Dispatch from Alaska: The Lost Boys, NeverLand, so where is Captain Hook?

The Day is Sunday; we have just had the Empress of the North cruise ship leave the dock. The Empress has been made to resemble an old paddle-wheel steam ship that one would envision on the Mississippi River while Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer floated by on their raft. More appropriately the boat looks like some of the early vessels that brought settlers and miners up to the area during the gold rush. At the height of the gold rush, because of how long news took to travel, the majority of the gold extracted from these streams and mountains had been found by the time the 30,000 plus miners came into the Klondike area. Less than one percent actually found gold, the dry-good merchants made more money supplying the miners than the miners found in gold.

Due to the 17+ hours of daylight here in this part of AK, with the days continuing to get longer by the day until the Summer solstice on June 21st people tend to be up late. Today, work and the bi-weekly company BBQ/meeting . . . I mean cookout( Being from the South I am always quick to point out that unless there is a pig slow cooking in the ground its not a BBQ) ends around 8 pm and we are off to the disc golf course for 18 holes. Since Haines was the last place I thought would have a disc gold course I did not bring my discs, but quickly pick a few up in town.

The course uses empty beer kegs with the bottom cut out mounted on a 4x4 post, instead of “ringing the chains” all one must do is hit the keg and a ringing similar to a bell sound rolls out. One of the directors for AMG is playing with us, and the rest of the players range in number of seasons spent in AK. I am watching this group of guys running from hole to hole and realize that the time is approaching 10 pm and it feels like 6. Along with the side conversations and friendly competitive spirits I think to myself, “We are like the ‘Lost Boys’ with Drasie as our ‘Peter Pan’ and Haines, AK is our ‘NeverLand’”. There is no Tinker Bell, with her magic dust, but the sunlight all day long is invigorating and makes most feel compelled to stay busy since the winter will be spent mostly dormant due to 6 hour or less of sunlight. With the Lynn Canal and the glaciated mountains surrounding town there is adventure to be had where ever you look. Many peaks have not been climbed, salmon can be pulled from the ocean and rivers with your hands at certain times, Dungeness crab can be caught just off the shore daily. The climate is to cold for the Crocodile with the ticking clock inside it to be here but rumors of the rare “glacier bear” a silver colored brown bear in the area are the talk at the Bamboo room some mornings. So if this is Neverland, where is Captain Hook? The character of Captain Hook is played by the lone DMV employee here. I have been working on getting my Commercial Driver’s License. The process is time consuming, the tests are meticulous, and the hours of the DMV ridiculous. So ‘Captain Hook’ a.k.a, the DMV employee does not have a hook-hand, nor does she wear a pirate hat, but like the O.G Hook constantly sought Peter Pan, she seeks to make getting a CDL in Haines harder than remembering how to fly without pixie dust. After three attempts at the written tests and 2 attempts at the practical I am only continuing for the license so that I win and she loses and 3 times is supposed to be the charm right?

Call me crazy, but because there is nothing to do here in Haines compared to that of my former residences, Atlanta, Charlotte, Boone, and Asheville, the lack of resources seems to free a person up to do, think or create almost anything. Most people here relish in the idea that they build there own house, catch, kill, and grow there own food. There are no strip-malls or traffic to waist time in.

So while Desoto, Cortez and the rest of the disease carrying Spaniards searched endlessly for “Eldorado” and the “fountain of youth” the Tlingets and other native tribes where living in the land of gold and benefiting from the vast days of sunlight. Ah, if only they had sailed up the Lynn Canal, managed to elude the sirens of Seduction Point, bush-whacked through the dense forests covered with devil’s club and brown bears they might have found “Neverland” and avoided turning St. Augustine, FL into a tourist trap.

All the best,

Mike