Alaska: Accidental Ascetic or Deliberate Delinquent?
Alaska.
Kodiak Island.
A cold rain falls on an already harsh, damp, and desolate night. A man slows his car down to pick up a hitchhiker trudging along the side of a mountain road. A teenager, his jeans tattered, white t shirt and bomber jacket thoroughly soaked liked the rest of him. He had a World War II Navy bag slung over his shoulder, also torn. “Going into town?” asked the driver. “going wherever you take me. Thanks for the ride.” “No problem. What are you doing way out here anyway?” “Well... I originally came here to be a king crab fisherman, but things didn't really work out as planned so I've been living on this mountain.” “No kidding? I picked up a kid with the same story a few months back.” “Yeah. That was me.” “What!? You've been out here the whole time!? Doing what!?” “Kind of a long story, but I've been living on the mountain doing solitary martial arts training up there.” The driver's expression was more inquisition than disbelief now. “Well kid, I can't tell if you're an incredible person or just crazy and dumb.” “... I get that a lot...” “I bet. What's your name?” “Nash.” “Well Nash, we've got a long, slow drive ahead of us. How about that long story about how the hell you wound up here?”
The kid was me, and I told the driver my story starting from the “beginning”, or at least the beginning as far as that story was concerned. I was 17 years old and about the graduate high school. I could have graduated at 15, but I felt it was important to receive the “Academic Honors” diploma, the “Highest scholastic achievement” you could earn for high school. What a waste! Something like that only matters if you're jumping right into University life, and I was definitely not. I hated school so much it was miraculous I graduated at all! I love learning, but school was literally crushing my will to live. I had no secondary education plans, or plans of any kind for that matter, except for studying martial arts and traveling. I was especially keen on walking the entirety of China's great wall, all 4,000ish miles of it, and stopping at all the esoteric martial arts schools along the way to liberate their secrets. There was only one tiny hitch in my plan (that I was aware of at the time, anyway): Money. I needed venture capital.
I had no idea how I was going to get funds for an excursion that would probably take the rest of my life. I asked around, and a friend of mine said they'd heard an Alaskan King Crab fisherman can make upwards of 30,000$usd in less than a month. Perfect! In asking around, one of my friends told me that HIS friend had done it and did indeed make that much. He said he would give me his phone number if I was interested. Even more Perfect!
I called the guy. The conversation went something like this: “Hey, you and I both know the same guy, and since facebook hasn't been invented yet, that means we're real-life acquaintances! Say, how about that fishing job?” “Oh yeah, I've done it a couple times and am going again this summer. I can get you on a ship, no problem! Just head to Anchorage and give me a call when you get there.” “Got it. Nash out.”
I informed everyone of my plan. I asked permission from my martial arts teacher at the time if I could go. Granted. My Grandad gave me his World War II Navy bag, which I would promptly pack and have at the ready. In fact, I would go on dragging it to numerous adventures over the course of my life. A few months passed and I was now a high school graduate. I got a hair cut, grabbed my bag, my bomber jacket, the few thousand dollars I'd managed to save in my life until that point, and I left.
What could go wrong?
Well. For starters the September 11th USA attack had caused a severe tightening of airline regulations, that only got worse a few years on. There were 4 things you could do that would put a symbol on your ticket,and if you did any of these you would be “randomly selected for additional security screening.” The 4 things were :
Buy your ticket at the last minute before you left.
Have no checked bags, only a carry-on.
Buy a one-way ticket.
Pay in cash.
Not knowing this at all I walked up to the airport ticket counter, threw down a huge wad of cash, and said “Get me on the next flight; One way ticket to Anchorage!!” I and my no checked bags were promptly “randomly selected for additional security screenings”. Ever since then I've had an increasingly more difficult time at airports and the like. That may have been the catalyst that began my life as an “airport outlaw”. I already had a disdain for authority, so I'm sure it didn't take much...
After I arrived in Anchorage I suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that I had no plan other than “call that guy”. I wandered the city until I found a run down motel. I plopped down money for the night and used the phone in the room to call the guy who was to hook me up with the crab fishing job. The conversation didn't go how I'd imagined it:
“...Hello?”
“Hey, It's Nash.”
“Dude, I'm glad you called. Man, the fishing market has fallen through this year, theirs no way I can get you on a ship; I can't even get on mine! I'm sleeping on the floor of an electronics store eating peanut butter out of a jar trying to scrape up enough money to escape Alaska! Whatever you do, don't come here!”
“... I'm already here!!! I'm in Anchorage! That was the plan!”
“... right. Well, I heard there were still some ships on Kodiak Island. That'll be your only chance. It's a nice place. Big island, small town. I camped on a mountain while I looked for a ship there. You should do the same; I'll give you directions to the mountain.”
“...Thanks.”
The next morning I went to the airport ticket counter, threw down a big wad of cash, and exclaimed “One way ticket to Kodiak Island!” Security...
Turns out the most difficult part of getting to Kodiak Island is literally getting there. The island is shrouded in a foggy mist and the tiny little planes that fly there can't go until it clears. “When are we leaving?” I asked. “Whenever we can.” was my response. It was days before we actually got to go. Good old plane delays...
