It seemed like a good day to have a midlife crisis so I opted for the red Mini at the rental car place. It was the right choice — the following day the sky was a shocking blue and it was t-shirt weather for the first time since I’d arrived in Alaska. It was also the first time I was alone. I fiddled with the radio for a bit while in the hotel parking lot, and then, I headed south along Turnagain Arm with the sunroof open.
My goal was Alyeska — my friend Scott McMurren, a booster for Alaska Tourism told me to make the drive. “If you see a bunch of people stopped on the side of the road, pull over, it’s likely there’s wildlife.” I stopped when there were no people too, picking my way through nearly every roadside turn out on the shoulder of the Seward Highway. I was the only person gawking at the snowblower engine at the Potter Section House stop, but a little further up the road, at Beluga Point, there were dozens of cars and dozens of people, some of them with binoculars. Off shore, poking out of the black water at odd intervals, were the white, white heads and then, backs, and then, tails of five or six Beluga whales. It was taking me forever to get to Alyeska and I did not care.
View from the Seward Highway, just north of Girdwood, at low tide.
But I was hungry and I wanted coffee. I turned left off the highway at Girdwood and kept driving until I hit a dead end. I didn’t have a map and I thought I had run out of town, so I stopped at the first place I saw, a little storefront called The Grind. There was rack of used books on the porch and a picnic bench on the sunny side of the building. I ordered a latte, bought a disappointing muffin, and went to sit in the sunshine.
About ten minutes in to my solitary day dreaming, a man with an absolutely gorgeous puppy wandered up, tied his dog to the porch, and asked me if I’d keep an eye on her while he went to get coffee. “Sure,” I said, “but if neither of us are here when you get back, it’s because your dog is too damn cute to resist.” He returned ten minutes later and as happens when you are the only two people in a sunny garden behind a coffee shop in a rather remote location, we started to talk.
I regret I don’t remember his name — or the dog’s — but I asked and we shook hands — both the man and the dog. We talked about dogs and I mentioned that I’d love to have one, but that I travel too much and it wouldn’t be fair, the dog needs you to be the alpha. We talked about sailing — he lives on a boat — and he told me about a magical time when he’d been lost in a maze of icebergs. “I wish I’d been an artist, it was like something only an artist could describe,” he said, before telling me about a daughter in art school. He was a retired podiatrist, struggling with diabetes and trying to maintain a sensible relationship with Merlot. And then he asked me why I traveled so much.
“I’m a writer,” I said.
“Are you prolific?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am! I never really thought about it. No one has ever asked me that before.”
“You know, we used to get a lot more of your kind up when Sarah was running for office. Journalists would come up and hang out in Girdwood for months, getting in everyone’s business, asking all kinds of crazy questions.” And then he used a turn of phrase I heard repeatedly during my time in Alaska. “Say what you will about Ted Stevens; he did a lot for the town of Girdwood. You know, some Japanese business men were up here looking to invest in some resort property. One of them twisted an ankle on a trail out there and the next season, that trail was in much better condition. We’ve got nicer sidewalks, got some new businesses in, Stevens, he was good to us here in Girdwood.”
Not for the first time, I found myself shutting the hell up about politics. We talked about Seattle, and what I’d seen in Alaska. I told my very companionable coffee date how much I’d been enjoying his amazing home state, how I’d been gob-struck by Denali and hoped to come back to see what it’s like in winter. And a little while later, he shook my hand again, wished me a safe return to the lower 48, and walked back to where he’d come from, with his bouncing, adorable puppy at his side.
My Alaska trip was sponsored by Travel Alaska.