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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
May242010

Just about, but not quite done, facing confusion, I take a break to walk five dogs 200 yards

DateMonday, May 24, 2010 at 11:54AM

I am very close to having parts three and four* of the funeral ready to post, but nothing is actually ready until it's ready and so far today I have spent the past five hours dealing with a completely unrelated and unexpected matter, the kind of thing that can happen when nine people travel, all to the same destination but at different times, so I am going to save it for tomorrow. 

Instead, so that I do not miss a day of blogging as I did Saturday, I will post these five images of me, walking LeeAnn's dogs. I was a bit nervous about it because five is a lot of dogs to walk at once and I had no confidence that I could keep the two little ones, Chewy and Alfie, both of whom seem very good intentioned but quite scatter-brained, under control. Nor did I have confidence that, if they escaped me and ran off somewhere, they would know how to get back.

So I called LeeAnn and she said as long as I had Chewy on a leash, it would be okay. Chewy was the only one that I need worry about running off.

I found a leash. Sparey, the weiner dog, headed out the door as I was preparing. Soon he returned to the door and impatiently peered back inside, wondering what was taking me so long.

So here we are, the six of us, out walking. It's true, you only see three, Chewy, Sparey and Famous, but there are six, counting me.

Famous, doing his famous walk.  

We had not gone more than 200 yards with Alfie disappeared. This worried me a bit, so I backtracked and found him at the house. I tried again, with two leashes, but then we encountered a gaggle of roaming dogs (and for the English pedantics, I know that gaggle is geese and pack is dogs, but, trust me, this was a gaggle of dogs) and it got pretty chaotic and I had to take everybody home.

I tried a couple of more times, but one thing or another always happened and we never got more than 200 yards from the house.

Later, I was going out the door with Sparey when Chewy, the one who LeeAnn said I did need to worry about, scurried out the door ahead of us. Soon, Chewy was bounding through the woods. I had to bound, too. Chewy did not want to be caught and I could not catch him.

So I called on Shadow. It is easier for him, because he only has to work in two dimensions, whereas I must deal in three. A dog can find more places to escape in three dimensions than it can in two.

It worked. Shadow caught Chewy Shadow and that somehow put flesh Chewy in my arms. I carried him home.

All was well after that.

*I plan to post parts 3 and 4 simultaneously, so if you come back on a link that takes you to one or the other, please be aware that they will both be up.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment4 Comments |
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Reader Comments (4)

oh you brave man ...i walk 3 dogs but i know every dog on our road and what could set them off.

May 24, 2010 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

Must have been a little difficult to get all 5 in a photo, but you did!

May 24, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterMichelle

Charming:) The pups are stars! Thanks for sharing.

May 24, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterDawn Spinella

charming........

May 30, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterclippingimages

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