Tom Walker - Wild Shots: A Photographer’s Life in Alaska

The summits of the central Alaska Range tower over an autumnal wash of color, much like the day I arrived in Alaska.

ONCE, I DREAMED OF A LIFE AT SEA, on a sailboat or an island, wearing little or nothing at all. I had visions of crystal water, endless sunshine, lush ports of call and Polynesian beauties, fantasy nights cooled by tropical breezes. Memories of these teenage dreams always bring to mind one question: How the hell did I end up spending more than fifty years in Alaska?

I grew up in Los Angeles, smothered by smog, assaulted by heat and ceaseless traffic. The one great wilderness known to me as a boy, the sea, stretched west to far horizons, with distant sails hinting at mystery and adventure. Reading The Sea-Wolf, Coming of Age in Samoa, and Mutiny on the Bounty fired my desire to be somewhere with pristine air and water and unspoiled environment. Places where wildlifewhales, porpoises, sea turtles, and albatrossesflourished and a person could forage for food from sea and shore. Places where living meant more than a nine-to-five grind. Seeking cool offshore winds, I explored coastal tide pools and watched pastel sunsets, lured by the sirens song of the distant unknown.

The urban landscape, the tracts of identical houses, the importance placed on glitzy cars and fashion repelled me, a child raised by parents whod passed on their simple Midwestern values. My grandfather was an alcoholic, a mean drunk, who took his son, my father, out of the third grade to work in a coal mine. They migrated to California in the 20s building boom to cash in on the need for labor. My mother was forty when I was born in 1945, my father forty-three, a construction worker, and neither had the inclination to guide me through the shoals of adolescence. We were poor, limited by my fathers education, living on the edge of an affluent suburb that was home to Hollywood stars like John Wayne. Unable to blend in with others my age, who mostly enjoyed material advantages, I sought escape in wandering along the coast and among the chaparral hillsides. Studying the journals of Lewis and Clark, I became convinced I had been born in the wrong century.

Decades-old adventure movies and documentaries revealed worlds beyond my narrow experience. Time and again I watched the grainy, flickering films of cinematographers and explorers Osa and Martin Johnson and their journeys to the wildest places on earth. Another hero was Frank Bring Em Back Alive Buck, who captured wild animals all over the world. In one movie he wrestled a giant boa constrictor, the coils tightening around him while the breathless narrator heralded his doom, only to be rescued at the last minute by a group of his faithful native trackers. I later realized his thrilling, almost melodramatic, films were often staged reenactments, sometimes pitting captive animals against their keepers.

The wildlife films of Walt Disney were my favorite Saturday matinees. On television I watched reruns of Bear Country, Beaver Valley, Living Desert, and other Disney nature narratives. These films turned my attention from the sea. After reading Jack Londons northern classics and Robert Services iconic Klondike poems, I became fixated on Alaska and the Yukon, the far northern wilderness realm of moose, grizzly bears, and wolves. Dreams of a cabin in the woods slowly replaced visions of life at sea.

A wild animal park just north of LA in Thousand Oaks, CaliforniaJungleland USAwas an irresistible attraction for me. Big cats were the main draw, but I gawked at all manner of wildlife, from bats to bears, most housed in cramped and smelly cages, their ceaseless pacing troubling me. The animal show of Mel Koontz, the premier trainer of Hollywoods golden age famous for training the MGM lion, rivaled anything staged by the finest circuses. He put lions and tigers through their paces, jumping them from one high perch to another or through rings of fire, all accompanied by the crack of whips, blanks fired from revolvers, and the roars and snarls of the apex predators pushed into contact with mortal enemies. Koontz greeted the public after his shows, and I saw the vivid scars that laced his arms.