Rule of thumb #4: Avoid situations like being commissioned getaway-driver in the mission to traffic “Joey” out of town

Day 4: May 18, Tok, Alaska to Teslin, Yukon Territories (498 miles)

My goals were straightforward. They were:

I. Go home to New York
II. If possible, see my girlfriend Natalia in Oregon
III. Travel by any means necessary; hitchhiking preferably
IV. Never, ever, let my mother find out

I chose Josh, my good friend in Coldfoot, Alaska, to be my “base camp.” I told him that if I don’t call every seven days, then he should go ahead and alert the authorities. And if there is no avoiding it any longer, call my mother.

I wouldn’t wish such a scenario on my worst enemy. I might rather be abducted by a couple of horny hillbillies in Appalachia or be a play-toy in a grizzly den than have to call my mom with bad news.

My mom, an overly nervous woman to begin with, would not—to say the least—respond well to news about her son missing in the land of grizzlies and sasquatch.

While I didn't think it would ever come to that, at some point in my ride with Bobbie, however, I worried that Josh was going to have to make that call.

In Tok, the previous evening, I struggled to get a ride. I stopped at the town’s visitor center to ask where I could find a good spot to stand, but the lady warned me that Tok was a difficult town to hitchhike out of because it was so close to the Canadian border. She recommended I take a bus to Whitehorse in the Yukon, but that cost $125 and I didn’t want to resort to other modes of travel quite yet.

There wasn’t much traffic leaving Tok and the few drivers heading east didn’t bother to give a passing glance to my cardboard sign to "Canada."

The weather was still pleasant but the temperature was descending with the sun, which—in a month’s time—would still be hovering above the horizon through almost all hours of the night.

As I sat on my pack with my sign held on my knee, a transient black lab offered me companionship. His presence may have deterred the few trucks that passed from stopping, but I didn’t have the heart to shoe him away.

I gave up for the night and made myself a Mountain House Meal (freeze-dried food you just add boiling water to), set up my tent, and slept soundly on the side of the road. I woke early, around 7 am, cooked oatmeal with craisins and brown sugar with my backpacking stove, and made an even bigger sign, reading “Canada” in huge red letters.

The hours go by and I grow concerned. I figure no one wants to take a hitchhiker across the border, and the border itself is a two-day walk—an excursion I’m unwilling to undertake. Still, I’m comfortable, the weather is beautiful, and a scattering of birds sing me a panorama of song as I gaze at a frozen wave of white peaks to the south.

It’s approaching noon and I begin to fret about being stuck in Tok when a black SUV pulls over and someone yells out, “Hey Ken!”

What the hell?

Much to my disbelief, it’s a group of former coworkers from Fairbanks heading through Canada to Skagway, Alaska. Still a bit shocked—almost to the point where I struggle to keep my hands steady—I hop in, relay my few hitchhiking stories, and slug a couple Kokanee beers en route to Whitehorse, Canada—a quaint sub-arctic metropolis in the Yukon Territories, 400 miles from Tok.

I’m overwhelmed and can’t thank them enough. Patrick, the driver, buys me a coffee and bagel at Tim Hortons and forces me to take $40 in Canadian money. They drop me off on the highway, we hug, snap pictures, and go our own ways.

Whenever someone pulls over for the hitchhiker, especially after a long wait, the elation is almost difficult to bear. I can only compare the feeling to moments of unrestrained ecstasy experienced as a child: seeing a cluster of presents on Christmas morning or hearing that your elementary school is going to have a snow-day over the radio.

But upon being dropped off, the anxiety is equally as potent. The hitchhiker wonders how long he’ll have to wait, where he'll sleep, and worst of all: whether he’ll ever get a ride.

It’s around 8 pm but there’s still plenty of daylight so I make my sign for the next sizable town, which is Watson Lake—just north of the British Columbia border. I stand out there for an hour, sit down to look at my maps, and was delighted when Bobbie pulled over in her sedan.

