Fairbanks, AK

"Nobody comes in here with anything small
They all started out with bad directions"
- Tom Waits



Light is both a wave and a particle. Light particles - photons - connect all things which we can see, and through the strange properties of relativity, the photons exist in a timeless state. During its journey from emission to interaction to reception, it has no concept of beginning or end - both are instantaneously occurring, always existing, to the photon. Though the light we receive from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us across 93 million miles of darkness, to the light itself the sun and our faces exist together at the same time.

It is 3 AM and it is light out. My journey is at an end. I am in Fairbanks after spending the longest day of the year, the solstice, the former occasion for pagan celebrations, with new friends at a youth hostel drinking Canadian whiskey until the sun disappears, which it doesn't. The weather is beautiful, after suffering 2 weeks of varying degrees of rain and colder weather than you might expect for June. Out here the world seems to wrap itself and unfold before my eyes as I round each curve of the road, and wrap up the carpet as I leave each town. Having accomplished my goal, I now need to make a new one. I'll give myself some time on top of a mountain to contemplate it.

As I began up the highway from Dawson Creek, the RVs and motorcycles became less frequent companions and the days start to stretch until they meld into each other. The road is solitude, but it is not lonely, it is alive. The Alaska Range mountains rode shotgun with me from Beaver Creek, Yukon to Tok Junction. The glaciers in the crevices form a pulmonary system that breathes along these huge lungs of rock. The northern lights are here behind the blue azure, but they cannot be seen. They will hide until September when they will be revealed by the absence of the Sun.

This highway was built during World War II in haste to prevent a Japanese invasion of Alaska, and possible bombing attacks on the west coast. The Alaska Highway is 1500 miles and was built in the space of 9 months by 7 regiments of American troops (3 of those regiments were black). That engineering feat is unrivaled in highway construction. Considering that they were still working on the Williamsburgh bridge when I left New York, it is even more astounding.

As I drove up British Columbia, the woods turn into forest and then into wilderness. No pictures can possibly convey the immense wilderness that radiates from this thin strip of gravel and asphalt like a strong magnetic field from a thin but powerful electric wire. But photos are not meant to capture those things which (to us) are immutable: the mountains, the flora and fauna, the rivers and streams. Photos are meant to capture those things which will one day change: our friends, our memories, our dreams.

I've met Texans who have bought me breakfast in exchange for stories, loggers who've bought me a beer out of sheer hospitality, a woman who buys me a hot dog at a baseball game because she's from Chicago, and why the hell not?, in her words. I meet an Alaska fish and wildlife ranger in Whitehorse, Yukon, who is based in Juneau and on business, and I will look him up on the way back. I have 20 numbers on various pieces of paper placed at various locations in my glove box, which contains no gloves, by the way.

I meet Christine, a French hitchhiker, in Haines Junction and she needs to get to Fairbanks, so I pick her up after sharing a coffee on a wooden porch next to the Kluane National Park. It is quiet and still and the silent mountains stand watch. She is from Lille, France, and the next two days are spent in spinning conversations on God, nature, Zen and love. She is visiting her Godmother in Fairbanks, who is recently divorced from a philandering American businessman. We reach Fairbanks and have a dinner of Pinot Noir, brie, French bread and kalamata olives on a picnic table next to the Chena River. I have made new friends and will be sticking around Fairbanks for a while. Journey is hard work for the soul, and I need a respite.

But I still have one objective, the only objective I've had for the entire trip. As I enter the Tok Junction visitor center, I inquire on the midnight baseball game.

I shuffle up to the reception desk and ask "where will the midnight baseball game be played in Fairbanks tonight?"

The old man shuffles back over to me and looks at me quizzically. He finally replies "Oh, that game was LAST night"

I am devastated. I had only one goal for this 5162 mile journey, and I have failed, I have missed the boat by one lousy day. The rush of feelings that I had when I left New York, of always seeming to miss something just out of grasp, rise within me, and I am visibly let down. I now feel lost again.

