Reading the History of a Place

Today, Alaskan naturalist Richard Carstensen took the wildness literature class on a bushwhack (without a machette) which was really a lot more like Twister than war, my favorite childhood card game.

For this entry, I've decided to narrate the journey in an extensive series of photographs, commenting and reflecting on the experience through the caption sequence.

Click here and scroll up to join me on the walk through peat bogs & fens, an all-age forest with old-growth trees, and a younger blow-down forest.

Rainy Day

Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.

So goeth the nursery rhyme. The already water-logged ground here in Juneau has attempted to absorb rain non-stop for about twenty-four hours. Rain in Juneau is an interesting phenomenon. While each day since my arrival has seen precipitation, only three of the past week could be considered to have born rain. The usual day in Juneau includes the chance encounter with the finest of water droplets, condensed out of the atmosphere more than from a specific cloud, who have suffered the inevitable gravitational effects which act on the massified.

I found myself humming the above tune as I walked through the slop even though I welcomed the rain. Urban, Western (though I'm now more westerly than I've ever been before!) mores have conditioned my outlook on the world, no doubt. Roderick Nash's discussion of the ancient European roots to the American mentality toward wilderness seems alive and well in this Romanitc citizen's subconscious. After all, my "wilderness condition" is one of intellectual appreciation more akin to the literati figures such as William Byrd and James Fenimore Cooper than to the utilitarian scrutiny and moralizing hatred required of the pioneering figures who first settled the wilds of the American continent. And yet I share in the tradition which reads wildness as a pejorative.

Humanity cannot control the weather; rain is therefore, an extension of the wild. Today, rain has made the picturesque ambiance of my wilderness surroundings still more wild, heightening the ingrained subconscious notion that my locale and motives are strange. The day has been a gloomy one only because I have been conditioned to think it such, for gloom is a human construct. In reality, the surrounding wilderness has not taken a turn for the gloomy, becoming ever more wild, rather the soggy peat under my feet has developed brown puddles rich with nutrient. In closing, I shall venture outdoors once more today in order to cast off the dark, heavy feelings I've worn in favor of simply getting wet.

Encounter with a Red Squirrel

On my way to lunch today, I happened across a little red squirrel chirping away in a tall spruce. At first I couldn't find the animal who was singing, it was so small by comparison to the tree and was situated some distance up its trunk. I felt myself drawn to the sound, though, by its sheer volume and the mystery of the moment. The mystery revealed itself to be a squirrel oriented veritcally, parallel to the trunk. I wondered for what purpose the creature barked so insistently, for I could now discern an urgency in its voice.

Just then a blue jay's shadow played over the daylight illuminating the path. I realized that the squirrel had know of the bird's presence all along; for the furry fellow's cry only intensified with the bird's flight. While the squirrel had not welcomed the jay's presence, it preferred the status quo to movement, which required renewed strategizing.

The blue jay alighted in a tree, yet the squirrel kept up its mighty bark. As I remained before the little animal, it charged a few paces down the trunk and let out its yawp. Yet I stood beholding the foxy coat and bushy tail. The squirrel charged a second and third time. Upon hearing the third cry, I realized that I, the human, had been the unwanted visitor. From the episode's start, the squirrel meant to ward me off, yet by sounding the alarm it had intoxicated me.

Squirrels have not announced themselves in my urban, suburban, or rural experiences. They have preferred to scurry across the scene without attracting the notice of passers by. Here in Juneau, this wild--or is it rural still?--squirrel continued barking for fifteen minutes straight. Not so terrified by my presence as to scamper away before I might see it, the squirrel had had the audacity to stand its ground against a formidable foe. Had my camera been the gun of one of my pioneering ancestors, the squirrel would have found himself in a Brunswick stew.

*****

Later today, I watched a bald eagle soar on the air currents above the shores of Auke Bay. I was on a walk along the shore and happened to be standing thirty yards from the spruce atop which it chose to perch. After admiring its magnificent size from that distance, I crept up under the eagle's tree. The eagle glanced at my approach. Standing a yard from the tree, I studied the eagle's yellow eye, its large, gripping talons, its fluffy, slightly unkempt feathers. Head in wing, the eagle resumed its nap.

