The Gift of Good Land

It’s funny, when I sit down to write I always think of Thoreau.  Maybe it’s not funny.  Maybe I have a problem: I can’t write without thinking about writers.  And the problem gets worse: I guess, I can’t talk to writers without talking about writing.

Allow me to explain–We are in the midst of break-up.  This is an exciting season.  Brown is joining this former landscape of white.  Birds are returning (haven’t seen the cranes by the airstrip yet so it’s not officially spring yet).  And we have an abundance of light.

Thinking about the light made me think of Thoreau.  In one of his lesser known essays, “Night and Moonlight,” Thoreau waxes on nighttime activities in the outdoors.  One of the traits I particularly enjoy about Thoreau is his ability to compare and contrast.  It’s a straightforward technique to better understand a place.  He contrasts with the seasonal moonlight of New England, “I complain of Arctic voyagers that, they do not enough remind us of the constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual twilight of the Arctic night.”  That is how so many people think of the arctic.  Not that I’m against population growth, but let’s keep it that way.

Dreariness and perpetual twilight are not two things that I think of when I see snow covered mountains. Here it is, mid-April, and I’m putting the curtains on the windows again to help create enough night to sleep.  Back to Thoreau–his point is about becoming moon powered instead of solar powered from time to time.  Or, maybe it is also about trying new things, breaking from your routines.

Since break-up is upon us, I broke from my routine last Saturday.  Local birding groups sponsored Hawk Watch at a turn-out from the highway.  I know a lot of people who would refer to the location as being “the middle of nowhere,” but I don’t like those imprecise terms.  Instead, I like to think it was the perfect location in the middle of everywhere.

Both people and birds saw the location as valuable.  Golden eagles, Harlan’s hawks, norther harriers, swans, and those pesky bald eagles flew overhead.  It was the best kind of birding, sit in a lawn chair and let the birds come to you.  The best part, being a novice birder, were the experts who helped with identification.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking through binoculars and flipping through pages in a bird book.  Maybe I’m just really slow at it, but generally, by the time I think I’ve found the right bird in the book, the real one would be out of sight.

Not the case at Hawk Watch. I didn’t even open my bird book.  Best of all, I hardly used my binoculars.  It was fun to learn the birds by the big characteristics: wing beats, shape, and major markings.  I felt pretty confident in my identification by the end of the day, but now I worry I may have forgotten most of it.  I might have to go back again.  It runs for a few more weekends–perhaps not as organized as last weekend.

While the identification was fun, the best part of the event was meeting new people and catching up with friends.  I hadn’t seen a coworker from Denali all winter, yet we met up a hundred miles from town on the edge of the highway  (I’m not mentioning his name because it might make him uncomfortable).

Even though we have worked together for a few years, I think we had much longer and better conversations at Hawk Watch than ever before.  It’s good to be around interesting people.

When I arrived, I met (re-met) the nature writer Bill Sherwonit.  We met briefly at a 49 Writers event last year.  It was better to meet him again in our native habitat, but oddly enough, we didn’t talk much about nature.  What do two writers talk about?

Writing, of course.  The nitty, gritty work of words on the page, the labor of finding a publisher, and the joy of good news.  I’m really excited for Bill.  He’s working on a great project.  I hope everything pans out for the best.

To wrap things up, I think I must turn to Thoreau again, the essay “Walking” this time.  Next time you are in the middle of everywhere, remember Thoreau and say, “Give me the ocean, the desert or the wilderness!”

The following is something I wrote many years ago, before I had spent a winter in Alaska.  Although this short story hasn’t been published, it has an interesting publication history.  I’m not going to share that history.  Enjoy the read.

Bridge to Forget the Stream

On the mountain, on the rivers,
on the cities, on the farmlands
we lay weighted hands, our breath
potent with the death of all things.
–Wendell Berry
from “Dark with Power”

The salmon run was light.  Enough chum for the dogs to make it through the winter.  But few kings, few silver, no surplus except firewood.  Even the traps were empty.  He walked the line every morning with hope, but hope never fulfilled his hunger.  The fishing pole was getting more use than ever.  Every evening he was at the lake trying to catch supper.  All he would eat was beans if he didn’t catch a fish.  He had beans and rice around.  But that was winter food.  Food for when ice covered the lake and river.  Food to take on the sled, but there was nothing for the sled since the traps were empty.

An eagle perched on a spruce along the curve of a bay.  It should have migrated by now.  It was immature, its head a checkered mess of white and brown.  In some ways it was the eagle that brought him to the country.  A friend of his once wrote a poem about it:  It is no accident / Starling / Sparrows/ and Pigeons / choose to live in cities / ask any Eagle.  He scratched those words into the wall of his first shack by the river, and the words followed him to his new place at the lake, deeper in the country.

John spent most of the day working on the bridge.  His body was tired.  His fingers fumbled with the fishing real.  It only took two casts to raise a pike.  John called it a hammer handle, and its size compared.  The sleek body was only going to be enough for one meal, but at least it was another meal.  He built the house by the lake because he saw the area as more plentiful.

***
When he first came to the country he squatted by the river.  He thought of it as living on the edge, part mountain man and part river rat.  The river was the local highway.  Maps referred to it as Keyokok, but locally it was known as the Key.  Most of the river traffic was during the winter after everything was frozen and the country took pelts or gold to town.  John saw enough people at the end of his first winter he started calling it the Pelt Line instead of the Key.  The traffic was heavier than he expected.  He wanted to be left alone.

During a visit from a neighbor, John decided to move farther into the country, farther away from the river.  John was checking a nearby trap for ermine.  It had been taking his bait but eluding the trap.  His dogs began barking in a calamity like a moose had entered the yard.  There were few sounds in the country during winter.  Most of them were personal like the sound of frozen breaths and the crunch of snow under snowshoes.  Wind didn’t whistle through the stiff-spruce needles; it ohmed like a mantra that rolled around the trunks veiling the outside world.  Noise was the awakening sound in the distance, the mysterious, like the crash of big game through the forest or the yelping of a sled-dog team on the Pelt Line.  The mantra in the spruce was, and usually is, too much.  But the noise of his own dogs snapped him back into consciousness.

John always carried a gun while walking the trap line.   It was needed for protection from winter bears, and traps don’t necessarily kill.  The combination of the animal’s immobility from the trap and the arctic night usually brought death, but if the cold didn’t bring it, John could.  He approached his house hoping for a moose, but it was a visitor.  The sled was anchored, and the man was throwing fish from a pack on the sled to his five dog team.  If John had a boat, this man would have parked his sled where John would have built a dock.

John was weary but not afraid.  The man’s caribou-skin coat hung down nearly to his knees.  It had a hood, but it wasn’t in use.  His hair and beard were scraggly to the point that it wasn’t possible to tell the difference from where one started and the other ended.  He was still digging in his pack when John called to him, “You hungry?”

