"Meditations on Automotive Access and Excess"

Kanakanak Road, the main avenue into Dillingham. Kanakanak features junctions with the 3-mile Wood River Road
and the 19-mile Aleknagik Lake Road. Besides Aleknagik, no other towns or villages can be reached by road from here.

THE VIEW FROM OUT WEST (part two)

Meditations on Automotive Access and Excess

When I was in my early teens, my father informed me: “When Soldotna gets stoplights, it’ll be time to move.” He failed to smile when he said this.

His proclamation worried me. I may have been an unruly and grumbly teen-ager, but I liked where I lived. I had no desire to move. And it seemed likely to me that if the traffic on the central peninsula continued to multiply and intensify the way it was in the 1970s, stoplights were coming, eventually.

It took a while—until the late 1980s, when all three Fair children were adults—but Soldotna did get stoplights (at the junction of the Sterling Highway and Kalifornsky Beach Road, and at the junction of the Sterling and Kenai Spur highways).

But my dad didn’t jerk up the tent stakes. He may have gritted his teeth as the stoplights kept coming, but he didn’t sell the homestead. He and Mom stayed put.

Chalk it up to inertia or entrenchment, to basic fatigue, or to some resigned recognition of the inevitable. The Fairs remained, and the traffic signals continued to increase.

At least there were no stoplights out on our own little gravel lane. (Heck, there were barely any road signs.) As he drove back from work each weekday evening, Dad could take solace from the rooster-tail of dust behind his truck and the absence of artificial illumination he encountered down the homestretch.

It’s not that my father disparaged public safety. Quite to the contrary, almost anyone who knew him well would say he was a meticulously safety-conscious man. But, having been raised in a rarely changing, blink-and-you’re-through-it Indiana town (which to this day still has no stoplights), he simply was no big fan of rapid progress. He liked his development at glacial speed. And he preferred narrow country roads—trails were even better—and plenty of mountains and water and wildlife.

I think he would have enjoyed where I live now in Dillingham.

There are no stoplights here. There aren’t many stop signs, either.

It must also be said, of course, that there aren’t that many roads.

The farthest that one can travel by road here without turning around is about 25 miles—from the hospital  at the southern end of Kanakanak Road to the sprawling Lake Aleknagik at the northern end of the road named after the lake—so the opportunity for intersectional conflict is greatly diminished. During that entire route from south to north, a driver must use his turn signal only once and will encounter no stop signs. Driving the same route in reverse requires halting at one stop sign and then turning right. Period.

In Dillingham it is possible to drive from one end of town to the other and stop at no more than three intersections—and at those only briefly.

Traffic here, frankly, is minimal overall and pales by comparison to the summer chaos on the Kenai.

I have been here since the beginning of September and have seen not a single motorhome.

That fact alone would mean almost Traffic Nirvana to peninsula residents, if it weren’t for one little snag: limited access.

While the shortage of roads means a relative dearth of traffic snarls, it also means that it’s more difficult to drive to this area’s abundant mountains and fish-bearing lakes and streams.

Peninsula residents, by contrast, can drive along the length of the Kenai River and through broad valleys of the Kenai Mountains. There are well-maintained gravel roads leading to Skilak and Tustumena lakes. There are boat launches from Homer to Nikiski, from Kenai to Soldotna to Seward. There are old mining roads and state and federal trail systems that open up the backcountry.

Snake Lake Road leads, of course, to Snake
(Nunavaugaluk) Lake, via Aleknagik Lake Road.

Here, a single access point—the unmaintained Snake Lake Road—leads to four trails that venture uphill—to Warehouse Mountain, Snake Mountain, China Cap, and Nunavaugaluk Overlook. The rest of the mountain trailheads, I’ve been told, lie across large lakes or streams or vast stretches of boggy tundra.

