Alaska | Part One
Chapter Twenty-Two | What These Ithakas Mean
Ch. 22 | I lobbed an extra-strength Fukitol against sticker shock and booked flights to Bellingham, Washington and passage on the Alaska State Ferry — then wrote honestly about my fragile back to the host family who had agreed to my cleaning their kennels, and offered to declutter their home instead.
I knew that if they declined the offer, I would still sail . . . and figure out what next once the ferry had docked.
Why Alaska? I was craving a different kind of beauty than elsewhere. There are so many kinds of beauty! Often when tired, I wished to be less hungry for direct experience of the luminous world, but the hunger wouldn’t be gainsaid.
The Solarium — the enclosed upper deck — was reserved for budget travellers. The sun naturally warmed, even baked, the space throughout the day. Radiant heating kept it cozy at night.
I had expected tent city up there, but it was off season; I was the sole guest. One look at the bare floor’s steel sheen that whispered adventure sent my pulse tripping.
I chose a locker and arranged my groceries: freeze-dried coffee, instant Swiss Miss and Quaker Oatmeal packets, peanut butter, crackers, packaged nuts, and dark chocolate bars.
I owned a sleeping bag but no tent, and picked up blankets and a firm pillow at the pursers’ desk.
Someone (or the ship’s motion) had haphazardly parked a white plastic lounge chair in one corner; I dragged it sideways, centered it against the bulkhead, and made up a bed with blankets for depth and softness.
At sunrise, I would dart to the windows and work along them, bracing sandaled feet against the floor, balancing hipbones against the railing, pressing nose and outspread fingers against the glass.
What might appear in the distance this morning? A sfumato ferry or freighter or fishing boat or floatplane? A winking lighthouse or small, hazy cluster of peninsular houses? Perhaps seabirds in graceful flight, or white spray signaling the presence of orcas.
Pulling on every winter garment originally purchased at Decathlon for the Dordogne, I’d head downstairs and out to the gently bouncing promenade deck, climb onto a dock box just below the forward observation lounge windows, and while sipping hot cocoa, watch the prow knife through water every shade of sparkling blue or green — turquoise, sapphire, jade, slate — while blue ice chunks floated past and glaciers loomed.
Then powerwalking, pausing at portside or starboard railings to marvel at porpoising orcas or ice calving, or lingering at the stern above the wake furrowed like a pleated, frothy bridal train.
If an occasional bout of sea sickness is the price one must pay, then bring it on!
The ferry did bring it on during hours spent crossing the Gulf of Alaska — sky like dirty cotton, from which Poseidon’s invisible fingers flung fistfuls of spattering rain at the windows.
But having sailed on that cargo vessel to Europe, and having crossed the North Atlantic, I knew how I respond to choppy seas, and how to cope: face down and spreadeagled across a mattress as if body surfing a tilting, sea-sawing plank.
This time I was lounge chair camping, however, and furthermore, the upper deck is the worst possible place to ride tossing waves. The place you need to be is amidships.
The Quiet Lounge with its short bar, magazine racks, and chairs and small tables was this ship’s approximate midpoint.
I wobbled into the room (from which the other passengers had fled to their staterooms), knelt to spread out my sleeping bag on the carpeting, flopped down onto my stomach, screwed shut my eyes, and gulped air.
The purser, glimpsing me, brought saltines and hot tea and offered blankets.
When finally the ship had reached calm waters and I’d groggily risen and found my sealegs, I sought out her office, to thank her. It turned out to be the nautical version of a shrine to chocolate: logo mugs, plaques, framed cartoons, and other knick-knacks displayed to that effect.
“So you’re a chocoholic too?!”
“I am, and since we share that in common, I have a gift for you! My landlubbing neighbors are chocolatiers and keep me supplied,” she explained, sliding open a desk drawer and producing a clear finger box whose gold foil base balanced four marble-size chocolate balls.
“You can’t buy these just anywhere,” she said. “They’re specialty! When you bite into one of these” — her eyelids closed and eyebrows lifted — “suh-pruh-iyyze!”
One of travel’s greatest joys is arriving at harbors you’re seeing for the first time and, to get where you’re going from there, promptly be initiated into local modes of transport.
For the locals it’s same-same, but for you?!
The ship docked in Homer (named for gold prospector Homer Pennock and not the Greek epic poet). I sought out the airport and bought a ticket to Anchorage.
In that relaxed, small airport among a handful of passengers, an amateur fisherman in sportsman apparel chewed the scenery. He lugged with him a carry-on cooler packed with enough salmon and halibut on ice to last him the coming winter — this he made sure would be known to his captive audience, but especially to the politely nodding college girl (knitted pom-pom hat, cornsilk-yellow braid, quilted vest and flannel shirt, jeans and kickass boots) whom he was chatting up.
