Sunday, August 31, 2008

Palin and The Smell of Bear

I have to admit I'm intrigued by Sarah Palin, probably because I lived up there in Alaska for a few years off and on, in my younger days. As I mentioned in previous posts, Alaska attracts extremists and isolationists, and a lot of people who hate government or any intrusion into what they want to do. It also attracts outdoorsmen, from hunters to hikers, to wildlife lovers, to pure adventurers.

I ended up in Alaska when I answered an ad in the OSU student newspaper for summer employment. I went up then to work in what was called the Minimall, which was basically a fast food and beer place in Seward. The ad said "room and board provided". "Room" turned out to be the basement of the restaurant owners house, a two bedroom apartment that between 12 and 14 employees shared. Talk about tight quarters. "Board" turned out to be food at the restaurant, which was far from healthy. We served everything from hamburgers and fries, to chicken and pizza. Some of the employees interpreted the "board" aspect as access to beer, more than food, and drank heavily. Many didn't last more than a couple of weeks for this reason.

Alaska has one big alcohol problem. This problem is exasperated by the long dark winters. Some of the people drawn to Alaska are drawn there because of the liberal pot laws, too. So, there are a lot of drug problems in Alaska as well.

One of the first acts I did, upon arrival, was to climb Bear Mountain, out off Lowell Point. I wanted to see the sun come up. At this point in June, the sun barely went down. There was about an hour of twilight and no true darkness. Lowell point extended out along the northern edge of Resurrection Bay with a narrow gravel road along the water, flanked by mountains on the other side. I used to walk the long way out to the point itself, that sported beaches along the bay front where one could watch the sea otters play. The sea otters all but disappeared from the edges of Resurrection Bay after the Exxon Valdez accident in SE Alaska. I don't know what the connection was, to the populations in Resurrection Bay, but obviously there was a connection.

Resurrection Bay is, if my memory is correct, nine miles long. There are at least three islands inside the bay. It is beautiful! Later, when I hooked up with a couple of transplanted Minnesotans, who had a Zodiac boat, we'd go out into Resurrection Bay and camp on the first island. Sometimes we would first buy some fresh shrimp off a boat in the boat basin and build a big campfire to cook it. One time, we watched a Humpback whale, from the Zodiac, repeatedly breach in the waters of the bay. That was glorious to watch.

My first year there, myself and another employee hooked up with a teacher from Anchorage who had bought a sailboat he intended to live on. We didn't know he had almost zero sailing experience when we went out onto the bay with him. The weather changed and the waves became large and wind high. He lost control of the sail and boom, which whipped around and smacked me in the head. I was injured and for months afterwards, had problems from that head injury. Once, when I climbed Little Marathon Mountain and laid down at the top, to take a rest, merely touching the side of my head to the ground, where the boom had hit me, caused spasms of pain throughout my head and body. But finally, my head injury seemed to heal and the pain subsided.

It was quite a frightening experience out there on the bay, in a small sailboat, no survival suits, no radio, with dangerously high wave action and winds. We thought we were going to die. We did not know if we would survive, but we did. We ended up on Lowell Point. I don't know if he ever sailed again. We never heard from him again.

Another time, I was hitchhiking back from Anchorage. I don't recall why I'd gone. I might have taken the train from Anchorage to Denali Park and was on my way back to work. I can't remember now it's been so long. A man picked me up. He told me he was picking me up to possibly save my life. Seems a serial killer/rapist was on the loose in the Anchorage area. He located his victims by picking up hitchhikers. I didn't hitchhike alone again after that. I did look it up to see if he was telling the truth and he was. I don't know if they ever caught that killer.

Halfway to Seward the man said he was really going fishing on the Kenai for King Salmon and if I would spot for him, afterwards he'd take me all the way to Seward. He needed a bear spotter. If you're salmon fishing along the rivers in Alaska, you do need someone to watch your back for bears, who often would rather take a fish from a fisherman than fish themselves. It's easier.

