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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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Wednesday
Feb032010

Margie returns from being snowbound in Arizona; we celebrate Melanie's birthday - but readers must wait to see it*

DateWednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:07AM

It has been quite a day. After being gone for nearly a month, Margie returned from Arizona. There, at her sister's home in the high White Mountain Apache community of Hon-Dah, she had been engulfed in up to six feet of snow and had spent a good deal of her time not going anywhere.

It was a very warm day here today, although, after she got off the plane, Margie noted that it was still cooler than it had been in Arizona, despite the fact they got huge amounts of snow and we haven't had any snow to speak of since early in December.

Cooler weather is forecast, and I look forward to it. It would be nice if it snowed a bit, first.

Today was also Melanie's birthday, so we stayed in town until late this evening to celebrate it.

It is 1:25 AM and Margie has been up for 22 hours. I haven't been up quite that long, but, in general I am living in a perpetual state of exhaustion and I really feel it right now. I took many pictures today and have already prepared and placed a selection in a post, but have not written the words. Margie just said she is going to bed now. I think I will too. 

I will add the words to the post after I get up - perhaps right away, perhaps not until the end of the day. I want to do it early, but at the same time I have a great deal of work that I must do tomorrow and I want to get started on that early, too.

Plus - if I add the text early and post it early, then I will surely find myself adding more pictures and more text in another post at the end of the day. I do not think that I have time to write two blog posts in one day.

Anyway, it could go either way.

The above picture of Kalib and Lavina is one of the images from today's take that did not make it into the post that I have not yet written. You will learn more about the beautiful, brand-new, white-buckskin cradle board once I add the words and put up the post.

*Before I went to bed, I scheduled this to post at 4:00 AM, as I usually do. Or so I thought. I actually set it for 4:00 PM. I did not discover this drastic, disastrous, error until 11:06 AM, so this is just now going up. I will hold the main post for one more day.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment3 Comments |
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Reader Comments (3)

Oh, my gosh! Kalib's little Carharts are just the cutest things ever! Just darling. Welcome home Margie!

February 3, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterdebby

Debby i was just going to say that about Cutie Pie Kalib and his hartts! That's adorable!

Glad Margie made it home safely! Get some rest!

February 3, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterRocksee

Yes, those little Carharts are cute.

February 5, 2010 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

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