The Local Moment
Jim Stearns - Always On Location
In All Beginnings Dwells A Magic Force
The Alaska Saga
Stage 6
Posted 9-21-09
By Jim Stearns
We leave the wonder of Denali National Park and head over the longest dirt road we’ve ever traveled. Cutting 135 miles across the middle of the state from Cantwell to Paxton, the old Denali highway, once the only car route into the park runs along and then above the Tanana River and its impressive and massive watershed, then swings over to pick up the drainage of the Copper and MacLaren rivers. As we rise over McClaren Pass a bald eagle soars along beside us, as if leading the way, for a minute or so. The views are across vast expanses of lakes that were created by icepacks left by the glaciers. We see moose, swans, countless beaver dams, crystal clear streams, lakes of every size and shape, near and distant glaciers and valleys into the distance as far as the eye can see. Lush tundra meadows, and the classic ten to twenty foot spruces that typically dot this particular type of Alaskan landscape fill the horizon in various directions with towering distant ranges of the Wrangell’s, the Chugachs and the Alaska providing an infinite backdrop.
After passing through places like the Amphitheatre Mountains, Crazy Notch and the impressive Susitna river headwaters, we finally emerge on the other side. Our car is so coated in mud that you can’t tell we even have a license plate much less read it. At Paxon we head down the Richardson Highway toward the infamous port of Valdez where we plan to spend the night. Suddenly, we are caught in one of the biggest thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced. Buckets of water are pouring from the sky and at full speed windshield wipers still have no chance. Slowing to a crawl, we pull out our handy milepost book and discover an escape just a couple of miles down the road. We limp into a little roadhouse called Sourdough’s, one of the original stops on the 1896 miners route from Valdez to the gold fields.
At Sourdough's Roadhouse we settle into a 100 year old decrepit log cabin that somebody attempted to modernize sometime apparently in the fifties. Still we find it quaint and comfortable and most importantly dry and warm, We wander in the dining room filled with the usual artifacts. Massive moose rack, Caribou antlers, stuffed fish that look too big to be true but always are. Various maps, photos and other items of interest adorn the walls and the food is decent until dessert. One of the locals dining on one of Ma Sourdoughs specials urges us to try her Rhubarb cream pie. Now I am not a huge fan of Rhubarb but I have tried it in a strawberry rhubarb pie and found it somewhat tasty and interesting so I decide to take the old timers suggestion and lo and behold out comes a warm and delectable piece of homemade pie like I’ve rarely experienced. The crust was perfect, the pie exquisite and we left the next morning vowing to stop at more roadhouses down the line.
Throughout our travels we have crossed hundreds, perhaps thousands of places like Sourdoughs and stopped in at a few. Most of them we pass by and find that many more are abandoned, for sale, shuttered and forgotten. Little stores, gas stations, restaurants, motels, cottages and cabins or some combination of the above, many seemingly quaint and once vital. Mom and Pop operations run by people who made a living off their roadside operations, perhaps for generations, gone the way of the Dinosaur.
There was a time in the lower 48 when it was the same-the route 66 era- when little operations dotted the countryside and people stopped in for better or for worse to fill up on gas, get a taste of local color, a bite of home cooked food, perhaps a few stories and a room or cabin.
I ponder why such a vital element and interesting factor in the AlCan travel equation is quickly becoming extinct and why it went extinct many decades ago in other lower 48. There are a number of factors at play perhaps and I find I need not explore farther than my own psyche to discover some answers.
First of all we have to a large extent become a point A to point B culture. Process has taken a distant backseat to result. Thus we have less time. We want to get in and get out and those clusters of gas stations, fast food outlets and quick stop shops fit well into that mentality. In addition we have become more adverse to risk taking. In an increasingly uncertain world we are willing to sacrifice the element of adventure for safety and familiarity. While the stop at the roadhouse might prove to be one of the best decisions you might make, it also might be one of the worst. The people might be odd, the bathrooms might be filthy, the food might be old or weird and Boo Radley might be sneaking around out back. There might not be, probably wont be, cable TV. Another problem is that as the roads improve, longer distances can be traveled between stops and when the car is zipping along the highway at 60 or 70 a decision to stop at a roadhouse must be made quickly. When the assessment of whether to stop or not is made that quickly the decision is usually going to be negative, unless we are running out of gas, starving or being pounded by a frightening thunderstorm.
Thus thousands of people lose their livelihood based upon that sense of potential discomfort or worse. Unfortunately, it’s the inertia thing, once it starts it gets worse, they have less customers, you never want to be the only guy in there, their attitude goes south, they have less revenue and so it goes.
Moving down the highway toward Valdez we begin following the same general path of the 800-mile oil pipeline that begins in Prudhoe Bay and ends at the port in Valdez. There it is put on tankers such as the Exxon Valdez, the same one that spilled 11 millions of gallons almost exactly twenty years ago with devastating results. TheTheThedrive
The Drive to Valdez is breathtaking, a landscape amidst breathtaking landscape. We drop into a dense fog as we arrive in Valdez and can’t seem to find our way around and then suddenly almost magically the fog begins to lift and the spectacular setting of Valdez, oil depot and all is slowly revealed in its entire splendor. Majestic peaks some filled with waterfalls and glaciers rise right out of the water and the town sparkles
On the way to Anchorage from Valdez we to pass by the unique and behemoth Matanuska Glacier and into the valley that shares its name containing the agriculture based towns of Palmer and Wasilla, the now famous hometown of Sarah Palin. Wasilla can best be described as the Modesto of Alaska. Open fields surround the sprawling town center complete with strip malls, big box stores, fast food joints, liquor stores, car dealers and whatever else you might find in its central valley sister city. It is the hub of the Matanuska Valley, a fertile and relative temperate region northeast of Anchorage settled during the depression by farmers sent from the Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Minnesota. Under FDR, the U.S. government sent several hundred families up here to settle the region and develop its enormous agricultural potential of which it remains renowned for to this day. Indeed while we were in town the fair was in full swing and one of the local farmers broke the world record for a 127 lb. cabbage.
The dilemma of Wasilla is that it represents the aforementioned America that is becoming homogenized. Even in Alaska there are places where character is slipping away and corporations are taking over. Quality and individuality are being replaced by medicrocrity and conformity. Drop somebody blindfolded from the sky into a Wal-Mart, Safeway, Office Depot, Chevy’s or some similar mall parking lot and see how long it takes him or her to figure out what state they have landed in. The problem is that it could all be labeled anywhere USA and increasingly anywhere international.
Denny’s, Big 8 and Best Western, IHOP, Taco Bell, Marriot and Applebee’s. It’s okay, it’ll do, but at what price to our culture and ourselves? It becomes the symbol, an underlying story of our lives and represents an element of our clearly declining civilization.
Part of the problem is that the Matanuska Valley is becoming a suburb of Anchorage. Only a half hour further along we arrive in Anchorage and suddenly the open space starts to constrict. Anchorage the major port city, is home to almost half of the Alaskan population and there are those who certainly would argue that Anchorageites are not truly Alaskans. It is the only place we have been where you can actually forget, quite easily in fact, that you are in Alaska. The freeways are six lanes wide in places, there are traffic lights and traffic jams, malls and Wal Marts, big hotels and mini marts everywhere and not surprisingly it is the crime capital of the 49th state.
One night in Anchorage is enough and onward toward the Kenai peninsula and our ultimate destination of Homer. We move along the Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage in an area where Captain Cook, endlessly searching for a northwest passage, ran into another dead-end and had to turn around again thus naming the long dogleg at the end of the Inlet, The Turnagain Arm.
We stop at a nature preserve that specializes in rescuing wounded and orphaned animals. Unlike a zoo where the animals are virtual prisoners, this is a place that gives animals a chance to survive. Caribou, elk and moose with highway injuries, orphaned or found wounded in snowdrifts. Two young grizzlies’ that were orphaned when their mother was shot. A bald eagle that lost a wing on power line. Coyotes, black bears, owls, bison, musk oxen all given another chance. It is quite a heartwarming experience for us animal lovers but none touches us so much as the 14-month-old bull Moose named Jack. As we moved around to a vast fenced in expanse, Hannah shouts excitedly that there is a girl sleeping with a Moose. Mom tells her that’s to quiet down and don’t scare the animals, and besides, that’s ridiculous nobody is sleeping with a moose. Yet there she is, barely 25 ft. from the fence line, Jennifer, a 20 something young woman is lying with a moose gently caressing his nose. With his enormous rack and humongous body it looks like a dangerous situation until we start conversing with her. She tells us that she found Jack when he was 4 days old and weighed 25 lbs. He had been hit by a car and had a broken leg. She had no idea what had happened to his mother and took him in as her own. While he grew rapidly he became a bit rambunctious and too large to fit in the tent they been sharing since she found him. The sanctuary folks took him in and gave him little chance but with the love and attention of Jennifer, (all her free time is spent with Jack), it looks like he is going to make it. Whether he is ever going to be returned to her yard or released into the wild is unlikely, but the story still seems to have a relatively happy ending.