So, I agreed to this. Unfortunately, the man did hook into a King, but got pulled into the river over the tops of his high waders, which then filled with water. He tumbled into deeper water. I thought he was done for. I ran along the banks looking for anything I could throw to him, or a long branch I could use to help him to shore. Finally, he got to shore, and was understandably freezing, shaking violently. We got into his truck and turned the heater on high. He got out of most of his wet clothes. I gave him my wool sweater to put on and my wool socks and hat, which I always had with me when adventuring in Alaska. I drove. At the apartment in Seward, I gave him some of my clothes and someone else gave him some of theirs. I never heard from him again. He was shook up by the experience.

Well anyhow, back to the first part of the story. Another worker and I, when fresh and green in Alaska, decided to climb Bear Mountain, hoping to watch the sun go down and rise again, all in the space of an hour, from above treeline on Bear Mountain. We didn't consider the mountain's given name might be meaningful.

I had a .44 magnum with me, for protection. It was in my backpack. I got the gun and learned to shoot it despite its fearsome kick that could cut a person between the thumb and index finger. I was a good shot. My mother would cringe when I reloaded cartridges in my bedroom, thinking I was going to blow everybody up. One had to learn to reload because the cartridges cost up to a dollar apiece if bought new.

I remember when I flew off to Alaska. I had the gun in my suitcase as required and declared it. But I didn't know ammo had to be new and in the original box. I had reloaded bullets in ziplock bags. When they asked about ammo, I told them honestly about the bullets, being in ziplock bags. They said I couldn't take them that way, so, with time running out in catching that plane, we took them out of my suitcase, which was then approved for checking, and mother put them in her purse. I had gone through the security to the gate to board the flight. Last minute, mother wanted to say goodbye. She told me later she never expected to see me again. She thought I'd be killed up in Alaska somehow. She wanted to see me one last time, she told me, and imprint my face in her memory.

So she could not take the bullets through to the boarding gate of course. And they wouldn't hold them for her at the checkpoint. So she dumped them into a metal ashtray at the entrance of the boarding gate and ran on through to tell me goodbye. Today, an act like that would be enough to close an airport and brand a mother a terrorist.

We climbed a rocky steep trail, over downed logs and huge rocks, higher and higher, through twilight, up towards timberline. I was slightly on edge, wondering if this was really safe, in big bear country.

We achieved timberline and took a break, sitting on a log, eating peanut butter sandwiches, another bad decision since the odor of peanut butter is pungent and penetrating. The spruce trees here were not tall, just spindly sticks basically, as are most trees in Alaska, whose root systems are shallow due to permafrost.

Suddenly, we hear what sounds like a freight train, coming at us. I froze in complete terror, but somehow found myself high up a skinny spruce. The coworker sat, glued to the log, eyes wide in terror. We had angered a bear. A HUGE bear. I never even remembered I had a gun in my pack. That was a good thing.

The angry bear stood up, a couple dozen feet away, snorting and looking back a forth with its' head, in kind of a rocking motion, like it couldn't really see us. We threw the peanut butter sandwiches and a grapefruit at him. I was so frightened I crapped my pants. My heart was literally pounding out of my chest. We couldn't see that well in the twilight, couldn't make out if he was still there or gone. We stared back and forth at each other, with wide eyes, not moving, not even daring to breath. We didnt' know anything about what to do if we encountered a bear at close quarters in the dark. We didn't know if he was gone or still there or very close by, lurking, waiting. There was all this brush and trees and the vagueness of trying to make out shapes in twilight. What should we do?

In the end, almost simultaneously, we bolted. But not back down that trail we'd come up, that he'd come up, too, then disappeared back down. Hell no we weren't going back down that way. We went down the cliff side, in record time, no trail either. We just plunged downward and getting down this way, in terror, took less than half the time we'd taken climbing up the trail.

We burst back into our workplace, which was open 24 hours, still pumping with adrenaline. Someone said, "What happened?" "Bear," we muttered. They thought we'd been attacked because we were cut up and bleeding, but that was from the shale and rocks we'd encountered coming down the cliff side.

That was an interesting introduction to Alaska. I had nightmares for about five years featuring that bear. And I never forgot the smell of bear. This served me well. I could identify a bear in the area within a mile, if the wind was right. The smell was imprinted soundly into my brain.

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