Two years later, with my fisherman-wannabe sweetie, I moved to Alaska. We chose a home nowhere near my perfect and implausible Arrigetch, but a town on the south coast; its dot on a map, at the end of a road, looked of a size that seemed “right” if you expected to find some kind of existing shelter, someone to pay you for doing something, and a post office where you might have an address. We’ve lived there ever after, and I’ve never returned to the Arrigetch or anywhere at all in the Brooks Range.
If you’d told me, in 1971, that I wouldn’t see the Arrigetch again, I would not have believed you. What, short of death, would keep me away?
Well, the reality of living in Alaska impressed itself upon me rather quickly. In our seasonal economy, summer is the frantic period in which to work and earn money; one doesn’t go off and scamper in the mountains. I also learned something about the rest of the year. Winter has its pleasures, but huddling in the cold and dark are not among them. Somehow, I did not become a mountain-mama outdoorswoman, and I did not build my own little log cabin in the Arctic, or even in the sub-Arctic. I did, for a summer, become a camp cook at a remote salmon hatchery, where I filled my spare time fishing for Dolly Varden and picking blueberries by the bucket. I did take up commercial salmon fishing, and I have seen some of Alaska’s magnificent coastline and I have fallen in love with landscapes all over the state, from southeast forests to Alaska Peninsula volcanoes to barrier islands along the Arctic coast. Everyday, when I look out my Homer window at ocean, mountains, and sky, I marvel at the beauty I live within.
These days, my knees are rickety, and I doubt I’ll punish them with any more voluntary backpacking, never mind technical climbing. I know that, although I could, I probably never will see the Arrigetch again. But I’m all right with that. I know something that I didn’t know when I was nineteen, and it has to do with the limits of one life. I also know better some things I may have known even at nineteen, having to do with seizing opportunities and letting ourselves dream. The power of the Arrigetch, for me, lay not only in its splendor, its scale, and the possibilities it suggested. The Arrigetch taught me about the potency of place and why we need large landscapes that will forever be more than what we humans want to make of them.
I’m an Alaskan now, without delusion or much sentiment. Each new summer I meet young people backpacking through town, turning their ruddy faces to the hills. I overhear their plans for scaling this or running that and how, later, they’ll find some old cabin to make-over for winter. They talk about Lake Clark and Katmai, about Denali, the Wrangells, and Kenai Fjords. They get out their maps and find the big spaces that still exist. At the end of the road and beyond, far off in the roomy reaches of our public lands, the newly arrived lie down in fields of fireweed or walk barefoot on smooth sand beaches, and they think they’ve found the places that will forever set the standards for what’s loveliest and most necessary in the world. Each new summer I shake my smarter, graying head, but I can’t keep back the smile that admits memory and moment, now joyfully joined.
Nancy Lord settled in Homer, Alaska thirty years ago and has only recently begun to explore Alaska again as she once thought she routinely would. Recent stops have included the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutians, Bering Sea islands including Pribilofs, and the Arctic Coast. She is the author of three short story collections and three nonfiction books, including Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast, which retraces and reimagines the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899.
Index
Admiralty Island 111
Anan Bear Observatory 7
Anchorage 77, 105
Arrigetch 269
Attu 232
backpacking 96, 182
Bartlett Cove 112
bear watching 8
Bering Sea 227
boat tours 109
Brooks Range 269
Byers Lake 57, 62
Chandalar River 178
Chilkat River 32
Chilkoot Pass 94
Curtis, Edward 32
Dalton Highway 166
Deadhorse 180
Denali 14
Denali State Park 57
Denali National Park 243
dogsledding 142
Exit Glacier 87
Fairbanks 141, 244
fishing 161, 173
Gates of the Arctic National Park 147, 172
Glacier Bay 70
Glacier Bay National Park 67
Glacier flying 15
Glacier River Valley 183
gold rush 94
Haines 37
Halibut Cove 91
Harding Icefield 88
Hidden Hill 142
hiking 96, 182
hunting 119
Holgate Glacier 85
Homer 90
Igichuk Hills 40
Kachemak Bay 91
Kachemak Bay State Park 92
Kahiltna Glacier 16
kayaking 68, 84
Kenai Peninsula 84, 90, 154
Kenai River 88
Kinnickinnick Lake 92
Kiska 231
Kotzebue 41
McNeil River State Game Sanctuary 9
Mt. McKinley 14
Mt. Noak 40
Muir Glacier 70
Muir, John 35
Nome 74
Point Retreat 113
Pratt Museum 90
Prince William Sound 27
rafting 165, 275
Resurrection Bay 84
rock climbing 271
RV camping 77
Sheep Camp 98
snowshoeing 99
Stampede Trail 246
Talkeetna 13
Teklanika River 247
Tlingit culture 34
Tok River 124
Upper Paradise Lake 154
whale-hunting 130
whale-watching 110
White Thunder Ridge 70
Whittier 217
Wiseman 181
Index of Contributors
Beeman, Susan 56–63
Bielawski, Ellen 76–82, 124
Brown, Barbara 27–30
Cahill, Tim 67–73
Caputo, Philip 165–184