At the back end of the Turnagain and 16 miles down the other side we roll towards another planned destination, the quaint and special village called Hope. We knew we loved Hope, founded during another one of the late 1800’s gold rushes, but we’d forgotten how much. No place we’ve seen in all of America has the authenticity of Hope. Filled with 100+-year-old log cabins that sit along dirt lanes in meadows and forested glens surrounded by towering mountains, it is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. Hope epitomizes the earliest western settling of Alaska. The cabins have been restored and inhabited by the present residents; the 300 or so rugged folks who call this unique place. in the land of unique places, home.
When we arrive the pink salmon are surging up the Resurrection river that runs right through the little downtown. ‘Downtown’ is composed of one of the most real bars you’ve ever seen. A rough-hewn building from 1895, it shares a deck with the Sea view café, a great place to grab a great meal or burger at a decent price. Just up the street is the Social Hall built of logs a hundred years ago and used as the name implies from that day to the present. Across the street is Sourdough Dru’s store-I guess we have a thing for Sourdough- where you can buy bumper stickers, ‘Alaska girls kick ass’ or Got Hope in Alaska’, get your picture taken with one of those stick-your-head in the gold rush scene cutouts, get some ice cream, candy or some of Dru’s beautiful jewelry. When we start asking about the fish, Dru a vivacious and gregarious woman who left a government surveyors job in Juneau almost 30 years ago and moved to Hope and been adding her share of local color ever since, tells us the pink are running strong for another week and that the silvers are just starting. We lament the fact that we don’t have a pole or license and she tells us we can get the license at the general store up around the corner and she can find a pole somewhere out back. She’ll rent it to us for 5 bucks. She’s closing up and leaving for Seattle the next mornings so “just toss the pole under the stairs,” she tells us. No deposit, no ID, no collateral, just good old fashion human trust in a stranger. They still have that in Alaska. You can pump gas before you pay. I’m guessing with the influx of people that trust might soon be a thing of the past.
Hannah, our ten year old has been dying to catch a fish so we set her up with the pole and quickly is taken underling by a wonderful kid from Anchorage named Oscar who is going to college at BYU.
Oscar shows her how to tie the lure, hold the pole, use the reel, cast the line and within minutes she has pulled in a five lb. pink. “That’s a male, Oscar tells us, and we should throw it back.” That philosophy has always run against my instincts. When I see a fish on the shore and none in the bag I’m not inclined to toss it back but Oscar assures us the females are better eating and since we can only eat one tonight and the other fifty or so folks spread up and down the river seem to be pulling them out so a regular basis, we toss it back and after a couple more casts she has a female. Her face lights up like only a child’s can and she excitedly casts back again as I take over to kill and clean the fish.
From Hope we set off down the Kenai Peninsula through a variety of small towns, villages and vacation spots, Sterling, Coopers Landing, Kenai, Nilnilski, Soldotna and Anchor Point. The Kenai River that runs out of the enormous Kenai Lake is one of the hottest fishing and rafting rivers in the region. There are so many fishermen and fisherwomen from all over the world crowded into certain spots along the river its almost funny but they all seem to be catching fish. At one point we stop at an overlook to watch a grizzly bear wading out in the river to grab him one of the plentiful red salmon that are running up stream. When a small boat comes around the bend and realizes that the pecking order puts them one notch below the grizzly, they gun their little motor and decide to move quickly to another area.
Finally after 52 days on the road we round the bend at the end of the road down the Kenai and see one of the most spectacular vistas in the world. It is Homer a place they say is ridiculously beautiful even by Alaska standards. Towering peaks across the Katchemak Bay, the five mile spit that juts into the middle of the bay where countless fishing and pleasure boats dock, including the now world famous Deadliest Catches Time Bandit. Thousands of tourists from all over, including many from Alaska itself, clog the spit the restaurants, the roads, the shops-including the Time Bandit souvenir shop and museums. Homer is a truly special place and is where we will settle for the next two months and deserves a story all of its own.
Part 5
Alaska is simply beyond comprehension; it exceeds the grasp of even the grandest imagination. The sheer vastness, the never ending awe inspiring scenery leaves you at once feeling unbelievably insignificant and yet somehow intricately connected to it all. A drop in an ocean, a leaf on a tree, a star in an infinite galaxy. Human, geological and ecological histories are rich, deep and complex and yet are still here and now. The land is raw and primeval. Everywhere you look the country is wild, full of wildlife, glaciers, raging rivers, some running through rugged gorges, others a mile or more wide, towering peaks, surging clouds, meadows, lakes and streams too numerous to even begin to name. I half expect to come around a corner and see a group of Mastodon standing in the road.
We move up the Al-Can toward Tok, a town of several hundred folks where a couple gas stations, stores and a few other assorted businesses handle the regions needs. Tok is the interchange where the Glen and Richardson highways meet, an Alaskan hub, small but extremely important.
We settle in to the Sourdough Campground where they advertise an all you can eat breakfast of sourdough pancakes and reindeer sausage among other conventional items. Though the kids turn up their noses at the sausage and do not particularly appreciate the pancakes it is unique and well worth the 12 bucks. We are warned that nearly a million acres are on fire near Fairbanks and that the air is so thick with smoke you can hardly see your hand in front of your face but we decide to check it out ourselves. We learned a long time ago, and it has been confirmed many times on this trip, that misinformation abounds and its best to see for oneself or at least get a story solidly corroborated. It doesn’t take long however, as we move along, to realize that the story is in fact true and that we were probably idiots to drive toward such an ecological and health disaster. When we stop at one of the visitor centers in a little outpost that is filled with fire trucks and thick smoke we realize that we have to move quickly in some direction where the fires aren’t.
Suddenly it begins to rain. It hasn’t rained near Fairbanks in nearly 6 weeks so the unexpected storm is a huge relief to all, including us. Thus we continue up the Richardson toward a relatively empty Fairbanks. Since our last trip here almost five years ago, Fairbanks is starting to sprawl. Building is moving down the highway toward the renowned and picturesque University of Alaska. Still it remains a wonderful town about the size of Juneau. Big enough to provide virtually everything you might need or want yet small enough to be highly manageable.
We settle into the beautiful state campground that sits in a forested glen along the Chena River that remains a pristine wonderland yet Safeway and Fred Myers have moved in across the street. You can literally stroll out of the woodland; walk by a moose and cross the street to get a cup of coffee and a bagel in the comfort of a shopping center. It is somewhat surreal to wake up in the morning to sirens going by and jets climbing out of Fairbanks international airport right overhead.
The town was founded by yet another of Alaska’s smaller gold rushes and the story goes that a guy named Barnette seeking to establish a trading post further south near Tok was dropped off by a cantankerous boat captain who refused to go any further down one the mighty Yukon’s tributary rivers, the Tanana. Barnette, after establishing a trading post and running into a miner who told him, he was ‘finding some color’ in some local streams, spread the word up and down river that there was going to be a big strike soon. Since the Klondike was playing out and there were miners spread up and down this region either coming, going or scraping by, they started to flock into the region. The name Fairbanks was suggested to Barnette as a way of securing at least some recognition in Washington. Fairbanks was a respected Senator from Indiana who apparently never gave much thought to Alaska. Never had been there and never would. Barnette was considered so shady in the area that the first Fairbanks newspaper branded him a common thief and an outright scoundrel and used his name as a verb-barnetting-for years after his departure to describe political shenanigans.
We spend a couple days wandering around town exploring museums, parks and taking in the rich and colorful history of Alaska’s unofficial northern capital. One morning while sitting along the Chena, a couple of beavers are actively working the area and Buck, our big dog, decides to wade out in the river to gingerly check out these strange creatures. Apparently they are just as curious and soon one of them is ten feet away from Bucks curious sniffing nose when suddenly it does what beavers do, it slaps its tail, making a huge noise and splash. Buck bolts from the water and runs to the safety behind my legs where he peeks out nervously to check out the completely nonchalant beaver. I realize that though Buck looks large and tough he has now been frightened by the feral cats of Sacramento, the salmon of Juneau and now the beavers of Fairbanks. I decide its time to start reading him White Fang at bedtime. Its Alaska boy, you have to get a little tougher.