But as my brain's wheels begin to spiral out, the female voice of a schoolteacher comes from behind the other desk. "Oh Fred, you're wrong. The game is tonight! Last night was just a normal game at 7 o' clock." The cling, the hope, rises within me. Can I be saved from the jaws of defeat? Can the Red Sox come back from being down 3 games to none against the Yankees? Will Batman survive?

Yes. I head over to the park in early evening. A man sells me tickets for $5 because his family can't make it. I meet a reporter (Dave Hoekstra) from the Chicago Sun Times and we chat for a long time. He tells me I may make it into the Sports section, along with Faulkner and my painted car. I meet many other people from Chicago. From New York. From Boston. From San Francisco. There are Boston Red Sox hats and Chicago Cubs caps all around. I find out that Bobby Doerr, Hall of Fame Boston Red Sox member from the glory days of Ted Williams and the Summer of '49 will throw out the first pitch. I see a girl with a Fenwick High School t-shirt - my high school! ... and it's a small school! - out here in Fairbanks at the game. I spend the game with a lady from Chicago who buys me beers and a hot dog and relates her stories of New York on holiday. The game is gripping, and the Alaska Goldpanners win 3-1. It is 1:30 AM and it is bright out, and the cars stream out from the parking lot, and I shake hands with the players as I walk Faulkner for that last walk of the night, which is confusing to Faulkner as much as to me, since it does not look like it is time to go to sleep. So I return to the hostel and spend a few more hours celebrating the solstice. And I go to sleep in a sleeping bag, but there are not yet any mountain tops, or any stars, because the night is not here. It is missing. But it will return. We will begin to steadily lose 10 minutes of daylight a day until the black night begins its slow crawl back to life.

This is my final installment. Thanks for listening. Until another time, love and peace to all,

Tom

"His goal in life was to be an echo
The type of sound that floats around and then back down
Like a feather
But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans
No one could hear him
Or anything

So he slept on a mountain
And in a sleeping bag underneath the stars
He would lie awake and count them
And the great fountain spray of the great Milky Way
Would never let him
Die alone

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird"

Wilco "Hummingbird"

Dawson Creek, BC

Mile: 3629 of journey
Mile: 0 of Alaska Highway


My years studying physics inform me that time can be a function of distance, provided you can arrive at a velocity. I have been on the road for about 10 days, covering an average of 362.9 miles a day, which works out to about 15 miles an hour. All told, not that fast. Kerouac covered America in a little over three days in a '46 Nash going most of the time over 100 miles an hour. Of course, his journey (like his writing) was based on speed. Mine is considerably more subdued. I find myself writing more like Steinbeck, needing time to collect my thoughts, time to gain perspective, time to heal wounds, time to perhaps lose some of the passion that overwhelms the brain and causes it to shut down.

Time is one of those constructs that we have to take (almost) as an axiom. In fact, even the greatest physicists have difficulty letting go of a concept of absolute time. They've fucked with space, distance, energy, temperature, mass, but time remains an absolute ticking clock, which in my mind seems a vain hope that we can measure ourselves against the universe. The universe does not care for time. To it, time is a needless division of a complete whole. Perhaps time is no more
universal than space, and our time may have no meaning in other parts of the universe (or in other times?).

I am at mile "0" of the Alaska Highway, at DawsonCreek, British Columbia. It is 9 PM at night and the sun is still high in the sky, more inviting for a game of softball than a few pints before I head off on the AlCan. I slept out in the woods last night near a town called Little Smoky fighting off God knows what demons in my dreams. Are bears able to channel? I know that wolves can, but I am not fearful of wolves; Bears are different creatures; I am not able to see into their souls. The wolf is the guardian of the East, of the rising sun. It is the bear which is the guardian of the West, of the setting sun. In Indian lore, that means the wolf is the gateway of your birth and the bear is the gateway of your death. Who is your guardian if the sun neither rises nor sets?