The man looked at his dogs then over his shoulder to John.  His smile lifted the skin on his cheek bones, but the mouth was concealed by the hair of his mustache.  “Well, I hadn’t thought about that but no.  No.  I’m not hungry,” he said.  He stopped messing with his pack.  “I just live over on Low Power Creek.”

The gun wouldn’t be necessary.  John realized what the visit was about.  If the man had food for his dogs, he had food for himself.  There was no emergency.  This was a neighborly visit, a property visit.  He had been waiting for the neighbors to stop by.  The man introduced himself as Underwood, but he preferred to be called Wood.  John helped him up the riverbank and into his yard.  He invited him into his cabin.  Wood declined the offer.  Instead he stood in the small clearing, not much of a yard, between the shack and the dog houses.  He pointed to the mountains, Flat Top and Finger.  John didn’t know their names.  He said, “Flat Top’s yours.  Finger’s mine.  Sandhill Stream is the boundary.”

John stared at the mountains noting their names.  He knew the stream but not extensively.  It was his water source and drained into the Key only paces from his house.  He was on the Finger side, Wood’s side.

“Don’t worry about where you are now.  You’re on my side of Sandhill, but Old Man Dan was out here first, and he counted his property as if the steam ran like it was supposed to go to reach the river.”  John had wondered about the property line.  The stream had seemed like a likely marker, but in reality it meandered too much, so Old Man Dan made an imaginary boundary, a straight line between Flat Top and Finger to the Key.  John had acres of land and miles of trails within that marker blazed by Dan long ago.

John shook his head in agreement.  “I figured it must be like that,” he said.  Wood went on to tell him more about Dan, the last guy who laid claim there.  “Aint no more gold, but you got everything you need in this basin by the river.  You can live here.  Dan never left until it was his time.”  Wood’s words did not reverberate in John’s mind.  John appreciated the information but disliked the direction of it.  He went into the country because he didn’t like rules, and hearing them from someone he didn’t know, in his own yard, did not sit well.  It was at that moment that John realized he had to get away from the river.  He didn’t need people stopping to bother him, and he didn’t need a neighbor telling him how to live in his property.

Wood left with farewells involving help in times of trouble.  John fed his own dogs, and cut a slice of meat for himself from the moose dangling in the cache.  Over the next couple years John shifted his trap line from less in the basin to nearing the slopes of Flat Top.  It was then that he found the lake.  Over a couple summers he built a new cabin on the lake and maintained a sled dog trail between the houses.  Even though he didn’t want to, he had to live in both places.  He needed the place by the river for the salmon run.  He spent most of the summer there moving fish from the trap to drying racks.

John had more drying racks at his lake house.  Most humans won’t eat chum salmon but dogs will.  The dogs loved the fish, but fish were a problem for John in the summer.  He had grown to hate them.  It was difficult to transport them from the river to the lake without the use of the dog sled, without snow.  During the transition between the salmon run and winter, John carried many bags stuffed with Chum from the river to the lake.  The fish weren’t always dry by the time he needed to move them from the river, so he built another drying rack between his food cache and modest home.  He built everything himself out of the forest around him.  What he called his yard was full of stumps.

John carried the pike by the tail to his fish cleaning stump by the dog kennels.  He slapped the head against a stump like he was splitting firewood.  Anger was building in him.  It was anger from desperation.  Each morning the frost line moved farther down Flat Top.  Winter would soon arrive.  The lake would freeze.  He had no meat cached for him, only for the dogs.  He needed to find something in his traps or kill a moose or caribou while walking the line.  Most of all he thought he needed to finish the bridge so he had easy access to much more country.  The smack of the pike against the stump was not for cruelty; it was to kill in the swiftest motion possible, so he could get on to other things like eating.

At that point, he didn’t even dare to fillet the pike.  Not because of the extra work but because of the waste, the little bits of meat trapped between the bones.  He slid a knife from the sheath on his belt.  Using the same stump from killing, he dissected the fish in three swift slices, one for the head right behind the gills, one for the tail, and one to split it in half.  He took a few steps to the kennels.  He was on a rotation with the dogs, only they didn’t realize it.  They bounced and yelped to become the object of his attention.  “It’s not your turn,” he said to Orion.  “It’s Ursa’s turn.”  He slid the guts away from the meat with his thumb.  Ursa, his new lead dog, caught some chunks before they hit the ground.  Orion and Berry continued struggling against the chain not realizing there was no more.

John’s dogs were his only companions.  They were the only things that had responded to his voice in nearly a year.  Last winter John had some success trapping wolves, lynx, and ermine.  He traded the pelts in town for money and food.  John had little use for money.  It was an extra step in the transactions that he didn’t care for.  Trade pelts for money then spend money for beans and traps.  He thought it was much easier to just trade pelts for food and traps.

He was thankful for the fish tonight.  He knew he would need the beans this winter.  “You can eat after I eat,” he said to the dogs.  He rinsed most of the blood from the fish in the lake.  With it still dripping fish ooze, he carried inside.  He had built for practicality, one room, no longer than a felled spruce with a loft and tundra roof.  The loft made warm nights during winter and gave more storage below for tanning pelts.  He would like to build it over again this time digging it into a hillside to make it more energy efficient.  Regardless of when he gets the chance to rebuild, he heated and cooked from what seemed to be an endless supply of firewood.  He had a rotation from piles outside to a straightened chord inside.

The embers in the bottom of the stove ignited a log thrown in with the mix.  The iron skillet above, warmed.  It didn’t need oil, and never would unless he washed it.  He wiped it out regularly.  The leftover grease from cooking kept it from rusting, kept it in good cooking condition.

During John’s last visit to town a rack of walking sticks caught his eye, not because John needed a walking stick but because the price people would pay for them.  The shopkeeper said they were made from diamond willow.  John knew the species.  Upon his return to the country, he began looking for them while walking his trap line.  At its full growth the trunk fits easily into a hand.  Knots form in the bark that when skinned the knots look like black diamonds against the soft wood grain.  While waiting for the pike to cook, John carefully whittled away at a knot.  The dark slivers of bark fell to the floor.  John would sweep them up later and put them in the switch bucket next to the stove.

When the fish sizzled in the skillet, he set his whittling aside and knew it would be ready soon.  He carried his water bucket to the door.  He attached the bucket to a rope looped around a pulley fastened next to the door of the house.  John could slash new trail through the forest and chop wood for hours without becoming tired, but he hated walking the short distance from the house to the lake for water.  He made a post from a spruce he chopped by hand.  Then he buried one end of it, just like a fence post, in the mucky bottom of the lake at about waist deep.  He attached a pulley to the post and one to his house, so he could stand on his step-stone, attach a bucket to the rope between the pulleys, and have a fresh bucket of water by doing little more than moving his arms.  He carried a fresh bucket of water into the house.

