I keep my eye on Craigslist for photography opportunities almost daily. While in Alaska last year, out of habit more than anything I checked the Minneapolis Craig’s and found an ad in which a guy was looking for a semi in a wilderness setting and it had to have a Thermo King unit behind the cab.

Being in the ultimate wilderness setting, Betsy and I were studying every truck on the way to Fairbanks. No luck. So we moved on to other photographic opportunities as we got outside of Fairbanks.

We stopped to take a photograph at a scenic overlook atop a mountain just above Fairbanks. As I got out of the car, I discovered “our” truck parked behind us at the overlook that we just happened to stop at. He was getting ready to pull out so we jumped in the car and raced down the mountain not far ahead of the trucker. Pulled to the side of the road and I ran across the street with my camera seconds in front of the truck going 50 mph down the mountain road.

I had time to snap two photographs.

That evening, I Photoshopped the image and sent a low res version to see if he was interested.

When we returned home, I met with the guy, gave him the digital file and he gave me $350 cash. Not bad for a few minutes work. The ad my photograph was used in recently ran and is below (The tear page was folded).

Related:

LOOK OUT!

MORE PHOTOGRAPHY GIGS LIKE THIS ANYTIME is a post from: Passing Thru

Perusing freelance gigs on Craigslist while on vacation in Alaska – $0

Responding to ad requesting photo of Thermoking truck in “exotic” setting – $0

Noticing Thermoking truck idling next to us at a scenic rest area – $0

Taking off at high speed to get ahead of the truck on the downhill grade to Fairbanks – $0

Watching your husband step directly in front of a semi hurtling down a steep mountain grade to get a photo that pays him $300 for less than 10 minutes work – Priceless

LOOK OUT! is a post from: Passing Thru

Image by Archangeli via Flickr

I despair on the morning of our departure when we are cleared for takeoff.  We are leaving Alaska and I have not seen Denali with my own eyes.  Uncharacteristically, I am in a window seat, a consequence of the first class cabin arrangement.  As I look out above the clouds, I am stunned.  Now The Great One chooses to reveal itself: icy twin peaks rendered bright by the sun.

“You see me now,” it whispers.

We struggle upon our our return.  Everything is different, off balance, needing more contrast.  We are halfhearted in locating our bearings.  We find it difficult to describe the pull of the land we have left.  When asked, we are nearly mute:  “Indescribable.”  “Unbelievable.”  “Awesome.”  “Incredible.”  The elemental presence we experienced courses through our veins, powerful, magnetic, unfettered, undeniable.

We have been Outside for six weeks.  Alaska holds us.  Our compass has been reset to our own True North – the Last Frontier.

We see it now.

OUTSIDE, SEEING is a post from: Passing Thru

When we enter the parking lot for Potter Marsh, we see a hand-lettered sign warning us to lock our cars and leave no valuables to temptation.  Other hand-posted notifications cite bird species observed and warn of bears.  There is an erasable whiteboard for anyone to post an update.  This collaborative system is common to many of the places we’ve visited.

The boardwalk meanders in spider-y fashion thoughout the marsh, which is fed by fast streams the salmon favor.  The traffic noise has faded to a quiet peace, and our walk is leisurely.  At first things don’t seem too exciting.  Then I realize I need to look closely.

Potter Marsh is bustling with activity.  Tiny Yellow Legs (we can’t tell if they’re ‘Greater’ or ‘Lesser’) dart back and forth in the shallows.  They look like little sandpipers hurrying about.  A mixed group of pintails and grebes in the water is more languid.  These families are swimming from pond to pond in clusters.

The marsh wasn’t always a wetland.  Although it is now part of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, at the turn of the century this site was dry land.  The Alaska Railroad changed that in 1917, when an embankment was built to lay waterside track along beginning of the Turnagain Arm.  Fresh water was trapped on the east side of the Seward Highway, transforming the upland into a rest-stop for migrating water birds.   Between 30,000 to 50,000 visitors stop in each year.

Three creeks feed the marsh.  The hydrology is just now being studied.  Discovery of high groundwater volume moving through the ecosystem has led to calls for suspending development upstream.  Interruption of groundwater flow due to construction is disturbing the balance and depositing sediment, filling up the marsh.

