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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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Entries in cookies (1)

Sunday
Dec202009

Margie bakes Christmas cookies but there is no little boy here to eat them

DateSunday, December 20, 2009 at 11:56AM

Here is Royce, lying around listless, missing his buddy Kalib, who he has not seen for four days now. If you are a cat, four days is like two months or so.

We have not gotten into the Christmas spirit here at all. We have yet to send out a Christmas card and we have done no shopping. When the kids were all at home and growing, every year, well before this time, I would pick up the saw, we would head out the back door, hike across the marsh and then keep going to this certain place where there were many trees of just the right size, but, being Alaska trees, most of them were kind of thin and sparse in the branches - but we always knew that if we looked hard enough, we would find the right one. 

The kids would fan out and everybody would look for that special tree.

Once the candidates were chosen, we would gather around and compare and, amazingly enough, almost always everybody would agree on the same tree. Then we would cut it down and tromp back through the snow, everyone getting their turn at helping to carry the tree home.

One year, Royce followed us to and from. The snow was way too deep for him to wade through, but he would hop about in our footprints.

The experience seemed to please him greatly.

Then they made Serendipity and that ended that. In each year since, I have been amazed to find a suitable tree in our own backyard. Last year, I was certain there was not a single one left that would make a good Christmas tree, but Caleb found one right on the fringe, headed into the marsh.

It was the best Christmas tree that we had ever found, period.

Now, Margie is saying that this year she is just going to buy one.

I feel kind of bad about that, and I hate to see a Christmas tree go onto a credit card, but that's what happens in life, I guess.

Margie does want to get the Christmas spirit going here, so she decided to bake some sugar cookies. And look - there, jammed into the cabinet door above her - baby Kalib, in a picture that I took while he was still brand new.

And further over - a picture of Kalib on a book marker, courtesy of his day care center, and another of him and his buddy Lafe, when they were tiny (and yet, even when he was tiny, Lafe was large). You have not seen Lafe in this blog for awhile because he has moved out of state.

Margie with the first batch of cookies.

But there is no little boy here to eat them.

So Margie eats a Christmas tree cookie by herself. Above her hangs one of Kalib's earliest pieces of art. Perhaps his first piece of art. I am not certain. Certainly, his first piece of art to be framed and hanged.

There is a chance that we might see Kalib today. Jacob is home now. I know he is exhausted from his two weeks training in Washington, DC, but he is going to get lonesome for Muzzy pretty soon. He will have to come and get him and Martigne, too.

Maybe that will happen today.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment5 Comments |
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