Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  I recently received a care package from one of my Fan Story friends. It contained some really, really good brownies. No, they weren't laced with pot, if that's what you're thinking. They were just very tasty. When I wrote the sender to say how much we enjoyed them, I lamented the fact that my wife and I ate them all ourselves. I would have been happy to share them, but for some reason or other, the usual people we would normally share them with were all gone. It runs in my mind both my daughters were out of town, and my neighbors were still in Louisiana. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think you can freeze brownies can you? Anyway, the bottom line is, we ate them all. I'm both ashamed of myself and pretty full. I was reminded of a time when I was living in Hoonah. My oldest daughter, Jennifer, was an elementary school teacher there. She had a habit of dropping by unannounced every other day or so. I had no problem with that, we always enjoy her company. However...

  '" I don't like white people much." he said. He was looking straight at me.' This is a quote from a book that I'm reading titled- Neither Wolf Nor Dog, b y author Kent Nerburn. I haven't finished it yet. In fact I'm only about a third of the way through it, but before I forget where certain passages are or the content of a chapter, I wanted to share just a bit. The book is non-fiction and is a startling look inside the mind of a Lakota elder. Nerburn is a white man from Minnesota who had written a book about the natives of that state and it caught the attention of Dan, the Lakota elder who wanted to set the record straight about natives. He invites Nerburn to the reservation to put together a book that white people can understand. I spent over forty years living and working among the Tlingit Indians of Southeast Alaska. I thought I knew them. I worked alongside the elderly native ladies, sliming salmon in wet, cold conditions inside the dark cold sto...

   Recently I've had reason to search back through my digital pictures. I've been writing some stories for a writing web site and sometimes find myself looking for a picture that would enhance the story I'm doing. With few exceptions, each picture brings back a pleasant memory. I've got a few in the digital library of things like the back of the computer or the wiring of the boat that have no sentimental value. They're so that when I take it all apart I won't be relying on my faulty memory to get it back together correctly. I've got pictures of fishing trips and crew hands, of family gatherings and friends who have moved away. I took photos of places that were a part of my every day life like the store where we shopped. There are deer pictures and fish pictures and pictures of eagles. I see one of a car we used to own and the house we lived in for over thirty years, both before and after we remodeled it. While you're in the process of living life, you do...

  It's hard to believe that 44 years has passed since that June day in 1976 when Jan and I drove our 72 Pinto up the ramp of the Hoonah ferry terminal into an adventure that would last for this long. Driving through the town I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. We left sunny Charleston South Carolina and came to this land of mountains and water and rain in amounts I'd never seen before. The main road was nothing more than a narrow, muddy, rut -filled lane that two cars could only pass on in select areas. Houses along the road were so covered with mud that the paint wasn't visible and if the sun did ever shine you'd never know because the windows were streaked brown with so much mud that light couldn't penetrate. People walking down the road were in no hurry to get out of your way, and stared at you like you were on display in a circus. The few cars I passed had slogans like Indian Power and Custer Had it Coming. A lot has changed in 44 years. Hoonah has be...

 I went to the city office this past Monday and someone told me about a huge rock that had fallen into the road down by the tunnel. I guess rock isn't the correct word, boulder would be more accurate I suppose. In any event I'm glad that there weren't any people or cars running by when it decided to go tumbling. That might have made for a messy situation. It's kind of ironic that the mountain that this boulder came from was the subject of much debate a few years ago. The powers that be, both the local native organization and the mayor and city council somehow came to the conclusion that it was too dangerous for tourists to be walking by the tunnel. They feared that a rock might fall down and hurt someone. Of course that was never a concern for the local people  here. It wasn't until tourists started showing that there was any thought for anyone's safety. In any event, obscene amounts of money were spent blowing tons of rock off the side of the mountai...

    Last week I was fishing at Homeshore for cohos, along with a number of other boats. Fortunately it's a big area so it doesn't get too crowded, unless the fish are all being caught at one end or the other, in which case it's like throwing a single lifesaver on the floor in an old folks home and watching the elderly people scramble for it. On the night that I took these pictures, it was calm and relaxing. It's the kind of weather that you long for. This year has been uncommonly windy, with day after day of westerly winds blowing. Finally, as we approach the end of the season there's  been a stretch of calm weather, which is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately I was lulled into believing the National Weather Service was going to be correct after they correctly predicted good weather for about a week. Several nights after these photos were taken I anchored in the same spot. I was a little surprised that no other boats were around me, but that was fin...

For an isolated fishing village in Southeast Alaska, Hoonah has attracted quite a number of people down through the years. In the forty three years I've lived here I've seen a pretty diverse group. Some have come to give, some to take and some to try and hide out. There has been no shortage of transient folks, people who've come to take jobs at the cold storage or on fishing boats and in recent years filling the jobs at the cannery in the tourist industry. Once in blue moon we are graced with an individual of uncommon talent, such as the young lady pictured above. Her name is Christina Baal and she's a professional artist. She has a strong interest in birds and a desire to paint all ten thousand species. I hope that she lives long enough to see her passion fulfilled. I first saw an exhibit of her talent when I was working in the Forest Service building. The top photo of the Sockeye Salmon shows an example of her work. I was immediately drawn to it, in ...