After I finally got to Kodiak Island I set about following my connection's directions to the comfy camping mountain... and found it being bulldozed! Probably to put up a building or something... now I needed to find a new place to make camp. Thankfully, in Alaska this whole situation was de rigour, so no one thought it weird when I asked around for good places to be a deviant vagrant while looking for a ship. It wasn't too long before I found a good mountain, not TOO far from the docks or town, but far enough for isolation. I set up camp, which was basically me just putting my bag down, since I didn't have a tent or anything. I DID have a solar blanket to huddle up in though. After that, I went to go beat the docks. Getting on a ship is a bit like getting picked for little kid sports teams: people line up and get picked one by one by people on the ships. Whoever is left on the docks doesn't go that time.
With the market as bad as it was, and without my connection, I didn't have much of a chance. Many times I was in talks to get on a ship, and many times I was not picked. Eventually the season started winding down, and my prospects became fewer and fewer. I would spend long days sitting around the docks, to no avail, watching manatees play with a beach ball next to the sign that said “Don't play with manatees!” Apparently they are frolicking brutes who accidentally kill people all the time because they play too rough.
It was rapidly becoming clear that I had no chance crabbing, so I set my sites on other things. Once the ships had all set out I decided that since I was already living on the mountain I should take it one step further and turn it into a real shugyo. My first. “YamaGomori”, or “isolated ascetic mountain training mission”. I devoted myself to training full time in the mountain wilderness: Meditating under icy waterfalls, jumping over things, using trees as striking posts, thoughtful reflection and reading, the whole bit. The training was a natural progression from my harsh training in high school, since my high school life was more training than not. I would get up at 4:30, work out, walk a few miles to school, cut some classes to train, walk a few miles back after school, grab my training bag and walk several hours to the dojo. Train from 5-10pm, then walk several hours back and get to bed by midnight to start the whole thing over. Mountain living wasn't bad by comparison. I could read and study without having to put up with anyone else at least. Occasionally I could Identify edible grasses and fish, and occasionally I would treat myself by climbing down and hitchhiking into town for treats like yogurt and bagels and going to the library to check out a book to study. Specifically a textbook of gymnastics training. I used that book to teach myself how to correctly do a handstand while I was up in the mountains, a favorite invaluable skill I still practice almost daily. I also still have that book... the late fee is probably sizable. I also practiced “Bottle Cutting” technique, which is when you chop the neck off of a bottle using the blade of your hand. I even succeeded a couple times! I had about a 1% success ratio using beer bottles I would find running through the mountains. Even in isolation I couldn't escape the garbage of people. Occasionally while running I would return home, which now consisted of a fire pit, propped up branches with my solar blanket for a self-made sleeping tube, my “clothes changing tree” which was a tree with my clothes hanging on it (either my civilian clothes or my karate gi) and my bag, and upon my return I would find that my bagels or whatnot had evaporated! The package would seem to be intact, but the contents gone...
Truly having nothing better to do I set a bag of bagels out one day and made myself scarce. I sat at a distance, still, for the better part of a day, before discovering the culprit: Chipmunks! Chipmunks were sneaking in, tearing a TINY hole in the bag and smashing the bagels to crumbs to get them out of the hole. Brilliant.
During one of my fore's to town, a clerk told me to watch out for bears. That's right! This was Kodiak Island, home of the infamous Kodiak Bear. I didn't know anything about them, but I knew I needed a plan in case I was faced with one. Back in the mountains I practiced image training to prepare myself just in case. I planned to attack the eyes, hit the snout directly to stun, and repeat. Simple. Then I hitchhiked into town and went to the sporting goods store for the first time, to get some more rope. That's where I saw it. The stuffed Kodiak Bear, complete with plaque detailing it's statistics. They can be up to 10ft tall, it's bones were so thick bullets wouldn't go all the way through. Faster than a human at running, swimming, and climbing, and outclasses them in strength many times. They can be up to 15,000lbs. I'm convinced they aren't ruling the world simply due to a lack of numbers or lack of interest. I never had a chance against one! I changed my battle tactics from “go for the eyes!” to “Poop pants so hard it kills me before the bear does!”. I never saw one in the wild, but they visited my dreams frequently to remind me that I was on their mountain only because they were allowing it.
A couple months passed and November was creeping in, and with it hellatiouse weather. Miserable nights filled with liquid nitrogen-like deadly cold rain and an all around lack of sunshine. Soon everything would be covered in ice and destroyed by wind, myself included if I didn't get the hell off the mountain. Food was becoming more of a pain to get, and on Halloween I hitchhiked into town feeling like I was starving. I wound up eating an entire bowl of tootsie rolls that I took from an electronics store.... I haven't had tootsie rolls since. On one miserable night I decided I'd had enough, it was time to leave the mountain for good, and I began my trek to to town. I'd fallen a bit down a cliff on the way down the mountain moving out, and the trip shredded my clothes and bag. I needed to get to some place with a light to repair my things, and I trudged on through the night on a sludgy mountain road until I was picked up by a passerby; that's where the story started, but was far from ending.
I was dropped off into town in the middle of the night and slept under a building's awning. The next morning I found “permanent” shelter... the homeless shelter that is. As it turns out, everyone staying there was an adventurer or vagabond of some kind. I was normal there, though I still had to keep my back to the wall because there were some legitimately crazy people in there to. The shelter opened the doors for dinner, fresh lemon pepper Tilapia, you slept overnight in one big room with a bunch of floor mattresses, got up at 4:30 for breakfast of dry corn flakes, then got booted out for the day at 5. Not a bad deal! After they booted us out I would go do my morning exercises and then hide my bag in a bush for the day. Now that I had lodging I needed some food, money, and training! Food was easy enough to scrounge between various church places, dumpsters, and free samples.
