“You know what would be amazing right now?”
Engaging in Fantasy-Land is what housekeepers did to keep themselves from going stir-crazy in the northern tundra of Denali, Alaska during the tourist season. Elizabeth had been snacking on TGIFriday's Potato Skins out of the vending machine all summer.
“Mudslides from TGIFriday's.”
“I'd been thinking the exact same thing.”
I forget which one of us concocted the thought, as by this point in the summer all the seasonal employees were in such a state of delusion, having fended off mosquito rages, moldy employee wall tents, and well, every other unfathomable thing in the world happening, that concocting any kind idea from staging a world coup to having sex with a stranger just to sleep on their mattress seemed within the range of possible thoughts one might have.
“There's a Friday's in Anchorage.”
At this point, it's necessary to pull up a map of Alaska to get an idea of the radiance of the light about to go off in our heads. Denali is about smack in the middle of Alaska. Anchorage is at the southern coast. Alaska is just about as long north to south as the entire length of the lower-forty-eight.
By car, Denali is about a five hour drive back down to Anchorage. None of us seasonal employees arrived by car. We all took the train, the ticket for which easily cost one week's wages. And that was just a one way ticket. The shuttle easily cost one week's tips, and hitchhiking was free except for the fact that the likely hood of meeting a fate many times worse than a train or shuttle wreck increased exponentially when putting thumb to pavement.
So the bottom line was, we were stuck. All we could do was change sheets and dream of mudslides. Cool, delicious, sweet, chocolaty, creamy, alcoholic mudslides.
But they're only five hours away. Five hours. Anyone on the road going south from here is almost certainly going to Anchorage. If we hitched a ride to go down there, maybe we could take a shuttle back. We could definitely save enough in tips to afford a one way trip. Then we wouldn't have to stress about finding a ride back in time to clock in for work after our escapade.
All that for mudslides? It's kind of like cock-tease to leave Denali, and especially to treat yourself to something as decadent as a mudslide. You get to taste ecstasy for a little while, but you know you have to go back. You know that shuttle is going to pull out at a certain hour, and if you're not on it, all your possessions will be thrown out of your tent by the time you do get back.
And if our history has taught us anything, any well meaning trip to anywhere for the sake of adventure in Denali has met with unadulterated catastrophe. We'd be fooling ourselves to believe we could actually pull such a thing off. Even from the perspective of the managers, though our fellow housekeepers Sam and Val had proved themselves to be the most valuable housekeepers on staff, Elizabeth and I were the alpha housekeepers for some reason. If neither of us were there, it would be like a second grade class with no teacher. Eventually there would be a dirty linen fight until Jin Sun, housekeeper from Korea, would screech out “Don't scratch my heart!” Elizabeth's and my presence never stopped that, but we gave the illusion that it did, I guess.
But when the “not-I's” start hanging down on you, that's when the spirit of The Goonies kicks in.
“RD, there is no idea that's too far out for us. I made out with a biker chick. You almost got kidnapped by a guy on crack. We can do anything.”
And with that, we arranged to have our days off together and dreamed of glorious mudslides with nothing stopping us, riding the cherry down the mountain of whipped cream right into the bliss of a milkshake with booze.
Five rooms just checked out that need to be cleaned before lunch which is fifteen minutes and it's the one time they bought pizza rather than making us horrendous shit and if i don't get there on time there will not be any slices left?
Mudslides, RD, mudslides.
The manager Candy, yes, Candy, docked me “bonus pay” again on my time card even though I clocked in well before my shift, and didn't clock out until after it was over, because she is a dr unk? Again?
Mudslides, mudslides.
On hitchhiking day, various bouts of discouragement and perseverance battled for our attention, but mostly salivating for the mudslides kept us in check. We knew they were only five hours away. We even had to find yellow pages for their address, then steal free internet by pretending to be an employee at another lodge whose managers allowed internet access to employees- all to get bus directions, and figured out a way to a hostel, all to get to these treats. And we knew there was a car going the distance coming across our path.
The story that would unfold inside the car would soon start to reveal itself. It showed up in a station wagon, female, with large dog. The dog had reign of the back seat, which the lady spent many moments re-organizing, and throwing random items like toy trumpets, pictures in frames, and Chips Ahoy wrappers into the wagon portion of the vehicle. All this so Elizabeth could sit next to the dog and pretend like she wasn't get getting shed on and slobbered all over. “Oh no, really, it's okay. I love dogs.”
In the front seat, I negotiated my way around several boxes of snacks and drinks, all designed to keep her journey going quickly and without much need for convenience outside of the car. Plastic baggies of deli sliced turkey and crackers were at her disposal, as well as large bags of peanut butter M&Ms and a lot of drinks. With caffeine.
