By Linda Ballou
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Transformation category
I leaned into a cold wind whipping up off the tiny boat harbor of Haines, Alaska on my way home from school. I arrived to find my father strapping the last bit of mailing tape around two boxes containing my belongings. I was to go on a trip that would change my life for better, or for worse, forever. I was fourteen and had never gone anywhere on my own.
“Get your jacket, the plane is waiting for you,” he growled.
“What plane?” I asked, horrified.
“The mail plane. I already talked to the pilot. You are leaving here today.”
“Where am I going?” I looked over to my mother who stared at me with a helpless look in her eyes.
“You are going to stay with Grandma Fry,” she said in a voice that was barely audible.
Grandma Fry was not my grandmother. She was a kindly old woman who lived in a creaking shack surrounded by a jungle of plants. My mother used to go to her house to get clippings when we lived in California.
“But I don’t even know Grandma Fry,” I whimpered in protest.
“It doesn’t matter. You are out of here today,” my father replied.
He scooped up my bundled belongings and put them in the cab of our truck and told me to get in. The instant my door shut, he gunned the engine and we were off. As he sped past the Pioneer Bar, I could make out a few regulars sipping their whiskeys on the rocks. I wondered which one of them told my father they saw me with Bobby after I’d been warned never to see him again.
As my father drove towards the airport beneath a lowered Alaskan sky we passed by the Moose Horn Café where the other kids were huddled over hot chocolates. Rain splattered the windshield as we continued past the high school. The wipers worked overtime as the truck bounced through mud puddles in the road pocked with frost boils. By the time we arrived at the airstrip, the drizzle had turned to downpour.
The pilot was waiting with the engine warmed up but expressed reservations about flying that day. Mail for Haines was (and still is) often held in Juneau, ninety miles to the south, for days because the planes are socked in due to soggy weather.
“Why do I have to go today?” I mustered the courage to ask.
“You’ve been with that black bastard again,” my father hissed into the wolf ruff of his parka.
Anyone who did not share his pasty pallor was considered inferior.
Bobby wasn’t black. He was a half-Tlingit Indian, of Mongolian descent, with a broad forehead, dark almond-shaped eyes, prominent cheekbones, and mocha-colored skin. He wasn’t a bastard either. His mother was an Indian from the native village of Klukwan resting on the Chilkat River. It has been there for two hundred years, long before my father’s arrival. Bobby’s father was a fisherman who happened to be white.
Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Too bad my dad didn’t get around a bit more. His attitude might have changed.
“It doesn’t look good, Mat,” the pilot said, leaning out of the plane and holding up the plastic window flapping in the wind.
“I really want her out of here today,” my father said.
In his mind, he felt he was doing the right thing because he was saving my life. If I didn’t get out of his sight today there was a strong chance he might do something he would regret—something like strangling his darlin’ daughter with his bare hands.
The pilot taxied down the airfield dotted with patches of glare ice. The visibility was nil. He taxied back to where my father and I were waiting for his verdict.
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea, Mat,” he yelled out his window over the wind.
I knew my life was in serious jeopardy when my father replied, “Give it a go.”
He tossed my bags in the plane and helped lift me into the back seat. My trembling sobs held no sway.
“Buckle up,” came from the pilot.
“Don’t worry Little Lady. I’ve made this flight a million times. It’s just going to be a little bumpy today,” he added with skeptical bravado as he revved the engine.
We taxied down the runway smothered beneath an iron curtain of clouds. In moments we lifted off and were plying our way to Juneau over the Lynn Canal. Rain splattered on the windows as the plane tossed from side to side in the stiff winds. I was weeping silently into the fur of my parka, trying to get a grip when the plane dropped what seemed like ten stories in two seconds. I bounced so high I hit my head on the ceiling of the plane. Shaken to the core, I was scared speechless. But it didn’t matter. My screams could not be heard over the din of the engine anyway.
The pilot craned his head around the seat to see if I was okay.
“Why don’t you come up here?” he asked. “You can help me fly this buggy.”
I welcomed anything to get my mind off impending doom. I wiggled between the seats and joined him in the tiny cockpit. He took my hand into his calloused paw and squeezed hard.
“This here is a float plane. If I had to, I could put us down right here on the canal. It’s going to be okay; don’t you worry none.”
He told me to take hold of the half-wheel moving about in front of my seat.
“Now, if you want to learn how to fly you couldn’t have a better lesson than today,” he laughed.
My stomach calmed and tears subsided as I grabbed hold of the wheel and concentrated on becoming an ace pilot. We chugged through a solid gray mass of clouds with blinding rain pelting the window for what seemed an eternity.
Occasionally the wind lifted a wing and tip us like a kite off balance. The pilot would bring us back, and then we would drop into a bottomless chasm until the plane righted itself. When we finally splashed down in the Juneau harbor with water spraying up over the windows, my cells settled back into their normal places. The pilot helped me onto the dock, carried my bags to the taxi station, and told the driver to take me to the airport. Emboldened by my first flight, I felt if I could live through that, I could live through anything
A quick change in the restroom prepared me for the rest of the journey. I teetered through the airport terminal listening to the sophisticated click of my high heels. I didn’t have much of what you could call cleavage, so I wore my cowl-neck sweater backward to show off my back, which I fancied being more attractive than a flat chest. The sweater was nearly long enough to cover my bright blue pleated cheerleading skirt that came to about mid-thigh. I considered this outfit the best thing I had to make the trip. Entirely inappropriate, but I felt glam.
Once aboard the jet bound for southern California, I sank into my seat and stared out the window waiting for my new life to begin. As the powerful engines lifted us off the ground, my spirits rose with the plane and G-forces pressed me into my seat. I closed my eyes and drifted into a dreamy coma. I awoke to a prim stewardess asking me what I wanted for dinner.
