Dream catcher

Alaska: Homer, Kenai Peninsula

There’s an irony at play here, I thought, as I assessed the outfit I was wearing to go halibut fishing in the ocean off Homer, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.  Checking myself out in the wing mirror of our car, the dawn sunshine breaking through the low clouds, my breath turning to steam, I resignedly concluded that when I go fishing I end up looking like a skier, and when I went skiing I looked like a fisherman. 

The skiing took place 10 years ago in Prince George, British Columbia, with two dear friends, Jacki and Warren, and my younger brother, Richard.  There is a picture of the four of us lined up, ready to hit the slopes, with me at the end wearing a blue fleece and grey rain hat that instantly prompted my brother to ask ‘who invited the fisherman’? I might as well have been carrying a rod for all the good my skiing poles did me as I sped into a snow bank on the side of the slope, ejecting head first from my two skis whose binding tension had been set, with sensible foresight, at extreme liability beginner level.  It was on this same trip that the man sitting next to me on the chair lift to the top of the nursery slope had looked at my old-school elongated skis (another thrift store purchase), and asked if I was a speed skier.  Having absolutely no idea what he was talking about I meekly replied, fear making my voice quiver, ‘er, not intentionally, no’.  Reaching the summit I pushed off the chair lift and confidently skied down the incline for ooh, at least four feet, before taking out two small children, doing a not-totally-inelegant pirouette, and landing on my face, making a deformed snow angel indentation in the snow.

Fishing would be successful, surely? Zipping up my skiing overalls I pushed to the back of my mind images of monster halibut pulling me over the side of the boat, and then taunting me by playing piggy in the middle with my rod.  I was flying solo on this one, the two girls opting instead to spend the morning devouring giant cinnamon buns, although they came to see me off at the dock, Helen pecking me on the cheek and slapping my bum with the instruction to ‘bring back dinner you hairy hunter-gatherer you, grrr’.  As I clomped down the ramp to the dock she shouted ‘Have you got your packed lunch’? after me.  Receiving a look that said ‘stop embarrassing me Mum!’ I joined the other fishers.

The boat was packed with families and groups of buddies, and I was surprised to slowly learn that they were all Alaska residents.  One of the many reasons I love travelling in America is the warmth and hospitality of Americans, and it wasn’t long before I was sat with a family learning about the upcoming marriage of the two grown up children, who sat looking embarrassed as their mom enthused about the flowers, and the food, and the guest list.  A couple of retired pilots, hearing my accent, leaned over and said ‘try this’ offering up the most delicious smoked salmon I’ve ever tasted.  ‘We caught that two days ago and oak smoked it the self-same day’ they explained, ‘you won’t get any fresher’.  With the ocean flat and glistening, the mountains standing on sentry duty around us, and the sun fully emerging from behind the clouds, I basked in the warmth of the kindness of strangers.

Moving upstairs to the open deck I was soon chatting to the only other solo fisherman, a charming bloke who had moved from Colorado to Anchorage simply because he ‘had always had a dream to live in Alaska’.  As he told me his story I was enraptured by his almost childlike fascination with this state, for he was articulating exactly how I felt about Alaska.  Here was a resident speaking with the awe and wonder I was feeling.  He had, he explained, moved up to Alaska in late summer five years ago and had, by his own admission, underestimated how tough you needed to be to survive an Alaskan winter.  ‘Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong’ he gently explained.  ‘I lost my job, the heating in my apartment packed up, and I couldn’t afford snow tires for my truck.  Believe me’, he continued, ‘you need snow tires up here’.  So he had moved back to Colorado, tail between his legs, but instead of giving up on his dream he had worked hard, built up a bit of cash, and tried again three years later, bringing his wife and young son with him this time.  His second crack at Alaska was proving more successful. 

Now, the more reality talent shows colonise our TV screens the more cynical I become with platitudes about ‘following your dream’, ‘never giving up’, ‘giving 1000 percent’ and ‘taking a journey’.  But I couldn’t have been less cynical as my new friend told me his story, fielding questions from me.  ‘What about your wife', I asked, 'does she like Alaska?’ ‘Oh man’, he replied, ‘she can’t get enough of it.  She’s having the time of her life, and my boy has this as his back yard’ he said, gesturing out across the ocean and mountains, just as a sea otter popped a furry head out of the water.  He told me about his new boat and his new Jeep like a child would enthuse about their Christmas gifts, and I lapped it up, smiling at just how happy he was with his new life, with a dream he was now living.  We had become temporary buddies, taking photos of one another with our catch, and against a backdrop that was picture postcard no matter where you looked.

