Alcan Highway Adventure Day 9: Golden Promises

Sunday, August 7th 2022

What little sleep I manage to get during the short night doesn't last long. I wake at 5am up to silence. No rain. No wind. Just silence. I slither into pants and slide over the center console and into the drivers seat. Depress the brake. Push the start button.

More silence. Not even the click-click-click of the night before.

I put on shoes and step out of the car. Let Pilot stretch his legs and pee while I gather soap, towel, and freshly washed underwear. I walk through the morning light to one of the shower cabins. It's rustic inside. Wood trim. Moose print curtains. Paintings of snowy scenes. A theme that always represented Christmas in San Diego when I was a kid. In here it just represents Alaska.

I turn on the water and strip off my clothes. Step into the shower. The water is hot. Soothing, but not enough to assuage my anxieties over being stranded.

The lodge won't reopen until at least noon, maybe later if they aren't expecting anyone. The morning plods on slowly. I keep an eye on the Fresno caravan parked nearby. The woman I spoke to the day before steps out into the sunshine and looks around. I wander in her direction. I try not to rush, but by the time I get near she's already going back inside.

"Good morning!" I call out cheerfully. She doesn't hear me. Door swings shut behind her. I linger for an indecisive second. I really don't want to knock.

A little while later another door opens. An older man climbs out of a trailer, bag of garbage in hand. I watch from a distance as he fiddles with the handle on the bear-proof trash can. He can't get it open. I come over to see if I can help. It's a weird one. The latch is hidden deep inside the cover and you gotta push hard to release it. Bears up here must be pretty smart.

I ask him if he can give me a jump. He responds with a chuckle and a nod, blank smile like you give the soft-spoken woman when you don't hear what she says but want to pretend that you did. I'm familiar with that response. He starts to turn away. I ask again in a louder voice, reinforced by all the courage needed to repeat a request for help. He hears me this time. Oh, of course. It's no problem. They'll be leaving soon. He just needs to disconnect his hookups and drive around to my car.

Pilot has a great time while we wait. Romps around in the sun and sniffs the butts of the other two Fresno dogs. I wonder if either of them are his cousins.

The guy who gives me a jump is a farmer back in Fresno. Small farm. He's says it's about time to get back on the tractor. His wife is concerned for my wellbeing. She warns me to be careful out here. Asks how old I am. I always bristle internally at this question. A youthful appearance and demeanor doesn't feel like a virtue when you've struggled your whole life to be taken seriously. I conceal my defensiveness with joviality. Tell her I'm 41, that I've got a little experience and looks like I'm getting some more as we speak. She looks surprised and relieved. I'm grateful. Confidence from a caring stranger is a beacon of hope when you're two thousand miles away from home.

The farmer pulls up in front of me. I wait in the car while he connects the cables. Press the ignition button on his cue.

Nothing.

I'm going to be sick.

He disconnects the cables from my car. Fiddles with something on his battery.

"Ahhh, ok."

He taps the charging clamps together. They spark. He reconnects the cables on my end.

"Try it again."

I try again. The engine turns over, and my little orange landship purrs to life. I leap from the drivers seat. Jump up and down and clap my hands. Everyone is smiling. Pilot is smiling. I keep the car running. Not turning it off until I'm in the parking lot of the Keystone Hotel in Valdez.

The drive to Valdez takes two and a half hours. Ahead I can see golden promises of vacation sunshine. I chase it down a glistening road that steams and screams 80s with its hot magenta streaks of fireweed flowers.

Grey skies are gonna clear up, or the sun will come out tomorrow they said yesterday and lo and behold it did, or you are my sunshine, or summertime and the livin' is easy, or whatever makes you happy. I don't care. I'm sunward bound.

Or so I would have myself believe.

The closer I get to Valdez, the closer the clouds come to the earth. My heart considers sinking, but the striking vistas winding through Thompson pass and into the Keystone Canyon distract it from its self-pity. As the clouds churn and tumble through the peaks and valleys I catch glimpses of the Alaska that entices and seduces her visitors until they can't handle her siren call anymore and plunge headlong into her dark winters and stay forever.

It's just after 10am when I pull into the hotel parking lot. I shut off the engine. Sit for a moment in the stillness before turning it back on. It starts right up.

I'm too early to check in, the clerk at the front desk tells me. My room won't be ready until 3.

Curling-iron-sized ringlets of hair jiggle as she speaks. She's wearing a fringed shawl over an elaborate dress from another era. Her shoes have buttons. She could easily have stepped off the set of a wild west movie instead of out of the rain where she was vaping when I walked in the front door. I want to inquire about her fashion statement, but I hesitate. In Portland people wear weird shit all the time for no reason at all other than because they want to. Nobody asks questions. To do so could be considered rude in some situations. Maybe this is just her thing. That's fine.

In the lobby a taxidermy black bear is frozen forever on all fours. Do not touch with bare hands, reads a sign.

I drive two blocks to the auto parts shop. Inside the guy tells me he can test my battery for free. It tests out good, but he points out that it's the original from 2018. Doesn't have much longer to go. He wants to sell me a new battery. I pass on the offer but buy a portable jumper. It needs charging. I tell him I'm on the road, and don't have an extension cord or a place to plug it in. Ask if he wouldn't mind charging it for me. Sure, that's no problem. I can come back in a couple hours to pick it up.

I backtrack on the same road and park the car outside an outdoor gear store called The Prospector. I don't want to spend more money today but this rain has proven that my old rain shell is no longer waterproof. Inside I find a raincoat and a pair of lightweight, quick-drying pants that I will wear just about every day for the remainder of my trip.

