Mike pointed to our right. In the deep shade of a grove of hemlocks the ground was torn up, but not like a crater. Everything was disturbed, the dirt, the mat of rotting hemlock needles, the rotting trees that had died and fallen, even small saplings. Mike knelt down.
“Look here,” Mike said. “Look at this black fur. Look, here is the mama’s skull, and her teeth. Look over here, a piece of foot bone with the claws still connected to it. Over here is a cub’s skull; no, two of them. This must have been awful when it happened.”
“What happened?” Gerry asked with his Swiss accent. Gerry hadn’t said much.
“Only thing I can figure, this fur and skull and whatever else is left was once a mother black bear and her cubs, and something killed them violently, and then ate them. It had to have been a brown bear.”
I picked up one of the long claws from the mother and put it in my pocket.
“Brown bear claws are about four times that big. Believe it or not, there are more people mauled by black bears in Alaska than brownies,” Hobo said with a teasing grin. Some Alaskans, I now realize, seem to enjoy seeing people from the Outside respond to the dangers that they live with so casually.
A line of willows was ahead.
Mike threw up his hand and stopped us. “Be real quiet now, we’re almost to the creek.”
We came to the creekbank; the water was about five feet below. Still shielding us from a clear view of the creek were the willows. Mike threw up his hand again and motioned us toward him.
He whispered, “Look up there.”
To our right, standing in the narrow and shallow creek, was the largest bear I had ever seen. It looked about twice the size of a large black bear. Its fur was golden brown and glistened in the sun. It was spawning season; we could hear salmon splashing, driving themselves up the clear creek. Because there were so many, it sounded like something much larger, something charging. We could also see many of the salmon’s bright red backs poking out of the shallow water as they swam.
At first the bear was ambling along the creek. Then, with no warning, it came running almost right to us. Chasing a salmon, it stopped and grabbed it.
Then another bear, more than twice the size of the first, stepped slowly off the bank into the creek. It seemed to stretch from one side of the creek to the other. Oh, God. She or he—probably she—was no more than seventy-five feet away. The “smaller” one was just twenty-five feet from us. I could hear the bones of the salmon being crunched as the smaller one ate.
Mike now had his gun off his shoulder and ready. He turned just enough to look in our eyes and whispered, “Do not say anything. Do not move.”
A third brownie, about the size of the first, came into the creek right behind the enormous one. Must be a mother and her twin two-year-old cubs. The mother crossed the creek to the other side and disappeared. Had she smelled us and was now stalking us? What I felt to be my last seconds on earth slowed to freeze-frame after freeze-frame. I remembered some advice I’d gotten once, supposedly as a joke. If you go for a walk where there are brown bears, always go with at least one person you can beat running. I began to try to figure whom out of this group I could beat down the trail. These bears can run as fast as a quarter horse. If all three chased us, I’d have to outrun three of these guys!
The second cub ran down the creek toward us. The bears moved with terrorizing speed and power; I now understood how they could be lying down on a kill one second and on top of you the next.
Then the big mother reappeared. All I could see was her incredibly wide, golden brown head. She was standing on our trail, but just across the creek. She could be on us in two ground-swallowing leaps.
I remembered what Mike had said about why it was especially bad to run into a mother and her twin two-year-old cubs. A cub could see or smell us and run up to investigate. If they attacked one of us—swiped and knocked us down or bit onto our heads—and we had to shoot it, then, as Mike said, the worst hell would break loose. The mother would charge us, perhaps the other twin too. Mike said he didn’t ever want to have to find out how he would respond in that situation.
The mother bear headed into the creek. We were all frozen in our spots. Mike, no more than twenty feet from her, had his shotgun ready. I heard a bone-crunching sound, then she stood up, and all I could see was the back of Mike’s head, her head, and a salmon in her jaws.
She dropped back down out of sight. Then we could hear a terrible splashing sound coming from our left. The two cubs were chasing each other back up the creek, or was something chasing them? Hobo had said that the brownies get in awful fights on the creek and that males could easily kill and eat these cubs.