I reward myself for going native with a last little fling with civilization. Dawson Creek is a modern town, built on the promise and hubris of the Alaska Highway. I get a motel for the night, shave off my detritus, and head out into town for a few beers at the local bar. Seattle is playing the New York Mets tonight, and as I head in, I see an overhead of Shea stadium, 3629 miles and 10 days from when I left New York. I remember it, but only in my dreams. Are dreams and memories the same, with only the direction of time being different? If so, my life in New York is now just a dream. I am here at a bar in British Columbia and that is all I know.

Checking out the game, I am pegged as a Yank, which invites conversation from some of the bar patrons. I meet Warren, Charles and Chuck, who work in the oilfields. I learn that it's pretty easy to get work in the oilfields under the table now that war for oil is a constant companion thanks to King George II. I could earn $24 (CDN) under the table, but the work is dangerous, and of course I'd have no health insurance. Warren gives me a number for a guy in Vancouver who does construction. I'd like to pick up some carpentry if I can on my way back, and I suppose my Dad would chuckle at the sight of me on a job pounding nails.

That is, ... if... I come back. I haven't thought about that until I reached the beginning of this highway, but I do not have any clearer plans after so many miles. I'll see how I feel when I reach Fairbanks but I no longer have expectations to figure anything out. The journey to this point has been a necessary washing of the spirit, a purging of bad blood and pent anxiety. The next road will be a new experience for me, I expect; more solitary than most. A road is a great place to learn how to be alone. It's hum is a passenger's chatter; its winding and grades are the turns in the story; its stops are the awkward pauses that lead to revelation.

I have 3 Murphy's Stouts in Dawson Creek and bid farewell to my new friends. Tomorrow I head out for the 1500+ miles to Fairbanks. I hope to make that midnight baseball game at the solstice, but we shall see. It is 11:30 at night and dusk is just arriving. I wonder with no night, what do you call a day?

-Tom

Edmonton, AB

"The way you squeeze my lemons" -Led Zeppelin



The best cheeseburger of my life was at a diner near Mt. Whitney after my college roommate and I hiked the mountain in one long day. (The Coke was pretty damn good too.) Of course, that cheeseburger could have tasted like cardboard and I would have given up three years of my life for a bite at the time. My tastes are always most acute when they are most starved, and that includes the metaphysical ones. I chalk this up to growing up Catholic. I'll sin like everyone, but I like to justify my sins and dole them out as rewards for hardships. For this trip, that means I only eat out if I've been slumming it for a bit. I've had two full breakfasts so far, on days after I slept in the car. Bacon tastes much better without a shower.

I give in for a cheeseburger in Edmonton, off Wayne Gretzky Drive. (Isn't there something wrong with naming a street after someone living?) The best part is giving Faulkner the last little bite, while he waits there salivating in the back seat for the whole meal. He probably doesn't connect the burger with the cows we've been seeing, but I do. I've spent the last two days on a ranch outside Vermilion, Alberta, and I've learned a thing or two about cattle.

The drive from Deloraine, Manitoba to Alberta was a steady transition from Great Plains to the West. I'm placed back in my womb of the asphalt hum. Feed cows give way to cattle. Flatness gives way to rolling hills and the treeless expanse gives birth to spots of aspen and fir. It's been over 8 years since I've been properly "West" and the atmosphere is strangely familiar ... The West of steady winds, blood on railroad tracks, toothless old men thumbing rides, barroom fights and rusted barbed wire.

This ranch operates as a bed & breakfast (though there were no idyllic couples there while I visited) and a campsite next to a lake. I meet the caretakers Jen and Clay, who are "common law" husband and wife - whatever that means - and Frank, the owner of the ranch. I spend the night sharing cigarettes and beer with Jen and Clay and their 3 dogs. Before I'm ready to take off, I meet Frank and he notes that they're going to brand the new calves today - would I like to help?