Bobbie was a native girl, heavyset, pushing at least 250 pounds. She was in her late twenties, very cheery, and was hoping to pick up a hitchhiker to keep her company. She asked me to help her move some party supplies out of the back seat into the trunk (she was hosting a baby shower in a town called Teslin). When I motioned to move the large bottle of liquor and various six-packs of wine-coolers, she exclaimed, “No, no. Keep those up front for me.” Luckily—for my sake—she gave me the keys and I was to take her the 100 miles or so to Teslin.

She pounded one wine cooler after another, and refused to shut the windows because it makes her feel claustrophobic.

“I’m a Yukon girl,” she’d giggle, while I shivered feverishly in my hoodie.

As we sped down the highway she interrupted, “No. Wait, wait, wait. Turn here at this campground. I got some friends I want to meet here.”

This is it, I thought. This was her plan all along. This is when she and her cronies throw me out of the car, steal my gear, rip off my clothes, and jam some non-cylindrical object into me while laughing and giving each other high-fives.

I knew that hitchhiking wasn’t exactly safe. Yet I thought if I kept my wits, used common sense, and at the very worst, was quick to retrieve my hunting knife, then I just might escape this adventure alive.

I was willingly putting myself in hazardous situations, probably for the same reason people go sky-diving, or mountain climbing. There’s a thrill to hitchhiking. There’s a lot of boredom, a lot of monotony, but there are, without question, thrills.

Bobbie said hello to a couple friends at the campground—without event—and we got into the town of Teslin around midnight. She said I could stay at her friend Marie’s place and though I felt uncomfortable with the offer, a warm bed sounded enticing.

Teslin is small community primarily made up of natives, a few whites, and an unverified number of sasquatch. Infamous in the Yukon for its high number of Bigfoot sightings, nine Teslin residents in 2005, according to CBC News, saw a large, hairy, human-like figure walk past a window. This has not been the first sighting, and I doubt, the last.

When we got there drunks strutted across the street yelling obscenities. I immediately felt uneasy. By the time we got to her friend Marie's, Bobbie was thoroughly soused and urged me, ceaselessly, to take a shot of whiskey, all of which I politely declined.

Marie—a well kept, attractive middle-aged woman—looked at me warily, probably wondering if I’d slice her throat open in the middle of the night. I didn’t take offense, though. I probably wouldn't want me in my house either.

Bobbie had other friends in town so I chauffeured her to Alex’s. She slugged a few more beers and every so often she brushed her hand against my thigh.

We couldn’t tell whether Alex was home or not because of the freakishly-large dog in front aptly named Zeus who looked like one of the ghastly Zuul dogs in Ghostbusters.

Bobbie prodded me to go knock and I responded, sternly, “Bobbie—I don’t care if I sound scared or girly right now, but I’m not going anywhere near that dog.”

We then visited Joey—a middle-aged native with sleepy eyes—who, to make things so much more complicated and scary, was under house-arrest. The police drove by every few minutes to make sure he was still home, while I nervously sat on his couch watching a TV show called “Kenny vs. Spenny.”

I was in a difficult situation. I wanted to get the hell away from Bobbie, Joey, Marie, Zeus and Teslin altogether. I wanted to be at home in my waterbed, safe and sound.

Hoping to get away, I told Bobby that I’d be happy to sleep in my tent but she fervently insisted that I’d have my own room.

As the night dragged on, Joey and Bobbie hatched a plan to get Joey out of town. If Joey slipped around the woods undetected by the police, we could pick him up in Bobbie’s car and party it up at Watson Lake where Joey would have access to his beloved alcohol.

I had no part in the creation of these plans, and while I tensely listened, they designated me as the getaway driver because we had a bottle of liquor in the back and sober people were scarce.

Bobbie wanted to go see another friend before we trafficked Joey out of town so before dropping her off I said, “This has been wonderful and I really appreciate the ride, but I really should go my own way at this point.” Finally she gave in. It was dark and I was cold. I walked along the highway and found a patch of grass to set up my tent for the night.

