“Have you seen ‘The Shining’?”
It was a question I’d heard many times and was destined to hear many more. Currently it issued from my cell phone as I sped down Northern Lights Blvd in Anchorage. Rush hour traffic was denser than I’d expected for this remote outpost of America. I’d been driving all summer to get here, and my Ford Ranger had seen better days: the grill and hood coated in a layer of protein that had once been millions of bugs, catalytic converter shattered, brakes all but shot. The driver’s-side window had been smashed out by a flying cinder, and now consisted of duct-taped plastic, whipping and snapping in the wind.
Melissa, who lounged in Orlando, FL, repeated her question. It was a pop-cultural knee-jerk reaction to my new job. I pictured Jack, a sneering caricature of homicidal mania, lurching through the halls of the Overlook Hotel with his bloody axe and memorable one-liners. I’d been a fan of the movie since I was 13. Now it had become my context.
There were obvious similarities: I was to be a winter caretaker, a custodian of property during a long, frozen off-season.
Like the character Jack Torrance I was a struggling writer, attracted to the position for the time it would give me to write. Other parallels were less obvious: I would live in a cramped fraction of a sizeable resort so the owners could save on heating. I would be overstocked with food, but denied alcohol.
In some ways I was better off than Jack: I didn’t have a drinking problem, or writer’s block. Malevolent ghosts wouldn’t plague me. On the other hand, Jack had wintered in a luxurious Colorado hotel, connected to civilization by power lines and roads. I would enjoy neither of these umbilici at my remote fishing lodge.
Jack and his family contended with formidable weather, but it was still Lower 48 weather. I would be up against an Alaskan winter.
Jack’s stint would’ve lasted 5 to 6 months, if he hadn’t gone berserk after 2. I was looking at 8.
Finally there was the most important difference, and I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad: Jack had his wife and son with him. I would be alone. Asking if I’d seen ‘The Shining’ was tantamount to: “What if you go nuts?” Rabid psychosis, Jack-style, didn’t strike me as probable, but I had other concerns. I’d spent much of my life hunched over a desk, writing or drawing. I wondered how 8 months of solitude would affect my already rusty social skills.
“Yeah,” I told Melissa, doing a bad Nicholson. “I’ve seen the goddamm Shining. Want to come with me? I promise not to hurtcha’.”
I pretended to be joking, but I was hopeful. She was an adventurous girl. She took flying lessons and she hated her office cubicle. She was, however, on the other side of the continent, and she liked running water, so I understood when she declined.
I came to a stoplight and frowned at the vehicle-clotted road. ‘In less than a week, I’ll be free of traffic for 8 months.’ This thought sent a shiver down my spine.
“How are you going to handle eight months without sex?” asked Melissa. “All work and no play makes Andy a dull boy.”
I laughed uncomfortably. The light turned green, I hit the gas, the plastic resumed its staccato, and for the hundredth time I wondered what the hell I was doing.
***
A mediocre GPA was partly to blame. I’d decided on grad school, but the looming shadow of a 3.1 steered me toward the borderlands of academia. My naive theory was that a remote institution like U of Alaska is desperate for applicants. Even when my admission turned out to be provisional, I embarked on a cross-continental road trip, from the Sunshine State to the Land of the Midnight Sun, confident I’d get financial aid of some kind. Leaving Florida was intoxicating. ‘Let it sink,’ I thought. ‘At least some good will come of global warming.’ I’d lingered there too long, among meth-heads who thought they were actors, rednecks who thought they were gangstas, and senior citizens after the Fountain of Youth. Now my creed was the Alaska state motto: ‘North to the Future.’
Three months later I was penniless, fellowship-less, and jobless in Anchorage. The tantalizing stories I’d heard about creative writing grad programs—that they get you connected and published—withered beneath the glare of primordial concerns: food and shelter.
I was not the first ill-fated traveler lured to the Northland by imagined boons. Certainly there were mammoth hunters, fresh from the Bering Land Bridge, obliged to gnaw on rats. Gold-fevered greenhorns reached the Klondike and worked in Dawson City as prostitutes. Luddites from the Lower 48, on naïve quests to “live deliberately,” have contented themselves with surviving narrowly.
