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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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Monday
Jun152009

Feeling lazy, I step backward in time a bit

DateMonday, June 15, 2009 at 11:56PM

When I started this blog, I said that I would alternate current photos of Wasilla (and elsewhere) with images that I had taken in the past. I haven't really done much of that. It is too hard to keep up with the present, let alone visit the past.

But today I went to town for a doctor visit (shoulder surgery followup - yes, after all this time, I still must do followups. The doctor, by the way, is most impressed with how I have healed. He said most people who suffered the same injury I did would not be able to raise their arm more than 90 degrees out from their body one year later and he could hardly believe it when I held mine straight up above my head. Two reasons, I figure - he did a good job on the surgery and I worked really hard to put that arm back in action. Margie got upset with me sometimes, said I was pushing it too hard, but I had to push it hard) and when I came home, I started sorting through pre-blog photographs for a project I want to do.

I worked on it until just a little bit ago and now I am lazy, so I am just going to blog a few past photos, like the train above.

I love trains, don't you know?

And then there was the time the Little Su overflowed, but I drove through and across the bridge anyways, as did these happy kids.

A couple of hitchhikers that I once picked up on Church Road, sitting in the back seat, as seen in my rear-view mirror.

A barista by the name of Melanie at Cafe Darte. Cafe Darte is up for sale. My daughter Melanie wants her Mom and I to buy it. We have no money to buy it.

Becky bounces on her trampoline as I drive by.

And how about Wasilla Main Street? I am pretty sure she rose from the ground wiser than before she fell.

This girl is not on Main Street, but on the Parks Highway, which was mistakenly identified as Wasilla Main Street on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I admire him, anyway. 

I was going to pull up an India shot, too, but I see there is only seven minutes left in this day and I have not taken a single picture. I will go take one, now. You will probably never see it, but I cannot let the day pass by totally undocumented.

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