Hippie Paradise - August 24, 2005
Hey y'all,
In Anchorage with a lull in my book tour schedule -
next round of dates not until September 12th and way
out of cashola, thank god for the credit card.
Joe was lured by the promise of a fishing job in
Valdez and he stayed while I drove on to McCarthy, and
by some miracle, did not get flattened by the road
leading to Hippie Shangri-la, the same road that just
happens to be hell on tires since it's rocky dirt
built over old train tracks - nice! Just before the
end of the road, I was tempted by the lure of
full-service cabins with VACANCY sign. Pulled in and
charged two nights for a yuppie cabin in the middle of
nowhere - I mean, laminate floors in McCarthy! Andy,
the keeper of the cabins, was very friendly and gave
me three eggs, freshly laid, with some bread and
butter for breakfast the next day, along with coffee.
I figured what the hell? this is a business trip, I
can write the whole thing off, treat myself to a
comfortable bed, a big tub and lots of privacy after
three weeks of camping, crashing on couches, and
sleeping in the Brown Beast, which is hanging in there
I'm happy to say.
The next day, went across the bridge and walked to
McCarthy, where I found out that the festival was in
Kennicott - five miles away. There was irregular bus
service, and a couple, Layton and Sharmon, from
Soldotna were on the bus with me. They were stocking
up on beer and camping equipment. When I said I
was in work mode, Layton asked if I was a writer. I
said yes, how did you know? And he said, you gotta
be. He was a writer for the Clarion, a local paper on
Kenai, and after telling him my story, he bought a
book and assured me that of course I would sell all
twenty as the bus running on peanut oil deposited us
at the Festival grounds in Kennicott.
Looking around me, I went into shock as the weight of
twenty books in my pack settled on my back.
There were about sixty tents set up in a gravel
parking lot with the ruins of the Copper mine and the
Kennicott Lodge perched on the hill above us.
Abandoned mining gear was laying everywhere in its
rusting glory and a homemade stage was set up
practically in the bushes. There were belly dancers
undulating wherever they could find space amongst the
rusting forgotten equipment, and people hanging out
wherever they could find space.
Turning around, the view from this scene looked like the other side of
the moon, terminal moraine that's too cold to progress
to the beginnings of forest because glacier ice is
three feet underneath it - but just thick enough to
cover the glacier, in uniform lines of silt in earthy
tones of grey, beige, red, depending on which valley
the glacier was carving through.
I looked at the homegrown festival - that was free, of
course, and my vision of a big field with a variety of
vendors was dashed. I muttered to the bus driver that
this was not what I expected.
"Well, what did you expect?" He quipped.
"I don't know, but it wasn't this."
Recognizing faces of people that I didn't know very
well, I had the feeling I was at a Girdwood party in
Kennicott and that this was not the right venue to be
selling books. A gal named Valerie confirmed that
suspicion a few hours later when she told me that she
and her boyfriend were also promoting a book, "Wild
Animus," written by an eccentric gazillionaire from
Colorado, that wanted people to read his book so much,
he was hiring promoters in every state to give his
book away. Last year, they had given away over 2000
books and this year they were handing out CD's with
him reading enticing segments of the book, so people
would actually read it.
"Is it any good?" I asked her.
"It's a piece of shit," she said. "It totally sucks."
This was definitely not the venue for what I had in
mind.
If you can't fight em, join them. I decided to just
enjoy the party and hitched a ride by motorcycle back
to the bridge and got my stuff out of the yuppie cabin
I wouldn't be sleeping in that night, and got my
camping gear for the party that went on until the wee
hours of the morning...
That's all for now, thanks for reading.
Montgomery
And this is where there are a lot of blanks to fill in. I met Ela in my second year in ODS along with Winter. She was living in Girdwood for the summer, and hitchhiked down to Seward. After camping in Seward and staying with Winter's father, Joe and I stayed with Ela in Girdwood in a tree house. And it was a tree house. There used to be a lot more, but the powers that be that want to turn another Vail type resort town tore down most of them. She said it was a squat that was passed down from person to person. She even lived there with a broken back, peeing in a piss bucket and even had a curious black bear coming up the steps to check it out. Incredible. If I hadn't gotten into a rather unpleasant situation with some dude in Girdwood, I probably would have stayed there more often. Who doesn't dream of living in a tree house when they were a kid. Later, I asked another Girdwood friend if she missed that town at all after moving to Fairbanks - y'all will meet her later - and she said: "No! That place is Never Never Land!" I could understand what she meant after staying in Girdwood for a bit and that party. There are a lot of Peter Pans and Tinkerbells there, as there are all over Alaska. It adds for a certain whimsical charm, but also immaturity...
And there was a bus running between McCarthy and Kennicott that ran on peanut oil. There was a sign in there I saw as soon as I got on that said: "WARNING: Contents are Changing the World." That takes a lot of balls to do that because that town really is as close to the middle of nowhere that you can get and still be connected to the road system. He must have been pretty determined.
Joe ended up showing up sometime that day. He said the fishing job was a bust and I found him when I went back to the cabin to get my stuff. He rode back on the bus with me, and later a drunken Sharmon snarled at him to get away from my tent, which was a sad affair, given that one of my poles was mysteriously left in the Beast. Ah, the travails of hurrying. I did another email on that one later just to record the details of that party because I didn't want to forget any of it.
By the way, Joe wanted me to inform everybody of what a love god rock star uber stud he really is. And truthfully, he has managed to charm quite a few lovely ladies, especially after a relationship with a polyamorous, tantric firedancing beauty from Hawai'i. He admitted she taught him a lot.
Thanks for reading.
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