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A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Sunday
Nov292009

Sarah runs out of gas, picks up her hockey stick; Mr. Dodd Shay blows the snow away; Rex and Kalib play with train, eat pie

DateSunday, November 29, 2009 at 4:00AM

As I walked today, I saw this girl, sitting still in the road on her four-wheeler, going nowhere, holding her hockey stick. I wondered why. "I ran out of gas," she told me.

I wasn't carrying any gas so I could not help her, but I could take her picture. Her name is Sarah, she is 14 years old and she plans to start playing hockey very soon. "At school?" I asked.

"I think I'm going to join a girl's league team," she answered.

Or did she say, "city league?" I'm pretty sure she said "girl's league." I suppose that I probably shouldn't quote her if I am not absolutely certain what her words were.

But then, it's not all that unusual for a blogger to get a quote a little bit wrong. I don't think that I got it wrong, I think I got it right. But I'm not 100 percent certain.

And don't worry. She had a cell phone. Her gas was coming.

A little further down the road I saw Dodd Shay blowing the snow off his driveway.

When he got to the end of his driveway, he turned around and started going back. His black dog kept coming. In fact, the dog followed me for a short distance. It wanted to keep following me, but it got worried that it was getting too far from from home, so it turned around and went back.

A white poodle awaited it. Yes, I photographed the poodle, too, but today I will make you use imagination, if you want to see it. I won't tell you if it was tall or short, or what color its collar was or if its fur was groomed or how. Use your imagination - see what kind of white poodle you can create to go with this black dog.

Snowmachine tracks cross a well-scraped road.

 

I needed something besides turkey, so I drove to Taco Bell and passed by Wasilla Lake. Snow blew off the lake, but it wasn't bad.

Rex returned to Anchorage from Homer, where he did lots of thinking. In the evening, he came out and, Taco Bell notwithstanding, we all did a Thanksgiving retake and ate more turkey. Afterward, Margie asked if we were ready for pie.

We weren't. I semi-dozed off on the couch to the sounds of Kalib squealing and Uncle Rex laughing (you can tell how much I got done on this task I told you about last night).

When I got up from the couch, I found the two sitting at the kitchen table, playing with the toy train engine I bought in India for about 50 cents and then brought home to Kalib.

Finally, we were ready for pie.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment2 Comments |
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Reader Comments (2)

I love the sidelong look that Kalib is giving Rex as he shovels pie in his mouth. And his Clifford pajamas are so sweet. Little folks love that big red dog.

November 30, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterdebby

This may sound odd, but my oatmeal today coincided with Kalib watching Clifford. It was the first time that I ever watched Clifford and you're right - he is a big dog!

I never knew.

December 1, 2009 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

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