Going to Haines - A Real Alaskan Town

Journey from Juneau to Haines, Alaska

On Sunday 30th April I took the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry to the town of Haines, population 1,811. On the ferry journey into Alaska one month ago I met two lovely individual travellers, Robin and Eli. Both talked of Haines being a beautiful little place to live. Robyn said the views had brought tears to the eyes of a few visitors she had shown around. Eli said Haines missed much of the summer tourist swarms that pollute downtown Juneau, spilling from the cruise ships that double the town's population in one foul swoop. Since arriving in Juneau, Haines was on my mind. It became the town I imagined living in - South enough to miss most of the summer mosquitoes, North enough to classify as 'real Alaska', with all the bells and whistles that accompany this title (mostly glaciers, mountains, whales, forests, people toting guns, eating home-caught smoked salmon, etc).

It was snowing in Juneau the Sunday evening we boarded the boat. Robyn and her partner Jeff had been in Juneau for a course in plant grafting and reconaissance tour of all the larger, more bountiful shops, so their van was packed with everything from brassiers to peat moss. On the ferry I took my up my favorite spot: the top rear deck under the solarium glow, wrapped in my sleeping bag, reclined on a deckchair. From there I oversaw our slow separation from Juneau and pondered my Alaskan adventure novel, Into The Wild.

A Classic Dichotomy: Dreaming and Experiencing. A case study of sailng

For at least a year and a half I have been thinking about sailing. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, Darwin, surrounded by an ocean with limited swimming availability, encourages fantasies about getting on top of the water, as a compromise for not being able to get in it. Secondly, I have spoken with a handful of admirable, adventurous women who have sailed and lived to tell tales that make me want a piece of the action.

Sailing appeals to my romantic aesthetic. Sailing appeals to my desire for challenging situations. My dreams of sailing include my assumption that the strong desire to be on the water will be the antidote for my proven physical ailment (seasickness) once on the water.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sail with my Juneau friend Rick. Here is an excerpt from my journal last night:

'Sailing today. I thought I was going to die. I almost cried when Rick asked if I was OK.

I had no points of reference for how safe stuff was and what was normal (heel, wind, cold, guts, closeness to rocks). It's so loose out there. No rules. Just your wits to save you. Not enough fuel to get anywhere - and the story of the gas tank unscrewed with (maybe) a plank of wood to protect the hull from the sharp corner of the heavy gas tank, loose in the hull as the boat heeled from side to side. I was really scared. I'm glad I'm alive.

'I didn't cry. And I helped where i could. And I didn't get in the way. I didn't have fun, but I didn't lie about it either. I may have lost my sense of humou and that is a shame, but I didn't treat anyone badly, or cop out, or ask to go home. I dealt with it.

'Do i have a strong mind? I don't know about that. I doubted, yes. But everything was relying on two people who had displayed lax safety standards. I felt unempowered to help or assist. I think I did OK but I feel disappointed in myself. For not enjoying the adventure. By wishing every second that it was all over. By being so moved by the fear that i couldn't even rebound into hyperactivity once I was safe - like a dented tin-can I just stayed humourless and a little distanced from the two men who had initiated the voyage that made me afraid. Like they'd done something to me. There's a part of me that thinks them irresponsible. I could have been a lot warmer, had more clothes on, generally been more prepared. But that's the opposite of their style.'

What does this say for my future of sailing home from America? Well, that I will dress warmer.

574

As of today I am officially an Alaskan social security number-holding American.

Every American-born citizen is awarded a social security number at birth. The first three digits of this number denotes what state the citizen was born. Alaskan social security numbers begin with the three digits, '574'. As so many Americans from different states wash up in Alaska, there are not many people living here who can say they hve a 574 social security number. I, however, are one of the proud few that can claim Alaskan birth - or pretend Alaskan birth, as I was awarded a 574 social security number today. I am hoping that this title will credit me automatically with 'permenant residency status' for which the American governmnet will grant me $1000 US, simply for choosing to reside in this stunning place.

The Bachelors of Kenai

'Aren't they lonely in clean clean houses, made-up beds, and taxidermied animals?'