Money was more difficult because I had finally spent it all. I was stranded until I could raise the money to escape. Thankfully the “rules” are fairly lax in the Kodiak Island labor arena. The town wasn't exactly huge: one movie theater which had one screen, and a sporting goods shops with a $300 hoodie. It was an island after all. I got steady work doing illegal immigrant grunt manual labor. My first of these jobs came courtesy of the marital arts. While running one day, a realtor stopped to talk to me about my running, and when he found out it was marital arts training he got extra talkative. He too had studied, and we had studied the same style! He seemed to like the cut of my jib, so he offered me some “under the table” work, paying in off-the-books cash of course.
For awhile I was a gravel spreader. Normally a big dump truck would dump a huge pile of gravel and then a bull dozer would come in and spread it. Same thing here... except I was the bulldozer. I would spend long days with two 5 gallon buckets and a shovel, spreading gravel. By myself. The bucket's handles were just thin wires, and since I had no gloves when full I would carry them and the wires would slice into my hands, a steady trail of blood following me wherever I went. The buckets were heavy too. It was cold and rainy and often times the gravel pile would get wet and turn into a mountain of frozen concrete. The work was harsh, and between that and my mountain training, my body was becoming one big strong impressive callous. Since this guy was a realtor, often times I was working on unoccupied properties he was trying to sell. Very nice places. When the weather got too bad, or I felt like taking a break, I would “let myself in” and take a break. Or a nap. I was so gross, just the memory of me being inside those places dropped the property value.
As fun as all that was though, the money just wasn't good enough, so I went looking for “better”work. I asked around with some of the guys I'd become chummy with at the shelter what I should do. There was a guy in his early 20's who was quite experienced, and good at handstands, who gave me a lot of advice. There was also an even more interesting guy his his mid 70's who looked like Santa Clause with a mangled hand: Gill. The guy had seen it all, and done it all. He'd been on and off the island for 50 years and had several lifetimes of experience. He would impart to me stories of his adventures over tea. There was a mansion on the side of a mountain that overlooked the town, and during the 1970's he was a drug kingpin who lived in that place, scarface-style. He owned and operated a series of bars at the time, that he used to launder money and run his narcotics. He got his hand crushed crab fishing. At one time before the town was as developed he worked as a cab driver, driving through mud roads. He told me that at the time there was a Filipino guy he knew who was also a cabbie and would dress up like a women and solicit blow jobs to guys just getting to the island in his cab for extra money. Then he would drop them off at the bar 'The B & B'. They guys would go in bragging about how they just got with some Asian cab driver, and the place would erupt into laughter, because all the locals knew. Their slogan became “The B & B, where the men are men, and the women used to be!” Hilarious. I asked Gill what ever became of that guy, and he said last he heard he went to go work for some cannery, which is just the job he said I should get. He had been on both extremes of the society spectrum and now he was staying at a homeless shelter. His words seemed to carry more worldly wisdom than those of others, so I listened to him.
In order to get a better job though, I needed to prove my intention to stick around, and that was done by getting an Alaskan driver's license. There’s a reason Alaska has the highest rate of vehicular incidents in the U.S. Territories: They will give a license to just about anyone! The test is basically “Do you want a driver's license, yes or no?” Also, I filled out the form with less than accurate information. There was no address on the license, and in the computer data base my address was listed as the address from the homeless shelter. I had a real license that made me an untraceable ghost, and for many years I used it to it's fullest.
Now that I had my “legitimate” credentials it was job time. The easiest ones to get where at canaries. A canary is a warehouse where they take sea food off of ships and put them into cans. If you saw how it was done you’d likely never eat it again... I mean I still do, but you probably wouldn't. One of the major barriers to getting a job in a cannery is the equipment requirements. You need specific gear to work there: Special boots, rain gear, and the like. If you don't have it, the company will give it to you, but deduct the cost from your first paycheck.
I got a job at the first cannery I went to. The work was awful. My only job was to pick up a tray from a shelf with my right hand, pass is to my left, and put it on a different shelf. All day. I was not a fan, but guess who my boss was? Filipino cab driver! Small world. Also, the whole of Alaska seems to have a surprisingly large population of Filipinos. Why? They where always a pleasure to work with, even though I didn't speak Tagalog and they didn't speak English. They would see I had no food for lunch, and why would not stop giving me food until I was stuffed. I was thankful, but I couldn’t' get them to understand what could and couldn't be put in the microwave...
After the first pay period was over, and after the deductions for my gear, I was supposed to receive 40$; Someone in accounting messed up though, and I received a check for 400$! I took that check and ran to the nearest bank, cashed it, and never went back to that canary.
Now that I had all my gear, some experience, and some wiggle money, I went to a different canary and got a much better job. I interviewed with one of the higher ups in human resources, and she seemed quite interested in me. I managed to parlay that interest into her taking me out for a nice dinner, a job, and a good contact. My actual job at this canary was to work on ships unloading their catches of Halibut. Up until this point I had no idea halibut were so huge: they can weigh hundreds of pounds, and the large ones need a huge crane to lift them out of the holds of the ships. The job wasn't too bad. I would go into the hold, move the packing ice, remove the fish, then repeat. The only downside was that I was unpacking from top to bottom, digging my way down, and eventually the ice and fish started to melt and break and fairly quickly I was literally up to my eyeballs in fish-guts slushie.