These calves are actually about a year old, and Frank has just bought them at auction. They not only need to be branded but (as it turns out) castrated as well! A specialist is coming in from town to do the job. Frank's cattle dog, Tonto, herds the calves into a pen, and from the pen we herd them into a chute, placing large wood blocks between each calf as they head in. Some calves (the ones still with their balls) sense the imminent doom and buck like hell. The toughest ones snap the wood blocks like toothpicks.

The castration process is remarkably easy. First, you lift the tail of the calve while it's stuck in the chute and twist it over the back. This somehow numbs the groin, though how someone first determined this, I have no idea. Once numbed, you grab the balls and slice them open like one of those plastic egg purses. Finally, you pull the "prairie oysters" out and clamp them down with a tool (picture attached for the squeamish) to chop off the nuts. Easier said than done. Finally, some of the cattle need to be branded, and others need their nascent horns covered with disinfectant. The smell of burnt hair fills the air with pungent sweetness.

I should note that Faulkner still has his balls, but he sensed the palpable fear and hid out underneath the pick-up truck most of the afternoon. Once, when he wanders too close to the pen, I pick him up from behind and he yelps out loud. I'm sure he thought he was next ... It takes some time to calm him down afterwards. In fact, he doesn't really calm down until I share that bite of a cheeseburger with him at Edmonton. I promise him that they'll be no trip to the ASPCA for the
time being.

-Tom

Deloraine, MB

"Our house is a very very fine house" -Crosby Still & Nash


When I was in 7th grade, I started researching my genealogy for a school project. It was through this schoolwork that I discovered my ancestors came not through the United States but through Canada. I was somewhat let down by this, as Canada did not seem sufficiently "cool." But it did help re-establish contact with the (larger) Manshreck clan north of the border. My Mom has exchanged letters with Jane Manshreck of Deloraine for a number of years since then.

Now, the "south" of Manitoba is still north of North Dakota, so the weather is pretty severe in winter. The University of Manitoba (an aggie school where I let Faulkner run in the fields) has electric outlets at each parking spot - of which there are thousands - to heat the car engines. I hazarded guesses at why my particular ancestor, great grandfather Charles, left Manitoba. What I didn't know is what brought the Manshrecks to Manitoba in the first place.

No Manshreck from my clan has ever personally contacted a Manshreck from this Canadian clan since Charles left Deloraine for Chicago almost 100 years ago. But the Internet had allowed me to connect with Al Manshreck, running a farm about 10 miles out of town. As I drive into Manitoba, the woods give way to familiar farm country, not all that dissimilar from any in the Midwest, but much more wide open. The flatness is stark. The sky is seemingly greater than 180 degrees, in a big wide arc with thousands of clouds. You've never seen clouds until you've seen them in a sky heavy with the weight of thousands of square miles.

I pull into town, past a few old barns labeled Manshreck and finally reach Al's place. Al has about 2000 acres, divided roughly into hay and wheat fields and about 2000 acres for grazing. About 500 head of cattle (100 grazers, 400 feed cows) 4 horses, and a dog named Jack. This is a real farm. I meet Al with a hearty handshake and notice the family resemblance (more so with Al than with me) and begin a tour of the farm, out to the still untilled prairie where his cattle graze and take care of their new calves. Later I help Al feed the cows, which involves (for me) learning about hay, silage, and punching a bunch of buttons on a big ass tractor. This is great stuff for the 3 year old inside your noggin.

Al and Laurie have 3 children, Rebbecca, Samantha and Chris. All are good at math. We all meet and share some stories. I learn that some relatives came to Chicago but changed their name to "Mann" during the First World war when being German wasn't viewed too well. Great grandpa once hit the wrong gear on a tractor and plowed it into the barn and got so pissed off he drove around and went through it again. I relate my stories of driving the FDR for comparison.

