ALASKA: Cliff driving and baseball in the Land of the Midnight Sun
What 'no darkness' means for fireworks, baseball stats, and the stories we tell ourselves
After hours of mostly wilderness through our windshield, the rustic, wood-sided business with the big front porch and a few scattered cabins appeared unexpectedly—as these sorts of places often do in Alaska. A big vinyl banner advertised ice cream, and the freshly mowed field out front was decorated with a rainbow assortment of ridiculously decorated cars and trucks. “I think we need to stop,” I declared, attracted to both the automotive spectacle and the promise of a sweet treat. The stress of driving a vehicle on the fritz called for a break, anyway.
Although we weren’t yet certain what was wrong with Walter, our big yellow adventure truck, we had enough serious clues to know he was not well. With an hour still to go before arriving back at our friends’ house, where we could safely rest and reassess our situation, ice cream and amusement felt like a solid option.
As we savored our creamy concoctions, we pieced together exactly where we were and what we were seeing. Wait! This was Glacier View’s Howdy Hall, the gathering point for Alaska’s renowned Fourth of July Car Launch! My husband Andy had shown me previous years’ videos of the cliffside mayhem, a 300-foot drop, crunch, and roll which takes place in view of a few thousand raucous spectators attired in their finest red, white, and blue. ‘Merica. The vehicles out on the lawn were this year’s participants, staged for a few days of photo-op glory before meeting their crashtacular demise.
Finished with my ice cream, I walked up the quiet back hill in search of the launch site. My stomach did that flip-floppy thing when I climbed up the earthen ramp and peered over the edge, past the graceful pines and birches and the pink spindles of fireweed, all the way down to the riverbank, far below.
I tuned my ear to the silence, imagining the roaring and sputtering of the engines, the flying bits and pieces of the airborne vehicles as they crash and tumble, the clouds of dust as the cars finally teeter to a stop, the fist-pumping crowd hooting and hollering for another one. Another one.
Snapping back to the present, I noted straight lines etched into a large dirt area to the left, like it had been recently graded. But this was no Zen garden; it was the spectator area for the carnival of chaos. At the end of the landing zone, a small pond stood between the would-be wrecking yard and the river; I’d seen in the videos how excited the crowds get when a car flies far enough to make it all the way into the pond. But—new for this year—the far edge of the pond has been eaten away by erosion, so the former dividing line now merges with the multi-channeled braided river itself.
I peered more closely at the landing zone and noticed one rusty car, perhaps left behind from last year’s event or a test vehicle for this year, on its back like a stranded turtle near the water’s edge.
When the cars are sent over the cliff, their engines are running, accelerators jammed into go-mode. That means the fluids have not been drained, of course. I hated to be such a Lefty Lucy or Krunchy Karen that I couldn’t relax and have a little fun, but I couldn’t help but think the whole scene resembled the automotive equivalent of a Roman coliseum with its rowdy hordes of blood-thirsty spectators. However, the bodily fluids of these fallen gladiators don’t sink into the deep sand of the arena floor (a horrific fate). Without the far edge of the pond to stop them, the fluids now flow downstream.
I walked back toward Howdy Hall and went out to the yard to snap a few photos of this year’s victims—er, I mean, participants.
I even covertly slapped one of our yellow and black Nomadic MidLife logo stickers onto the front bumper of a yellow Chevy Tracker, so a little piece of us could be part of the event, careening down the cliff in a blaze of misplaced glory.1
I could tell Andy was interested in attending the Car Launch, close enough to our friends’ house that we could just borrow their car for the day—precluding the need for Walter to be roadworthy. I was torn. Yes, it would be a wild and quirky cultural experience. But did I want to pay the admission price, financially supporting something that seemed so environmentally irresponsible—especially now that the pond opens directly into the river? As a follower of Jesus, I believe human beings have been given an imperative to be stewards of the earth. In my interpretation, this doesn’t rule out responsibly managed forestry and hydroelectric power plants, or even hunting, but I’m not too keen on oil spills—particularly non-accidental ones. Still, I suppose the event would be loads of fun to watch. I am a jumble of inconsistencies sometimes.
Unfortunately—or fortunately—we found the event was sold out, so I didn’t have to internally debate the issue any further.