Now that I had a regular influx of money I was biding my time until I had accumulated enough to leave. During this time, I searched the town for martial arts. I managed to find a combination Japanese Goju ryu/ Tang soo do school, and a Judo club. The owner of the Goju/Tang school was nice enough, but he was not a good martial artist. He had a few black belts, but his understanding of the arts was basic. He was super Fat, and he'd had a few heart attacks; not the image of any true martial artist I'd ever met, or what I would want in a school patriarch. In the school I had come from in the lower 48 my teacher had treated me more or less like a regular person, but at this school I was considered a superhuman! Even the most mundane of my movements caused them to “marvel at my speed and flexibility”, except that I didn't think anything I did was that impressive... could my mountain training have jumped me that far? I sparred the school and reigned supreme. I didn't stay at that school. Why stay at a place where you won't learn anything?
The Judo club I found was different; I could learn something. It was a small club that practiced in the side room of an old military base, and was lead by an exceptional 76 year old man who was the very embodiment of his art. Watching him practice and teach it was obvious this man was a true martial artist and not someone who was just in it for Olympic gold, which he had received. I inquired about lessons. The man said I should learn about Judo before beginning any training, in order to make sure it was something I actually wanted to learn. He then pulled out an old book on Judo and handed it to me. “Borrow this.” he said. “Bring it back when you're finished with it.” I was shocked. To loan out a personal book, to a stranger who looks like a bum from the 1950's, all on good faith, blew me away. Especially considering I'd already liberated at least 1 library book from this very town. I read the Judo book many times and returned it to the man. I watched the Judo club many times, and learned much.
I practiced my martial arts when I wasn't at the cannery, and on my lunch breaks while there. Once while running through the mountains I strained a tendon in my foot. This lead to me not being able to lift Halibut, which lead to me not being able to work on ships, and instead I had to go back to the cannery proper.
When I got sent back to the cannery proper I was placed on a human assembly line with a bunch of Filipinos. At the start of the line a fish would get put on a conveyer belt and someone would cleave it's head off. Then someone else would remove the head from the belt. Then someone would do something else as it traveled further along the conveyer, so on and so forth until it got to me. I was about half way down the line. When the fish got to me my job was to take an old tooth brush and scrub out all the blood clots in the fish that had been forming in the headless carcass up until that time.
It took me no time at all to realize that job wasn't something I wanted to do. Stuff that! About 2 hours into doing that job the lunch whistle blew; I walked off and never went back. I didn't have to; I had scraped together enough money to leave.
I threw a ball of cash on the counter at the airport and got a one-way ticket to Anchorage. From there I got a one way to the lower 48. Of course my plane was delayed, I did live in the Anchorage airport for a week total after all. While there I tried all manner of things to pass the time, and I eventually decided I would take the bus into town and kick around the mall, but I would have to do it the next day because it was already too late. After reading every magazine in the airport I decided I would sleep the time away. I glanced at the clock: only 15 more hours... I found a row of chairs and stretched out, using my bag as a pillow and airport construction as 'white noise', I went to sleep.
"Hey! Hey buddy!" I open my eyes to see a girl, about 20 years old, sitting at my feet. "you got a pen I can borrow?" she asked. I reach into my jacket, hand her one and close my eyes, drifting to sleep. "Here's your pen back!" One eye opens, I grab the pen then close my eyes. All I want is sleep. "Thanks for letting me use that!" No problem, I reply without opening my eyes. I drift into the dream world of the pseudo awake. Asleep, but still aware of my surroundings. It was then that I heard the same girl talking to a couple of other girls. I ignored them the best I could. "Hey Buddy!" I knew she couldn't be talking to me, I was clearly trying to sleep. "HEY!" I hear as I am hit on the shin. I open my eyes. The girl now has two girl friends with her. "What's you name?" the original girl asks. Nash. "Cool, where are you coming from?" Kodiak Island. "The Emerald Isle? I heard it was beautiful. Is it beautiful?" Yes, I say, though the weather can be uncomfortable. "We're waiting for our girlfriend." one of the girls adds. oh, I say as I close my eyes. It wouldn't last long.
"Hey! Do you smoke?" asks the first girl. No. "Do you drink?" No. "You like to party?" I'm not much of a party-er. "Oh....you like to smoke weed?" I don't do drugs, I don't even take aspirin, I inform the group. "Oh...what are you waiting for?" asks a different girl in the group. I explain that my flight is not for a couple of days, and that I am passing time until the next day so I could take the bus to the mall. I told them all I really wanted right then was to sleep and get something to eat.
The friend the girls where waiting for arrives. They talk for a second, then say "Hey, we all live together, you should come stay at our place, we'll feed you, and in the morning we'll drop you off at the mall. What do you think?" Food... I thought, some place to sleep that wasn't pushed together chairs...it sounded tempting. Then there previous questions started slipping into my mind. "Smoke, drink, pot, party...". Four girls and one guy they briefly talked to at an airport... I don't know what would have happened. I turned them down, got some sleep, and stayed hungry.
I find it very amusing to look back on that exchange; If it had happened just a few years later it would have been a very different scene. It would have been me staying at the girl's place, eating all their food, partying hard, and becoming friends for life... or me getting drugged and having my kidneys stolen. Either way, these days I’m equally on the lookout for either scenario. When this happened I just wasn't a seasoned enough adventurer to recognize every single opportunity, and I certainly wasn't aware that for the most part you have to make your own opportunities. The more experience you have the more experiences you can see opportunities for. Live and learn, if you're doing it right.
The next couple days passed rather uneventfully and I found myself back in the lower 48. I debriefed and regrouped. I was ready to set out and become the me I'd always wanted to be, which was the me I already was, I just didn't know it yet.
