Thursday, September 27th, 2007

(Exactly two years after I last left Alaska.)

“Hi!” Mike shouted into the darkening wilderness as he and I walked down a narrow, gravel, mountain road, “My name’s Mike!”

We had been walking for a half hour and were almost out of daylight. If we couldn’t make it back to civilization when darkness fell, all we would have for illumination would be my phone’s screen. With no cell signal, my new Blackberry would be reduced to nothing more than a very expensive, low-power flashlight.

“And my name’s Clarence!” I shouted in response.

To our right, the forest ascended into the sky, occasionally pierced by streams of snowmelt trickling down the side of the mountain on which we walked. To our left, the forest fell away and revealed other mountains in the distance, only partially obscured by trees at the roadside. The ground rolled almost straight down, and the streams of water from above eventually terminated in a small but violent river below.

Mike continued, “We’re with the National Theatre for Children, and we’re here to present a show called…” We both simultaneously shouted, “Mad About Money! Pay Yourself First!”

It’s late September. Days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping, and grizzly bears are feeding on the salmon which run through local rivers and streams. Mike speculates that, this late in the season, the bears are getting more desperate to get food before winter arrives. He had just seen Grizzly Man, a movie about Timothy Treadwell, who was a nutjob from the lower 48 who decided to live among grizzly bears. He actually succeeded for years, but he stayed a little too late in the season one year, and a desperately hungry bear decided to eat him. Mike had consequently developed a definite case of bearanoia.

To ensure that we wouldn’t startle any bears, we made continuous noise, just like the Park Rangers tell you. After a little while, our clapping and cries of ”Hey, bear!” gave way to a line-through of our show – the show we were currently missing, because we were stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with no transportation, no cellphone signal, no supplies, no food, and no shelter. I wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

You can probably figure out that we didn’t get eaten. But I suspect that, if there were any bears in the vicinity, they are now aware of how to better handle their finances.

Earlier that afternoon

After standing on the shore, staring in awe at humpback whales breaching in the distance, Mike and I noticed that we still had a couple more hours to kill. Our next school, Mt. Edgecumbe, had two shows back to back that evening. We would arrive between 6:15 and 6:30 PM for a 7:00 PM show. What other amazing Alaskan things could we see in Sitka between now and then? we asked ourselves.

The Raptor Center, where we could see bald eagles up close, would be closing in minutes, but we remembered seeing brown road signs (you know, the kind that mark “sites of interest”) pointing to Blue Lake Reservoir, a water source for Sitka. Further signs indicated the presence of hiking trails and campgrounds on the way. We decided to check it out. Scenic drives had become a standard passtime on our tour. We would have just the right amount of time to drive up to Blue Lake, look around for a bit, then head straight to the school.

We turned off the highway onto Blue Lake Road, which was a narrow gravel road that wound up the side of a mountain. The views were great, there were numerous waterfalls, and we couldn’t wait to see the lake. We came across several other motorists on their way down the mountain, and we saw a lone backpacker venture off towards the hiking trails and campgrounds. Mike and I wished we had the time and the gear to do the same.

As we neared the lake, the road straightened out and granted us a spectacular view of the mountains across the water. We couldn’t see the water, though, for all the trees. We came around a switchback, and the road suddenly steepened to a near 45 degree angle. There was no room to turn around (there had been a little gravel patch just yards earlier where we could’ve parked or turned around), and we figured there must be a way to turn around at the lake. We were accustomed to seeing little interpretive signs, benches, and parking areas at these kinds of places.

We continued down the incline, fearing that our rented Chevy Malibu would be unable to make the climb back up. We came around another bend to see water. Just water. Nowhere to park or turn around, no alternate routes out of there, no nothing. The road just dead-ends into the water, like a boatslip. This is when we got worried.

Sure enough, the Malibu couldn’t get enough traction on the steep, moist, dirt road to climb back up. We tried for half an hour to extricate our rental vehicle and only succeeded in getting it closer and closer to the water’s edge. We even found two tire-width planks of wood nearby that we were sure would help. We wedged them under the drive wheels and hoped that the tires would gain traction on them, but all we did was burn more rubber and shoot the planks out behind the car.

6:30 PM — Our scheduled arrival time at the school.

We have no other options, so we start walking. We left our set, props, and costumes, and my camera bag and accessories in the car, locked it up, and abandoned it. We started our trek back into town, carrying only my video camera (to document the comedy or tragedy that would unfold), our impotent cellphones, and our NTC binder (which had all of the pertinent documentation related to our show and tour).