John used his fingers to flip the fish in the skillet.  Then he dumped half the bucket of water into another bucket.  This gave him one bucket for drinking water and another for cleaning.  He didn’t use soap, but he rubbed his hands together as if he did and splashed some water onto his face.  Instead of pouring, he dunked a drinking glass into the other bucket.  The pike fell apart as he lifted it from the skillet.  He sat at a table and used a plate but no silverware.  He ate with his fingers, sucking the meat from the bones.  The last bits of the sun dropped behind the mountains.

The dogs couldn’t see John through the window, but they could somehow sense when he finished his meal.  Orion and Berry yelped while Ursa stood with her tongue hanging and tail swaying like a metronome.  When John opened the door the dogs danced for attention.  “I bet you’re hungry,” he said not talking to any one of them in particular.  He thought of his own hunger he temporarily settled.  He hacked a smaller salmon into thirds and tossed the shares to the dogs.  He fed them late for the same reason he fed himself late; their metabolism should slow for sleep causing a buildup of fat.

The sliver of the moon rose from behind Flat Top and continued into the sky.  John spent a few minutes petting each dog.  They enjoyed his attention even though they were eating.  Calmly the dogs perched themselves on top of their houses and waited for John to leave so they could sleep.  John snagged a few logs from a pile and carried them into the house with him.  He was ready for sleep, but anxiety of completing the bridge made sleep difficult.  Throughout the night he rose for sips of water.  By first light he knew he must finish the bridge.

John thought he must bridge Sandhill Stream.  He had explored the other side on foot. The stream cut diagonally across his property.  He must cross it to reach Flat Top and get farther into the country.  By the Key he could cross the stream easily, and he did cross it often.  When he lived by the river he had a surplus of food and many pelts to take to town.  He maintained a large network of trails for his trap line that extended well past the stream, and the stream was his water source.  So he made regular visits to it and beyond it.  However, crossing way down by the river took him hours out of his way.  He needed a crossing close where the stream had gouged into the earth not only uncovering pointy stones but also creating hidden drop offs at the banks during snow cover.

Last year John lost his lead dog and shattered his sled when he mistakenly came upon the stream.  He can’t remember how it happened.  He just remembers how he found everything when he awoke.  Bounty, his lead dog, was dead.  A sled rail had pierced her chest.  Orion and Berry were gone.  They had chewed through their harnesses.  The next day, he found them sleeping in the snow on top of their kennels at the river house.  John didn’t want another accident with a sled, and he didn’t want to waste half a day’s travel going all the way to the river to cross the stream.  He decided he needed a bridge to cross during winter.

During the summer, John cut a new trail between an existing trail on the other side of the stream and his lake house.  The bridge over the stream would be easy compared to building his house, the outhouse, the food caches, the drying racks, the water retriever, and cutting trails.  John was a builder.  He needed to use his hands, so he built.

The morning sun pierced through the curtains of the eastern window.  John attached a hatchet to his belt.  He only needed a few tools, the most important being the twine.  He took Berry with him to the bridge and allowed him to run free.  Berry never went far, alone.  If one of the other dogs was with, Berry could be convinced to go astray, but when he was alone, he always stayed nearby.

The bridge was near complete.  The construction was easier than laying logs for his lake house.  He felled a number of spruce, then rotated the placement so every other log had the thick root end on the same side.  He didn’t make any notches or anything fancy; he simply stripped the trees of their branches and lashed them together with twine.  Only a couple more logs needed to be added before the bridge would be plenty wide for his dogs and his sled.

Two spruce had already been stripped and were ready to be added.  John worked one into place.  He started his lashing, a temporary lashing, in the middle to hold it steady.  Then at one end he lashed tight crisscrosses and end-arounds securing it with a cross-over knot.  He repeated the lashes in the middle, on the other end, and numerous points in between.  Then he did the same to the last log.  Berry laid in the stream watching.  The sun warmed John’s back.  He worked up a sweat.

When he finished, John let out a howl like a wolf.  Berry jumped to all fours and excitedly wagged his tail for no other reason than that he could tell John was happy.  “It’s done Berry,” John said.  Berry took it as a call to join him on the bridge.  While he was down on his hands and knees double checking all the lashings, Berry tried to lick his face, so John used one hand to keep Berry at a distance and rub behind his ears.  “The damn thing is done,” John said.  He was relieved.  With Berry following his stride, he paced back and forth along the bridge noticing the distance above the stream and how the water moved around the rocks.  The distance was slightly farther than John was tall.  The stream pushed against the stones, not in a gush but a meandering that would make a leaf stop and twirl in currents before moving on.  John stopped in the middle.  He unzipped his pants.  “I’m done with you at last,” he said.  Then he pissed in his former water source.

Berry and John returned to the lake house.  It was too late in the day for John to set out, blaze more trail, and set traps deeper in his country.  Instead he played with the dogs and fished.  He caught a couple weeks surplus of pike and grayling but that was nothing near what was needed to get him through the winter.  The next day and the following days John extended his line deeper into the country.  For every new trail he built, an earlier one, one made by Old Man Dan become overgrown.  When the snow came, he used his bridge to make rounds to his traps a couple times a week.  The traps were usually empty.  He snared a couple ermine and added the meat to his beans.  It tasted like a mix between a rat and a hare.

***

The next spring, John took a trip to his river house.  He snowshoed.  He used one of his walking sticks for support.  His dogs were weak.  He had been living off their food, the chum.  There he found a note from Wood.  It said, Wow.  What a winter.  I’ve never had so much in the traps.  Thanks for the cans of beans and the bed.  I didn’t need the beans.  I could of used some whisky.  I shot a moose while I was on my line.  It ran damn near all the way here before it went down.  I found it before the wolfies, but a fox got to it.  It took me 2 nights to pack it all out of here.  I expected you to be around.  Are you out?  Are you dead?  That is some poem you got there.  I always wanted to be a writer.  I like trapping better anyways.  I hope you haven’t up and froze on me.  Stop by if you are ever over my way.  I’m damn near right on the river but really just up Low Power Creek.  If I don’t hear from you expect to see me around spring.  I can’t bury you in the winter if you’re dead.  The grounds to hard.  Thanks again for the place to stay.  Wood     

John used the note to light a fire.

Warmth finally arrived in the country again and changed the snow in the stream to blocks of ice.   The bridge created an ice jam, a mouth with the spring leaking from it.  Holding back of gravity was eventually too much for the bridge.  The mouth followed the spring to its lowest point.  The bridge was dragged and cast aside.

* The poem quoted on the first page was written by Dr. John Allen.