Rule of thumb #3: Avoid drivers who “just got out” [of prison]

Day 3: May 17, 2007. Delta Junction, AK to Tok, AK (111 miles)


I said goodbye to Dirk and his family, snapped a picture of them, and held out my cardboard sign for the town of Tok drawn in big purple bubble letters. As I sat on the side of the highway, a local tossed me a cinnamon bun that he just bought from a nearby farmer’s market, which I gratefully accepted.

A couple of cars pulled up and offered to take me a few miles up the road. I declined, hoping to snag a longer ride, but settled when James offered to take me to the town of Dot Lake, fifty miles closer to the Canadian border.

James was a hunter and told me about all of his hunting exploits and claimed, in Texas twang, “You can’t never beat a female in gun shootin.’ You give a girl a gun the first time and odds are they’ll shoot better than most any guy.”

Dot Lake—a town largely comprised of natives—has a population that doesn’t exceed the double digits. I sat with my sign to Tok by a nearby school and some girls, in their upper teens, kept walking by, greeting me each time with a “hi there” and giggles.

I smiled and waived back.

Despite the pattern of middle-aged men I had had for drivers so far, I secretly harbored fantasies of having a sub-arctic tryst with some nubile young driver in a tight tank top and jeans who’d love me one night and leave me the next.

The adventurer—by nature—relinquishes the direction of his life to the discretion of “fate.” No longer entirely at the wheel, someone or something else is driving. And suddenly, strangely, paradoxically, the loss of control becomes empowering. No longer at the mercy of the stifling order of conventional life, order, inhibition and restraint are accordingly flung into the air, off like clothes in a moment of passion.

Though Wayne—a heavyset, middle-aged native—wasn’t the dark-haired beauty I dreamt of, I was still excited when he pulled over for me. As I got in his rust-speckled pickup, though, I detected something off-putting in his wide smile and slurred pronunciations. I buckled up, swallowed my fears, and hoped he was merely dazed by a mild hallucinogen.

He was heading east to Tok to get his tires changed on the truck that he was giving to his son as a graduation present. A strange gift, I thought, because Wayne just received a royal, meth-induced ass-whoopin’ from his son.

“He beat the living shit out of me.”

Wayne hadn’t been much of a father figure. He casually mentioned that he “just got out” of prison and that he occasionally dabbles with meth. He sipped from a can of Sierra Mist and I wondered what squares on the periodic table he may have sprinkled in.

As we headed down the Alcan Highway lined on each side of the road with thick spruce forest, Wayne divulged stories of his eighteen-month stint in a federal penitentiary for killing a bald eagle. When I questioned him about what seemed like an awfully rigid sentence for killing a bird that is now off the endangered species list, he clarified that the length of his sentence was exacerbated because of a rich history of DWI’s, thereby confirming the worst of my fears.

First a convict. Then a hunter. Now I was riding with a convict/hunter with a penchant for nose-candy and swerving over yellow lines.

We were going about 60 mph and I estimated that if I open the door, exit the truck, land on my shoulder, tuck, and then roll, I might have a better chance of surviving the fall than I did in the truck with Wayne.

I took my chances, though, and remained in the truck. He told me all about the prison gangs and the drug epidemics plaguing various Alaskan villages. He said meth was a good drug, far different than cocaine, which “makes you go insane.” When I brought up his son’s recent act of meth-induced insanity, Wayne changed the subject.

He dropped me off in Tok, I walked to the edge of town, made a sign for Canada with a drawing of a big red maple leaf, and awaited my next ride.

Rule of thumb #2: Even drivers who say, “If you’re gettin’ in my truck, you’re gonna fuck,” may not be so bad

Day 2: May 16, 2007. Coldfoot, AK to Delta Junction, AK (349 miles)

I didn’t like truckers.

They were fat, obscene with waitresses, and watched Fox News at all hours. Too lazy to pull over, they'd reputedly urinate into pop bottles at the wheel and then hurl the golden grenades of Dr. Pepper and Mug Root Beer into an otherwise unsullied arctic landscape.

As a cook at the truck stop, I’d purposely hasten the onset of heart disease by slathering an extra coating of mayonnaise on greasy cheeseburgers and overloading their dinner plates with hillocks of golden-brown tater-tots.

