Looking for Alaska (66 page)

A line of willows was ahead.

Mike threw up his hand and stopped us. “Be real quiet now, we're almost to the creek.”

We came to the creekbank; the water was about five feet below. Still shielding us from a clear view of the creek were the willows. Mike threw up his hand again and motioned us toward him.

He whispered, “Look up there.”

To our right, standing in the narrow and shallow creek, was the largest bear I had ever seen. It looked about twice the size of a large black bear. Its fur was golden brown and glistened in the sun. It was spawning season; we could hear salmon splashing, driving themselves up the clear creek. Because there were so many, it sounded like something much larger, something charging. We could also see many of the salmon's bright red backs poking out of the shallow water as they swam.

At first the bear was ambling along the creek. Then, with no warning, it came running almost right to us. Chasing a salmon, it stopped and grabbed it.

Then another bear, more than twice the size of the first, stepped slowly off the bank into the creek. It seemed to stretch from one side of the creek to the other. Oh, God. She or he—probably she—was no more than seventy-five feet away. The “smaller” one was just twenty-five feet from us. I could hear the bones of the salmon being crunched as the smaller one ate.

Mike now had his gun off his shoulder and ready. He turned just enough to look in our eyes and whispered, “Do not say anything. Do not move.”

A third brownie, about the size of the first, came into the creek right behind the enormous one. Must be a mother and her twin two-year-old cubs. The mother crossed the creek to the other side and disappeared. Had she smelled us and was now stalking us? What I felt to be my last seconds on earth slowed to freeze-frame after freeze-frame. I remembered some advice I'd gotten once, supposedly as a joke. If you go for a walk where there are brown bears, always go with at least one person you can beat running. I began to try to figure whom out of this group I could beat down the trail. These bears can run as fast as a quarter horse. If all three chased us, I'd have to outrun three of these guys!

The second cub ran down the creek toward us. The bears moved with terrorizing speed and power; I now understood how they could be lying down on a kill one second and on top of you the next.

Then the big mother reappeared. All I could see was her incredibly wide, golden brown head. She was standing on our trail, but just across the creek. She could be on us in two ground-swallowing leaps.

I remembered what Mike had said about why it was especially bad to run into a mother and her twin two-year-old cubs. A cub could see or smell us and run up to investigate. If they attacked one of us—swiped and knocked us down or bit onto our heads—and we had to shoot it, then, as Mike said, the worst hell would break loose. The mother would charge us, perhaps the other twin too. Mike said he didn't ever want to have to find out how he would respond in that situation.

The mother bear headed into the creek. We were all frozen in our spots. Mike, no more than twenty feet from her, had his shotgun ready. I heard a bone-crunching sound, then she stood up, and all I could see was the back of Mike's head, her head, and a salmon in her jaws.

She dropped back down out of sight. Then we could hear a terrible splashing sound coming from our left. The two cubs were chasing each other back up the creek, or was something chasing them? Hobo had said that the brownies get in awful fights on the creek and that males could easily kill and eat these cubs.

Then, the mother stood up again. She seemed to be looking right at us through the cover of the willows. Just as quickly, she dropped back down. Had she seen us? Had she caught our scent and was circling around to attack us from behind? I heard more splashing sounds, louder than before. All three of them were running up the creek, back where they had come from.

Hobo touched my back and I almost jumped over the willows and the creek and the moon.

“I've been living in Alaska since 1972, and that's as close as I've ever come to death by bears.”

“Did anyone take a picture?” Rusty asked.

“I did,” Gerry said.

“Mike, we are turning around, right?” I asked.

“Nah. I want to take you to the top of the hill by the spring, so we can look back at the lake.”

We crossed the creek on top of a fallen log. On the other side I asked Mike why the bears didn't see or sense us. He licked his finger and held it in the air.

“What little breeze there is was blowing into us and away from them. They never smelled us, which was a good thing, believe me.”

