GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME

I had been in Alaska for nearly two months and it was time to start thinking about the road home. The fish had either been consumed or in the freezer, a ton of photos were in the can, had seen so many bald eagles they didn’t draw a second glance. All that was left was to have dinner with some friends, get a good night sleep and pack the truck. The difference going back was that I wasn't pulling a camper. I didn’t have my bed on wheels; foraging every night for a place to sleep. The first 900 miles retraced the original route but after that it took a long, low swoop through British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies, down into Montana, not knowing how I’d find my way back from there. 

With just a few days left, the weather was balmy and we went to the ball game. Alaska has a Baseball League with six teams. It’s a developmental league for college athletes who come north for the summer and live with sponsor families. Anchorage has two teams, the Buc’s and the Glacier Pilots. They were playing each other; when they do that they take turns being the home team and last night the Buc's had the home dugout on the 3rd base side. We had box seats, behind the 1st base dugout. 

There were several young women next to us who took fan enthusiasm to a new level. They knew all the players by name, where they were from and kept up a stream of chatter and encouragement. "Hey Collin, you can do it." "Come on guys." "Yea, yea; alright." Directed at the players, but it would translate more accurately, "Hey boys, look up here, look at us." I had a movie flash-back, deja vu moment. It was Bull Durham, all over again. The hometown girls were putting a rush on the new boys in town. It reminded me of an old Jack Lemon movie. There was one nice looking girl and her friend who was on the south side of way too many calories; they just loved baseball. They liked all the Blue-shirted Pilots and in particular, the Buc’s. #33, a tall kid named Collin from California.  None of the players looked up or showed any sign that they were listening but the girls kept it going without a rest.

In the end the boys in blue won 8-5 and they were happy, high 5’n and fist bumpin’. The girls transitioned straight from baseball to their smart phones, texting, thumbs a blur. All the way down the stairs and out to the parking lot, they never looked up. I played in college but there were no hometown cuties behind our dugout, just a couple of old guys smoking cigars, with clip boards and stopwatches. I think there should be a Summer Texting League for young women. Junior High boys could cheer from the bleachers and of course the girls would ignore them. 

GOOD OLD DAYS

I slept in a bed last night; didn’t wake up once. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am, what day it is, even what year it is. It is a short lived revelation and when I rediscover myself it’s hard to believe I’m really that old. This morning I knew exactly where I was and age, well, it is what it is. Yesterday was a driving day, south across Wyoming to Colorado’s front range. I’m still taken with the images of old, abandoned buildings, snow fences and hay fields. Something about the way they say, “People come and go and they leave their things behind.” It’s hard to find natural settings that haven’t been touched by civilization, even if it’s just a high flying jet’s vapor trail. We leave things with repeating patterns, hard lines and straight edges and somehow, they assimilate and look almost natural. I take photographs, and right now I can’t resist snow fences and hay fields.

Dr. Martin Strand is a retired, surgeon who lives in the hills above Denver. He has stories that challenge the imagination, unraveling both the noble and the dark side of the Human Journey. He and his wife Joan are my hosts. They fed and entertained me, sitting on the deck, sipping wine, watching hummingbirds arc and dive around us. I knew Martin a very long time ago, when we occupied adjacent lockers in high school, sat next to each other in history class and made small talk across the lunch table. We weren’t best friends but we laughed at the same foolishness and shared a common path, life was pretty good. I was standing at his front door when he called my name. I turned to see him coming across the drive, behind me. After 56 years, the short, red hair had given way to a shock of white hair sweeping down over his forehead and the way our bodies evolve over half a century was evident but I recognized my old classmate without reservation or hesitation. We’ve been in a loose, informal mode of contact since our 50 year class reunion, six years ago. He didn’t attend but he was located and has contributed to the class news letter that grew out of that celebration. He had made a standing offer that any of us who might be passing through, to stop for a visit: and here I am.

