Talkeetna and Mat-Su

Gather up your dogs the dogcatcher is coming!

What is it like to live at the end of a 15 mile cul-de-sac, where the population in the winter hovers around 300 and balloons to over 3,000 in the summer?

Talkeetna is a Native word that means: “Where the rivers join”. The Talkeetna, Chulitna, and Susitna Rivers all join near this originally Tanaina Indian village. The European settlers made this a mining settlement in 1896, which predates the later settlement of Anchorage and Wasilla. The gold rush along the Susitna brought many prospectors to the area, and eventually a steamboat station was built, followed by the construction of the Alaska Railroad in 1915-19. The population boomed to 1,000 before falling sharply with the completion of the railroad and the advent of World War I. The whole town was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1993. Many of the surviving log buildings are historic landmarks with a story.

One such historic building is the Fairview Inn, established in 1923. The self-proclaimed “Heart of Talkeetna”. It has the dubious honor of hosting Former President Warren C. Harding: “he stopped for lunch briefly before pass[ing] away”, proclaims their website. My interests lie in the visual candy that this bar/inn offers up: a stuffed bison head, a bearskin, a picture of the women of Talkeetna, who in 1983 where served free drinks compliments of the Playboy crew that was in town, and a 5 cent slot machine gleaming with a polish only oily hands bent on winning over the many decades could produce. This place is an original. Much like my traveling companion Mark Turner, a former Talkeetnite of two years. We are here to drink in the past, and I can see it washing over Mark as the smells, and the stories of the people that still linger here overwhelm him, but so much has changed too. Mark asks after many people to learn that many of them have passed, his favorite pizza place burned down. Somebody left a candle burning upstairs and the result: a hollow burnt out shack. The whole town has morphed from a funky amalgam of Athabascan native culture meets west coast granola mixed with some of the families that settled in the railroad and mining days of yore to a more tourist-oriented mecca. Princess Tours has an office in town and other outfits bring tourists by the busload. They come to imbibe the sweet nectar that is small town Alaskan charm, and their dollars flood the local economy during the summer months to ebb as winter approaches. The railroad spur here leads into the heart of Denali country. It is here that climber’s dreams build up steam to the summit.

Imagine the flood of climbers from all over the world descending upon this town, full of piss and vinegar. The Brits would try to drink each other under the table. They would start full of life and weeks later after they cast their lot against the force that is Denali they came back a shadow of themselves, having spent weeks at altitudes with less than half the oxygen found at sea level, and the grueling regime of up then back down that is required to acclimatize and prepare for the final summit bid. I know in my heart that I don’t need to climb to such heights, having climbed to the top of Gokyo Ri with Heather in 2000 to view the pantheon of 8,000m + giants. We made it to just shy of 18,000 ft. and I had a pretty good headache and felt queezy but in awe of the serpentine shape of the longest glacier in the world wrapping it hulking mass from Tibet into Nepal. This glacier framed a scene of such massive peaks including Mankalu, Mt. Everest, Cho Oyu, and Kangchenjunga. It was a clear day, cold, and afforded perfect views into the heart of the Himalayas. My little Pentax K1000 did its manual magic and worked in spite of the battery-numbing cold. Heather was a trooper having agreed to go to such heights. Our trip to New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India was culminating in this effort to see the top of the world- Nepal. The whole journey we kidded each other, that it was a “test, if we could put up with each other for nearly six months of arduous backpack-style travel, we must be meant for each other”. It has proved true; we’ve survived a whole year living a 4 hours drive apart from each other in Minnesota, to her loony idea to move to North Carolina to be a “wild wings educator” at Charlotte’s Carolina Raptor Center, to my crazy idea to move to Alaska and start my new position as AK’s photo manager and leave her and the cats behind for two months! We have had many adventures and I know in my heart that I have found my lifelong companion. She completes me. She is steadiness and stability in any situation, and at the top of a mountain with half of the oxygen is no exception! She cared more for my welfare then her own, asking after me as I struggled with headaches.

Denali is a completely different mountain than Everest, it is much more massive. Denali towers 18,000 feet from its base to its peak, whereas Everest is only 12,000 feet from its base to the summit. Everest reaches its great heights with a giant assist from a high plateau that is its foundation. Denali by contrast is taller and more massive but does not get a giant assist to send it over the edge when measured from sea level. When measured from sea level, Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island is the tallest on earth rising 32,808 ft. above the sea floor. I could not even see Denali today. Mark had this picture in his head that he bagged years ago, when he shot film. It was Denali in the background and the foreground was the Susitna river leading the eye right into McKinley. Today would not be the day to bag this shot. The clouds completely veiled the majesty of the mountain.

