Read Coming into the Country Online
Authors: John McPhee
Coming into the Country (14 page)
The capital committee got into the Twin Otter and flew back through the mountains toward the south. “A great place for grizzlies,” said Willie Hensley, looking over his shoulder.
In its many months of sorting possibilities, the committee had discovered that there were few places in Alaska that could meet the criteria of the search. By law, resulting from the terms of the initiative, they had to find a hundred square miles of land somewhere near a road and a railroad and in terrain appropriate for a new airport that would consistently experience negotiable weather. The land had to belong to the state, or, in any case,
to be available to the state for nothing. In addition, the committee and its consultants established standards of their own. Since weather and cold worsen with altitude, they would look for a site below two thousand feet. It should have, among other things, good soil, ample water, topography both practical and aesthetically appealing, relatively modest annual snowfall. It should not inconvenience resident wildlifeâshould not invade bear-denning grounds, salmon-spawning areasâand it should not be in zones of earthquakes or volcanism.
to be available to the state for nothing. In addition, the committee and its consultants established standards of their own. Since weather and cold worsen with altitude, they would look for a site below two thousand feet. It should have, among other things, good soil, ample water, topography both practical and aesthetically appealing, relatively modest annual snowfall. It should not inconvenience resident wildlifeâshould not invade bear-denning grounds, salmon-spawning areasâand it should not be in zones of earthquakes or volcanism.
A simple task. In Indiana. Corydon was the capital of Indiana until a new-capital-site-selection committee drew a statesize X on the map and noted where the legs crossed. The spot was in deep forest. Indians owned the land. A treaty took care of them. Indianapolis, Indiana.
This was Alaska, though, where people are even more marginal than plants, and the choice was truly complex. About a third of Alaska is above two thousand feet. Something like two-thirds is demarcated for the natives and the federal government. It would be unwise to build in an area of permafrost. Two-thirds of Alaska is underlaid by permafrost. Alaska has two railroads. One is twenty-six miles long. The other runs four hundred and seventy miles, from Sewardâa port on the Gulf of Alaskaâthrough Anchorage and on to Fairbanks. The Alaska Highway comes into the Interior from Yukon Territory. The rest of the state's highway system principally consists of two roads. One goes from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and the other, by a newer and more westerly route, goes from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Roughly speaking, the land that has been built upon, pipelined, or otherwise trammelled in Alaskaâall the land that is now taken up by towns, villages, cities, airports, trapper cabins, motels, roadsâconsists agglomerately of less than a hundred thousand acres. That leaves, untouched, nearly three hundred and seventy-five million acres. By almost any standards drawn from the North Temperate Zone, human settlement is still the next thing to nonexistent in Alaska.
Juneau, a relatively small town of eighteen thousand, is Alaska's third-largest “city.” The celebrated Trans-Alaska Pipeline is, in scale, comparable to a thread laid across Staten Island. With it, the “destruction of Alaska” may have begun, as some people will say, but utter wildernessâuncompromising, unhuman wildernessâis almost wholly what Alaska is now. So if a group of people had to choose a townsite near a road and a railroad, off permafrost and on fairly low but well-drained ground, and not inordinately far from the main pockets of existing population, nearly all of Alaska would recede from the conversation and by the facts the people would be ushered into the Susitna Valley.
Juneau, a relatively small town of eighteen thousand, is Alaska's third-largest “city.” The celebrated Trans-Alaska Pipeline is, in scale, comparable to a thread laid across Staten Island. With it, the “destruction of Alaska” may have begun, as some people will say, but utter wildernessâuncompromising, unhuman wildernessâis almost wholly what Alaska is now. So if a group of people had to choose a townsite near a road and a railroad, off permafrost and on fairly low but well-drained ground, and not inordinately far from the main pockets of existing population, nearly all of Alaska would recede from the conversation and by the facts the people would be ushered into the Susitna Valley.
