BOOKPATHS

Alaska

Pico Iyer writes about “Alaska’s Great Wide Open” in this month’s Smithsonian.

I've lived in the American West for more than four decades, but I began to wonder if I had ever really seen—or breathed—true American promise before. Every time I stepped off a boat or plane in Alaska, I felt as if I were walking back into the 19th century, where anything was possible and the continent was a new world, waiting to be explored. – from “Alaska’s Great Wide Open,” by Pico Iyer, Smithsonian

Brady Glacier (now part of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve), Alaska

 Stickeen, by John Muir (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1990; first published as a book in 1909)

John Muir recounts “the most memorable of my wild days,” spent exploring Brady Glacier on Taylor Bay, now part of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, in the midst of a “grand” Alaska “flood-storm” with the “short-legged and “bunchy-bodied,” courageous, and loyal dog Stickeen.  Before finally writing the story down, Muir is said to have told of the 1880 adventure many times.

Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day.  As I write it all comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart of it.  Again I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and snow, the ice cliffs towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic ice-cascade, the vast glacier outspread before its white mountain fountains, and in the heart of it the tremendous crevasse, -- emblem of the valley of the shadow of death – low clouds trailing over it, the snow falling into it; and on its brink I see little Stickeen, and I hear his cries for help and his shouts of joy.  I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe as much as to Stickeen.  At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. – from Stickeen, by John Muir

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Stickeen – Online Edition

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve

Michael Chabon talks with Scott Timberg about his new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

“The Yiddish Policemen's Union begins with a down-on-his-luck cop who discovers that a resident of his fleabag hotel — a mysterious, perhaps saintly loner dedicated to both heroin and chess — has been murdered. Landsman, the cop, pursues his killer through a world of chess savants, Alaskan tundra and ‘black hats’ — ultra-orthodox thugs — while answering to a boss who happens to be his ex-wife. Oh yeah, it all takes place in an alternate universe, in which the Jewish settlement of Alaska is, after a 60-year lease, set to lapse.” – from “The Idea Hit Michael Chabon Right in the Kishkes,” by Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times

And, listen to an interview with Michael Chabon on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Bookpath: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

Last Great Wilderness: the Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Roger Kaye (Fairbanks : University of Alaska Press, 2006)

In Last Great Wilderness: the Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Roger Kaye shares the events leading to its 1960 designation as the Arctic National Wildlife Range and its 1980 expansion and renaming as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Reading about the early efforts of conservation "visionaries," such as Olaus and Marie Murie, helps put into perspective the ongoing battle for continued protection of this unique and fragile wilderness.

Related Websites

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

University of Alaska Press

Bookpath: Pribilof Islands, Alaska

Libby: the Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman, 1879-1880, as presented by her Granddaughter Betty John (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989)

Libby Beaman, the first non-native woman to travel to the remote Pribilof Islands, wrote about her experiences during the year her husband served as a special government agent in the islands. Her diary entries and letters offer a fascinating account of time and place.

Related Websites

The Nature Conservancy – Pribilof Islands

“June 10 – I’ve been on S’Paul [Island] long enough to have explored every inch of it, for it is not very big – only twelve miles long and scarcely six miles wide. Yet I’ve seen precious little of it. Walking over it is nearly impossible, though I see in the log that Mr. Elliott did manage to explore almost every inch of it in three successive summers. The best way to see any of it is to go by native boat or company cutter to a likely beach (and every likely beach is a rookery), disembark, and explore inland as far as one can go. The inland terrain is so rough – full of ravines and sudden chasms, craggy upjuttings and slippery, lichen-covered rocks and boggy areas around little lakes – that walking is treacherous. So far I’ve cajoled natives only a few times into taking me in their boats on the calmest days, so I have seen a few of the more famous rookeries.

The dunes and the high plateaux are my favorite places to wander. They have a certain strange beauty about them that John cannot perceive, but seeing that beauty keeps me from being lost here….” -– from Libby: the Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman, 1879-1889

Bookpath: Cook Inlet, Alaska

Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths, by Nancy Lord (New York : Counterpoint, 2004)

Alarmed by the rapidly declining beluga whale population in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, Nancy Lord began a “five-year-quest to learn what was happening to the whales.” Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths shares Lord’s discoveries and ongoing concerns.

