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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
Apr052009

A mid-afternoon drive down Shrock tells me winter is over - but then it is always a bit risky to say so

DateSunday, April 5, 2009 at 12:00AM

Look! The snow that these horses live on is melting! Fast! It is 37 degrees! At about 4:30 in the afternoon! The sun is shining and it feels hot. Winter is over. I must get out my bicycle. I haven't ridden it since early last June, before I took my fall and shattered my shoulder.

I haven't done much of anything physical since then, except a bit of therapy and my walks. I am in the worst physical condition of my life. But I think I will soon get that bike out and ride it.

I will do it! I sure hope I don't fall on my shoulder.

Unless we get another heavy snow, the temperature plummets and the roads all ice up again. Could happen. I don't think it will, but it could. If it does, I will not ride the bike. Or the air could fill with volcanic ash. Redoubt blew again this morning, but the ash missed us. It went to Homer.

Hey! What are those people doing up there, at the side of the road?

They are making firewood! 

When I arose this morning, the temperature was in the 20's and everything outside was solid. Inside, I was groggy and I did not want to cook, I did not want to eat cold cereal. I just wanted to sit down somewhere and have someone wait on me.

I knew Margie would not want to come with me, because I took her out yesterday and the day before and it was very hard on her and so I knew she would not want to step out of the house, but I asked her anyway.

She did not want to go.

So I went by myself, which is okay because I like to be alone.

But I wasn't alone. There were all kinds of people about, including this guy, talking to the man two tables in front of me.

He demanded that I take his picture. I do not think that he knew that he demanded that I take his picture. Even though he appears to be looking straight at the camera in this frame, I am not certain that he even knew that I took his picture.

Just the same, he demanded that I take it.

He demanded just by being there in front of me, creating a visual image that I found interesting. So I obeyed. I took his picture.

Then, even though I wanted only to be alone with my breakfast, I decided that I should find out something about him - his name, what he did, some sort of intelligent observation that he might make about this world.

I decided that I would wait until his conversation ended, and then ask him.

And then, as the waitress was laying my breakfast out in front of me, he finished his conversation, stepped out the door and disappeared. I could have chased after him, but the ham and eggs beckoned to me. 

From what little I saw of him, he appeared to be a jovial sort of man, but also one that you would not want to mess with. 

I have no idea what they conversed about, but at one point he did raise his voice and I overheard a little snippet. He had read something released by AARP. "Daylight savings time kills more people by heart attacks than any other cause," he said. He then continued on by saying something about golfers who had to get up one hour earlier, but that was all I heard.

Caleb is a golfer. I wonder if he knows about this?

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