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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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Sunday
Oct092011

I set out to walk, with no destination in mind, and wind up at a gas-filled meteor crater; afterward we eat caribou 

DateSunday, October 9, 2011 at 9:38PM

Today I stepped out onto the street and started to walk, no destination in mind, curious to see where I might wind up or who I might see.

I had not gone more than 100 feet before Richard and Arlene Glenn pulled up in their truck and invited me to tag along. We went to a few spots, including the landing site where yesterday's whales had been butchered and the boat launching site out towards Point Barrow.

Then we wound up on the Gas Well Road, where we saw this truck coming in the opposite direction. We passed over what looks to the eye to be ordinary, flat Arctic Slope tundra but which is actually the site of a crater where a meteor once blew out a crater about six miles wide. The rubble in the "disturbed" ground left behind in the crater trapped the concentrations of natural gas that now make up a portion of the Barrow Gas Fields, owned by the North Slope Borough, tapped to supply affordable energy to Barrow.

This is Richard, whose Iñupiaq name is Savik, and he is the nephew of Savik, the same Savik whose kitchen table I sit at as I write these words, Savik who opens his house to me as he does to his own blood family. Savik, the nephew, is a geologist and serves as the Vice-President of Lands and Natural Resources for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation - although right now, his heart is out here, where a new gas development is being produced.

Behind Savik stands the rig drilling the new gas well named Savik #1 and there will also be Savik #2. The well goes down 1000 vertical feet, then turns and is being drilled another 4000 feet horizontally beneath a layer of sandstone that sits atop the field of natural gas it will tap. 

Sandstone crumbles easily and its fragile nature would make it problematic to drill the well straight through to the gas reserves.

Afterwards, Richard and Arlene took me to their house, where we ate rice smothered in caribou gravy, rich with big chunks of meat.

I just now asked Savik the uncle why they named this new well after him.

"I never asked," he answered.

The drilling rig pictured here is owned by Kuukpik, the ANCSA village coporation of Nuiqsut.

 

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

I'm glad you had a safe trip, Bill. All your Barrow stories must be fascinating, and I wish you had an online magazine so we could read the details about why the well is named "Savik", among many other things. What does the town look like?

Even though you've flown over the Brooks Range many times, maybe you can get some photos from the air on your way back home. It looks so jagged and rough! Between your wonderful blog and Joe McGinniss's book "Going to Extremes", I've become fascinated with Alaska. And a big hello to your new little Lynx grandson! Thank you so much, from California.

October 10, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterHeidi3

fascinating! even a couple of paragrafs from bill hess sounds like it comes from the ny times!

October 11, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterRuth Deming

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