After a brief stop at the town of North Pole a few miles outside Fairbanks where Santa has an all year tourist trap and the kids get their picture taken with the old man we head south on the Parks highway toward Denali National Park. Though the fires are still going, the rain has knocked down their advance and increased the air quality tremendously. One stop that is a must for a quick beer or a bite is Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn as you’re heading down the Parks highway toward Denali. We pass the place just above Denali where the adventurous young man whose tragic fate was the foundation of the movie Into The Wild and find our way to an old friend of mine who has lived and worked in Denali for the past couple of decades. On our last visit I attended a meeting with her and some of her neighbors as they were moving toward the formation of a borough-the equivalent of a county, because of the rising development right outside the park entrance that they had dubbed Glitter Gulch.
Glitter Gulch has sprung up in the last five years or so like many Alaska towns did, because of a gold rush. This time however the gold rush is basically the tour buses that are bringing the cruise ship folks and others willing to venture into the Alaska wild as long as they can ride, stay and eat in the comfort of a first class situation. Thus Glitter Gulch is composed of fancy log hotels, restaurants and knick knack shops. The formation of the borough by the park employees and other like-minded souls at least gives a semblance of control and some tax revenue.
Denali National Park, once McKinley, is centered around the largest mountain, Denali, in north America and is now at least named appropriately with the Athabascan native name meaning The high one.
Though Denali Park is huge, about the size of New Hampshire, it is not even the largest national park in Alaska. It does however remain as perhaps the wildest place in the country in terms of development. There is but one approximately 100-mile dirt road that runs into the park. The only way to access this vast region is by walking or taking a bus drive on the road that takes virtually all day. We had talked to some other travelers who claimed Denali was a big let down but we certainly didn’t share that assessment. It is different than much of the surrounding region simply because it is so high. Most of the road travels above timberline along the high tundra offering views of vast valleys tapering toward canyons that are backed by the massive snow capped peaks that share the Alaska range with the 20,320 ft. behemoth Mt. Denali. The vistas are jaw dropping the wildlife abundant and the terrain unique for even Alaska. It resembles high desert more than forest, which is why we figure some tourists find it disappointing but to us, it is an incredible never-ending wonderland.
We see moose, a mother wolf with pups, caribous, a grizzly or two. At one point we hop out of the bus, you can do that at any point, and grab another bus as long as there is room, and hike to a vista point that offers a unique panorama. When we return to the road and start moving along waiting for a bus, a ranger rolls by in his truck and asks us what we are doing. We explain the situation and he suggests we go the other direction because just up around the corner from where we are walking a grizzly is hanging out in the road. No problem we tell him, thanks for letting us know.
After Denali, we decide we are going to travel across the longest dirt road we have ever attempted. Once called the Denali highway because for many years it was the only way into the park besides rail and air, it is a 125-mile road that cuts across some incredible country back over to the Richardson Highway at a little town call Paxson. We take a deep breath, tighten down our load and take the turn.
Part Four
Finally we are boarding the ferry, Taku, in the predawn mist of Prince Rupert and set off for the inside passage and ALASKA. Almost immediately we see a pod of orca. The low hanging clouds and the mist only heighten the mystery. We feel a sense of liberation and exhilaration as we weave through the passages and channels, Nichols, Revillagigedo, Behm and Wales. We roll past the islands Pearse, Somerville, Mary, Annette, Bold and Pennock. Gaze at the inlets and bays, Carroll, George and Boca De Quadra, but a sprinkling of the major ones and we’re just getting started. There’s the narrows, the fjords, mountains and straits, too numerous to mention. Slowly and steadily we move past this awesome landscape toward the first Alaskan stop at Ketchikan. While it’s not exactly Captain Cook style travel you nevertheless get the sense of what he and his cohorts might have felt and certainly what they saw. The view today is not appreciably different than that of 100, 200 or 300 years ago.
We set our tent on the solar deck. Despite stories we’ve heard of the tent cities on the ferry decks, held down through driving wind and rain, we have the whole deck area to ourselves and the weather improves dramatically as we move along toward Ketchikan. A pair of bald eagles flies across the bow as if they are welcoming us or wishing us safe travel. As we wander through the various levels of the ship we find a play area, several lounges, a movie theatre, a cafeteria, comfortable clean bathrooms and showers.
Outside the expansiveness, the sheer vastness of this region is simply overwhelming. Humpbacks spouting as we roll by, island after island, some with miniscule settlements we can see in the distance, the human habitation dwarfed by the enormity of the surrounding landscape bursting with waterfalls, glaciers, snow capped peaks and cloud patterns as diverse in a day as what we are used to seeing in a month. There are eagles, otters, seals, killer whales and humpbacks, too much to even process much less grasp. I find myself not wanting it to get dark for fear I will miss wave after wave of something breathtaking and special. Mysteries, however fleeting in the daylight, slip right by in the night. Still it will be light until nearly midnight and dawn will break by 4 so I won’t miss much and I’m betting the stars will present quite a show of their own. Sleep? I’m not sure. Maybe when we dock for an hour or so in the various ports of Petersburg, Wrangle and Kake. As we leave the port of Kake at dawn a huge iceberg comes rolling by and I’m glad to have popped out of the tent at first light.
For me the feeling is similar to a deep, all consuming and passionate love affair. That unbelievable freshness that brings the desire and ability to stay awake all night in the arms of your beloved. A captivating and consuming fascination that you never want to end. If you go to sleep you and awaken it might be gone or you may discover it was but a dream.
On the other hand, while we find our excitement barely containable, we quickly realize that we are traveling with those who don’t share our enthusiasm. To many on board the boat is just transportation, a bus or a train taking them home. There is Sherry taking her 3 small children back to Sitka from Ketchikan via Juneau. Her teenage son missed the connection in Ketchikan where he was visiting his dad and she is beside herself as the ferry pulls away from the dock. There is the Ed the deck hand who looks more interested in finding a place to take a swig or two off the bottle. The guys on the car decks going through the motions. The weary Alaskan families and couples coming home from the lower 48 travel after trips for pleasure or obligation. There are a few folks who share our wonder, carrying the binoculars, asking questions, scanning the horizon, looking in awe at the jaw dropping scenery but for most on this ferry it is but passage back to a reality that has become, despite the wonder of their external surroundings, mundane, predictable or possibly even dysfunctional.
I think back to the times when I have been immersed in my own reality, consumed by some relatively minor issue, late for a meeting or an appointment and got behind some gawking tourist on the road or in a check out line somebody who wanted to ask too many questions, drive too slowly as they found that fresh wonder of my home region. Perhaps they could have reminded me that I had forgotten to marvel at the wonder and beauty of my own home turf. The same sense of taking for granted something so marvelous and special that I see in these Alaskan travelers, I too have often been guilty of myself. Hopefully this lesson can serve to remind us to try to find the sense of wonder and appreciation for the places and the people in our lives that are so easily taken for granted wherever we might be.
After 30 hours on the boat we come into Juneau, the capital of Alaska, where the first thing I do is grab the local paper. One of the first things I notice is the free delivery Papa Murphy’s pizza is offering. No big deal, except it’s by plane. Catch is you have to buy five for more. Still I’m guessing this is the only place with free pizza delivery by plane.
The first contact we had after coming off the ferry is from locals- hey dude looks like a cool trip -when our car, covered with mud from our aforementioned Canada adventure hits the first parking lots of Juneau. If I were in California the first thing would be somebody writing on my mud splattered rear window-WASH ME.
In downtown Juneau massive cruise ships tower over the two three and four story shops and apartments of the main drag in Juneau. Though the visual look of downtown is undoubtedly similar to the gold rush era there is something odd going on. After a quick jont up and down the street I find the whole situation paradoxical. Italians, Pakistanis, Iranians, Tunisians, Koreans and the other foreigners run the stores. A couple of stores announce in bold letter signs in the front, THIS STORE OWNED BY ALASKANS. Sure it’s a free enterprise system but this place is clearly being taken over by slick wealthy opportunistic outsiders. They have figured out what to wear, how to decorate and what to stock, jewelry, furs, clothing, Persian rugs, elegant Alaska art and crafts, in their high-end retail stores. There is a surreal quality to the whole scene. It still looks very cool on the surface but the money gods within and without have gutted the soul. Its like Jack London goes Dubai.