     I suppose every city has it's share of urban blight.Places like Detroit come to mind. Hoonah isn't exactly a metropolis. We only have about 850 residents who call it home year round, although with the coming of the tourist season there is an influx of tourist related business owners who are flocking to town. Some of them live on their boats which they use to charter out for whale watching or fishing. Some live in campers or travel trailers which they take with them when they go, and still others manage somehow to find a place to rent. There seems to be a surprising number of rentals in town, although none of them are cheap, regardless of the state of the rental. It runs in my mind that $1000.00 a month is the average, although I could be wrong. In any event, if the houses shown above had been maintained down through the years there would have at least been the option of providing the owners with a little rental income. As it is, they have all been...

  A number of years ago, when Clint Eastwood was still a fairly young man, he starred in a few spaghetti westerns, one of which was titled, The good, the bad and the ugly. I'm sitting in my home today listening to the wind howl, and the rain beat against the roof, and realize that I'm experiencing the bad part of living here. As you can see from the pictures, we're still dealing with the after affects of the last major snow storm. This past week it actually warmed up fairly well and with the rain the snow is starting to melt  a little quicker, so I guess in that respect the rain is good. However, it's gloomy and cloudy out, and that seems kind of bad. I almost wrote cluddy instead of cloudy. I think cluddy would pretty well describe the scene outside my windows. Kind of muddy, cruddy, rainy and cloudy all rolled into one. In other words, depressing. When we first moved into Hoonah, it was kind of a step up from where we had been living on the ...

    When I woke up last Sunday, I was greeted with a fine layer of fog blanketing the town. I wasn't really surprised. The night before it was clear and cold out, and this time of year when that happens, if the moisture content in the air is sufficient, we end up with fog.  Of course we get fog at all times during the year, summer, spring, fall, and sometimes winter.  If the conditions are right it can set up, and oftentimes it can be a real pain. On Sunday the fog dissipated out over the bay, but looking back towards Ear Mountain it was so thick you could just about gather it in buckets. Because I was on the land and I didn't have any place that I needed to be, I kind of enjoyed it. When I'm out in the boat it's another story all together. Even though I have a GPS to let me know where I am, it doesn't tell me if I've got another boat in front of me. For that I need my radar. Unfortunately the radar crapped the bed last year. Of cour...

  For most of the month of January we had rain. In my almost thirty eight years here, I've never experienced such a winter as this. Frankly, I was delighted that it was rain instead of snow, but honestly, waking up every day to the sound of pounding rain and the gloomy skies overhead was getting pretty consarned depressing. Yesterday the day dawned bright and sunny, and although much cooler than it had been, it was a welcome reprieve. After church I had almost no choice but to go on a walk out to the cannery. I took Jen and the dog with me. Usually Rigby likes to walk into the woods and sniff all the different smells. Jennifer on the other hand, never stops to smell the tracks on the ground. I'm kind of glad.Yesterday though, he was reluctant to get too far into the walk. He took a dump early on and, feeling that he had done his duty, started turning around trying to get back to the truck. We kept pulling him against his will to keep going forward. He...

  Today's post will be number 300. Who knew that I could be so long winded? Well, maybe everyone but myself. It's why I accomplish so little in the course of a day. I should be a DJ or something so I could at least be paid for being a windbag. In any event, I suppose I should celebrate somehow- maybe bake a cake and stick on three hundred candles. I could probably shut off the heat for awhile. More likely I'd set the house on fire, so I guess I won't attempt the cake.   I went out yesterday to document something that I never thought I would see- utility poles stretching out beyond the town. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw the crews from Chatham Electric erecting them. I knew that Shorty Tonsgard had started a subdivision out past the runway, but the power lines go well beyond that, all the way out to the O3 road where our water supply for the city is. I asked a former city administrator about it, and she said we were going to ...

   I made a trip over to Juneau last week to go shopping. Sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry doesn't it? I believe most ladies like to shop, but I think that usually involves fun things like shoes or clothes or some such thing. I don't know what's so fun about those items. Now if they were shopping for hoochies or spoons or flashers and assorted other fishing gear, I could see where that would be fun. I think my heart skips a few beats every time I spot a new pack of hoochies that have the potential for catching fish. That's much more practical than a tenth pair of shoes or an extra blouse to squeeze into a closet. Unfortunately I wasn't shopping for fishing gear. I paid $132.00 to hop a ferry and go shopping for groceries. It seems like a lot of money, and it is, but the fact is, it costs so much for groceries here, that with the amount that I bought, I actually saved money. A case in point. I ran out of gum prior to my trip so I ...

Door post with a goat head carved into it Shark backbone doorpost Killer whale doorpost Octopus doorpost Gordon Greenwald with one panel painted and carved Herb Sheakley carving a cedar panel It's been more than a few months since I last dropped in on the school auto shop to see how the Glacier Bay Tribal House project is going. I have to admit, I was pretty well blown away by the amount of work that's been done there. I love to see skilled people at work and it's obvious that the three carvers, Gordon Greenwald, Herb Sheakley and Owen James have carving skills in abundance. I regret that I was unable to sufficiently capture the detail and beauty of the carved objects. It was a little bit hard to get around in the building, and the fluorescent lighting leaves a greenish cast to the pictures. As you can see in several of the pictures, the upright blue lifts are still in place for raising cars  off the floor to work on. The shop hasn't been used ...