ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

Ice is Not Your Friend

I tried to take The Feltist’s advice on negotiating the ice.

I really did try. But I failed — miserably.

Last night, the streets of Haines were sheets of ice. When Joe and I walked down from the second-floor newspaper and onto Main Street below, on our way to the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony inside the local public library, which draws just about everyone in town, he looked at me with no small amount of concern.

“Do you have enough winter clothes?” he asked.

I said I did. I’m from Upstate New York, after all. I have survived Buffalo winters.

I was cool.

But Alaska ice, he said, was particularly treacherous.

Too many people fall and break arms and wrists trying to break their descent.

Joe is a jokester. But his face was dead serious. He said many people wear grippers on the bottom of their boots. But he was often too lazy for those.

So, Joe said this: he took small steps and clenched his butt cheeks. That seemed to work, he said.

That was his secret.

Overnight, a steady rain fell with temperatures soaring into the low 40s. By morning the streets had turned to slush — with an invisible coat of ice underneath.

I worked most of the day. I walked gingerly when I ventured out.

Then, about 2:30 p.m., when the sun was hurrying to the horizon, I decided to take a walk with the newspaper’s camera and take advantage of the wan and stunning afternoon light. The northern light.

I trudged outside the central business district, up to old Fort Seward, founded here more than a century ago by some no-doubt hardy men. I’ve seen their sepia-toned historical photographs. They look happy, making history like Shackleton’s men.

Decades later, the town owns the beautiful old homes that were once officers’ quarters. They sit majestically on the hill overlooking the water, all in a row l, like those San Franciscan Victorians in the tourist postcards.

I was easing down a slushy road, picking my spots, remembering what Joe had told me: ALWAYS watch where you’re going. Never take your mind off the next step ahead, let alone your eyes.

I raised my camera at something I saw.

Then it happened.

One of my size-13 gunboat boots slipped out from under me. I twirled around, grasping for my balance.

They say war correspondents don’t so much worry about getting hurt or wounded in a battle zone as they do missing the story.

That was me. I knew I was going to fall. What I did NOT want to do was break the newspaper’s Canon camera that I held unprotected in my hand.

It all happened in a single moment. I leaned sideways so I would slam into the snow next to the road and not on the pavement itself.

This is all I could think about: I did NOT want to be the doofus who broke the paper’s only camera.

And so I fell. I landed in the snow. And then I sank.

I had landed in a drainage culvert. Under the snow was 18 inches of standing water. I landed on my right shoulder, using my outstretched left arm to keep the camera above water.

It must have looked like some Three Stooges stunt to someone looking out their window.

But I didn’t care. I was drenched. I was cold. I was suddenly freezing.

But the camera had not submerged.

It was, however, covered in snow. I threw off my rain parka and wrapped the camera in my sweater underneath, like I was a fireman trying to revive some drowned puppy.

Ice caked in the viewfinder, on the lens, in all the working parts.

I hurried home, each step an adventure in balance. Once inside my dreary little apartment, I wrapped the camera in a dry towel. I rubbed and babied it’ gently, delicately.

And now I wait. It seems to work OK. I’ll know tomorrow when I have to whip it out at some meeting, hoping water does not cascade from the device’s inner workings.

The camera is ailing, my pride wounded, my clothes soaked.

I should have listed to Joe.

In small town Haines Alaska, ice is not pretty.

Ice is not my friend.

It is the enemy.