The More You Look

Bus 142: The Life of Objects

• UA Museum of the North • Season 1 • Episode 3

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The stampede trail bus, or Bus 142 has come to the UA Museum of the North. The bus was made famous by the death of Christopher McCandless, John Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild, and the subsequent movie of the same name.

The condition of the bus when it was removed from the trail and the process of preparing any object for exterior exhibition at the museum mandates professional conservation of the object. Midway through this process at the UAF Engineering Department’s High Bay, UAMN Exhibits Director, Roger Topp, spoke with then Museum Bus Conservation Project Manager, Della Hall and Project Director and Museum Senior Collections Manager for Ethnology and History, Angela Linn about the process and project management to that point. The surprises. The frustrations. The unexpected but inspiring dialog that comes from caring for and exhibiting an object steeped in controversy and point of view.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

Angela Linn:

It is a single object. It is hundreds of objects all together, and it is such a visible, recognizable item that so many people have an opinion on. I've never worked on an object or a group of objects that people had such emotional connection to. And such visceral reactions to, and the need to physically put their hands on a piece.

Roger Topp:

Hello, and welcome to The More You Look, your behind-the-scenes journey into museum collections, research, exhibition, and public programming from Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm Roger Topp, director of exhibits, design, and digital media at the UA Museum of the North and host for today's episode. The Stampede Trail bus or Bus 142 has come to the UA Museum of the North. The bus was made famous by the death of Christopher McCandless, Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild, and the subsequent movie of the same name. The process of preparing the bus for exhibition at the museum includes professional conservation of the object, and midway through this process at the UAF engineering department's high bay, I spoke with then museum bus conservation project manager Della Hall, and project director and museum senior collections manager of Ethnology and History, Angela Linn, about the

process to this point:

the surprises, the frustrations, the unexpected but inspiring dialogue that comes from caring for and exhibiting an object steeped in controversy and point of view. We begin with Angela Linn.

Angela Linn:

Here we are in the--in the high bay. We are standing here next to famous Bus 142. This is the 1946 International Harvester K-5 bus that sat along the Stampede Trail since 1961 and was removed in the summer of 2020. And came into the possession of the museum in the Fall of 2020.

Della Hall:

People have--whether they have positive or negative emotions, it elicits an emotion. So, I find it really interesting to see how people respond to this object like it really--it brings out your whole history, your whole past, your individual experiences in life.

Angela Linn:

From a preservation standpoint, clearly, you know, our job in the museum business is to protect things, to reduce these agents of deterioration, to preserve them for future generations. And this thing, I think, really illustrates how important the passage of time is, both to the physical object, but to the community's response to it. Many people don't care very much about conservation treatment, about restoration.

But this thing:

people are so adamant that it not be restored, that the way that it looks now is so important to its identity, to people's connection to it. And so, this is one of the things I think that's different about it too--is that this is the first item where people have been, you know, so vocal about the need for it to keep all the rust, to keep all the damage, that all of those things really clearly illustrate its life and its passage of time and people's connection to it through those, those physical impacts on it.

Della Hall:

Right now they're working on the wheels in the undercarriage, so underneath is coated in mud. And so they're removing that so that they can treat the underside with a protective coating so that it doesn't continue to rust.

Angela Linn:

The whole reason why the bus was left on the Stampede Trail is because that front driver's-side tire, the wheel itself, detached from the tire mounting essentially, so that it wasn't able to get pulled smoothly down the Stampede Trail. So that element of it, while it looks wonky, is really important. It is an essential, maybe the most essential, part of this story. Because, if that damage hadn't occurred, this bus would have been pulled out like the other three. And it never would have been found by hunters and trappers and mushers. It wouldn't have been used by Chris McCandless in '92. And it certainly wouldn't have been used over the last 30 years by all the pilgrims who have now, you know, put their names on its surface. So that part of the story is super important. The tires themselves, while they don't match, are also important to the story because there's one tire that is stamped 'military.' And that helps support this idea that that's how the bus got to Alaska. It's how it started. Its path along this whole journey, that it was made and used by the Alaska military, probably coming up over the brand new opened Alaska Highway sometime after 1948. And, and started this journey along the way. So those two elements, even though the tires are totally deteriorated and are flat, you know their connection to the bus. They're such essential parts of the story.