Last weekend was interesting from a transportation perspective.  1,056 dogs and 66 mushers began the 1000 mile race to Nome.  Another thousand people skied 25, 40, and 50k routes around Anchorage.  During the gasoline age, it’s hard to believe some many people can be involved in archaic forms of transportation, but that’s how we live up here.  That’s how we have fun.

Besides ice fishing and sledding, the winter sports in the Midwest of my youth were practically nil.  Winter was not a time to celebrate the outdoors.  Winter was a time of rest and preparation between fall harvest and spring planting.

My first experience celebrating winter occurred while I was living in the Bavarian Alps, Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  There were ski jumping championships.  Giant slalom.  And others.  During one of the ski championships Garmisch had a party in the park.  Right Said Fred played an outdoor concert.  The concessions stand sold gluhwein.  It didn’t matter that the temperatures were below freezing; everyone had a great time.

Now that I live in Alaska, I see an even greater appreciation for winter.  Winter is the longest season, so it’s no surprise that we get out and enjoy it.  Take last weekend for example.  I partied along the Iditarod trail in Anchorage with a hundred others.  We were far from the crowds of downtown.  We were back in a neighborhood.  Friends brought grills.  Tables.  Boomboxes.  Coolers.  Snow chairs.  And it wasn’t a real party until someone brought a generator and an amplifier because the music wasn’t loud enough.

Mushers stopped their sleds to say hello.  To pose for photographs.  To make us happy.  To make them happy.  To celebrate.

And what were we celebrating?  We were celebrating a peculiar form of transportation.

The following day, the Iditarod began, formally.  The mushers actually left the starting gates—no ceremony, the real deal.  Before the dogs were hitched to the sleds, skiers were racing through Anchorage.  2 options were available–classic and skate skiing—downhill was not an option.  This was a fitness test.

I raced in the classic division.  Technically, I did well but I was unhappy with my time and equipment.  I didn’t glide when I skied.  Jogging the race course could have been a better option.  Regardless of the challenges, myself and others completed long distance races on thin strips of wood.  Although the technology has changed greatly in the past hundred years, skiing is a sport now.  No longer  is it the only method of travel from point A to B.  We have cars and snowmachines now.

If I were to guess, I would say half the population of the state was involved with the Iditarod or the Tour of Anchorage last weekend.  Not everyone attended the events, but I would argue many followed the Iditarod from long distance.  Perhaps even more than half the population.  I love this and see this as extraordinary.  I see this as a way of actually thinking of Alaska as a cultural island.  Such a huge percentage of the state celebrating winter sports, celebrating archaic transportation.

For comparison–we can find a huge population celebrating transportation in the Lower 48.  I will choose my cross-country skis and the Iditarod over auto racing any day.

Robert Finch begins The Primal Place, a collections of personal essays about living on Cape Cod, with the line, “One of the occupational hazards of living in a place like Cape Cod is not always knowing where you are.”  Finch goes on to describe disorienting weather conditions ranging from fog to storm, yet the discombobulation mostly comes from change.  Cape cod is a place with four seasons, fish and bird migrations, insects infestations, tourist infiltration, and, perhaps most importantly, humans reshaping the land.  “Change is the coin of this sandy realm,” Finch writes.

If you’ve been to the cape, I’m sure you’ve noticed the changes Finch describes, if not from the seasonal variations then from the diversity of places within a few miles of one another.  If I were to re-write Finch’s first line to be appropriate to Alaska, I would only make a slight change: One of the occupational hazards of living in a place like Alaska (or The Valley) is trying out smart the weather.

I’m a new year-round resident to Alaska and The Valley and find the weather defeating me time and time again.  This is no isolated occurrence to cheechakos like myself.  Look in the ditches of the Glenn Highway for plenty of examples.  Before I go into further details, let me clarify: I haven’t been caught by a ditch.  I grew up Outside, but in a corn growing state with snow.  I’m well traveled.  I’ve worked and played in Denali for nearly a decade.  I know the difference between foolishness and preparation.

This is my second Alaskan winter.  I had only settled in for a short time when I learned that Wasilla sucks and Palmer blows.  A lady at one of the stores in downtown Palmer said we had thirty days with 50 mph winds last winter.  I have lived in windy places, but no place has ever blown like Palmer last winter.

Despite the prevalence of wind last winter, when I shoveled the driveway, I piled the snow far into the yard to be certain I had plenty of room for more snow storage as the winter continued.  Last winter, those berms never accumulated to much.  Two or three days after the storm would arrive the winds would kick up and blow the snow into the Knik Arm.  The grass would become visible in the yard again.

No point moving the snow too far, if the wind is just going to blow it all away in a couple days, I told myself this year.  This winter I have been shoveling as little as possible, expecting the wind to kick up at any moment and blow the snow into the inlet.  During the past couple weeks, my driveway has become an alleyway with chest-high snow berms.  I barely had enough room to open my car doors.  I could narrowly wedge the car in from the road.  I felt like a groundhog driving into my tunnel.  Something had to change.

Anticipating the arrival of more snow and not having anywhere to put it, I set out to move one of those chest-high berms.  I need room for more accumulation and space to easily maneuver my car into the driveway.  I know people with plows.  I could have asked them to give the berms a push.  I could have even paid them to do it; however, I wouldn’t stand for such a thing.  I created the problem, so I was going to solve the problem.

It might sound strange, but I saw moving the snow berm as an opportunity for solar power to reign over oil power.  The sun grew the salad for my supper.  The sun grew the grains for my hearty croc-pot chicken.  Who needs oil to move a berm when I have calories and time?
Moving a snow berm is much like moving a hole in soil, as assignment my Grandfather gave me when I was a child with too much energy.  It may be good exercise, but it feels like unnecessary exercise.  If the hole were in the right place the first time, it would not have to be moved.  If the berm were in the right place . . . .

I moved that berm with my shovel.  Afterwards I felt satisfied and proud.  While shoveling I also decided that by next winter I want to have a four-wheeler with a plow or a neighborhood kid with enthusiastic shoveling skills.  Moving the berm was a miserable experience I never want to repeat.

We all have these minor misfortunes or miscalculations from time to time.  During our teenage years, the adults tell us that misfortune is part of growing up.  When it occurs during adulthood, we like to think it is all part of understanding the place we live in.  These events and how we describe them say much about who we are.  These events say much about how Palmer doesn’t blow this year.

Most importantly to us writers, these events come in layers.  We have the obvious physical action like moving snow.  But there is always more to the story: why and how was the snow moved?  What does moving snow via “solar power” say about living in The Valley, Alaska, or the world for that matter?  Taking advantage of these moments is our job as place writers.

Just being Alaskan allows us to describe an interesting world for our readers.  For a few years, I summered in Denali and attended graduate school near my hometown in rural Illinois.  Hundreds of people asked, “What is it like to see a glacier?”

