Sunday, May 6, 2012

Wild Alaska


Wild Alaska

Literature of Alaska and the Yukon Territories encompasses a wide range of writing about the wild and certainly unpredictable lands in both areas. It encompasses fiction, non-fiction, biographical writings, and poetry that tell stories about the Land of the Midnight Sun. While not all accounts are true, they all captured the essence of the real Alaska. The Alaska I know and love, and the Alaska of imagination. This semester we read some wonderful fictional stories from very well-known writers, like Jack London’s “White Fang,” and “How to Build a Fire.” We also heard from lesser known writers like Robert Jones, who wrote, “Slade’s Glacier,” a fictional tale about two bush pilots who discover the power of kindness, friendship and deceit after their plane crashes in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness.  

Even though I love a good fiction book I really enjoy when writers share stories from their own lives. The everyday adventures that we all experience have been my favorite kind to read this semester. I especially like the tales of animal encounters. In The Battle of the Giants, W. Douglas Burden shares the experience of becoming a spectator in a battle between two gladiator-like bull moose as they fought for dominance in the wild. Burden allows readers to see through his eyes when he writes, “the resounding clash of antlers backed with nearly fifteen hundred pounds of taut sinew and bursting muscle. I could not help feeling that here was a gladiator-fighting, defending, but without the determination to kill” (p. 391).  Another one of my favorite real-life tales is by author Frank Dufresne. In the excerpt from “No room for Bears” titled, “Grizzly Habitat,” Durresne tells the tale of two deer hunters on Admiralty Island, a place with the biggest population of wild grizzly bears in the world. In this tale the hunters must bed down for the night on a bear trail so they would not lose their way back to their boat. This story is a wonderful depiction of the intelligence of wild bears and their ability to problem solve. In the story the men are stoking a fire between themselves and a large, hungry bear who seek to take their kill. The men find the bear is smart enough to figure out he needs to circle around behind them in order to find a weak spot. The bear never attacks the men and thankfully the men do not need to kill the bear, but it is an exciting tale and one that is certainly very real in the Alaskan wilderness.

 Admiralty Island, known to the Tlingit as Xootsnoowú, which is sometimes interpreted as "Fortress of the Bear(s)," is renowned as one of the most famous bear sanctuaries in the world. There are an estimated 1600 grizzlies here and they are said to outnumber humans. According to Dufresne there is “one bear per square mile. Five times more bears than people” (p. 652). Here grizzlies average 8-9 feet but can easily grow much larger. 

To learn more about the grizzlies on Admiralty Island check out http://www.gonorth-alaska.com, or http://www.beyondak.com
 
This picture was taken on Admiralty Island in 2007, and depicts a mother grizzly and her two cubs salmon fishing.

            Another animal story I really enjoyed was from the book “Icebound Summer” by author Sally Carrighar. In the excerpt titled, “The Dark Song,” we follow a female loon as she migrates south for the winter. Carrighar weaves a heartfelt tale of friendship, freedom and love as we mentally watch the loon float over lonely waters in search of a mate, get trapped and held against her will by humans and then set free again to find love and happiness, or at least that’s what I got out of it. In this story I connected on an emotional level with a loon as she fought to be free in so many ways and finally found happiness. 

            For me Alaskan literature is about feeling a connection to the lands and the creatures within it and sharing that connection with readers so they can be connected as well. Alaska is so wild and beautiful that you simply cannot truly live in this state without being in love with something about it. I love the wild uninhibited chaos of the lands. Nature here exists on its own playing field without any rules or regulations, and most days I love that. Weather, wildlife and even the people have their own way of existing that you simply do not see anywhere else in the United States. Alaskan literature shares all this and more with readers.