-Nash
"Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating."
- Michael Crichton
Kodiak Island.
A cold rain falls on an already harsh, damp, and desolate night. A man slows his car down to pick up a hitchhiker trudging along the side of a mountain road. A teenager, his jeans tattered, white t shirt and bomber jacket thoroughly soaked liked the rest of him. He had a World War II Navy bag slung over his shoulder, also torn. “Going into town?” asked the driver. “going wherever you take me. Thanks for the ride.” “No problem. What are you doing way out here anyway?” “Well... I originally came here to be a king crab fisherman, but things didn't really work out as planned so I've been living on this mountain.” “No kidding? I picked up a kid with the same story a few months back.” “Yeah. That was me.” “What!? You've been out here the whole time!? Doing what!?” “Kind of a long story, but I've been living on the mountain doing solitary martial arts training up there.” The driver's expression was more inquisition than disbelief now. “Well kid, I can't tell if you're an incredible person or just crazy and dumb.” “... I get that a lot...” “I bet. What's your name?” “Nash.” “Well Nash, we've got a long, slow drive ahead of us. How about that long story about how the hell you wound up here?”
The kid was me, and I told the driver my story starting from the “beginning”, or at least the beginning as far as that story was concerned. I was 17 years old and about the graduate high school. I could have graduated at 15, but I felt it was important to receive the “Academic Honors” diploma, the “Highest scholastic achievement” you could earn for high school. What a waste! Something like that only matters if you're jumping right into University life, and I was definitely not. I hated school so much it was miraculous I graduated at all! I love learning, but school was literally crushing my will to live. I had no secondary education plans, or plans of any kind for that matter, except for studying martial arts and traveling. I was especially keen on walking the entirety of China's great wall, all 4,000ish miles of it, and stopping at all the esoteric martial arts schools along the way to liberate their secrets. There was only one tiny hitch in my plan (that I was aware of at the time, anyway): Money. I needed venture capital.
I had no idea how I was going to get funds for an excursion that would probably take the rest of my life. I asked around, and a friend of mine said they'd heard an Alaskan King Crab fisherman can make upwards of 30,000$usd in less than a month. Perfect! In asking around, one of my friends told me that HIS friend had done it and did indeed make that much. He said he would give me his phone number if I was interested. Even more Perfect!
I called the guy. The conversation went something like this: “Hey, you and I both know the same guy, and since facebook hasn't been invented yet, that means we're real-life acquaintances! Say, how about that fishing job?” “Oh yeah, I've done it a couple times and am going again this summer. I can get you on a ship, no problem! Just head to Anchorage and give me a call when you get there.” “Got it. Nash out.”
I informed everyone of my plan. I asked permission from my martial arts teacher at the time if I could go. Granted. My Grandad gave me his World War II Navy bag, which I would promptly pack and have at the ready. In fact, I would go on dragging it to numerous adventures over the course of my life. A few months passed and I was now a high school graduate. I got a hair cut, grabbed my bag, my bomber jacket, the few thousand dollars I'd managed to save in my life until that point, and I left.
What could go wrong?
Well. For starters the September 11th USA attack had caused a severe tightening of airline regulations, that only got worse a few years on. There were 4 things you could do that would put a symbol on your ticket,and if you did any of these you would be “randomly selected for additional security screening.” The 4 things were :
Buy your ticket at the last minute before you left.
Have no checked bags, only a carry-on.
Buy a one-way ticket.
Pay in cash.
Not knowing this at all I walked up to the airport ticket counter, threw down a huge wad of cash, and said “Get me on the next flight; One way ticket to Anchorage!!” I and my no checked bags were promptly “randomly selected for additional security screenings”. Ever since then I've had an increasingly more difficult time at airports and the like. That may have been the catalyst that began my life as an “airport outlaw”. I already had a disdain for authority, so I'm sure it didn't take much...
After I arrived in Anchorage I suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that I had no plan other than “call that guy”. I wandered the city until I found a run down motel. I plopped down money for the night and used the phone in the room to call the guy who was to hook me up with the crab fishing job. The conversation didn't go how I'd imagined it:
“...Hello?”
“Hey, It's Nash.”
“Dude, I'm glad you called. Man, the fishing market has fallen through this year, theirs no way I can get you on a ship; I can't even get on mine! I'm sleeping on the floor of an electronics store eating peanut butter out of a jar trying to scrape up enough money to escape Alaska! Whatever you do, don't come here!”
“... I'm already here!!! I'm in Anchorage! That was the plan!”
“... right. Well, I heard there were still some ships on Kodiak Island. That'll be your only chance. It's a nice place. Big island, small town. I camped on a mountain while I looked for a ship there. You should do the same; I'll give you directions to the mountain.”
“...Thanks.”
The next morning I went to the airport ticket counter, threw down a big wad of cash, and exclaimed “One way ticket to Kodiak Island!” Security...
Turns out the most difficult part of getting to Kodiak Island is literally getting there. The island is shrouded in a foggy mist and the tiny little planes that fly there can't go until it clears. “When are we leaving?” I asked. “Whenever we can.” was my response. It was days before we actually got to go. Good old plane delays...
After I finally got to Kodiak Island I set about following my connection's directions to the comfy camping mountain... and found it being bulldozed! Probably to put up a building or something... now I needed to find a new place to make camp. Thankfully, in Alaska this whole situation was de rigour, so no one thought it weird when I asked around for good places to be a deviant vagrant while looking for a ship. It wasn't too long before I found a good mountain, not TOO far from the docks or town, but far enough for isolation. I set up camp, which was basically me just putting my bag down, since I didn't have a tent or anything. I DID have a solar blanket to huddle up in though. After that, I went to go beat the docks. Getting on a ship is a bit like getting picked for little kid sports teams: people line up and get picked one by one by people on the ships. Whoever is left on the docks doesn't go that time.