Despite these changes, salmon still spawn upstream in Potter Marsh.  We spot one nearly spent in the shallows.  The salmon slowly twists near the surface, breaching to gasp for air.  This is a dance of death to be, part of the life cycle, horribly fascinating.  I feel sorry for the fish – humanizing it on its sandy deathbed – and walk on so as to look no more.

This is our last day and we’re spending it without much of a plan.  The truth is, we don’t want to leave.  And we don’t want to talk about wanting to stay, either.

The mist and gloom of the day is a perfect depiction of our mood.  When the drizzle intensifies, we head for the parking lot.  I am unsettled.  I am not sure what to do with all I have taken in from this land.  I climb in and silently buckle up, as it all seems too big for words.

POTTER MARSH is a post from: Passing Thru

Book cover via Amazon

Part 2 – Stories of Women in Alaska

A feisty schoolteacher making waves at the turn of the century in frontier Alaska sounded like the perfect subject for the next read. Hannah Breece came to Alaska in 1904, assigned by the U.S. Department of Education to establish schools for Native and Russian children.  Her timely view throughout her 14 years in the Frontier was that her purpose was to bear educational gifts and benefits from the U.S. government and civilization itself. Jane Jacobs, Hannah’s great-niece, known by her own right as a leading urbanologist, fills in the gaps that Hanna left in her narrative, in A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska.

Hannah’s first four years were spent on Afognak Island and Wood Island off Kodiak Island.  She had already been a teacher for twenty-four years in Pennsylvania and Rocky Mountain Indian Reservations.  This photo shows two Anglo women who are identified as possibly schoolteachers on Wood Island in the time period she was there.  The Alaskan island villages in which she worked have relocated and vanished, and the terrain has shifted or they were obliterated by tidal waves resulting from 1964 earthquake.  Jacobs retraced her aunt’s sojourn in Alaska and added narrative and context to her aunt’s handwritten memoir.

I wondered what would bring a 45 year old spinster to the frontier.  While quite conventional and proper, Hannah also held daring views.  She was not bound by traditional teaching methods and often improvised when she encountered language barriers and restricted opportunities to be in front of her pupils due to their family commitments and lifestyle.  She was generally enthusiastic, religious, loved finery, and was a staunch prohibitionist.

Travel was perilous and upon arrival, life was arduous in these villages.  Contrasting cultures between Russian and Aleut residents often necessitated ingenious solutions.  Hannah was responsible for book learning, but also for educating the populace in modern ways.  She often served as an on-site mediator, and also advocated for the people, serving as a conduit to and from the U. S. Department of Interior.

Hannah’s preference was to get things up and going, and then, after things were in place, move on to a new remote location.  She would typically request reassignment after two or three years.  After the Kodiak area assignments, she moved on to the Lake Iliamna area – shown in the photo, and then to Fort Yukon and Wrangell.

In a lengthy commentary at the end of the memoir, Jacobs comments and clarifies through a modern lens.  Seeking to draw conclusions derived from federal policy as meted out by an increasingly frustrating labyrinth of bureaucratic agencies, Jane bemoans Washington’s micro-managing and ignorance.  The system was firmly in place and bucking it was to no avail.

More interesting is Jane’s discovery that Hannah may have self-sabotaged her career with her partisan advocacy of Native interests.  Much of this advocacy stemmed from benign neglect on the part of Washington.  Personnel changes and unfilled positions left many of her requests unanswered.

Jane admits that she let Hannah’s fragmented manuscript languish for more than 50 years.  Assumptions and attitudes inherent in Hanna’s times conflicted with Jane’s beliefs – she hated them.  As time passed, though, Jane came to understand that without the attitudes and beliefs, there would have been no story.  Hannah and others like her would never have been sent, nor more than likely would have gone on their own, to Alaska.

Hannah eventually retired to Oregon.  Jacobs recalls a rare visit to Pennsylvania and was taken along on a visit to a colleague of her aunt’s in an old folks’ rest home.  Expecting to be bored, instead the 9 year old Jane recalls a rollicking afternoon spent with the two old ladies gleefully recalling scandals and hilarious moments.  Later, she would be somber thinking of the elderly teacher, confined to one room, waiting on the inevitable in obscurity, highly ironic considering the dangers and adventures that had gone before.

