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.
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| 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.