I was raised among miles of cornfields and since living here not one person has asked, “What is it like to see a cornfield?”  Granted glaciers and cornfields are very different things, and I would argue both are equally beautiful and amazing just in very different ways, but this isn’t the place for that argument.

Alaska is a special place.  Trying to write about Alaska can be difficult.  Trying to describe any place can be difficult.  We have plenty of models at hand, the most famous one being Henry David Thorea and Walden.  Thoreau described his life at Walden Pond and in turn he describe the world of man.  We innately think of Thoreau as a nature writer, but take another look at Walden.  The first chapter is entitled “Economy.”  Ideas and values are just as important to place as plot and action.

Most nature writing has been incorporated into place writing.  The nice thing about place writing is that you don’t have to live by a pond or, for that matter, in the wilds of Alaska.  The place around you is important, whether it is a suburban neighborhood or a shack in the woods.

The place-writing course I will be teaching will take place at the Palmer Library during February and March.  Check out the website for specific dates.  We will be workshoping your writing, working with a fun method to generate more material, and reading writers you are familiar with and hopefully some new ones for your reading list.  I’m still solidifying the readings, but here’s the list so far: Thoreau, Sherry Simpson, John Lane, Robert Finch, Katie Fallon, Tom Montgomery Fate.

I hope you can join me at the place-writing workshop.  Regardless of your attendance, try to refrain from attempts at out smarting the weather.  They rarely turn out the way we want them to.  If you know a kid in my neighborhood who enjoys shoveling, please send him my way.  I have a berm on the other side of the driveway with his name on it.  Like Cape Cod, Alaska is ever changing.  Why not write about this great place?

A month ago I posted a letter I wrote to Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar; Senators; Conservation Groups; and perhaps most importantly, Superintendent of Denali Park, Paul Anderson.  The letter expressed my opinion on the new Park Road Vehicle Management Plan.  Sounds like a boring letter, but allow me to boast and argue that it is not boring.

I ask for Superintendent Anderson’s resignation.  How can that be dull.  Read that letter here.

It is nice to know that letter did not go unread.  U.S. Senator Mark Begich recently responded to it.  I thought you might enjoy reading his response.  You will find it below.

December 12, 2011

Dear Mr. Bourne:

Thank you for contacting me about the Denali National Park Vehicle Management Plan.

For most Alaskans, Denali National Park is the crown jewel in our national park system and a symbol for our state.  Balancing the need to preserve wildlife and wilderness values with the public’s substantial interest in seeing that landscape is a difficult task.  It’s difficult to provide access for all who want to experience the park without having visitors “love it to death.” Any plan will necessarily be a compromise between these objectives.

To remedy some of the concerns you raise about the chance for Alaskans to have a less crowded visitor experience, I support increased access to the Park’s southern side through Denali State Park and a joint state-federal visitor center on state lands.  This proposal has the ability to offer a number of different types of visitor activity on a smaller scale and through shoulder seasons and even into winter.

Thanks again for sending me your concerns about the park plan, and please don’t hesitate to do so in the future.

Sincerely,
Mark Begich
U.S. Senator

It has been a few weeks since I have updated this site.  I apologize for my absence.  I wish I could say a regular schedule will ensue in the coming weeks, but I am doubtful I can be responsible to following through on that kind of statement.  Some of you might be aware of the strange and yet difficult times that have unfortunately fallen upon me.  Hopefully, it will all pass soon.

One reason Thoreau loved the woods was because too much socialization would make him ill.  The same went for Charles Darwin.  I am a social person, but when public circumstances go awry, I turn away from the masses.  I desire to be the unobtrusive American traveler in far away countries.  I wish I could shrink into a mouse.  I desire an escape.

Oftentimes the outdoors is my escape.  Indeed, that has been helpful to me recently, yet perhaps my most beneficial escape involves my book-nerd tendency.  I seem to turn to Thoreau and Wendell Berry during difficult times.  There is pleasure in reading and re-reading.  There is pleasure in good sentences.

When anxiety arises, like days like these, I often turn first to a Wendell Berry poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.”  Berry is personal hero of mine.  He’s replied to my letters.  I remember meeting him like a teeny-bopper would remember meeting Lady Gaga today or Elvis of long ago.  He is genuine.  As he says, “he believes in what he stands on,” and I believe him because he the appropriate posture, upstanding.

Below is a poem that I believe is one of the best representations of today’s outdoorsmen.  This is, I think, the place many of us turn, especially those of us in Alaska, when the time is needed.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down whee the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.   I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

About a year ago, I posted a short list describing my preferred methods of travel, click here to read it.  It has been a great year, and I think now is a good time to update the list.  The motivation from this might actually be coming from recent snow.  The motivation might be from having a summer filled with hiking.  Walking now seems so dull.  The motivation might be coming from losing a freezer of salmon.  It might be from a couple good days on the skis.

Favorite Methods of Travel—oh yeah.

1. X-country skis with fly-fishing gear.  Adding the distinction of fishing gear is important to this.  It’s extra weight.  It’s combining enjoyment with that hunter-gatherer instinct.  It’s a testimony to the puritanical work ethic I was raised with—can’t just enjoy a ski, nope, gotta turn it into an attempt to find food.  And I love it. 
2. X-country ski—regular style.  After skiing with a fly rod, skiing without a fly rod can seem trivial and pointless.  Maybe it is.  Regardless, it barely beats number 3.
3. Hiking with a fly-fishing gear.  Not much to say here—If I’m going to walk somewhere, I would rather do it with a fly rod.
4. Pack raft with fly-fishing gear.  Yup.  Seems to be a pattern.
5. Pack raft.  I haven’t done it much, but I foresee an amazing 2012.
6. Horse/mule/pony.  I’ve wanted to be a cowboy since I was 3 or 4 years old.  That dream is not dead.  No way.  Just went to the Alaskan Cowboy store in Wasilly the other day with JT and S.  Lassos, saddles, boots, and wranglers.  Had a stray horse in my yard a month ago.  Some friends keep inviting me to the Southwest to ride.  Who knows what will happen?  Who knows.
7. Sled.  They ain’t just for children.
8. Canoe.  I still miss the one I sold last year.
9. Snowshoes.  Cuz it’s more fun that just walking normal.

Between now and next years, I hope to experience dog mushing and skijoring.

One method of travel that will never end up on the list—snowboarding.   Nope.

My dream method of travel: to ride a reindeer in Siberia.

