A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
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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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Thursday
Jun032010

The delay was long, but finally I flew to Anchorage and drove home to Wasilla, where a fish had jumped out of a tank

Given the non-stop intensity and full range of emotion that I have experienced these past few weeks, coupled with a chronic lack of sleep, I am a tired and lazy boy. I have no desire to blog or to do anything but to lay around, vegetate and indulge in the pleasures that lie on the soft and easy side of life, all of which seem to be out of reach.

So I will just post another traveling blog, with little comment. Tomorrow, I hope to get back to some serious blogging.

This is from yesterday afternoon in Fairbanks International Airport, where delay compounded delay. At one point as I was web-surfing, my adopted Wainwright Sister, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak (left, holding cards), appeared suddenly at my side and so I stood up and we gave each other a hug.

A bit later, she joined some other Arctic Slope ladies in a game of Snert.

Maybe if I had asked, I could have joined in, too, but they would have slaughtered me.

When it comes to Snert, they are all very cunning and ruthlessly ruthless.

So I sat in Fairbanks International Airport from 11:35 AM until about 5:30 PM. Finally, I was on the plane, sitting in Window Seat 7F. I observed other people debarking from another flight.

As you can see, the smoke from the wildfires remained heavy, although not so bad as when I passed through on the way to AKP.

Then came the preflight briefing. As usual, the passengers paid rapt attention to every word and demonstration, as all of our lives could depend upon it.

I wonder what it feels like, to have two batons in your hands and to order the pilot of a big jet around? Even if for just a few moments?

Of course, if that pilot were to accidently run over a duck because you waved a baton wrong, it wouldn't feel very good at all.

Then we were rising from the runway, passing over moth-balled airplanes as we climbed. Someone should give me one of those airplanes. I would put it in my back yard and move my office into it.

I think the cats and I would be very happy in such an office and it would give the fish a new place to swim.

Then I noticed that the sun had come through the window and had lit my hand up.

Lots of cumulous clouds in the air. 

Can you see Denali, right under the wing tip?

That's the highest mountain in North America, you know - and the tallest mountain in the world, measured from base to peak rather than feet above sea level.

We here in Alaska all love this mountain and most of us hate to hear it called McKinley. It is just not right to call it McKinley.

Here we are, descending over the Cook Inlet mudflats on final approach into Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage.

I wonder how Ted Stevens feels, when he sits on a plane descending on final into this airport?

And then we were at the gate, ready to deboard.

Back in Wasilla, a dog looked at me.

After I returned to my house, I discovered that the small green terror that had disappeared and so I had thought might have been eaten had not been eaten after all.

It had jumped out of the tank, had flopped its way several feet until it was under my work table and there it had died and dried. It didn't smell too good.

I try to keep my tanks covered, but awhile before I left, Pistol-Yero climbed upon the 95 gallon tank and broke one-half of the cover.

I wasn't worried, though, because I did not think there were any jumpers in there.

Just a little bit ago, Pistol-Yero climbed atop the 55 gallon tank and collapsed one half of the cover. I don't think he broke it, though. I don't think there are any jumpers in there, but I had better fish that cover out and put it back.

I was wrong before, I could be wrong again.

It just wouldn't be right to lose another good fish because it jumped out of the tank.

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Reader Comments (4)

glad you made it home, i think you deserve to be lazy for a few days

June 3, 2010 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

Take a photo of the dried green terror?

June 3, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterMichelle

Ew. Dead fish make me squeamish a little.

I do have a dead fish story that will make you laugh. My Dylan was just a little pippersqueak, and he had an aquarium in his room. We also had a cat who was a prodigious and excellent hunter. This cat would bring her kill home, and arrange it artfully at the front door. One time she brought home a fish, about six inches long. Where she caught that, I haven't a clue. I saw it as I went out for the paper, and made a mental note to dispose of the fish once I'd had my coffee and read the paper. (One needs to be properly fortified to handle such chores.) Anyway, I was reading the papers and kids began to get up, and wander down, one by one. I heard a great deal of excitement at the front door, and got up to investigate, and caught Dylan heading upstairs at top speed with that dead fish. He was planning to plop it into his aquarium where it would come back to life (he still believed in magic), and be the biggest fish in the tank. He stood there holding that disgusting fish arguing with me as I tried to explain that it wouldn't come back to life. Inside that little voice was screaming, "Get it out! Get it out! Get that disgusting thing OUT OF MY HOUSE." But I did not say that. I made it a learning experience.

June 4, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterdebby

twain - I really want to be lazy.

Michele - I didn't. The poor little guy looked all horrid and fuzzy. I took him out and put him in my garden, which I did not plant again this year, but he should enrich it, just the same.

Debby - LMAO! And I have had that same feeling - that if I could drop a dead fish back in the tank, it would come to life. And guess what? Once it did. It was a jumper. I found it stiff and dry and put it back in the tank. It floated around for a bit, then gave a little twitch. An hour later, it was swimming around just like everybody else.

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