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Posted At : August 12, 2008 1:00 AM
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Outdoors, Alaska
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Excerpted from My Wilderness: The Pacific West by William O. Douglas, published in 1960 by Doubleday, a division of Random House.
Read by Eleanor Huffines: "As Alaskans we are incredibly fortunate to have this nation's only Arctic ecosystem, a place where traditional cultures and wildlife still thrive." Eleanor is the Alaska Director of The Wilderness Society. She has been fortunate to spend a significant portion of the last 14 years also guiding people from around the world paddling, hiking and climbing throughout Alaska. She checks out this music website: Pollstar.com.
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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."
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Taken from A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, published by Broadway Books
Read by Katie Conway, "vice president of the Alaska Women's Environmental Network, a local nonprofit of women inspired by nature." Born and raised in Alaska, Katie divides her time between working for the Alaska State Legislature and writing her Masters thesis. It's been a busy summer -- she's hoping to sometime very soon experience the simplicity of a wilderness escape just like the one in this piece.
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Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail and wrote about it in A Walk in the Woods:
‘Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. ...
You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties.... All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.
There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. ...
Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don't think, "Hey, I did sixteen miles today," any more than you think, "Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today." It's just what you do.'
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From "Steepletop," a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, appearing in her volume Mine the Harvest, published by HarperCollins.
Read by Leslie Shallcross: "Who could help but be a fan of the large, fragrant purple or creamy white blossoms -- they are beautiful downtown right now! As a child, I often played in the wonderful retreat provided by lilac bushes -- the thick trunks created a hiding place under the beautiful foliage and flowers." Leslie is an 8-year resident of Alaska, a public health nutritionist, and an assistant professor with the Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Health, Home and Family Development program. Her earliest memories of family life include enjoying observations of the natural world -- identifying the flowers, trees, snakes and birds in her yard. And of course smelling the lilacs. |
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Edna St. Vincent Millay loved the lilacs in her garden, but she noticed what happened in the rain in her poem "Steepletop." This is the second stanza of the poem:
"Nothing could stand
All this rain.
The lilacs were drowned, browned
before I had even
smelled them
Cool against my cheek, held down
A little by my hand.
Pain
Is seldom preventable, but is
presentable
Even to strangers on a train--
But what the rain
Does to the lilacs--is something
you must sigh and try
To explain."
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Contributed and read by Elizabeth Manning, an education and outreach specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge was judged by Rick Sinnott, ADF&G's Anchorage-area biologist who enjoys writing these Japanese poems. A haiku has three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables and often reflects on some aspect of nature. Elizabeth recommends: www.alaskabears.alaska.gov. |
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This summer, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game held a Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge in which entrants had to use the words "bears," "garbage," and "shorts" in a haiku. These were the distinguished results:
First prize, from Barb Williams and family:
"Eat my shorts!" I cried
Backing into the garbage,
Afraid of the bears.
Megan Sharkey got right to the point of the contest:
Garbage on the porch
is the best way to get a
bear on short notice.
As did Jessica Pisa:
Bears in undershorts
Belong in a circus act
Not in your garbage.
Jamie Rogers focused on the crime:
Bear's tight alibi
Rules out short list of suspects
in garbage caper.
And Jessica Bowman, with the title "Divorcing Him of His Clothes," threw in some humor:
If there's garbage here
Unfit even for the bears
It's his yellow shorts.
... hoping you're keeping your bears and garbage separated ... at least when they're not in poetry.
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Taken from Traditional Food Guide, available at www.anthc.org.
Read by Karen Mitchell: "I work at the Alaska Native Tribal Health
Consortium, where we try to come up with better ways to help Alaska Native cancer survivors." Karen is part Yup'ik Eskimo, and a lifelong Alaskan. She
lives in Anchorage with her daughter, Jennifer, and their miniature
dachshund Whennie, who thinks she rules the world. Website: http://www.emersonfortheday.com. |
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The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium just produced the Traditional Food Guide, which covers the nutritional value of subsistence foods and includes traditional recipes. In the book, Eleanor McMullen of Port Graham describes how they shared their fish:
"I took my grandson out in a skiff to catch pinks. We caught 15 fish, and then went house to house to give to elders. At the last elder's house, we gave away the only fish left. After leaving, my grandson asked ‘Umma, what are we going to do? My mom needs fish too.' I said we can go fishing tomorrow. This was my grandson's first experience of the ‘gift of giving' to others."
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