You get back to Kenai from a week on the rigs
There's a hunt on the weekend
But tonight bloodsport can't warm you

Where will warmth come from
In Kenai's frozen springtime?
your aggression isn't winning over
and pull tabs don't make you laugh

You order an Americana at Coffee Time in the carpark
But the girls here aren't pretty
And the bagels aren't toasted
And you miss your mother, your sister
Your ex-wife, and your next girlfriend

Where will she come from
To make all this money made sense?
Long hair on your pillows
And a sweet taste in your mouth

You drive to Ninilchick
To see the cabins, snow, and the creek
A lune swims against the current
Getting nowhere at all
Why would he swim to get nowhere at all?

'Aren't they lonely in clean clean houses
made up beds and taxidermied animals?'

On the weekend there's mateship
And hot blood spilling forth
You're feeling vital - swift and steady
there's no longing when you're elbow-deep in killing
there's no longing when you're elbow-deep in killing

Clam Gulch - on surviving the first night of the road trip

In Homer I caught up with my friend Damion, who I had met on the ferry. I hardly knew him. This became alarming on the first day when I realised I was about to camp out on a remote beach, in
the snow, in the back of a truck, with a guy I had known for two and a half days on a ferry to Alaska. It was then I made some joke to him about not knowing him, and for all I knew he collected guns! Ha ha. It was then he admitted that he did in fact collect guns.

I was shocked. I tried to be open-minded about it, and asked, 'Ok, one question though, do you have any guns in the car?'.

'No' He laughed. But not comfortably. I repeated the question,

'No, really Damion, do you have any guns in the car?'

'Yeah. One'.

Dark is falling as we arrive at Clam Gulch. Snow is flurrying around, and the moose have retreated into the forest to bed down for the night. We have driven the truck (yanks call big utes with covered trays on the back, Trucks) up on the deserted beach. We collect frozen wood for our fire and Damion attempts to get the stove going for dinner. No go. Stove doesn't work. I'm thinking about how he's the quiet type - doesn't say much. I'm thinking about an article I read on the ferry trip, while I was sitting next to Damion, about a loon who went nuts and shot a whole lot of people. Everyone said he was the quiet type - didn't talk much. I'm thinking about my first night in Spain a few years ago when I found myself camping on a deserted beach with a randy Belgian that didn't understand the meaning of no until it had been forcefully repeated ad nauseum, and how I'd sworn to myself never to put myself in that situation ever again.


Turns out, I got lucky once more. Perhaps I am an alright judge of character. Damion is The Perfect Gentleman. Morning arrives and I climb out of the truck, happily unmolested.

The Road Trip - Homer to Kenai to Anchorage to Talkeetna

My First Moose

Homer, Kenai Peninsula

Whale Trails

Flying in a small float plane from Juneau to Homer

Did you know that whales made trails in the ocean?



Neither did I before Dan pointed it out on our flight along the Southern coast of Alaska. You can see the trails in the image above, behind the two Grey whales travelling from the right to the left of the frame. Their bodies make pock-marks in the ocean as their mass cuts through the silt in the water. The ocean is particularly silty here because of the glacier melt.

Glaciers, grey whales, sea lions, mountain goats, clear-cut logging, bear tracks, radars for the Russian invasion, iceburgs, frozen lakes, a pod of 6 Orca - scenery was bountiful for the seven hour trip. I was beside myself with excitement.

On-board security was lax - I prepared lunch as Dan flew, sipped coffee, and spotted whales. He even let me fly the plane.

We stopped in a remote inlet to refuel with the petrol Dan had stored in the floats. The fuel goes into the wings of the plane.

The Alaskan Hotel

In the carnevourous corridors and rooms of The Alaskan Hotel, between the late hours of night until just before breakfast, is a frenzy of jamming. Bluegrass, old timey, old-style country, you name it - it happens. The space is cramped - squeeze through and put your fiddle case along with the others towering on the bed in the centre of the room. Take a swig of whiskey from the medicine jar that girl with the cowboy hat is passing you, and get some bow room to thrash out a tune along with the mesmerising cacaphony of sound. For the final two nights of the festival I break-through into the jam-land of the Alaksan Hotel. On Saturday night I get home at 9:30am Sunday morning.