With the market as bad as it was, and without my connection, I didn't have much of a chance. Many times I was in talks to get on a ship, and many times I was not picked. Eventually the season started winding down, and my prospects became fewer and fewer. I would spend long days sitting around the docks, to no avail, watching manatees play with a beach ball next to the sign that said “Don't play with manatees!” Apparently they are frolicking brutes who accidentally kill people all the time because they play too rough.
It was rapidly becoming clear that I had no chance crabbing, so I set my sites on other things. Once the ships had all set out I decided that since I was already living on the mountain I should take it one step further and turn it into a real shugyo. My first. “YamaGomori”, or “isolated ascetic mountain training mission”. I devoted myself to training full time in the mountain wilderness: Meditating under icy waterfalls, jumping over things, using trees as striking posts, thoughtful reflection and reading, the whole bit. The training was a natural progression from my harsh training in high school, since my high school life was more training than not. I would get up at 4:30, work out, walk a few miles to school, cut some classes to train, walk a few miles back after school, grab my training bag and walk several hours to the dojo. Train from 5-10pm, then walk several hours back and get to bed by midnight to start the whole thing over. Mountain living wasn't bad by comparison. I could read and study without having to put up with anyone else at least. Occasionally I could Identify edible grasses and fish, and occasionally I would treat myself by climbing down and hitchhiking into town for treats like yogurt and bagels and going to the library to check out a book to study. Specifically a textbook of gymnastics training. I used that book to teach myself how to correctly do a handstand while I was up in the mountains, a favorite invaluable skill I still practice almost daily. I also still have that book... the late fee is probably sizable. I also practiced “Bottle Cutting” technique, which is when you chop the neck off of a bottle using the blade of your hand. I even succeeded a couple times! I had about a 1% success ratio using beer bottles I would find running through the mountains. Even in isolation I couldn't escape the garbage of people. Occasionally while running I would return home, which now consisted of a fire pit, propped up branches with my solar blanket for a self-made sleeping tube, my “clothes changing tree” which was a tree with my clothes hanging on it (either my civilian clothes or my karate gi) and my bag, and upon my return I would find that my bagels or whatnot had evaporated! The package would seem to be intact, but the contents gone...
Truly having nothing better to do I set a bag of bagels out one day and made myself scarce. I sat at a distance, still, for the better part of a day, before discovering the culprit: Chipmunks! Chipmunks were sneaking in, tearing a TINY hole in the bag and smashing the bagels to crumbs to get them out of the hole. Brilliant.
During one of my fore's to town, a clerk told me to watch out for bears. That's right! This was Kodiak Island, home of the infamous Kodiak Bear. I didn't know anything about them, but I knew I needed a plan in case I was faced with one. Back in the mountains I practiced image training to prepare myself just in case. I planned to attack the eyes, hit the snout directly to stun, and repeat. Simple. Then I hitchhiked into town and went to the sporting goods store for the first time, to get some more rope. That's where I saw it. The stuffed Kodiak Bear, complete with plaque detailing it's statistics. They can be up to 10ft tall, it's bones were so thick bullets wouldn't go all the way through. Faster than a human at running, swimming, and climbing, and outclasses them in strength many times. They can be up to 15,000lbs. I'm convinced they aren't ruling the world simply due to a lack of numbers or lack of interest. I never had a chance against one! I changed my battle tactics from “go for the eyes!” to “Poop pants so hard it kills me before the bear does!”. I never saw one in the wild, but they visited my dreams frequently to remind me that I was on their mountain only because they were allowing it.
A couple months passed and November was creeping in, and with it hellatiouse weather. Miserable nights filled with liquid nitrogen-like deadly cold rain and an all around lack of sunshine. Soon everything would be covered in ice and destroyed by wind, myself included if I didn't get the hell off the mountain. Food was becoming more of a pain to get, and on Halloween I hitchhiked into town feeling like I was starving. I wound up eating an entire bowl of tootsie rolls that I took from an electronics store.... I haven't had tootsie rolls since. On one miserable night I decided I'd had enough, it was time to leave the mountain for good, and I began my trek to to town. I'd fallen a bit down a cliff on the way down the mountain moving out, and the trip shredded my clothes and bag. I needed to get to some place with a light to repair my things, and I trudged on through the night on a sludgy mountain road until I was picked up by a passerby; that's where the story started, but was far from ending.
I was dropped off into town in the middle of the night and slept under a building's awning. The next morning I found “permanent” shelter... the homeless shelter that is. As it turns out, everyone staying there was an adventurer or vagabond of some kind. I was normal there, though I still had to keep my back to the wall because there were some legitimately crazy people in there to. The shelter opened the doors for dinner, fresh lemon pepper Tilapia, you slept overnight in one big room with a bunch of floor mattresses, got up at 4:30 for breakfast of dry corn flakes, then got booted out for the day at 5. Not a bad deal! After they booted us out I would go do my morning exercises and then hide my bag in a bush for the day. Now that I had lodging I needed some food, money, and training! Food was easy enough to scrounge between various church places, dumpsters, and free samples.
