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| Photos: Van Stein |
I should have
slept well, having been awake for so long, but could not find a comfort zone and
finally gave up, got up and faced the Anchorage morning: pitch-black darkness at 7am.
Very dark is how it remains for the next couple of hours, with me watching it slowly evolve into dawn from inside a Starbucks built into the corner of an office building,
voyeuristic glimpses through glass partitions of a mezzanine and work cubicles
lit with white mercury vapor.
Van Stein joins
me for long lattes before we amble to Hertz for organizing a getaway into the
wild.
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| Hertz clerk |
The rental clerk is aloof and non-communicative while fingering a keyboard to process a rugged
vehicle for us to drive.
A second
question, then a third, causes her brain-freeze, and we must wait for it to
thaw before, wordlessly, she recommences computer-generated paperwork for
releasing a Ford Escape to our custody.
Escape from
Anchorage is precisely the point.
Especially after Alaskan Salmon Hash in Captain Cook’s breakfast room
turns out to be potatoes with slivers of salmon that must be mined like gold.
We escape onto
Route One, due south.
Our
mission: Traverse the Kenai Peninsula to
the Homer Spit.
With Anchorage behind us, the Chugach
Mountains open our collective spirit to the elements.
Traffic is light coupled with clear conditions along the highway, and every new road twist is another Christmas card, add a moose.
This road
sign advisory:
Cars have killed 140 moose in the past six months.
Cars have killed 140 moose in the past six months.
Other
evidence—cars sunken in the snow, abandoned—implies moose sometimes get their revenge.
There is no hurry this day; we long ago resolved that the journey is what matters, not the destination.
We stop to
stretch in Soldotna and soon after pass an orthodox church—in a town
called Niniichik—that looks like a smaller version of St. Basil’s Cathedral in
Moscow.
“Have we crossed
into Russia?” says Van Stein.
In fact, the
Kenai Peninsula was Russia’s first settlement and trading post in Alaska 76 years
before the dumb-ass Russians sold this whole oil-rich territory to the United States.
Homer Spit, the
second longest spit in the world, is a sliver of land jutting four-and-half-miles
into Kachemak Bay.
Homer apparently comes
alive in summer with ramshackle mini-boardwalks, but now, in winter, is bleak and
desolate, littered with abandoned fishing boats and empty buses from another
era.
A lone bald
eagle is perched atop the stars & stripes fluttering in a breeze from the
bay.
We roll onward, to Land’s End Resort, which is deluged with participants from a cross-country ski expedition.
Nonetheless, we’re able
to nail a condo with kitchen, living room, fireplace, and picture-window views of
the Aleutian Mountains across Kachemak Bay.
When darkness
descends—early—we head back to the heart of Homer, a restaurant called Café
Cups, decorated on the outside with large, colourful mad- hatter teacups.
Surreal
weird.
Inside, it
bounces: a local crowd that recognizes
an unknown face when they see it.
Sitting down,
looking around, we realize this social hub sits on the fence between creativity
and madness.
Their wine list
is presented on the back of an original oil-on-board; their walls explode
three-dimensionally with colourful arts and crafts.
But best of all
is what they serve: steamed clams in
garlic broth, Alaskan Crab legs—no butter or cocktail sauce needed—wild salmon
and halibut.
So many schools
of halibut matriculate in Kachemak Bay they qualify for post-grad status.
It provokes me
to announce that Alaska is one large mental institution, akin to Gheel in
Belgium.
I am overheard,
apparently, because on her way out a few minutes later, a woman hands me a
portrait she has sketched of me captioned with these words:
I find everybody’s mad.
Which reflects my sentiments precisely.
Or, as Mark Twain wrote, When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