Around five am on the final night of the festival I need to leave. I am getting on a tiny float plane in three hours for a seven hour flight. I need my wits about me to put on the immersion suit should we hit a migrating swan and plummet to the ocean. But the music plays on and I am transfixed by this lone coyboy old country jukebox. A Juneau local with his own radio show, he is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge and the voice of early country music. His voice is sweet and perfect for pre-dawn watzing. Ahhh slow dancing. Why is it not practiced in Australia? How lovely it is to sway with your partner, cheek to cheek.

Jamming at the Alaskan Folk Festival

Thursday 6th April 2006
Heritage Coffee Company Cafe, Front Street, Juneau

It's Thursday and I still haven't played. I'm hitting myself with stimulants in Juneau's own Heritage coffee shop: coffee and cookies. I walked in to find a mob of folk fest musos jamming away, two good mando players, a concentina squeeze, and one bad old mando player, curiously adorned with knee pads, two sun hats, and a Hawaian shirt. It takes all kinds to make a folk festival, believe me.....

OK, so the jam was busting up and I finally got the gall to introduce myself. Now I have met Martha, a great mandolin player and the nicest of ladies. She gently explained how the whole jamming scene works, and basically told me not to be shy. I know I just worry about doing something badly in public - not something I think a real musician would worry about. As Ally told me about a month ago in Darwin, 'Oi meg... don't be no fuss budget...' It was such good advice that I got her to write it out for me. It's really good advice: just get out there and do it.

The Ice Fields

On Friday of the Folk Festival week Kate introduced me to Dan, a pilot who works as a fish-spotter, that is he has the dangerous job of flying low above the ocean spotting schools of fish and then orchestrating the position and timing of casting nets over the schools. Often there are a number of planes in the air above the fish schools, and this is the dangerous part - the pilot is watching the ocean carefully, not where they are flying. Thus a passenger is employed to keep an eye on where the plane is flying and to prevent collisions as best they can. Even so, the job remains a dangerous one and accidents happen. Needless to say, Dan is a very skilled pilot, and Kate and Damon were relaxed enough with the idea of sending me up into the air under his care. I am thankful that they did.



From the air the exquisite ice fields unfold. The ice fields lie behind Juneau and stretch into Canada beyond the thin strip of Alaskan territory that hugs the coastline. According to Dan, most people never see this and it's hard for some to even imagine. To me, it was like heaven. Surreal whiteness. An absence of relative scale.



The glaciers are a liquid solid. Ice that is flowing - slowly, slowly over time.

The Alaskan Folk Festival

Here In Juneau

Juneau Alaska, Kate and Damon's house.

I am sitting at a laptop overlooking Juneau. A body of water, The Inner Passage, on which I was delivered yesterday morning on the marine vessel Matanuska, stretches from left to right. On this side of the water lies downtown Juneau – wooden housing in reds, greens, blues, browns, and a few taller state buildings, amongst which tall pines are scattered throughout. Juneau is the capital of Alaska with a population of 30,000, and no roads in or out. The only way of arriving is by sea or air, and although there are other much bigger cities, like Anchorage with 250,000, Juneau has been the capital for around 100 years.

Going Through The Narrows

It turns out all the chatting-up of the Captain paid off, and The Waa (as he is affectionately known by those of us who are close to him) invited me onto the Bridge to witness passing through The Narrows - a treacherous few miles of water where ‘you can almost reach out from the ferry and touch the trees on either side’. All of my new-found ferry buddies were jealous. We sat in the bar over a few whiskeys and discussed my luck. Kierson made lewd remarks about the Waa, cocktails, and Jacuzzis up on the exclusive Bridge. Eli said he wanted to come. Robin told me that being bored out of my brains for hours on end of The Waa's genealogy stories and strange ways around women were actually going to be worth it, and Damion politely told me to have fun. Then all of a sudden, we became aware that the The Waa was amongst us, lurking behind our circle, like a silent ship that had approached unnoticed and makes you a bit nervous wondering how long they'd been standing there, waiting to be announced, listening. It was time.

On the bridge it was all gold plated, comfortable seating, fancy navigation devices, and good coffee - at last. The pilot, who is second to the captain and in charge when the captain is off-duty, showed me around. The Waa took control. He was the puppeteer - without touching anything, he steered the ship and directed the men. The Waa made a command, the man on the wheel steered the boat, and other men looked out for important things. I have no vocabulary for what their skills were or what they did, but according to the pilot, The Waa was doing it well, especially docking into Petersburg that required an apparently tricky turning in a strong cross-current. I made myself suitably impressed and thanked The Waa profusely for the opportunity to view his skills at close range.