Cerwonka, Robin 169
Deschu, Nancy 105–108
Dorsey, James 193
Dunkel, Tom 83–93
Fair, Jeff 3–6
Fortier, Edward J. 255
Frazier, Ian 74–75
Freedman, Lew 143
Goldstein, Niles Elliot 141–151
Greci, Dana 61
Grudowski, Mike 217–226
Haines, John vii
Hayes, Ernestine 109–115
Henry, Daniel 31–48
Houston, Pam 119–129
Howe, Steve 94–104
Jettmar, Karen 203
Kahn, Steve 40, 122
Klein, Chris 111
Krakauer, Jon 13–26
Leavitt, Dustin W. 239
Lord, Nancy 269–277
Marshall, Robert 171
Moore, Kathleen Dean 49–55
Nickles, Jon R. 221
O’Hara, Pat 149
Pestrikof, Florence 35
Readicker-Henderson, Ed 7–12
Roberts, David xiii–xvii, 198–205
Rock, Rex Allen 135
Romano-Lax, Andromeda 51, 152–164
Sherwonit, Bill 209–216
Simpson, Sherry 243–265
Stabenow, Dana 95
Steere, Mike 185–197
Steffian, Amy 35
Sullivan, Toby 227–242
Troll, Tim 213
Villars, Heather 130–140
Woodbury, John 246
Recommended Reading
Berger, Thomas R. Village Journey. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985.
Cahill, Tim. Road Fever: A High Speed Travelogue. New York: Vintage Departures, 1994.
Davidson, Art. Minus 148°: First Winter Ascent of Mt. McKinley. Seattle: Cloudcap Press, 1986.
Ford, Corey. Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The
Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska. Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1992.
Freedman, Lew. Iditarod Classics: Tales of the Trail from Men and Women Who Race Across Alaska. Kenmore, Wash.: Epicenter Press, 1992.
Gabriel, Moses P. Gwich’in History. Fairbanks: Yukon/Alaska Publishing Company, 1993.
Garfield, Brian. The Thousand-Mile War. New York: Doubleday, 1969.
Goldstein, Niles Elliot. God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places. New York: Bell Tower, 2000.
Halliday, Jan. Native Peoples of Alaska: A Traveler’s Guide to Land, Art and Culture. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1998.
Hedlin, Robert and Gary Holthouse (eds.). Alaska: Reflections on Land and Spirit. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.
Houston, Pam. A Little More About Me. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Huntington, Sidney. Shadows on the Koyukuk: An Alaskan Native’s Life Along the River. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1993.
Jans, Nick. A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1996.
Kizzia, Tom. The Wake of the Unseen Object: Among the Native Cultures of Bush Alaska. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992.
Krakauer, Jon. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons & Burford, 1990.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Villard Books, 1996.
Kremers, Carolyn. Place of the Pretend People: Gifts from a Yup’ik Eskimo Village. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1996.
Kusz, Natalie. Road Song: A Memoir. New York: Harper-Perennial, 1991.
Langdon, Steve J. The Native People of Alaska. Anchorage: Greatland Graphics, 1993.
Lentfer, Hank and Carolyn Servid (eds.). Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2001.
Leo, Richard. Way Out Here: Modern Life in Ice-Age Alaska. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1996.
Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986.
Lord, Nancy. Fish Camp: Life on an Alaskan Shore. Washington, D.C.: Shearwater Books, 1997.
Lord, Nancy. Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press, 2000.
Marshall, Robert. Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
McGinnis, Joe. Going to Extremes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
McPhee, John. Coming into the Country. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976.
Mergler, Wayne (ed.). The Last New Land: Stories of Alaska Past and Present. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1996.
Miller, Debbie. Midnight Wilderness: Journeys in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990.
Moore, Kathleen Dean. Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 1999.
Morgan, Lael (ed.). Alaska’s Native People. Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Quarterly 6(3), 1979.
Nelson, Richard. The Island Within. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Paulsen, Gary. Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod. New York: Harvest Books, 1995.
Rich, Kim. Johnny’s Girl: A Daughter’s Memoir of Growing Up in Alaska’s Underworld. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1999.
Roberts, David. The Early Climbs: Deborah and the Mountain of My Fear. Seattle: The Mountaineers Books, 1991.
Roberts, David. Moments of Doubt and Other Mountaineering Writings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Mountaineers, 1986.
Romano-Lax, Andromeda. Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula: A Traveler’s Guide. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 2001.
Romano-Lax, Andromeda. How to Rent a Public Cabin in Southcentral Alaska. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1999.
Schooler, Lynn. The Blue Bear. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
Servid, Carolyn. Of Landscape and Longing: Finding a Home at the Water’s Edge. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2000.
Servid, Carolyn (ed.). From the Island’s Edge: A Sitka Reader. St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 1995.