Roger Topp:

Not just the bus where you see this, but the bus is indicative of this, this idea that the interpretation of an object, the history of an object doesn't end when it comes to the museum. The bus is a great example of this: we can continue to gather stories, improve the interpretation, and learn more about the object. In this case, because of the conservation and in all cases, just by exhibiting objects at the museum. I find that fascinating, just the wealth of people who have come into contact with a single object and the wealth of stories that are out there. Lots have already been told already. And we're hoping to gather them. But this may be a drop in the bucket, once people can come see the bus again and realize that their graffiti, their story, like the bus, still exists.

Della Hall:

Most of the work I've been doing is documenting the graffiti. I think, getting inside the bus for the first time, the quantity of graffiti is way more than I thought it would be, and I've being trying to document that is so, as as one person is insurmountable, which is why we're doing this project to document it systematically with photographs, and then share it online so that people can contact us and tell us that's my signature. Because just you know, having to look at all of this. I've had so many people ask me, where did Chris sign? I don't know. But maybe other people can see it and show me.

Angela Linn:

I think I wasn't ready for the level of emotional connection that people have had. I wasn't prepared for the community input that people had. And it really, you know--we can often in the museum world can go about our daily work without consulting with anyone, without having input from the public, even though now the profession is changing and the best practices encourage us to do that. But to no other--like no other project I've been involved with before, the stories that people want to share with you, the emotional depth that people give to you when they convey those stories. That for me, was just--in the big picture--was not something I think I was ready for. Certainly, coming across individual items and cataloging those and putting them on social media and then having the person who put that in there come and connect with us and tell 'Oh, that was the thing that I put there. And here's my story.' You know, it's just all these layers, I mean, literally the layers of the of the graffiti on the bus. Those are the layers of the stories and the layers of relationships that we can potentially build and maintain throughout the life of this project as we, you know, discover more of those individuals, the more of those individuals come in contact with us. And and I would say then, the other big surprise has been just the creative process of coming up with a new way to think about exhibiting this. Of course, when it came to us, everybody's thinking about the McCandless story as being the focus of it, but because people have been so emotionally connected to whatever element of it, either the positive or the negative. It was really surprising this process of trying to figure out a way for everyone to see the relevance of preserving the object. Most the time, we don't have to defend too much why we're preserving something in the museum collections. We have an acquisitions committee. We make these deeply researched proposals to the committee. So, we can pretty well defend why we're bringing something into the collection. There's not a lot of debate about the historic value of something in the museum collection. And like no other piece, people question, why are we preserving this thing when it represents x, y, z. And so the biggest surprise to me, I think, intellectually, has been our ability to get through all of that and come up with some some ideas, some approaches, some themes that kind of help put that emotion to the side and redirect people's interest and engagement with it, and think about it in a different way. And I think that that's really exciting, and has been really rewarding. Everybody who, who meets you and knows that you're working on the project wants to know what your opinion is on Chris, on the bus, and so they feel a need to get your position on all of it. And it's one of those things where you mentioned trying to find some neutrality, or find a middle ground so that you can get all of those different perspectives. And I find that that's a new skill that I'm, I'm having to, to think about. And to also question, you know, because we talk about now, museums are not neutral, right, this is something that for for years, we said. 'Oh, we have to be objective. We have to only present all these different perspectives so that our visitors can come to their own conclusions.' But at the same time with something like this, people feel this need to know your take on it.

Della Hall:

And I have noticed for myself that I have two versions of myself. There's the work version of me and how I feel about it in the context of my, you know, background in history and my experience in working in museums and working with objects and working with people and connecting them to objects. There's that. And then there's: I've read the book, I've seen the movie, and I've now interacted with the bus myself--and how I feel about it. And those are two different things. I have, you know, I can feel my own feelings, and I can also do my job.

Roger Topp:

Appreciate... Confusion.

Angela Linn:

Yeah, because I think everybody does have a little bit of that ambiguous feeling about it. You know, many museum people get into this because we're much better dealing with inanimate objects, and doing hands-on work and doing this documentation and this research side of things. But what's been really fun, and, and a bit of a surprise, and very rewarding is all the new relationships that we're recreating through this project, and connecting people, whether it's the people who are part of McCandless's family, whether it's people who hunted, you know, and used the bus long before Chris ever even knew it was there, before he was born even, you know. So, hearing all of these other stories and reconnecting them now with the bus, you know, these families who have come in and shared their family stories, their family videos and photographs, to tell us what the bus means to them. That's been super rewarding, and finding a way for them to connect with the museum and what we do and see the value in preserving objects. Because everybody has those different experiences, and they come into it, you know, with their different backgrounds. And so that's been for somebody who is much better dealing with objects, learning how to walk those lines, and to invite participation and to encourage that conversation and sharing. That's been a really rewarding part of this project too. I would say that it has been fascinating to see how we are able to help people turn away from the anger or the disgust that they feel over the idea of creating a memorial to someone who made mistakes and paid the ultimate price for it. And that they turn and they see the value of an object, when you remind them that the object itself has had a life. And that what we're trying to do is to share the whole life of this object and to help present all of those other parts of its world and the things that it saw and that it was connected to, and how this emotional negativity can so immediately turn and change. And you see this aha moment that we always talk about wanting to get from our visitors, when we introduce something surprising, or we introduce a new way of thinking about something, and like no other project before, you know, this ability to help people see through all of that and get back to the reason why we're here and why we're doing this, this object itself. That's been--that's been really the thing that has stood out for me every time I talk with anybody about this.