And this place, which includes the largest state park (Wood-Tikchik) in the United States, is nearly surrounded by gorgeous peaks and ridgelines, and some amazing fishing spots, which is why most people who live in Dillingham have remedied their vehicular-access ailments with the following cures: private airplanes, power boats, snowmachines, and four-wheelers.

Planes and boats are the key means to
reach the distant mountains and the
prime fishing spots.

In the summer, the rivers, creeks and lakes in this place are liquid avenues to the great beyond. And in the winter, I’ve been told, the tundra and frozen lakes around here are transformed into veritable snowmachine highways.

Meanwhile, my own versions of the Dillingham modus transporti include a borrowed inflatable kayak, my mountain bike, cross-country skis, snowshoes, and whatever else I can strap onto or slide over my feet to improve my human-powered progress.

 

Drivers on the Kenai Peninsula, on the other hand, are positively spoiled by access—as was I for many decades—no matter how many gates or regulations we may have denounced.

Peninsula drivers also are spoiled by the very fuel prices that I was bitching about back in August. The price tag here on unleaded gasoline is pushing $7 per gallon.

On the plus side, having so few roads means that it takes longer to burn up a tank of gas.

And finally, peninsula drivers are spoiled by the number of options available to them via the highway system. In Dillingham, there are no car lots—and of course no car salesmen. All vehicles are delivered here either by cargo plane or by barge, mostly out of Anchorage. The little Toyota we drive cost nearly $3,000 to ship here—packed with clothing and household goods—on a multi-village sea voyage lasting approximately three weeks.



Also, since it is so difficult and expensive to get them here, vehicles rarely leave once they arrive. In fact, I think it is fair to say that Dillingham—like many remote Alaska communities, I suspect—is a place where cars and trucks come to die.

Abandoned VW Bugs form a small graveyard along Wood River Road.

The cost of sending old junkers to a salvage yard on the road system is prohibitive. Consequently, many backyards here contain rusting, battered hulks, often tucked in behind or alongside the ubiquitous boats and solid-steel shipping containers.

It is nice, however, to have a reliable source of spare parts lying around. Consequently, even junk here has value….

In the end, it’s up to each individual to decide which is better—all that access and the excess that goes with it, or more limited access but less of the hustle and bustle that my father disliked. In Dillingham, Dad would’ve found ways to get into the wilderness and to all the best fishing holes.

And he would still be waiting for the first stoplight to appear.

Mom, on the other hand….

 

 

"This May Seem Like a Trivial Pursuit, but...."

This was the Redoubt Reporter team in 2011, the second consecutive year we won the Triviapalooza title.

THE VIEW FROM OUT WEST (part one)

“This May Seem like a Trivial Pursuit, but….”

 

SEPTEMBER 2013

I can’t repeat every verbal rejoinder that Trivia Master Sarah Evans unleashes to the throng during Trivia Night at the Willow Tree bar each Tuesday in Dillingham—this is a family newspaper, after all—but I can report that the F-word is bandied about as heartily as the beers are consumed. And while I can’t commend Sarah for her use of proper language, I certainly can praise her ability to keep proper order among the rowdy, suds-swilling trivia buffs seated at plastic tables spread throughout the sprawling establishment:

“Put that phone away, or I swear I’ll cut your F---ing hand off!”

“Come on, guys! No cheating! Don’t be d---!”

“Shut up! Shut up and listen! Okay, question number seven….”

Such exclamations and enthusiasm readily grab one’s attention. Such exuberant vulgarity even has its own kind of charm. And such rawness adds to the flavor of a beloved community event occurring weekly inside a shadowy saloon along the Nushagak River.

In many ways—minus all the swearing, of course--it’s not so different from Trivia Night each Wednesday near the Kenai River at Odie’s in Soldotna or the Triviapalooza benefiting the Triumvirate Theater and held periodically at the Visitors Center in Kenai. The participants in these events are essentially the same, as is the spirit of the competition, the corny or clever and occasionally offensive team names, the consternation caused by the need to recall almost arcane bits of data, and the beer.

