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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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Monday
Feb232009

Jack Russell puppies for sale; the boy is not sad to see the St. Bernard pup go... reflective Mocha Moose coffee girl

DateMonday, February 23, 2009 at 11:44PM

I got this bad headache, I am tired and the skin around the top of my head seems to be contracting in a strange way. I just want to go to bed without writing even one more word... or maybe not one more after this... but I have already placed these pictures. I suppose I should add a few words to them.

So here's the story above: once again, I coaxed Margie up off her convalescent couch and took her out for a fast food lunch, just so she could see something besides the four walls that surround her. It is a little hard to get her out the door and it is scary when she steps off the porch and onto the packed snow and ice of the driveway, but we are careful and it is good for her to get out.

We drove to KFC-A&W for chicken and cut through Fred Meyer's parking lot to get there. Before we reached the chicken, I spotted this guy, Lenny, trying to sell Jack Russell puppies, so naturally I stopped. He was asking $400 per pup, which he assured me was a very fair price, but it was too high for me, so I didn't buy one.

Of course, if Lenny had been giving them away I wouldn't have bought one either. There is no such thing as a free pup.

Although the lady is having a good conversation with someone on the phone and it looks like she might be telling whoever it is that she is bringing a Jack Russell pup home, she and the girls were pupless when they left.

Jack Russell butt. 

Lenny called his pickup the Jack Russell Pup Mobile, or something like that. When you have a headache as bad as the one that now smites me, it is hard to remember such quotations word for word.

Jack Russell ear.

Just beyond the Jack Russell Pup Mobile was another vehicle and in it this boy held this St. Bernard pup. As you can see in the windshield, the pup was going for $600. If Lavina had been with us, she would probably have bought it. She fell in love with it when I showed it to her on the LCD to my pocket camera. That was yesterday. This evening, she was still walking around, thinking about this puppy and sighing, wishing that I had bought it and brought it home to her.

Jacob strongly insinuated that if I really loved my grandson, I would have bought it for toddler Kalib. But, if a free pup is expensive, think how expensive a $600 pup is.

As for the boy holding the pup, you can see how sad he looks. "It must be kind of hard to know you have to give up the pup," I said to him.

"No," he said, "It doesn't bother me at all."

I had more questions that I wanted ask, but a grim and solemn air permeated the St. Bernard Pup Mobile, so I kept my questions to myself.

If I had shot these as a feature for a newspaper, I would have had to ask the questions; I would have had to write down names. But since its a blog - my blog - I can do whatever I decide to do.

And I decided to leave it at that.

The puppy pictures are all from yesterday, but now this raven catches me up to today. I spotted it as I took my walk. It is so good to have all this sunlight back, to see such a blue sky, but it fooled me a bit.

I did not wear my earband. My ears got cold.

Even so, the increased hours of sunlight is finally beginning to drive the SADS out of me. I am still lazy and listless, but new energy is radiating back into me.

A snowmachine trail across Little Lake. Little Lake is not really a lake at all, but a pond, a tiny pond. When my kids were small, they named it, "Little Lake." They even made a sign that said "Little Lake." They posted that sign by Little Lake so that all who passed by would know its name.

Serendipity. Damnit. That hill used to be mine. 

This dog came running from a house, barking at me with joy. He was so happy to see me. Or maybe "she." I didn't check.

Today, to get her out of the house again, I took Margie to Taco Bell. Right next to Taco Bell is this construction site. It will be a Walgreen's Drugstore. 

Wasilla grows ever more mainstream, but in a haphazard sort of way.

The coffee girl at Mocha Moose reaches out towards her own reflection to take a customer's money.

Headlights coming down Shrock Road. Click on the picture, if you don't believe me. And that is all I have to say about this day, which for me, in its entirety, was spent right here, in Wasilla, Alaska. Maybe not all within the official city limits, but Wasilla, just the same.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment2 Comments |
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