Alaska, Day 4 -- ghosts of Kennicott

20 August 2017

Sunday

A white 14-passenger van trundles along from McCarthy, navigating washed-out road with thankless aplomb. Grandmother sits up front; the puppy occupies the doorwell. I sit somewhere in the middle. Tall banks of dirt rise and fall alongside us, gnarled with ferns and evergreen roots. I eavesdrop on my fellow passengers, who talk about where they came from, where they're going, what their absent friends are up to, who's seen which episode of Game of Thrones last.

We are headed into Kennicott, a town abandoned when its mines became unprofitable in 1938. Named for the Kennecott glacier to the west--some accident of history to blame for the degenerate vowel--this town has spent more time abandoned than inhabited, it would seem. Though the Forest Service has been restoring some of its old buildings, and putting on tours for tourists (like us), the spirit of this place is still one of quiet and strangely dignified decay.

To the left, the debris fields of the Kennecott glacier. To the right, the ghost town of Kennicott. Grandmother, in her bright orange coat, looks out at the mountains.

We meander through the town, browsing local shops and scattered buildings, restored to miniature museums. Grandmother and I watch a video about the ore processing plant we are preparing to tour while Dad and Margy keep the puppy occupied outside. We wander through the general store, flipping through blown-up copies of vintage photographs and random surviving forms and manifests. I learn that when this town was first established, the Kennecott glacier loomed over it, squeezing its development into one claustrophobic corridor. Decades of ice melt is what opened up its west flank.

Margy explains something, via gesture, to Grandmother as we look out over the mountains from the balcony/deck behind a coffee shop.

Kennicott's west flank. In between us and a ridge of snow-capped mountains lies a vast gray expanse of dirt and stone, layered atop a hidden, surreal landscape of glacial ice.

Someday I hope to hike the glacier, but today we've come to tour the town. And the centerpiece of the tour is the ore processing plant. (The mines themselves are an arduous, full-day hike away, and long-since closed, besides.) Margy stays behind with the puppy while Dad and Grandmother and I join our scheduled tour. It is a bit of a hike to the start of the tour--not for me, necessarily, but certainly for Grandmother (working with half a lung less than the rest of us), and an elderly gentleman with a bad leg. Dad slows and unassumingly takes up the rear, ready to aid in case of a fall. I stay toward the back also, scanning the gravel for chaff left by the mines: scattered stones streaked with iridescent shades of green, and blue--colored thus by copper-rich minerals, malachite and azurite. I pocket one or two particularly pretty stones, each about the size of my thumbnail. I feel a strong, barely-conscious urge to wash my hands after considering what heavy metals and other elements comprise the dust that I've been sifting through.

The crumbling, red, 14-storey ore processing plant looms over Kennicott. Most Kennicott iconography depicts this building, from some angle or another.

View of the ore processing facility from the top, where the tour enters.

Slightly blurry selfie of me in one of the hard hats provided by the tour, layered over my Army surplus jeep cap. I am not sure how to categorize the expression on my face.

Our tour guide is younger than I am. Though he is engaging to listen to, I drift in and out of paying attention. I am more focused on snapping photos of everything I can, from every angle. I use up a whole battery and have to switch to my final spare. Most of the photos turn out to be terrible--dark, blurry, indistinct, whatever. But I enjoy taking them. I enjoy hanging back from the group; I enjoy the excuse to stand in certain places, walk off a ways, look under or go on the other side of things. One other person in the group seems equally preoccupied in taking photos... but awkwardly with an iPad, for some reason. The gentleman with a bad leg is also an armchair scholar, and the tour, more often than not, is less a lecture and more a conversation between the guide and him.

I hold two samples of copper ore--on the left, the colorful, shiny, 80% pure ore they found in the area mines; on the right, a dull, adulterated sample of what your typical copper mine produces.

A workbench area inside the processing plant. A row of empty window-frames lets in summer sunlight.

It seems like the type of place that ghosts hang around in. I can't decide if the ghosts would be angry or just... tired. Tired and homesick and cold.

We part ways with the tour after exiting the processing plant, 14-storeys down ad hoc ladders and stairs constructed by afterthought. The tour continues further into town, but Grandmother and Dad hurry back to catch the five o'clock van back into McCarthy, and I follow.

I think a meal commenced after this. A conversation long in coming. A series of small but significant revelations. Pregnant silences. A truce.

Some time later that evening, after the sun should have set (but didn't), I wander off to try my hand at painting en plein air. I sit on a large rock by McCarthy creek and look out toward a mountain and... come up with something.

I refill my water pen in the creek as needed, and try to get used to how watercolors behave in the saturated Alaskan air--as opposed to the thirsty air of Colorado. At some point I accidentally flip the painting into the dirt... but kind of like the texture that the accidental grit affords it. I paint until I lose my light, and I paint some more after that, until I realize that the light has faded to where continuing to paint will make it worse, not better.

Me, sitting on a rock in my purple gore-tex, reenacting my painting the next morning now that I have Dad handy to take photos for me.

My final watercolor piece, resting against the rock I was sitting on, along with my watercolor tray and the watercolor pen I was using.

Me holding up my watercolor piece the next day, lining it up with the landscape that I'd painted.

(Later I show my painting to N., and he identifies it as Sourdough peak. I'm proud of myself, that I was able to paint something he recognized just by looking. After all, when it comes to watercolors, I'm still pretty much making it up as I go along.)

The light is gone when I slip back into Ma Johnson's, and Grandmother is asleep. I move quietly to avoid disturbing her, resting my painting on the beside table, putting my stuff away, and gathering supplies for a shower without turning on the light. Only after I've thoroughly warmed my hands and feet and core with hot water am I able to slide into bed and drift to sleep.