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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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Saturday
Jul032010

ICC Nuuk, Greenland, part 6: Seals are butchered, cooked and eaten; then there is song and dance

DateSaturday, July 3, 2010 at 5:15AM

It was designated "Day of the Seal" here in Nuuk and to commemorate a hunter by the name of Lars, dressed dressed head to toe in seal skin, butchered a seal on the rocky beach at Noorliit. A couple of other hunters did the same, but with much smaller seals. After the butchering, the seals were cooked, both on rocks over an open fire and in kettles, boiled into soup.

Then all of us who had gathered ate the seals and they were very, very, good.

Afterwards, there was singing and dancing, both traditional and modern.

As you might suspect, I took many pictures and I suspect that I have several worthy of presentation here and I do want to show them to you, but it is 4:01 AM and pretty soon I have to pack my bag and head to the airport, to begin the long series of flights home, to be interrupted by a short night in Copenhagen, which right now I wish I could just skip and head straight for Alaska.

So I am going to hold off until I get home and then I will finish my ICC series there, sitting in my office, working on my much faster desktop computer there. This laptop is a wonder, but it can also be a frustrating pain when it gets bogged down while editing and processing high-resolution RAW photo files. Once I get a little rest and start up again, it will probably take me a couple of days to do so; maybe three.

I will then show you more of the Day of the Seal, and will finally do a good wrap-up that explains the Nuuk Declaration of 2010 and I will also present a better history of the ICC and a run-down of the issues the indigenous people of the Inuit circumpolar north face.

Doing the Greenlandic Polka under a beautiful open sky on a mostly sunny Day of the Seal here in Nuuk, Greenland.

I wish that I could stay another week and do whatever I want to do, but I can't. I must go home now.

I would like to say that I'll come back one day, but one never knows about such things.

 

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Reader Comments (4)

have a ave trip and i hope you feel a little better

July 3, 2010 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

Thank you Bill for a taste of the world I have never seen. It was beautiful. The people are beautiful and you have exposed us to a beautiful culture.

July 3, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterKathryn Mueller

Thank you Bill. You are such a blessing to the rest of us...

July 3, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterDonna

Thank You Bill for posting the pictures, I look forward to seeing more. I fly over Nuuk many times a month and Greenland is high on my list as places to visit.

July 4, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterRandolph Beebe

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