The last sentence of the memoir reads, “And I was glad that I had had a small part in blazing the way for better things in this most beautiful, most wonderful land.”   Ultimately, Hannah is revealed as generous, stubborn, independent and original.  I think I would have liked her very much.

FRONTIER TEACHER is a post from: Passing Thru

Image via Wikipedia

We are back in Seward at the J-Dock with minutes to spare. Optimists, we are hauling our big new cooler along in the event we get our limit. Our excursion partners are two friends traveling together from the West Coast, one of whom self-describes as being on the trip of a lifetime.  We can relate.

The captain and the boat are weathered.  I remind myself this can’t be an easy life.  He runs us through the safety procedures check, which is sobering.  Someone in the water has only minutes.  If anything happens to him we are to use the radio to summon help.

We should expect some wrinkly water once we head into Resurrection Bay proper, around Lowell Point.  We are told it will smooth out past Caines Head and, as predicted, it does.  The chop keeps us in the cabin when we are under full throttle. The air is pleasurably brisk and the sun is bright – a good day to be on the water.

Fishing has been disappointing lately, so we have a choice to make.  Since we have only a set amount of time, we can either go out an hour or so and have three hours to fish, or we can go out two hours and fish one hour.  We all vote for more fishing and less travel.  This puts our sights on an island grouping to the southeast.  Fox Island is the largest of the group, but there are several boats in Sunny Cove already.  We decide to move past and fish the less-crowded narrows between Fox and Hive Islands.

Rockwell Kent, an artist, arrived in this area with his eight year old son, seeking solitude.  They spent the winter of 1918-19 on Fox Island in a trapper’s cabin.  Kent painted, read, and wrote in his journal about the simple happiness and freedom his son enjoyed in this wilderness setting.  Kent perfected his woodblock engraving technique during his stay and went on to illustrate a highly regarded edition of Moby Dick.  In 1920, he published a book, including illustrations, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska. Combined with a major exhibition of his paintings, this established Kent prominently in the art world.  His work can be seen at the Metropolitan, the Whitney and the Rockwell Museums, as well as a dedicated, permanent gallery at SUNY – Plattsburgh in the State Art Museum.

The cliffs of Fox Island are steep on its south end, filled with rookeries, home to many birds.  While our lines are baited, a curious puffin comes close enough for a photograph.  Pete makes numerous attempts to focus and each time the puffin dives just before the shutter clicks.  Finally, we realize this is a game of amusement at his expense, and Pete concedes defeat. Puffins are such appealing birds and we are delighted to have a personal encounter.

Image via Wikipedia

To our south is Aialik, a peninsula named with the Alutiiq word for “dangerous” or “forbidding.”  We are able to see Bear Glacier across the Bay past Callisto Head, a gateway from the water’s edge into the Kenai Fjords National Park.  I see what looks like a styrofoam cooler in the distance, only to be corrected.  It’s a large block of glacial ice, floating and bobbing.  This is a hint of the dynamic natural conditions in the fjords.  Ice masses calve into the sea, stir up plankton for hungry foragers, and recede for plant life to gain a toehold in the rocky crevices.  There is a slice of temperate rainforest between the glacial paths and the sea where land wildlife flourishes.  Our captain tells of bears, sheep and even moose routinely spotted on the high, forested ridgelines hundreds of feet above the sea.

There is no sign of any fish whatsoever.  To seduce a Silver salmon, you must let the bait drop to the bottom and deliberately jig it up and down.  Silvers like to put up a fight, but their bite is light.  I fear my luck this day will be similar to that previously, where I provide a tasty snack to the fish taking advantage of my clumsiness and lack of experience.

Our two other companions are anxious for a catch as well.  The crackle of the radio reveals most boats in the vicinity are having a quiet day.  I feel a nudge on my line and jerk back to set it, reeling in a bait-size fish.  It’s so small that Pete says he won’t even change his lens to get a photo.  Over the side goes the first and only fish of the day, I remind them all, rather testily.

