We are getting the once over. The twice over. Our interrogator
leans coolly against the wall of his small office, nudging the
brim of his faded ball cap toward the ceiling. He narrows his
glance behind Coke-bottle glasses.
"You boys spent much time in the outdoors?"
His office is attached to an airplane hangar outside a remote
town in Alaska, about 120 miles north of Anchorage. We've traveled
through a sizable chunk of "the outdoors" just to get here. I
glance over at my traveling companion, trying to resolve which
one of us is going to field this question. Tyler, outfitted in
a recently purchased, bright red North Face jacket, speaks first.
"Oh yeah," he says casually, "we've both camped a ton."
"That right?" comes a gravelly voice from the corner.
I had forgotten about the guy in the corner. Ralph.
Fading into the photo-cluttered wall, Ralph has been sipping coffee
around a mouthful of well-packed chew. Now he considers my gear,
which suddenly seems insubstantial. Fisher-Price Camper Kit meets
J. Crew photo shoot.
"Yup," I say to Ralph. I proceed to embellish our camping resume
until it sounds like we're qualified to be deposited by a ski-plane
in the Alaskan backcountry for four days.
"What kind of weapon you guys carrying?" It's the ball-cap guy
again, with another stumper.
He's a veritable legend in these parts. We are not.
Performing a mental scan of my backpack, I come up with . .
. my Swiss Army knife. It has a cool plastic toothpick that slides
into the handle and little tweezers on the other side that --
I don't mention this. Tyler smoothly answers Jay's question with
another question.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Well, what are you going to do about the bears?"
Jay is on to the question-with-a-question evasion method.
"We saw some of those bear bells at the REI down in Anchorage,"
I start in, "but we didn't think --"
"Yeah, them things ain't much use up here," says Ralph. "On
a trail maybe, but up here they'd just help the grizzly find you
easier." He winks at Jay and continues, "Make some nice music
while you get ate up."
"And then they had the pepper spray," I offer.
Ralph laughs so hard I'm afraid his chew will end up in his
coffee. Jay just snickers. He has a suggestion. "I recommend a
small firearm. Don't need anything much bigger than a .22."
Tyler has done some hunting. He knows about guns. He is our
gun talker. I don't know jack about guns. I keep quiet.
"A .22?" Tyler says. "That enough to take out a bear?"
Ralph looks at Jay as if he might pick up my gear and throw
it back into our rental car himself. "A bear?!" Jay says.
"Hell no. Gun's not for the bear. In bear country you don't ever
have to outrun the bear. Prob'ly couldn't anyway. You only have
to outrun the slowest person in the group." And here Jay fixes
Tyler with a conspiring gaze. "That .22's fer your friend here.
Shoot him in the leg."
Ralph nearly swallows his chew laughing. They've used this one
before. The Abbott and Costello of Talkeetna.
I look out the window of the cramped office and consider the
short, snow-dusted runway beyond. Ominous clouds congregate in
the mescaline blue sky, promising backup for the 4 feet of powder
already on the ground. It is April in Alaska. We are going camping.
* * *
The first thing you need to know about Alaska is that it is bigger
than you are. The name "Alyeska," a gift from the Aleut language,
means "Great Land." Alaska occupies an enormous geographic space,
possessing 20 percent of the land and twice the coastline of the
continental United States. It occupies an even greater space in
the psyche of those who visit or remain. A state of stunning natural
beauty, it is also a wild land with enormous, untamed corners.
The towering mountains and endless glacial icefields suggest a
disregard for anything so fragile as a human, an ancient indifference
to the alleged evolutionary advantages of homo erectus.
Unlike other points of interest on the map that, once visited,
are left diminished by familiarity, Alaska, once visited, leaves
you diminished.
* * * "
So, have you guys been to the David Letterman
show?"
It's Jay, crackling through the cockpit headphones. We are cruising
several hundred feet above the Talkeetna Mountains in his single-prop
Piper Super Cub. Jay, having discovered we live on the East Coast
of the Lower 48, is making radio small talk. My headphones aren't
working well; I'm eating a steady diet of static. I start to wonder
what time Letterman comes on in Alaska. Is it still Late
Night if the sun doesn't set? Tyler, riding shotgun, tackles
the Letterman question while I lose myself in the primordial landscape
unfurling outside the plane.