Then, the mother stood up again. She seemed to be looking right at us through the cover of the willows. Just as quickly, she dropped back down. Had she seen us? Had she caught our scent and was circling around to attack us from behind? I heard more splashing sounds, louder than before. All three of them were running up the creek, back where they had come from.
Hobo touched my back and I almost jumped over the willows and the creek and the moon.
“I’ve been living in Alaska since 1972, and that’s as close as I’ve ever come to death by bears.”
“Did anyone take a picture?” Rusty asked.
“I did,” Gerry said.
“Mike, we are turning around, right?” I asked.
“Nah. I want to take you to the top of the hill by the spring, so we can look back at the lake.”
We crossed the creek on top of a fallen log. On the other side I asked Mike why the bears didn’t see or sense us. He licked his finger and held it in the air.
“What little breeze there is was blowing into us and away from them. They never smelled us, which was a good thing, believe me.”
We got back to Mike and Linda’s lodge around 10 P.M. I lay in bed and thought about our little “after-dinner walk” to the creek. I remembered portions of it as vividly as any experience I’d had. I felt more alive in certain seconds than in whole months of my life, a life that has been used by my readers as a model of adventure and self-determination. I could not fall asleep. It was not being afraid that kept me awake; it was because I felt so alive. I felt the early groanings I have come to recognize as internal messages drawing me to a place. Lying in bed that night, thanks to Hobo and Mike and that walk, I was getting the feeling that Alaska was a place I would need to explore.
That hike was more than three years ago. Tonight was a time to celebrate life and Alaska and that most of our family was together again. Hobo was master of this ceremony. He was tuning his guitar, about to begin. He plays so hard that people lay bets on how many strings he will break in one night.
Hobo’s done about all there is to do in Alaska. He built his own log cabin on the Kenai Peninsula. He’s been a commercial fisherman, he ran for mayor of Homer. He has composed some of the best songs ever written about Alaska. He’s been a cowboy on one of the few ranches in Alaska. He and his wife, Cyndi, have lived off the land. Hobo’s been around enough to benefit from countless rings of the bell in the bar. When the bartender rings the bell, someone who has just come in with a large load of king crab or halibut or returned from a month in the oil fields of the North Slope is buying a round. He’s an antique-book collector; he is a student of comparative religion.
As soon as Hobo tuned his guitar, the audience would begin making requests. Hobo always looked for Julianne or Luke right away, knowing they would have to leave. Julianne requested “The Iditarod Song.” The whole bar would stop what they were doing and sing along to Hobo’s Alaskan classics. In the best sense of the word, being at a Hobo performance was like being at a far-out adult summer camp. Most people in Alaska don’t seem to worry about being hip; if it’s genuinely good, that’s enough.
I watched Julianne as she sang every word along with Hobo:
Well, way up in Alaska, the state that stands alone
There’s a dog race run from Anchorage into Nome
And it
’s a grueling race
With a lightning pace
Where the chilly winds do wail
Beneath the northern lights
Across the snow and the ice
And it’s called the Iditarod Trail.
College students, couples, people covered with eagle tattoos, boat captains, white-haired folks—we were all singing, waiting especially for the chorus. Mike and Linda Sipes were here tonight too. They remembered when Hobo wrote this famous song.
“Dad,” Luke said, hitting my arm, “here comes the chorus.”
The noise of the bar’s many conversations died down and the people switched to singing the chorus:
I did, I did
I did the Iditarod Trail.
After the kids had their sodas and a few Hobo songs, I ran them back to our apartment. When I returned, Hobo was doing Dylan’s “Forever Young.” Then he performed some German drinking songs that were sing-alongs. Hobo played a song he wrote for his wife, Cyndi, called “Backwoods Girl.” He yodeled. If people had told me pre-Hobo that I would like yodeling, I would have told them they were nuts. Hobo’s so original, he’s just right for Alaska, and that’s why we love him.