Well, the beer isn’t exactly the same. At the Triviapalooza, good beer is dispensed from taps inserted in chilled kegs into clear plastic cups arrayed on a table covered with white linen. At Trivia Night at Odie’s, servers mete out cold craft beers from taps behind the serving counter. But at Trivia Night at the Willow Tree, customers are sometimes left with only domestic American brews (Budweiser, Coors and Miller) contained in and consumed from 12-ounce cans.

Still, it is the games, not the beers, that are important.

Games bring together people across the globe, but the unifying effect of games in small communities seems particularly acute. In villages and tiny towns, with no national branding or television coverage to prompt widespread loyalty, and no metropolitan centers to bolster mass attendance, the allegiance to the games comes from within, from the union of conglomerate souls facing challenges together.

In Dillingham (outside of commercial fishing, which is the hub of the universe here), residents unite for community events—the winter festival known as the Beaver Roundup, the Tony’s Run benefit marathon in September, the slate of sporting events centered around Dillingham High School, and, of course, Trivia Night at the Willow Tree.

The first community trivia event I ever attended was the Triviapalooza two or three years ago. A small band of us, pulled together by Redoubt Reporter publisher Jenny Neyman, joined at a sturdy table and tested our wits at numerous rounds of questions. According to the tote board, which was updated after each round, we forged a solid victory that returned to Jenny her buy-in money and netted our team a used trophy that had had a previous life at some golf or bowling tournament, I believe.

Beyond the Triviapalooza, my first trivia-competition steps occurred last winter when my friend Stephanie and her boyfriend Ryan drove in from Seward to meet me at Odie’s and test our

With Ryan Ek and Stephanie Wright in the winter of 2013
--our first winning effort at Trivia Night in Soldotna.

intellectual mettle. At Odie’s, Trivia Night, consisting of nine theme-centered rounds of 10 questions each, costs $5 for a small team like ours, $10 for a larger team. Our come-from-behind victory earned us the entire pot of entry fees--$105 that night. After posing for a photo in front of the tally sheet, I walked out with a handful of cash—more money than I’d walked in with.

My first taste of Trivia Night in Dillingham occurred on Sept. 17.

The competition at the Willow Tree consists of a single set of 20 questions, all based on a common theme, yet the game manages to stretch into an approximately two-hour-plus affair, complete with cigarette-and-beer breaks after every five questions. Before the festivities begin, a thirst-inducing pre-game snack is provided—something like cheesy nachos, meatballs, or hotdogs with chili.

Team size is unlimited, and the collection of professionals, fishermen, campus folks, construction workers and others provides a rich tapestry of community life, bound together for a common cause.

One night, the not-exactly-sober crew from the Discovery Channel’s Emmy-nominated Deadliest Catch reality-television show barged into the Willow Tree in the middle of the game, halting the competition with a bell-ringing barrage of bar tabs and good humor. Once the hubbub died down and the TV folks dispersed outdoors, Trivia Night picked up where it left off. No minor interruption, regardless how exciting, was going to stop the game.

There is no tote board at the Willow Tree. If some participant reminds her, Trivia Master Sarah is content to holler out the scores at the end of each round. With so few questions (some of them with multiple parts for extra points), the scores tend to remain fairly close, keeping the competition lively and the commentary raucous until the end.

Sometimes a team like “Tons of Fun” may get the upper hand; other times, perhaps, it’ll be their good-natured rival, “F--- Tons of Fun,” or maybe “The Dillingslammers,” “Pork Chop & Applesauce,” or “The Hospital People.” On Sept. 17, however, it was our turn to shine, as “The Drifters” slid neatly alone into first place on the fifth tiebreaker question (selected from cards out of a Trivial Pursuit game).

Among the prizes available to the winners were several anti-Pebble Mine stickers, a baseball-style cap depicting the F/V Brown Dog, a berry picker, some canned soup, a Lonely Planet book (Europe on a Shoestring), and an assortment of candy, key chains and fishing tackle.