There is enough good-natured grumbling and banter back and forth that the captain decides we should head across to Callisto.  The water is a little shallower there so we shorten our drop.  I fear we have just set up an all-you-can eat buffet for our salmon friends when I feel a gentle, yet unmistakable tug.

“Fish on!”  I start reeling and halfway up to the boat there is no resistance.  I haven’t set the hook!  The captain had been scrambling for the net, and now he is peering over the side.  “Don’t move, it’s following your bait up!”  Sure enough, we see a good-sized salmon literally circling the bait.  She snaps on it, I jerk her and she is netted and in the boat within seconds.

This catch is sufficiently respectable to warrant a lens change, though there is grumbling that the woman requests the gaff.  Pete decides he will defuse this situation by photographing a cooperative ring-billed gull, one of many who thought we might be providing a nice meal as the captain sliced up more bait.  Just after he gets the photo, we hear the whine of Pete’s line on the other side of the boat.  He’s snagged a big one and it’s running on him.  This is far more exciting than my fish that wanted to be caught.  Pete’s fish keeps him occupied for what seems like a lifetime.  We’re fearful it might run under the boat and snap the line.  Pete skillfully disabuses the fish of that notion.  When he brings it in, it is far larger than mine as well.

I am conscious that our companions are somewhat envious and disappointed as we make ready to return.  We talk a little bit about how difficult it is to feel them bite, and the captain reminds us this isn’t the best year for Silvers in the Bay.  He wonders if the Derby results next week will be disappointing as well.  We head back through the chop toward the harbor.

After we dock, the fish are cleaned and our paltry catch is deposited back in the (really oversize) cooler.  We decide to drown our sorrows celebrate at Ray’s Waterfront.  I find myself seated next to an attractive gentleman enjoying a plate of enormous crab legs at the crowded bar.  It’s clear after several minutes that this is Ray.  He’s a New Yorker who has lived here for years.  The menu reveals his brainchild: an impressive variety of prepared seafood, prepared by melding various ethnic influences into the unexpected.  Ray wields his authority lightly and good-naturedly, but the respect and admiration from the employees speaks well.  If that isn’t convincing, the Friday night crowd surely is.

We reluctantly make our way to the car, as it’s past 8 and we’re due back in Anchorage.  If we had to do it over again, we would stay a night or two in Seward to go out on the water all day.  The hauls from the full-day trips are enormous in number, variety and size.  We would really like to tussle with a halibut or two, so I make a note for the list of reasons to return.

We’re tooling back in the central Kenai at a reasonable clip when we come upon a large black bear galumphing in the right-hand ditch ahead.  “bear, Bear, BEAR,” I point out as he bounds alongside my window.  This is a smart bear who waits until we have passed, and I twist around to see him head into the woods on the other side.  Why does the bear cross the road, indeed?

Dusk comes as we enter the Turnagain Arm portion of the route.  The turn-offs provide an unfettered view of the west.  There is color spilling in rivulets over the flats from behind the inlet.  The sunset’s liquid fire is the perfect epilogue to another unforgettable excursion.  We began early this morning searching for silver and now we have been presented with gold just before midnight.  “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”  This day on the water has truly been that.

SEARCHING FOR SILVER SALMON is a post from: Passing Thru

In the late 18th century, Resurrection Bay was sighted and named by a Russian explorer, although Native communities had been present in the area for thousands of years.  Later, shipbuilders settled in the area, followed by Gold Rush miners and settlers. Seward was laid out in 1903 by railroad men.  The Alaska Central Railway envisioned Seward as the ocean-side embarkation point for its planned route to the Interior.  Then, as now, Resurrection Bay offered safe harbor for passenger vessels.  During World War II, Seward was the United States’ most northerly ice-free port, which made it an important staging point.  The Alaska Railroad continued the line of supply to troops and installations. The Hunt for Red October’s opening scene was filmed in Resurrection Bay to mimic the fjords and mountains of Murmansk, Russia‘s submarine base.