The town of Coldfoot got its name from the gold-rush miners who got “cold feet” and scurried back home to wife and child in favor of toughing it out in mosquito-laden summers and negative-sixty degree winters.

But some stayed. In the early 1900’s, Coldfoot—in its prime—boasted half a dozen saloons, a gambling hall, two roadhouses, a post office and even a brothel.

The miners, these days, are gone, but Coldfoot has staged a comeback servicing truckers who are hauling equipment up to Prudhoe Bay where oil is pumped down 800 miles of pipeline to Valdez.

Just several years ago, truckers at Coldfoot—rumor has it—would coax waitresses back to their trucks for more generous tips. The saying goes that the waitresses would “service them in the restaurant, then in the cab.”

But the truth was, I had hardly even spoken to a trucker and I was lumping the lumpy into one very unfair and unbecoming stereotype.

****

Before I go any further, I should mention that this was my first attempt at hitchhiking. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I had ever even seen a hitchhiker. I wondered: do people still hitchhike? Is there any conceivable way that I could thumb my way home?

Of course I was familiar with the hitchhiking lore of the 1960’s and 70’s, supposedly when over-sized, multi-colored vans picked up hitchhikers at whim, offering them coke lines and invitations into writhing, hairy-bodied backseat orgies.

I wasn’t so sure if that was how things actually went down, but I was pretty sure that hitchhiking wouldn’t be so easy these days. Far worse, I suspected.

New anti-hitchhiking laws, a nationwide deluge of paranoia, and a collective distrust would make hitching rides, I presumed, much harder.

When I started my hitchhike, the movie The Hitcher just came out on DVD—a ludicrous remake of an absurd, but slightly better, horror flick from the 80’s, starring Rutger Hauer. Though I haven’t seen either film, I can safely presume that some hitchhiking psychopath relentlessly interrupts ludicrously good-looking teens having sex by impaling them in the skull with some sharp, metal object. Because that’s, I guess, what people believe hitchhikers do. And the paranoia created by movies like these fosters a general distrust towards strangers and trepidation towards hitchhikers that would—at times—keep me on the side of the road for longer than I pleased.

But I had one thing going for me. Looking more like an innocuous country boy who needed a ride back to the family farm, drivers, I thought, would feel more inclined to pick me up rather than the bearded, camo-wearing eccentric that sometimes frequents curbsides outside of Fairbanks.

To better my chances at landing rides, I:

1. Shaved off my scraggily beard
2. Wore polos and button-up shirts
3. Wrote on my cardboard signs with crayola crayons
4. And finally, hid my twelve-inch hunting knife in the side pouch of my backpack

*****

Dirk was a trucker in his mid-thirties. His ensemble of oil-stained jeans, an unbuttoned plaid shirt and a dirty ball-cap seemed in sync with his confident demeanor and convict's-goatee. As we walked to his truck I kept in stride with his caffeinated gait while he explained that he needed someone to talk to so he could make it all the way home to Delta Junction (almost a 350-mile ride) without falling asleep. I met him that morning at the trucker’s cafe.

He talked a mile a minute, detailing everything from his family history to his criminal past. (Dirk was wanted in two states and, according to him, wrongly suspected of murder in one.)

As he came to trust me, he began imparting highly personal stories, which included a rich history of relationships with strippers and a period of his life when he was a self-admitted man-whore. Dirk used to warn women: “If you’re gettin’ in my truck, you’re gonna fuck.” In addition, and in exquisite detail, he described the faults and merits of his wife’s pubic hair.

His stories, though, at times, would take a serious turn. He told me about how his father molested his sister and how Dirk threatened to kill him if he ever caught him alone with his children.

He was fully, genuinely, in love with his wife Julia and their two kids. Mostly, he whined about his enormous debt and I was amused when he'd mention the Tommy Gun that just came in the mail, costing him nearly $1,300.

“You know what I’m thinking about?” he’d ask, filling in a break of conversation. “Rat-at-at-at-at-at-at!” he sputtered while miming a 1930’s gangster.

“When we get home, we can test it out.”

