The Road to McCarthy (46 page)

One of the good things about coming to such a small place when there are no other visitors is that word gets round that you’re here, and people start to invite you to their homes. It’s hard not to be impressed by the warmth of Alaskan hospitality. Tonight I’m having dinner with Rick and Bonny, who produce the community newspaper. Rick is also a pastor at the nondenominational church. I nearly made a major faux pas by turning up with a bottle of wine, until Neil warned me that alcohol would probably be about as warmly received as a member of the Bin Laden family. Instead of Old Slippery I’ve brought a loaf of bread, an act that would be seen as a practical joke where I come from. There is already a basket of home-baked rolls on the table, so now I feel guilty for having brought rival bread.

Rick and Bonny live a few miles out of town, in a snug wooden house built on a piece of land that was once a farm supplying fresh fruit and vegetables to the sex- and whiskey-crazed miners. Though winter is long and harsh, there is a prolific summer growing season because of the long daylight hours. At the moment there’s a gain of six minutes’ light every day. But it can only achieve so much; cabbages do well, pineapples less so.

We’re joined for dinner by two neighbors. George is a retired weatherman—a meteorologist, not a sixties’ terrorist—and John works as a park ranger during the summer season. The park service is a controversial body in these parts, where many people have come to live in order to be free of
government bodies and regulations. The National Park was only established twenty years ago, and most of the Americans who flock to Yellowstone and Yosemite are unaware of its existence, even though it’s the biggest in the country. The park service has a hundred-year development plan, a curiously Soviet-sounding concept that will significantly expand visitor numbers. But it’s wilderness, say the locals; why can’t they just leave it alone? In an area with little paid employment people understand that their friends may have to take jobs in the parks, but it doesn’t stop them hating the concept. I found this letter pinned to a noticeboard today.

I was about to show it to John, until he asked me, “Who was the first terrorist?”

I said I didn’t know.

“It’s in the Bible.”

I still didn’t know.

“The serpent, in the Garden of Eden.”

How so?

“Terrorism has two purposes: to spread fear, and to subvert the power of government. That’s what Satan did in the garden.”

Only if you think of God as the government, John.

“Exactly.”

I decided not to show him the letter.

Dinner is moose stew—which would have gone nicely with a jammy bottle of that Penfolds Bin 389, but nonalcoholic fruit punch is absolutely fine—served with home-grown-and-pickled beets the size of Maltesers which are sweet and delicious, and would be a perfect match for a peppery Côtes du Rhône, or even a rich Traquair ale. And of course there’s masses of homemade bread, always ideal with tequila slammers, neat Stolly or a couple of pints of that lethal Belgian beer they serve in a test tube.

So I’m just thinking how refreshing it is to be eating dinner without drinking any alcohol when I notice that John has finished his moose and is following it with bread and homemade plum jam, and now he’s been served seconds of moose and he’s eating it
with
the bread and jam, which is very interesting. I’m dying to ask about it, but I’m scared he might think I’m weird.

The jam’s about the same color as a Hardy’s Cabernet Shiraz.

I’d been hoping to talk to these people about local politics and self-sufficiency and the mental strength you need to live in a place like this, but mostly we’ve been talking about bears. The notion of sharing living space with wild animals who might kill you is as remote a concept for me as planning permission is to Alaskans, and it holds a grim fascination. I am gripped by an urgent need to talk about bears, possibly as a substitute for ever meeting them. So how many are there out there anyway?

“A lot.”

“You know something?” asks John. “All this time I’ve lived out here, been treed by a moose, but never got treed by a bear.”

Treed?

“When you have to climb a tree to get away.”

Rick tells the story of the rogue grizzlies, a mother and two cubs, who terrorized the area a couple of years ago.

“They started with breaking into the trunks of cars looking for food, then got to ripping open four-wheel drives and eating the seats.”

They eat the seats?

“Sure. And the roof upholstery. Seem to love that. One lady was out on a mountain bike, the three bears just jumped out in front of her. She was up
a tree nearly two hours till her husband came and found her. Wouldn’t come down till she knew he had a gun. After that, they started on people’s homes. Didn’t they, George?”