In 1964, multiple tsunamis wreaked havoc on Seward and other Alaskan communities as a result of the Good Friday earthquake.  A first rogue wave 30 feet high slammed into town, and the entire waterfront slid into the sea, destroying a fuel tank farm in the process.  Flaming oil covered the water surface, so that when the second tectonic tsunami arrived, a 40 foot wall of fire and water engulfed the town.  Now, Seward has a comprehensive evacuation plan in place, which assumes limited or no access to and from Anchorage in the aftermath.  In 1964, bridges linking Seward to the highway system were destroyed.  More recently, avalanches have been responsible for isolating Seward for lengthy periods of time.  Self-reliance is a community attribute in Seward, as we will come to see in different context during our visit.

But we’re hungry first.  We park in the municipal lot adjacent to the small boat marina and head straight for Chinook’s Waterfront Restaurant.  Enormous windows bathe the tasteful interior with light, and the boat slips are right outside.  The atmosphere is modern and earthy, and we enjoy eating at the bar overlooking “the best view in town.”  Afterward, we amble next door to book our fishing charter for the next day.  The J-Dock Seafood Company takes good care of us at virtually the last minute.  They arrange for the proper licenses and book us on a smaller boat with two other anglers for the next day.  It is then that we realize we would likely have a better catch if we could book a full day charter.  But, since we’ll be coming down again from Anchorage in the morning, we settle for a half day on the water and hope for good weather.

Our business completed, we set off for the older district and downtown area..  Buildings and sites on the historic walking tour range from Millionaire’s Row — a street of Victorian-style cottages which housed the wealthier citizens of the day — to turn of the century businesses and hotels still in operation.  Our walk is enlivened by the many murals depicting life in Seward and its colorful history.  We stop inside the restored Van Gilder Hotel, which is furnished with brass beds and period antiques, yet offers high speed internet and a community kitchen.  At 4th and Washington, we duck into the Yukon Bar, billing itself since 1942 as ‘typical Alaska.’  There’s an old yellow hound dog of the four-legged variety on the premises, and he hops up on the bar stool to sing on command.

The mist outside has intensified, so we hop in the car and drive along the shoreline toward Lowell Point.  The road ends without warning in this tiny suburb at the water’s edge.  We head the three miles back into town and stop into Ray’s Waterfront on the Small Boat Harbor.  We’re seated at the bar next to another couple and before we know it, regaled by the wife’s recounting of all the snoring remedies her husband has undertaken on her behalf.  Too soon we have to take our leave.  The late sunsets make us lose track of time, and we need to be back in the early morning to catch our boat.  And some fish.

SEWARD is a post from: Passing Thru

Instead, we will make the 2-1/2 hour drive to Seward today, where we will sightsee and compare charter fishing options.  It is prime time for silver salmon.  We’ve decided we will avoid “combat fishing” in the rivers in favor of an ocean experience.  We’re also glad that we are a week ahead of the annual Silver Salmon Derby, as we have yet to reserve a boat.

The Seward Highway south of Anchorage is a National Scenic Byway and and All-American Road for good reason.  Travelers between Anchorage and Seward behold incomparable views.  We are unprepared for what we see.  The route is carved on the coastal edge of steep mountains as we loop around the Turnagain Arm.

Turnagain Arm is an appendage fjord off the Cook Inlet known for excellent wild and marine life viewing opportunities.  Waterfowl and spawning salmon can be seen at Potters Marsh, so we make a note to return on a free day.  I spot a pod of whales between Beluga and Windy Points.  Although Dall sheep are known to wander down the mountainside, today only solitary gulls pick their way through the mudflats revealed by low tide.

Snow-covered peaks soar above the surface of the waters, with glaciers spilling through their gaps.  The Seward highway cuts and climbs through majestic wilderness passes as we make our way toward the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.  The central Kenai is known as Alaska’s Playground to hikers, rafters, canoe and kayak enthusiasts, as well as anglers and hunters.  Rushing whitewater gives voice to the landscape and tranquil lakes reflect its grandeur.

We have to stop at almost every turn-off even though photographing scenery is not Pete’s thing.  Each opportunity is bigger than the last, but we are both so awed that we cannot believe there will ever be another.  As we make our way toward the sea again, on an angle toward Seward, we begin to think we might have happily spent our entire time in Alaska here.