The Twin Otter, coming out of the mountains, moved south above the Susitna, whose water, flowing swiftly, bore so much glacially pulverized rock that it was gray and glisteningly opaque, and appeared to be ready to set. The upper Susitna has cut a canyonâDevils Canyonâwhere rapids pile up almost to the scale of the Colorado; and then the currents spread out and braid their way among uncountable islands. The Susitna Valley âto a point more than a hundred miles above Anchorageâincludes the most northerly penetration in Alaska of land that is generally free from permafrost. The Alaska Railroad goes up the valley, as does the Anchorage-Fairbanks Highway, which was opened in 1974âsignificant marks, to be sure, of advancing humanity, but from the low-flying plane they looked in the forest like a slim ribbon and a set of sutures. An occasional roadhouse, cabin, or clearing appeared along the highway, and there were other cabins beside streams splaying out from the railway. A trainâLionel in appearance among the black lowland spruceâwas stopped near a stream in the undepoted wild. Someone was collecting supplies. Or getting off to go home. The railway serves many dozens of people who have abandoned the civilization the railway represents. The train, typically, drops them at a stream and they go in canoes or skiffs to cabins some miles away. They chose the cabin sites and staked them
out as “Open to Entry” land, which was available for low sums until 1973, when the program was at least temporarily stopped, pending the resolution of all the major and interlocking events in the subdivision of Alaskan land: final selection by the state of the one hundred and three million acres allotted to it in the Statehood Act, in 1958; final designation of intended useâparks, refuges, national wild riversâfor vast segments of federal lands; and selection by the natives of the tracts to be deeded to them. When the Open to Entry program was set up, recreation was what its creators had in mind. But a number of people who staked lots went to live on them year roundâto combat the winter, to live in wilderness, to kill and eat game, to trap fur, to simplify their lives and be relatively self-sufficient, albeit in some dependence on the Alaska Railroad. Making money was emphatically not their objective. They sought little more than permanent relief from the larger society. To place a city down among them would be to flick them from the earth. Willie Hensley and the committee, overhead, looked down over the spruce-and-hardwood forest. A couple of cabins were barely visible among the trees. Aspen leaves, yellow, were quaking in the fall air. “Too mundane,” Willie Hensley said as the Twin Otter moved on toward Talkeetna.
out as “Open to Entry” land, which was available for low sums until 1973, when the program was at least temporarily stopped, pending the resolution of all the major and interlocking events in the subdivision of Alaskan land: final selection by the state of the one hundred and three million acres allotted to it in the Statehood Act, in 1958; final designation of intended useâparks, refuges, national wild riversâfor vast segments of federal lands; and selection by the natives of the tracts to be deeded to them. When the Open to Entry program was set up, recreation was what its creators had in mind. But a number of people who staked lots went to live on them year roundâto combat the winter, to live in wilderness, to kill and eat game, to trap fur, to simplify their lives and be relatively self-sufficient, albeit in some dependence on the Alaska Railroad. Making money was emphatically not their objective. They sought little more than permanent relief from the larger society. To place a city down among them would be to flick them from the earth. Willie Hensley and the committee, overhead, looked down over the spruce-and-hardwood forest. A couple of cabins were barely visible among the trees. Aspen leaves, yellow, were quaking in the fall air. “Too mundane,” Willie Hensley said as the Twin Otter moved on toward Talkeetna.
A minor but handsome run of mountainsâthe Talkeetna Mountainsânow framed the valley with a six-thousand-foot ridgeline to the east. To the west, the land was at first low and then rose toward mountains beyond which were only a few specks of settlement in the five hundred miles to the Bering Sea. To the north, roughly forty miles distant now, was the topographical mural that closed off the Interior. Mount McKinley, veiled in snow haze, was fast removing itself to obscurity. The big mountain, sometimes described as the Weathermaker, creates its own integument, because it is so high and cold that when it interrupts flows of warm and often moist summer air it causes violent reactions: roiling clouds that form in a moment, sudden storms, gale-driven blizzards. High up the
mountain, the windchillâeven during the elsewhere-warm Alaskan summerâcan go down to (and beyond) a hundred below zero. From within its vapors, the mountain can emerge as swiftly as it disappeared, and when it is out only the distant curve of the earth can reduce its dominance, for it is the most arresting sight from forty million acres around. The Alaska Range elevates with a rapidity rare in the world. Its top is about two-thirds as high as the top of the Himalayas, but the Himalayan uplift is broad and extensive. If you were looking toward Mount Everest from forty miles away, you would lift your gaze only slightly to note the highest in a sea of peaks. Forty miles from McKinley you can stand at a bench mark of three hundred and climb with your eyes the other twenty thousand feet. The differenceâbetween your altitude near sea level and the height of that flying white mountainâis much too great to be merely overwhelming. The mountain is a sky of rock, seemingly all above you, looming. Until it takes itself away, you watch it as you might watch a hearth fire or a show in color of aurorean light. The provocative immensity of Mount McKinley seems to symbolize Alaska to many Alaskans. No wonder they would have a capital with the mountain much in view. Some of those Alaskans, as it happens, are Athapaskans, and their regard for the big mountain is understandably deeper (in time, in metaphor, in spiritual mystery) even than the regard of white Alaskans. The Athapaskans are not much impressed that a young Princeton graduate on a prospecting adventure in the Susitna Valley in 1896 happened to learn, on his way out of the wilderness, that William McKinley had become the Republican nominee for President of the United States. In this haphazard way, the mountain got the name it would carry for at least the better part of a century, notwithstanding that it already had a name, for uncounted centuries had had a name, which in translation has been written, variously, as The Great One, The Mighty One, The High One. The Indians in their reverence had called it Denali. Toponymically,
that is the mountain's proper name; and if a city were deliberately to seek the mountain and appear before it, the city might be Denali, too.
