chicken, alaska - five years ago

Chicken, Alaska is an outpost with an official population of just seventeen persons. It's located on the "Alcan" highway that connects the Alaskan Interior to Canada, and thereby the rest of the North American highway system. I camped there five years ago this weekend. The municipality is named, if I recall correctly, for an arctic ptarmigan. We were on our way to Inuvik, Northwest Territory. Right now Chicken is threatened by the tremendous wildfires that have engulfed the state of Alaska.

Monday, July 05, 2004 - CHICKEN--Susan Wiren stood on the porch of her gift store in this Taylor Highway town Sunday staring at an empty dirt parking lot and a haze of smoke that completely blocked the view of a distant ridge she normally enjoys. The scene has gotten a little old this summer for Wiren, owner of the four businesses that make up downtown Chicken. Smoke from fires that ignited in mid-June has scared off the stream of visitors who normally flock to Wiren's shops to snatch up quirky Chicken-related memorabilia. "Look at it. It looks like we're living in another world," Wiren said. "We feel like we're on another planet." ... Chicken, a community of only a handful of year-round residents about 70 miles north of Tok, is being flanked by the 120,000-acre Chicken Fire and the 30,000-acre Wall Street Fire. So far, the wildland fires burning along the Taylor Highway and near Eagle have consumed nearly 1 million acres. Currently, more the 350 firefighters are working in the area, including six elite crews from the Lower 48. (continues in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

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My main memory of Chicken is of the bar there, with all the baseball caps and other requisite kitsch stapled to the walls in the hazy interior. There was a jukebox, and I think it played Don McLean's American Pie. We played pool. But most of all we were regailed with tales by Linda, the bearded lady barkeep who had experienced in her years the adventures most people secretly envy -- riding the rails, jumping freights from sea to shining sea, seeing the country as a sort of hobo. Spending arctic nights soaking in boreal hot springs while the aurora exploded overhead. Said she was heading down to Fairbanks at the end of the summer to take part in a UAF dinosaur dig on the North Slope. Sure enough, come August we found her in a photo of the University paleontology team, out on a dig in the far north.

In Chicken we encamped by the river, and in the morning we continued to Dawson City, Yukon.

[i have no idea why this entry doesn't have a "comment" option.. er, let's try this: comment or read comments.]

4th of july

recent 4ths-of-july:

2004 - san diego, ca. a hilarious account of my fourth-of-july by emosnail, and another by furzicle.

2003 - geneva, switzerland. this is actually the location of the largest american independence day celebration outside of the usa. the swiss throw off all manner of fireworks. supposedly. silly me, I thought they'd launch them over the lake, but instead they launched them over a stadium somewhere, so liz and i missed them entirely. however, we did go to the bastille day celebration in ferney-voltaire, which was a hoot.

2002 - rehovot, israel. i don't remember what we were doing. it was a thursday and i doubt i did anything special; however, i do have vague memories of a lot of people giving me congratulatory greetings. they like us there. a few days ago someone was saying how he didn't want to be in oceanside for july 4, because he thought all the military types would go nuts with shooting off RPG's into the air and whatnot. i thought this was quite unlikely, but it did remind me a time in wadi musa, jordan. tony and i were walking down the street when suddenly there was a rattt-atatatatatat of a machine gun very near. we both dove for cover immediately. then a jordanian guy burst out laughing, exclaiming "it's just a wedding!"

2001 - lund, sweden. our swedish mentors (such as baseballump seemed very axious that they provide us with some activity that was 'sufficiently american'. a barbecue was suggested and we eagerly agreed that it seemed a properly american thing to do. later, however, i came to see barbecues as more of a swedish phenomenon. you'll understand if you're in the country on april 30.

2000 - san francisco, ca. i believe i went to the warped tour to see weezer and green day on one of the piers, then saw the fireworks from the embarcadero, but i could be connecting unrelated memories.

1999 - on the way to inuvik, northwest territory. we had a four day holiday from the university, so we went on a crazed 1800 mile roadtrip over unpaved highway to reach the arctic ocean. no independence day festivities per se.

1998 and previous -- street fair in mission viejo, ca ?