ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

The Feltist. The Junker. The Woods And the Animals.

It was already dusk when the Feltist and I pulled up at our destination in his $300 car.

The beat-up white Honda looked like it had been through ground wars in both Baghdad and Kandahar; the kind of a vehicle that some hapless Middle Eastern cabbie drives straight toward a U.S. military checkpoint.

In other words, it looked like trouble. The color was off-white, like filthy snow. The back and side windows were still covered with the snow dump of a week before. Everything was un-scraped and dangerous. A white Mohawk of snow rose more than a foot off the roof.

We’d rumbled 30 miles up the Haines Highway from town, toward the Canadian border, to check out something Joe Parnell had wanted me to see. Trucks passed us, whipping up rooster tails of now. We could only go slowly because the back tires were bald. But the fronts had a bit of tread, the Feltist explained, and the car was front-wheel drive. Besides, we had heat.

He had a point.

I got out of the car on a side road up near Mosquito Lake. The snow had fallen gently out here, away from the wind on the coastline. The branches were cloaked in white, as if they’d all just decided one quiet night to don white winter coats. The woods were a cathedral of white.

The property gate was closed. A sign gave a scribbled but still very clear warning.

Do Not Enter: Extreme Danger.

It was OK, the Feltist assured me. He knew somebody here. We were cool. Just keep going.

We walked through the unlocked gate and hurried up a snow-covered path. The ascent was fairly steep in the snow, and the Feltist, a one-time college quarterback, surfer and all-around athlete, hurried easily ahead.

Then I heard it: a mournful howl — something deeper, wilder and more threatening than that of any backyard dog.
It sounded like a wolf.

It was.

We were at the Kroschel Films and Education Center, a wild animal park that contains a dozen Alaska species, including wolverines, lynx, a grizzly bear, reindeer, a snowy owl and a moose — and of course those wolves.
The 60-acre center is one of the most popular tourist draws in Haines during the summer months, when busloads of tourists from the docking cruise ships below flock here for passionate two-hour tours given by founder Steve Kroschel. Part of the act involves kissing a moose. The tourists love it.

The Feltist had a lot of respect for Steve.

“This was always Steve’s dream,” he said. “We all have dreams. But we all don’t do ’em. Steve did his dream.”

But now the place was closed for the season. Nobody was supposed to be here. The sign said so.

We were trespassers among wild animals. Some were orphaned as pups, others born here.

But all of them still wild.

The Feltist said he once drove a tour bus here and often walked up the hill with the tourists to see the show. One day, he was standing near the wolves’ encampment when the lead wolf eyeballed him and started to try and dig a hole under its barrier. The animal was clearly agitated and began jumping at the fence.

“Go back Joe,” Steve warned. “Go back to the bus.”

Later Steve, who knows these wild creatures and considers them as his family, explained his trepidation.

The wolf, it seemed, singled out the Feltist.

As a meal.

“You mean I can’t even come back and hide among the tourists?” Joe asked.

“No,” Steve said, “He knows your scent. He has singled you out.”

So, apparently, the wolf didn’t like Joe.

So Joe told Steve: “Tell the wolf the feeling is mutual.”

I heard another wolf howl. I tried to catch up with Joe.

We finally reached the top where a cabin sat with lights on inside. Joe called out, but no one answered.

The Felitist had run into a center earlier that day in Haines. Rocky was an Alaskan original, a native who lived at the camp year round when Steve went south for the winter.

He said Joe and I could come up around dusk for a quick on-the-sly tour.

Joe said that Rocky had had so many adventures in Alaska he couldn’t tell them all in one sitting.

One day, the Fetlist asked Rocky, “So, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen up here?”

Rocky paused for a moment, and then said, “You.”

At that hour, the light was gorgeous, the white mountains in the distance lit by the so-called alpine glow of the late afternoon. I took some shots. Joe wandered a short distance away.

Then suddenly, I turned and there he was.

He looked like a mountain man. He wore a cap and a full beard and a coat that seemed from another century.

He gave me a look that seemed to say, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Or, “You are about to die.”

His approach was so quiet, so stealthy, that if he were a wild animal — say, a wolf — I would be already be dead. Another winter meal in the fading December light.

“Um, I’m with Joe,” I stuttered.

Joe appeared and the mountain man seemed to relax

Joe rambled on about Rocky and a tour and the mountain man just said to call next time.

His name was Mario Benassi and he was Steve’s partner at the center.

But that’s not all he was.

Mario was a falconer and an accomplished wildlife photographer. He’d seen a falconer as a kid and decided that’s what he wanted to be. He took a test for the trade and people all laughed that a kid would even think he could master such a complex feat as handling a bird of prey.

But Mario passed the test.

As Joe and I waited below, Mario walked up to the cabin and returned with a red fox in his arms. The creature, who he called baby, had been born at the center but was still skittish, so they kept their distance.

Even in the arms of a handler, the fox was wild and gorgeous and seemed larger than life — its red coat redder and more luxurious then any Internet photo.

Joe and Mario talked about how people here had recently killed a couple of wolverines. They clucked their tongues at the senselessness of such a crime.

Mario had spent the day with a scout from the Discovery Channel, showing her around the camp. They wanted to do a reality show here, but neither he nor Steve was sure they wanted film crews running around the place. They’d already been contacted by numerous film crews all seeking exclusive access.

Steve said they’d only do it in summer when the place was already overrun with tourists and it wouldn’t be such a distraction.

Once, a film crew asked to accompany Mario out on one of his excursions into the backcountry to film wildlife. He asked what the pay would be.

They said they’d hoped he would do it for the exposure.

“I already have enough exposure,” he said. ‘How do you think you found me?”

We walked around the enclosures in the snow. Mario said we should have come earlier when the light was better. The grizzly was hibernating and the moose had wandered down to the swamp for the winter months. The camp was quiet.

Then Mario said, “C’mon, let’s to see the lynx.”

We stood outside the large enclosure. I couldn’t see a thing.

“He’s there,” Mario said. “See him move? He’s watching up, for sure.”

Mario then gave a call that sounded both exotic and wild; half cluck, half hoot.

The lynx emerged from its hiding spot and hurried down to the fence; an elusive creature with pointed ears and a cat’s presence.

“He’s fat, for the winter,” Mario said.

He then laughed over the fact that wildlife officials required the camp to build houses for the animals, which they did.

“They don’t need houses,” he said. “They’re wild. They don’t give a damn about houses.”

We said our goodbyes. The Feltist gave Mario $20 for the tour. Every little bit helps up here.

On the way home, we stopped at a place called the Funny Farm, where a retired fisherman named Bruce Bauer runs a lodge for extreme skiers and keeps a menagerie of orphaned parrots.

We watched as Bruce cooed at the birds.

I took a picture of one and probably got too close and he lunged at my lens in a faux attack.

I felt like I was back in Haines, where the attacks come fast and furious.

They we left the Funny Farm.

Joe and I drove back to town slowly, on bald tires.

It was a crazy drive; like a cabbie and his passenger driving straight for a U.S. Army checkpoint.