Dirk derided the theory of evolution and loved to talk politics, often attempting to draw me into disclosing my beliefs. But prudence nudged me to share little, especially none of my feelings on the availability of automatic weapons or the improvidence of buying a machinegun when in debt. I courteously deflected his questions and upon reaching his home, we gleefully fired a few rounds at the gravel pit.

His wife Julia was beautiful with achingly long legs and a model’s jaw line. They were affectionate and according to Dirk’s descriptive monologue, had a vibrant sex life. The kids, Kevin and Kristen, were angels: polite to me, obedient to their parents. I played tag with them at the gravel pit and Dirk and Julia grew familiar enough with me to invite me over for dinner and to spend the night.

The hitchhiker is not just a miser of rides. He’s a therapist, a companion, and sometimes, a friend. Dirk and I, for just a day, were friends.

Berries and black bears

No matter how much time you spend in the Alaskan bush, you never really forget about the bears. Not entirely, at least.

Of course, over time, you can't help but become complacent. But really, it only takes the snap of a twig or the tremor of a heavy footstep from a shadowy forest to jar ancient fears back into being.

I’ve been off patrol for almost a week now so I’ve been spending plenty of time picking blueberries. It’s been a superb berry year. On some bushes I can pull—with one comb of my hand—the juicy, blue mini-marbles in clumps of threes and fives. After filling my nalgene to the brim, I gluttonously devoured bushes and bushes of endless blueberries, letting those that escaped my jaws roll down my cheeks.

It’s so easy to forget that this might have been someone else’s food. The bears here leave evidence of their predilections for the ubiquitous berry in their dung, which looks less like the smoking pile of overlapping brown logs that you may imagine and more like a piquant and sugary pie-filling bespeckled with a smattering of dark reds and blues.

They devour blueberry bushes whole—leaves and all—like an oscillating weed whacker, mowing down the plants by rhythmically swaying their heads from one bush to another.

This past evening, I was going for my daily jog down the airstrip, which eventually narrows into a trail just outside the village of Bettles (pop. approx. 30), where our ranger station is located.

Occasionally, I’d stop to rustle around in the bushes in search of some undiscovered patch of blueberries. I found an opening and ate as many as my stomach would allow. It must have looked odd for Chris—a fellow ranger on a bike ride—who saw me standing alone in the middle of the tundra like a scarecrow in running shorts.

I continued to gorge the berries, which stained my finger tips red and left their sticky purple juice on my beard before continuing my run back towards the airstrip.

To my right though, I heard something large rustling in the thicket. Staring tremulously into the six-foot high jungle of adolescent willow, alder, and spruce trees with an understory of berry bushes and sphagnum moss, I stopped to discern the sounds.

Alaska can be so quiet. It's hard to imagine, sometimes, what absolute silence is. Even in our quietest moments—when we think we have absolute silence—we forget about the hum of the refrigerator, the rumblings of distant street traffic, or the click of a clock's second hand.

Sometimes on windless Alaskan days a gray jay flitting from tree to tree could be confused for a bear loping across tussocks. I was miles from town and the sounds—the rusting of leaves, the snapping of twigs, and downed-trees crushed under the weight of some magnificent mammal—amplified by the silence were practically deafening. This was no gray jay. I was sure of that.

I called out, “Hey bear.”

Was it a bear? A moose? A caribou?

I called out “Hey bear” again and again, hoping my voice would deter an attack as it normally does with wild bears.

But it didn’t stop trailing me.

I had ceased running so as not to trigger some predator-prey response, but I stiffened my pace in hopes of reaching the airstrip where the trail ends and widens into a football field of gravel.

My heart pumped a surging medley of biochemicals through the narrow, artiaral canals that widened my eyes, stiffened my body, and made my hands shake as I struggled to remove the cap off the bear-spray that I carry with me on all my runs.

The rustling grew louder. Whatever it was plowed through the bush like a tank. The ground crunched, leaves shook like ocean waves, and dried branches snapped off trees like pencils-tips.

I was being hunted.

I started screaming “HEY BEAR!!!” “HEY BEAR!!!” over and over. My voice no longer a confident stentorian bellow, was now a blood-curdling scream that I chanted without pause.

