When the World Was Young...Alaska Part 1

Just because you haven't seen my ugly mug in a few days...

It has been a few days since I last posted a blog entry...as I think I wrote, I was the only one here at the office, and I was just inundated with work.  I have had 18 hour days for the last five days and I am wrecked.  Prior to being buried I had started a blog post and will try to finish it today.  So, let us hearken back to Monday:

It is a chilly, foggy day here in Iraq...one of those days that simply breeds melancholy.  You can almost feel the malaise in the air as each member of the crew retreats inwards to fight their own demons.  I, for one, awoke this morning particularly invigorated for a phone call home to Erin...just the thing to snap the creeping loneliness that this sort of rotational work seems to gestate.  It was wonderful to hear her voice; to be reminded that we do have lives back home to return to...that there is a place where the sands and pipelines end and people live normal, everyday sort of lives.  I am happy as a result, and feel as though I have a suit of armor on to protect from the fog, the chill, and the loneliness.  I was in the office early, though I was on late last night, as there was unfinished production from yesterday that needed to be done today, and a set of daily deliverables to produce for our client representative before my meeting with him at 9:30 am.

Foggy...gross.

I don't quite know why the fog was so captivating to me, but there you have it.

The weather here seems to be changing, as the afternoon has arrived the temperature is now in the 60s...comfortable enough for short sleeves; this is the first day where short sleeves have been possible.  I am not sure how I feel about the warm up; on the one hand it is nice to get to wear short sleeves, but on the other it means that the hot is upon us, and I am not looking forward to a summer spent in one of the hottest places on the planet.  I like the cold, as a general rule...I would rather it be a bit too cold than too hot.  One can always put on more or warmer clothing, but you can only take so much off (particularly in the Arab world where people tend to cover nearly all exposed flesh year-round).

So, yesterday I said that I would share a traveling tale from when I was young...I don't know if anyone cares, but it might be fun to tell nonetheless.  For the sake of not boring everyone to death, I think I will split the tale into two pieces.  So, without further adieu...In 1997, I had returned to college for a semester and had taken a job cooking at a place called the Boot Bar and Grill just off Tulane University's campus.  I worked there with a couple of very good friends, John (one of my best friends and roommate) and Gordon.  In any case, we wanted the summer to be something special and started to consider the options.  Our next door neighbors were a young family of four...the parents were both in the service industry, bartenders and waiters and baristas, depending on the season of the year.  They were exceptional people and remarkably interesting, as they would spend the winter and spring in New Orleans and the summer and fall in Alaska.  A little known fact is that it isn't only fisherman who migrate to Alaska in the summer for huge money on the high seas...the service industry must employ many additional people to cater to the fishermen and the hordes of tourists who come into the state in the summer (in the fishing towns and villages of the Southeast of the state these tourists come in on the Cruise ships with hundreds descending upon the town daily).  So, each year they would pick a new place in Alaska and head north for the season.

John and I were absolutely in awe of these two amazing people with their precocious little girls who seemed so much older and more mature than their years, and they acted as vectors in the transference of one of the most tragic bugs that can be caught by a young man...the Alaska bug.  It is incurable and it ruins lives...once a man tastes the clear northern air and experiences the true freedom and primal intensity of the place nowhere else measures up...much like the sea that wild land will sing its siren song to him for the rest of his life.  In any case, John and I were doomed, and we sought to convince Gordon that an adventure to Alaska was just what we needed...it took only a little more that the word Alaska and Gordon acquiesced.  We three threw ourselves into the endeavor with all the vigor of youth, studying all that we could of the state, buying the gear that we thought we might need (hiking boots, sleeping bags, tents, etc) and each of us invested in a bike to bring with us, knowing that we wouldn't be driving up there, as we had settled on the plan to choose a fishing town in the Southeast as our base...John and I would fish or work in the fishing industry, and Gordon planned to get a job as a cook or chef, as he had aspirations towards that occupation in life.  After extensive research, long discussions with the neighbors, and many late night strategy sessions after closing the Boot kitchen down at three or four am we settled that OUR Alaska adventure would take place in Sitka, Alaksa.  Sitka was the Russian capitol of Alaska, back when they owned that part of the world and was founded as New Archangel.