I would make my request before he got the place in high gear. His job is to get the place rowdy, good rowdy, and keep it that way. My request was too reflective for later in the night when everyone would be howling and dancing and spinning their partner. I always asked for his song “Wild and Free.” Since I want my funeral to be a party, I have asked Hobo to play this song at my funeral:
There’s a part of me
Wild and free
In my heart there’s a wild wolf howling through the tall pine tree
It’s a long cold trail that I’ve been on
Just doesn’t seem to be an end to this way I’ve been going
I can see that road spreading over the land
I see a young boy standing with a suitcase in his hand
It was long ago the boy was me
I was running like a wolf in the mountains
Wild and free
I’ve got in my mind that it must have been the times
That made me to wander away
From a family that I love
And a warm roof above
But everyone else around does say
It’s just me
Being wild and free.
Hobo is an outstanding guitar picker, in any style. People would yell out Hendrix, and he’d switch instantly into “Purple Haze.” He always plays an acoustic guitar. Many of his songs were bluegrass style, but he could do chording like Dylan. He’d play his guitar Mississippi blues slide-style using an empty beer bottle. And he doesn’t need sheet music or lyrics.
After a couple hours he’d start playing songs that would infuriate the politically correct among us, and most everyone would sing along. Fortunately there aren’t generally many PC folks in Hobo’s audiences. One, by an Irish songwriter friend of his, is called “Deform Farm.” It’s based on “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” except animals on this farm have been experimented on by the CIA. The characters in this song are a snake with a lisp, a narcoleptic pig (Hobo snores), a dyslexic sheep that says “ab, ab,” and a Tourette’s syndrome chicken that says things a chicken shouldn’t say. Hobo introduces this song and suggests that any hypersensitive folk or members of one of the two PETA organizations in Alaska may want to leave. Alaska has two PETAs, one Hobo belongs to and one he doesn’t. There are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and People Who Eat Tasty Animals.
A dentist from Soldotna and his wife, Dan and Reean Pitts, came in and surprised Hobo. They sat with us. Over the years they’ve heard him hundreds of times. It’s not that Alaska is short on entertainers, it’s that Hobo is that entertaining. From night to night, performance to performance, you never know what he will say. Sometimes this is related to the number of drinks admirers send up to Hobo. Normally he just sips on a white wine. But his fans know if they send him shots of tequila or Matoxa, he might be more likely to leap onto their table, play standing on one foot, or invite people to come and sing with him, one of his songs or one of their own. One time after too many shots of Cuervo Gold, he even let his good friend Ben Ellis, the guy who had introduced me to Seward, get up onstage and do his Dylan interpretation. People who were coming into the Yukon Bar that night when Ben was “singing” said they saw flocks of seagulls and ravens leaving downtown Seward.
Usually bunches of young cannery workers come to wherever Hobo’s playing on the coast. They are sunburned white kids with dreadlocks, almost preppy-looking college students, or people who could have come to Alaska because they’re running from the law or something else. When Hobo launches into a particular song, they throw their fists in the air and howl in understanding. Every time I was at the Yukon after this song, some guy brought Hobo a fresh pack of salmon roe, one of Hobo’s favorite foods.
My name doesn’t matter
There are many like me
Who come up here to work in the old cannery
Packing fish in the summer
Then we leave in the fall
Then we’re done with the cannery call
And we’re done with the cannery call.
Hobo’s a wise enough performer not to close with one of his most passionately delivered songs, one of Woody Guthrie’s. Until I heard Hobo’s version, with commentary before and during the verses, I’d never thought of this song as revolutionary.
But when Hobo would start singing that “this land is your land, this land is my land,” mentioning for non-Alaskans in the audience that only 1 percent of Alaska is privately owned, the place would erupt. There is some serious concern and even developing anger over the way Alaskans see the federal government clamping down on their land and our land. Hobo’s song points that out. He is the rare entertainer who is willing to challenge his audience, even make them uncomfortable.