Instead, we decided to attend the other Anchorage-area Fourth of July tradition—the baseball game. There isn’t any need to specify which one. The baseball game will suffice. Alaska has a short-season semi-pro league with a handful of teams that play each other nearly every single night in June and July. The Fourth of July is the main event.
Actually, the most famous baseball game in Alaska is the one held annually on Summer Solstice in Fairbanks, which has happened every year since 1906. The ump doesn’t call “play ball!” until well-after the kiddies ought to be sound asleep—but the stadium doesn’t even have lights to turn on. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, however, I wanted to be above the Arctic Circle line for Solstice this year, and Fairbanks doesn’t quite make the cut, so we didn’t catch this game.
By the way, here’s what Solstice above the Arctic Circle is like, in case you missed my post about it:
The second most popular ball game in Alaska is the traditional Fourth of July double-header between the Anchorage Bucs and the Anchorage Glacier Pilots—game one at 7 and game two at 10. Being at a lower latitude than Fairbanks, they do turn on the Anchorage stadium’s lights for the second game, but I know when I was a kid, our neighborhood games would have continued just fine in that level of twilight.
Baseball, traditionally a warm-weather outdoor sport is a bigger deal in Alaska than I would have ever imagined—and it goes back further and includes more big-name stars than I could have guessed. I know this now because I got to meet someone very special at the game, someone who probably knows as much about Alaska’s baseball history as anyone else in the world.
Dr. Katherine Ringsmuth is the Alaska State Historian. The state historian. Like the poet laureate, but for history. To a kid as nerdy as me and a former history teacher myself, she’s kind of a big deal. And I got to meet her and have a lengthy conversation! If I’d had a baseball and a Sharpie on me, I might have asked her to sign it.
To kick off the America250-Alaska project, celebrating Alaska’s place in the nearly 250-year-old history of the United States, Dr. Ringsmuth (or Katie, as I now know her), herself a baseball fan; researched, compiled, and designed a high-quality nine-panel display (nine panels, nine innings, not a coincidence) about the role of America’s pastime in Alaska over the years. The world premiere of this exhibit, appropriately appeared at that Fourth of July double-header in Anchorage this year. Fun! As Andy and I are both lovers of the game, I read the panels with interest and learned quite a bit.
Early baseball-adjacent stick and ball games, traditionally played by indigenous peoples with driftwood bats and sealskin balls stuffed with grass, are still played today. In the 19th and 20th centuries, American baseball culture permeated mining communities and military bases and brought people of all skin colors together to play in the craziest places—like on snowy glaciers and frozen lakes and diamond-shaped forest clearcuts—often in below freezing temperatures. Modern Alaskan summer teams have played a big part in the development of many big leaguers; their alumni lists claiming a wide variety of the game’s elite, from Satchel Paige to Tom Seaver, Wally Joiner to Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson to Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds to Aaron Boone to Aaron Judge, and many more.
Here’s a great little overview:
Of course, digging up the past, as Katie pointed out to me, often comes with uncomfortable discoveries. She did allude to the fact that some of Alaska’s historic events don’t necessarily paint America in the rosiest of Midnight Sunlight, but as a government employee, she is no longer allowed to cover some of those topics or even use the terminology to properly refer to them. But such is the country we live in right now. We nodded at each other knowingly, then shrugged and sighed before moving on in our conversation.
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Katie the historian. By the end of our time together, I was wishing I had taken the study of history as seriously as she has, and she was wishing she could hit the road and live a nomadic life of exploration, like I do. We bid each other a fond farewell, and I returned to the beer garden on the first base line, where Andy and I had been enjoying the best seats in the house, right along the rail at field level with a convenient little table, all for the price of general admission.
At midnight, the stadium lit off a fireworks “extravaganza.” It felt a little silly without a dark sky, but I loved the uniqueness of it all—especially watching the players sprawl out on the pitchers mound like little leaguers to watch the show.
No darkness for the fireworks to contrast against the night sky. No darkness allowed in Katie’s research on the historical presence of baseball in Alaska—other than one very small reference I found on one of the posters that mentioned the prevalence of baseball in a region sometimes being an indicator of the presence of colonialism. But to expand further would have darkened the American view of itself, in the eyes of some, so it is not allowed. Even that one tiny note, less than one percent of her display, is likely making her nervous as it may have crossed the line. No darkness allowed.