Afterwards, we walked away into the chilly Dillingham night—and into a town with fewer strangers.

 

"Building Up to the Big Move"

 

BUILDING UP TO THE BIG MOVE

LATE AUGUST 2013

The days have begun to accelerate even as they proceed with mind-numbing slowness.

And the finality of it all is beginning to sink in.

I knew this would happen, of course. I had steeled myself for it.

But it has still been strange and more difficult than I expected. Moving into my mother’s house for a few days has heightened the feelings of impending separation from the homestead.

I have only small chunks of days left to spend at my house, taking care of last-minute  
details—wiping the final counters, scrubbing the remaining floors, washing the last few windows, driving the screws into the plywood covering the leanto’s front door and window, snapping a padlock into place over the hasps on the shed doors, harvesting the last leeks and basil and lettuce and carrots and chard and kale from the greenhouse and garden.

Final steps on my way out the door. Soon, I hope, I’ll have paying renters inside this place to assuage the financial demands from the bank and allow me to use my income in my new environs.

As gradual as I’ve tried to make the changes, however, I still have decades of familiarity to let go of all at once.

No more floor plan I can maneuver with my eyes closed. No more Kenai Mountains and river valley to greet me over breakfast or to glow in the light of the setting sun. No more clomping over my snowshoe trails crisscrossing the backwoods of the homestead. No more roaming my circular driveway, my gardens and my old wooden sheds. No more mowing equipment always on the edge of permanent breakdown. No more happy, furry golden retriever loping along to join me. No more teen-agers tromping through my house and eating all my food, no more stressed-out mother needing my help next door, no more nice but scowling neighbor to drive by on my way into town.

No Fair presence to the north of me, and soon no unclaimed lot to the south of me.

With all this loss, one might logically assume that I’m consumed with sadness, but I am not.

While some of these things may have been lost to me forever, others—such as the Kenai Mountains and our friends throughout Southcentral Alaska—will be only temporarily out of reach.

I am making all these changes of my own volition, in control of all my faculties, and with a greater goal in mind. Even as Ii am fearful on the cusp of this commitment, I embrace these changes, the sense of adventure, and the opportunity to form a more permanent partnership with the woman I love.

Besides, I refuse to dwell on what I leave behind; I choose, instead, to dwell on the here-and-now and what lies ahead.

In only six days, I’ll be in Dillingham, ready and willing as this new chapter begins.

 

"Forged in the Fires"

Three-year-old Clark Fair examines the rainbow trout he just pulled from the Kenai River.

FORGED IN THE FIRES

SUMMER 2013

NOTE: This piece was my winning entry for the “Pen the Kenai” contest, which was accompanied by the “Paint the Kenai” contest. The winning entries, featuring a large rendering of the winning mural, will be displayed at the Kenai Airport. See https://www.facebook.com/PaintTheKenai for more details.

I was forged in the fires of the Kenai Peninsula. My thoughts rise and fall with its topography. My movements are informed by its changing seasons.

Clark soaks his feet in a remnant pond high on Cecil Rhode
Mountain near Cooper Landing in the late 1990s.

My entire life has been here, from my infancy in Whittier, the neck of the peninsula, to my childhood in Soldotna, its crossroads; from high school and my first real job in Kenai to my hiking, biking, running, boating, and exploring from Kachemak Bay to the Kenai Mountains.

Without the Kenai Peninsula, I am a different man.

I dress for the roiling rhythms of its annual weather — winter, thaw, breakup, return of sun and salmon, autumn yellow, autumn brown, more winter. My footwear alone tells the tale — spiked running shoes for winter, cleated trail shoes for summer, Xtra-Tufs for anything wet below the knees. I have Sorels, Tevas, bunny boots, rock-worn hiking boots, sneakers, dress shoes, hip boots, chest waders.

Clark and friend, in the early 2000s, high on Hideout Hill in
Kenai Mountains.