I hadn’t realized the Frontiersman published this until now, a couple weeks later.  I’m surprised the comments weren’t hate oriented since anger seems to be the typical chatter around the Valley.  Check it out.

http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2011/10/08/opinion/letters/doc4e911d72ad606178692141.txt

I appreciate the current protests over economics.  No doubt, greed is a subject I’m concerned about.  I also have a concern arising much closer to home, in my park.  Below is a letter concerning the new Vehicle Management Plan in Denali Park.  Notice, this letter is going to more places than just Denali.  And try to notice the point where I refrain from holding back the anger.

October 18, 2011

Douglass Bourne

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Palmer, AK 99645

XXXXXXXXXXXXX@gmail.com

Secretary of Interior Kenneth Lee Salazar

Department of the Interior

1849 C Street, N.W.

Washington  DC 20240

CC:              Superintendent Paul Anderson

Denali National Park and Preserve/ATTN: Vehicle Management Plan

Senator Lisa Murkowski

Senator Mark Begich

Denali Citizens Council

National Parks

Sierra Club

Alaska Wildlife Alliance

Subject: Denali Park Road Vehicle Management Plan

Dear Secretary of Interior Kenneth Lee Salazar,

I wish to speak a few words for wilderness. I wish to allow wilderness to grow and prosper in the ways wilderness has done for millennia.  I wish to show you wilderness.  And I hope that when you see it, when you see a caribou grazing on lichen, when you see a raven perching on a spruce bough, when you see a grizzly bear digging for Eskimo potato roots, when you see glaciers spilling into tundra plains, and when you see the tundra encroaching upon the road, when you see wilderness, you recognize it for what it is.

That might seem like a simple request.  That might seem obvious, but you should know, the value of wilderness can be overlooked these days, even at Denali National Park and Preserve, a six million acre federally controlled wilderness in the Interior of Alaska.  When imagining the size of Denali National Park, image the state of Massachusetts.  The two are nearly equivalent in size.  Knowing the size of the place is important.  It helps us put things in perspective.  It helps us frame things in our mind.

To know the acres, people marked boundaries and measured those boundaries.  Sometimes, it is good to measure things.  Measurements help us understand physical characteristics; however, you should know, we can’t always trust measurements and numbers.  You remember the analogy of the island, right?

Let’s say you have an island.  Waves lap onto the beach.  Sometimes tides crash waves across the sand.  Other days, perhaps, the halcyon season is upon us and the waves are calm.  Let’s say you want to measure the beach so you gouge a nice line in the sand to mark your starting point.  Then you begin flipping the yardstick end over end, measuring the perimeter of the island.  Fortunately the waves are mild.  The process is simple.  When you return to your line in the sand, you have a number.  This number is important to you and everyone.  You see, we like numbers.  We recognize numbers.  In first grade we begin training to manipulate them with addition and subtraction. Numbers are familiar to us.

Let’s say, however, you didn’t like the number you found with the yardstick.  Let’s say you decide to measure again because you didn’t think the yardstick was accurate enough.  This time you use a 12” ruler.  The halcyon days are still upon us, so measuring is relatively simple, just a matter of flipping the ruler end over end.  Problematically, compared to the yardstick and the uneven line created by the calm water lapping at the beach, the ruler makes a cumbersome zigzag pattern as it measures the beach.  As you might have guessed, when your measurement of the island is complete, due to the serpentine movement of the ruler, your measurement is much different, much larger than your yardstick measurement.

Here lies a problem.  By re-measuring the island, it seems you are further from knowing its actual perimeter.  For the sake of accuracy.  For the sake of science and numbers, oh how we like numbers, you decide the only way to know the perimeter of the island is to measure again.  This time, third time’s a charm right, the first two were approaching the truth, this one has to be accurate, this time you measure with a protractor.  The protractor should be the perfect tool for this kind of work, a flat side six inches long and little inch marks on the arch to help measure the lapping of the waves.  This measurement will be perfect.  Right?

Scientifically, the methods were solid so the third measurement must be perfect.  It’s a much different number than the two previous, but it is an accurate number.  We can have a lot of pride in the hard work used to identify that number; however, the new number is problematic.  You would think, with the finer measurement, we would better understand the size of the island.  Secretary Salazar, if someone asks you the size of the island, which number is the accurate one?  Which device measured the most accurate perimeter?

I hope you see the greater problem often produced by measurement, by numbers.  Oftentimes, when you look to the minute to understand the whole, you forget you already knew the size of the island, you actually lose track of the original concept.  This point is important, so I’m going to rephrase it: sometimes focusing on numbers and measurements allows a person to shirk the original concept.

Secretary of Interior Salazar, I think this is a good time to remind you of the original concept.  When the land was first established as a park in 1917 it was 2 million acres in size and called McKinley National Park.  The name change and increase in size occurred in 1980 when ANILCA was signed.  The purpose of Denali and the then called McKinley Park was to showcase wilderness.

Decades ago, there was an attempt to authorize a change in infrastructure of McKinley Park and other parks throughout the country.  You are probably familiar with the nationwide parks project called Mission 66.  While Mission 66 was well suited for most parks in the country, people familiar with McKinley Park opposed it.  Adolph Murie, a scientist and conservationist who published the first scientific book on wolves in the predator prey cycle and his brother Olaus, a director of the Wilderness society, both opposed Mission 66.  Adolph’s reasons were simple enough.  In a letter to the then superintendent he wrote,  “Because McKinley is a wilderness within a vast northern wilderness, the ill effect of any intrusion will here be proportionately greater; and any ‘dressing up’ will be more incongruous, will clash more with the wilderness spirit, than would be true in any of our areas in the States.  And since wilderness is recognized as one of the foremost values in the Park, it must be given special consideration in order to maintain its purity.”

National Parks Magazine, a periodical published by the National Parks Conservation Association, published an article by Olaus.  Olaus foresaw Mission 66’s capacity to reduce wilderness.  In the article  “Mount McKinley: Wilderness Park of the North Country,” he describes the wilderness spirit of the park, then writes, “The other side of the picture of Mount McKinley National Park is that of the prevailing enthusiasm for what the bulldozer can do; the speedway-building craze that has come over this continent has begun to penetrate Alaska also. “

The important theme you should be gathering from these quotes is rather simple; Denali is a symbol of wilderness.  Another theme, you might be noticing this in the letter, most certainly it is a common theme around Denali these days, we have to protect the park from Park Service.  All of our human challenges to improve wilderness are ineffective.  We must allow wilderness to be wilderness.

This task seems simple.  In 2001 Superintendent of Denali National Park and Preserve Stephen Martin was awarded the Stephen P. Mather Award by the National Parks Conservation Association.  The NPCA awarded Martin the award “for management decisions based on preserving Denali’s essence as a wilderness wildlife park.”  Wilderness is relatively easy to manage.  Martin kept his hands out of it.

