Alaska: Wandering into Trouble

They call him the Wanderer. For the past three years, San Francisco Native John Weymouth, 33, has drifted about the American West and Alaska, keeping to himself, getting by on odd jobs, never staying in one place for very long. Last week the misanthrope, who wants only to be left alone, briefly became a focus of international attention. Early this month the Wanderer took a 2 1/2- mile stroll across the frozen Bering Strait, from America’s Little Diomede Island to Big Diomede in the U.S.S.R. The suspicious Soviets moved him to a tiny room on the mainland and interrogated him there for nearly two weeks. Weymouth finally convinced them that he was not seeking to defect–just wandering.

After negotiations between the State Department and the Kremlin, the U.S.S.R. last week returned Weymouth to Little Diomede in a military helicopter. Nearly all of the island’s 154 inhabitants–mostly Eskimos –turned out to see Weymouth’s return. Asked if he was glad to be back in the U.S., the Wanderer replied, “No. Sorry.” And what did he plan to do now? “Keep on walking.” Weymouth’s mother had paid for an airline ticket for her son to return to San Francisco, but at Anchorage airport, he traded it in for a ticket to Seattle.