Sherwonit, Bill. To the Top of Denali: Climbing Adventures on North America’s Highest Peak. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 2000.
Sherwonit, Bill. Alaska’s Accessible Wilderness: A Traveler’s Guide to Alaska’s State Parks. Portland: Alaska Northwest Books, 1996.
Sherwonit, Bill (ed.). Denali: A Literary Anthology. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 2000.
Sherwonit, Bill and Jeff Schultz. Iditarod: The Great Race to Nome. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2002.
Simpson, Sherry. The Way Winter Comes. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1998.
Spencer, Page. White Silk and Black Tar. Minneapolis, Bergamot Books, 1990.
Walker, Tom and Larry Aumiller. River of Bears. Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 1993.
Waterman, Jon. In the Shadow of Denali. New York: Dell, 1994.
Zwinger, Susan. Stalking the Ice Dragon: An Alaskan Journey. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to all of the writers, who submitted so many remarkable stories, including ones that did not make it into this anthology. Thank you to David Roberts for his delightful and perceptive introduction, and to the editors and publishers at Travelers’ Tales for their fine work and dedication to this book.
Additionally, the Alaska editors express appreciation to their families for ongoing support of their writing lives. Bill Sherwonit especially thanks his wife, Dulcy Boehle, and, mom, Torie Sherwonit; Ellen Bielawski thanks Kay Bielawski; and Andromeda Romano-Lax thanks Brian Lax.
“Sixty-Five” by Jeff Fair reprinted from the December 2000 issue of Appalachia. Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Fair. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Surrounded by Bears” by Ed Readicker-Henderson published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Ed Readicker-Henderson.
“The Flyboys of Talkeetna” by Jon Krakauer excerpted from Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer. Copyright © 1990 by Jon Krakauer. Reprinted by permission of The Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot.
“Kayaking Through a Timeless Realm of Rain, Bugs, and B.O.” by Barbara Brown published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Barbara Brown.
“Eating Edward Curtis at the Ugruk Café” by Daniel Henry published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Daniel Henry.
“The Only Place Like This” by Kathleen Dean Moore excerpted from Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore. Copyright © 1999 by Kathleen Dean Moore. Reprinted by permission of The Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot.
“From Scratch” by Susan Beeman published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Susan Beeman.
“The Great White Philharmonic” by Tim Cahill reprinted from the June 1996 issue of Outside. Copyright © 1996 by Tim Cahill. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Woe Is Me” by Ian Frazier originally appeared in the March 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Copyright © 2001 by Ian Frazier. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Camping at WalMart” by Ellen Bielawski published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Ellen Bielawski.
“Taking on the Kenai” by Tom Dunkel reprinted from the May/June 1998 issue of National Geographic Traveler. Copyright © 1998 by the National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission of the National Geographic Society.
“Hell Can’t Be Worse Than This Trail” By Steve Howe reprinted from the February 1995 issue of Backpacker. Copyright © 1995 by Backpacker/Rodale Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
“Downtown Duel” by Nancy Deschu published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Nancy Deschu.
“Point Retreat” by Ernestine Hayes published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Ernestine Hayes.
“The Blood of Fine and Wild Animals” by Pam Houston excerpted from A Litt
le More About Me by Pam Houston. Copyright © 1999 by Pam Houston. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company.
“On the Pack Ice” by Heather Villars published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Heather Villars.
“In God’s Backyard” excerpted from God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places by Niles Elliot Goldstein. Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000 by Niles Elliot Goldstein. Used by permission of Bell Tower, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Seeking Paradise” by Andromeda Romano-Lax published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Andromeda Romano-Lax.
“The Last Road North” by Philip Caputo reprinted from the November 1995 issue of Men’s Journal. Copyright © 1995 by Men’s Journal Company, LLC. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
“Everything’s Oishi” by Mike Steere reprinted from Outside. Copyright © 1993 by Mike Steeve. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Shot Tower” by David Roberts excerpted from Moments of Doubt and Other Mountaineering Writings by David Roberts. Copyright © 1986 by David Roberts. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Hairy Man Lives” by Bill Sherwonit published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Bill Sherwonit.
“Would You Be, Could You Be (And Why in the Hell Would You Want to Be) My Neighbor?” by Mike Grudowski reprinted from the April 1999 issue of Outside. Copyright © 1999 by Mike Grudowski. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Leaving Land Behind” by Toby Sullivan published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Toby Sullivan.
“I Want to Ride on the Bus Chris Died In” by Sherry Simpson published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Sherry Simpson.
“In the Giant’s Hand” by Nancy Lord published with permission from the author. Copyright © 2003 by Nancy Lord.
Additional Acknowledgments (arranged alphabetically)
Selection from Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range by Robert Marshall copyright © 1956, 1970 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by permission.
Selection from Alutiiq Word of the Week: Lessons in Alutiiq Languange and Culture by Amy Steffian and Florence Pestrikof copyright © 1999 by the Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository. Published with permission.
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