It's always the ones with the littlest amount of room that pull over and offer you a ride. The first part of the interaction is usually spent with arms outstretched frantically moving bits and clues of life around in various formations. It's like watching a kaleidescope, but with pill bottles, cigarette boxes, porno magazines and french-fry boxes making up the shiny jewels.
Perhaps there's a clue in there about spending a lot of time in the car, mostly in solitude, and being comfortable with inviting a stranger into their world for a while. Hello, this is my bubble, you can get inside for a little bit.
The hitchhiker's role becomes extremely valuable at that point, when they act as a conduit for the person inside their bubble, able to interact with the outside world, without bursting their bubble. And for this delicate ability, the conduit gets to where it wants to go.
And so we were off.
“I'm actually going to see my therapist.”
Oh no. Not even five minutes into our five hours, she cracked the nut right open and declared a feast.
For five hours we learned all about why she was in therapy. The entire trip. Bless that woman. For five hours to divulge personal griefs and tragedies to total strangers, to open up and just give and give and give, it was quite remarkable. It's completely strange most of the time, because you can only respond with so many variants of “oh my” before sounding fake, but that doesn't seem to matter much in the end. It was just a matter of us being there to hear her words, to be a sound that vibrates outside of her bubble and out to the universe. Bless that.
When we pulled up to some random corner in Anchorage with our huge back packs prepared to take us camping if we couldn't find a place to stay, it started raining. Our driver said she felt a lot calmer having had us ride with her and some one to talk to, and had a renewed confidence going into her therapy sessions, where she was starting an EMDR treatment. We marched on in the direction of a bus.
We probably stood on the bus like slobbering hooligans, puppy dog eyed hoping every cross street would be the one we were waiting for not knowing if it would be the next block or after eighty blocks. From there we had no idea how long of a walk it would be, and we were hoping like crazy they didn't close early, or run out of ice cream.
It was when the faint red and white striped Friday's facade came into view on the horizon during our walk after the bus ride, that the unreal length of car-sales lots became abundantly clear.
“Oh, it's just down there, after the car lots.”
And for fifty minutes we treaded down nothing but car lots, usually with little or no sidewalk so the passing cars would splash water on us as they zoomed by.
“No, it's not worth waiting for another bus, I mean, it's right there.”
But still, the length of cars in the distance in front of us never seemed to get shorter.
Was it a mirage? As the smell began to waft in, I had to double and triple check that the red and white stripes in the distance weren't just wishful thinking... weeks of salivating over mudslides built up like a dam giving way.
I swear the restaurant hasn't gotten any bigger for the past mile and a half, but I know I can see it. It has to be there.
Faith kept, no doubts won out.
In front of its doors, we wept in excitement for the slide of muddy froth coming our way.
“Hi, we just hitchhiked from Denali, and we're going to put down our sopping wet bags now, and mosey up to the bar, and we're sitting down now and can we get two mudslides and potato skins and chicken fingers please?”
Saying all of that was better than sex. I just came. And now I get to eat. And drink. Oops, I did it again.
I knew that getting two mudslides down would be a challenge, but I needed to do it. It wasn't a question. I mean, if you're going to hitchhike five hours just for this one thing, you might as well have two. I didn't want to have to savor the first one. I just wanted it to hit that spot, then the second one I could savor, while high on the first one. Am I an addict?
In the heat of our amazingly high high, a memory was discovered tucked away in Elizabeth's brain, “You know who lives here now? Mike, the maintenance guy.” Mike had either been fired or quit, I don't remember which, but both seemed inevitable. In any case, he used to work with us at the Crow's Nest, and we loved him as a member of the clan dearly. He had found replacement work in Anchorage, and was now living there, along side some former housekeepers, the Russian Cosmonaut duo, Alex and Dimitri.
Elizabeth had his number, and we could probably stay with him. The rain paused for a moment, allowing a rainbow to pop up.
And like the pot of gold at the end of it, Mike answered when we called him from a pay phone, and told us where we could find him. Done with walking in the rain, we sussed out for cab, knowing we wouldn't have to pay for lodging. A glorious glory. This left literally enough in our pockets to buy breakfast in the morning, then we'd be off on our shuttle back to the Nest.
Mike's presence in our journey drew us into a realm of magic that the mudslides were at the foot of. Like a guardian Shepard, he took us in with smiles and hugs, his big warm body comforting us cold and weary. He was working for a B&B, and clandestinely let us sleep in one of their accommodations, which was under repair, so not rented out. Sitting on rocks in a circle outside the B&B in the eternal twilight of the Alaskan summer night, pot became our tribal unifier, and we reached deep into the subconscious to transmute all our horrors into laughter, and embed those laugh tracks over anything named “Candy.”