I would like to leave the story for a moment here and say some things about Sitka, Alaska.  Sitka is located on Baranof Island, named for the first Russian governor of Alaska, Alexander Baranof.  The old gubernatorial mansion is located on a hill overlooking the town and is a museum now.  The name "Sitka" means "People on the Outside of Baranof Island" in Tlinglit, which is the tongue of the people of the same name who were indigenous to this part of Alaska.  The Tlingits are an offshoot of the Athabaskan tribes to the North and closely related to the Haida people of further south.  The town holds one of the oldest Russian Orthodox Cathedrals in the US, St Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral, and was the seat of the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, and Alaska.  During the early part of the nineteenth century the city was known as "the Paris of the Pacific" and was arguably the most important port on the West Coast.  When America bought Alaska for 7.2 million dollars in 1868 (that's two cents an acre), Sitka was the site of the ceremony wherein the Russian flag was forever lowered and the American flag raised over the territory for the first time.  It is the fourth largest city in Alaska with a population of just over 8,000 people (God, I love Alaska), and is the LARGEST city-borough in the US with a land area of 2870 sq miles, though the borough also contains quite a bit of water yielding a total size of 4,811 sq miles.  The town proper is located on the west side of the island, facing the Pacific Ocean, but protected from it by numerous small islands and the majestic Mt Edgecombe presiding over all of it.  Lastly, there are approximately 14 miles of paved roads in the largest city in America...chew on that fact.

Sitka from the harbor...pretty, yes?!

This is Mt Edgecombe viewed from just outside the town proper...from our first camp this is what I would see in the morning.

Back to the story, so we had the plan to take the train from New Orleans, LA up to Chicago, IL and from there to turn due west on another train to Seattle, WA.  This train ride proved to be one of the highlights of our summer, as we met the absolute salt of the earth on the train hanging out in the smoking car.  We spent countless hours with these fellow travelers, smoking cigarettes, telling stories, and building shared memories.  Every large town stop we would elect a couple of people to run out into the town for whiskey and beer and cigarettes.  The party never stopped in the smoking car...we may have only slept an hour or two at a time for the three days on the train, curled up on the luggage racks outside of this smoking car (really the lower level of a passenger car with a seperate ventilation system).  On the train we made the acquaintance of two young kids also heading up to Alaska for the summer...we would end up spending quite a bit of time with them later on the ferry.  We would stay overnight in Seattle, hit REI headquarters for some last minute gear purchases and then catch one last short train ride for Bellingham, WA, the "Gateway to Alaska".  The Alaska State Marine Highway ferry docks in this picturesque little town about 60 miles north of Seattle.  From there it was a three day boat ride along the Inland Passage to reach Sitka.

So, four days after leaving our home in New Orleans we were boarding the MV Columbia, the state ferry that was going to take us to our Alaskan destiny...the ride was almost surreal.  We bought what are called Solarium tickets which are non-berthed tickets. Basically, there are two back decks of the ship, each of which is half covered...under the cover are lounge chairs that lay down and heat lamps.  If you don't score one of the chairs or a bit of floor between them to unroll your sleeping bag you are pitching a tent on the back of the boat...the whole back deck turns into a tent city.  It was amazing...and much like a shanty town anywhere a certain barter economy comes to life...people selling hemp jewelry, pipes, or Grateful Dead bootlegs willing to trade for tins of sardines and saltine crackers, or cups of whiskey, or packs of smokes.  It is hard to imagine a time when I have felt so completely out of sorts but happy at the same time.  Also, if you are ever on the MV Columbia I would say that you should definitely head to the cantina for some clam chowder...very solid clam chowder on that boat.

SOLARIUM...seriously, best beds on the boat, but not for the faint of heart...

Tent city in the back of MV Columbia

In any case, after three days on the vessel with brief ports of call in Prince Edward, BC, Petersburg, AK, and Ketchikan, AK, we arrived at the ferry landing in Sitka approximately 5 miles out of town...by this point, I should tell you that we were travelling on a very tight budget, so I was down to my last ten dollars or so, and the other guys were pretty broke as well.  Seriously, I had been eating sardines, smoked oysters and crackers for two days already...and we had not planned for a place to stay in Sitka, our plan being to camp until we found work and earned a check or two to afford more permanent summer housing.  So we did what any newcomers with no money would do...we squatted under a bridge a couple of miles from the town, right next to a lovely little stream.  All around us the Tongass National Forest, the largest swath of temperate rainforest in the world hummed, and buzzed, and dripped, and decayed...our own little "Ewok Forest" as we took to calling it.  The trees were more massive than anything I had ever seen of natural origin...ten feet in diameter and over a hundred feet tall.  There were three of us, as I said, but we only had a single two man tent between us, so each evening we would draw lots to see who was sleeping outside in their sleeping bag on the rocks beside the stream...to be honest, I was always happy to sleep outside...some of the best nights of rest I had ever had.

This may not be the very stream that we camped next to, but upstream from our  under-bridge camp looked just like this...

Our first night under the bridge was a magical night...beautiful, cold, and free.  We were free at last and on the type of adventure that every man should have at least once to test his mettle...out there exposed without "enough" money...forced to make it or not...forced to exist on skill, will, and wits...we were living at last!!

Our own private Ewok Forest...

I will continue the story tomorrow, but it is getting really late and this is already a VERY long post...thanks for sticking around.  Before I go, a note about the above pictures...most of these pictures of Sitka and its environs are from online and are not my pictures...sadly most of my pictures from this experience are now found only in my memory - Hurricane Katrina stripped me of the physical reminders back in 2005.  Until next time...