3/27/23
Newsletter #288
The Crack of Dawn
As I marched east out of Tok Junction, Alaska, back toward the Canadian border, I thought, “150 miles walking at three miles an hour should take about 50 hours.” And so, step by step, up one hill and down another, one long twisting mile after another, I humped my out of Alaska.
Along the way I saw a herd of about 50 caribou. Several of them glanced up at me, but they all seemed entirely unconcerned by my presence. At some point a moose stepped out of the woods onto the road maybe 100 feet ahead of me. It was enormous – about 10 feet up to the top of the antlers. A moment later its calf appeared out of the woods and stepped up beside it. The calf was as big as me. I froze into a pillar of salt, trying not to breathe. As her baby slowly crossed the road, the mama moose glanced over at me, her expression clearly saying, “Keep your distance, human, don’t make me do something you’ll regret.” I remained frozen. When the calf stepped into the woods on the other side of the road, the mama moose slowly turned away from me, casually following along after her child.
Completely shaken, I continued walking. My mouth was so dry I could hardly breathe. I took my canteen off my belt and found that it was empty. Bummer. As I kept going and my mouth somehow kept getting drier, I began to think about what in my pack was liquid and could possibly be drunk: Worcestershire sauce and bug repellent. Bad choices, both. And meanwhile it would rain hard every hour or two for 10 or 15 minutes. By the time I stopped, dug out my poncho and got it over my head, the rain would have stopped and I was already soaked. I was so thirsty that I eyed the little mud puddles and considered drinking from them, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I just kept walking and walking and walking, mile after mile, with no cars going either way.
At some point along the way a big black bear came leisurely strolling out of the woods about 50 feet in front of me. It was huge, and so close that I could smell it. It crossed the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side, entirely unaware of me. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to get frightened, although my dry mouth got even drier.
Mile after mile, the sun traveling in an oval and never going down, the relentless heat and bugs, and I was as severely parched as I’d ever been in my life. I could hardly breathe. And my stuffy nose didn’t help. Now I would happily drink from a mud puddle, except there weren’t any. In desperation I stopped, dug through my pack and found the little bottle of Worcestershire sauce. I took a big slug. Yow! Nasty! But it was wet and I was no longer desperately thirsty. I kept on walking with the little bottle in my hand, and soon finished it. In no time I was every bit as thirsty as I ever was, but now I had the fucked up flavor of Worcestershire sauce in my mouth.
And where was I going anyway? Back to L.A.? Why? Nobody was going to hire an 18-year-old kid who’d made a few crappy Super-8 movies, and bumbled his way through a couple of unreadable screenplays. I needed to make some movies and figure out how it was done. That meant Super-8. People in L.A. didn’t like Super-8. Whereas my old buddies in Detroit were shooting Super-8, and there was a bunch of them: enough for a cast and crew. And they seemed enthusiastic. Fine, I’d go back to Detroit and make movies with Sam and Scott and those idiots. And I had an 18-page script that was the end result of typing all over 1,000 sheets of paper. Great, I had a plan.
Except that I was pretty sure I was going to die of thirst. Or more likely, since I could hardly breathe through my parched mouth and throat, plus my stuffy nose, I seriously thought I was going to asphyxiate. I’d just sit down in the Alaskan wilderness and stop breathing. Maybe wolves would eat my carcass. But I kept walking.
And then I saw a flash of red in my peripheral vision. I stopped. Nothing in nature is that color red. I glanced back . . .
Sitting there on the side of the road, in an environment with absolutely no litter of any kind, was a full can of Coca-Cola. I picked it up and it wasn’t cold, but it was full, and it was unopened. It wasn’t even dirty or dented. I looked all around to make sure I wasn’t on Candid Camera. Nope. I opened the can and took a big slug – oooh, warm Coke, very intense, but much better than Worcestershire sauce. I could breathe again. I wasn’t going to die, at least not then. I took another gulp, then poured the rest into my canteen. I smashed the can, put it in my pack, then kept on walking.
Apparently, fate was not quite done with me. Not yet anyway.
A now a new day dawns. How cool is that?