Been Places

I'm back in Anchorage. I've been places.

On a Friday afternoon, July 2nd, 2010, I ducked out of my empty office early and headed home for a nap. My work is gratifying but the amount of screen-staring it requires can be exhausting. When I woke up, Dan Simmons was in my room. We had work to do.

We were leaving that night, with Sophie, for Seward, Alaska - a small port and fishing town that more than quadruples its population in the weekend leading up to Independence Day. We had to get groceries - bread, cheese, roast beef, granola, peaches, apples, and beer. We had to gather up our not-ready-for-prime time camping gear. Somewhere in there, though we didn't HAVE to, we had beers, halibut tacos, and John Prine singalongs with our neighbors and a North Slope civil engineer out of Vicksburg, Louisiana named Freeman. We had to gas up Dan's half-wrecked Tacoma and pick up Sophie at her apartment in the drizzle. And then, as if nothing was more natural than to be heading down Turnagain Arm at 1:00 AM in the driving rain with a robin's-egg blue sky shivering above, we were on the road.

On the drive, we were pulled over twice for our wrecked and non-functional driver's side headlight. Both times we were let go. The second incident happened near Seward, and it turned out that Dan had wrestled kids in high school whom the trooper had coached in Fairbanks. This state is huge, people are spread like flooded-out ants, and somehow most of the population has wrestled Dan Simmons.

We rode into Seward at roughly 2:30 AM. After some driving, circling, and deliberating, we loaded ourselves down with gear, shoved the guitars and snowboards into the cab of the truck, and traipsed off into the forest at the foot of Caine's Head. The weather might have been described as "cartoonish serial killer weather". Convinced we would find a soft, flat, sheltered spot, we trudged on. After a time we passed an eerie redneck junkyard full of siding and drums of...something...punctuated with a derelict brick-red GMC pickup with a windshield boarded in drywall. Up a rocky path and suddenly Dan froze. The outline of something low and black was moving around up in the hollow about 100 yards ahead. If you haven't been spooked by a wild animal before, it's difficult to describe how it feels to combine the mental experience of running for your life with the physical action of taking measured, calm steps and trying not to look over your shoulder. We got out of the woods.

More driving. Eventually we set up camp on a low-lying stretch of turf around the bend from some other tents. We used devil's club's broad leaves to waterproof our tent's roof and tucked into apple-cinnamon granola, bagels, and Corona. The mountains of Seward reached high into the air - in Denali the peaks hem you in and stare down in consideration, while in Seward they seem to stretch back and away like solid-state fireworks in a palette of gray and blue. The rain came down light but steady and the ocean sounds made their way up the hill to our tent. I may have forgotten to mention that we had set up camp on the well-manicured lawn of Seward High School.

Saturday morning we woke up early and packed the truck, heading into town in search of coffee. We saw a few people roaming the main drag with Kaladi Brothers cups and began to hunt for their source. The city seemed much less than buzzing with festivity - it seemed a little deserted, but that would change eventually. The beginning of the coffee trail was Nature's Nectars, where you can buy coffee and juice from Cedar Bourgeoise. As of yesterday, Cedar has won the women's Mount Marathon Race seven years in a row - she's a wiry-strong, middle-aged woman and local celebrity. She makes a good cup of coffee. I'll get to the race in a bit.

After waking up a bit, we found the owners of the campsite we were headed to - and the man we had come to see, Logan DeMarcus. Logan is as solid a man as I've met in this life - a thoughtful, kind guy originally from Barrow, Alaska who went to Chugiak High School with my housemates Erik and Stephen. Logan is a Marine, an expert on explosives who ships out to Afghanistan next week. He's been at Mojave and Camp Lejeune and is back in Eagle River to see family and friends before leaving town. At that particular moment, however, Logan needed a haircut. On 4th of July weekend in Seward, Alaska, even a Marine has a hard time finding a haircut - we visited four separate places before finding a barber who had an opening. Apparently July 3rd is a big day for haircuts. A couple hours later found me sitting on a cooler looking up at the mountains while Sophie slept in the tent and Dan and Logan walked on the beach up the road. In the interim, we had visited friends collecting signatures to outlaw coal mining in salmon streams and set up shop busking next to their stand. We made 9 dollars before being evicted by a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, though our effect on the future of coal mining in Alaska is unmeasurable.

As Sophie slept in the tent, I sat and talked to a man named Trevor - another genuinely good guy. Apparently, while I was away pissing, he defended my honor to an insufferable peroxide bitch who wondered why he was talking to someone wearing such tight pants. Good man. After machinations and figurings-out, Sophie, Dan, Logan and I joined Logan's family at Miller's Landing for what Alaskan's call a spaghetti "feed" - a group meal for a big gathering. It took a while to figure that word out - "spaghetti feed" - but it applies to the serving of any food in the manner of, say, a Girl Scout pancake breakfast. That's a pancake feed. This was a spaghetti feed. This family was amazing. Ms. Hofbauer, Logan's mother, is incredibly kind and warm-hearted, and the whole scene on that rocky beach was full of good energy and relatives who welcomed us into the fold, little kids and wet dogs running around our ankles. I made a new friend - his name is Deegan and he's 2 years old.

We rounded the nearest cabin to watch men gutting fish - small halibut, rockfish, and lingcod - and before I could fully register the series of events, Dan and I were shirtless and teamed up in a salmon-throwing contest. We lost in short order. This is just the kind of thing that happens on July 3rd in Seward, Alaska. Logan and a younger cousin ended up winning, mugging for photographs with slippery silver fish pressed to their lips.

We walked down the misty beach a ways, where ice fields and glaciers were visible between deep, asphalt-colored peaks. On the way back, a boy of about 10 years was beating a fish with a hammer-shaped log. He just kept slamming down the fat end of the branch as fish guts and pink flesh and bony bits and stones flew up around his feet. Dan asked if the fish was dead yet, to which the boy grinned "Sure enough!" I asked him if he had killed it himself. "Nope!" Lars von Trier is brought on as a guest director for Bassmasters, and the entire episode is a still camera, using natural light, holding a medium shot of a young boy on a bleak beach beating a fish over and over again. There is no music.

Return to the campsite. Beer and bonfires. A brief altercation with a drunk idiot named Mario Gomez (he made sure we knew that his was his name) that amounted to not much. Most of our fellow campers were mentally-stunted hockey players and their bleach-blonde girlfriends, but we muddled through. Eventually, after a fireworks display on the beach that seemed to happen with equal apathy on at least 5 sides, illuminating the maximum security prison that sits far in the water of Seward's shore, we slept.

I don't have enough juice in me and the ugly hippie sitting across from me in the coffee shop won't stop swaying from side to side long enough for me to properly narrate the next day. More on July 4th, the Mount Marathon Race, ska bands in the woods, and scramble eggs later. Be well.