The sun had already gone behind the mountains, and we were fast losing the light of the evening sky. Mike was scared of bears. After my five month tenure in a remote part of Alaska in 2005, I felt confident that we wouldn’t have to worry about bear attacks (as long as we were smart about it), but I was scared that we might not make it back before it got dark.

On the way up the road, we had seen a cross and an arrangement of flowers and other items memorializing a local girl who had driven off the mountain and killed herself in 2003. On the way down, it was even more creepy and ominous than on the way up. I thought back to the week we just had, then further back to my time in Alaska exactly two years before, and I thought about everything in between. Strange coincidences, amazing experiences, and a definite cyclical pattern to it all. And hey, the film adaptation of the book Into the Wild, which Foldy had told me about in Skagway, was being released the same time we were out here! I thought it would be quite poetic and dramatically appropriate if we got eaten by bears, fell down a mountain, or died of exposure in the wilds of Sitka. I kept it to myself.

We finally hit pavement around 7:10 or 7:15 PM. There was a large water-bottling facility at the foot of the road. We walked the chainlink perimeter and saw no one. There were a few vehicles, but no people, and the place was locked up tight. We were worried that we’d have to keep walking down the highway to make it to town, miles away. We heard a car door close, and saw a young woman walking on the other side of the chainlink.

“Hey!” we shouted, trying our hardest not to look like lunatics. She came over to the fence, and we told her our predicament. She couldn’t get us into the front office to use a landline, but she offered the use of her cellphone. While mine was still useless, hers had a bar or two, so I tried using her phone to call the school. Someone answered, but the call was immediately dropped. She said we might be able to get inside the complex near the employee quarters around back. We walked back there, but found no means of entry.

Completely furious at our lengthening series of let-downs, we were turning back towards town, when Mike stopped. “I hear a car,” he said. I heard it too, and I looked up to see a glimmer of headlights coming down the mountain.

It was now dark. Actually dark. And it was starting to rain. At least we had found the highway, but we weren’t out of the woods yet (literally and figuratively).

We ran as fast as we could, trying to catch the truck at the intersection, before it could drive away down the highway. The truck, Mike, and I arrived at the Stop sign at precisely the same moment. We explained our situation to the driver, and he offered to drive us back to our hotel. We had to ride in the bed of his truck, but we didn’t care.

The freezing raindrops and wind battered us as the truck sped down the highway along the shoreline. Mike and I sat with our backs to the mountainside and looked out over the water. We could vaguely make out the other islands and mountains, and remembered how only a few hours earlier, we were watching humpback whales out there. We laughed incredulously at the week we were having.

“Well, we finally got our hiking in!”

“We have officially had an Alaskan adventure!”

The truck pulled into the Super 8 parking lot. We hopped out, thanked the driver, and dragged our wet, cold, angry, and traumatized selves into our hotel room. I was certain we were getting fired.

We called the school and explained what happened. They would get in touch with NTC about possibly rescheduling for the next day. Oh, and great news: Our client had been there! (We’re paid for by corporate sponsors, and the outfit funding our Alaska tour was the Alaska Credit Union League.) Shit. We are so fired.

We called Avis about our rental car. Their roadside assistance could tow it, but I’d have to pay for it, because it’s apparently a violation of the rental agreement to drive a rental car on an unpaved road. Oops. I opted to call my insurance company instead.

My insurance company also said I’d have to pay for the tow myself. Fine, I thought, what choice do I have? They were going to call three local towing companies and call me back. When they got back to me, they said they only found one guy willing to do it — a guy named Pat – but the clutch was out on his tow truck and wouldn’t be fixed until at least 10:00 AM the next morning. In an effort to help me out of this situation, the agent on the phone told me that the car is in a high-vandalism area (!). The last car that got stuck out there was torched — Memorial Day Weekend of this year. Oh, shit! I had vivid images of locals getting their kicks by destroying a rental car that someone was stupid enough to bring to Blue Lake.

The agent went on to explain that, fearing for the welfare of the vehicle, I could call the police. She explained that the police would have a company contracted with them, and that it would be that towing company’s first priority to respond to their request. In a nutshell, if I call the police, they would have their own guy, and he’d have to do it ASAP. And, the agent continued, I could submit the receipts for reimbursement. Wow, I thought, that sounds like a great plan! It gets done AND I don’t have to pay for it? Yay!

But this was Sitka, Alaska.