In my opinion, the acknowledgement of darkness provides the necessary contrast to recognize the light. Shadows, after all, emphasize the presence of the sun. As a former history teacher, I wonder how we can accurately portray any historical context if one team is always “the good guys” and they are protected at all costs, even if it means altering the scoreboard, so they never look bad. It’s just not the whole truth.
In the double-header baseball game we attended that night, errors were made. Unearned runs were scored. The home team heroes lost the first game. The official game stats bear the story—all of it—even the parts one team or the other would prefer to gloss over. Without those statistics, coaches and players would not be able to accurately track their weaknesses. They wouldn’t know what to work on so they could improve. They wouldn’t have definitive proof that they have grown or declined in particular areas.
But then, I don’t know. Like I said, I’m a messy jumble of contradictions. When I went to little Wasilla’s smalltown Fourth of July parade, the morning before the ball game, I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing political at the entire event. No one was spouting off political opinions, endorsing a favorite politician, or calling anyone out as their enemy. I saw no foul t-shirts encouraging folks to F-this guy or that. It was all just red, white, and blue fun (as well as plenty of advertising for local businesses and loads of candy for the kids, of course). No disagreements. Nothing but a simple celebration of the nation’s birthday.
The next day, Andy and I attended the 50th annual Forest Fair in Girdwood, another hour beyond Anchorage. Their stated policy is no politics, no divisive topics, no controversial opinions, whether in spoken word or emblazoned across t-shirts and caps. Predictably, the atmosphere was delightful, whimsical, joyful, and fun—a wholesome celebration of beauty, art, music, good food, and togetherness.
Both of these events presented a delightful change from the controversy and contention that seems to be present at every turn—at least in my experience—in the Lower 48. I found it refreshing. And in small bursts like this, it truly is.
But all light and no darkness can’t tell the whole story.
A baseball team needs to keep accurate stats in order to improve on their weaknesses and ultimately succeed. A nation is much the same, the way I see it. I believe the most patriotic thing I can do—truly seeking the good of my country—is to keep accurate stats, to speak up when my “team” is not living up to her ideals, the needs of her diverse people, the principles laid out in her founding documents.
I know I’m not a very good activist—I’m a lover, not a fighter. But I do speak up occasionally, particularly when I can see the edge of the pond has eroded away and the toxic fallout is allowed to seep downstream unchecked, polluting the lives of the ones I love. I can’t blindly support that, even if it is easier to just go along with the cheering crowd. I hope you speak up sometimes, too.
As I was leaving Wasilla’s parade, a middle-aged man—as nerdy as me and perhaps a tad lonely—walked toward me with a question on his face.
“Pardon me; you look familiar. I feel like perhaps we’ve met before.”
“Hmm, I rather doubt it. I’m not from around here.”
“Oh? Where are you from?”
Skipping the complicated reality of my life, I opted for a simple answer, “Montana.”
“Montana! I’ve spent some time in Montana. Maybe that’s where I met you. What part of Montana?”
Skipping the complicated description of our former rural town in the wild and beautiful Bitterroot Valley, I replied, “South of Missoula.”
“Hmm, Missoula. I’m afraid I’m too conservative for Missoula. You know what I mean?” He gave me a little wink and a nod.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, not taking his bait. “I think it’s ok to have people with different viewpoints in every town. I mean, that’s the freedom of America, right?” I swept my arm wide to include the patriotic festivities surrounding us.
“I suppose you’re right. I guess folks are basically the same everywhere. And there are good people all over.”
“I agree.” I waved and excused myself. “Have a nice day.”
Until next week,
Sherry
P.S. Here are a few sneak-peeks at the stories from this week I’ll have to save for the book: the young man who brazenly attempted to bribe me while I stood in line for spinach bread; notes on the fascinating audiobooks we’ve been listening to; the gracious comfort of having access to our friends’ home while Walter is out of commission; the making of another YouTube video for the Nomadic MidLife channel that doubled as marriage counseling.
The sad-looking mini-SUV to which we affixed our sticker had been spraypainted a cheerful yellow with orange wheels—in a less than professional manner. Later, I saw in photos (and in the video below, if you zoom ahead to car #31 at the 22:05 minute mark), a giant inflatable rubber ducky was added to the roof. Oh, and you can see our sticker on the front bumper when the video camera pans around the vehicle.
Takes demolition derby to a whole new level