Money was more difficult because I had finally spent it all. I was stranded until I could raise the money to escape. Thankfully the “rules” are fairly lax in the Kodiak Island labor arena. The town wasn't exactly huge: one movie theater which had one screen, and a sporting goods shops with a $300 hoodie. It was an island after all. I got steady work doing illegal immigrant grunt manual labor. My first of these jobs came courtesy of the marital arts. While running one day, a realtor stopped to talk to me about my running, and when he found out it was marital arts training he got extra talkative. He too had studied, and we had studied the same style! He seemed to like the cut of my jib, so he offered me some “under the table” work, paying in off-the-books cash of course.
For awhile I was a gravel spreader. Normally a big dump truck would dump a huge pile of gravel and then a bull dozer would come in and spread it. Same thing here... except I was the bulldozer. I would spend long days with two 5 gallon buckets and a shovel, spreading gravel. By myself. The bucket's handles were just thin wires, and since I had no gloves when full I would carry them and the wires would slice into my hands, a steady trail of blood following me wherever I went. The buckets were heavy too. It was cold and rainy and often times the gravel pile would get wet and turn into a mountain of frozen concrete. The work was harsh, and between that and my mountain training, my body was becoming one big strong impressive callous. Since this guy was a realtor, often times I was working on unoccupied properties he was trying to sell. Very nice places. When the weather got too bad, or I felt like taking a break, I would “let myself in” and take a break. Or a nap. I was so gross, just the memory of me being inside those places dropped the property value.
As fun as all that was though, the money just wasn't good enough, so I went looking for “better”work. I asked around with some of the guys I'd become chummy with at the shelter what I should do. There was a guy in his early 20's who was quite experienced, and good at handstands, who gave me a lot of advice. There was also an even more interesting guy his his mid 70's who looked like Santa Clause with a mangled hand: Gill. The guy had seen it all, and done it all. He'd been on and off the island for 50 years and had several lifetimes of experience. He would impart to me stories of his adventures over tea. There was a mansion on the side of a mountain that overlooked the town, and during the 1970's he was a drug kingpin who lived in that place, scarface-style. He owned and operated a series of bars at the time, that he used to launder money and run his narcotics. He got his hand crushed crab fishing. At one time before the town was as developed he worked as a cab driver, driving through mud roads. He told me that at the time there was a Filipino guy he knew who was also a cabbie and would dress up like a women and solicit blow jobs to guys just getting to the island in his cab for extra money. Then he would drop them off at the bar 'The B & B'. They guys would go in bragging about how they just got with some Asian cab driver, and the place would erupt into laughter, because all the locals knew. Their slogan became “The B & B, where the men are men, and the women used to be!” Hilarious. I asked Gill what ever became of that guy, and he said last he heard he went to go work for some cannery, which is just the job he said I should get. He had been on both extremes of the society spectrum and now he was staying at a homeless shelter. His words seemed to carry more worldly wisdom than those of others, so I listened to him.
In order to get a better job though, I needed to prove my intention to stick around, and that was done by getting an Alaskan driver's license. There’s a reason Alaska has the highest rate of vehicular incidents in the U.S. Territories: They will give a license to just about anyone! The test is basically “Do you want a driver's license, yes or no?” Also, I filled out the form with less than accurate information. There was no address on the license, and in the computer data base my address was listed as the address from the homeless shelter. I had a real license that made me an untraceable ghost, and for many years I used it to it's fullest.
Now that I had my “legitimate” credentials it was job time. The easiest ones to get where at canaries. A canary is a warehouse where they take sea food off of ships and put them into cans. If you saw how it was done you’d likely never eat it again... I mean I still do, but you probably wouldn't. One of the major barriers to getting a job in a cannery is the equipment requirements. You need specific gear to work there: Special boots, rain gear, and the like. If you don't have it, the company will give it to you, but deduct the cost from your first paycheck.
I got a job at the first cannery I went to. The work was awful. My only job was to pick up a tray from a shelf with my right hand, pass is to my left, and put it on a different shelf. All day. I was not a fan, but guess who my boss was? Filipino cab driver! Small world. Also, the whole of Alaska seems to have a surprisingly large population of Filipinos. Why? They where always a pleasure to work with, even though I didn't speak Tagalog and they didn't speak English. They would see I had no food for lunch, and why would not stop giving me food until I was stuffed. I was thankful, but I couldn’t' get them to understand what could and couldn't be put in the microwave...
After the first pay period was over, and after the deductions for my gear, I was supposed to receive 40$; Someone in accounting messed up though, and I received a check for 400$! I took that check and ran to the nearest bank, cashed it, and never went back to that canary.
Now that I had all my gear, some experience, and some wiggle money, I went to a different canary and got a much better job. I interviewed with one of the higher ups in human resources, and she seemed quite interested in me. I managed to parlay that interest into her taking me out for a nice dinner, a job, and a good contact. My actual job at this canary was to work on ships unloading their catches of Halibut. Up until this point I had no idea halibut were so huge: they can weigh hundreds of pounds, and the large ones need a huge crane to lift them out of the holds of the ships. The job wasn't too bad. I would go into the hold, move the packing ice, remove the fish, then repeat. The only downside was that I was unpacking from top to bottom, digging my way down, and eventually the ice and fish started to melt and break and fairly quickly I was literally up to my eyeballs in fish-guts slushie.