These were the days when a mini-pack of two cigarettes came with a full-course meal, white napkins, and wine if you were old enough. I wasn’t, so I contented myself by lighting up and puffing in a most lady-like manner. Mata Hari had nothing on me as a blue haze coiled about my head and shoulders. I had smoked Camels (pilfered from my father’s bureau) with my brother in his bedroom, but never in public. My first travel adventure was turning into a heady affair.
By the time I arrived in San Diego, I had changed planes successfully, struck up stirring conversations with my seatmates, gotten used to being waited on, and considered myself quite worldly. I was in no hurry to go to Grandma Fry’s. Since I lived in San Diego before going to Alaska a year ago, I had connections. Instead of checking in with Grandma Fry, I called my old girlfriend Slinky Sue.
Susan and I went way back. She helped me water the horses at the barn next to my house. We raced on our bikes, moving hoses from one bucket to the next. We had it down to precision timing. I hadn’t seen her since my family had rudely uprooted me and taken me away from my childhood friends.
Susan came from a well-to-do family with a big house. I knew they had room for me. Her mother agreed to come and get me at the airport but was not keen on my hanging around. After a couple of days, I called Grandma Fry. She was hopping mad. It seems she had placed an all-points bulletin on me, had been praying hard, and was worried sick. This didn’t start our new relationship too well, but we both knew this arrangement was temporary. We just didn’t know how long temporary was going to be.
When I went back to my old school, things changed. Girlfriends squealing like pigs over some teen idol on TV at pajama parties seemed silly. They hadn’t known the mature love of an 18-year-old like my Bobby. This set me apart and caused me to turn to literature for more enlightened friends. Like many readers, I began to write. It helped maintain my mental equilibrium.
Paul Theroux says that “if we were normal balanced individuals we would not write books.” My disjointed childhood put me well on my way to a topsy-turvy state of mind—perfect for writing.
I loved Grandma Fry, but she had a habit of taking her false teeth out and dropping them into a glass of water on the table in the middle of a meal, which was quite off-putting. We went to church three times a week. I agreed to be baptized to get the Christians to stop praying for my lost soul and to ensure that I would not burn in hell for any past or future sins. I pined for Bobby during my absence, sending him many impassioned letters. After a year in exile, I was allowed to come home.
When I returned to Haines, Bobby and I made plans to hide behind the rows of logs piled on the dock for one last clandestine meeting. After a final feverish groping, we agreed we didn’t want me to be punished again and that we would not see each other. I became an even more ardent reader and for solace turned to long, lonely walks along misty shores and into the dripping rainforest of southeast Alaska.
On these walks, I tried to absorb the spirit of Hootz the bear. Not that I wanted to meet him in person, but according to Tlingit lore he is the closest of all animals to humans. Plainly out of sorts with my own kind, I imagined a kinship with him.
According to the legend of the woman who married a bear, “After you take a bear’s coat off, it looks just like a human. And they act human: they fool, they are rowdy and curious, and they remember. They are confident. They make love for hours. They are grumpy after naps. They seem to be indestructible. They know what’s happening, where to go, and how to get there. They are forgiving. They have no enemies, no fears, they can be silly, and they are big-hearted. They are completely at home in the world.”
To have the essence of bear in my heart would be good.
Edward Abbey, of Desert Solitaire fame, concluded that solitude is a brooding meditation on open spaces. My solitary youth allowed me to sink deeper into the present and internalize my impressions. It gave them time to settle into my mind and become a part of me. The quietude was uninterrupted by the constant awareness of a companion’s comprehension of events, and the feeling that I must be entertaining in my conversation was absent.
In short, I became more comfortable and in tune with the place I was in than with the people who lived there. In adult life, this quality has helped me breathe deeply into other landscapes and to bring them to life for others in travel articles.
According to Don George, author of Travel Writing, the quintessential qualities of a travel writer are as follows:
“You have to be able to drop everything and take off to far-flung places at a moment’s notice.”
I believe my first flight was perfect training for the job.
“You also need to leave room for the unexpected to happen.”
Surely this lesson was learned.
“You must be adaptable, that is, equally at home on the high seas as on the low road.”
I think I rose to the occasion admirably.
“You will have to manage strained relationships due to long absences.”
Bobby did have to learn to live without me and me without him.
“You must have ‘pluck’. That is, you have to find the courage to talk to people you’ve never met, and to learn to trust in the kindness of strangers.”
The pilot whom I had never met before was just the first in a long list of assists from total strangers in my life.
George concludes that travel writing is essentially a lonely profession.
“You must possess a passion for exploring and integrating your discoveries into precise palpable prose to offset this negative.”
I feel fully alive when I am engaged in the state of exploration. As for palpable, as opposed to purple prose, that is something I will be working on for the rest of my life.
It seems I was handed all the ingredients to become an accomplished travel writer on my first flight. Collecting and collating data is a habit I’ve acquired because I like to get to a source quickly. Research is fun. Travel enlivening. Writing expands and excites my universe.
Was I happy at the time about the trip that engendered personality quirks that led me to this profession? No. Am I happy about it now? You bet.
The ugliest of ducklings emerged as an elegant black swan with a bright red beak and crimson feet flying high with an eclectic flock of other exotic birds
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Blessed with a double dose of genetic wanderlust, Linda Ballou loves to explore. At thirteen her pioneering parents took her to Alaska where she became firmly grounded in nature. Linda’s articles have appeared in American Fitness, Northwest Travel Magazine, and Morning Calm, the inflight magazine for Korean Air. She is a contributor to Travel World, Real Travel Adventure, and Go World Travel e-zines. Her outdoor adventures are brought to life in Lost Angel Walkabout: One Traveler’s Tales.