Log of the Harriman Expedition: Mead Treadwell

In 1899, the Harriman Expedition sailed to Alaska with a party of scientists, explorers, and writers on board. Henry Gannett, President of the National Geographic Society, was overwhelmed by the enormity of the experience.

"There is one word of advice and caution to be given those intending to visit Alaska for pleasure [he said]. If you are old, go by all means. But if you are young, wait. The scenery of Alaska is much grander than anything else of the kind in the world and it is not well to dull one's capacity for enjoyment by seeing the finest first."

Beluga Days: Nancy Lord

This is Nancy Lord, and this piece is from my book Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale's Truths:

"I had wanted, when I started, to learn everything I could about Cook Inlet's belugas. What I'd learned was that most of what was about belugas was really about things other than, or in addition to, belugas.

Dena'ina writer Peter Kalifornsky had taught that everything has a life of its own, but that nothing lives by itself. Cook Inlet's original people ... understood ecological relationships in a way that our ... scientists seem only now to be catching up to. The plankton connects to the salmon and the salmon to the beluga, and the pesticide sprayed in Mexico connects to the river and the air to the beluga..., and the people eating muktuk connect to ... the woman who reaches out and touches a wild beluga swimming by. The senators and the judges, and the corporations, connect to them all."

My Wilderness: Eleanor Huffines

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas visited the Brooks Range and wrote about it in My Wilderness: The Pacific West.

"The Arctic has strange stillness that no other wilderness knows. It has loneliness, too -- a feeling of isolation and remoteness born of vast spaces, the rolling tundra, and the barren domes of limestone mountains. This is a loneliness that is joyous and exhilarating. All the noises of civilization have been left behind; now the music of the wilderness can be heard. ...

The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few. It is a call to adventure. This is not a place to possess ... it is one to behold with wonderment."

Leaving Resurrection: Eva Saulitis

This is Eva Saulitis, and this piece is from my essay "To the Reader Who, From the Eternal Present, Asks About the Oil Spill."

"...the killer whales' lives go on in every weather, storm or fair, and, it seems, against the odds, for now -- lucky, lucky, blessed us -- they carry on. That's the present tense that matters. And yes, the oil seeps into every sentence, every observation, every breath. But the present tense is real. Reader, it's the sacred grail, the pot of gold, the pearl without price. And today, in this holy present -- August 11, noon -- in the lee of Knight Island, this place and these animals endure."

Never Night: Derick Burleson

This is Derick Burleson of Two Rivers, Alaska, and this is my poem, "Never Night."

You'd like it here where
it's never night, where the sun
circles, rather, until it ends
up where it started from,
east or west, rises, sinks
but doesn't ever set,
where in the summer
you never need to sleep
and all day and all night
the sky is a series of blues
you've seen only once before,
blues van Gogh painted
at the end. Where all the traffic
is fox and moose and bear,
where aspen and birch
bud and leaf all in one day,
and your sleep, when sleep
finally comes, is innocent,
spring wind through a window
left open now that spring
is passing fast and summer
won't stay here long before
the snow sweeps any green
away again and then it's always
night. You'd like that too, when
endless night falls and the moon
comes up, reads your book over
your shoulder, learns which dead
poet moves you tonight,
when any heat at all rises,
and becomes a visible thing.