We got back to Mike and Linda's lodge around 10
P.M
. I lay in bed and thought about our little “after-dinner walk” to the creek. I remembered portions of it as vividly as any experience I'd had. I felt more alive in certain seconds than in whole months of my life, a life that has been used by my readers as a model of adventure and self-determination. I could not fall asleep. It was not being afraid that kept me awake; it was because I felt so alive. I felt the early groanings I have come to recognize as internal messages drawing me to a place. Lying in bed that night, thanks to Hobo and Mike and that walk, I was getting the feeling that Alaska was a place I would need to explore.

That hike was more than three years ago. Tonight was a time to celebrate life and Alaska and that most of our family was together again. Hobo was master of this ceremony. He was tuning his guitar, about to begin. He plays so hard that people lay bets on how many strings he will break in one night.

Hobo's done about all there is to do in Alaska. He built his own log cabin on the Kenai Peninsula. He's been a commercial fisherman, he ran for mayor of Homer. He has composed some of the best songs ever written about Alaska. He's been a cowboy on one of the few ranches in Alaska. He and his wife, Cyndi, have lived off the land. Hobo's been around enough to benefit from countless rings of the bell in the bar. When the bartender rings the bell, someone who has just come in with a large load of king crab or halibut or returned from a month in the oil fields of the North Slope is buying a round. He's an antique-book collector; he is a student of comparative religion.

As soon as Hobo tuned his guitar, the audience would begin making requests. Hobo always looked for Julianne or Luke right away, knowing they would have to leave. Julianne requested “The Iditarod Song.” The whole bar would stop what they were doing and sing along to Hobo's Alaskan classics. In the best sense of the word, being at a Hobo performance was like being at a far-out adult summer camp. Most people in Alaska don't seem to worry about being hip; if it's genuinely good, that's enough.

I watched Julianne as she sang every word along with Hobo:

Well, way up in Alaska, the state that stands alone

There's a dog race run from Anchorage into Nome

And it's a grueling race

With a lightning pace

Where the chilly winds do wail

Beneath the northern lights

Across the snow and the ice

And it's called the Iditarod Trail.

College students, couples, people covered with eagle tattoos, boat captains, white-haired folks—we were all singing, waiting especially for the chorus. Mike and Linda Sipes were here tonight too. They remembered when Hobo wrote this famous song.

“Dad,” Luke said, hitting my arm, “here comes the chorus.”

The noise of the bar's many conversations died down and the people switched to singing the chorus:

I did, I did

I did the Iditarod Trail.

After the kids had their sodas and a few Hobo songs, I ran them back to our apartment. When I returned, Hobo was doing Dylan's “Forever Young.” Then he performed some German drinking songs that were sing-alongs. Hobo played a song he wrote for his wife, Cyndi, called “Backwoods Girl.” He yodeled. If people had told me pre-Hobo that I would like yodeling, I would have told them they were nuts. Hobo's so original, he's just right for Alaska, and that's why we love him.

I would make my request before he got the place in high gear. His job is to get the place rowdy, good rowdy, and keep it that way. My request was too reflective for later in the night when everyone would be howling and dancing and spinning their partner. I always asked for his song “Wild and Free.” Since I want my funeral to be a party, I have asked Hobo to play this song at my funeral:

There's a part of me

Wild and free

In my heart there's a wild wolf howling through the tall pine tree

It's a long cold trail that I've been on

Just doesn't seem to be an end to this way I've been going

I can see that road spreading over the land

I see a young boy standing with a suitcase in his hand

It was long ago the boy was me

I was running like a wolf in the mountains

Wild and free

I've got in my mind that it must have been the times

That made me to wander away

From a family that I love

And a warm roof above

But everyone else around does say

It's just me

Being wild and free.

Hobo is an outstanding guitar picker, in any style. People would yell out Hendrix, and he'd switch instantly into “Purple Haze.” He always plays an acoustic guitar. Many of his songs were bluegrass style, but he could do chording like Dylan. He'd play his guitar Mississippi blues slide-style using an empty beer bottle. And he doesn't need sheet music or lyrics.