Related Websites

Nancy Lord

Counterpoint

“Cook Inlet belugas, then, weren’t just any old belugas, exchangeable or replaceable. They belonged to their place in the same way that the lunker king salmon of the Kenai River belonged to the depth, the current, the temperature and cool blue color, the holes and protective snags and rocky bottom of their perfect-for-them river. Except that, compared to prolific salmon, which run upriver by the tens of thousands every year to deposit their eggs by the multimillions (giving them some safety in numbers as well as reproductive speed), a beluga population can grow only very, very slowly. Individual belugas may live a long time (into their thirties), but females don’t give birth until age five or six and then normally bear only one calf every three years during their prime.” – from Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths, by Nancy Lord

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

“This, then, is the Sheenjek country. The Arctic wilderness of the Brooks Range. Will we have the wisdom to cherish such places? To leave such parts of the earth in their natural state, humbly and with appreciation?” – Mardy Murie

Listen to Elizabeth Arnold’s podcast of her recent expedition to The Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Organized by John Waterman and including the “world-renowned naturalist with the Wildlife Conservation Society,” George Schaller, the expedition returned to the site of Mardy and Olaus Murie’s 1956 expedition. Schaller provides a link with the past, having been a “young field biologist” on the 1956 expedition, and a voice for the future, urging continued protection for this vast and fragile landscape. The podcast, a video of Olaus and Mardy Murie’s “Letters from Brooks Range”, photographs, additional information, and related links, can be found on NPR’s Radio Expeditions website.

“"One of the things that Olaus and Mardy left with me is that you must do something beyond yourself… And conservation is one of the most basic things you can do. For Olaus and Mardy's sake, I really wish that this will forever remain a memorial to their vision." -- George Schaller

BOOKPATH: Sitka, Alaska

John Straley's Cecil Younger Mystery Series

I looked out toward the bay and beyond to the Gulf of Alaska. Up the hill the daylight had spread through the forest. The sun seemed to illuminate each needle of every hemlock and spruce tree. To the west, the breeze freshened and the black clouds edged a little closer. I was struck by a feeling that I urgently wanted to remember this moment all my life, but at the time I had no idea why. -- from Cold Water Burning, by John Straley

John Straley's mysteries take place in Sitka, Alaska, and the vastness that surrounds this town of 9,000 on Baranof Island. Readers follow Private Investigator Cecil Younger into a beautiful and dramatic landscape where he meets the challenges of his work and private life. Mountains, ocean, and wildlife often seem in stark contrast to troubled and complicated human lives.

When you enter a John Straley mystery, such as his latest, Cold Water Burning, you enter a landscape of mountains and ocean. The landscape intrudes on characters and readers, reminding all of nature's presence. Often, Cecil notices the environment and wildlife when he is immersed in other thoughts. Returning home in George Doggy's truck, Younger looks up to see mountains "[rising] up from the sea in steep-forested slopes until they [give] way to rock and ice...a fine spume of snow lifting into the sky as the wind scoured the face of the rock." The ocean is ever present -- waterfront, "bay and beyond to the Gulf of Alaska." When a predicted violent storm moves onshore, Younger notices its beginnings along the waterfront, "the waves were building and breaking white...." Later, out in the storm, he experiences, "waves...two stories high."

Within this landscape, readers are introduced to the book's human and non-human residents. Wildlife, including whales, gulls, crows, and ravens move through the book's pages. Each, as Poet Denise Levertov observes in "Come Into Animal Presence," knows what it must do" in ways seemingly lost to humans. While Younger struggles to hold on to his capsized boat, whales move gracefully by and gulls soar past: "Pure white gulls with black feet wheeled above me and the massive backs of the whales pushed toward me like islands magically being pulled along." In town, crows and ravens mystically appear. In conversation with Harrison Teller, Younger seems to be advised by "a sly raven":

A sly raven flew from under the canopy of trees and landed on the gravel not twenty feet from where we were standing. He was a large bird with a crown of feathers on his head and almost a lion's mane around his throat. He had what looked like a baloney rind in his beak. I knew Teller wasn't really asking what I thought.

The Cecil Younger Mystery Series offers compelling reads, drawing you into the landscape and lives of the human and non-human residents.

John Straley has lived in Sitka since 1977. His home and office are on Sitka's waterfront, "near Old Sitka Rocks." Sitka is almost as important to Straley's mysteries as Cecil Younger. The town comes to life as Younger and other characters walk its streets, noting buildings as they pass, meet one another in the grocery store, or gather to listen to music and dance at a local bar. While you won't find Cecil Younger in Sitka, or Todd, Jane Marie, Blossom, or other characters (although you may find some who seem vaguely familiar), you will find Sitka, mountains, ocean, and raven and crow looking down from the branches.