I’ll turn east, across Kansas today and I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight. But the short visit and warm hospitality will not dull or diminish soon. There is something empowering about reaching back in time and filling in empty space with fond memories and good will. Martin and Joan will be heading out to Iceland in the near future, about the same time I take off for Michigan and Ohio. I added a few extra miles to be here and it has been more than rewarding. Our culture is hard to resist. It’s so easy to slip into old, predictable ways but I think it’s something Martin and I can agree on; these are the good old days.

TRUCKSTOPS

Sheridan, Wyoming: 6:00 a.m. and I wake up maybe a minute before the alarm on my smart phone jingles its  “Wake Up!” How do I do that? Did it the day before yesterday too. But then sleeping in the truck cab is a lot about waking up, often. You scootch around like a puppy, making a nest on your dirty clothes and then you sleep for a while. After a while, you need to straighten out or stretch and collide with the steering wheel or the brake pedal and you wake up. It’s a closed loop that keeps repeating, until your alarm goes off and the sun tells you, “It’s a new day.” In between wake-ups, you get some sleep. I don’t recommend it but sometimes it’s the best option. I feel better when I think about the five or six dollars a shower costs and the six or seven hundred dollars I didn’t spend on motels between Soldotna, Alaska and Wyoming this morning. 

I pulled in at 10:30 p.m. last night; took an hour to decompress, do house keeping and get to sleep. In the morning, when you walk, bleary eyed, into the truck-side desk, you are just another driver who needs a little TLC, a shower and coffee. I’ve never been poorly treated or found a dirty shower at a busy truck stop. So here I am, a couple of days out of Kansas City, sitting in with professional drivers, doing correspondence and journal before looking for that coffee and moving on down the road. 

Today I’ll make Denver and go visit with a guy I haven’t seen since high school. Martin was a quiet, unassuming kid who always had his homework done and didn’t hang out much with the cool clique. We graduated and you know how that goes: scattergram all over the world and by the time your 10 yr. reunion comes around, some of the players have dropped off the radar. Martin was out there somewhere but none of us knew just where. By the time the 50 yr. reunion rolls around, somebody with persistence and desire keeps looking, checking old sources and finds most of those rolling stones. Martin had spent the past 40 years as a Trauma Surgeon in Emergency Rooms in California and Colorado. He didn’t attend the reunion but we did locate him and continue to keep in touch via our class news letter and e-mail. He is a seasoned traveler and we have many common interests. Now that the sun’s high enough that I won’t have to deal with it in my eyes, it’s that time.

DOROTHY, WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

I’ll be crossing the border in an hour or so at Sweet Grass, Montana. Spent four days and nights with Canadian wilderness but once you get back out onto the plain, it’s just watch road signs and keep between the lines. The Cassiar Hwy. frames you in a remote setting and it’s certainly worth the drive. But my overall impression is that it was oversold, overrated. I had some really, really high expectations. The countryside and scenery were awesome but views were mostly obscured by roadside forest. 

The drive from Prince George to Banff was a pleasant surprise. It puts you back in touch with civilization and the views are rich. It’s first cutting time and hay fields were either in wind rows or dotted with big, round bales. I got started taking photos of green and gold hay fields against mountain sides and blue skies and couldn’t stop. Jasper, Alberta to Banff was through their national park with it's wonderful, ice field-scenery. The nuisance of swarming tourists, strategically placed gift shops, roads clogged with rented motorhomes is the price you pay to be there. Maybe that’s how you transition back into the consumer culture.

This trip is for the most part, in the can. I need to drive the last few legs, finding ways to make familiar sights and uninspiring views, inspiring. Marcel Proust said, adventure doesn’t require travel to exciting places, just seeing with new eyes. So I’m dialing in new eyes for the rest of the ride. 

