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The Ferries and the Last Frontier

Part 2: Storytellers

The LeConte is one of the smallest ships in the ferry fleet. It holds 300 passengers and 34 vehicles, but on the day we sailed from Skagway for Juneau its population was sparse: I boarded alongside a half-dozen other passengers and a handful of cars. The crew greeted most of my fellow passengers by name, and paused in their rounds, leaning on armrests to chat. I snagged a large table with a power outlet tucked underneath it, and soon the outlet drew a seatmate, Heidi, to join me.

Heidi’s a ferry veteran, a longtime resident, and she was keen to tell me her favorite ferry story. She’d been on the boat to Bellingham a few years back, a three-day ride all the way down the labyrinthine, fjord-riddled coast, and as she always did on that longer route she’d set up a small campsite on the ship’s deck. Around her, other tents sprouted as locals and tourists made themselves at home, lugging sleeping bags and sleeping pads, even full-size inflatable air mattresses, packing coolers full of food. It was a three-day village.

For two and a half days, Heidi watched as a single mom attempted to contain her two inexhaustible children, who were wild about the floating campground. On the third day, reinforcements arrived—the mother met another family that was camped on another part of the ship, with children the same age, and a play-date was arranged. The over-worked mother would let the second shift take over, for a little while at least.

When they met on deck, the two groups of children approached each other cautiously. One little girl asked the other, “Do you live here, too?”

Leaning forward, Heidi lifted her closed fist above the table between us as she explained the point of the story—and, for her, the point of the ferries. “Safe,” she said, raising one finger. “Reliable. Affordable.” Another finger, and a thumb. “No security BS.” And, raising her last finger: “Community.”

“People that don’t ride the ferries a lot don’t always get this,” she said, “but ferries build community. People say, ‘Oh, the ferries don’t pay for themselves.’ But how do you measure their real value?”

This would become a theme in my conversations with ferry passengers and staff. Apparently it was a perennial debate in Alaska: Some people—people, my fellow passengers were eager to point out, who didn’t rely on the ferries; people from the interior with its roads and highways, people who didn’t understand their way of life—thought the service was too expensive, unnecessary, old-fashioned. In a state that was firmly Republican red, where independence and self-sufficiency were prized above all else, a public ferry system spanning hundreds of miles of thinly populated coastline made an easy target.

I left Heidi chatting with an ex-neighbor she hadn’t seen in awhile (“If it wasn’t for the ferries, I’d never see some people,” she said as I got up to leave). I went upstairs, to the bridge, to meet the captain and his officers. We were approaching Haines—after a quick stop there to take on more passengers, we’d carry on down the Lynn Canal to Juneau. I’d flown over this body of water in summer; then it had shone a clear turquoise, almost Caribbean in the sunlight, but now the water was dark, impenetrable. We were hemmed in on both sides by tall cliffs, and even taller, snow-capped mountains grew on the horizon, tinted sunset yellow and pink. The captain looked at me and smiled. “It’s not a bad office,” he said.

The Chief Engineer, a large man named Tiny, invited me down to the engine room for a tour of the LeConte’s guts. I wore a set of Peltor earmuffs as we passed through the clanging, roaring workings, and then took a seat in a small office, a soundproofed room with walls covered in buttons and switches and dials. On one blank section of wall, between the door and a window looking out on the engines, a flow chart had been taped up. It was titled “U.S. Nuclear Chain of Command,” and it read: President -> Secretary of Defense -> Unified Combat Commanders - and then, doodled in above President, “The Engineer Who Installed the Red Button.”

Like Heidi, Tiny had a favorite ferry story. His was about the time he’d met Simon Winchester, who’d been traveling on assignment for Conde Nast Traveler. Tiny and Winchester had hit it off, and they’d been eating breakfast together in the ship’s cafeteria when another passenger had started choking. Tiny found himself performing the Heimlich maneuver in front of the bestselling author. “We’re Christmas card friends now,” he said.

I wound up eating dinner with the captain, Tiny, and most of the ship’s officers. I sat and picked at my halibut and listened as they all swapped ferry stories. The ships were characters in the stories, and beloved ones. “She has such beautiful lines,” the captain said about the MV Columbia, the ferry service’s flagship. “She’s got a personality all her own,” Tiny agreed.

Eventually, as we ate, it came out that I planned on hitchhiking the 12 miles from Juneau’s ferry terminal into town and to my hostel, since there was no bus. Tiny rolled his eyes. “We have a spare room in the basement,” he said. “I’ll let my wife know you’re coming.” I looked around the table, surprised, needing confirmation that this was a real offer, and one I should accept. The captain shrugged and smiled. “It’s an Alaska thing,” he said. Tiny added, “I bring people home from the ship all the time.”

I woke up the next morning in a suburban house with a big mountain view. Tiny had already returned to the ship, and I spent the morning chatting over coffee with his wife, Marcia, before she drove me into town. Sure enough, she had her ferry story, too.

Marcia had dreamed for years of driving the Alaska Highway from end to end. Her father had been one of the civilian contractors who helped build the road during the war, and she’d wanted to see the area where he’d worked, but it wasn’t until after he’d died that she got around to it. She packed up her truck in Montana and drove north, through Alberta, across the Rockies, to mile zero of the highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Then she followed the highway through the Northern Rockies as they curved west, across the Yukon, and into the Alaskan interior. From Fairbanks, she drove south to the coast, to the Gulf of Alaska. She planned on taking the ferry back to Washington and driving home to Montana from there. “It was supposed to be a one-time trip,” she said. “I thought I’d never see Alaska again.”

But she met Tiny on the ferry south, and a year later she left Montana and moved to Juneau. Marcia laughed and shook her head. “I can’t believe he gave Simon Winchester top billing.”

Not long after the move, her college-age daughter boarded the ferry in Bellingham, sailing north for a visit. In a Hollywood-style twist of fate, she met her future husband on the ferry, too, and now Marcia and Tiny had two young grandchildren in Anchorage, and any plans of heading south for retirement were on the shelf. A one-time ferry ride had turned into an Alaskan lifetime.

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