I plan around the light that the peninsula provides — from the almost limitless sun of summertime to sometimes oppressive darkness of winter, from sunglasses during the explosion of growth and green, to the careful packing of headlamps and matches and extra layers in waning light and intensifying cold.

Being a part of the peninsula, however, is more than simple reactions and planning. I am shaped in my thoughts by my home.

I compare new places to this place. When I started college Outside, I scoffed at the hills they called mountains, wondered why they had so few small planes motoring through the skies, fretted at the absence of saltwater and sockeyes.



Canning salmon. (Yvonne
Leutwyler photo)

Too much flat land makes me nervous.

Too few rivers and beaches leave me parched.

A dearth of moose cannot be compensated for by a fenced-in field of dairy cattle.

I want to fish through the ice of the lakes down Swanson River Road, climb to the saddle on the Skyline Trail, watch from my dining room window as the sun rises over the Harding Ice Field. I want to taste what has been harvested from this place — highbush cranberry jelly and liqueur, canned red salmon, a sheep roast, a fireweed salad, razor clam chowder, steamed blue mussels. I was raised on fresh Dolly Varden, rainbow trout and silver salmon from the Kenai River; king crab, shrimp and halibut from Kachemak Bay; bull moose from the Kenai lowlands and Dall sheep from the Kenai Mountains. My mother served up moose steaks for dinner, then chopped up the leftovers to stir in with our scrambled eggs for breakfast. She ground moose meat into burgers, dumped it into chili and onto homemade pizza, stirred it into casseroles.

Clark's father, Calvin, stands over a 1965 kill.

We lived on the land and took what the land provided. And, as much as possible, we tried to nurture the land, careful not to soil our own nest. And even today, 55 years after I was born in Alaska, I am dancing to the beat of the Kenai Peninsula — always my home, no matter where life takes me.

Late winter 2013 on the Skyline Trail, Clark poses with (clockwise from himself) Yvonne, Trevor, Tony, Mike,
Oliver the black Lab, Nate, Ryan, and Stephanie.

 

"The Hard Part"

THE HARD PART

AUGUST 2013

On the Wednesday I faced the actual procedure—the day my doctor planned to navigate a small camera through my colon as I lay half-naked on my side, an intravenous needle in my left arm, my brain swimming in chemicals—the two nurses in the operating room informed me that the hard part was already over.

And they were right.

On the previous day, my diet had been restricted to fluids only. After my morning coffee, I had eyed the clock on my kitchen wall until the prescribed hour of noon, when I swallowed a pair of Dulcolax laxative tablets with two full glasses of water, then followed up with another Dulcolax duo and two more glasses of water an hour later. Then I had proceeded to wait.

The instructions had said that the laxatives would prompt me to have a bowel movement in one to six hours, at which time I was to begin consuming a second round of laxatives. I was to drink a half-gallon of a blandly sweet concoction called the Half-Lytely Bowel Prep Kit. Cherry flavored. In the same way that cherry-flavored mineral water tastes like real cherries. I was to drink eight to ten ounces of the stuff every ten minutes until it was gone.

You do the math.

During this drinking spree, I was allowed to consume only clear liquids, nothing with any color and nothing that was not in liquid form.

I chose 7-Up, with which I chased my doses of Half-Lytely, hoping that the carbonation would cut through some of the Half-Lytely’s tongue-coating, wince-inducing nourishment. I swigged the soda, even though my stomach was swelling tight as the head of a snare drum, even though I craved solid foods instead, and even though my intestinal tract was gurgling loudly and churning painfully.

And when the laxatives cumulatively kicked in, I shambled to the toilet about every 20 minutes for about three hours to noisily and very wetly evacuate my bowels … until I feared I had nothing left to give. At about 11 p.m., I collapsed wearily onto my bed and slept almost immediately, waking at 6 a.m. and thinking of food I could not eat and liquids I was not allowed to drink until after my procedure, which was scheduled for noon.