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INTO THE KENAI is a post from: Passing Thru

I wanted to immerse myself in a book that would ground me in The Last Frontier.  I wasn’t sure if I should look for a book about settlers, miners or Natives.  I paged through several wonderful photo archives in sepia tones.  But then I decided I should read about the women, just because Alaska was, and in so many ways seems still to be, a man’s world.

There weren’t many books written by or about women from which to choose, but one book seemed to choose me.  Cold Starry Night, by Claire Fejes.  I didn’t give it much thought, purchased it rather quickly, and we went on with our day.

Late that evening, I began with Claire.  In 1946, she left what she knew in Brooklyn and traveled beyond her imagination to a forbidding and harsh environment.  Yet, almost immediately there is lyric in her prose about what she found, whom she met, how it affected her art and ultimately, why it all matters.

Everyone who came North began afresh, with a new slate. . . we decided we would create our own traditions. . . “It’s what you are now that really counts.”. . .Our needs were small, we did not feel poor at all. . . My whole being slowed like a steady, contented beat.

Claire’s first winter was one of the coldest ever in Fairbanks.  A friend of ours has a cousin in Anchorage who moved to Fairbanks.  We were amused to hear that he moved right back after his first winter.  “Too cold!”  The combination of pervasive darkness and deathly cold often results in self-isolation.  “…against darkness we had nothing but our will and the inner light we possessed.”

We learn from Claire how shocking these compound elements are, and how much we depend on warmth and light. Claire tells of her family, her friends, and a varied cast of characters inhabiting Fairbanks. There are charming anecdotes of sourdoughs and settlers, mythic in some proportions.  There are tragedies and comedies bound together by survival in a harsh, yet magical environment.  From all this comes her portrait of post-war frontier.

More vivid is the story of how Claire is reborn in Alaska, out of its darkness, from what she first perceives as a netherworld.  Her talent is kindled and bravely ignites into a persistent flame.  She has no kin in Fairbanks with her artistry.  Only years later comes a blaze of creativity, a frenzy of painting unleashed by time within the Arctic.  Her inspiration emerges renewed among those whom she describes as “a loving community of souls.”

Claire’s words point to a creative process shrouded in layers:  I had to cut away all ways of creating that were not my own. The painting had to rise, as it were, out of its own burnt ashes… Being seen and accepted as an individual was a powerful experience, given the times in which she made her journey.  The North was a place even more remote than Fairbanks had seemed.  Yet she discovers universality with the Native people, and brings forth the elements within us all in her art.

Cold Starry Night’‘s jacket notes refer to this as a memoir written from the heart.  There is warm and comforting heart to the story, to be sure.  More so, there is guts.  This is a story that contains the sweet moments in life, yet those moments are wrapped as they really are, with the raw and visceral.  There is the warm and golden, and there is the bleak and darkening.  There is the comfort of friends and family, and there is the danger beyond the door.  There is the intensity of beauty that hurts, and there is the toughness of spirit that keeps moving.

The Yup’ik Eskimo song called “Listening to the Stone” sings of small adventures.  Claire uses it to reference her journey to a definition of purpose:

And I think over again
my small adventures
when with a shore wind
I drifted out in my kayak
and thought I was in danger.

My fears,
those small ones
that I thought so big
for all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only one great thing,
the only thing:
to live to see
in hunts and on journeys
the great day that dawns
and the light that fills the world.

This is, then, the main thing: the light that bursts forth and fills the world.  Claire, with stunning simplicity of word and image, weaves this ribbon of awareness through the ordinary.  From this consciousness — this light, the extraordinary can be born.

The forward in Cold Starry Night refers to the sacrifice Claire made to come to Fairbanks.  Yet, had she not, would her light-filled art have burst forth in such great glory?  She provides the answer:  …I emerged with a new persona, a creative rebirth, to find my own voice.  All the banked fires within me had burst into flame, and I painted surely, without retracting a single stroke.

We all wander the wilderness.  Some of us wander only in our thoughts.  Some of us wander away from our familiars to new places.  Still others go miles into the deep, far from any road.  What we bring forth from these wilds of nature and spirit determines who we are.

We can begin again, afresh with a new slate, create our own traditions, cut away the ways that are not our own. We will let our fears go, and slow to the contented, steady beat.  We have the chance to learn what we are meant to be.  If we absolve our fear, then a great day will dawn and the light will fill the world.  And so, we can be reborn and redefined in purpose.

