Sec. 08.62.157. Duties of licensed pilots. (a) A person licensed under this chapter has a primary duty to safely navigate vessels under the pilot’s direction and control and to protect life and property and the marine environment while engaged in the provision of pilot services. —Alaska Statutes May 25, Nikiski THE 590-FOOT TANKER Pacific Polaris…
IN NOME, THEY FISH FOR KING CRAB from snow machines. Local resident Carl Emmons has a pet reindeer who hops in back of his pickup and rides around in it like a dog. After the holidays Nomeites stick their Christmas trees in the frozen surface of Norton Sound and put up a sign that reads…
IT’S A SMALL WOODEN SCOW with an even smaller woden house perched on top of it. In the window is a neon script “Open” sign. There are mooring stanchions along the edge, and the proprietor of Nardelli’s, a solid man with a lot of hair flopping into his eyes and a welcoming grin on his…
Read more IT’S A SMALL WOODEN SCOW with an even smaller woden house perched on top of it.
“EVERYBODY HAVE FIVE GLASSES OF WINE in front of them?” Everybody did. “Good,” Van says, and gets out a honking big wooden bowl, which he informs us is absolutely essential in the making of Caesar salad. I don’t own a wooden bowl. Also, I don’t know how to coddle an egg, which the twenty-page handout…
Read more “Everybody have five glasses of wine in front of them?”
NO MORE SLEAZE BAGS. No more plastic monkeys hanging off the side of your Wasilla Bad Apple. No more intermission admonitions to go out into the parking lot and father a child. After 3,547 performances (“Absolutely that many,” he said when challenged) in two locations in sleazy downtown Spenard, Mr. Whitekeys is calling it a…
Absolutely no seal oil is permitted in the vehicle, or an extra charge of up to $200 may apply. —Car rental agreement, Nome FRIDAY WE PICK UP Peggy Fagerstrom, who describes herself as “our trusty Native guide” to everyone she introduces us to, to the great hilarity of all, and we drive east down the…
Where the river is windin’ Big nuggets they’re findin’. North to Alaska, They’re goin’ North, the rush is on. —Johnny Horton, “North to Alaska” IT STILL IS. In the spring of 2003, a Nome miner found a nugget the size of a man’s clenched fist worth $75,000. Nome sits on the southern coast of the…
It turns out that Kotzebue is why God invented bush pilots. Literally the moment I get off the jet from Anchorage, Lynda steers me through the maze of airplanes and air taxi outfits at the Kotzebue airport to Northwestern Air, run for umpteen years by bush pilot and certified Alaskan old fart Jim Rood. Jim…
Read more It turns out that Kotzebue is why God invented bush pilots
I GREW UP ON KING CRAB. In Seldovia in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s king crab was king, with all the guys shipping out on crabbers like the Teejin and the Amatuli and the Frances E. and the Katie K. and the Rosie G. and the Shishaldin. As a teenager I earned money for…
A FRIEND BROUGHT HER HUSBAND to visit from New Jersey, and I took them to Homer. We were walking on the Spit when Laura Anne said, “Is that an eagle?” I glanced up and said, “Yeah,” and kept walking and talking, until about a block later I started getting the fishy eye from other people…
Read more That’s basically what a bird is to me, a flying pooper.