I turned to the Anchorage Daily classifieds. My prospects seemed grim, but I began to notice a preponderance of winter caretaker openings. It was late August—summer/autumn was drawing to a close. I contemplated serendipity. I thought about all the writing I could accomplish, free of society’s demands. I recalled John Krakauer’s ‘Into the Wild,’ Chris McCandless dead in the bush at 24. On the other hand, many wanderers had turned stints in the wilderness to their advantage: Kerouac and London and Steinbeck, among others.
With idle curiosity rather than firm intention, I applied to these hunting and fishing lodges, never mind my profound ignorance of carpentry, mechanics, electricity, wilderness survival—let alone arctic survival—guns, boating, fishing, even cooking. I’d done some hiking and camping in the Lower 48, but these experiences were largely irrelevant.
I was a child of suburbia, a 21st Century Digital Boy, shaped by microwaves and 1st person shooters.
These employers wanted a rugged handyman/frontiersman. Most of the lodges were far from roads, reachable only by so-called ‘puddle jumpers,’ small prop-planes equipped with floats or skis. I wondered if I was up to this challenge. I couldn’t help being intrigued.
After the first few rejections, with the specter of destitution—or worse yet, a normal job—looming, I fudged my resume. There were limited materials to work with. I’d done Habitat for Humanity in high school: hammered a few nails, in other words, while I flirted with girls. I painted apartments during college, fired my dad’s shotgun when I was 14, helmed an outboard on my grandfather’s lake when I was 12. But with creative wording—and omission—I began to conjure a viable resume.
Still, my last pennies were trickling away. No one had offered me a job. I was 29 and unpublished. I needed time to write. Coming to Alaska had been a move rooted in panic—slow, existential panic disguised as a sense of adventure. But now there was a chance to turn disaster into opportunity. Tolkien called this the ‘eucatastrophe,’ a sudden turn of fortune when all hope seems lost. I couldn’t destroy the Ring. I needed Gollum to show up.
So I crossed a new boundary: I lied. I sent out a resume boasting my skill in winterizing motors, then rushed to the Anchorage Public Library and read up on the process. I scanned children’s books on internal combustion, and classics like ‘What’s in Daddy’s Toolbox?’ I memorized talking points about parallel battery set-ups. I tried not to think about the potentially mortal hole I was digging for myself. My mantra was: ‘Just get the job. Worry about the rest later.’
On a cold grey morning I headed for one of the many glacier-strewn hikes that lie within an hour of Anchorage. I was still escaping the city when my cell emitted a fateful ring, and then I was on my way.
***
A week before that call, I’d gotten one from Jim Klein, owner of Northland Trout Lodge. This aged pioneer’s first words to me were a grudging admission: I was being considered for the job.
I sat absorbing this in the Anchorage Library computer lab. I said something about what a great opportunity it was, how hard I would work. How excited I was.
“Well it ain’t fun and games,” he replied. “You’d be alone all winter. That’s October through May. The solitude, a lot of guys don’t understand that when they come out. I’ve had guys quit mid-season. Most people can’t handle this kind of isolation.”
This Jim was gruff and to the point. Jack Torrance had gotten a similar speech from Stuart Ullman, manager of the Overlook. Jack objected: The hotel had phones, a radio. It wasn’t completely isolated. Ullman replied, “Suppose your son or your wife tripped on the stairs and fractured his or her skull, Mr. Torrance. Would you think the place was cut off then?”
Trout Lodge had a satellite phone, but the only skull to worry about would be mine. If it cracked, I might not make it to the phone. Jim emphasized this dynamic with relish. “You can’t screw around out here. You gotta have a head on your shoulders. If something happened, it might be weeks before we could get to you.”
I had scanned the Lodge’s website, and remembered something about a nearby bush community. These villages are hidden throughout Alaska. Predominantly Native American, they’re far removed from the state’s limited road system, reachable by puddle-jumper or boat or snowmachine. “Iniuk,” said Jim. “About twelve miles down the river you’ll be on. Population about 60.” Digging further, I learned I would have a snowmachine—Alaskan for snowmobile—and a skiff with an outboard. Jim was hesitant about my using them to get to the village. “We’d want you on Lodge property as much as possible. One of your main reasons for being here is to deter looting by natives.”
