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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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Tuesday
Feb032009

Kalib, held by Caleb: A brief moment of respite

DateTuesday, February 3, 2009 at 3:49PM


Notwithstanding the fact that this blog and a huge part of my mind and pysche has been stuck at the Inauguration of President Barack Obama for two weeks, life has continued to move on and all the while I have been taking snapshots of what I see around me.

So I am way behind. I still have more from DC that I want to include in this blog, and there are images that I have photographed since my return that I also desire to post, along with the stories behind them - such as Melanie's birthday and Frankie's goodbye, Muzzy's encounter with a moose - various things that I have seen as I have moved about and sprawled across the couch.

I will probably manage to post some of it here, but much of it will likely just slip away into the back regions of my hard drive space, perhaps never again to be seen by anybody.

And I am tired. Exhausted. Oh, God, am I exhausted! I have spent my entire career exhausting myself, pushing myself through insane 24, 36, 48 and even 50 hour plus workdays, sometimes back to back; almost never getting a good night's sleep, for I am that kind of person. I have not done anything like that, this time, but our life since we departed for Washington, D.C. on January 17 to the present has been such that it has left me exhausted, beyond recovery. it feels like.

But I don't believe it. I will recover, and I will yet do great things with this blog, the kind of things that I had in mind when I created it, but which a lack of time has so far precluded.

If some kind person out there would just send me $1 million dollars so that I could put aside all other concerns, save for this blog, Grahamn Kracker's cat blog and the canon of books that I am working on, then I would get right to it, and I would start sleeping well at night, too.

Hell. I'd settle for $100,000. 

What are you waiting for, generous people? Hop into your online bank account and transfer the money to me, right now. I will put it to good use, I promise. I will not squander more than 50 percent of it!

As to the picture above, I took it yesterday, right after Muzzy's encounter with the moose. Jacob, Muzzy and I had been out walking and we had returned home through the marsh, which is where we met two moose. There used to be three - a mom and two calves. Now there is only a mom and one calf.

Absent minded me! I had not emptied the card for my pocket camera and I was not carrying a spare, and so I filled up the SD card and missed the best part of the Muzzy-moose encounter - the part where the moose was chasing Muzzy and Muzzy was running straight towards me. I furiously pushed the shutter, but nothing happened - no image.

That was when I discovered that I had filled the SD card.

Afterward, we approached the house through the backyard, and I spotted Kalib in Caleb's arms, up against the wonderful reflection of the trees that stood behind me. 

Damnit! No space on the card! Hurriedly, I found an image to delete. But it did not free up enough space! I found another, deleted it. Still, the camera read "Memory card full."  I found a third image, deleted it, and now the camera gave me one frame to shoot.

Not knowing how long Kalib would keep his hands raised, I lifted the camera and shot that frame instantly. Kalib then lowered his hands and did not raise them again.

Jacob and I entered the house. Margie was sitting on the end of the couch, her injured leg propped up on the ottoman and her crutches nearby.

I tracked snow onto the floor and she scolded me for it - but it was a gentle scolding, as are all her scoldings, and I deserved it.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment1 Comment |
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Reader Comments (1)

Beautiful shot. Really a wonderful metaphor for the time.

February 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterKurt Hoss

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