Alaska is the last frontier, when it comes to America at least. This fact was visually reinforced when Mark packed a caliber handgun I had never seen in my life into his rucksack. I asked him: “What’s the gun for?” He gave me a quizzical look and said “bears?!” To which I replied sardonically: “Don’t you have to be an amazing shot or you’ll just piss off the bear more?” He grinned back showing some of his well-worn, tobacco-stained teeth. Well, I didn’t have bear spray and I kinda liked the idea of Mark walking down Main St. Talkeetna slinging a gun on his hip so I acquiesced. We hopped into my Honda passport that I just acquired in a trade with my landlady, Suzan. I provided her beautiful pictures of one of her properties that she had up for sale. I did the full work up providing beautiful lighting with three flashes: one stationed outside one of the windows to the room with a warm gel to replicate the look of the sun beaming through the window at a low angle. She loved the images and so now I had full access to her oldest daughter’s car that had a tricked out bumping- bass car stereo system with mp3-ready miniphone jack. Of course we were styling as the bass was bumping bringing my ipod to life with tunes from Nina Simone, Michael Franti, and Dead Can Dance interweaved with some bluegrass and folk, much to the chagrin of Mark whose face contorted into a veritable pucker when blue strings started strumming. But he let it ride as we hit the highway with The Mammals blaring with puffy bass. Pioneer Peak showing its full glory today. Awesome, I can totally see Heather and I living out in the valley.

We head to the Knik River, crossing the swollen glacier and snowmelt fed river as our stomachs rumble from the yummy fresh Matanuska Creamery Ice Cream we had the night before. The river has rebelled against any confinement of its banks of late. One fella who has lived here nearly 30 years has found most of his land swallowed up by the river and the water is only 50 feet from his house! He can’t sell and he refuses to leave as the water rises, he stands as a captain going down with the ship. Alaskans are tough and rebelous lot. I wonder what I would do in the face of a force of nature endangering our house. Part of me sees some convoluted plan to harness the rivers energy, but in the end we would just be adrift, our foundation being eaten up by the turbid water of the Knik.

The Mammals give way to some Michael Franti and the whole car bumps with bass and lyrics tuned to a spiritual reckoning. Our first stop was to visit Marie, Mark’s significant other at the Matanuska Creamery. I had already enjoyed a pound of fresh cheese curds from the creamery and loved the idea of sampling more of their fine products. I picked out some garlic and herb cheese curd per Marie or should I say “Cream-Marie’s” suggestion? I was then offered Alaskan Honey Ice Cream straight from the mixing vat and I melted right there- Yummy!!! We left the creamery greeted by sunny weather and big grins on our faces.

After filling up at $3.32/gallon- ouch! Mark thought it was time to fix the passenger side door that wasn’t quite to spec anymore and the upper half let a lot of road/wind noise infiltrate the cabin of the passie. He proceeds to apply his considerable heft to the door while torqueing it towards him. The result: a door that no longer was noisy, but would not shut properly!! I yelled out “dude”. He proceeded to explain that he braced the door with his knee while he applied the weight, and that the door was like that etc. “Ok, don’t worry about it”, wondering how I was going to explain this to my landlady, but that was for another day. I think all Alaskans dabble in the fine art of auto body repair. Many of them figure the value of their car and the cost of the repair is so prohibitive that they have nothing to lose if they “fix” it. Mark made up for the mishap by going into full tour guide mode as he explained how he was a lumberjack felling trees in this very forest to build log cabins. He lit up when I told him that we might build a log cabin on some land at the outskirts of Anchorage and he pledged to help. His wages back in the 80’s for felling trees was $1 to fell and another to skid, and I think he said another to run it through a debarker. What a crazy job.

The closer we got to Talkeetna the more cloudy and less promising the weather became until we knew that we wouldn’t be able to see Denali. But in the end the journey with Mark and his stories augmented with a soundtrack that brought on cue Dead Can Dance as we rolled through the landscape; a whirling dervish of chant and beat that intertwined in a spirit dance. It was the perfect mix for a journey to the confluence of three rivers.