Looking for Lucia in Juneau, Alaska

Bears, glaciers and gold on the first stop of my Lucia Berlin research trip

Hello, friends!

Thank you so much for coming with me on my long journey in search of Lucia Berlin. My manuscript for Looking for Lucia: A Biography is due with my editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux next summer, so over the next three months, I’ll be on the road, following Lucia’s footsteps from Alaska to Chile to California and beyond, tracking down her many homes and speaking to some of the people who knew and loved her. As my sister says, I’m road-tripping my subject’s life.

My first stop was Juneau, Alaska, where Lucia was born in November 1936. Her parents had moved there so that her father could take a job at a gold mine. I flew to Juneau on Sunday, via Seattle, arrived in the early hours of the morning, and stayed for three nights. Here’s what I found.

First Impression

When the airport doors opened, the first thing I saw was an enormous white bear. I’ve never thought much about airport arrival halls before, but this one caught my attention.

My other first impression is that there isn’t much public transportation in Juneau, and it can be hard to get taxis. Ride share apps don’t really work. Luckily, I met Maria Miller by chance on that first night. She’s been a taxi-tour-guide in Juneau for the past twenty-eight years — and I just kept running into her! Juneau seems to be a place of coincidences (more on that in my book).

Here’s Maria, telling you about why she moved to Juneau. Prepare yourself for more bear content…

If you’re ever in Juneau, definitely book in with Alaska Taxi & Tours, Maria’s company, at (907) 321-2329.

Last Impression

I left Juneau with a strong impression of bears, too. I never actually saw a live one — the fact that I’ve never seen a bear shocked all of the Juneauites I spoke to — but people talked about them a lot. My guest house insisted that we dispose of rubbish in a specific way to avoid creating ‘a bear problem’, and longtime Juneau resident, miner Garry Baysinger, told me that a brown bear had once ‘walked into the Foodland supermarket downtown. The door opened, and she just walked right in. Didn’t hurt anyone, though. They don’t attack, they’re just looking for food.’

There are problems, and then there are bear problems.

Best Discovery

One of the reasons I went to Juneau was to find and visit Lucia’s first home, since places and homes — and the quest for a sense of ‘home’ — were so important to her. As she put it in an interview with Chip Livingston in the 1990s, ‘All of my life I was always looking for a place because I had moved so much, and had found “place”, or “home” in literature and in reading books. When I started writing, I went to a place and tried to capture that place in what I wrote.’

With help from archivists Sandy Johnston and Chris Hieb, I was able to track down her first address. I’ll write about that in detail in my book, but here’s a gorgeous aerial photo of Juneau in 1916, which shows her family’s house: it was one of those pretty wooden ones tucked up into the mountain. As Lucia put it in her memoir (which you should read): ‘They said it was a sweet small house with many windows and sturdy woodstoves, screens taut against mosquitoes. It looked out on the bay, onto sunsets and stars and dazzling Northern Lights.’

(I hate to link to Amazon, but I know I have readers in the US and UK, and I can’t think of any other transatlantic online bookstores.)

Worst Discovery

I found Lucia’s first address, but the building itself, alas, is gone.

I was also sad to hear from locals how much the Mendenhall Glacier above the town has retreated since the 1930s. Here it is, back then.

And here it is now, when I went to visit.

It’s still gorgeous, of course, but the difference took my breath away. Selfishly, too, I was sad that I wasn’t seeing it as Lucia would have seen it — even though she probably didn’t see it at all, obviously, because she was literally a baby.

Final Word

‘If birds of a feather go together, then everyone should see Loose Ankles.’ That’s the title of a review of the comic play that Lucia’s parents put on as part of the first amateur dramatics club in Juneau. Apparently, her mother was great in her supporting role: ‘She weeps while the audience laughs.’

I’m off to look for Lucia in another city now! In the meantime, keep well, and watch out for bears.

Nina

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