After a couple hours he'd start playing songs that would infuriate the politically correct among us, and most everyone would sing along. Fortunately there aren't generally many PC folks in Hobo's audiences. One, by an Irish songwriter friend of his, is called “Deform Farm.” It's based on “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” except animals on this farm have been experimented on by the CIA. The characters in this song are a snake with a lisp, a narcoleptic pig (Hobo snores), a dyslexic sheep that says “ab, ab,” and a Tourette's syndrome chicken that says things a chicken shouldn't say. Hobo introduces this song and suggests that any hypersensitive folk or members of one of the two PETA organizations in Alaska may want to leave. Alaska has two PETAs, one Hobo belongs to and one he doesn't. There are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and People Who Eat Tasty Animals.

A dentist from Soldotna and his wife, Dan and Reean Pitts, came in and surprised Hobo. They sat with us. Over the years they've heard him hundreds of times. It's not that Alaska is short on entertainers, it's that Hobo is that entertaining. From night to night, performance to performance, you never know what he will say. Sometimes this is related to the number of drinks admirers send up to Hobo. Normally he just sips on a white wine. But his fans know if they send him shots of tequila or Matoxa, he might be more likely to leap onto their table, play standing on one foot, or invite people to come and sing with him, one of his songs or one of their own. One time after too many shots of Cuervo Gold, he even let his good friend Ben Ellis, the guy who had introduced me to Seward, get up onstage and do his Dylan interpretation. People who were coming into the Yukon Bar that night when Ben was “singing” said they saw flocks of seagulls and ravens leaving downtown Seward.

Usually bunches of young cannery workers come to wherever Hobo's playing on the coast. They are sunburned white kids with dreadlocks, almost preppy-looking college students, or people who could have come to Alaska because they're running from the law or something else. When Hobo launches into a particular song, they throw their fists in the air and howl in understanding. Every time I was at the Yukon after this song, some guy brought Hobo a fresh pack of salmon roe, one of Hobo's favorite foods.

My name doesn't matter

There are many like me

Who come up here to work in the old cannery

Packing fish in the summer

Then we leave in the fall

Then we're done with the cannery call

And we're done with the cannery call.

Hobo's a wise enough performer not to close with one of his most passionately delivered songs, one of Woody Guthrie's. Until I heard Hobo's version, with commentary before and during the verses, I'd never thought of this song as revolutionary.

But when Hobo would start singing that “this land is your land, this land is my land,” mentioning for non-Alaskans in the audience that only 1 percent of Alaska is privately owned, the place would erupt. There is some serious concern and even developing anger over the way Alaskans see the federal government clamping down on their land and our land. Hobo's song points that out. He is the rare entertainer who is willing to challenge his audience, even make them uncomfortable.

Hobo does a couple songs after “This Land Is Your Land” for pure entertainment. Maybe “Gloria” or a cowboy song with the sing-along chorus “Yippee yi a, yippee yi o, ghost riders in the sky.” If the audience didn't sing loud enough, he'd wonder aloud if this was a convention of accountants. He'd chide the people and tell them they were just a bunch of yuppies. Usually by now there are three Seward guys in the bar wearing realistic-looking rotted teeth, tie-dyed, fake Afro wigs on their heads, skintight cowboy jeans, and cowboy boots. Hobo instantly shifts into Willie Nelson's “Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” when they appear. These three guys head onto the dance floor and do some kind of cowboy-style buck dancing. When one begins to sing along, Hobo segues perfectly to the
Beverly Hillbillies
theme about a poor boy named Jed. The bar bursts into applause. As the Afro-wigged guys dance, Hobo, playing the
Beverly Hillbillies
theme instrumentally, then says, “You know, you look like a cross between Jed Clampett and Jimi Hendrix.” Then some Tennesseans scream they want “Rocky Top”; tonight Aaron requested it. After “Rocky Top,” Hobo segues into a meticulous version of the
Deliverance
theme song.