As we drew into port at the end of the trip, the two of us standing at the bow against the bracing sea air, he pointed out his wife and young son standing at the dock awaiting his return.  And chatting to his wife was Helen.  Exhilarated by the fishing, my two halibut waiting for me as a trophy, I had an overwhelming feeling of good will to this man, and his family, and to Alaska and, if I’m totally honest, I had a lump in my throat as his son ran down the dock to greet his father, the two wives happily chatting and following him down the dock.

‘Did you have fun’? Helen asked as I presented my catch to her. ‘I really did’ I replied, waving goodbye to my new friend, ‘it was a dream’.       

Catch of the day

L: a triumphant homecoming.  R: Skiing

A-Unit: thrift in the Last Frontier

Alaska, Kenai Peninsula

‘Eew, don’t put that thing on my hoodie, it smells like dead people’. 

‘Well I think it’s pretty snazzy, and look, the last owner has left me a bottle top in one of the pockets’ I replied, proffering up the bonus gift from the inside pocket of my newly acquired four dollar bright orange body-warmer I had snaffled, along with a bunch of other cold weather gear, from the Salvation Army thrift store’s racks in Homer, the southernmost town on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

‘Yeh, well I bet that was his lucky bottle top, one he always carried and fondled as he fished these waters, before that fateful night when the cruel mistress of the ocean took him.  And now you have it, a bad omen.  Like I say, it smells of dead people, and that stain looks like poo’.

And so began the call and response game between me and our new temporary travelling companion, my oldest friend, Haley Joel Osment Kate who had, in a moment of impressive impulsiveness, said ‘why the hell not’ and booked a last minute holiday, not to the Balearics, but to Alaska to join us.

(Me) ‘Ooh, these new boots are warm’, (Kate) ‘dead people’s boots’. 

(Me) ‘This fleece really was terrific value’, (Kate) ‘That’s what they said, before they died’.

(Me) ‘These underpants are, um, supportive’:  (Kate) <raised eyebrow> ‘Bet they died of crotch rot’.

I love thrift shops (charity shops in British parlance), and can happily spend hours poking around the racks, or plunging elbow deep into the bargain bins.  And thrift shops in North America are the best.  The ‘make do and mend’ ethos has not yet supplanted the ‘give away and buy new’ one, and I’m happy picking at the bones of this consumer society, a vulture circling before hungrily swooping on a branded bright blue, down filled hat, with earflaps, for the princely sum of 50 cents.  Maybe that’s what that old rapscallion 50 cent (or fiddy as the inarticulate kids call him) should do a remix to his song Candy Shop about:

gonna take you to the thri-ift shop

I’ll let you touch my bottle top

go ‘head girl, ignore the plop

keep going ‘til you buy the lot

I'll take you to the thri-ift shop
Boy one taste of this crotch rot
I'll have you spending not much of what you got
Keep going 'til you find those pots (woah)       

Yeah...
Uh huh
So cheap

gonna take you to the thri-ift shop

Come and touch this new pot

go ‘head girl, ignore the clots

Keep going we’ll refurnish the yacht

Ohh, yeh, baby etc…

But let’s back up a little.  We weren’t supposed to be in Alaska.  We were supposed to be in Myanmar (Burma).  That is until on one humid and sticky evening in Vietnam a couple of months ago Helen turned to me and said ‘I can’t believe we’ve still got six weeks left in South East Asia.  This sounds really bad, but I kinda want a change of scenery’.  ‘Yeh, I sort of know what you mean’ I replied.  ‘We could, of course, change our plans’ I floated.  ‘Where would you really like to go’? I asked, figuring that once you articulate your hopes the rest is just detail.  ‘Well, this is stupid and totally unrealistic’ she replied, ‘but we’ve always talked about Alaska, but it’s a long way away’.  And that’s what did it.  Alaska is a long way away.  But then it is always a long way away, no matter where you are.  That’s the point.  Alaska is exotic, more exotic to me than anywhere else I could think of.  Where men are men and moose are nervous.  Where the border guards get twitchy if you don’t have a beard, even more so if you’re a man. 

So, a couple of calls to the friendly people at Trailfinders in Cardiff to shift our flights, a plea of assistance to those kind, anonymous folk who answer questions in travel discussion forums on t’interweb for no reward other than the satisfaction that comes from the maxim of ‘it’s nice to be nice’, and we had a new plan.  Having a new plan – is there anything finer?  It’s one of the things that has stuck with me most from the time we spent in Africa with our tour leader, and now friend, Tim; his fondness for the phrase ‘let’s make a plan’.  It’s a phrase so full of possibilities, so lacking in procrastination, so no-nonsense.  It sits up there with ‘yes we can’, ‘ I have a dream’, and ‘I want a Big Society’.  Oh, hang on a sec, one of those phrases doesn’t look quite right – that’s right Cameron, the one that means absolutely NOTHING, you naïve, focus-group reliant, out of your depth buffoon.

Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes, Alaska, our new plan.  Flying up from Seattle, where we’d rendezvoused with Kate, the sky getter lighter as we headed north, we peered out of the plane window, seeing wraith-like clouds hugging the mountain ranges and stretching down to the sea like glaciers.  Oh, they are glaciers.  Lots of glaciers, hugging the coastline until the lights of Anchorage appeared like an oasis of civilisation in this untamed land. Trying, but failing, to get some sleep in the hire car on our first night I reflected that now was probably the time to get our game faces on, or we’d end up looking like complete greenhorns, the type of city folk who try to cuddle a grizzly and then look shocked when it acts like a wild animal.  Or at least would look shocked if they still had a face left. 

But who was I kidding?  We were greenhorns.  Better to admit it and respect this land of unforgiving wilderness than act all enigmatic and end up trudging Into the Wild before realising the wild wouldn’t let us trudge back out.   We all, I think, shared this exciting sense of the unknown, of a wilderness beyond Anchorage, that tinge of nervousness that accompanies a new adventure tugging at our bellies.  The simmering nervousness was relieved the next day when Kate said she’d ask for directions to the nearest Liqueur Store. ‘Um, I think they pronounce it Liquor Store’ I replied, ‘there’s not much call for crème-de-menthe up here’.  Giggling, the hire car stocked up with camping kit, a new cooler, a ridiculously oversized tent, and enough liquor to fell a mountain man, we headed south out of Anchorage into the Kenai Peninsula, Adam and Joe podcasts on the Ipod in the car, the most staggering and humbling landscape rolling by outside the car.

Bathed in sunshine we carried on south, then west, passing scores of fisherman lined up along the banks of the Kenai River, reeling in salmon with an ease that reminded me that of all the adjectives one could apply to Alaska, abundance is probably the best.  Abundant scenery, abundant space, abundant wildlife, abundant natural resources.  Excluding the intelligence of Alaska’s most recent, most glamorous, and certainly most famous Governor this was a land of abundance.  Finally however, the distinct lack of abundance in my sleep got the better of me and I declared that we had to set up camp for the night or risk seeing one of those river beds in a little more detail than any of us would appreciate.

Sleep deprived, inexperienced, and desperate for a camping spot we made a stupid decision as the rain started to fall, first in drops, then in sheets.  'That beach looks interesting' we said, 'there are lots of other people camped down there'.  And there were, except these were fishermen, taking part in the annual dip-net fishing event that is hosted on the beach in Kenai.  They were there to catch fish in their oversized nets not, as we were to discover, to enjoy a prime camping spot.  Pulling our camping kit out of the car, price tags still attached, we dragged it down onto the beach in torrential rain, the phrase ‘city folk’ running through my mind as we received bemused looks from the locals.  Resisting the urge to batter them out of the way with our double air mattress (‘well, I might look like a ridiculous city slicker, but at least I’ll be a comfortable ridiculous city slicker, bosh’) we erected our cavernous tent in silence, soaked through to the bone, sand making its way into every nook, cranny, and orifice.  Shivering in the tent, the wind blowing off our rain sheet after a fitful night’s sleep, we were up and out of there early, at which point I remembered the old military adage; any fool can be uncomfortable.  I’m no fool, I lied to myself. 

And that is what led us to going wild in the aisles in the thrift store when we arrived in Homer, with the conviction that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad preparation.  With a new warm, waterproof wardrobe purchased for less than $25 we were ready to put our inauspicious start behind us.  Humming a little tune, our Alaska adventure was beginning to take shape…

Hey girls, we’re in Alaska

we’re gonna party like it’s Alaska

we’re gonna sip liqueur as it’s Alaska

 And you know we don't care for bears
‘cos it’s Alaska!

Bo.

Kate and I on the beach in Homer.  Check out the new threads!

<< Well, the blog has shot through the 6,000 page views mark which is, as ever, far more exciting for me than it is for you. A big welcome to all the new readers; a veritable smorgasbord of nationalities.  Thank you for reading, particularly those of you who came for the 'useful' posts on SE Asia and have stayed for the whole show.  There will be another 'useful' post on Alaska coming soon, but I first need to rid my mind of all the superfluous nonsense about thrift stores, 50 cent, and whatever else pops in before then.  

Although most of what I write is tongue-in-cheek, my thanks for reading is straight down the line serious:  <Hand friskily placed on your forearm, intense and creepy eye contact, little bit of spittle around the edges of my mouth> Thank you. >>