Della Hall:

So Angie recommended this really great movie that I finally watched, called The Red Violin. And it's about exactly what she was just talking about, an object's life. And it's--I was just thinking, as you were talking about--in the movie, there is a group of people that would like to see the object destroyed. And that emotional reaction that I felt as the viewer of the movie of like,'No.' And so I, you know, there're two sides, there're people who feel one way, and there're people who feel a different way. And I think seeing the big picture, the whole life of the object can help people step back and really think about, like, their emotional response versus history, which, you know, for me, I'm a historian, so I connect to the history. But not everybody does. So they need a little more prompting to get there. But yeah, the the controversy of this object is challenging, as an employee to work through, to feel on a day to day basis. I know there are people out there who don't agree with what I'm doing on a day to day basis. But I have to, you know, continue to work through that and to justify my own actions internally. And if people ask me about it, be prepared to respond in a, you know, a way that allows them to continue to have their feelings, which are totally justified and fine, but also an opportunity to learn.

Roger Topp:

I'm intrigued that we're working with an object--and none of us are new to museums and collections in this business--but we're working with an object has the potential to teach us how to look at, to think about other objects and relationships, and possibilities elsewhere in the museum collections.

Angela Linn:

Yeah, I love that aspect of this project, that it's making me think much more critically about all parts of my job. And developing partnerships and providing a process for people to have a say in how and why we are doing what we're doing, in order to make it more significant to more people, to make this job that we do not questionable, you know, that that people see the value in preservation, even if it means allowing things to continue to degrade naturally. That's, that's okay, too. That's part of its lifecycle also, and that there are groups of people who, who think that it's unnatural for us to try and stop that natural process of degradation. And so, this, this lesson that that I'm taking, is making me a better museum professional. It's making me think, more inclusively about who gets to make the decisions about how we do this work. And that's a really good thing. You know, I don't think I would be in the same philosophical place I am about this work if this hadn't have come across our desks, if this opportunity had not presented itself. And I hope that when people come to eventually see the exhibit and experience it, that they will be reassured that ultimately the state made the right decision in having us be the caretakers of this, because of this growth that we're all going through. And that, while it is taking a long time, that time affords us that opportunity for growth and change, and relationship building and partnerships. That's really the future of museums, I think, and this project, this object has really, you know, put that that process of change right in front of us.

Della Hall:

I was just gonna say, and you can cut this from it if you want, but I--when Angie was talking, it made me think about how I hope that people will use this also as an opportunity to think about the objects that they have around them. Things that maybe their grandparents are going to be getting rid of, that kind of thing. What, you know, what could they donate to a museum or to an archive to preserve? And also take it as an opportunity to think about what do the museums around you have? And can you go see them and engage with them in this same kind of way, like this object is triggering an emotional response? What other things are around you already in your community that you can engage with, and you--all museums want that. They all want you to come engage. So you can be doing that right now.

Roger Topp:

It's only a small fraction of people who have had a story about the bus ever went out to the bus, right? The story is sometimes seeing the movie or reading the book and letting that impact them, or just hearing tangentially about Chris and thinking back to their 20s. And there will be stories that derive just from coming to the museum exhibit in the future. Thank you to Dell Hall and Angela Linn, for the lunchtime conversation, to the crew at BR Howard for conducting the conservation work on Bus 142, and to the growing list of private, corporate, state, and federal contributors without whose efforts and funding, getting the bus down the road to exhibition will never be possible. Information about this ongoing project is regularly updated on the museum's website. You can find an audio tour of the bus on the museum's free mobile app, and a 360 photographic tour of the bus in the form of a downloadable virtual exhibit. All of these resources continue to grow with the project. The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dene people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, share, and rate the program. This helps other listeners discover more about not only the work of this museum, but quite possibly other museums in their neighborhoods. The more you look, the more you find.

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