I descended from The Bridge happy for my special treatment, but exhausted from the male ego-stroking I had done over the few days on the ferry. Although it was getting me places, I was ready to retire from my Aussie Red-Head status. It had been over two days with no personal space, and it appeared there was a lot of men aboard that needed my audience. The ferry was shrinking in apparent size each day, and a small part of me was the bird in the cage that was ready to be set free on arrival in Juneau at dawn the following day.

For the time being I loved my new ferry friends and we stayed up late breaking only a few of America’s minor laws, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Ketchikan in Mist

Between Ketchikan and Wrangell, on the M/V Matanuska

Today we made our first stop: Ketchican. I’d woken in thick mist, the ghost of mountains to either side, water as glass. I stayed in my nest enjoying the contrasting warmth against the freezing breezes reaching the back wall of the solarium where I was holed-up. I watched Damion exit his fluttering tent further out on the deck and commence the morning. At six-thirty an adult roused the sleeping teenagers who would be disembarking on arrival in port. As they packed up I was pleased to note the donning of gumboots – an item of clothing I have read in the guidebook as being common attire in Alaska’s South East. I love gumboots. I am unsure why they are necessary in Alaska’s South Eastern towns, but will enjoy the unfolding of this little story.

After sharing breakfast with Damion (destination: Whittier) and Robin (destination: Haines), we dock, still in impenetrable mist. The three of us caught a taxi into town with the Big Man – an enormous hulk who, according to my companions, had an odour to match his size. He did his home town proud in our five minute cab ride, offering the fullest rendition of town history, trivia, and intrigue that time would allow.



We were deposited near a picturesque creek that was deeply embedded into the rock upon which wooden trellis on trellis of quaint housing had been built up the steep hillside. Ketchikan is a very steep island. Vertival wooden staircases lead to horizontal wooden footpaths, jutting out from the sheer hillside, and leading to doorways of charming wooden houses. We ventured up one such staircase and down the path to find ourselves upon someone’s doorstop. Poor locals, I thought. We felt intrusive, and I had to resist the strong desire to follow the horizontal wooden pathway in the opposite direction, and instead descend once more to street level, and discrete tourism.

From everything the mist rose. The wood that composed most of the visible built world in Ketchican – railings, houses, paths, exhaled warm, white breath. We were snap happy. From the shorefront small domestic and large commercial boats delighted us with color and titles, ‘Hootchi Cootchi, and the old battler, ‘Edith H Grayce’. There were no seals frollicking where fresh water met the salty, as the Big Man had suggested there might be, but we didn’t mind. A brisk and much needed walk back to the ferry gave us enough time for a stretch, a beer donated from the weird-around-women man, and to scurry back on as the fog horn sounded.

Heaven's Up The Inner Passage

Canadian Waters, on the M/V Matanuska

This morning I woke in heaven. With ear-plugs in, I had been having thick, looped conversation dreams – then I opened my eyes. Blue green shot with silver white cloud tresses; the stately rise of thickset mountains from a bullet-grey ocean through which we are slowly ploughing. On both sides the views roll in and I laugh out loud in pure pleasure. I’ve woken in Paradise – little did I know it was to be found up the Alaska Marine Highway. Surrounding me is thirty beautiful sleeping youngsters (as I now affectionately think of them). Last night they were too consumed by the out-loud reading of ‘A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ to be smoking cones or bonking eachother. I am warm as toast under the heaters and with thirty hot breaths around me in the yellow Perspex solarium bubble; however the warmth does not tempt me to linger. I slide out of my bag, collecting every layer of clothing I possess, and toddle through the mesh of bodies to come standing on the open deck in socks, red shoes in one hand.

The stars and stripes flap in the freezing wind. My bed-warmth slowly thickens into an awake coldness. Our wake – a soft wide mark of foam on the water, reminiscent of yesterday’s cappuccino, is exhaled from the bowels of the steady Matanuska, stretching out, fading from white to an absence of ripples – a snail-trail on the water’s surface. Around us pine-clad mountains, low, affectionate mist hugging curves, and super-white snow honoring the crowns. I am in the North Country.