Top
A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
All support is appreciated
Bill Hess's other sites
Search
Navigation
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.

Blog archive
Blog arhive - page view
« Margie, the fork, and Jim | Main | iPhone shadow portrait of Margie and I approaching the movie theatre; Kalib and cousin Gracie, cooking eggs down in the Navajo Nation »
Sunday
Apr172011

My fairweather biking friend; off to a glacier to cook ice worms; cat on a stump

DateSunday, April 17, 2011 at 12:03PM

With the good weather that we have had lately, I've been out everyday at coffee break time riding bikes with Mr. Shadow.

He is good company, Mr. Shadow - but only in fair weather.

When the weather is bad, he tends to desert me.

Mr. Shadow: my fair weather friend.

So I bike to Metro Cafe and there I find short Carmen, being hugged by tall Sarah. Tall Sarah has come to say goodbye, because she is leaving for Skagway, where she will spend the summer on a glacier, cooking for people on tour.

She didn't say, but I believe Sarah will be cooking ice worms for her guests. Ice worms crawl around on the glaciers by the multi-millions. A cook can just step outside the cook tent, scoop them up, throw them into the vat and boil them up.

Put them in tomato sauce and they look just like spaghetti. So I think is what Sarah will do. She will cook the iceworms and then tell the guests that it is glacier spaghetti.

"Hey!" one of her guests will invariably shout, "This is the strangest damn spaghetti I have ever tasted! Tastes like worms!"

"Eat your damn spaghetti and quit whining!" Sarah will shout back.

The guest will eat it, too, but will mumble to himself, all the way through.

Back home, I hang out with Jim.

It seems odd to me that some people probably look at him and see just another cat. 

I look at Jim and see a friend. A close, close, friend who hangs out with me every day, from morning until night and then through the night - unless I am traveling of course.

Margie reports that he can hardly bear it when I am traveling.

When I return, he goes a bit insane. He jumps onto me, clambers all over me, jumps off, jumps on, clambers, jumps off... maybe 50 or 60 times.

Unlike Shadow, Jim is not a fair weather friend. He is an all weather friend.

 

View images as slides

 

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment6 Comments |
in , , , , , ,

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments (6)

I love your all weather friend...so much like me :) :) :)

April 17, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterSuji

Jim is magnificent...he looks like the perfect friend... not sure about those ice worms though

April 17, 2011 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

Great photo of your all weather friend. Beautiful cat.

April 17, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterWhiteStone

what a great job for sarah. would love to see pix of ice worms. i'd eat em. barf. jim looks like a deep thinker.

April 17, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterRuth Deming

Well Bill, I never thought I'd be googling 'Alaska's ice worms', but I just did. Yes, of course, our ol' familiar mesenchytraeus solifugus! How is Sarah going to explain the black spaghetti though? :-)

April 17, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterHeidi3

Jim really looks like a lover. How lucky you are to have each other. I'm still reading and enjoying. Thanks.

April 18, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterDeven Werthman

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Alert
Comment Moderation Enabled
Your comment will not appear until it has been cleared by a website editor.

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.