Now that I had a regular influx of money I was biding my time until I had accumulated enough to leave. During this time, I searched the town for martial arts. I managed to find a combination Japanese Goju ryu/ Tang soo do school, and a Judo club. The owner of the Goju/Tang school was nice enough, but he was not a good martial artist. He had a few black belts, but his understanding of the arts was basic. He was super Fat, and he'd had a few heart attacks; not the image of any true martial artist I'd ever met, or what I would want in a school patriarch. In the school I had come from in the lower 48 my teacher had treated me more or less like a regular person, but at this school I was considered a superhuman! Even the most mundane of my movements caused them to “marvel at my speed and flexibility”, except that I didn't think anything I did was that impressive... could my mountain training have jumped me that far? I sparred the school and reigned supreme. I didn't stay at that school. Why stay at a place where you won't learn anything?
The Judo club I found was different; I could learn something. It was a small club that practiced in the side room of an old military base, and was lead by an exceptional 76 year old man who was the very embodiment of his art. Watching him practice and teach it was obvious this man was a true martial artist and not someone who was just in it for Olympic gold, which he had received. I inquired about lessons. The man said I should learn about Judo before beginning any training, in order to make sure it was something I actually wanted to learn. He then pulled out an old book on Judo and handed it to me. “Borrow this.” he said. “Bring it back when you're finished with it.” I was shocked. To loan out a personal book, to a stranger who looks like a bum from the 1950's, all on good faith, blew me away. Especially considering I'd already liberated at least 1 library book from this very town. I read the Judo book many times and returned it to the man. I watched the Judo club many times, and learned much.
I practiced my martial arts when I wasn't at the cannery, and on my lunch breaks while there. Once while running through the mountains I strained a tendon in my foot. This lead to me not being able to lift Halibut, which lead to me not being able to work on ships, and instead I had to go back to the cannery proper.
When I got sent back to the cannery proper I was placed on a human assembly line with a bunch of Filipinos. At the start of the line a fish would get put on a conveyer belt and someone would cleave it's head off. Then someone else would remove the head from the belt. Then someone would do something else as it traveled further along the conveyer, so on and so forth until it got to me. I was about half way down the line. When the fish got to me my job was to take an old tooth brush and scrub out all the blood clots in the fish that had been forming in the headless carcass up until that time.
It took me no time at all to realize that job wasn't something I wanted to do. Stuff that! About 2 hours into doing that job the lunch whistle blew; I walked off and never went back. I didn't have to; I had scraped together enough money to leave.
I threw a ball of cash on the counter at the airport and got a one-way ticket to Anchorage. From there I got a one way to the lower 48. Of course my plane was delayed, I did live in the Anchorage airport for a week total after all. While there I tried all manner of things to pass the time, and I eventually decided I would take the bus into town and kick around the mall, but I would have to do it the next day because it was already too late. After reading every magazine in the airport I decided I would sleep the time away. I glanced at the clock: only 15 more hours... I found a row of chairs and stretched out, using my bag as a pillow and airport construction as 'white noise', I went to sleep.
"Hey! Hey buddy!" I open my eyes to see a girl, about 20 years old, sitting at my feet. "you got a pen I can borrow?" she asked. I reach into my jacket, hand her one and close my eyes, drifting to sleep. "Here's your pen back!" One eye opens, I grab the pen then close my eyes. All I want is sleep. "Thanks for letting me use that!" No problem, I reply without opening my eyes. I drift into the dream world of the pseudo awake. Asleep, but still aware of my surroundings. It was then that I heard the same girl talking to a couple of other girls. I ignored them the best I could. "Hey Buddy!" I knew she couldn't be talking to me, I was clearly trying to sleep. "HEY!" I hear as I am hit on the shin. I open my eyes. The girl now has two girl friends with her. "What's you name?" the original girl asks. Nash. "Cool, where are you coming from?" Kodiak Island. "The Emerald Isle? I heard it was beautiful. Is it beautiful?" Yes, I say, though the weather can be uncomfortable. "We're waiting for our girlfriend." one of the girls adds. oh, I say as I close my eyes. It wouldn't last long.
"Hey! Do you smoke?" asks the first girl. No. "Do you drink?" No. "You like to party?" I'm not much of a party-er. "Oh....you like to smoke weed?" I don't do drugs, I don't even take aspirin, I inform the group. "Oh...what are you waiting for?" asks a different girl in the group. I explain that my flight is not for a couple of days, and that I am passing time until the next day so I could take the bus to the mall. I told them all I really wanted right then was to sleep and get something to eat.
The friend the girls where waiting for arrives. They talk for a second, then say "Hey, we all live together, you should come stay at our place, we'll feed you, and in the morning we'll drop you off at the mall. What do you think?" Food... I thought, some place to sleep that wasn't pushed together chairs...it sounded tempting. Then there previous questions started slipping into my mind. "Smoke, drink, pot, party...". Four girls and one guy they briefly talked to at an airport... I don't know what would have happened. I turned them down, got some sleep, and stayed hungry.
I find it very amusing to look back on that exchange; If it had happened just a few years later it would have been a very different scene. It would have been me staying at the girl's place, eating all their food, partying hard, and becoming friends for life... or me getting drugged and having my kidneys stolen. Either way, these days I’m equally on the lookout for either scenario. When this happened I just wasn't a seasoned enough adventurer to recognize every single opportunity, and I certainly wasn't aware that for the most part you have to make your own opportunities. The more experience you have the more experiences you can see opportunities for. Live and learn, if you're doing it right.
The next couple days passed rather uneventfully and I found myself back in the lower 48. I debriefed and regrouped. I was ready to set out and become the me I'd always wanted to be, which was the me I already was, I just didn't know it yet.
-Nash
"Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating."
- Michael Crichton