Hobo does a couple songs after “This Land Is Your Land” for pure entertainment. Maybe “Gloria” or a cowboy song with the sing-along chorus “Yippee yi a, yippee yi o, ghost riders in the sky.” If the audience didn’t sing loud enough, he’d wonder aloud if this was a convention of accountants. He’d chide the people and tell them they were just a bunch of yuppies. Usually by now there are three Seward guys in the bar wearing realistic-looking rotted teeth, tie-dyed, fake Afro wigs on their heads, skintight cowboy jeans, and cowboy boots. Hobo instantly shifts into Willie Nelson’s “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” when they appear. These three guys head onto the dance floor and do some kind of cowboy-style buck dancing. When one begins to sing along, Hobo segues perfectly to the Beverly Hillbillies theme about a poor boy named Jed. The bar bursts into applause. As the Afro-wigged guys dance, Hobo, playing the Beverly Hillbillies theme instrumentally, then says, “You know, you look like a cross between Jed Clampett and Jimi Hendrix.” Then some Tennesseans scream they want “Rocky Top”; tonight Aaron requested it. After “Rocky Top,” Hobo segues into a meticulous version of the Deliverance theme song.
After these hysterics Hobo gets all of us to sing Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and masterfully slows the place down. People slow-dance, including Rita and me. The bell goes off—it was actually rung by the owner. The whole place gets a free drink. To end the night, Hobo does “Hava Nagila.” Tonight Hobo had given an Israeli hitchhiker a ride into town and brought him along, and he jumped up and danced alone.
In many ways, this night with Hobo illustrates Alaska. Songs about mushers were sung by children in a bar, songs about cannery workers were sung by cannery workers with dreadlocks, songs about a Native shaman were sung by a native shaman; songs were sung by some of the most handsome guys in town wearing fake rotten teeth and tie-dyed Afros making fun of themselves. There was Bach and Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, “Mustang Sally” and songs about gold miners and the Alaska railroad. The federal government was trashed, the whole place yodeled. Hobo did some Hank Sr., some Johnny Cash, a song abo
ut a Spanish stallion, and my favorite, “Wild and Free.” I never knew there was so much of both left in the world until I got to Alaska. Thanks, Hobo.
20
XtraTuf
After spending her spring break in Deering, Rebekah was ready to take off on her own, create her own spot in a universe where people are the planets. She wanted to spend the summer in Alaska. A couple months ago, I’d gone to Kodiak Island, stayed with my friends Captain Jimmy and Joy Ng at the Coast Guard base there. I’d lectured a couple times at Kodiak College for Professor Leslie Fields. Leslie had mentioned something to me about trying to find someone to help her with her children and the house this summer out on their island. She and her husband, Duncan, a lawyer specializing in fishing issues, and his extended family are set-net salmon fishermen. I told her that Rebekah had worked with children, as a nanny and at a day-care center. I mentioned she had been to Deering for spring break; that kind of thing impresses Alaskans. I gave Leslie Rebekah’s number in Tennessee. She called Rebekah, and they hit if off over the phone.
Now, today, I was driving her to Anchorage so she could catch her flight to Kodiak Island to spend the summer working for them. I hugged her, she hugged me, I told her I loved her, she told me she loved me, and we both knew that to be so. I remember thinking as I walked back to the car that being a parent is tough in so many ways; you never really want to leave your child but you must. Sometimes you must even encourage the leaving.
FROM REBEKAH
July 18: One thing has been accomplished thanks to my travels in Alaska: I have overcome my fatalistic fear of flying. I’m even at the point now where the smaller the plane, the better. The more creaks and grunts it makes, the better. Flying has now turned into an adventure. It certainly was adventurous when, sitting next to a cigar-smelling fat man, a sports fisherman up from Florida gator country, I flew over Kodiak Island in a small, old nine-passenger plane. The destination was Larsen Bay, a scarcely populated, much talked about cannery town in bush Alaska. From there, my southern-flying buddy was headed out to a remote lodge where he would spend his days catching some of the finest salmon in the world. I was headed to Harvester Island and the Fields family.
Looking for Alaska Page 49