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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 Iona (1)

Thursday
Nov052009

I fall ill; the world becomes strangely quiet

DateThursday, November 5, 2009 at 4:02AM

This is as bright as the day ever got for me.

Following a miserable night, I was awakened by Margie, who stood at the foot of the bed moving the blankets that covered my feet.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She answered, but in a voice so quiet that I could not make out a single word.

"What?" I repeated.

Again, she spoke in the decibel of a whisper, although I knew she had not whispered. She had just spoken quietly. I was growing annoyed. Why was she doing this to me?

"I couldn't understand a word you said," I grumbled. "Speak louder."

She raised her voice until I could barely make it out. The blankets had slipped down onto her crutches. She had moved the blankets.

Although I had begun the day before feeling okay - just a bit of raspiness in my throat, irritated by all the glacier dust that the wind had whipped into the air, and some stuffiness in my sinuses that I attributed totally to the dust, I had gone to bed in a terrible state. My throat was so sore that it burned - it felt as though I had gargled with scalding-hot water. My nose was so plugged that I could breathe only through my mouth. Pain and congestion in my upper chest caused me to cough every now and then. When I coughed, it hurt.

It took me a long time to go to sleep and then I didn't sleep well. I wanted to sleep more and so I pulled the covers over my head. I then became aware that my heart beat sounded very strange - muffled, kind of squishy. I wondered what this meant. I went back to sleep and did not wake up until after 10:00 AM.

Now, I knew that it was not just the dust. I was sick. This was not going to be a good day.

I went into the living room and found Margie and Lavina. Yesterday, Lavina stepped on a splatter of water mixed with Muzzy slobber, her feet flew out from under her and she came down hard on her hips even as her head smacked against the wall. The baby in her is fine and she broke no bones, but she is very sore and will spend the rest of the week at home.

When Margie and Lavina greeted me, I could hardly hear them.

It was like I wore Boze headphones, turned on to quiet to filter out noise. Margie had not been speaking quietly, but my sinuses had completely filled up. I could hardly hear.

I fixed oatmeal with raisens, walnuts and a sprinkling of cinnamon for Lavina and me. Margie had already eaten.

Afterwards, I felt so sluggish, miserable and terrible that I could do nothing. I struggled on until 11:00 AM, then went back into the bedroom and laid back down on the bed, where I was joined by three cats. I dozed back off, and stayed in a state of dozing, punctuated by brief moments of semi-consciousness, until nearly 4:00 PM.

This is awful, because I have too much to do, but I knew that the only reason that I had collapsed like that is because my body needed to rest.

So, at 4:00 PM, I stepped outside for the first time. I climbed into the car and, having done nothing but sleep all day, took my coffee break, then sipped my brew as I drove down by Iona Grotto. It was overcast and dark. It was very strange, driving through the afternoon darkness, as if I was in some kind of utterly quiet, electronic vehicle.

I feel horrible. All I want to do is to lay back down and go back to sleep.

Where the hell is the snow? I want it to snow.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment14 Comments |
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