan weather, she doesn’t need a freezer to store the frozen birds.
“We don’t throw them until we see people outside their houses because if they don’t see where they fell, they won’t know where to look,” Keim explained, adding that she prefers to throw them onto frozen lakes, where they are easiest to spot.
One turkey spent five days buried in deep snow before it was found, and the only “real casualty” was one ham that was never recovered.
Esther Keim hopes to establish a nonprofit organization, increase donations, and expand the reach of her mission so that it’s not limited to Thanksgiving turkeys.
“There are lots of kids in those villages. It would be great to include a stuffed animal or something they can hold onto,” Keim said.
Photo: wikipedia