The plane turned out to be a turboprop. My window framed the starboard propeller’s pinwheeling and feathering, and landing gear’s articulated grasshopper struts’ retracting into the wheel well after takeoff and, a mere 45 minutes later with city lights twinkling and gleaming below, extending for touchdown.
My work-exchange hosts welcomed me and left me to unpack.
I had just placed on the sill above the bed, for sorting, a first fistful of small things when the specialty chocolates fell from my grasp and a slender, dark blur bounced across the threshold, streaked across the floor, dove squirming under the bed, and wriggled back out.
Myriad situations can throw me, but I am sure around dogs; if there were any reason to fear a particular pooch, I believe I would intuit that.
“Why you little rascal!” I cooed to the stranger as my fingers automatically reached down to pry open her jaws and extract the prize: a squished and twisted, bite mark-riddled PVC box with jagged, chewed edges.
Within were two smooth, dark marbles, intact, and a jam-filled half ball whose dented surface bore the skid mark of a canine snaggle tooth.
Dogs love chocolate, but for them it is poison.
“Shit,” I whispered while stroking the bony sweet spot at the back of the dog’s skull (the occiput), which, of course, you’re not supposed to do unless you wish to reward behavior.
Softly: “OshitoshitoshitoshitoSHIT!”
I had not been in this house 15 minutes, and foresaw myself banished and sent out on the icy roads for having accidentally killed a pet.
I took a breath and summoned the wife. “I brought you artisanal chocolate for a gift, but the dog ate it and the plastic lid, too,” I confessed, handing over the warped package, which she turned between thumb and index finger to inspect.
“Not solid chocolate,” I amended. “Blueberry jam.”
“Ha!” she laughed. “Well I see you’ve met Jade. She gets into everything! I don’t think this amount of chocolate will hurt her, but we’ll keep an eye on it. Come — would you like a tour of the house?”
Yesterday a maiden flight by turboprop, today initiation into dryland (urban) mushing.
The wife had set off with her team before sunrise, entrusting me to her friend Dave. “Don’t bother with breakfast,” she said, “he’ll stop on the way.”
Dave drove the highway awhile before swerving into a vast parking lot empty at that hour save for a single, lighted hut.
Till then taciturn, “Here’s your first taste of Alaskan coffee culture,” he said, pulling up at the take-out window and giving our orders to the lone barista, who smilingly handed over two steaming, aromatic cups perfectly brewed.
I soon learned to salivate at the sight of these solitary huts that are beacons of fragrant, caffeinated comfort in the lengthening darkness of autumn.
The meet introduced me to dog trucks (cleverly rebuilt vehicles whose straw-lined cubbies replace truck beds), specialized bikes, kick scooters, and mushing rigs; to gang lines and pulling harnesses; to the sport’s lingo — canicross (dog pulls cross country runner), bikejoring (dog pulls bicyclist), carting (dog pulls rig) — and to commands spoken by the athletes to their teams (gee and haw and on by and whoa); but especially to the four-legged contenders who cacophonously squealed and yapped beside the trucks in the parking lot, or trotted across frosted yellow grass toward the course, or waited their turn near or at the starting line, paws levitating and trembling bodies launching and torsos twisting and neck and shoulders pulling at the leash, so delirious with joy were they in anticipation of the races they would run.
These were staggered sprint races over dirt paths, not (like the Iditarod and Yukon Quest) extreme endurance marathons over snow and ice.
On weekends, I was assigned to the four-person timing tower, whose windows surveyed the start and finish lines of a two-mile loop trail that disappeared into the woods.
It was my role to spot the teams just as they lunged from the woods, then swivel and with Zen focus note the split second when the leader’s nose crossed the finish line and cry out “Mark!” (at which my partner clocked and jotted the time).
The couple’s kids had flown the nest for university studies or married life. The intrepid youngest had lived and worked among Bush communities and left behind a jumbled closetful of camping, fishing, hiking, and hunting gear and Native clothing and footwear.
Get Nia Outis’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
To impose order, I wanted very little equipment: cardboard boxes, duct tape, a black chisel tip marker, and scissors.
The husband said that he would drive downtown to purchase two dozen folded cartons and two tape reels.
“BÓ-wie!” he hallooed, “ywannagofer ÍCE-cream?!!”
The young Malamute to whom this was addressed pricked up his ears, leapt to his haunches, and shivered with eagerness. He was a rescue, and it was the husband’s daily wont (whether or not he had errands to run) to drive to McDonald’s to buy the dog a vanilla soft serve cone.