“Sure did. It was late at night, I heard this scuffling at my window, looked and saw this black nose and pair of claws trying to get between the screen and the frame. One of the cubs. Looked outside, there was mom standing on her hind legs on the lawn. They don’t like it if you get near the cubs, so I went through to the lounge room. There’s another nose and set of claws trying to get in there.”

It sounds like the sequel to
The Birds
—“They’re back, and this time they’re furry!”

“So I phoned the rangers, but they said they had no one available ’cos it was on a weekend, and I’d have to shoot ’em myself. Thing is, I don’t own a gun. Won’t have one in the house.”

So what did he do?

“Phoned me, and I shot ’em,” says Rick.

That makes three. What about the fourth?

“Heard a noise from the garage one night, went in and turned on the flashlight, there’s a big grizzly on top of the freezer.”

I thought you were only supposed to shoot them in a life-threatening situation, as opposed to on the tops of freezers?

“If I’d asked him to come down, I think we might have had ourselves a situation.”

“Don’t worry,” says Bonny as I’m leaving. “The bears won’t bother you. They’re still asleep. Have a safe journey back to town.”

“Keep your speed up. They should be waking any day now,” says Rick, roaring with laughter.

A skidoo
is another word for a snowmobile, but in Alaska they’re known as snowmachines. I rode one a few years ago in Lapland, but the technology seems to have moved on since then. They’re bulkier, and the speedo goes all the way up to 120. I’m told the record for the sixty miles from here to Chitina is forty-eight minutes without a crash-helmet. Apparently
there’s a problem with alcohol-related snowmachine deaths, and you can see why. They bounce around so much you’d be in a serious danger of losing control every time you took a swig. Thirty-five is about my limit, and even then I’m wincing into the wind, grimacing like my nuts are trapped in the deep-freeze. I’ve just reached the footbridge that crosses the river—in the summer this is where the road to McCarthy ends, but in winter you can drive a vehicle or snowmachine right across the frozen river—when I’m confronted by a convoy of antique trucks and buses straggled along the river bank. Several large St. Bernards are tethered to the trucks, straining at their leashes and barking at me. All around the vehicles, standing, sitting and carrying or pulling things, are people in floppy leather hats, old-fashioned dungarees, floor-length embroidered skirts and buckskin jackets. I appear to have stumbled into a scene from
The Grapes of Wrath
. At the center of the group a man has stopped to watch me pass. With his folksy clothes, long gray hair and bandana he looks like Willie Nelson on a good day. He waves as I pass, and a couple of children join in. I wave back, and almost lose control of the snowmachine as it goes careering down the riverbank. Thank God I wasn’t trying to have a drink at the same time. You can see how those accidents could happen.

“That’ll be the Pilgrim family
. They said they’d be back. I guess you picked a good time to come.”

Neil and I are sitting up in the bar. There’s just the two of us. Midweek can get kind of quiet on the wilderness social calendar. It’s late but light, Beth Nielsen Chapman’s on the stereo, and it feels like the temperature’s dropping. The days have been brilliantly clear and sunny with the snow starting to thaw by lunchtime, then freezing overnight to leave a shiny, glossy crust that crunches underfoot.

Neil has been a perfect host since I got here, digging out books, photos and papers for me, phoning people who might know something about James McCarthy—so far without any luck—and even taking time to give me a masterclass in how to drive a snowmachine.

“This is how you make it go. This is how you make it stop. That’s it.”

He and Doug have been partners for fourteen years. They’ve been running the McCarthy Lodge for eight months. It’s one of those crackpot romantic schemes that never work out, only this time it seems that one has. Neil is originally from Boston, but Doug grew up on a homestead in Alaska. When he was a kid his parents bought the McCarthy Lodge and fixed the place up. Doug hung the moose antlers over the door, and painted rooms, cold beer, meals on the windows. Then, in the 1980s, his parents sold up. Doug promised that one day he’d get it back, just like they do in the kids’ story books; and now he has. They closed the deal on the lodge and several other plots and buildings at the end of last summer, and now Doug and Neil own a very large part of a very small place.

