Thursday, November 10, 2016

That time we built an official 'historic site'

It's somewhere on this map and, no, I am not going to say where.
There are two places where some of the world's greatest adventures are formed: around a barroom
table late in the night and around a campfire way off the pavement somewhere.

This one comes from the latter. It occurred on a remote beach in Alaska's Prince William Sound and led to quite a different result than any of us could have expected.

Sitting around a campfire in front of a teepee my friends used as a headquarters for kayak trips they guided in the sound we hatched the plan to build a sauna for our use over the course of a summer. It came up as a whim but as the line goes in Stan Rogers' song "Mary Ellen Carter" "with every jar that hit the bar" the idea became more of a mission.

A ready supply of lumber in the form of weathered cedar planks lay just across the bay at an abandoned cannery. We all had tools and a quick call on a radio to another friend coming out the next day produced a supply of nails and some hinges and we were on our way. A stove and pipe would have to come out later.

The next day while a couple of friends and I made several trips across the bay in my 19-foot boat hauling lumber, others drew up a design, found a level spot and cleared it in preparation for the construction

Along with the weathered cedar the old cannery produced other treasures: some metal roofing in good enough shape to cover our building and a box of the old-time square nails which we thought would give our steambath some character. Little did we know it might give it too much character.

With half a dozen people working over the course of the next day we had the structure on a solid foundation and built all the way to the roof. The next day we built a fancy door and fashioned a handle from gnarled driftwood. At that point I had to leave to go back to work and it fell to others to complete the structure.

That summer proved so busy I never did get back to see the finished project, but when I came back the following spring a bunch of us went out there and had a fine party on that beach to kick off the summer. After that, the boat work became hectic and it wasn't until August the chance arose to go back.

At the time I was carrying four Bureau of Land Management surveyors who were documenting historic sites chosen by Natives in the area under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. We visited several bays and coves over ten days until one day we pulled into that very bay where we'd built the sauna. As was my custom I asked the surveyor what was in this bay.

He was kind of excited. He said the Natives had claimed a spot in the bay were there was a foundation for an old cabin and a steambath that was still in use. He expected to have a sauna while we were there. I became immediately suspicious. He showed me a photograph and sure enough it was our sauna. I started laughing while the others looked at me curiously until one asked what was so funny.

I looked at them very seriously and said, I built that goddamed historic steambath. Yup, the Natives  had come along and claimed our sauna as their own and indeed one of historic significance. The only thing historic about that building was the imprint of my skinny white ass on a bench inside. But what can you do? If we went too far into the legalities we probably had built an illegal structure to begin with; we had no legitimate claim to it. I don't know what happened to that sauna though a fellow in another port on the opposite side of the sound told me one day he had found a sauna and described the island. A welder, he worked up a fancy stove for it, but then he disappeared too.

Whether it is still there or not I have no idea and most of the people who knew about it either have died or dispersed across the globe. But sometimes I like to think of future tourists tracing the history of Prince William Sound staring into a roped-off area that protects that building which was my contribution to the Native history of the sound.

2 comments:

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

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