Alaska’s glaciers and dogsleds are wonderful, but it’s the people you remember
Thanks to Rhino and Pickle, I really got to know Alaska.
Of course, I can’t forget The Commander, Silky Sally, Dave the Dog Man and all their friends, but expressing gratitude for a vacation is like accepting an Oscar: you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
When I think of the week my wife Pam and I spent going up the coast of America’s 49th state last May, a lot comes to mind – from canoeing past glaciers and flying over ice fields to mushing a dogsled and running from eagles.
But in the end, it’s the people who linger most in your memory.
The dead of winter may seem an odd time to be thinking about travel to where it’s even colder, but Alaskan cruises are becoming increasingly popular each year and many of the more popular sailings for this spring and summer are already starting to sell out, so this is the moment to make your plans.
Yes, you go to Alaska for spectacular scenery and incredible outdoor adventures, but what you really remember are those idiosyncratic individuals the state is filled with. Remember that cult television series Northern Exposure? It wasn’t that far from the truth
We were sailing on Celebrity Cruise’s Mercury, with sleek service, great food and plenty of welcome extras, like an on-board naturalist who was there seemingly 24/7 to point out the leaping whales or explain the Hubbard Glacier.
Experienced friends had told us that an Alaskan cruise is a lovely thing, but it’s the off-ship excursions that can lift it into something really special. Fortunately, Celebrity offers a wide assortment of choices in each city at every price point and stage of physical difficulty.
Our first big adventure begins in Juneau, with a bus ride to the heliport, where we squeeze into a helicopter with a fellow who calls himself The Commander. He admits to a military history and his accent is pure mid-West American, but now he’s part of Alaska.
“I like it here,” he says laconically. “The space, the sky – plenty of both.”
Then we’re off, swooping through unbelievable vistas as we make our way to the Norris Glacier. A quarter-hour later we descend to a scene of mad activity. It’s a mushing camp, where genuine Alaskan huskies alternate training for the annual Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race (their Stanley Cup, Super Bowl and World Series combined) with providing tourists like us a half-hour ride they’ll never forget.
On the flat white plateau, with the sun bouncing blindingly off the snow, the sound of dozens of huskies wailing to be exercised can have an eerie effect.
That is until Dave lopes over to put us at ease. Dave the Dog Man to the mushers, Dave Dalton on his birth certificate, he radiates the calm you get for having done this for more than a quarter century.
“I came from Weymouth, Massachusetts,” he admits. “Didn’t like it much. Got here in 1981. Liked it a lot. Been mushing ever since.”
He quickly shows Pam and I how to handle the huskies and we’re off. Maybe he showed us too quickly, because when it’s Pam’s turn to control the team, she lets the sled tip to one side and I wind up squarely in the snow.
“Aha” says Dave. “You’ve got it! The Wet Butt of Shame. Everyone will look at your wet jeans for the rest of the day and know you fell off a sled into the snow.”
By the next day I had forgotten it all and we were in Skagway, where we ignored its faux-Yukon buildings with their genuine historical whorehouse (The Red Onion Saloon) because it was time to meet Rhino and Pickle.
What we’d signed up for here was billed as a multi-part excursion down the Chilkat River to see a receding glacier up close. We had to take a high-speed catamaran, followed by an old school bus on a logging road, then hike along a bear trail through the wilderness before we finally came to the canoes that we’d paddle to our destination.
But along the way, there appeared Rhino. His real name is Ryan Parker and he looks like any one of thousands of 20-something kids you see working tourist jobs in the summer.
The only difference is that Rhino came from Lubbock, Texas and now he lives in Haines, Alaska.
Oh, he goes away each winter to work on construction sites around the world, but every spring it’s back to Haines. Why? He blushes. “Ever since I saw Northern Exposure on TV, I wanted to live here, to be one of those guys.”
Well, he’s made it. The dry wit, the concept of embracing idiosyncrasy as a religion, the surreal sense of humour, the “you and me against the world” attitude that most of the characters from that series possessed are qualities Rhino has carefully cultivated.
He’s every guy who ever moved here to find something – although he’s still not quite sure what it was – and he’s the essence of Alaska.
He points out his adopted hometown to us proudly (population 1,811) and takes time to detour past a shelf of rocks where dozens of sea lions are sunning themselves, as we continue scooting through the water.
“Pickle will help you with the canoes,” he mumbles tersely as we head down the bumpy road and over the bear trail.
And he’s right. Pickle appears. I don’t know what his real name is; he won’t tell us. But Pickle surely suits him. No details about where he came from, either. Just firm, but friendly, advice on how to manoeuvre a canoe.
When we return, hours later, our arms are aching and he still hasn’t said a single personal thing. That’s another side of the Alaska ethic.
But a different piece of the puzzle came into focus when we arrived in Ketchikan, where eagles chase you across the town square and most of the houses are built on stilts 10 to 12 metres high, because of its 380 centimetres of rain annually.
We opted for a boat and seaplane tour of Misty Fjords National Monument, a one-million hectare spectacle of forest, mountain, sea and sky unmatched in North America.
Silky Sally dispensied hot coffee and lukewarm chowder as the winds whipped around us; she had a slightly faded “hippie chick” look that was de rigueur in Vancouver during the 1960s and ’70s.
Tossing her blond hair, streaked here and there with grey, she talked about how she’d lived “all over Alaska.” She had a story for every city, but after a while they began to sound the same: there was a man, he loved her, he left, then she moved on. Her monologue somehow served as an arresting counterpoint to the daunting splendour outside our boat. Alaska may be a giant place, but it’s full of people holding on to their individuality as tight as they can.
We’ll be back again one day to enjoy the pink light of first dawn over the glaciers, the cool shadows of afternoon that turn the forests nearly black and the sun that shines so long into the night you start to think it’s another moon.
And with any luck, we’ll meet up again with Rhino and Pickle.
Source:
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Recent Comments