I called the police, and the woman who answered had no idea what I was talking about. “Yeah, I mean, we’ve got a couple guys we use.” She paused. “Well, no, just one…the other one had a death in the family, so only one of ‘em is runnin’ now.” She gave me his name and number and told me to just call him myself. The going-through-the-police plan was a bust.

I called the guy to whom the police referred me, and he expressed his misgivings about doing it at all. Apparently, he was fairly new to the towing business, and he yanked the bumper off the last car he tried to pull out of that spot. He was unwilling to go out there that night, but he could go out the following day if I really wanted. He also highly recommended I call Pat (the guy whose clutch was out).

After a few more phone calls (the “phone call” portion of this story has gotten too long already), it was finally determined that our guy Pat would retrieve the Malibu once he got his truck fixed, and my insurance company would indeed cover it. Yay! We only hoped that the car and its contents would survive the night. And we were still without transportation. We had a show the next day at 1:00 PM. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

Friday, September 28th, 2007

At 4:23 AM, NTC called me (they were three hours ahead of us) and authorized us to rent a second vehicle for the day. That way, we could do our other shows while we waited for the Malibu to get towed.

Not wanting to show our sorry faces in Avis again until we had the Malibu back, we walked down to a small, local auto service place and rented a fifteen-year-old Honda Accord for a mere $42. It was a beater, but at least it wasn’t stuck at the bottom of a mountain road. We drove the rickety Accord back out to Blue Lake to retrieve our stuff from the Malibu.

Vivid, terrifying visions of a burned vehicle and destroyed NTC set ran through our minds as we retraced our steps from the night before. Anxiety and shame filled us, and I was not only expecting us to get fired, but also to be financially liable for a new Chevy Malibu and a Mad About Money set.

This time, we made sure to park the Accord in the little gravel area before the steep descent into the lake. Incidentally, Pat the tow truck guy told me they used to have signs at the place we got stuck that said, “4×4 vehicles only.” But people kept shooting them, and they got tired of replacing them. Brilliant.

When I saw the completely intact, undamaged Malibu sitting where we left it, covered in dew and gleaming in the morning sun, I wanted to cry. It was unsettling to be back there again, and it prompted new waves of shame and anxiety, but we were overjoyed that we dodged the vandalism bullet. Things were beginning to work out okay.

We dragged the set and props up the incline and tossed it into the trunk of the Accord. We were a functional troupe once again. Mike turned the key, the engine started, and just as we were heaving a sigh of relief, it died.

The Accord fucking died.

One hundred feet away from the Malibu, we were suffering another vehicular casualty at Blue Lake. Mike and I could only stare and gape at each other. Blue Lake is a cursed, evil place. It didn’t just have a bad vibe; it had a disaster guarantee. We would have to relive last night’s “adventure” all over again. At least it was daylight this time.

Mike tried to start the Accord again. Again, it died.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll give it a minute. So we don’t flood it.” He stepped out of the car and lit a cigarette. He had been trying to quit smoking during our tour, but had fallen off the wagon.

“How long should we give it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It might be fine now. But I’ll do it when I finish this,” he said, indicating his cigarette. “This is a good hourglass.” When he finished the cigarette, he tried again.

And it started. And stayed running. We cheered and headed back into town.

On the way, we spotted two bald eagles perched on trees by the side of the road. We stopped and admired them for a moment. We thought about parking and taking pictures, but got intensely paranoid, and we continued on our way.

Regaining Equilibrium

Mt. Edgecumbe had declined to reschedule, so we only had one show to do in Sitka on Friday: Blatchley Middle School. The show went very well, and the Alaska Credit Union League rep in attendance seemed okay about the lost show. We actually joked around a lot and talked about lots of other things (including Katrina — a friend of his went down to gut houses). He was a cool, funny guy, and I almost wanted to invite him to grab a bite to eat with us. But I didn’t want to seem like we were kissing ass to make up for our mistake.

Mike and I went straight from the school to Pat’s shop to pick up the Malibu, but it wasn’t there. Pat’s truck had been fixed, and he managed to collect the Malibu unharmed, but the other guys in the shop told us that Pat insisted upon bringing the car directly to Avis.

We were happy to hear that it was towed and undamaged, but we needed to fill the gas tank and clean the Blue Lake Road dirt out of it before returning it; otherwise, we’d be looking at hefty fees. We went to Avis, where I begged for the car back. Thankfully, they let us have it back, but we had to clean the dirt out of the carpet or they’d charge us cleaning fees. We eagerly agreed to their terms, and we managed to successfully clean it at a gas station, resulting in no additional charges. We totally lucked out where Avis is concerned.