The decluttering and deep cleaning that I would do for this family was fun, and even the pop released by each folded box as I opened the flaps and built the structure, the rrrrrRRíp of duct tape pulled from the reel, the scissors’ metallic snip, pleased me.
But here’s the thing and why would I fight it? Everything pleased me in Alaska! Sometimes I have wondered if it was because I was nearing the world trip’s end.
I spread clean sheets over the floor, heaped the closet’s contents, and sorted stuff into piles. I enjoyed smoothing out the several pastel kuspuks (hooded, skirted tunics) to admire their sprigged patterns and colorful piping or rickrack before folding and stacking them just so. My synapses pinged at the challenge of precisely fitting things, one into the other like puzzle pieces, into labeled boxes.
Afterwards, when visiting the Anchorage and Fairbanks museums, I could value even more the privilege of having handled, without curators’ gloves, an ulu (Inuit knife), beaded mukluks (sealskin boots), the kuspuks, and pair of gauntlet mittens of thick, glossy fur.
When that job was done, the hallway’s recessed closet called for emptying, dusting, and rearranging. As if it were my own closet, I color coded the bed and bath linens and placed a single unwrapped soap bar above each stack.
The mudroom needed mopping, and the laundering of cloth leashes and harnesses that hung from hooks.
The den (which displayed trophies, and gold or silver or bronze medals on ribbons — but mostly gold!) needed daily straightening, and frequent laundering of the sheets and blankets covering the dogs’ couch and armchair. Its floor required daily sweeping up of dust puppies, and the harvesting of polyester bolls that spilled from gnawed, slashed, and ripped floor mattresses (think canine teeth).
The walls and baseboards, greasy from furry bodies having brushed and lain against them, called for scrubbing, but I didn’t think of it as grease or grime — because dogs.
Tidying after pets (poo-picking, too) has never bothered me — the opposite! It’s like changing a baby’s diaper or picking up its toys: You love your baby. You love your dog. Cleaning up their mess is never a chore but always an act of love.
While I worked, the dogs would trot over, tails wagging, to inspect my labors.
They were a mix of rescues (whom you’ve already met) and active and retired medalists: siblings Thor and Vidar, the latter’s consort Suka, and her strapping offspring Aspen, Larch, and Spruce.
The wife said that usually racers announced their retirement by showing indifference at the track, and she always respected that. In fact, if on occasion an aging dog proved so addicted to the sport’s adrenaline that it never wished to quit, she would decide for it.
Retiree Suka’s small body, demure comportment, and white muzzle’s delicate blush belied her stealth (at which her white sock feet, like tabi socks, did hint).
She would grab and cleverly bury in the yard anything, anything at all, left lying out. There was the story of her having entered a sleeping guest’s bedroom and nabbed his wallet and keys from the bureau top.
The colorful knitted beret that she filched from me only added to her lore for I had not been sleeping! I had been sitting upright, and laid the hat down for a sec to fix a strand of hair. One minute Suka was there in the den with me, the next minute she was there again, but as with all her heists, the hat was gone forever.
As for Thor, it took him a wary three days to trust me (unlike the others, who bonded with me instantly). But then there was this moment when he visibly made his decision, waddled across the floor, and laid his snowy, puppyish head on my knee.
After that, I called him My Boy and sometimes Snugglebunny, and dignified old gent that he was (and former champion), he accepted the silliness, signaling with a tilt of his head and a look in his eyes that he wished for sweet talk and petting.
Alaska. I had debated the expense, but such was the magnetism of this state (which seemed a sovereign country) that quickly I snapped to attention.
Quickly, but not immediately. No — when first I had arrived, some part of me was always elsewhere! I still viscerally missed Southeast Asia and especially hungered for Vietnam and Laos — this despite interludes visiting the American heartland and sailing the Inside Passage.
The longing diminished when standing on the host family’s veranda overlooking Cook Inlet.
I would learn that Captain Cook was not necessarily admired by locals, but the bay named for him endlessly fascinated me; I tried to imagine the English mariners sailing up into it.
As viewed from the veranda, a silvery light seemed to hover over and bathe it in daylight hours: At high tide, the sky would be reflected by a sheet of water — at ebb tide, by the exposed mudflats, ridged and rippled and incised by squiggly, retreating rivulets.
At sunset, the surface turned gold tinged with pale orange. Then the light sank, and the darkened inlet would be outlined by the glittering peninsular city at its head.
This play of light on water, and the green and yellow-gold of Indian summer, led me to miss Southeast Asia less, but still nostalgia tugged.