CASSIAR

Yesterday I woke up in a six-bed room at a backpacker’s hostel in Whitehorse, Yukon. Everyone spoke English, but not their native tongue: very civilized but then it’s a big city as the Yukon Territory goes. By mid afternoon it was time to get off the AlCan Hwy. and head south on Route 37, the Cassiar Highway. If you want to get away from the hustle and shopping mall mentality, the Cassiar is where you go. Young people here remember when their first rate gravel road was paved over, not all that long ago. About 450 miles of highway were added to northern British Columbia’s remote, pristine wild country. 

Within a half hour, I drove into a burn area. Several years ago the fire took out vast region along the northern B.C. border, southwest of Watson Lake, Yukon. When I reached a high point where I could look out, especially to the east, the blackened trunks of spruce and cottonwood stretched for as far as I could see. New cottonwoods were waist to shoulder high along the roadside and in wetlands while fireweed created a visual blanket on the forest floor. I always liked fireweed but it was a neural, text book sensibility. Fireweed fixes nitrogen into the soil rather than taking it; making it a pioneer in the ecological succession of upended environments. On the outwash plains of glacial streams, fireweed is plentiful but this was different: about how it got its name. In the burn area there was a feel-good feeling, all about starting over; new beginnings, and I’m a sucker for “New Beginnings.”

It’s still the summer season and I”m far enough north that days are long and sunset really, doesn’t happen. The sun just gets lost, wandering around in the west and then you realize it’s gone. Still, it won’t be dark for several hours. I stopped in Dease Lake for gas and wasn’t impressed: not a friendly face or a kind word so I drove on. As I drove I noticed that the scenery was getting better, I was losing light and the sky turned wet. We were getting into taller, older forest and it was harder to see out so the frustration with not getting great photographs was just that. I did a little dance with a she-moose and her calf. Able to slow down and slip up on them, they were walking in the road and didn’t really want to go back up into the bush. When Mamma went for higher ground, the calf turned back to the middle of the road and moved away. We did that little 2-step for quite a while. Mamma kept up with us along the ridge line and finally coaxed the little one through some running water and away from the menacing man with a camera.

This morning I woke up at Bell 2 Resort. I got here just about the time I needed my headlights (11:00p.m.) Nobody up and everything dark so I pee’d in the bushes, brushed my teeth off the tailgate, rearranged the cab and tucked myself in for the rest of the night. My alarm went off at 7:00, same time the coffee shop and gas pump open. So both the truck and I are full and ready to go farther south. It’s sunny and I’m full of great anticipation for photographs today.

Bell 2 Resort is a world class resort, tucked away in a truly, get-away niche. Misty, my morning host, sells gasoline, brews coffee, deals in delicious cinnamon rolls and deals out information with a smile. Jillian, who covers the restaurant and their boss Sally were going over the grocery order when I came in. They get two deliveries a week, from hundreds of miles away. Sometimes they get what they order and sometimes it’s a surprise. The resort is booked ahead for over a year with most of the visitors coming in from Europe. They feature Steelhead fishing in the summer and in the cold season, skiing virgin, powder snow with a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain instead of chair lifts. The coffee and cinnamon roll were perfect and I didn’t have to dig too deep to cover that. I didn’t ask how much a room and skiing cost and I don’t think I will.

EXIT

I used to work at Exit Glacier, a volunteer at Kenai Fjords Nat’l Park, Seward, Alaska. I got a small stipend and my boss expected me to be at work on time but it’s not kosher to call oneself a Ranger if you are in fact, a volunteer. Volunteers wear a brown uniform with a baseball cap instead of the gray and green with the Smokey Bear hat. It was great duty and the friends I made there have made me rich in that category. 

I’ve been in Alaska over a ;month now and seen most of my Ranger friends, seen bears, moose, orca and eagles; caught fish , fried fish and eaten fish, even bought a sack full of trinkets to take back. Today is my lsat day in Anchorage, tomorrow I’ll be back in Canada with a very long way to drive. Someday, not too long, I’ll be somewhere else thinking again how time flies and it’s time to leave new friends and far places with nowhere to go but home. I know chasing down the road won’t last forever but then, I only have to make it through the day. Then, if I wake up again, I’ll get another day.