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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
Sep222010

Time forces this blog back into Wasilla, but it will return to Cross Island tomorrow and will romp with polar bears

DateWednesday, September 22, 2010 at 12:48PM

After spending too many hours* working on what I had planned to be today's Cross Island post, I realized that it would still take me a couple of hours more to finish it. So I stopped, put it off until tomorrow and then quickly pulled these three Wasilla pictures off my pocket camera.

I was having great fun - because it is fun to wander among polar bears on your screen when you know that they can't hurt you, but, really, I can't afford to spend that much time working on this blog in a single day, especially when I did so just the day before, and the day before that as well, so I decided to spread the work on the polar bear entry out over two days.

So here I am in Wasilla in my car a couple of days back, before I drove to Nikiski.

I am on Church Road. I have been directed into the left lane and a flag lady up ahead is ordering me to drive slow.

Judging from the stain on the road, it would appear that someone crashed here recently, although this had nothing to do with that but rather with road repair.

And this was Sunday morning, after I had returned from Nikiski late the night before. Whenever I come back from a trip, I always try to take Margie to breakfast the next morning. True - this had been a very short trip of just one night, but tradition is tradition.

Regular readers know that Margie and I have been on a strange routine, lately. When I am home, I pick her up from babysitting Jobe in Anchorage on Thursday nights, then take her back Monday morning.

I was so tired this Monday that Margie volunteered to drive herself to Anchorage and said that I could just stay home, sleep in and use my bicycle that day.

Oddly enough, I found that I greatly enjoyed not having a car but only a bicycle.

So we did the same thing today. 

I think we will do it tomorrow, too.

The only problem is, I bought a new plecostomus to eat the algae that is taking over one of my acquariums, as the pleco who used to live there died, but I couldn't bring it home. They said they would be open until 7:00, but Margie didn't get back home until about 7:30. 

And here I am, at Metro Cafe, after pedaling over on my bike.

That's Jason Starheim in the photo with Carmen. Jason is her nephew through one of Scott's brothers.

Scott is fighting hard, staying as busy and active as he can as he battles his horrible cancer. Jason has come to help out around the cafe.

Tomorrow, I will return this blog to Cross Island and will drop you into the midst of polar bears. It will be fun. You will enjoy it.

 

*Note: I actually created this entry last night. Before I went to bed, I set it to publish for 7:00 AM this morning. I'm afraid that in Squarespace my blog hosts have created a trouble-plagued platform filled with many inefficiencies and time wasting features where anything can go wrong at any time and today Squarespace did not publish as scheduled. I just discovered it, and am about to manually post it.

 

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AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment2 Comments |
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Reader Comments (2)

can't wait t see the polar bears

September 22, 2010 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

I am sending prayers, good thoughts and good vibes to Scott and his lovely wife Carmen, who always lights up the screen in this blog.

September 22, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterdahli22

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