This will always be no small adventure.

I finish Cold Starry Night as we descend from the Parks Highway into Fairbanks and tuck it into my purse.  We drive toward the river and what we think might be the older part of town.  I look up from the map to see The Alaska House and we climb the steps inside.  “Have some blueberry tea!” calls out the friendly proprietor, and “Hey! great book you’ve got there!”  “I just finished it,” I say, “and we don’t know how, but we were going right past, so we have to see Claire’s paintings.”  ”They’re right this way,” she says.

After drinking in the colors of the paintings, I select a card with a Native mother’s image because she is with two children, and there is water and a mountain beyond.  While our purchases are wrapped, I mention to the same woman how meaningful I found the book and she responds.  It is then that I realize I am speaking with Yolande Fejes, Claire’s daughter.  “Wait here,” she commands.  “I want to give you a gift.”  She sweeps back into the room and presents me with two more images.  I look into her smiling face and our eyes fill with tears.

“I wish we had more time,” I fumble.  “There will be,” says Yolande, “because you will return.  In the meantime, remember your adventure with these.”

CLAIRE – NO SMALL ADVENTURE is a post from: Passing Thru

Alaska has a tradition of waysides.  There are frequent pull-offs along the Parks Highway, mostly to savor the spectacular views.  But even before the highway was built along the older routes, the Alaskan roadhouses welcomed weary travelers.  As unique as their proprietors, the roadhouses have personalities.  Funky, quirky, kitschy, sometimes ramshackle, never imposing, the roadhouse is combination watering hole, home-cooking station, and overnight accommodations.  Comfortable and unimposing, roadhouses sit you with the locals, and the atmosphere is likely to be uninhibited, friendly and inclusive.

We need fuel.  We’ve filled the gas tank and now we want to fuel ourselves.  We come upon the Fireweed Roadhouse, which meets all the criteria.  We enter the large main room, which is a combination dining room, lobby, reading/TV room, and bar.  The kitchen is off to the side.  There are picture windows off to the left, framing a rustic tableau: an old sourdough in bib overalls is tending a smoking contraption that looks to be half fish smoker and half portable pig spit.  We think he’s probably got some large game he’s processing in there, or perhaps a salmon or two.

I ask for a local paper and idle through its pages while listening to the small talk.  The other two young guests are from Ireland and they’ve taken off from real life to see the country.  They are adventuring before they return to their home country.  The sourdough comes in from outside and Robin, our host and owner, opens his beer.  “What do you think?” she asks.  “I need to work on her a little bit, but I think it’ll do the trick.”  Pete asks the sourdough what he’s got going on the fire.  “Hell, son, I’m burnin’ coal in there!”  We’re startled.  Robin tells us, “That thing is my ticket out from under my heating bills this winter.”

I try to remember the last time I saw coal firing anything, let alone a heating system.  “You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay last year.  We tried everything to cut bak and seal this drafty, old place up, but still . . . I had $1500 energy bills!  Who can afford that?”  Who, indeed?  “It’s self-defense.  The problem is more and more people are turning to coal since prices are staying so high.  They could go higher. But what can I do?  I gotta heat this place.” Pete goes out to check the coal heater and snap some photos looking west.

Robin has owned the Fireweed for longer than she wants to tell me.  She embodies the tough stereotype of Alaskan women that I so admire.  There is an obvious community she leads, and I imagine the locals congregating here in the winter.  “Oh yeah, we all pull together.”  I get the impression that Robin is far from lonely here in this quiet outpost.  “I don’t know how much longer I can last with these costs,” she whispers.  “As it is, I’m getting by.”  I nod sympathetically.  “There’s just something that keeps me.  I have to be here.”  “I know what you mean,” I say.

Before we leave, Robin snaps a photo.  “I take a picture of all my guests and some of them go on the wall.”  I think of our teenagers and their Facebook pages.  Robin’s doing the same thing, her way.  We are reluctant to go, but we must.  The sun, thankfully, is still high in the sky and we head south again.

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ROAD RETURNING is a post from: Passing Thru