We returned the Accord, which managed to stay running the rest of the day. After apologizing to the Malibu for what we put it through, we drove it into town to shop, eat, and forget the previous 24 hours. Walking around the shop-lined streets, I found that downtown Sitka reminded me of Skagway, only bigger.

All of the stores were unloading their seasonal tourist merchandise at super low prices, and I took advantage. I loaded up on cheap Alaska souveniers just as I had in Skagway two years earlier. I bought an Alaska tote bag for Kat and filled it with a keychain, a chocolate bar, kitschy Soapy Smith and Klondike Kate soaps, a Raven’s Brew coffee mug to replace her old broken one from Skagway, and moose socks. Mike bought stuff for his girlfriend as well.

We stopped at the Westmark Inn to eat. I remembered the Westmark in Skagway as a grade-A doucheteria, with mediocre food and obnoxious people, but this one was mostly empty. As we pored over our menus, Mike and I realized that we hadn’t eaten at all since lunch at the Bayview the previous day. We had been running entirely on adrenaline and never thought to eat. Now, though, we were starving.

What the hell, we figured. We have one meal to blow our per diem for today. We splurged. I ordered an Alaskan Amber, and we split calamari, an order of beer-battered halibut and huge steak fries, and a pound of King Crab. During my time in Skagway, I never did get to eat King Crab, so this was my first time. The meat we pulled out of that thing was enormous and Jesus Christ, was it delicious. Everything was delicious.

There were a million ways our situation could have gone very, very wrong. I had spent a day operating in focused, adrenaline-fueled, crisis mode, trying to deal with what was happening between us and Sitka and between us and our employer. We were tremendously grateful that everything worked out as well as it did, especially considering how much influence Murphy’s Law had in our situation. I was still nervous about what NTC would think of us, but as it turns out, they still like us, and we will be working with them again.

Mike and I sat in the Westmark, feasting on life-changingly good Alaskan seafood with bags of gifts for our girlfriends at our sides. I stared out the window at the mountains and the pickup trucks driving by with huskies in the back, and missed Skagway. Hard. Our next stop after this meal would be the airport, so I made sure to get a good, long last look.

Our plane was delayed about an hour and forty minutes. We left the airport and spent the extra time driving up and down the highway and looking around — avoiding dirt roads, of course. Night fell. We returned to the airport, dropped off the Malibu, and boarded our plane. I said goodbye to the Tongass National Forest, and we left Sitka. We would stop in Juneau, then continue on to Anchorage. Mike and I would sleep in a Microtel for a few hours that night, then hop a plane from Anchorage to Minneapolis, nonstop.

Night

In the air that night, flying above the cloud cover, I gazed out the window to admire the stars. I cupped my hands around my face to block the glare from other passengers’ reading lights and watched the waves of pale blue clouds roll beneath us. The Big Dipper sat in the night sky above.

As we neared Anchorage, I saw occasional snowy peaks jut up through the clouds. I also noticed a hazy line of clouds well above the cloud cover, and farther away. After a few moments, I began to realize that the haze was not a line of clouds. I cursed myself for not thinking to look for it as soon as we were airborne.

It was the Northern Lights.

It glowed a faint, dull green. Occasionally, parts of it would ripple gently. You had to unfocus your eyes and look slightly away from it to really make it out, but there it was. If I hadn’t already been cupping my hands around my eyes to see the stars, I wouldn’t have been able to notice it at all.

In addition to King Crab, the other thing I never got a taste of in 2005 was the Aurora Borealis. On this trip, due to the cloud cover, Mike and I missed any opportunity to see them. But on this, our last night in Alaska, having risen above the cloud cover, I finally got to see it unobstructed.

The closer we got to Anchorage, the brighter and more active it became. I played E.T. theme music on my iPod and watched the green light and color intensify. A second line of lights appeared behind the main one, and both lines rippled a little bit more. I could see it arc all the way across the sky, from one end of the horizon to the other, curving along the magnetosphere. I tried to get photos using a super long exposure, but they didn’t come out.

Unfortunately for Mike, he was asleep in the window seat on the opposite side of the plane. Had he been awake, he wouldn’t have been able to see it anyway, since he would’ve been facing in the opposite direction. I let him sleep. I looked around and didn’t see a single other person looking out the window. I seemed to be the only person on the plane observing the Northern Lights.

I kept it to myself.