mountain, the windchillâeven during the elsewhere-warm Alaskan summerâcan go down to (and beyond) a hundred below zero. From within its vapors, the mountain can emerge as swiftly as it disappeared, and when it is out only the distant curve of the earth can reduce its dominance, for it is the most arresting sight from forty million acres around. The Alaska Range elevates with a rapidity rare in the world. Its top is about two-thirds as high as the top of the Himalayas, but the Himalayan uplift is broad and extensive. If you were looking toward Mount Everest from forty miles away, you would lift your gaze only slightly to note the highest in a sea of peaks. Forty miles from McKinley you can stand at a bench mark of three hundred and climb with your eyes the other twenty thousand feet. The differenceâbetween your altitude near sea level and the height of that flying white mountainâis much too great to be merely overwhelming. The mountain is a sky of rock, seemingly all above you, looming. Until it takes itself away, you watch it as you might watch a hearth fire or a show in color of aurorean light. The provocative immensity of Mount McKinley seems to symbolize Alaska to many Alaskans. No wonder they would have a capital with the mountain much in view. Some of those Alaskans, as it happens, are Athapaskans, and their regard for the big mountain is understandably deeper (in time, in metaphor, in spiritual mystery) even than the regard of white Alaskans. The Athapaskans are not much impressed that a young Princeton graduate on a prospecting adventure in the Susitna Valley in 1896 happened to learn, on his way out of the wilderness, that William McKinley had become the Republican nominee for President of the United States. In this haphazard way, the mountain got the name it would carry for at least the better part of a century, notwithstanding that it already had a name, for uncounted centuries had had a name, which in translation has been written, variously, as The Great One, The Mighty One, The High One. The Indians in their reverence had called it Denali. Toponymically,
that is the mountain's proper name; and if a city were deliberately to seek the mountain and appear before it, the city might be Denali, too.
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Talkeetna, the only community of any size in the upper part of the valley, voted sixty-nine to forty-two in favor of moving the capital. Talkeetna is a prime collecting point for climbers on their way to McKinley. I once saw a Japanese climber in Richard and Dorothy Jones's store there, buying a cabbage. It was a purple cabbage and somewhat larger than his own head, which was purple as well, in places, from contusions and sunburn, and probably windburn, suffered in his bout with the mountain. On his cheek was a welted wound, like a split in a tomato. Leaving the store, he walked out of town, ate his cabbage, and slept it off in a tent. I had asked Mrs. Jones what she thought of the idea of moving the capital away from Juneau, and she said she was all for it, but she did hope the new town would not be placed near Talkeetna. “Please may they leave this beautiful section of Alaska alone,” she said. “Nature is part of us. We moved here for the out livingâfor the river. The capital has to have big buildings, a superhighwayâand that takes care of the blueberry patches.”A genial person, easygoing and garrulous, she was somewhat beyond athletic weight. Her husband, wry and spare, smiled and nodded while she talked. “A new city, built from scratch in the bush, would be sterile,” she said. “The state will probably sell off land to meet some of the cost. I can't see anything of value coming out of a place where people go in with speculation in mind. Meanwhile, we're so naïve we'd be stepped on like bugs. Like June bugs. We're all neighbors here, and together. Your neighbor might need you to help put out a fire in his cabin. But Anchorage and Fairbanks are crooked. If you
don't wear pointed-toe boots and a Texas hat, you're not with it. And that is what would come with a capital here. The capital should go to Fairbanks or Anchorage. They're already ruined. But it goes in the bush because the cities are arch-rivals. If it comes here, it will be the end of this community as it stands.”
don't wear pointed-toe boots and a Texas hat, you're not with it. And that is what would come with a capital here. The capital should go to Fairbanks or Anchorage. They're already ruined. But it goes in the bush because the cities are arch-rivals. If it comes here, it will be the end of this community as it stands.”
Talkeetna was a random miscellany of log cabins, cabbage patches, some frame houses, house trailers, Quonsets, lettuceonion-carrot gardens, two or three roadhouses, and an inn from the first part of the century, with a dusty moose rack in velvet on the wall and old colored-glass shades on the hanging lights above the bar. There were two hundred and fifty gold and silver claims around Talkeetna once. Talkeetna has a Historical Society. Dorothy Jones is on the board of directors. Unlike most of her neighbors, she grew up in Alaska. Her father homesteaded, in the Matanuska Valley, nearer Anchorage.
“I was brought up here, too,” said her husband. “By Uncle Sam.” He, also, was for moving the capital, but he seemed just a little less concerned than his wife did for the environs of Talkeetna. He was a disaffected fisherman. Things had been better when Talkeetna was more isolated, when it was served only by the railroad and bush aircraft; but now, with the new highway, and Anchorage only a little more than two hours away, the fish had been beaten down and you couldn't find a rainbow more than twelve inches long.