Nevertheless, there are some elements of the old days, the Red Dog Saloon, Rendezvous Club and the Hotel Alaska. Raucous sounds come from behind the old fashioned swinging doors and indicate that while it many not be pure Alaska, there is still some substance there. There is the homeless shelter and the soup kitchen that somehow remain right in the middle of the high priced main drag. The worn and ragged buildings, stuffed inside and spilling out, are the worn and ragged individuals who have fallen victim to the internal and external demands of life. Alisa spends a day helping the overworked kitchen staff feed the overcrowded dining room. I stand outside with the kids for a while shooting the breeze with the revolving group of smokers coming in and out. The cruise ship folks stroll along, window shopping or popping in and out of the series of shops then pick up their pace and avert their eyes as they move past the shelter and the kitchen.
The mighty Mendenhall glacier is the visual jewel of Juneau. At once present and ancient, still vital and dynamic, carving rock and delivering the freshest and coldest water to the world below. Still there is something deeply depressing about the clear demise of this once and still powerful force of nature. There is no question that this glacier, like all others is doomed, ‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’ and anyone can see that these glaciers are in serious retreat, Like ice cubes on a summer sidewalk, the melt perpetuates melt.
Some would argue that its not humanities fault (almost all scientist believe we are at least to blame for the shocking acceleration of the melt) but there truly is no other indicator as obvious as striking as the sad ending to the glacial era and its vast implications. You don’t have to look long or talk to many native Alaskans before its painfully recognizable. If there are any glaciers left when our three year old is a grandma then I would be surprised. A massive waterfall, hundreds of feet high, plummets down to the right and another pours right out of the glacier itself. Icebergs, the size of cars and houses, fluorescent blue mixed with snow white, recently broken off (or calved) float slowly but surely to the sea.
As usual our three year old, Hope, provides some of the lighter moments each day. When we finally arrive in Juneau she wants to know, “Are we in North to Alaska yet?” Later as we’re driving around she asks, “Where is all the snow?” Finally as we get out at the Mendenhall overlook she wonders with unbridled enthusiasm, “Where’s all the penguins?”
The cruise ships are starting to send their passengers a bit more inland. The safety of the bus allows them to see the eagles, grizzlies, wolves, moose, caribou, the wild rivers, glaciers etc. from the climate controlled comfort of their high quality tour mobiles. One of the most amusing moments for us happened at the Mendenhall overlook and we were readying ourselves for the mile long walk to the base of the great waterfall when a huge tour bus pulled in. Alisa and I looked at each other and groaned, as we believed we would be sharing the trail with dozens of camera toting tourists. The bus stopped for just a few seconds, everyone snapped a photo out the window and off they went as if to say ‘Got it’, on to the next site.
We stop by the visitor’s center at Mendenhall (a mile plus from the glacier and covered by 20 feet of ice only seventy years ago) and I ask the lady if I could get a kayak and go out to the glacier face, which is about 150 feet high. She says that I could but that they suggest I stay a couple of hundred yards from the face in case of a sudden calving. I ask her if there are buoys or barriers of some kind to keep people back and she says no, if I want to be an idiot I can just go ahead. I respond by saying –That is so non-California. She replies with a smile-No comment.
We spend the night at Eagle Creek campground a few miles north of town. There are no roads out of Juneau since towering peaks and the 150 sq. mile Juneau Ice Field surround it. Indeed, miles of trail outnumber the miles of roads. We are shocked at the amount of eagles hanging around the stream mouth as it enters the Galbraith channel. Unlike Redwood City or Oakland these locations are representative of their names. At dawn I rise and walk along the creek. (Creeks are like rivers in Alaska). Eagles are sitting on snags, rocks and trees waiting to nab a spawning salmon. The mist hanging over the water is almost mystical and the only sound is the song of the water. Our German Shepard, Buck is wading into the stream to drink when a salmon suddenly jumps out of the water about two feet in front of him. Quickly he bolts to shore and sits at my leg. He hasn’t been this nervous since the cats of Sacramento.
Everywhere you go, everywhere you look there are rivers, streams, lakes and waterfalls in Alaska. Almost invariably they are pure and powerful. In the lower 48, indeed all over the world, we can see the result of mismanagement of resources, overpopulation along with often human driven ecological and humanitarian disasters. We’ve annihilated wetlands, the great lakes are in grave danger, the California water system is a systemic travesty and the Colorado is being drained to a trickle by excess and waste. Alaska may be headed that way eventually but there are a few things going for it. It is as big as Texas, California, Montana and New Mexico combined. Only about 700,000 people live here, about one for every fifty who live in California. There are thousands of major rivers, 3 million lakes larger than 20 acres (that’s 4 for every resident) and a landscape so rugged it is virtually impossible to put roads or railroads in most places. It’s going to take a while to mess this place up. In a way I guess that might sound selfish but if space is what you are looking for, as I have often been, then it’s hard to resist the call of Alaska.
We leave Juneau on the ferry for the 4-hour ride to Haines. Though driving offers a great perspective of the never-ending, jaw dropping scenery, the ferry offers a broader view. Chugging in the middle of the various channels, Favorite, Stephens and Lyn, dotted with dozens and islands, the towering cliffs on both sides offer continual kaleidoscope of glaciers, avalanche and slide areas, waterfalls, coves, inlets and beaches virtually all completely devoid of any sign of humans.
Haines, the postcard perfect little town on the natural bay is as real as any we’ve seen. It was such a prime spot that the Indians used it for trading and would blindfold members of other tribes when they led them to the post. When the first western traders arrived in the Chilkoot Bay, it became a hub of trading activity for the entire region. The modern world has not found its way to Haines and that gives it a refreshingly authentic quality.
Haines is the only town in all of Southern Alaska named after a woman, A village once named Drehshuh (‘end of the trail’) by the Tlingit, it was renamed Haines for Mrs. E.F.Haines of the Presbyterian Executive Committee for Home Missions. The locals like to say that the 800 or so permanent resident of Haines were visitors who never left or those who visited and came back to live.
Heading north out of Haines the highway leads back into Canada and the Yukon Territory. While driving through this region we go through four distinct weather zones as we move toward the highway junction at Tok. The misty high fog shrouded coast and relatively lush coastal inland leads rather quickly to the drier interior, a mountain pass thunderstorm and finally the warmth and unblocked sun of Tok. The Yukon is very similar to Alaska and is virtually uninhabited. Huge, gorgeous lakes and not a soul in sight. No one is fishing or boating and our expansive view across the horizon offers no sign of humanity. As we drive about 50 miles around three sides of a particularly beautiful, turquoise lake and see literally nobody I suspect the water must be somehow poison. When we finally get to a remote, log outpost a seventy plus year old man strolls out to give us some gas from the single pump. I ask him how come there is nobody on the lake. He responds succinctly. –There just isn’t anybody around here. I tell him that if the lake were in California there would be at least twenty five thousand people here. He faintly smiles and shrugs.
The arbitrary line that divides the two countries seems irrelevant. Still one distinct difference is the quality of the roads. The Yukon roads are brutal, like driving over something that was hit by an earthquake the day before. Add some long patches of gravel, throw in some teeth jarring bumps with a few potholes that you’d better dodge and you get the idea.
It changes quickly as we cross the border again back into Alaska. The roads are better probably because only 100,000 people of 33 million live in the upper three provinces. We have arrived in the top section of Alaska and though it has all changed in the bigger picture it is still the same, beyond comprehension, nearly impossible to describe and as vast and raw as virtually anywhere on the planet. We see a massive moose eating in one of the countless lakes along the road and on we go. Thousands of miles still lie out ahead.
The Third Installment:
Canada, The Mounted Police & Catching A Ferry
August 1st, 2009
The next leg of the journey involves Canada but first I’d like to relay an incredible story from the news, one of the first we heard upon entering our northern neighbor. The story is not particularly relevant to our trip, other than perhaps setting a great tone.
A family was camping along one of the myriad rivers in the northern part of B.C. when they lost track of their 3 year old. Authorities were called and every possibility was explored. Roadblocks were established with car searches. Hundreds of people were involved, tracking dogs were brought in, helicopters and planes searched frantically from the air. Everyone couldn’t help but fear the worst. A wild animal, either literally or figuratively had taken him, or more likely, he had fallen in the river and was swept away. Several hours after the disappearance was reported and hope was beginning to wane, he was found in the battery powered car, in which he had been last seen, 12 km./7 miles down the river still sitting on the upside down car. Apparently he had driven the little car into the wide river and though it had turned upside down, he had managed to crawl up onto it and was oblivious to the gravity of his situation. Now that’s a happy ending.
