Otto Lake, Alaska

 

Otto Lake at midnight

           I know that sometimes years of distance tend to make memories more nostalgic than they were in the moment. My memories of summers in Alaska were like that. The sense of endlessness to the landscape, knowing that if you started walking west, you could walk for the rest of your life without encountering anybody. The midnight sun shining on the dock as we gathered as wild and weird friends to play music or kickball and laugh uproariously into the wee hours, then wake up at 5 am and go white water rafting all day. The novelty of meeting a moose or a bear almost daily in the campground we all shared on the shores of Otto Lake. 

These memories make it easy to brush over the hellacious mosquitoes in the summer of 2013, the simmering resentment at the uncontrolled tourism growth that supplied our weekly paychecks, the general crankiness that filtered through the entire company from a few burnt out employees would never stop complaining. The constant reminder from some of the more experienced guides that the best days had passed and my wondrous experience as a 19 year old was not as cool as it used to be. The hangovers after the midnight dock parties. It never got dark for three months, but for much of the summer, most of the moods were pretty dark. 

Every now and again, I dream of trading a normal summer for another Alaska adventure. Go rafting down the Nenana again. Young and inexperienced that first summer, I swam every rapid over 13 miles, thrashing to flip by kayak back over in my leaky drysuit as icy gray glacial water churned around me. Just a handful of water that had been ice just thirty miles upstream was enough to send shivers to your bone. Unprepared, a human body would go into shock in less than thirty seconds. Dressed in all my Under Armour layers with a drysuit over the top, it was less shocking but still eye-opening. As the office manager, I would work eight hour shifts taking reservations and greeting customers, getting them fitted into their own drysuits and making them sign waivers. When my clock timed out, I would toss a kayak in the back of the school bus and tag along on the evening river trips. I was technically a safety boat, equipped to save a customer if they fell overboard, but mostly I was comedic relief for the tourists from Florida and Manitoba, charging my lime green inflatable kayak into giant haystack waves, getting flipped over backwards and swimming out into the calm water to recollect before Iceworm or Trainwreck came around the next bend. 

Sometimes, I would fill out a paddle boat that didn’t have enough people. The guides would concoct a fictional background for me and I would impersonate that character for the entire three hour trip. I was the son of a maple syrup baron from Ontario or a recently paroled car thief or whatever. We hurtled through raging waves to the tune of our guide, nicknamed Thirsty or Country or Flood hollering to paddle on the left or right, calm in a sea of froth. Sometimes the customers would catch on, sometimes they were too out of breath from a wave rolling over the front. The cold water would render some people speechless.  

Raging into Razorback

I was there when the competing raft company bus driver forgot the e-brake and rolled their bus into the river at the takeout. I was in the office when some poor tourist died of a heart-attack from getting splashed by the cold water in another company’s boat. Or when three young grizzlies swam just feet from our raft to the astonishment of a few couples from Virginia. Afterwards, shivering and soaked, we would retreat to the Minty Green, the toothpaste colored cook-shack perched in the center of the campground to grill roadkill moose and drink case after case of Coors or High Life as the Grateful Dead played show after show on the iPod in the corner. One memorable evening we were trapped inside for three hours by an ornery bull moose who was claiming territory. He was shot a few weeks later at the start of rifle season and turned into steak by our Yosemite Sam look alike Boss, Al. 

Most nights, I would mosey out of Minty Green before the heavy drinkers started to slur their words and wander down to the lakeshore. The golden sky would ripple with magenta and orange as I would sit with my guitar and dangle my feet. Most nights, I would barely play, listening instead to the conversations at campfires on distant shores, or the evening birds on the water. Ironically, boredom was a common emotion; surrounded by such vast unreachable wilderness and living with absurdity most days, a lot of hours were spent just killing time. 

I am thinking all of this today because after falling out of touch for a few years, I learned what became of the Otto Lake campground and rafting business. The owners retired a few years after I departed and the land was sold to a multinational hotel company who plan to raze the site and build a new tourist destination. Soon, guests on the gigantic Alaska cruise lines can take the train up from Anchorage and spend their evenings swatting mosquitoes and watching moose wade in the shallow golden waters of Otto Lake. I have plenty more crazy stories that will probably end up in this blog someday, but for today, just a haze of nostalgia. 

Song of the post: High on a Mountaintop, Del McCoury

Late night jam session outside Minty Green...