Al fills me on some family history, as his son Chris is working on this for a school project. The first Manshrecks settled in Montreal, thence to Ontario where they began farming. In the later 1800s, they became part of the great Canadian migration to settle the plains, mostly as a response to encroaching Americans. Canada was afraid of suffering the same fate as Mexico at the hands of land grabbers and 54'40" or fighters. So my ancestors first came to Winnipeg, and then to homestead on the cold, less than perfectly fertile plains of southwestern Manitoba, around the town of Deloraine.

We head out in the pickup to the old family farm, the barn that was built in 1906 by great great grandfather Albert Reinhardt Mannschreck. It's a huge barn and a feat of carpentry, back in the day with no electricity. (This part of Manitoba didn't get electricity until the 1950s, and didn't get person to person phone service until 1989.) My Dad would have liked looking at the tongue and groove floor, and the special beams shipped in from British Columbia (fir lumber) to form the bulwark of the roof. The old family house built in 1907 is brick - wood was so rare in these parts that it needed to be shipped in from the Rockies, and the rocks needed to be pulled up out of the prairie for farming anyway - but they make poor insulators in the biting cold. Al notes the house is a "hooer (sic) to heat." I also hear my first "ay" at the end of a sentence.

The house is boarded up now as Ralph Manshreck, who inherited this particular farm, died of cancer 6 years ago. His son John now lives in Vancouver and I'll visit him on the way back. The quality and expanse of the loft above the barn wishes this farm were in Massachusetts - it would make a perfect office space.

We have a big dinner at Al's parent's house (George and May) and I see a number of great old photos. The family relates that they remember my grandmother because she was quite the looker in the 1920s (the flapper age) and George used to carry the photo around and brag about who his brother landed in the Big City. We get steak while the dogs play outside, and then play some softball.

Seeing all this history, the huge barn, the homestead, the pig pens and cattle fences, this could have easily been my life if so many random chances didn't occur in the past. I wonder if I would have liked it. I ask Al if he wants his kids to take after him and he hopes not. Being a farmer is tough, and BSE has nearly ruined him. It turns out that he can now sell his beef in the States, but he can't ship his cattle to be slaughtered there, so local houses are charging twice as much for the work. It's also been raining for 10 straight days (soon to be 11) and a large amount of his fields are soggy and unable to be seeded.

Still, it seems more honest work than typing at a keyboard.

The farm also has an abandoned school bus (now up to its shoulders in water from the recent rains). It gives me ideas ...

-Tom

Lake of the Woods, ONT

"There is a town in North Ontario/ With dream comfort memory to spare And in my mind I still need a place to go/All my changes were there."
-Neil Young

Ontario is a large province. It stretches almost from Vermont to North Dakota, to give it perspective, and touches the arctic. I left Ontario at Sault Ste. Marie only to reenter it in Minnesota, near International Falls, the site of a huge belching Boise paper mill. The sky is overcast but clearing. Rain and Tom Waits have been passengers since Duluth as I headed north into Arrowhead country. Rain and Tom Waits go together like water and cheap scotch.

The photo of Faulkner is from a park in International Falls, which as a point of pride counts itself recipient ofthe largest Smokey the Bear statue in the world. Faulkner barked at it, which doesn't bode well for our time in Alaska. You would think a tussle with a pit bull might back him off a bit, but no. I was expecting to head over into Canada here but the "bridge" (which consists of little more than a steel grate) costs $6, and I take a certain New York umbridge at paying the same toll for this chicken-shit bridge as for the George Washington.

So I head out west on the MN 11 as the sky clears and see increasingly thinning traffic. Hoping for one ofthe VFW fish frys (it is Friday night) I find only desolated small towns. I really only want a beer. I haven't had one since Bruce's Corner, Wisconsin, where I sensed a palpable hostility from the outdoorsman and army reservists (both armed about equivalently) as I entered and played my game of pool. A cheap Pabst at a truck stop dive would be ideal.

As I pass through Birchdale I see the Pabst sign so I pull over to astonished eyes from the locals gathered on the stoop. There is so little traffic here and so little law enforcement that the "bar" is more outside than inside. Everyone knows everyone, and Faulkner is a hit. I
get a beer for $1.25 (the Midwest is grand, ain't it?) and sit outside and relate my story. Some baseball talk. The air is crisp as the wetness gives way to cool open skies.