Artists always make a lot of mountain peaks. I suppose I have always been a valley sort of guy. It never bothers me that something is taller than I am, and I've been content to let it stay that way. But when the light hits a peak, even if I'm watching it from the front seat of a tugboat-sized truck, something rises up in my chest. 'You don't have to be here,' the mountain says, and I know that's true and am grateful. -- from Cold Water Burning, by John Straley

Mysteries from The Cecil Younger Mystery Series, by John Straley

The Woman Who Married a Bear (Signet, 1994)
The Curious Eat Themselves (Bantam, 1995)
The Music of What Happens (Bantam, 1997)
Death and the Language of Happiness (Bantam, 1998)
The Angels Will Not Care (Bantam, 2000)
Cold Water Burning (2001)

Website

http://www.johnstraley.com/

"...it occured to me that I didn't have to worry about this story of my life and what to bring with me, for it was finally dawning on me that I am not the sole author of this story of my life, and that all my luck, both good and bad, will follow the lay of the land." -- from Cold Water Burning, by John Straley

April 21, 1838

REMEMBERING JOHN MUIR

John Muir was born on April 21, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland. His reach was always wide, embracing not only the places we usually associate him with -- Yosemite, Sequoia, Alaska -- but the entire "Earth-Planet, Universe." His birthday falls on the day after the House of Representatives voted to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge "as part of a broad energy bill.... The bill calls for $8.1 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, most of it going to promote coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas energy industries (H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press)." The final vote on this legislation is expected today, on John Muir's birthday and the day before Earth Day.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." -- John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." -- John Muir, John of the Mountains

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty." -- John Muir, Travels in Alaska

Website
House Votes for Oil Drilling in Alaska, by H. Josef Hebert
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/04/20/national/w191024D85.DTL

National Resources Defense Council
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/050331a.asp

BOOKPATH: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

We walk across a sea of tundra, stunned by the open, boundless vista and never-setting sun. Thousands of square miles of wilderness surround us on this vast coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Like the desert, the unforested tundra possesses the beauty of a simple, uncomplicated landscape where the eye can embrace the surroundings, absent of any obstructions, and the mind can drift with the flow of the expansive landform. The uncluttered freedom of space, unlimited visibility, and naked, yet living, tundra are awesome." -- from Midnight Wilderness : Journeys in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Debbie S. Miller

These four books help us to understand the land, habitat, and homeland that may be lost if oil drilling occurs in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge : Seasons of Life and Land : a Photographic Journey by Subhankar Banerjee. Seattle, Washington : The Mountaineers Books, 2003.

Banerjee's photographs invite us into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. His stunning work shares the land, the wildlife, and the lives of the Native peoples. Essays by Peter Matthiessen, George B. Schaller, Fran Mauer, David Allen Sibley, William H. Meadows, Debbie S. Miller and Terry Tempest Williams complement the photographs. Together, the photographs and words are a testament of preservation.

Arctic Refuge : a Circle of Testimony, Hank Lentfer and Carolyn Servid, compilers. Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2001.

This anthology was originally presented to Congress in March 2001 as a response to the proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Contributors include Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Scott Russell Sanders, Rick Bass, Jimmy Carter, Terry Tempest Williams and others. Each voice speaks to the beauty, fragility, and necessity of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Caribou Rising : Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich- 'In Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Rick Bass. San Francisco, CA : Sierra Club Books, 2004.

Rick Bass shares in the Gwich- 'In caribou hunt as the threat of oil drilling looms. His journey personalizes the potential loss of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the interconnectedness of the animals and people who live there.

Midnight Wilderness : Journeys in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Debbie S. Miller. Portland, Oregon : Alaska Northwest Books, 2000.

Debbie Miller has lived in northern Alaska for over twenty years. Midnight Wilderness : Journeys in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge describes the pristine wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and urges its preservation.

"It is here that we are being challenged with the responsibility of imagination and of discipline, attributes we as a country once had in spades...It is not the caribou, nor the Gwich- 'In, who are being given one more chance. It is we who are being given one more chance." -- from Caribou Rising : Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich- 'In, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Rick Bass

Perhaps one way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day is by sending "some green" to an environmental group of your choice. So many are working on our behalf to save this wild and important place. There may still be time.