Acres and acres of snow-bent timber sprawl the hills, condensing
along the frozen lakes, dissipating near the steeper crags. Even
framed in the rattling, triangular window at my elbow, there is
an inexorable immensity to it all. Untouched, pristine snow-fields
lean forward from the horizon, gapping the peaks, dwarfing the
plane. Our agreement with Jay calls for him to deposit us in this
Alaskan hinterland, landing at a place called Stephan Lake where
we will meet our two guides, Chris and Jerry. The guides will
stay with us for two days to establish a camp and fish some early
river melts before Jay returns to collect them. Tyler and I will
remain for another three days of winter camping, snowshoeing and
fishing. Jay will fly back in for us on the third day. That's
the plan.
"Man. You ain't never heard of Busty Hart?"
Jay is midway through a story about a burlesque dancer in New
York with whom he once had a Polaroid taken. He is about to wrap
up the story of how she knocked a man unconscious with her substantial
bosom when he gets suddenly focused, twisting knobs and adjusting
flaps.
"Well, boys, there she is. Stephan Lake." Out the front window
is a large swath of whiteness with vaguely defined edges. It is
several miles long. There is no landing strip, no runway. Someone
has laid fresh evergreen cuttings 20 feet apart in parallel lines
about 100 yards long. Jay flips a switch and the plane's skis
audibly descend.
"This might be a bit rough," Jay garbles in the headphones,
"Looks like ol' Chris hasn't flattened down the strip for us."
I reach down, tugging on the seat belt slack. The Super Cub
rocks in the crosswind, churning toward our destination.
* * *
She is drying the pint glasses with a damp barcloth, closing
out the cash register. Last call was an hour and a half ago. We've
just ordered another pitcher. Make it two. This earns us a weary
look that says, "Don't push it." It's not the first time we've
seen the look tonight. Two more pitchers land on the slick bar.
Tyler flashes a flirtatious grin and spins back to the only
other person remaining in the bar, a man who has an 8 a.m. job
interview with the Alaskan telephone company. Tyler is helping
him prepare. There is exactly one telephone linesman position
available in this small Alaskan town of Seward. It is well after
2 a.m. Sobriety is a memory. Tyler figures to give his new friend
the edge by coaching him on the finer points of the "pregnant
pause" and the "question rephrase."
"I'm telling you, make those dudes wait. Push back
from the table and digest the question."
Leaving this one to Tyler, I turn back to the bartender. She
is younger than she looks, perhaps 25. Friendly, but by no means
effusive. But she has a hippie grooviness about her that has kept
us here long past closing. Earlier she mentioned growing up in
Springfield, Virginia, and attending college at Amherst. Double
major in bio and chem. I'm still trying to figure out how she
wound up tending bar in Alaska.
"I was planning on going to medical school. I even took the
MCATs and all. But . . . I don't know . . ." She looks away, wipes
the bar top.
Sensing the discomfort, I change the subject, mentioning that
Tyler and I have noticed that there seem to be far more men in
Alaska than women. I ask if that's actually the case.
"Yeah," she says, brightening a bit. "They even have a saying
about it." She casts a sidelong glance at the aspiring telephone
linesman at the end of the bar. "For women in Alaska, the odds
are good, but the goods are odd."
We laugh easily at this. Her laughter runs into mine. She picks
up a pint glass and runs a finger around the rim. "After a while
everything just felt . . . scripted. Everybody had a
message for me, everybody was trying to sell me something. It
got to the point where it was medical school or Alaska. I realized
I needed room to think. Up here . . ."
She pauses, wistful. I sense we're connecting. We are having
. . . a moment. Despite my intoxication, I will wow her
with my sensitivity. I will show her that I am not "odd goods."
"Sounds like . . . you needed to just take a break for a while,
huh?"
She shakes her head dismissively and sets the glass down.
"No," she says, "I needed to find a hole in the noise."