I still saw Chris on his bike, maybe 200 yards away. Not confident in the bear-spray’s effectiveness, I starting yelling for him because I knew he carried his pistol with him everywhere. But alas, he couldn’t hear me. And my voice, though deep and savage-like, probably echoed my fears through the forest.

Then it crashed out of the thicket, 15 yards behind me. Its inky black coat seemed to shimmer even under the overcast sky. With each step its fur shook as the muscles underneath swelled, supporting its prodigious bulk.

It wasn’t coming toward me, but it crossed the trail from which I just came entering the opposite set of trees. It barely glanced at me.

I was as erect as a statue, with my arm extended, waiting to blast its eyes and nose with a shower of orange, cayenne-scented spray. But that wouldn’t happen. I would begin my walk again, gradually picking up speed that ended with a sprint into town when I thought I was no longer in eyeshot.

If you are anything like me, you’d probably wish that it was you who had had this wild encounter. But if you were anything like me in that moment, then you would have wished you were back home, safe and sound, away from bears and berries and anything wild.

And while I feel that with each close call that maybe I should make it my last in Alaska, oddly, it are the memories of these sensations, more than anything else, that keep bringing me back.

Rule of Thumb #1: Prepare for anything. Failure especially.

[In the summer of 2007 at the age of 23, I hitchhiked 5,500 miles from Alaska to New York. To preserve and share these memories, I've decided to post a weekly entry about the journey.]

Day 1: May 15, 2007. Coldfoot, AK to Coldfoot, AK (0 miles)

I would rather that my spark should burn out

in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom

of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time. -- Jack London credo

Hitchhiking is a lot like asking a girl out. It’s exciting, nerve-racking, and you’re sure there’s absolutely no chance for success. And as each and every car zips past you, you're left with the spurned lover's sting of rejection.

But sometimes, you get lucky.

This is actually a terrible analogy because—even at the age of twenty-three—I still had yet to ask a girl out. Nor had I done a drug, broken a law, or—for the most part—diverted from the path prescribed for me by social and parental expectation.

I was thence cursed with a burning restlessness that—I thought—could only be purged by embarking on a highly dangerous and certain-to-fail adventure.

Faulty logic, maybe. And I suppose my romantic plunge into the unknown was also due in part to the unhealthy amount of travel and adventure books I had been reading over the winter.

But one thing I was sure of: seeking a secure future no longer interested me. It never did. I thought that while security may prolong life, it dulls it too. Rather, I dreamt of mingling with ex-felons, knife-fighting with grizzlies, and falling in love on the open road.

I had been living in Coldfoot, Alaska for exactly a year. I did everything there from brushing toilet bowls at the motel to flipping burgers at the truck stop to guiding rafting tours down the Koyukuk River.

Having arrived at Coldfoot the day after I graduated from college, my experiences in the world were few. To fix that, I made it my goal to hitchhike 5,000 miles from Coldfoot, Alaska to my boyhood home in Buffalo, New York.

I said my goodbyes to friends, strapped on my backpack, and on a mild, blue-skied May afternoon, I walked down the Dalton Highway—nervous, scared, but brimming (and almost shaking) with excitement.

I gazed upon the mountains that were percolating water from melting winter snows into turgid streams and rivers. An inquisitive moose watched me from a camouflaging copse of green spruce trees as I marched past, confidently shouldering the heavy load on my back that was bursting with clothes, food, and camping gear that I hoped would sustain me for the next several weeks.

I heard a truck grumbling from the north. Perhaps my first ride? I stopped, grinned, and stuck out my thumb. Nothing. He didn’t even slow down. After five miles, I ceased walking and laid my pack on a patch of grass. I’d wait for the rides to come to me, I thought.

But after twelve hours and only seventeen southbound trucks (at a disillusioning pace of one truck every 42 minutes), I slung my pack on again and walked the five miles back to camp and jeering coworkers.

How will I get to New York if I can’t even get out of Coldfoot?

Dirk, a trucker and my first ride the following morning, would help me figure that out.