The weather is warmer in Victoria, warmer than anything we’ve experienced since home. Victoria will be our ‘big city’ stop. Since leaving Sacramento it is the largest town we’ll pass through.
The city has a distinctly European flavor. The architecture is beautiful and the city, on the harbors edge, is laid out in a visually compelling way. We find it to be an international, cosmopolitan city full of diverse languages and people. A melting pot of cultures that seems to cultivate tolerance. Indeed they have taken their needle exchange program one step up. They’re now giving away free crack pipes. Of course the homeless have found this attitude, along with the surprisingly mild year round climate, to be particularly attractive. Still, they seem to be cared for well enough so as to not present major problems for the thousands of international tourists that pour in each day.
The Empress Hotel and Parliament building are so impressive that our three year old wants to know if dragons and princesses live there.
There is much to do in Victoria and we try to do it all. We make a good run at it, but wear ourselves out. We go to the miniature museum, intricate layouts of historical scenes that are incredibly accurate and detailed, (for me the most incredible thing), the bug zoo, the museum and the Imax. We go to the Parliament building where the town folks and big shot officials are welcoming the Emperor of Japan and his wife so it’s a bit of a fiasco with all the masses of people and security. We look at the double decker buses and decide to ride on one of the four person bike taxis where an energetic and enthusiastic young driver takes us to the best ice cream and chocolate places downtown. The girls get dolled up and go to the Empress Hotel dining room to have an elegant tea party. Toward the end of the day we move north of town and wrap up the day at the butterfly garden and the overwhelming Butchart Gardens, certainly the most aesthically pleasing and spectacular human created natural areas I’ve ever seen. An expensive and exhaustive couple of days but experientially worthwhile. Nevertheless, we are more than ready to push on north into the unknown wilder country.
We are starting to forget what day of the week it is, what day of the month it is. If we kept doing this we might just start forgetting what month it is. Still, looming on the horizon however, is that ruthless task master called responsibility. We have to figure out where we’re going to land. The kids need to go to school and we have to find ways to replenish our quickly diminishing bank accounts.
When we told the kids we were looking for a new place to settle in for a while they ask, when we stop at certain places, ‘Is this where we are going to live?’ Hope, our three year old, has asked that at campgrounds and even the salmon hatchery. When we tell her we’re going to push on to Alaska she will often ask, because of the song, ‘Daddy, are we north to Alaska yet?’
We take the ferry off Vancouver Island and head up the mountain road, called the ‘Sea to Sky’ highway, toward Whistler, one of the primary sites of the 2010 winter Olympics. The relatively small mountain ski town is bustling with activity. Sports complexes, apartments, condos and roadwork are busting out everywhere almost resembling an anthill.
During our lengthy trip through Canada we find some interesting distinctions. Besides the differences in the money and metric system we find the Canadians are big on alerting their citizens about the dangers of their behavior. The highways designate high-level crash areas; Public bathrooms remind you to wash hands or risk getting gastro intestinal diseases or influenza. Smoke cigarettes and you might as well forget it. Pictures on the packages show mouth cancer, loss of teeth and throat cancer with pictures of horrific examples on each pack. Inside each pack is a little card urging you to quit complete with places to get help and little slogans like, You can do it! Hang tough! Stay active! It’s like you mother looking over your shoulder, not all bad of course, but a somewhat annoying ‘father (or big brother) knows best’ attitude.
On the other hand the regulations and general uptightness about propriety and official reality are in some ways more relaxed. When we stop at a kid’s faire in a small town we are passing through, there are homemade rides, and the entire event straddled a railroad track. When I heard a train whistle in the distance I thought, ‘No way’ and there it was: a train rolling slowly right through the event. Parents all whisked their kids off to the side and everybody on the train and both sides of the tracks smiled and waved. In addition all the rides and activities, including pony rides, portraits, and face painting were free. Never happen like that in California.
The B.C. ferries allow you to take hang out on the car decks whereas Americans think it’s just a wee bit too risky. We find the Canadian customs almost like a welcoming committee compared to the ever-suspicious Americans.
One of the amazing things about traveling is the realization that it is a very big world out there and everywhere you go people are the same and yet they are completely different. They all have their own way of talking, eating, working and dressing. They have unique customs, and religions. They have their own trees, lakes, rivers, bugs and wild life. They have their own sports their sense of community, weddings and funerals, tragedies and triumphs. They all have their unique angle and they all think, in their own way, that they got it going on and the cool thing is that in some sense they are all right.
Past the gorgeous Whistler area the highway continues to climb toward the sky, steeper and longer than any Sierra pass complimented by spectacular vistas, waterfalls and lakes. As we reconnect to the main highway going north it becomes relatively flat and significantly drier. but still offers never ending beauty. Farms and ranches dot the horizon and panoramic vistas of forest, meadow and distant mountains captivate our attention. We are surprised at the size, civility and social connectedness of some of these northern towns. While they are places that wouldn’t necessarily make our short list of potential places to live we are nevertheless impressed with Williams Lake, Prince George Quesnel and even Smithers.
Every adventure has to have those times when things go haywire and amidst all the beauty and excitement we inevitably found one of those times. Since we didn’t have an itinerary, schedule or definitive plan, we have been staying generally on smaller highways and which are understandably longer and less well maintained. At one point, in northern Canada, there appears to be a side road through some incredible lake country so we decide to take an extra day and check it out. We stop for the night along the shoreline of the sweeping expanse of François Lake, an overwhelming place with but a handful of cabins and only one boat within view. Eagles sweep across the sky and fish jump fully out of the water during the pink, purple and billowy clouds of sunset. The lady at the tiny store tells us the stories of the lake. It freezes so hard in the winter that Big Rigs drive across it during winter. Each winter they usually witness a pack of wolves or coyotes bringing down an elk, deer, or caribou. In fall when the fish are biting like mad the fishing regulars throw the smaller ones (under 16”) up in the air where the eagles swoop down and pick them off. Francois, just one of numerous massive lakes in this region, appears to be as big as Tahoe and other nearby lakes Kootenay, Babine, Atlin and Okenabogan make it seem small.
The next morning we continue on the back roads and gradually come to the realization that the dirt road we are taking is far rougher, wetter and longer than we had anticipated. The gas gauge is sinking fast and there is no cell phone reception at all. We drive for 15 miles without seeing a soul then there is a massive berm in the middle of a mushy slippery road. I’m trying to pick up my speed or at least keep it up to get the best mileage out of my quickly diminishing gas. We can’t find out any information in the manual about the gas reserve (the lights now on) but we figure we have at least a gallon. Unfortunately that is not much over 20 miles and we soon see a sign that says 67 kilometers to the next town. Translated to miles that’s over 40 miles. While trying to maintain a little speed through the muck I look up as Alisa calls out and there is a grader coming around the corner right at us. I have to cut across the beam and hope that I can successfully navigate the maneuver. We make it, but then realize that I have to go back over or risk running into somebody coming on the other side. I get back over and see a large tractor-trailer gravel truck ahead and then see a sign that indicates that the town, which was actually called Houston, is ten miles further than previously indicated. As you might guess we used the old Houston we got a problem joke a few times to lighten the situation. Once I almost slid off the road and after the briefest of loud debates I was directed to slow down. Of course that means more friction in the mud and a greater distance to hitchhike or walk to Houston when I finally run out of gas, because at this point, it appears to be the not if, but when scenario.
I try to draft behind the gravel truck but he is kicking up a lot of rocks, mud and even dust on the drier stretches. This dirt road continues on for 45 miles and somehow by coasting, drafting and having a larger reserve tank than we ever hoped we limped into Houston and as we pulled into the gas station ran over somebody’s recently dropped six-pack of bottles. Somehow, someway we didn’t get a flat and we headed off too much anticipated Smithers (again the real name). As always I grab a paper and start perusing. I notice a musical, horse show performed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Color Dudes and think, ‘damn that would be kind of cool to check that out, especially since it’s a Cops for Kids with Cancer benefit. I look to see if it’s in one of the bigger towns we’re headed toward and realize that, again totally true, the performance is scheduled for 2 p.m on Wednesday in Smithers. It is Wednesday at 1 PM and we are in Smithers. Obviously we’re going and it is quite a site to see. Not only are the horses and the performance awesome but the entire town of Smithers was there and that is worth the price of admission in and of itself. The Mayor was there in the VIP section along with the local hockey player who had made it to the NHL. After the hour plus long performance we are on to Prince Rupert and the ferry terminal that will take us to the famed Inside Passage. Onward and upward towards the last frontier.
