| letter from the juneau jungle...(part 1) the alaska ferry columbia drives along the marine highway, appropriately enough with cars and trucks in its bowels--lines and chains holding vehicles secure sometimes part during storms on car ferries, sending tons of steel plunging back and forth like the proverbial loose cannons... no such adventures on my trip--the boat seems big and the inside passage is calm--only over the three short open water crossings do we rock 'n roll--and through places like wrangell narrows the size of our ship overpowers the hemlock and spruce green towers... the cheap fares aren't in steerage, like the old days--budgeteers have set up their tents on the solarium deck, or just camped out on the reclining chairs--they are a hardy crew--moose hunters, collegians, alaskans and lower 48'ers mixed together into the nautical melting pot--the columbia is the workhorse of the fleet--there is even room for cabin passengers on one deck, though they're not having as high a time as the solariumites living outside... i'm hanging with joey and lisa, a pretty raven-haired girl who looks like a femme fatale from a "sopranos" episode--she is visiting her brother on prince of wales island, the third biggest in the u.s. after hawaii and kodiak--we perform hilarious duets with the filipino and indonesian crew at the karoake bar--"shop in the name of love" my duet mate croons, only three or four keys off--i become one of the back-up supremes, making the complicated hand motions of a traffic cop during the black-out, trying to match my voice to my pavarottish partner... we are too drunk to be critics, except for joey, unable to legally swill at 20--he is happy enough on the pain pills he's taking for a wakeboarding foot injury... it's a low-rent love boat, people pairing up to make big journeys further into the country--we don't stop in prince rupert, canada--they held up the ferry malaspina for three days in the summer of 1997 after hundreds of angry canadian (how often do those two words go together?) fishermen protested that alaskans were bullying them and stealing the coho salmon run for the border... like most disputes, it ended up making only the lawyers rich and happy... so our first stop is ketchikan, alaska--a town i've been warned about, a volatile mix of loggers, luxury liners and fishermen--all with industrial-sized appetites the size of, well, alaska--i was lucky to bring my bicycle along to take advantage of the brief port call--there's a museum still closed at this early hour, where unreconstructed and abandoned totem poles have found a home inside--northern coastal weather only allows the red cedar to survive about 50 years before rotting... and there's a salmon hatchery next door, though it's death and not birth that the fish is celebrating in late august, swimming upstream to spawn, changing colors from pink to mottled brown, finally ending it's life as food for seagulls, eagles or bears... the original town of ketchikan was built around a creek that ran thick with salmon until overfishing, garbage and sewage almost doomed the run--now the fish are back again, perfuming the air with the smell of death and life... there are more totems too, south of town--i am not quite fast enough on my two-wheeler to beat the bus tourists getting off the cruise ships--"this is abe lincoln," the guide tells her camera-toters about a totem with a single hatted figure on top, "the first white man these tribes knew about"--totems weren't perfected until european tools replaced the native ones in the 19th century--just in time to semi-immortalize the gettysburg address prez... "and over here is one of william seward, who brokered the deal to buy alaska for 14 million dollars--the rings under seward were for the number of potlatches he sponsored--a potlatch was the ceremony to celebrate a great event like a totem-raising or marriage, they could last days, and were all about the hosts giving away as much as they could..." "but seward turned out stingy and didn't give away enough potlatches or anything else"--i guess that's how he suckered the russkies to give up alaska for the price of a new york yankee shortstop's three-year contract--"and members of the tlingit tribe came back to paint his eyes red--meaning No Generousity..." i thought it stood for Too Much to Drink and Smoke but what do i know? our next stop is petersburg, where the heavy norwegian population there built a viking lapstrake-hulled sloop that looks remarkably like my folkboat xora (pronounced zora)--i'm starting to notice the giant cruise ships more--traveling in salmon-esqe schools, though lit up brighter than christmas trees at night--and like salmon, they are baited and hooked--by the tour buses, golf carts, guides, fudge shops and various skullduggery when they stop swimming... next stop is the capital of alaska, juneau... love, jeff |
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