February 27, 2009

• Rondy

  People from Outside often think all Alaskans are crazy.  Real Alaskans know that the crazy people live in Anchorage.  If I needed any evidence to point to for support of that contention, I’d need to look no further than Fur Rendezvous, affectionately known as “Rondy”, which starts today in downtown Anchorage.

  In the middle of the Nineteenth Century, as settlers moved west from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and started building towns, some of those towns grew up around the trappers’ forts that were already there.  Social life among the settlers was relatively tame and the participants were generally only the local residents, except for a few weeks once a year:  the fur rendezvous.

  Trappers would spend the winters, when pelts were thick and lush, running their trap lines in the mountains.  It was a solitary life with many dangers and a lot of doing without.  As snows started melting and animals started shedding their winter coats, they would take up the traps, load the furs and traps onto pack mules, and lead the mules down to a fort to meet the fur dealers who had come out from Saint Louis, Chicago, or points east.

  They would work hard at making up for lost time, drinking and whooping it up.  They’d challenge each other to shooting matches, wrestling matches, and, now and then, even chess matches.  They would bow their fiddles, stomp their feet, and dance.  As a kid, I thought it must have been a lot of fun, but that was before I read about the carousing, violence and general lack of sanitation and hygiene.

  The tradition of the Rocky Mountain fur rendezvous was dying out by the time there were enough American fur trappers in Alaska to revive the annual party up here.  At first, fur traders made the rounds of bush villages to buy pelts.  At some point, trappers started meeting up in Anchorage to sell their furs.  In 1936, Anchorage’s Fur Rendezvous became officially organized.  Long before I got to Anchorage in 1973, Fur Rondy was THE must-do social event of the season.

  Which season?  Winter, of course.  The only time to hold a fur rendezvous is after the peak of the pelts’ quality, and before breakup when the rivers thaw and travel in the bush starts to vary between difficult and impossible.  This being cabin fever season, Anchoraguans are more than ready to get out and whoop it up.  They are deliriously eager for Rondy.

  

  In addition to the commercial fur auctions, and an auction by state game authorities of hides confiscated from poachers (at which the buyers are often the same miscreants from whom the skins had been seized in the first place), Rondy brings a week and a half of festivities.  There is a carnival at which frostbite is a real possibility if you’re stopped at the top of the ferris wheel with inadequate gear, and there is the annual outhouse race.

   

  In one recently added event, the Running of the Reindeer, men and women pay for the thrills of running along a city street with a few reindeer, probably more hazardous for the domesticated caribou than it is for the humans.  One event that has proven in the past to be hazardous to onlookers is the Rondy Grand Prix car race.  The World Championship Sled Dog Race, a sprint race of a few urban and suburban miles, isn’t much of a danger to anyone.

  

  Other more or less harmless events include a parade, Multi-Tribal Gathering, the Frostbite Footrace, a snow sculpture contest, and a beauty contest.  Around the year-end holidays last year, there was some buzz of plans to construct a snowman to dwarf Snowzilla.  I have heard nothing about that scheme recently.  You can be sure that the Keystone Kops will be out, ready to lock up anyone who is caught in public without the official Rondy lapel pin.

   

  The Miners and Trappers Ball has changed a lot over the 36 years that I have lived in Alaska.  It used to be a rather exclusive affair with scarce and expensive tickets.  Tickets are still costly, but it is now held in a bigger venue so more of the rabble can attend.  It has always featured a mix of formal dress and outrageous costumes on an annual theme, competing for prizes. 

  

  A perennial highlight of the ball is the Mr. Fur Face contest for the best beard in Alaska (or at least the best at the Miners & Trappers Ball), and another beard contest for more civilized men.  “The Businessman’s Brush Booster Button is your ticket to show up at work Grizzly Adams style until the night of the Ball where your dun-drearies will be measured and a winner is announced!”

  

  I have no plans to go to Rondy.  When I lived in Anchorage, I did go to the carnival some years, and I dodged the silly Kops to attend the lapidary club’s Gem and Mineral Show.  Now, it is too far to go for too little payoff, and Anchorage’s air quality has deteriorated along with my respiratory health.  I’m just not crazy enough for Fur Rondy.
  

  • 11:13 pm
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