We get into the ferry line in the predawn hours and wait our turn to load up.
Traveling up the inside passage from Prince Rupert we see right away a pod of orcas (killer whales). It is misty and cloudy but exhilarating and liberating as we weave through the countless passages, islands and fjords, slowly and steadily moving toward Ketchikan and the massive state of Alaska. While it’s not exactly Captain Cook style travel you sure get the sense of what they must have felt and certainly seen since the view has changed very little. Our North to Alaska mantra is just a few hours away from manifesting into reality.
The Second Installment: 7-15-09
North To Alaska
Despite feeling like fish out of water in the Portland metropolis we spend a pleasant couple of days with my family in Beaverton. For the first time in five years my two brothers and I are with my mother. She is clearly excited, and on top of that my Beaverton brother is throwing a surprise birthday party for his wife. Nobody seems to think it can work because we all of us have such big mouths and not a great sense of filtering between thought and word, but somehow we do it and it comes off quite well.
When deciding which direction to head, my brother tells me that in 1888 our great Grandfather built a church in a small Washington coastal town call Wallipa.
We head west out of Portland gradually leaving the traffic as we weave through the Clatsop National Forest and the Tillamook State Forest. We head north toward the picturesque coastal towns of Seaside and Astoria. Astoria sits on the vast estuary where the mighty Columbia river enters the Pacific not far from where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1805. It is fairly large by coastal town standards but still has a village like feel. The bridge spanning the river that divides Oregon and Washington is striking. It is visually compelling and over a mile long as it spans across the great expanse of sea and river between Washington and Oregon.
What is always amazing yet ever present is the awareness that there are hundreds of sleepy little back roads that lead to small towns, hamlets and villages all with their own stamp of individuality in terms of personality and terrain. Vast regions of open space and untraveled forested land often seemingly impenetrable separate these dots of human habitation. Without question unknown species and wild ecology that may or may not include creatures like Big Foot could wander these rain forests and deep canyons without recognition for decades or even centuries. Sure we're overpopulated but we're all jammed in certain areas.
The more distance we put between ourselves and the large metropolises the less people we see. We pass fewer cars and the outposts become fewer and farther between. Keeping an eye of the gas gauge becomes a vital issue when the next pump might be 75 or 100 miles. Still compared to Lewis and Clark and their hearty crew we haven't entered preschool.
We end up camping on the Wallipa Bay which must be one of the oyster and clam capitals of the world given the literal mountains of shells that sit outside some of the big commercial buildings.
The next morning we try to find our way to the little town of Willapa. I am a little bit nervous because there are dozens of seemingly similar size and style towns in the region (based upon the scientific fact that they are printed the same size on the AAA map) and I'm wondering if Wallipa is going to be some backwater Appalachia type place. Will it be filled with toothless Buckwheat types and decrepit buildings where some guys sitting around an ancient gas station tell me "Well yeah, see that old abandoned shed fallin in the crik over there-that there's your grandpappy's church?
Feeling ego attachment to people, relatives, places or things is somewhat ridiculous but it's natural. Secondly, since we crossed the border into Washington the quality of the towns, buildings, even the roads is better. There is greater sense of place in these coastal Washington towns, more pride in their buildings and lands. As a general rule, at least in the coastal area, the Washington towns are more charming. I call my brother to ask him if he has noticed the difference since he has lived in the northwest for his entire adult life. He sums it up in one word, roots. These people go back generations in these little towns and when I look in the phonebook I find there are over a dozen Stearns in the small area. Apparently they are all relatives, but I'm not ready to tackle that one yet so we find our way to the Willapa and the church. It is still the most vital church in the area. A thriving Methodist establishment with beautiful stained glass windows and a tall steeple. It is simple, but well built and majestic in its own way. The people in the relatively thriving area of Raymond & Willapa and so forth are some of the most earnest and kindest people we've met on the entire journey. We head north feeling good about our stop and move toward Aberdeen and the Olympic National Park.
We ask for directions at a salmon hatchery that was started in 1895 by some clearly progressive Washington folks. We end up hanging out with the salmon dudes for a while. I love fish, particularly salmon and have been quite concerned about the frighteningly diminishing salmon runs out of the Pacific. When I eat at a restaurant and want salmon my first question is if it is wild. Increasingly, the answer is no so maybe these salmon guys can help explain what's going on. They release nearly 3 million salmon a year (mostly Chinook) and only about 7,000 make it back. That's not quite one quarter of one percent. In 2003 nearly 20,000 made it back but the hatchery guys tell me that the experts can't seem to understand why exactly one year is better than another.
Along the coast, we stop at what is perhaps the biggest cedar tree in the country. I estimate that it is over 100 feet around and as it rises toward the sky it splits into a dozen tops. We take a lengthy stop at a rugged and gorgeous beach called Ruby. It's a perfect place to watch the ocean relentlessly carving into the coastline. Just out from the shoreline there are staggered rock islands of various shapes and sizes, some barren some with a tree or two still hanging on. These outposts of the former coastline stand for now against the onslaught of the elements and time. The entire beach is littered with a huge pickup sticks layout of trees that have washed in from wherever. The kids and Buck run over, under and on the maze while I try to push a few smaller logs back into the waves. I laugh at myself as I realize what a perfect metaphor this action is for parts of my life.
Onward through the spectacular Olympic National Forest and Port Angeles. Port Angeles is a northern port on the Washington border. A major jump point between Canada and the U.S., it sits overlooking the Strait of Juan De Fuca. Nobody seems to know much about Mr. De Fuca so I decide to find out. The Strait itself is 95 miles long and 22 miles across. The Strait was named in 1787 by English sea captain Charles William Barkley (I wonder if he's related to the former basketball player). Apparently Juan De Fuca was a Greek navigator who sailed with a Spanish expedition in 1592 as it sought the fabled Strait of Ania'n, the passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic. De Fuca claimed that his expedition had made it from the Pacific to the North Sea. Whether Barkley was being facetious or not I couldn't find out, but clearly the story has more to it but nobody seems to care so, we'll let it be.
Number One
July 7th, 2009
In All Beginnings Dwells A Magic Force
By Jim Stearns
"Nowhere to go and nothing to do when I get there." Lindel Thomas (Blacky) used to say when I asked him how he was doing. Lindel was the first person I met when I bought my remote abandoned homestead deep in the National Forest over 30 years ago. Lindel was a retired bank robber from Missouri who was living on 400 acres a couple miles from my place. A gnarled old man at the time, he had been living in the backwoods since the early fifties. After a few tense and sometimes hostile encounters he became my friend and mentor and is quite a story in and of himself but that is for another time.
Today, I am, for the first time since I met him, applying one of his most common phrases to my life. Besides that our house burned down so its time to look for another place. After 30 years of hot foothill summers we're ready to head north. We honeymooned in Alaska many years ago and found it to be spectacular and enchanting so that will be the ultimate destination. Not the usual Point A to Point B style of travel but more of a nomadic wandering. First to the coast and then moving north at a suitable pace toward the place 'where the northern lights are running wild in the land of the midnight sun'. We play the old Johnny Horton song, 'North to Alaska' each morning as we move up the road.
Since extracting ourselves from relationships and responsibilities is so difficult and packing has never been a particular strength we stuff the car full of stuff and head towards Sacramento where we'll grab a Motel and try to sort it out. We load up our kids, passports, camping gear and one of our dogs and head out.
After reconnoitering in Sacramento, it's still 105 so I get up before dawn to take the dog for a walk. Buck's a 110 lb. mostly black German Shepard who intimidates most animals and people on sight. When I see two or three cats moving across the street in the breaking light I get a bit nervous for the cats. Suddenly the cats stop on our sidewalk about 100 feet ahead. Usually Buck would be lunging and pulling toward them but he is surprisingly hesitant. These are no ordinary cats. These are torn up, tough feral cats who aren't about to take any crap from some phony psuedo-tough, country dog. We go into the street and swing around them as they arch their backs and hiss. They are clearly street brawling cats with torn ears, missing tails and a wide range of scars, a truly intimidating presence for both of us. Neither one of us want anything to do with them. We may be from the mountains but they're from the streets and the alleys of the city. On the way back a homeless guy is feeding them and as we give a wide berth to the still hissing motley group he gives us a toothless smile and says 'them are guard cats'. Yes indeed.