‘What is this?’ I wondered. ‘The Old West?’ Jim didn’t sound like the joking type. He seemed eager to talk weaponry. I would have an arsenal, it seemed: high caliber rifles, .12 gauge shotguns, even pistols. I would certainly be better armed than McCandless, who sauntered into the bush with nothing but a .22. Jim warmed to the subject of guns. Suddenly he was the nicest guy in the world. “Plenty of game out here for you. You hunt?”
“Deer and pheasant,” I lied. It was probably unnecessary, but I was in lie-to-get-the-job mode, which tends to breed irrelevant lies.
“You’ll love it out here. Caribou, moose, ptarmigan…” He went on to explain that if I were chosen, I would go out to the Lodge and spend ten days with the staff during the last third of September. I scanned the website as he talked.
Northland Trout Lodge is on the Lukinek River in southwest Alaska. The River is part of a watershed, emptying into Bristol Bay, which hosts the best rainbow trout fishing in the world, the largest salmon runs, and world-class sport in many other species. In 2003, a week at the Lodge ran about six grand per client. It was 250 air miles from Anchorage—in other words, 250 miles from the road system and civilization. That intervening space consisted of tundra, rivers, lakes, inlets, glaciers, and some of the highest mountains in North America.
Jim went on about those ten days in September. The staff would be handling the last of the clients as the Lodge shut down for the winter. I would help out and learn my way around. I guessed I would be under scrutiny, out there in the unforgiving wild. My lies and exaggerations might easily come to light. That first call with Jim was ambiguous. I didn’t know what I was in for. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. I hadn’t landed the trial period yet, let alone the job. Jim, despite his flashes of joviality, sounded deeply unsure of me, and I couldn’t blame him.
***
My readings at the library strayed from the pragmatic. I researched bush flight fatality rates, the psychology of solitude, Alaskan history. I discovered the Anchorage Daily archives, rife with the kind of stories you don’t get in the Lower 48, like moose attacking garbage trucks.
I learned that Alaskans have plenty of reasons to be skeptical of newcomers. Their land has long attracted dreamers with heads dangerously in the clouds. The countercultural revolution of the late ‘60s amplified this trend, bringing an influx of misanthropes and nature lovers determined to live off the land. A few succeeded as trappers and homesteaders, but many more gave up. They were the lucky ones, cutting and running while others starved, froze, drowned, or committed suicide. They kept coming in the ‘80s and ‘90s, leaving behind journals full of pitiful bewilderment and decaying sanity.
Some returned to civilization with minds perilously askew. In 1983 Louis Hastings, an immigrant from California, emerged from solitude near the remote village of McCarthy. He was armed to the teeth, having composed a shit list of 200 Alaskan political leaders he felt threatened the environment. In addition to serial killing, his plans included hijacking a fuel truck and making a suicide run at the trans-Alaska Pipeline. He killed six McCarthy residents before State Troopers arrived by chopper and arrested him.
Lama Yeshe, a Tibetan Buddhist Abbot who spent years in solitary meditation, warned Westerners against solitude. He didn’t think we could endure it. He said we had too much negative emotion to release.
***
The week following Jim’s call was suspenseful. I learned more about the job via email from his wife Helen. Other than guarding against native incursion, the duties were much like Ullman described Jack’s: repairing damage as it occurred, and heating certain areas of the Lodge. Keeping the elements at bay.
I continued my absurd research at the Anchorage Public Library. I waited and didn’t sleep much. I went on hikes to relieve the stress, discovering alien landscapes that made me forget my coming economic doom. I was en-route to my most ambitious hike yet when Chris, the Lodge’s previous winter caretaker—and current camp manager—called.
He told me I’d gotten the job.
Of course, all I’d really gotten was that ten-day scrutiny period, but I was ecstatic. I’d never expected to make it this far. The sun was just peaking over the Chugach Mountains in the east. All at once the world was full of possibility.
