Back to Alaska 2008

I returned from my first trip to Alaska toward the end of September 1974. I stayed at my mother’s house in Århus, Denmark for a couple of weeks. Enough time to sort out my affairs, develop my photographs and plan my next move. Then I moved. Up to my Dad, who lived in Sandnes, western Norway. As it happens, Sandnes is right next to Stavanger, the oil capital of Norway and Sola, the base for Stavanger Airport as well as for many of the oil service companies. I got a job there and started my career in the petroleum business; I will cover all that in another tab soon.  

I let Bill know my new forwarding address, and in November I got this letter from him, neatly written on a mechanical typewriter and dated 31 October 1974. It is little events like this one that make you occasionally regain your faith in humanity. Here is Bill, busy with all his matters in Paradise, California, his personal affairs, his planning for the next season. And yet he finds time to write to me, far away in Norway, and settle our accounts! Down to the cents! In 1974, $953.85 was a lot of money. That experience gave me hope in mankind; and in the following decades I oftentimes thought back on that: Whenever other people screwed me or stole from me, in my heart I always knew that there are also some good people out there. You just have to find them - and stick with them, and treasure them, when you do. 

I got busy with my life. I wrote Bill a couple of time; I sent a $20 note in a letter to Bettles the next summer and told the mail plane to bring an extra case of beer up to the crew at the creek; I don’t know if they ever got it. But other than that, you know how it is, you move on. I got married, ended up in Singapore, divorced and married again – all that stuff; Alaska became a distant memory in the past. 

Up until the end of 2007. I don’t know why, but around that time I just felt an urge to find out what happened to Bill. Our son Mark (born 2002) was not a baby any longer, he was getting easier to manage; the business Bee Choo and I was running was well established. I felt now would be a good time to re-connect with Bill. He wasn’t easy to find though. I Googled him and found very little. But there was a record of a court case, where Bill had a dispute with the government over some mining claims, and in those report there was an address in Fairbanks. I wrote but got no reply. In the court papers was another person mentioned with Bill’s surname, Claudene, I figured that would be his wife – and she had a telephone number! It was January 2008 by then and I called up Claudene and asked to talk to Bill. Claudene shouted into the room for Bill: “It is Morten for you, from Singapore!” I could hear Bill’s deep voice in the background: “Sure, right, I am coming ...” I thought: My God, he is alive!

We talked for almost an hour. Bill got my letters but had been too busy to answer, he said. We covered a lot of ground: “You were a bit of a bird lover, right?” Bill remembered. I admitted and Bill said: “I am not an environmentalist myself, but I am a conservationist!” I replied that was a good start. “Your mother”, Bill said: “She was a politician of some sort, right? She must be Queen of Denmark by now!” There were a lot of things to catch up on!  

In my letter I had offered to pay Bill back by flying him and Claudene to Singapore. Remember, this was January, and conditions were a bit nicer in Singapore than in Alaska that time of year. I would put Bill and his wife up in a hotel here, they could swim in the pool and we could all meet and have dinner and get reacquainted and catch up; after all, it had been 34 years! I would take Bill out for a walk and show him a rainforest, he might be impressed. I am not rich, but I could find the money for something like that; it would only be fair after all that Bill had done for me when I was a kid. But Bill didn’t want to travel, so that never happened. 

Instead Bee Choo and I began to plan a trip up north to see Bill at the creek. Bill and I started communicating by email, and Bill sent me photos of an amazing new lodge he had built at the creek. We agree to go out end of August 2008 and stay for a week or so at the camp. Bill told me that the Haul Road was now a public highway; Alyeska had handed it over to the state for maintenance, and it was for anyone to use; there was a nice bridge across the Yukon River and much of the way was paved. “It is still a rough road”, Bill said. “Watch out for the big rigs coming your way”. Today that road is called the Dalton Highway, and there is loads of info about it online. 

Late at night 24 August 2008, Bee Choo, Mark (5) and I landed in Anchorage, Alaska and checked into the Puffin Inn. I will let our photographs from the trip tell the rest of the story.