Later- in bed, stoned, headphones on, snickers wrapper by the bed stand- all the sugar, grease and thc of the day started metabolizing itself through out the crevasses of my cells, and enveloped me into a deep rapturous sleep, in which, almost a conscious excitement of the state of complete rest seemed to be touched. I woke up smiling with the sunshine.
Our shuttle reservations only left us with little clues as to what we would be looking for while we waited at some random street corner. It's not like there was any obvious pick-up area or sign saying “So and So Shuttle.” So when we saw a crusty old cowboy with shit-kickers, a feather in his cowboy hat, leather vest and some kind of Native American hairpiece extending down below his ear and over his shoulder, doting around a van with a tailor, we thought, “that must be our ride!”
“Are you my twelve O'clock?” He said in his crusty old-man voice.
Deer in headlights.
“Well, put your stuff in the back, I haven't got all day.”
All formalities aside, we hastily threw our bags into the trailer, which means we instantly cut ourselves off from our supply of books, CDs, snacks and water we had carefully selected for our five hour journey. Surely we will stop to pick some one else up, and then he'll open the trailer, and we can re-arrange our stuff. Surely that'll happen.
Nope. As soon as he shut the doors, our next stop was to be Denali. We were his only two passengers. Us and the cowboy.
Once out of the city streets and onto the open road, the cowboy started to play friends a little bit, asking where we were from and all the like. When we made mention we worked at the Crow's Nest, he broke out into a hysterical fit of laughter.
After a minute or two of catching his breath, he uttered under his mustache,
“I've heard about them.”
This is the story of our lives right now. Of course, everybody has, except anyone whose never been to Denali. What is it that you've heard?
“Well, I can tell you I've never driven anyone whose worked with them BACK like you guys.”
We're gluttons for punishment, what can we say. Will you be stopping by any chance, because I want my CDs, and I have to pee.
A grunt that sounded vaguely like the words “diner” and the name of a city that I've never heard before was uttered.
Maybe, as our craving for snacks gave way to head aches and squirming, maybe there would be relief sometime soon. Or maybe we were high-tailing it all the way back to the Nest.
But again, the path of good fortune shone down on us, and the cowboy swerved off the side of the road to land us at the doors of a diner. Of course, once inside, the smells of hamburgers and pancakes being cooked up overwhelmed our baggies of trail mix, and we bemoaned having spent all our money already. Perhaps they took credit card, but way up here in the sticks, it seemed unlikely. But it had been a long haul, and there were still many hours before we'd be able to eat again.
As we paced the diner, hoping the next handful of trail mix would magically turn into a club sandwich, we stumbled onto a giant stash of fresh baked chocolate muffins. This entire journey had been in celebration of feeling the itch and relieving it. And here we were, a mountain of hot fresh chocolate muffins ticking us until we could no longer stand it.
We broke our gaze on the muffins only long enough to look at the waitress with our teary eyes. Her hair was piled high on her head. She was diner incarnate. Halfway through my “do you take credit card” question which came out like instinct acting on desperation, the waitress just wagged her Lee-press ons in the direction of the brightly hand-markered “CASH ONLY” sign.
In unison, the chocolate muffins looked up at us and broke out into a singing chorus: “Yes, we have no muffins for you.” Queue the “I'm laughing because your sad” trumpet sounds.
Hearts broken, the waitress walked over to the cowboy who was having coffee on the far end of the bar.
He stood up to pay his bill, and walked over by us.
“Well, pick whichever ones you want, and lets go.”
He probably said “just don't hug me,” to himself after he exited the building.
Like raccoons we snatched what we ours, then quickly ran into a corner and picked apart the treat the cowboy was so gracious to buy for us.
“Well, you're going back to THAT place, thought you should get at least one break,” he told us as the doors to the van slammed shut, and we rested back into his shuttle, now with headphones, chocolate muffins, mudslides and comforting warmth of blessed moments all along the way.
Elizabeth and I could have done a multitude of things on our days off that could have fully utilized the magnificence of Denali around us. We came as far away as middle-class white kids can get from suburbia, and we headed for the mall on our days off. Part of the draw of a place like Alaska though, is stripping yourself of your boundaries, and seeing what happens to humanity. We could argue the irrationality of a thing like mudslides in Anchorage, but we put ourselves there anyway. We put ourselves in the middle of the unknown, like explorers going slow enough to watch all the beauty of mystery unfold.
We see hardened cowboys buy a couple kids cupcakes. We see old friends reunite over distances of hundreds of miles. We see a symbiotic relationship between people enclosed in their vehicular bubbles, and the life forms that allow them to interact with the world outside. And best of all, we saw mudslides in our minds, and we made them happen in real life.
