I decided to find out what these folks do for fun, and one phonecall and 24 hours later we were headed south to Denali National Park, (home to Mt Mckinley) with a whole load of band gear in the back of the truck. Yeah, I was going to be a band roadie for the first time in my life! I have previously tried the dubious career path of DJ groupie, so this was obviously my next step, and what better band to follow than the Alaskan favourite, The Gangly Moose.
When we arrived at our first destination on Friday night, The Salmon Bake, a topsy turvy restaurant bar located at the entrance to Denali park, I helped carry some equipment inside and swaggered around a little, sporting my new fur hat. I drank a few yagermeister bombs in the bar, and later made my way to the room where the band was playing. At some point it occured to me that I was so drunk that the bar was beginning to tilt crazily. Yes, in fact, the more I peered into the shadows and flashing lights, noting the angle of the floor and the walls, the more convinced I became that I needed to go and lie down, right now.
I hissed to my friend, "I'm drunk, this whole place is tilting! Please! I'm dizzy!"
"Oh," he laughed. "That's not you, that's the bar, it's got sloping floors in here because its on the side of the mountain."
On Saturday night the Gangly Moose played in a smaller pub in the town of Telkeekna, an hour or two further south just beyond the park. It's difficult for me to categorise their style of music: perhaps somewhere in between funk, rock and country with a hell of a lot of freestylin thrown in for good measure - the local crowd were lapping it up like funk-starved pussycats. Never have I seen so many enthusiastic elbow shapes thrown about in such a small space; smirking cowboys were bending knees like Jane Fonda, and sweating young men in wooly hats were twisting around in front like disco rabbits. I bumped into a real cowboy called Eddie who unexpected decided to pull down his jeans and smack his bare arse while shouting, "Yeehaa, here's to all ya'll Brits, yeeehaa!" It wasn't exactly what I was expecting at that moment, but I took it in my stride and smiled graciously.
Revelling in the afterglow of being a real life band roadie the next morning we said goodbye to the Moose and headed back into the park to spend a couple of days in an isolated retreat called Earthsong Lodge: a collection of tiny cabins on windswept tundra that offered spectacular views of Mt. McKinley.
The owners, Jon and Karin, kept a large kennel of working sled dogs on the property. We were invited to take a guided tour to meet the animals, who were of course on summer holidays from their winter duties. These dogs were the result of cross-breeding with traditonal huskies, bred for their strength, size and stamina. When one named Nocturne jumped up on me in an enthusiastic greeting he was almost as tall as me, with iceberg-blue eyes.
I resolved to return here again in winter, when these great windy expanses would be covered in deep snow: a blanket of infinite white reaching up into the glaciers above. Dog sledding excursions - some involving winter camping and lasting days - are run from Earthsong Lodge, and I decided that this is another experience I should put on my life long list of "things to do before I die!"www.earthsonglodge.com