It was a strange thing, being induced to empty my digestive passageway and then talk about it with a note-taking nurse while a needle-wielding nurse stabbed my arm for the I.V. It was strange, too, to be told to remove my pants and underpants, to leave on my socks and t-shirt, and to lie beneath one thin blanket on a wheeled hospital bed.

I don’t remember much after the sedative entered my bloodstream. I was told later that I had been cooperative and seemed as comfortable as one can be while being probed in such a manner. I don’t recall the entrance of the doctor. I just remember waking up, rolling from my side onto my back, having a nurse remove the I.V. needle and cover the hole in my arm with a small piece of white tape, and seeing the doctor return to report to me once I’d pulled my pants back on and dropped gently onto a chair next to the bed.

My doctor said that, overall, everything looked good, but that he did find some diverticula and one polyp, which he said was about a centimeter in diameter and had been removed and would be sent off to a pathologist to check for cancer. Finding that polyp, he said, was why procedures like this colonoscopy were done in the first place.

I have a family history—my father had prostate cancer and severe diverticulosis; my mother had diverticulitis. I am 55, and my age made it incumbent upon me to be screened for such problems in myself.

The pathology report a few days later was okay but not perfect. Patients with sparkly clean colons can placed on a screening schedule for every seven to ten years. Patients with polyps—even one like mine, which was precancerous and in a very early stage but too big to ignore—must accelerate their return trips to the Half-Lytely Bar & Grill. I’ll need to repeat the procedure in only three to five years.

I know I should be grateful for the knowledge I gained and the care of my physician. And I am.

But “bowel prep” is a miserable experience, and so my gratitude is tempered. In three to five years, I’ll once again await a procedure that virtually no one wishes to undergo but which truly arrives after the hard part is already over.

 

 

"Small Town, Big Blast"

SMALL TOWN, BIG BLAST

August 2008

The first blast shattered one wall of the propane company’s garage and office building and set the rest ablaze. Quickly, the adjacent home of company manager Paul Frickey was also in flames.

The second blast, which destroyed a tanker truck containing a thousand gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, blew Soldotna Fire Chief Harold Jackson off his feet nearly 30 yards away, and rocked the entire city of Soldotna with its concussive force.

Caught in a low-lying area between their nearby homes, Verona Wilson and Vera Howarth were caught by the ignition of the heavier-than-air gas and were burned about the legs, hands and face.

Students at Soldotna Elementary School, more than half a mile distant, had just been excused for the day by the 3:30 bell and were spilling out onto the playground when they heard the blast and saw the giant plume of black smoke fill the afternoon sky behind the leafless trees on the horizon.

It was Nov. 25, 1968, and less than a quarter-mile northeast along the Sterling Highway, Al Hershberger was at his television and electronics shop when everything blew.

“I was standing by the door,” Hershberger said. “My back was turned when it actually blew. And I immediately turned around and saw everything blowing up down there…. I saw the hood of what turned out to be a pickup flying across the road. And I saw big pieces of wood. Those turned out to be the garage door when I went over and looked at it. I saw those flying clear across the road.”

The heat from the conflagration was so intense that it melted power lines and knocked out electricity from Kasilof north to the outskirts of Kenai, and east all the way to Sterling.

Windows were blown out of nearby buildings, two 700-gallon tanks of propane were destroyed, and in the aftermath of the main explosions nearly 20 80-gallon tanks occasionally detonated like small bombs.

Volunteer firefighters, first from Soldotna and then from Kenai, began rushing to the scene within 10 minutes and were able to save Wilson’s Soldotna Store with jets of water from high-pressure hoses.

The problem had begun that afternoon when a local delivery driver for the Petrolane business—located ironically on what are now the grounds of the Soldotna Fire Department—pulled in with his small truck and connected his tank to the fuel line of the big tanker. After he had filled his own tank with propane, according to Hershberger, he “forgot to unhook the hose and drove away and tore the valve off the truck.”

