I Came Home
I am an Alaskan. I have always been. I was not born here. I did not grow up here. No ancestor of mine ever lived here. I was born into exile in Ogden, Utah, on July 14, 1950. Even before I could read the word, “Alaska,” I felt Alaska call out to me.
On July 14, 1981, I drove a Volkswagen Rabbit loaded with my wife Margie, the four children so far born to us and all our possessions not sold in the yard sale across the Yukon border into Alaska. No job awaited, no house. We knew no one. Yet my soul felt soothed. I had come home. Two months later, I was offered a poor paying job at a small daily on the Kenai Peninsula. We packed up our two soggy tents and moved into the apartment the publisher had arranged for us. Two hours later, I was offered an even poorer paying job at the struggling, nearly bankrupt, Tundra Times.
The Times had been founded over 20 years earlier by the late Howard Rock, Iñupiaq, to fight Project Chariot, launched by the US Atomic Energy Commission to blast out an experimental deep water port at Cape Thompson with nuclear explosives. Howard could see the Cape rising over the whaling waters of his ancient village of Point Hope. He and his readers shut Project Chariot down. The paper, based first in Fairbanks, then Anchorage, had gone on to serve the Alaska Native community, statewide.
My adult life had thus far been consumed by two intense experiences – first with the Lakota of South Dakota and Montana, then Arizona's White Mountain Apache – my wife's people - my children's people. From those two experiences, I knew if one wanted to truly touch the heart of any place in America, that heart beat strongest in America's surviving indigenous communities - whatever turmoils one might find within.
I chose the Tundra Times. I stayed only three-and-half years, but managed to do work in every region of Alaska – the Aleutian Islands, the rainforests of Southeast, the river basins of Interior and Southwest, the great Arctic Slope... and so followed all that has since transpired. Alaska is too big... diverse... complex... beautiful... tough... giving... deadly... joyous... heartbreaking... for any individual to ever fully grasp. I have had a tantalizing taste. I remain at the table. I live in exile no more.
Bill Hess