Untold Stories

PALMER — The inside of the Palmer Train Depot echoed with laughter, gasps and thunderous applause Sunday night during the latest installment of Untold Stories, the Mat-Su Valley’s up-and-coming, live storytelling series. Seven members of the community stepped onto the stage presenting seven stories, covering the gamut between humor-laden journeys to harrowing tales of danger in the Alaskan wild. United under the love of stories and one common, selected theme — Survival — the room was enraptured with each tale.

“I do think storytelling makes it real, not only for the person hearing it but for the person telling it,” said event emcee and one of the founding members of Untold Stories, Emily Forstner.

More than 130 people stirred with each narrative, groaning at the painful details, chortling during a gleeful musing, and cheering with fervor. Forstner said that this show amassed a lot of positive feedback from the public. With the theme Survival being so broad, the floor was open to a spectrum of stories. That’s what ended up happening.

“Surviving is perhaps not so much about living as it is about the lessons learned,” Forstner said.

Untold Story veteran, Alys Culhane returned to share her story, “Meeting Pete and Ditching Paul.” Among her were some new faces to Untold Stories, such as District 1 Assemblyman Jim Sykes, who frightened the audience with the telling of his nearly deadly encounter with a protective mother black bear. This was his first time telling the bear story in front of an audience.

“I did enjoy telling and I certainly enjoyed surviving,” Sykes said. “The story is always more interesting when you survive it,”

Jim and his wife have a cabin north of Talkeetna. It’s located several miles away from any civilization. About 25 years ago, Jim — against his wife’s caution — ventured into the woods. Along the Susitna River, he stumbled onto a mother black bear with her cubs. Before he had a second to think, he was charged. He screamed as loud as he could and raised his arms. This worked — briefly. He tried to get away, only for the bear to pounce on him, clawing and tearing away at him. Sykes took time to intimately describe the harrowing details of the attack with nonchalance and occasional dry jokes.

“I could smell her breath — we were nose to nose,” Sykes said. “I could see the blueberry stains on her snapping teeth.”

The audience shrieked.

“I looked into her eyes; they were just like polished marbles, and I flashed on the movie ‘Jaws’ while I was there,” he said.

Everyone laughed. Sykes recounted Quint’s monologue from the 1970’s movie, the bit about the shark being a ‘killing machine’ with ‘expressionless eyes.’

After a tussle with the bear and getting bit in the hand, Sykes eventually had a chance to play dead, curled up with his hands above his neck. He escaped without any life-threatening injuries; just a few scars.

“I felt like I was real lucky,” Sykes said.

Sykes’ story starts out with the main action and high dramatics. He said that after listening to one woman’s story on the Moth Radio Hour and the two rehearsals before the show, he made changes to the story with more details afterward. According to Forstner, the stories at this event were some of the most polished she’s seen at Untold Stories yet. Sykes affirmed that working as a group under Forstner, Patricia Chesbro and Betty Pierce as coaches.

“I would say all of the stories sounded better by the time they hit the stage Sunday,” Sykes said.

The sessions focus on how to refine the story, trimming the fat, tweaking the formula, adding and or subtracting details, pauses, and other tools of the trade. Forstner said that the rehearsal sessions are getting into a productive and “tight-knit” groove where people are able to give notes and bounce ideas off each other. She said that eventually, they will be able to focus less on the content and be able spend more time working on the parts of speech, how to present a story out loud in a clear and entertaining style.

“I think it (takes) a real skill; that’s why I really enjoy hearing other people tell stories,” Sykes said.

Forstner was pleased to see this foundation of spoken word take on a life of its own. She anticipates an ever-growing future with an reach going beyond Palmer, to Wasilla and beyond so the whole Mat-Su Valley can participate in the story without end; its narrative spun by the community itself. With time, Forstner, Chesbro, Pierce and the Palmer Museum hope to breathe life in the Mat-Su’s fresh history and sharpen the craft of people telling it.

“It’s breeding this different storyteller that is committed not to their story but to their performance,” Forstner said.

The Next Untold Stories is April 15th and the theme is “Road Trips: “the cars in our lives and the roads they’ve taken us down and up.” Stories can be submitted at the Untold Stories page on the Palmer Museum’s website: http://palmermuseum.org/untold-stories.