Pilot and I find a hilly park called Dock Point. We hike to the top. Through the trees I can see the harbor. Beyond that, across Port Valdez, the Alyeska Pipeline. When I was 8 years old, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez left this port, bound for Long Beach, California. It only made it as far south as Prince William Sound before running aground on a reef, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the sea. Recovery from the spill took decades. Some animal populations never fully recovered.

My feelings around oil are mixed. I like my car. I put gas in my car to make it go. But when my car goes, it exhales carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as do billions of other vehicles and factories in quantities too high for trees keep up on their job of cleaning up the air. I love this planet, but I'm trashing it along with everybody else. Collective suicide.

If I could electric, I would, but working class wenches like me can't afford electric cars that can go anywhere other than to work, and affordable hybrids don't get much better gas mileage than my car does on those long highways I like to drive on.

I am trapped in this system. I don't like supporting the oil industry, but I won't stop using oil. I deserve to see the world as much as anyone else does. I deserve to follow my dreams. So I pump in the gas and pump out the fumes that raise the global temperature a little higher each year just so I can get up here and see the glaciers before they melt.

---

A couple hours is up. I pick up my portable battery charger. I'm not sure where to go next. Maybe park at the hotel and take a nap. I pull onto Egan Avenue. Or try to, anyway. The car in the driveway in front of me is parked. Turned off. Driver just sitting there. I'm not sure what's going on but I don't honk. I'm not from here. I go around the car and pull into the street. Once there I get a wide view of empty road lined with people. Whole families, standing around, waiting. Waiting for what? Suddenly I remember hearing the word "parade" in a conversation between the clerks inside The Prospector. I roll down my window and shout to a man on the side of the road.

"Is there a parade? Am I the parade?"

He laughs. Says something I can't hear over the din of the other spectators. Can't hear over my anxiety. I hurry down the road and pull into the hotel parking lot, which is right on the corner of the staging area for the parade that is going to start oozing down the wet road any second now.

My car safely parked and out of the way, and my self safely bundled in a new coat that will effectively protect me against the current elements, I gather camera and dog and join the other spectators.

I'll learn later that the parade is part of an annual week-long celebration in Valdez called Gold Rush Days, honoring the city's history and, according to the website, its present and future and children. You put that all together and it makes just a little more sense as to why everyone in the parade is flinging candy at kids.

I watch in fascination as maybe a quarter of the population of the small town drifts past. Candy and kids everywhere. People tossing floppy frisbees into the crowd. A woman from the power company handing me a neatly packaged rain parka, which I accept with a feeling of foresight. Police brigades, breweries, bears, politicians, Elvis...

The commotion of music and candy-crazed children upsets Pilot. I take him back to the safety of the car and return just in time to see a flock of golden retrievers float by. A young woman in a fuzzy dog costume walks ahead of the team, handing out stickers.

"Can I have a sticker?" I call out over the crowd. She can't hear me through the five inches of fuzz on her head. The current of the parade pulls her away.

I chase her down.

The parade ends and I check the time. It's after 3. My room is ready.

Inside a different clerk checks me in. The woman in the wild west dress is nowhere to be seen, but no matter. My questions about her attire have been answered.

The hallways are narrow inside the hotel. I feel like I'm on a ship, minus the rocking and the pitching that comes with a stormy day like today.

I haul in some gear and a little dog. Change into leggings, new pants, dry socks, and hiking boots. Fill a bag with peanuts and kibble and stuff it onto the pocket of my new raincoat. Head back outside with Pilot to explore the docks.

I feel numb. No sense of the awe and wonder and excitement at being in a new place. I'm tired. Rattled. Scared. The experience of having a dead car made me realize just how vulnerable I am on this journey. Just how much control I don't have. And it's raining. It keeps raining. It won't stop fucking raining and I can't fucking see anything. I'm mad. I'm sad. And I miss my crows. It's only been a week. I have three more weeks of this.

How the fuck am I going to do three more weeks of this shit?

The rain falls hard. People out walking are hidden under parkas and umbrellas. Nobody sees that I'm crying. Nobody sees me. I am invisible.

Until I decide to let myself be seen by the people that bring me the most joy.

I don't know how they do what they do, the corvids. Or how I do what I do. It's not just about the food. We are strangers to each other, but they come so close. The call to me. They call their families over to me. It's only been ten minutes but we go way back. Old friends, maybe. Since the dawn of time. Since a thousand past lives.

I can always go home. If I am tired or homesick or just soaked through I can always call it quits and take the next road south.

But I won't. I know I won't.

The sky lightens up for a few minutes. Emerald greens glow against a sulky grey.

Dinnertime approaches. My belly rumbles in rhythm with the rain as it hammers down on the roof of the car. I don't want to cook in the downpour, but I don't have a choice. Dining out is not in the budget, nor is risking an allergic reaction that will keep me tethered to the toilet for three days. There are no covered picnic tables available save for the one down the road where a bunch of older dudes are hanging out and drinking beer. But no matter. I am a resourceful human being. I grab my free rain parka and rig up the trashiest, most ghetto-looking, ugly ass wtf-are-you-trying-to-look-homeless rain fly and cook dinner in the car.

Then I go home and get the dog warm and dry and get myself warm and dry. I open up the laptop and write and write and write until it gets dark, which doesn't happen until well after midnight.

I climb under the covers. Pilot climbs in with me. I turn off the lights.

The window is open. The rain, nemesis and dear old friend, she sings me to sleep.

---

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Read Day 10.

Read Day 8.

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