Read Online Travelers' Tales Alaska by Bill Sherwonit - Free Book Online
Authors: Bill Sherwonit
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women, and weathered in at some of the most obscure communities in America. He is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE
The Only Place Like This
In an unnamed Southeast fishing town, residents ponder hard choices and wonder what the next tide will bring.
A S A BALD EAGLE COASTS OVER HIS HEAD, A LITTLE BOY walks along the boardwalk toward school, wearing a life jacket, clutching a handful of daffodils. He passes an old man on a four-wheeler.
âHiya,â the boy says. âHow are you today?â
âHome, sick in bed,â the old man announces. Then without waiting for the boy to figure out the joke, he laughs, downshifts, and trundles off, rattling the planks of the boardwalk past the Cold Storage Plant and a boarded-up house. By the post office, a little dog is sitting square in the middle of the walkway, not moving. The old man stops, turns off his engine, and devotes ten minutes to the project of scratching the dog. Close by, two men in yellow rain-pants lean over the railing, talking in low voices, watching a school of herring. Frank and I sit on a wooden bench in front of the restaurant, looking across the boardwalk to the inlet and the mountains beyond. Our backs are erasing âborschtâ from the chalkboard menu.
Wildland shoulders in on the little town from all directions,jagged snow-covered peaks and fjords as deep as the mountains are high. Because the mountains plunge so steeply into the sea, the town is built on stilts over the water. Buildings line up on both sides of the boardwalk that runs along the bluffs, graying wooden cottages connected by narrow planks with railings. Even the school sits at the end of a pier, on posts above the tidal flats. Twice each day, tides move in under the town, and twice each day they move out again, stranding starfish.
The nearest road is seventy miles away. When the weather is goodâwhich it rarely isâa floatplane might land at the dock and off-load a fisherman, or a dog, or some groceries. We flew in on yesterdayâs floatplane, imported from outside to teach in the school for a few days. Low clouds forced us to fly below the cliffs along arms of the sea, skimming close to the waves like a pelican. The ferry comes only once a month. When the schoolteacherâs piano arrived by barge, the town turned out to haul the piano up the gangway and along the boardwalk on the back of the only suitable vehicle in town, the garbage ATV. Now the teacher trades piano lessons for halibut and jam and considers herself ahead in the bargain.
This little town is home to 160 people, more or less, people who take the word âhomeâ seriously. When I ask my writing students what marks this place as home, the seven children in the high school put their heads together and make me a list:
The Boardwalk
Boringness
Dogs barking
My boat
TOO MUCH RAIN.
Bears
The restaurant
The river.
I press them for the names of the inlet, the restaurant, the river, the bears, and they debate for some time, but really, the question makes no sense. Whatâs the use of proper names, when thereâs only one of each? But the children consult among themselves and tell me that the bears are brown bears. They wander into town in April looking for something to eat, but head back to the mountains when the snows melt. âThey have their space and we have ours and it works out pretty good,â says a student. All the same, she spent the night with a friend, having been warned not to walk home past the place a bear had been seen. When townspeople visit each other at night, they carry cowbells and pepper spray. And when word comes round that a bear is on the boardwalk just past the church, the teacher leaves her meeting and walks home to bring her dog inside.
I âd read two things about this place. One: that the people were friendly to tourists. And two: that they were not. Timing, temperament, season,
KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE
The Only Place Like This
In an unnamed Southeast fishing town, residents ponder hard choices and wonder what the next tide will bring.
A S A BALD EAGLE COASTS OVER HIS HEAD, A LITTLE BOY walks along the boardwalk toward school, wearing a life jacket, clutching a handful of daffodils. He passes an old man on a four-wheeler.
âHiya,â the boy says. âHow are you today?â
âHome, sick in bed,â the old man announces. Then without waiting for the boy to figure out the joke, he laughs, downshifts, and trundles off, rattling the planks of the boardwalk past the Cold Storage Plant and a boarded-up house. By the post office, a little dog is sitting square in the middle of the walkway, not moving. The old man stops, turns off his engine, and devotes ten minutes to the project of scratching the dog. Close by, two men in yellow rain-pants lean over the railing, talking in low voices, watching a school of herring. Frank and I sit on a wooden bench in front of the restaurant, looking across the boardwalk to the inlet and the mountains beyond. Our backs are erasing âborschtâ from the chalkboard menu.
Wildland shoulders in on the little town from all directions,jagged snow-covered peaks and fjords as deep as the mountains are high. Because the mountains plunge so steeply into the sea, the town is built on stilts over the water. Buildings line up on both sides of the boardwalk that runs along the bluffs, graying wooden cottages connected by narrow planks with railings. Even the school sits at the end of a pier, on posts above the tidal flats. Twice each day, tides move in under the town, and twice each day they move out again, stranding starfish.
The nearest road is seventy miles away. When the weather is goodâwhich it rarely isâa floatplane might land at the dock and off-load a fisherman, or a dog, or some groceries. We flew in on yesterdayâs floatplane, imported from outside to teach in the school for a few days. Low clouds forced us to fly below the cliffs along arms of the sea, skimming close to the waves like a pelican. The ferry comes only once a month. When the schoolteacherâs piano arrived by barge, the town turned out to haul the piano up the gangway and along the boardwalk on the back of the only suitable vehicle in town, the garbage ATV. Now the teacher trades piano lessons for halibut and jam and considers herself ahead in the bargain.
This little town is home to 160 people, more or less, people who take the word âhomeâ seriously. When I ask my writing students what marks this place as home, the seven children in the high school put their heads together and make me a list:
The Boardwalk
Boringness
Dogs barking
My boat
TOO MUCH RAIN.
Bears
The restaurant
The river.
I press them for the names of the inlet, the restaurant, the river, the bears, and they debate for some time, but really, the question makes no sense. Whatâs the use of proper names, when thereâs only one of each? But the children consult among themselves and tell me that the bears are brown bears. They wander into town in April looking for something to eat, but head back to the mountains when the snows melt. âThey have their space and we have ours and it works out pretty good,â says a student. All the same, she spent the night with a friend, having been warned not to walk home past the place a bear had been seen. When townspeople visit each other at night, they carry cowbells and pepper spray. And when word comes round that a bear is on the boardwalk just past the church, the teacher leaves her meeting and walks home to bring her dog inside.
I âd read two things about this place. One: that the people were friendly to tourists. And two: that they were not. Timing, temperament, season,
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