A Cold Postcard for a Hot Fever | Finding Strength in the Ghost Town of Kennecott, Alaska
My bones hurt. My muscles hurt. In Malay, we call this ‘demam urat’. It feels like every part of my body is tired and complaining. I do not want to eat. The food has no taste. I do not want to move. The bed is my home now. It is my world.
This world is small. It is just my room. The fan turns and turns. The clock on the wall says tick-tock. It is a slow and boring world. When you are sick, time moves very slowly. One hour feels like one day.
In my small world, I look for something to do. My eyes are tired of the phone. My ears are tired of the quiet. I see a box on my table. It is a simple brown box. But inside, it is not simple. Inside are my treasures. Inside are my windows to the world. The box is full of postcards.
Friends from far, far away send them to me. Each postcard is a picture. Each postcard is a story. Each postcard is a hello from another place. I pull the box closer. My hands are weak. I open the box.
So many colors. So many places. A beach in Thailand. A big tower in France. A busy street in Japan. I touch each one. I remember the friends who sent them. Then, my fingers stop. They stop on one postcard. It is very different from the others. There is no sun. There are no happy people on a beach.
There is snow. So much white snow. The snow is on the ground. The snow is on the roofs of the buildings. The snow is on the big, tall mountains in the back. The sky is a soft, pale color.
And the buildings. They are big and red. They are made of wood. They look old. They climb up the side of the mountain, like big wooden stairs. There are tall black chimneys, like two fingers pointing to the sky. It is a quiet picture. It is a cold picture.
At the bottom of the postcard, I see the words: WRANGELL-ST. ELIAS NATIONAL PARK.
I look closer. At the bottom right, there is a tiny person. The person is walking in the snow. Next to the person is a small, white dog. They look so small. The red buildings are big. The white mountains are giant. The world in this picture is huge and quiet.
My fever feels so hot. But this picture is so cold. I feel a little better looking at it. The cold from the picture feels like it is cooling my hot skin.
I am curious. What is this place? Why are there big red buildings in the middle of all that snow? Who built them? Where did everyone go? The tiny person and the dog are the only living things I can see.
So, I ask my friend, Cik Gem. "Cik Gem, can you tell me the story of this postcard?" And Cik Gem tells me a story. It is a story from a long, long time ago.
The place in the picture is in Alaska, in America. It is a very, very big park. The biggest national park in America! The red buildings are part of an old mine. The name of the place is Kennecott Mines.
A long time ago, more than 100 years ago, two friends were looking for something in the mountains. They were not looking for animals. They were not looking for a place to build a home. They were looking for treasure. They were looking for copper.
Copper is a type of metal. It is a reddish-brown color, like our old one-cent coins. Copper is very important. We use it to make wires for electricity. We use it to make pipes for water. It is a very useful treasure.
One day, the two friends saw something strange on the mountain. It looked like a green field on the side of the snowy mountain. But how can there be a green field in the snow?
They went closer. It was not grass. It was rock. A rock that was bright green. And that green rock was full of pure copper! They had found the treasure. It was one of the richest copper treasures in the whole world. But there was a big problem.
Kennecott was in the middle of nowhere. No roads. No towns. Just mountains, rivers, and a lot of ice and snow. How do you get the treasure out? They needed to build everything.
They built the big red buildings in my postcard. The biggest one was the mill. It was 14 floors high! Can you imagine that? A 14-floor building made of wood, on the side of a mountain, in the snow. Inside the mill, big machines crushed the rocks to get the copper out.
To take the copper away, they needed a train. So, they built a railway. It was almost 200 miles long! The workers had to build bridges over icy rivers and cut through mountains. The winters were so cold. The work was so, so hard.
I think about my fever. My body hurts. It feels like hard work for my body to fight this sickness. But then I think about those workers. Building a railway in the freezing cold. Their bodies must have hurt so much more.
My fight is inside my warm room. Their fight was outside, against the ice and the wind. It makes my own pain feel a little smaller.
A whole town was built there. It was called Kennecott. The workers and their families lived there. They had a hospital. A school. A post office. A shop. It was a busy little town, full of noise and people, all because of the red treasure in the mountain.
They worked there for about 30 years. They took so much copper from the mountain. They sent it all over the world. But one day, the treasure started to run out. There was no more copper to find. So, the mine had to close. The train made its last journey. And everyone had to leave.
One by one, the families packed their things and left Kennecott. The town became quiet. The school became empty. The big red mill stopped making noise. All that was left were the buildings, standing alone on the mountain. A ghost town. Now, I look at my postcard again.
I see it differently. It is not just a picture of old buildings. It is a picture of a dream. A dream of treasure. It is a picture of hard, hard work. It is a picture of a busy life. And now, it is a picture of silence. The people are all gone. The noise is all gone. Only the wind and the snow live there now.
My head still hurts. My room is quiet. The town of Kennecott is quiet too. We are both resting. My body is resting to get better. The town is resting after working so hard for so many years. The big red buildings are like old warriors.
They are strong. They faced the wind and the snow for a hundred years, and they are still standing. I need to be strong like these buildings. This fever is like a winter storm. It is strong now, but it will not last forever. I need to be patient. I need to rest. Soon, my storm will pass.
The tiny person and the dog in the picture are visitors. They are looking at the history. They are walking in the quiet. Maybe they feel the stories in the air. The stories of the miners, the families, the train, and the treasure. This postcard is a good friend to me today.
It took me out of my small, hot room. It took me on a journey to a big, cold mountain in Alaska. It told me a story about dreams, and hard work, and about endings. Everything has an ending. The great mine of Kennecott had its ending. And my fever will have its ending too.
One day soon, I will be better. I will put this postcard back in the box. But I will not forget its story. I will not forget the big red buildings, standing strong in the snow.
A quiet reminder that even after the hardest work, and the longest storms, there is peace. There is rest. And there is always a new day to come. Thank you, my friend, for sending me this piece of the world. Thank you for this story. It was the best medicine I had all day.
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