As well as the lodge, they have Ma Johnson’s hotel, twenty yards away across the street, which is where I’m staying. I’m the only guest, so I can sit behind the desk in reception pretending I’m wearing a vest and a bootlace tie and that Wyatt Earp is about to walk in. Doug has brought his designer’s eye to bear on the old building, which was named after the original formidable Finnish owner. There’s a burgundy pressed-tin ceiling, green velvet drapes, antique clocks and furniture, and a ceiling fan turning even in winter. Other buildings are being restored in traditional style. There will be a hostel, a deli and another bar. “There’ll still be fewer than sixty beds. McCarthy used to be much bigger than this. We’re not aiming to be Las Vegas,” says Neil.

“Pity about the brothels though. If we could have one, we would.”

And now they’re facing what might be the biggest redevelopment of all.

“There aren’t many towns whose population could be doubled by the arrival of just one family,” says Neil, getting me another Black Butte porter from the old wooden-doored fridge, “but that’s what’ll happen when the Pilgrims move into McCarthy. Were these the guys you saw?” He hands me a large photo album. It’s them. “We all thought we were weird, but these guys just raised the bar.”

I wake with a start
and look at the bedside clock. Ten past five. So why didn’t the alarm go off? I get up, brush my teeth, look at the clock again
and realize it’s only ten past three. I ought to be angry, but I’m not. It isn’t often you can give yourself an extra two hours’ sleep when you’re getting up at five in the morning.

I get up again two hours later and put on all the clothes I own, together with some I have borrowed. Starting with thermal underwear and ending with a sweater as heavy as an orangutan, topped by a fleece topped by a woolen jacket topped by a full-length waxed Driza-Bone, I can walk with all the free-flowing grace of a medieval knight in sheet-metal armor who’s just been knocked off his carthorse by one of those spiky balls on the end of a chain. I put one foot in front of another, totter out through the lobby and stand on the veranda of Ma Johnson’s. No doubt about it, it’s cold out here. I pull the sheepskin hat with earflaps hard down on my head. In England people may point and laugh, but out here this piece of comedy headgear is all that stands between me and frostbite of the brain. As I wait I rummage around in the dozens of pockets I have at my disposal for something to provide a little comfort. In the sixth or seventh I strike lucky. It’s a grubby packet containing three ancient mints. They have melded together and will take some separating once I’ve scraped the worst of the fluff off. Are they still making them? Surely not.

I’ve just popped a partially upholstered mint into my mouth when I hear barking, distant at first, then closer as Jeremy appears at the far end of the frozen street, bang on time at five-thirty, standing high on the back of the sled as the eight huskies gallop towards me for all they’re worth. Jeremy pulls them to a reluctant halt, throws an anchor into the snow, and I get on board as fast as I can. The sled lurches forward, my head snaps back and we’re off, me sitting down just above ground level, Jeremy standing behind me holding the reins and mushing the excited little buggers for all he’s worth. We hiss past the lodge and now town has gone and we’re gliding through woodland wilderness, following the path of the old mining railway up to Kennicott. Thirty miles away to my left the 18,000-foot peak of Mount Blackburn is glowing limpid pink in the first rays of morning. This is a hell of a way to kick-start the day.

The mint turns out to be a masterstroke. It’s like having a coal fire glowing in a cold house in winter, the house in this case being my face, sprayed
and spiked with early-morning ice and snow, which isn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation. The rest of me is warm and comfortable, though I hadn’t reckoned on being directly in line with the dogs’ bottoms, which have an assertively gaseous, early-morning quality about them.

We’re about a mile out of town when I remember what Rick said last night. I hope the bears really are still asleep. After all, I’m not asleep, even though I should be, so what if they’ve had the same idea? People say the best way to survive a bear attack is to make sure you’re with someone who can’t run as fast as you; a party of primary-school children, perhaps, or an aging, infirm relative. Jeremy lives in a tent with a pack of dogs and spends all day climbing around on a roof in sub-zero temperatures hitting things with a hammer. He is intimidatingly fit. In my condition, and dressed the way I am, I doubt if I could outrun the Before woman in the “I Lost 200 lbs in 10 Days” advertisements. My only chance would be that I’m wearing so many layers the bear would tire before it got through to my tasteless battery-produced flesh and would head into town for an organic free-range construction worker instead. And as for getting treed—well, I honestly can’t see how you’d manage that. These trees are thin, straight, lacking branches and not very high. I suppose you might be so scared you could leap twelve feet and cling to the top like Velcro, but the bear would just bide his time, grinning and shaking the tree while he worked up an appetite.