“And all that propane leaked out (of the big tank), and it was laying on the ground,” he said.

Hershberger said he believes that the driver immediately knew what he had done because he turned around and came back to warn people in the area. Don Wilson (Verona’s husband) and others hurried to shut off pilot lights—anything that might create ignition—and everyone attempted to move away from the greatest concentration of the invisible fuel.

No one, Hershberger said, is really sure what triggered the initial explosion, but the fire from the first blast certainly set off the second, and then the sky filled with flames and smoke.

Remarkably, no one died in all the fiery chaos that followed, and Wilson and Howarth’s burns were the only injuries.

Perhaps even more remarkably, quick and risky work by the emergency-response teams prevented the scene from becoming much, much worse.

After volunteer firefighters had sprayed a second large tanker, Kenai Fire Chief Frank Wisecarver crawled beneath it and closed open valves to cut off the flow of fuel. Nearby were five additional 1,000-gallon tanks and an even larger tank containing 8,000 gallons.

It took several hours to quell the flames and begin to assess all the damage, and emergency teams labored well into the early winter evening. In the end, Wilson and Howarth spent time in a hospital, Howarth for the longer period since her burns were more severe.

The Frickey home was obliterated, and Marion Frickey visited the scene the next day, searching for any valuables that might have escaped the fire. Hershberger remembered that she “found a handful of melted coins,” and very little else.

Two days later, on Nov. 27, the local twice-weekly newspaper, The Cheechako News, featured a banner headline in type two inches high that proclaimed, “BLAST RAZES GAS FACILITY.” Photographs in that issue and the one of Nov. 29 showed buildings in flames, the silhouettes of firefighters at work, vehicles on fire, and plenty of smoldering remnants.

Early December issues featured advertisements for benefit dinners and activities to help the homeless Frickeys. And months later, a trial was avoided when Howarth and Wilson settled out of court with the Petrolane Alaska Gas Services Company.

 

"Man of the Mountains"

Harry A. Johnson (far right) with a party of hunters, 1904. (Photos courtesy of historian Gary Titus)

MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS

January 2009

By the time Harry A. Johnson heard the handcar moving toward him down the rails, he had walked 15 of the 20 miles to Seward from his mining camp on Victory Creek. Earlier in the day, he had been attacked by a brown bear, and now, using a shovel for a cane, he was working his way toward town to get some stitches for the nine bite wounds on his arms, legs and back.

Manually propelling the handcar were Johnson’s friends, Fred Beyer and Mat Schlosser, who applied the brakes and rolled to a stop alongside him. According to Johnson’s own account of the event, published in the 1961-62 edition of the Alaska Hunting and Fishing Guide, their conversation was brief:

“What happened to you?”

“Never mind. Get going to Seward and the doctor.”

And they did. Down the rails they traveled, dropping off their friend at the Hotel Sexton before calling on Dr. John Baughman, who came and “sewed up” Johnson’s wounds. By the time The Seward Gateway newspaper reported the incident five days later, on July 25, 1908, Johnson was recuperating at the Coleman House and said he was “feeling pretty well, though stiff and sore.”

Johnson, who was born in 1874 and was trained as a blacksmith, had come to Alaska from Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1904, to work for the Alaska Central Railway as a meat hunter. He and a crew of “mountain hunters” were employed to supply wild game—mostly moose and Dall sheep—for the tables of the men laying track north from Seward.

Over the next 60 years in Alaska, Johnson also subsistence hunted and trapped, prospected for gold, performed other seasonal work for the railroad, was a longshoreman in Seward, worked as a hunting guide in the Kenai Mountains, and became a renowned wildlife photographer, toting his treasured Graflex Speed Graphic camera with him almost everywhere he went.

Hope historian Diane Olthuis, who wrote about Johnson in Goldpan, Trapline & Camera, described him as “small and wiry,” perhaps 5-foot-6 and 120 pounds, with dark hair and a handsome face that featured a lean nose and high cheekbones. She said he was known widely as a fastidious man, who wasted nothing, spoke only when he had something worth saying, had gentlemanly manners, and was unbelievably tough.

