Gallien wondered whether he'd picked up one of those crackpots from the lower forty-eight who come north to live out ill-considered Jack London fantasies. As they rolled down from the forested ridges above the Tanana River, Alex gazed across the expanse of windswept muskeg stretching to the south. "He wasn't carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you'd expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip," Gallien recalls. Alex's backpack looked as though it weighed only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien-an accomplished hunter and woodsman-as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. Gallien, a union electrician, was on his way to Anchorage, 240 miles beyond Denali on the George Parks Highway he told Alex he'd drop him off wherever he wanted. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and "live off the land for a few months." Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota. "Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. "Alex?" Gallien responded, fishing for a last name. The hitchhiker swung his pack into the bed of the Ford and introduced himself as Alex. Gallien steered his truck onto the shoulder and told the kid to climb in. A rifle protruded from the young man's backpack, but he looked friendly enough a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state. He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. (Postcard received by Wayne Westerberg in Carthage, South Dakota.) If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man.
It might be a very long time before I return South. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne.
0 kommentar(er)