Since Superintendent Martin retired, Superintendent Paul Anderson has had difficulty keeping his hands out of the wilderness or his shovel might be a more appropriate image.  Anderson has spent tens of millions of dollars on construction.  He built a new Visitors Center.  He demolished and constructed a second Visitors Center deep within the park.  He’s built new trails and rest stops.  He’s removed rest stops and had them rebuilt again years after realizing their importance.  He enjoys the vibration of the jackhammer.  He likes the way the engines of bulldozers rumbles in his chest.  It is difficult to put his action in perspective and still remain polite.  Although Superintendent Paul Anderson is in charge of maintaining a wilderness, Anderson is in favor of urban sprawl.

A demolished and reconstructed visitor’s facility at mile 66 of the road is a good example of Anderson’s hyperbole.  The park asks visitors to practice leave-no-trace backpacking, yet they spend millions on a building only open a few months of the year and only visited by a moderate percentage of park visitors.  If the park planners were to practice what the Park preaches to visitors, a tent, a simple structure easy to remove each winter, would leave no trace and serve as a functional visitors facility.

While that visitor facility was being constructed, a tent served as a temporary stopping point.  Now, Superintendent Anderson has been successful at making that tent controversial.  Written into the construction plan the temporary tent was supposed to be temporary, but Anderson, now, will not allow its removal.  It remains in place, adding to the sprawl.

Secretary Salazar, I think you should know the halcyon days have passed.  There is no calm on the current issue.  I am angry and distrustful of Anderson, and I am comfortable with expressing that since I no longer work in Denali; instead, I work in education within the state.  My credentials aren’t important here.  What’s important is that I’m still in close contact with park employees and concession contract employees (bus drivers), and I’m still in intimate contact with the place.  I know of no person who is happy with Anderson’s reign.  People say we have to stand against him.  Retirees say they have never see so much construction.  Returning visitors try to understand what happened to the park they enjoyed.  Anderson builds.  He seems unstoppable.  Comment periods are a joke, for he doesn’t listen.  He has an agenda unsupported in wilderness values.

To put things in perspective, here are some figures for the Recovery Act’s distribution of monies from February 17, 2009 to June 30^th, 2011.  Yellowstone, zip code 82190, received $9,193,570.  Yosemite, zip code 95389, received $6,18,980.  Grand Canyon, zip code 86046, received $7,118,820.  While those parks receive millions more visitors per year than Denali, Denali received $14,007,668 in just the two years of Recovery Act funding.  These excess funds do not include monies for recent Visitors Center demolition and construction plus numerous other contracts.

Currently, the park is seeking comments, like this letter, on a new Vehicle Management Plan.  Secretary Salazar, this management plan is perhaps the most important management document for Denali in decades.  There is only one road in Denali.  It dead-ends ninety-two miles into its middle in an old mining district called Kantishna.  Sixty-six miles in, at Eielson, a recently reconstructed multi-million-dollar Visitors Center offers a destination for some of the bus travelers.  All the travelers are by bus.  You see, bus transportation is the only method of travel past mile fifteen of the park road.  Denali is a wilderness park with basic infrastructure.  Employees and visitors like it that way.

Restricted travel on the Park Road is a good thing.  The road is better suited to occasional buses rather than mass vehicular traffic.  The wildlife utilizes the space between buses to wander back and forth across the road.  And, the bus system allows two very different trips into the park.  One branch of the system allows hiker/backpacker no frills travel.  The other branch offers certified tour guides.  This bus system was created in 1972, when higher numbers of tourists began visiting Denali.  Since the inception of the bus system, it has been tweaked into the system that it is today and a cap at 10, 512 buses per summer are allowed to travel the park road.

These details I’m sharing may give you tangible characteristics of the bus system, yet these details don’t tell you the value of the bus system.  Here’s the importance: the current bus system permits a wilderness experience with little impact on the environment.

Changes to this system will create a greater impact on the wilderness.  For example a rise in vehicular traffic will decrease the amount of wildlife spotted along the road.  While the park scientists have been gathering numbers, creating graphs, and tables for a few years, some of the employees who have been driving buses on the road for thirty years describe the lesser wildlife today than years ago.  They know this because they witnessed the change, the increase in traffic to the 10, 512 number, the increase in construction equipment, and the decreased in the number of wildlife.  It’s a simple observation.  Like the person who recognizes the snow arriving later and later and, perhaps, accumulating in less quantity than years before.

We can trust our observations.  If we had to trust numbers, we could.  One bus driver has been recording wildlife sightings for decades.  He has the data to prove his observations, yet Anderson isn’t interested in these observations.

Park Service devised three potential management plans: A, B, and C.  A is close to the existing.  B and C are quite different, and I argue they are barely worth mentioning since, I believe, those two plans lack morals, wilderness ethics, and contradict the Park’s own management goals.

To help devise these new plans, the park categorized the wilderness into different wilderness zones and subzones.  Secretary Salazar that last sentence should make you think about re-measuring the island.  Our job as caretakers of Denali is to preserve the wilderness and teach a wilderness ethic to visitors.  By evaluating and quantifying wilderness areas along the park road, by measuring the wilderness, park planners are shirking the original concept.  This is unsalutory behavior.

Secretary Salazar, think for a moment, what brings visitor to Denali Park?  What is draw of the place?

I suspect your mind will find images of mountains, like Denali.  You might imagine glaciers.  Perhaps it is a beautiful display of tundra in fall colors.  I know at some point your imagination turns to wild animals for a moment.  I know this because I drove a tour bus in Denali for years.  Visitors want to see wildlife.  I also know bus drivers want to see wildlife.  Seeing a wild animal inhabiting its natural environment is a thrill, even when repeated hundreds of times.

Spotting wildlife is important to visitors traveling on buses, and problematically, wildlife vacate the road corridor as traffic increases.  Since there is already a 10,512 cap on the number of buses allowed to travel the park road, you would think, if the park is dedicated to protecting the wilderness and wildlife of the place, the cap would carry over into the new Vehicle Management Plan.  You would think the planners would safe guard against turning the Park Road into a bus traffic jam.  You would think planners would consider the original concept.

I have driven tours to the dead-end of the 92 mile Park Road, and I’ve driven short tours to mile 17.  Sometimes the subject of traffic would come-up on a trip.  I would mention the road capacity.  Visitors, on both the long and short tour, were astonished the road had such a high capacity each summer.  There desire was not to increase traffic.  In fact, the opposite occurred.  They thought the traffic could be limited even more.  There’s something special about being in Denali; just being there arises strong desires for protection within visitors.

Therein lies the rub Secretary Salazar.  In the new Vehicle Management Plan there is no road traffic capacity.  This is troubling for three reasons.  First, the increased traffic has the potential to reduce wildlife sightings.  Second, the increased traffic will create traffic jams.  Just because a traffic jam occurs in a national park doesn’t make it more fun than a traffic jam in Denver.  Third, only one group has the potential to benefit from the increased bus traffic.

