People like to say that landscape painter Gil Smith was the first Haines hippie, kayaking here from Skagway, a company town, back in 1940.
An art school graduate, Smith built a stone-clad house at Zimovia Point and like many hippies thereafter, supported his art with government work – humping a wheelbarrow and surveying for the federal road commission on the Haines Highway.
All Smith ever did was render Haines scenes in oils that landed in the Smithsonian.
Of course, Smith was beat to Haines 61 years earlier by the radical environmentalist John Muir. The Presbyterians needed Muir to talk pretty to the war-like Chilkats, who weren’t keen on newcomers moving in here with their newfangled ideas like the real estate industry.
Besides quelling the Chilkats, all Muir ever did was to inspire the protection of Yosemite, the creation of the U.S. national park system and the formation of the Sierra Club.
Since forever this place has held a magnetic pull on artists, dreamers, drop-outs and random oddballs of all flavors, and thank goodness for that. Outside of that group, few people in this world do much that is interesting.
For years, Howsers was adorned with pink-painted moose horns. One man in this town owns 10,000 hammers. For no good reason there’s a three-story roadside tower at 38 Mile with a giant eyeball at the top.
The residue of eccentricity is open-mindedness and that saves us from the numbing conformity that hangs over company towns like Skagway or Juneau. Don’t get me wrong. I love visiting our neighboring towns. They’re orderly and functional and great fun for an outing.
But theirs is not a soul like the one in this valley.
Ours is revealed again and again in small moments of brilliance. One year ago, for her ninth birthday, Janine Allen, a leap year baby and bantamweight boulevardier, held a most unusual party.
Guests were invited to a makeshift living room at the fairgrounds where they were asked to quietly read books for an hour. Allen didn’t tell anyone to shut the hell up, but the sentiment was there. In a society that’s squawking 24-7, what’s more radical than a group of people coming together to read in silence?
About a month later, Helen Alten organized an art walk out in the woods. Folks hiked on the CIA boardwalk past painters painting, musicians playing, actors acting. An art event where a spectator might stumble into a brown bear or a moose. Now, that’s art.
A few years ago a person could choose between three different puppet troupes that were putting on shows around town. Knock me over with a feather if that ain’t something.
For generations, Haines has been delightfully offbeat. We’re richer for it.