Johnson's main cabin near Resurrection Creek.

According U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service historian, Gary Titus, Johnson was one of only 10 residents of Moose Pass in 1920, and the following year he constructed a cabin near Resurrection Creek, 18 miles south of Hope, and moved there. Although he built a home in Moose Pass in 1948, he returned to his mountain cabin and his traplines there until well into his 80s.

But on the afternoon of July 20, 1908, Johnson was a gold miner exploring a knoll  high in the countryside when he was startled by the sight of twin brown bear cubs lying in a patch of alders only about 25 feet away. The appearance of cubs, Johnson knew from experience, almost always meant a sow was nearby.

“I stand perfectly still and give the surroundings a careful, close scrutiny which yields no adult bear,” he wrote. “Where is the mother grizzly? I am sure she is somewhere on the knoll.”

He considered his situation: He was alone and unarmed. In one hand he held a shovel. The pack on his back held a prospector’s pick and a gold pan.

Suddenly, the sow materialized before him, immediately focusing on Johnson with her eyes wide and her nose wrinkling in alarm. A moment later she charged, and Johnson yelled, “Get back! Get back!” But she kept coming.

Johnson swung his shovel and struck the sow on the side of the head. She, on the other hand, swung a paw and cuffed Johnson on the side of his chest. As he went down, she stood over him, then bounded around him and growled before biting him five times.

“She suddenly left me and galloped up toward where the cubs were, squealing and growling all the time,” he wrote. “(Then) she came back again, still growling, and bit me four more times. Perhaps 30 seconds have passed since the bear came in sight, but she has been in continuous, fast action, and I am completely at her mercy.”

It was at this point, as the bear romped away again, Johnson said, that some part of his mind noticed that the sow’s breath smelled of berries.

He didn’t dwell long on the fragrance. Instead, he lay as still as possible, awaiting what he presumed was going to be a death blow from the agitated bear. But the sow did not return, and eventually he rose cautiously and headed back for camp.

“The bear didn’t shake me and didn’t inflict tearing bites,” Johnson wrote. “In the whole battle I received only one serious bite. The shock of it, however, stayed with me for years.”

Fortunately for Johnson, the shock was not enough to fog his common sense. After walking for an hour just to reach his camp at Victory Creek, he examined his wounds and decided that a doctor’s needle and thread were going to be required. A few hours later, he was on the handcart with Beyer and Schlosser, rolling noisily toward Seward.

Johnson's trapline cabin.

Johnson did not allow the mauling to prevent him from returning to the mountains. For nearly 30 years, he lived alone in the cabin he had built in 1921. From there, he ran an extensive trapline, hiking into town in the spring to sell furs and buy provisions for another year in the mountains. In 1926, southwest of his home, he constructed a trapline cabin that in 2000 was included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Olthuis reported that Johnson, who had only one working lung—perhaps due to a childhood illness— guided his last hunter in 1955, at the age of 80. He is said to have climbed a tree at age 85, and at age 86 to have made one final 23-mile hike in to his mountain cabin.

But in 1961, his body would no longer cooperate and he finally had to seek assistance. He asked John Kinda to take him on horseback to the mountain cabin, where Kinda said that Johnson “bawled like a baby,” knowing he would never see the place again.

In 1962, he sold the cabin to Cooper Landing guide Max Hamilton, and in 1963—55 years after he had struggled wounded from the mountains to get a ride into town—two neighbors gave Johnson another, final ride to Seward, to the Wesleyan Nursing Home.

He died on the morning of June 14, 1965, at age 90, in the Pioneer Wing of the Seward Hospital. And, as Olthuis said in her book, “An Alaskan era passed with him.”

 

Harry A. Johnson (with rifle) in his later years, in Seward. (Photo from Alaska Digital Archives)