On a sunny Soldotna day in the outside garden of River City Books, about half a dozen bicyclists mingle before hitting the trails with a new friend.
The plan is to ride to Kenai, biking on a multi-use trail along the Kenai Spur Highway. The community bike ride is part of author Tessa Hulls’ book/bike tour, which began earlier this month.
“Alaska is the place that I love more than anywhere else, so for me it was a no-brainer to just come spend a month on a bike visiting all my friends,” she said. “The book part’s kind of secondary, my publisher thinks I’ve lost my mind.”
The new book, titled “Feeding Ghosts,” is a graphic memoir that follows three generations of women in Hulls’ family. She says it begins with her grandmother, who was a journalist in Shanghai during the communist takeover of the 1940s.
“It’s basically tracing what happened to two generations to teach about a century of Chinese history,” Hulls said. “Like a lot of people who wind up in Alaska, running away from some family darkness to become feral in the wilderness. This book is me coming home and facing that history.”
The book tour began in Fairbanks, where Hulls cruised the Denali Highway to Valdez. After, she took a ferry to Whittier and biked to Seward, Cooper Landing and Soldotna. She also rode another ferry to Seldovia and still has more stops on the tour.
Hulls completed her first big bike trip in 2011 when she rode solo from California to Maine. Since then, she’s spent a few months every year on biking trips, picking up seasonal contracts for work. She says her favorite aspect of biking is the connection it gives you to people and places.
“I also relish the solitude of it and having time to think,” Hulls said. “Like many people who have spent time in Alaska, I think best when my body is in motion, and find pockets of my brain that I otherwise can’t access.”
Since her bike tour began, Hulls says she’s met a lot of new people and has seen a lot of new places. Throughout her tour, she’s been unofficially adopted by a librarian, stayed in a free cabin and given the keys to someone’s car.
“I think bikes are just great ways to have conversations with people while watching the scenery go by,” she said. “I don’t think I have an agenda, it’s just my favorite way to hang out with folks.”
Although she lives in Seattle, Hulls has been spiritually connected to Alaska since she worked as a boat cook in Petersburg years ago. She’s officially making the move to Juneau this winter.
“Alaska’s home, I think it has been for a long time for me, and finishing this book kinda kept me chained to my drawing table that kind of made me pretty miserable,” Hulls said. “I’ve been kind of joking that it’s that point in the romantic comedy where I’m finally admitting I’ve always been in love with my best friend, so I think the fact that I finished this book and I’m taking the plunge and moving to Juneau, it’s just for me, reassuring me that Alaska is really the place that I want to be and I’m happy to finally be moving up.”
The next stop in Hulls’ “Feeding Ghosts” book tour will be Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer. It’ll finish with a party and community bike ride at The Writer’s Block Bookstore and Cafe in Anchorage on Thursday at 6 p.m.