Ralph, the guy pictured, warns me that I better not be talking anything over the border, even if I have holes drilled into the frame ... He also gives me the contact of a woman in Anchorage who he whispers is a "guaranteed blowjob" (that is, if she's out of prison). I chalk this all up to Tom Waits. If I had been listening to Nick Cave, I'm sure someone would have tried to murder me.

I wave goodbyes and head out to the border in Baudette, where sure enough, being a small town with plenty of time on its hands, I get the
good 15 minute once-over of my automobile. I munch on some fries with Faulkner and talk with the mounties going through my luggage. I finally get cleared and head out as the sun is setting along the Lake of the Woods.

My beer and search have taken more time than I wished, and I am unable to secure lodging along the east side of Lake of the Woods. The only traffic around here is logging trucks and SUVs toting fishing boats, and the anglers have all the spots divied up. I finally pull over next to the lake near Sioux Narrows at a picnic rest stop. As I go to sleep I hear the first chorus of wolf howls on this trip. Faulkner picks up his ears. No damn whiny coyotes. It's all wolves now.

-Tom

Duluth, MN

"Do you know how it feels?/To be out on your own/With no direction
home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone" -Bob Dylan



It took a while, but I finally got on the road earlier this week. I'm now in a coffee shop in Duluth while it's pouring outside. Faulkner is sleeping in the front seat of my decked out car parked outside drawing curious looks from these Midwesterners (of which I claim lineage). This is Dylan's hometown (sort of), and having heard "Like a Rolling Stone" yesterday afternoon -- Manchester Palladium live version -- it hit me that the song was no longer a metaphor. Now I know what it feels like to be on your own, with no direction home.

Getting out of New York was an endeavor. I had to move my important stuff in stages to a storage spot (records, books), sell off most of my large possessions, and finally chop up my remaining furniture with an axe (my axe! that I had with me back in the woods of Massachusetts) to fit in the dumpster. Spending a few hours doing this out on Boerum Street was both cathartic and bittersweet.

The first day was anxious, not the least because my car was giving off burnt oil, and I ended up hiking into the Adirondacks during a thunderstorm to finally reach the sanctuary of the lean-tos near Mt. Marcy. Unfortunately, I didn't pack waterproof matches so I went without food that night in the cold rain. Some backwoodsman I'll make. Try to make fire with two f*%&ing sticks. Just try. A shot of JD to whoever can accomplish this at the bar. No cheating.

Got a flat tire in Whitney, Ontario and got attacked by black flies in the 10 minutes it took me to change it. Still dealing with the aftermath, and the required headgear (Red Sox cap) that I must wear to avoid looking like I have a skin disease. These pests put mosquitoes to shame.



While changing the tire, met a motorcycle dude who travelled the Alaska highway in '49, and who skipped US citizenship in the 60s for obvious and unstated reasons. My rim was bent so he banged it back into place at no charge. Tire is holding up so far. Just want to make it to Edmonton where I'll buy a new set of steel belts.

Photo of Faulkner is on the south shore of Lake Superior. I've been blessed with good weather, and awesome camping sites, 2 along the shores of the lakes and 1 deep within the woods of Algonquin Park. Did not hear the wolves that night, though. Maybe in Alaska. The wolves and I have a lot in common.



The other photo of Faulkner is from Marquette, Michigan. The huge structure (it's much bigger than it seems from the perspective) is a former railway platform where iron trains dumped raw iron onto ships bound for Chicago, Gary Indiana, Cleveland, for the steel mills. Marquette (it turns out) is something of a hippe outpost now. They sell Djarum cloves, books on Buddha, and hydroponic supplies. They also have damn good Whitefish.



Until later,

Tom

Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn, June 6, 2005
Originally uploaded by manshreck.