While employees, local residents, and visitors desire the road capacity to stay the same or decrease, park planners have done away with the road capacity all together.  This action, obviously, is linked to the benefit of one group.  This refusal to establish an equal to or lessened road capacity will only help the pocket books of the concessionaire.

In addition to being an apparent Park Service business decision, the absence of a road capacity from the Vehicle Management Plan is troubling for two reasons.  First, buses aren’t near capacity now.  With plenty of room on the existing buses, there is no reason to add more buses.  Second, according to the Vehicle Management Plan, once the plan is put in place, Superintendent Paul Anderson has all power to change or modify the plan.

Secretary Salazar, the best interest of the wilderness of Denali is not placing more power in the hands of Superintendent Paul Anderson.  His track record of destroying the wilderness, his lack of wilderness ethic, and his failure to listen to the desires of park locals are three of many reasons to step in and urge Superintendent Anderson to make decisions in the interest of wilderness conservation.

Years ago, when commenting on this plan began, those of us involved in the park asked for a couple things.  We want a road capacity of 10,512 or less.  And, we want to keep what we have now and tweak it some more, as we have done since the inception of the bus service.  By doing just that, the park is incorporating the first goal of the new management plan, “Protect the exceptional condition of the park’s resources and values through informed, proactive, and transparent management.”  As it is now, the plans neither protect nor are they transparent.

Secretary Salazar I need your help in convincing Superintendent Anderson of the urgency of our wilderness values.  Anderson is not listening to us, and as I mentioned earlier, they days of calm have passes.  We are angry.  We are commenting.  At this point, we need to protect the park from Park Service.

Here are my suggestions for the new plan.  First, Anderson needs to be thanked for all the hard work he and his team put into creating this new plan.  Second, plans B and C should be described as good ideas, perhaps phrases like thinking outside the box or exploring ideas could be used to describe their nature.  Nonetheless, they should be dismissed as good tries yet unacceptable tries.

Plan A has opportunity.  As it is now, it fails the first goal of the plan, it seems dedicated to business, and it grants complete power to a person dedicated to urban sprawl.  These problems with plan A must be addressed before implementation.  My suggestions include adding the 10,512 capacity, sticking to the current plan as much as possible and just tweaking as necessary, and removing the sole power of modification from Superintendent Anderson.

Many of my friends, coworkers, and concerned citizens are writing very good comments about the new vehicle management plan.  If Superintendent Anderson remains unwilling to consider comments of concerned citizens, if Superintendent Anderson remains unwilling to establish a road capacity at or less than 10,512 vehicles, if Superintendent Anderson remains rooting his decisions on the best interest of business or exploitation rather than the best interest of the wilderness, I ask you, Secretary Salazar, then please ask Superintendent Anderson to resign from his position.  He does not deserve the privilege to serve as presiding steward of Denali Park or any national park.

Denali is a special place.  Since it is a wilderness within the larger Alaskan wilderness, we have a substantial obligation to showcase how the federal government can preserve wilderness.  A Superintendent with a wilderness ethic is vital to the place, not a leader with a disposition towards sprawl.  Becoming obsessed with measurement and numbers can allow a person to neglect original goals, but one number important to the goal of wilderness preservation in Denali is 10,512.

I hope you visit Denali some day.  When you do, I hope you don’t become stuck in bus traffic jams.  I do hope you see wildlife.  Perhaps a caribou will run as caribou do, for they always seem to be going somewhere.  Perhaps a long-tailed jaeger will dive for voles.  Perhaps you will see a grizzly slumbering in the tundra.  And I hope you recognize these things as worthy of preserving for future generations.

I leave you with a quote from Edward Abby.  I’m sure you are familiar with it.  Sometimes, I think, it’s good to return to it.  Abbey often serves as a good reminder of our values towards our wild places and our values towards sprawl, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Sincerely,

Douglass Bourne

The date for commenting upon Wishbone hill is fast approaching (been pushed back a month, now–sometime in November).  This mine would only be a few miles from my home.  If you live in this neighborhood, I urge you to write Mr. Kirkham at the address listed below.  I didn’t have a lot of time to put into this letter, so it’s too the point.  Something is better than nothing.  Brevity:

October 1, 2011

TO:     Russell Kirkham

Coal Regulatory Program Manager

Division of Mining, Land & Water

550 West 7^th Avenue, Suite 920

Anchorage, AK 99501-3577

Dear Mr. Russell Kirkham,

Much has been written about the economic advantages and disadvantages of Wishbone Hill.  Occasionally we hear vague mention of how it will adversely affect the health of our community whether it be the health of the people or of the land.   For some reason, I feel this part of the issue has been overlooked.  Wishbone Hill actually threatens the physical health of our community.

I’m an Outsider who has found home in the Valley after trying a few places east of the Mississippi.  I love it here and hope to raise children here some day.  One thing my travels has taught me is that various challenges occur in all communities.  This may be the first time we as a community are debating the existence of a coal mine as a neighbor, yet coal mines have been the neighbors of many, like West Virginia, a place known for its coal strip-mines.

We can learn from West Virginia, in particular, we can learn from Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University’s Community Medicine Department.   Here’s a few of the things Hendryx has learned from his studies in coal-mining communities.  The residents:

• Have a 70 percent increased risk for developing kidney disease.
• Have a 64 percent increased risk for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) such as emphysema.
• are 30 percent more likely to report high blood pressure (hypertension).  (From ScienceDaily 3/27/2008)

These statistics are from open pit and/or strip mines, the same mining styles planned for Wishbone Hill.  If you were to add another mining method to the list, mountain top removal, then you would also need to add birth defects to the illnesses involved with coal mining neighbors.   It’s scary to think, Wishbone Hill could kill us.

One of the things I love about Alaskans is our enthusiasm to play in the outdoors, whether it be hunting, fishing, snowmachining, or skiing.   We work hard to have our play time.  We like to catch our food, and I will admit, I love salmon.  Love them fishes and I worry about the health of them fishes.  When the polluted water runs from the mine, down Buffalo Creek, into the Matanuska, and then into the Knik where the two rivers intertwine, then we have extraordinary number of salmon that will be affected by this mine.  Will the salmon run in polluted waters?  What will happen to our stock of fish in the freezer?  What’s going to happen to Jim Creek?

The act of debating a coal mine may be healthy for a community, but actually having Wishbone Hill will be disastrous to our health.  I’m not against mining.  I’m against a mine that will likely make me ill.  My health and the health of the people in my community are important to me.  I’m against Wishbone Hill because I know which direction the wind blows and which direction the water flows.  Please prohibit a new permit at Wishbone Hill; the health of our community is dependent upon it.

Douglass Bourne