While the eagle did not feel threatened by my presence as the squirrel did, both animals shared a quality I could recognize only as wildness for a few hours. But, of course, the two animals I encountered today are wild and live in a region which is wilderness relative to my experience. By terming the eagle and the squirrel wild, I had identified them as inhabiting a different zone from my own habitual realm of existence--one in which even a squirrel considers me part of the throng of nature.

Photo-Journal Blog

For ease, I've created a parallel blog to which I'll post photos throughout the summer. I'll create links to specific photos within my writings, but they may be viewed together at my Juneau, Alaska Photo-Blog (http://juneau-photos.blogspot.com/).

Arrival

I arrived in Juneau, Alaska nestled above Auke Bay this morning at 12:30 a.m. (4:30 EST) and immediately caught a taxi to my lodgings where I promptly went to bed, having been awake for about 22 hours. Despite my overbearing fatigue, I had trouble falling asleep due to the dusky early morning sky.

This morning, I awoke refreshed, though, and began to settle in and get my bearings around the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) campus. I've uploaded to my photo-journal blog a few photos I shot while walking the Spanish-moss-tinseled evergreen-lined path from my lodgings to the main campus. While last summer in Bread Loaf, Vermont, waist-high ferns amazed me, their cousins here in Alaska no longer seem unusual. The foliage that has caught my imagination already this summer gives the impression of a seemingly prehistoric weed. Easily four-feet tall, the more illustrious specimens seem to be just the right size for a dinosaur's chomper.

The day began overcast and misty and about 5o F, but vacillated from wet to cloudy to clear all day and reached 70 F (very warm for Juneau, according to the locals, who wore T-shirts and shorts while I remained comfortable in my jeans, long-sleeve shirt, and fleece vest). At 8:40 in the evening now, the light outside would suggest 6:00 pm back home in North Carolina. I'm looking forward to seeing my first Alaskan sunset on the longest day of the year.

As for sunlight, the absence of sunglasses has struck me today. I have only seen one pair of sunglasses the entire day -- they were mine. I presume that locals see so little of the sun during the winter that they welcome the intense ambient light of the extended daytime during summer months.

Comments of Particular Note (June 09, 2006)

On the last day of class this year, I asked my students to read the blog's first post and leave me a comment. Some left kind retrospective notes about the year which I've left (mostly for me to remember them while away this summer); others left more introspective or reflective commentary on my original post, "Naturalized Nature" or the general notion of a trip to Alaska. As they take up the questions I posed, I've listed their names for the reader's ease.

Nicole
Hill
Colin
Marina
Adam
John
Rashidi
Arjun
Ben S.
David
Julie C.
Natalie
Lindsey
Erik
Rachel

Naturalized Nature

I must admit that as I prepare for my trip to Alaska, the current immigration debate echoes in my mind’s ear. As a nation of immigrant descent, we embrace moves of assimilation. When we speak of naturalized citizens, images of immigrant families who have begun to fold themselves into the population come to mind. Yet how natural is it to allow one's self to be assimilated by another culture? Is not the natural state of every individual to be true to her or his identity? How natural is it for dogs to be "man's best friend"? How natural is it for my beloved cat, Moonshadow, to curl up in a human's lap -- even if it is my own? I have made Moonshadow a naturalized citizen of my home -- he does not step foot outside -- just as waves of immigrant populations have been naturalized since the founding of our country. Were I to release Moonshadow to the wilds of my suburban neighborhood, he would surely perish.

Behind my townhouse, I maintain a modest specimen garden, befitting my status as a young teacher. My fiancee and her mother introduced me to gardening as an alternative to sculpture which I've found too messy without a proper studio. For the past two years, my studio has been the great outdoors ten feet from my back door. I get to work with my hands to cultivate living visual art. At first I felt a connection to the land through working the earth. Yet I have begun to question my garden’s claim as "natural," for by definition, cultivation requires the manipulation of nature by a green thumb.

We who inhabit urban or suburban zones exist denatured -- even while some of us get dirty after work before stepping back indoors. My students and I have been realizing this through discussions of Chris McCandless's story as told by Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild. We find ourselves longing to take the pulse of the "raw throb of existence."* This summer I have the opportunity to venture in search of wildness. While attending graduate school in Juneau, Alaska, I hope to become a truly naturalized citizen. I invite you to join the experience.

*Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996, New York: Anchor, 1997. 22.