We head up 5 toward 299 that goes west out of Redding to the coast. About 5 miles from the ocean we come over a rise and the air temperature drops 30 degrees. We are in the coastal fog belt and the air outside becomes suddenly cooler than the air conditioner. We all breath a sigh of relief and then I remember. As good as it feels I used to live on the coast for a few years before moving to the mountains. One of the most memorable things was that musty smell that filled the pages of my books even years after I moved. I could literally open a book for the first time 5 years after moving from the coast to the dry Sierra and still smell the faint musty coastal dampness. Still at this moment, after a week of soaring heat, the grass is truly greener.
We find our way toward Brookings, Oregon where Duke, one of my oldest and dearest friends now lives. We lived together in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco and over 30 years ago he headed north and I headed east.
Duke is a mountain man in every sense of the word. He bought a piece of land on the ridge high above the Chetco River and raised a family of 4 girls and a boy. They all have grown and moved on, along with their mother, and Duke remains in the ramshackle cabin surrounded by rolled Power Wagons, ancient trucks, massive piles of redwood burls, fence posts, lumber, sawmills and other assorted odds and ends being buried under blackberries and other fast growing coastal vegetation. He doesn't know we're coming because he has never had a telephone, computer, electricity (and I mean never) and only gets to the mail box once a month or so. He's way out there in more ways than one but a better man you'd be hard pressed to find. His cabin is accessed only down a narrow, overgrown trail through big thickets of growth and his porch is caving in so you have to carefully pick your way across it to the front door.
He isn't home and since there is no telling when or if he will even be home soon, we go in to look for indicators about when he might have last been there. Duke's the kind of guy who can disappear for days into the forest. Walking or driving he can get stuck or just find himself fascinated by a new canyon, a tree at the top of a steep ridge or any other such thing. He might find an old miners shack and settle in for a day or two and then return with some unique log or artifact on his shoulder.
His house is full of books, photos and the most intricately printed cards and various papers. His writing and reading are constant and his printing is the smallest I've ever seen but somehow completely legible. Our little one would reek havoc on his chaotic system of order so we set up our tent in his driveway.
I hear Buck barking in the middle of the night and look out to see the candles burning in his cabin. I get up and wander in. It's nearly 2 a.m. and Duke is cooking rice and vegetables. At 6' 3" and 200 lean pounds he is the strongest vegetarian I've ever known. He tells me he was out in the woods 'kind of late'. I ask him if his truck is broken down and he says that no he's parked up above. 'I kind of coasted in'. My guess is no gas.
We stay up talking nearly till dawn and I crawl back in the tent and he curls up on his sleeping mat surrounded by candles, books and writings.
The next morning we go for a long walk then decide to head north toward Coos Bay and Florence.
The Oregon coast is literally breathtaking. Unlike California where all the major mountain rivers run into the bay, Oregon's rivers carve their own rugged canyons and empty into the breathtaking coastline every 20 or 30 miles as you move up the coast. The river mouths, the bridges, the majestic sweeping valleys as you look east toward the source and of course the little towns and ports. Brookings and the Chetco, Gold Beach and the Rouge, Port Orford with the Coquille and Elk, Coos Bay and the Coos, Reedsport and the Umpqua, Gardner and the Smith, Florence and the Sluslaw, then Newport and the Yaquina. From there we head inland.
There's something about these coastal towns that are at once charming and tacky. They are small and full of character but the helter skelter planning and lack of town centers leaves a disjointed feel. There are the cool little shops, stores and restaurants made of wood but they can be next to a fifties or sixties aging strip mall or perhaps a more 'modern' development. There is no cohesion and no heart and as much as I'm an anarchist at heart I can't help but believe that in the common areas of towns and villages more thought needs to be applied. Go ahead and do your Duke like thing off the beaten path but the places we all share should be more carefully crafted. What makes a small town charming I've discovered over the years is the incredible individuality combined with a heart. A person, a village, a town needs character and a heart. That is the simple reason why Murphys is considered the charming place of the 4 corridor: It has a heart and individuality. There is a center and there are dozens of buildings that despite being built by a wide range of individuals over a long period of time form a unique cohesiveness that make it attractive. that is why the 'new' section to the south on main street doesn't quite work. it was built by a corporation. As soon as I saw the fake cracks being painted on the side I knew it was doomed.
We pause for the night in Coos Bay and the casino is having a big fireworks show on the 3rd of July. Sorry, though my kids love fireworks I think they're kind of a joke. I wish there was a ten or 20 percent or 30 percent tax on all fireworks which went to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. what a waste what a perfect symbol of America style over substance, noise over quiet and instant gratification over long term sustenance.
We stop at the Sea Lion Caves where I stopped with my family when I was a boy. It is the largest sea cave in the world and the only place the sea lion's nest, rook and mate on the shore. It's packed but it's worth it. We move on to the aquarium in Newport listed as one of the ten best in the world and I'd have to inexpertly agree. There are otters and sea lions, seals and some of the most amazing fish and sea creatures. If I didn't know better I'd believe they were from another planet and in some sense I guess they are.
We move inland toward Beaverton, a suburb of Portland where my brother and mother live. My mom lives in one of those retirement facilities (I call it the stationary cruise ship) and we are going to spend a few days here before continuing north toward the Olympic Peninsula, Victoria and Vancouver Island. It is our last stop in the refined and relatively civilized world we are bidding adieu to.
So like our ancestors did when they gazed back on the coast as their ships left Scotland, Sweden or Spain or when they looked back toward St. Louis from their wagons we are heading out of Portland tomorrow and moving towards the great unknown. Obviously it's not as rugged or as definitively final as our predecessors but the feeling has to be similar. Possibilities, adventure and excitement mixed with varying levels of anxiety and uncertainty.
There is something unbelievably liberating about being on an adventure where the return trip is not an element. Even on a long trip in terms of distance or time there is always in my mind the return factor. It is part of the equation, psychologically, logistically and economically. When there is no return factored in it provides a new level of freedom. We might come back, but we are open to anything, any place, any gig any possibility and that has left our psyche's amazingly unencumbered. We laugh more, we worry less, we rise earlier and the horizon looks brighter. I haven't felt this free since I was 19 hitchhiking toward Big Sur.
I don't necessarily buy into the old saying (given some of my history) that "you never regret the things you do, but the things you don't do" - I do know one thing that seems to be universally true; there aren't many people who when facing the end of the line wish they'd spent more time at the office.
May 29th, 2009
The High-Tech Dude
By Jim Stearns
My new computer is a Neo by Alpha Smart. I think it's the kind they send to Third World grade-school kids. It costs about two hundred bucks and is about as basic a piece of technology as one can get; and in that sense, for someone like me, (essentially a 3rd world grade-school kid) it’s really refreshing. It’s the Flintstone car in a world of Ferraris, the Musket in the realm of “Smart-bombs.” In size and weight it truthfully is about like a Christmas catalog from L.L. Bean or one of the bigger New Yorkers.
I never could quite figure out all the various functions on my old computer. It seemed like a perfect symbol of that old tenant that states “you're lucky if you're using ten percent of your brain.” In the world of computers even 10% is stretching it for me. I have never needed the myriad bells and whistles and constant updates that come with all the cutting edge machines. Then again I'm also the kind of guy that would almost never get a 'new' release from Blockbuster when I can wait a couple of months and get it as an “old-release.” After two years I still can't quite figure out how to work my CD player in my car so I'm guessing that I'm not the target market for anything cutting-edge.
It seems that when it comes to the modern world I'm a Luddite of sorts. I was fine with the way computers and phones worked more than a decade ago (improved cell-phones continually trickle out yet reception has never improved). When it comes to a computer I need word processing, the internet and nothing else. If I have something complicated to do I simply ask any number of people who make me feel like a time traveler from the Iron Age. They gladly show me how to do it, and when the task comes up again, I've completely forgotten – and ask for help again.
I am at once amused, impressed and distressed by the continual developments in the world of “personal-systems.” I don't relate to the obsession with the latest technology. Everybody wants the newest model with the most features and the most power; but, it goes deeper than that. Others want the coolest and latest, they want the trendiest dog in whatever dog and pony show they perform. Clothes, tools, paint, seeds; whatever it seems the industrialized world wants, better, faster, more! Is there some kind of race going on?