Like the best of work-exchange hosts, this generous couple wished to share their culture with volunteers.
The wife would be driving up to their cabin for two days to prepare it for winter — would I care to come along? Yes.
Her husband was willing to take me on a daylong sightseeing trip south to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula — would I like that? Yes.
She would be driving the Alcan to Whitehorse (the Yukon, in Canada) to pick up two dogs and bring them home with her for training — not an easy trip, she cautioned: 12 hours there and 12 hours back with only a businesslike night’s sleep in between. Did I wish to join her? Yes I said yes I will Yes.
It happened on the first of these excursions: I laid eyes on the cabin’s snug structural perfection, the beauty of its honey-colored timber, its solitary stance amid woods whose leaves above and leaf litter underfoot were every shade of burnished gold and, in that brisk weather, I became fully present.
It felt like a knob turning in my heart, or one switch clicking off and another clicking on. And that feeling of presence, that experience of pure focus and heightened attention, lasted.
There were overcast days during the two months that I lived in Alaska, and eventually snow did fall. But in a run of luck (as if the universe wished to reward me for having let curiosity lead me there), on road trips we always struck gold in the form of dazzling sunlight on birch leaves.
It was little things and big things and none of it intellectual — all of it spoke to the senses, stunned them and jolted them wider and wider awake. Just when I thought the doors of perception in my soul couldn’t fling open any wider to take Alaska in, they did.
It could be something as apparently mundane as the wife’s tossing a box of peanut butter pancake mix into the cooler at the last minute before our leaving for the cabin, and my tossing in after it the salvaged chocolates and, next morning, overcoming my usual reticence in the kitchen to flip those flapjacks and serve them drizzled with inky (blueberry streaked) melted chocolate.
Or the outing to Seward, whose stated goal was to visit the SeaLife Center, but for me the real draw was a detour into Kenai Fjords National Park to hike to the toe of retreating Exit Glacier — trail crunching underfoot, melting ice river speaking faintly at first — to marvel at the compacted white ice, light blue aswirl in it, as if it were stiff, crisp meringue.
“You see the snow on the mountains?” The husband said as he drove the highway past trees with leaves like bronze and coppery and golden coins against so pristine a sky.
“We call that termination dust — the first visible snowfall at elevation, which signals the end of summer. There are years when it will snow overnight and take us from summer to winter with no autumn in between,” he said, “but not this year.”
“Termination dust,” I echoed.
Maybe those individual words are not particularly lovely, maybe said separately they’re not lovely at all, but combine them and they seem like the kind of haiku or refrain that pleasurably aches.
“Termination dust,” I said again. “That’s pretty.”
Or traveling the Alcan, with silky Aspen for company and doing the quirky, unselfconscious things that dogs will do (e.g., chewing a moist, ragged hole in his brand-new, plaid wool blankie).
We reached our destination, a homestead outside Whitehorse, after nightfall. A silhouette preceded by a dancing flashlight beam approached our vehicle as it idled; then the silhouette resolved itself into a well-made middle-aged man who greeted us in French-accented English.
He had sighted bear, moose, and wolves on his land today, he cautioned conversationally, and the grapevine had it that an extraordinarily large grizzly had been spotted in the woods through which we’d just driven.
It was the combination of everything: a road trip in the term’s purest sense — asphalt ribbon unfurling and mattering more than whatever you might find at its end — but also the excitement of crossing national borders, and the sheer size of Alaska and Canada that you could begin to measure on such a drive, and the view out the guest cabin window of sprinkled stars above pitch darkness through which that giant grizzly wandered, and the stranger’s European-French origin meeting my secret Francophilia, the intrepid life he’d led at sea before living his currently dog-centric, inland life, his membership in the mushing community of course, and his newest rescue pup — a one-eyed tripod chihuahua whom he cradled in one muscular forearm while he brought out glasses and a pitcher of lemonade for us.
I politely smiled at their shoptalk about kennels and training methods while drinking in his décor and house pets and the muted flat screen, tuned to a wildlife program, whose chyrons advertised dogs and cats in need of rehoming.
I imagined that in him I had met an early-21st-century reincarnation of Leatherstocking.
And I, who feel nothing like that anymore, not for years and even decades, and never would risk it with anyone, ever, in this man’s presence felt my throat tighten.
The next day before sunrise, when he escorted us from the guest cabin out to the driveway beside his kennels and bid his two youngest dogs farewell for the winter, it happened again.
WOW, I realized. I’m still capable of that! I thought that was over forever.
Go to Chapter Twenty-Three >
