Alaska delivers
remember. At the age of 74, he strolls from his camp in the woods, hunting rifle and banjo over his shoulder, and whenever a raft hoves into view he breaks into song.
But then this is Talkeetna, a pioneer town deep in the Alaskan backwoods which I am visiting as part of a land tour from a Princess Cruises voyage which also calls at Fairbanks, Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, Whittier and the Mt McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge here.
Talkeetna is the one-street shanty town that spawned television’s strange Northern Exposure drama – think Twin Peaks with humour – and where the town mayor is a cat named Denali.
The previous mayor was a cat called Stubbs, and there are those who fear that feline first citizen may have passed before his time. Banjo player Steve says: “I write about the people and times I’ve known these last 40 years in Alaska. “I don’t write for ‘markets’ like the kids do these days.” (Apart from the raft market, presumably. It’s a niche thing. Not many other musicians have to watch out for bears when they’re setting up.) Talkeetna, you see, is a town of free thinkers, big pick-up trucks and even bigger beards. Wacky baccy is legal here. There are moonshine stills in the woods. And in the back room of the Denali Brewing Company, Led Zeppelin’s Going to California jangles out from the cassette tape deck. This is where former mountain guide Sassan Mossanen and Shawn B Standley, late of Anchorage institution Humpy’s Alaskan Alehouse, brew up the likes of Mother Ale, Blues & Wheat