Ironically, while we develop the most amazing ways of communicating, interacting and transferring unimaginably immense and diverse information, we have become ever more isolated from each other. The bubbles of perception and social interaction in which we move become ever more refined, individualized and intricate while simultaneously and paradoxically more fragmented and isolating. We are expanding and contracting, reaching out in ways inconceivable just a few years ago while shrinking back into our private little worlds like never before. Ever more connected and ever more alone.So in the midst of this modern world that is racing along moving at warp speed, I choose to simply take a step back. I don't need to be on the cutting edge, never have, never will. I don't need the new car, the latest fashion, the hottest technology or instant information. I'm drawn to the simple more than the complex, the basics more than the refined. I'd rather talk than text. I prefer hiking over driving, reading over cyber surfing.
The modern world is leaving me in the dust, but I'm okay with it.
April 28th, 2009
Burned Out
In ashes of despaire, though burnt, shall make thee live.
-Lord Phillip-
By Jim Stearns
We give lip service to it and know it intellectually; there is nothing constant except for change. Still, while we move 66,000 miles an hour through space, spinning around at over 1000 miles an hour and watch the seasons come and go, we can become entrenched in an existence that seems much the same every day. Certain phases of our lives seem as likely to change as a desert landscape in the summer. Things are quiet, there are no storms on the horizon, the wind is still and we settle in to the figurative hammock for another day of familiarity.
Then out of the blue we are flipped upside down and dumped on our heads. The volcano erupts, the tornado comes across the plains, the earthquake shakes our foundation. In my case this time, it was a fire sweeping through my house.
We went to bed in much the same way we had for several hundred days in a row. Read the kids a book, tuck them in, watch a little television or read a book, stoke the fire and turn out the lights.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the smoke alarm screeches in the pre-dawn, a quick look, the house is filled with smoke and flame, out the back window with the kids and barely the clothes on our backs, one quick return trip for the hard drive, a few photos and a pair of shoes. In less than five minutes the all-Sugar pine and all-oak house, and everything collected and valued for the last ten years and beyond, is going up in 50-foot flames.
It took the firefighters extra-time to get to our secluded location, but it hardly mattered. The entire 3 bedroom 2 bath home was burning at 3000 degrees with 80-foot flames, and for all intents and purposes, completely gone in 15 minutes.
Each member of the family including the animals has reacted differently. We have all lost our sense of home and each of us some long cherished things but we all are trying to see the silver lining.
I believe, however difficult it might be to admit at times, that most things, particularly dramatic things, happen for a reason. There is a message to hear, a lesson to learn, a change that must be made. Life has a way of kicking my ass when I fall into complacency, make less than stellar choices or try to hunker down in some “b-grade” level of comfort. I used to call it “subconsciously tossing a grenade in my own bunker.”
When the grenade lands in your bunker you're left with little choice but to dart into the open field and dodge incoming fire and land mines. Fortunately in my more blessed existence that incoming fire and mines are figurative. They are the challenges and opportunities that create and refine character. They are the endeavors and relationships that test our strengths, reveal our weaknesses and hopefully make us ever more self-aware.
The fire delivered a fierce and quick blow. Resolution or disintegration are the choices emerging from crisis. Can we move toward the former? It appears to be a time for change, and not later - right now. Perhaps it is time to let go of the past and some of the extra weight it carries. And of course the most important lesson, already known, but pounded home: nothing matters more than life, the animals, the family and the friends. So many people have been kind and generous that we are overwhelmed. We are truly humbled by the humanity of our community, families and friends.
We deeply hope that the people we know going through difficult times are the recipients of that same spirit. We know people who are going through terminal diseases, life debilitating syndromes, hard divorces, loss of loved one, impending operations and potential homelessness. In comparison to those real human agonies our tragedy is in a different league. We had a few moments of terror, lost all our stuff and face an uncertain, but open-ended future. Still, today we have our love, our family and our animals intact.
We experienced an outpouring of support and love we hardly knew existed. For that, how can we not feel at least a quiet sense of gratitude and grace as we move on to the next chapter.
March 2009
Who Knows What The Tide Could Bring?
By Jim Stearns
I always cringe when I hear those stories from death defying survivors who talk about how they are going to embrace each day and live with a renewed vigor. I feel like I to should be doing that. I’m not even sure what ‘doing it,” actually is. Part of me responds to that strict standard of visible, responsible productivity. ‘I should clean out my car.’ But then I will read a book or watch TV. Is it more productive to read a book or watch TV than clean out my car? I guess it depends on the book, the show or ultimately just my frame of mind.
I can be the master of procrastination and rationalization. I can have a leak in my roof and think I should fix it but I can’t fix it when it’s raining and when it’s sunny it’s not a problem. I love a line I heard decades ago. ‘If you put something off long enough, you may not have to do it at all.’ That of course can cut both ways. There are so many things I’m going to get around to eventually. More exercise, better food, more conscious husband and father, clean up the yard, change the oil. Putting those things or anything off until tomorrow leaves us with the real possibility that we won’t ever get them done at all because tomorrow, literally, never comes.
Every day we make thousands of choices. These days I know I make the wrong one at least half the time. (Of course we can launch into the relative nature or intrinsic truth of right and wrong but that is a whole other tangent). I want to do the right thing but I’m really not sure if fixing the roof is better than playing with my kids or reading a book. Is it more important to clean the yard or go for a walk with my wife. Then again, while those choices may be a bit more complicated or hazy there’s no question if I made the best use of my time the more difficult choices would be eliminated. That very thought then, becomes the perpetual cat chasing its tail.
For everything there is a season. Would we want it always sunny, joyful and upbeat? Is there anything more annoying than the perpetually productive, upbeat ‘I’m on top of the world’ persona? There have been points in my life that have been incredibly focused and self assured, there have been periods of confusion and doubt, I have bounded forward and floundered helplessly. I have confidently made the wrong decision, then with great doubt and uncertainty made the right decision. I have been bold and cowardly, had my heart bursting with love and broken in pieces, I’ve laughed and cried, triumphed and failed and through it all tried to learn and ultimately grow. Easier said than done.
It has taken a long time to even realize that I needed to accept the whole package as inextricably symbiotic. They are all elements of my being, my character, this gig I call my life. Even the most jagged edges of solid stone are smoothed and polished by the endless, ever changing flow of the river. Trees establish deeper roots and unique character while steadily pushing into the earth and reaching for the sun - standing firm with and against the forces of wind, rain, sleet and snow that alternately bring life and destruction.
The idea that life is a scorecard, a linear progression or objective standard by which we chart and analyze our progress and accumulation is deeply ingrained in my family and cultural heritage and thus in my psyche. I get stuck when I find myself resisting the place where my ever judgmental ego beats on me like a relentless drill sergeant. ‘What an idiot, you got drunk again!!!! You slept in until 11! Why don’t you get something done for once?’ I try to change the inner tape. Is it really better to fix the deck or go sit with a sick or wounded friend? I can turn the whole concept on its head and then wonder if that is but elaborate rationalization.
I recognize that same existential angst in my friends and loved ones. A restlessness, a discomfort in our progress, that nagging feeling that ‘No matter where I am I can’t help thinking I’m just a day away from where I wanna be.’ It should be better, I should be having more fun, I should be more productive. My life should be better - at least that was the plan. If nothing else we want to ‘Carpe Diem,’ or if we can’t seize the day we should be able to seize a few moments and when we don’t or can’t we chastise ourselves and heap doubt and guilt onto our already overloaded and self important egos. That perspective is ultimately self defeating in the sense that it often makes the moment miserable and keeps us locked in a perpetual hamster wheel
The weakness and the strength, the anger and the joy, the fear and the courage, the fast track and the quicksand; it’s all part of the show. It is all part of the gig as surely as the changing seasons. Life will pound like a drum through our veins and diminish to a whisper, it will dance then withdraw, contract and expand, it will blossom in the light of wonder and shrink into a dark cave of drudgery. Though one might be easier than the other, neither is ultimately better or worse. Lessons learned though not always implemented.
Be gentle with yourself. Stand in the wind. Let it rain. Cry in the dark. Embrace the pain. Surf right through it and know it will change. A new wave is coming. It could be the greatest run of your life or a big wipe out. Either way just let it be.
“ I know what I have to do now. I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”
Tom Hanks-Castaway