Looking down from the Twin Otter at Talkeetnaâclose by the confluence of three rivers, where the Chulitna and the Talkeetna pile into the SusitnaâI could see the Joneses' place and, facing it, an old and ramblingly extended cottonwood-log cabin called the Roadhouse, and near that the small Quonset home of a bush pilot named Cliff Hudson. Climbers stay in the Roadhouseâgather there, go over and over their gear, and wait for the mountain to come out, or, at least, for weather promising enough so that Hudson (among others) can fly them to the Kahiltna Glacier, on the mountain's south side, landing on skis at seven thousand feet. A gravel airstrip runs from behind
Hudson's Quonset on out to the edge of the Susitna. I had once flown with him, not to the glacier but into the country around Talkeetna, looking for the dragon's teeth of capitals. Hudson will take anything that comes alongâtrappers and miners to their cabins, hunters, Oriental alpinists. Bearded, bespectacled, with tousled thinning curly hair, Hudson flew in ten-inch boots and a brown wool shirt that had seen a lot of time on his back. In fact, he appeared to have been
in
the bush instead of flying itâto have lost his plane there and to have just walked out. In 1948, he had come to Alaska (from the Pacific “northwest”) for all the great hunting and fishing, and he had become a bush pilot because it was “the only way you could get around.” He was disappointed, bitterly, with Alaskan progress. Would he voteânowâfor statehood? “Hell, no. They're ripping us off every way they can think of. It's bad enough just to have to feed all those politicians. We've got nine-tenths too many of them. They're a bunch of kids. It's just a big playpenâJuneau âat our expense. They argued once for eleven days over who would be the House Speaker.” Flying me around the valley, bumping along on the wind over the spruce and the high tundra, he said he did not really care now if a capital were to come springing up from the land below. The plan was “ridiculous” and “expensive,” but if a new city was to be built, it would be “O.K. anywhere.” He said, “The game is all gone, anyway. Those asses in Juneau won't let us hunt wolves from airplanes anymore. Three packs of wolves roam this area in winter and kill at least three moose a weekâsometimes that many in one day. The fishing is going downhill, too, like everything else up here. When I came up here, you could catch fish till your arm was tired. That's Montana Creek down there. Used to be good. The air is cooler beyond Montana Creek. If you're driving south in the winter and it's, say, ten below in Talkeetna, it's suddenly forty below when you cross Montana Creek, and you feel the car tighten upâthe steering gets stiff. Talkeetna is a little higher and warmer than the lower part of
the valley.” Montana Creek, having unglacial waters, was pebbly clear. A day or two before, I had caught a four-pound humpback salmon there.
Hudson's Quonset on out to the edge of the Susitna. I had once flown with him, not to the glacier but into the country around Talkeetna, looking for the dragon's teeth of capitals. Hudson will take anything that comes alongâtrappers and miners to their cabins, hunters, Oriental alpinists. Bearded, bespectacled, with tousled thinning curly hair, Hudson flew in ten-inch boots and a brown wool shirt that had seen a lot of time on his back. In fact, he appeared to have been
in
the bush instead of flying itâto have lost his plane there and to have just walked out. In 1948, he had come to Alaska (from the Pacific “northwest”) for all the great hunting and fishing, and he had become a bush pilot because it was “the only way you could get around.” He was disappointed, bitterly, with Alaskan progress. Would he voteânowâfor statehood? “Hell, no. They're ripping us off every way they can think of. It's bad enough just to have to feed all those politicians. We've got nine-tenths too many of them. They're a bunch of kids. It's just a big playpenâJuneau âat our expense. They argued once for eleven days over who would be the House Speaker.” Flying me around the valley, bumping along on the wind over the spruce and the high tundra, he said he did not really care now if a capital were to come springing up from the land below. The plan was “ridiculous” and “expensive,” but if a new city was to be built, it would be “O.K. anywhere.” He said, “The game is all gone, anyway. Those asses in Juneau won't let us hunt wolves from airplanes anymore. Three packs of wolves roam this area in winter and kill at least three moose a weekâsometimes that many in one day. The fishing is going downhill, too, like everything else up here. When I came up here, you could catch fish till your arm was tired. That's Montana Creek down there. Used to be good. The air is cooler beyond Montana Creek. If you're driving south in the winter and it's, say, ten below in Talkeetna, it's suddenly forty below when you cross Montana Creek, and you feel the car tighten upâthe steering gets stiff. Talkeetna is a little higher and warmer than the lower part of
the valley.” Montana Creek, having unglacial waters, was pebbly clear. A day or two before, I had caught a four-pound humpback salmon there.
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