From Alaska
A lot of my adventures have moments when I am beat over the head with a grand takeaway.
I will never forget the immense satisfaction that washed over me as I sat on the frozen ground in Iceland taking in the aurora for the first time. The feeling of inspiration that overcame me when I saw a California condor above Zion National Park - living proof of the effectiveness of conservation - set me on the professional path I currently walk.
My first summer in Alaska was awash with micro-moments like these. There wasn’t really a singular event that stood out above the rest, likely because the entire thing was so uniquely profound. As a naturalist and writer, it is my job to convey my observations about the natural world to those willing to listen, yet I often felt myself straining to keep pace with my desire to be professionally prolific. Often I was so overcome with joy and curiosity and the result was continued observation and study. Writing and photos took a backseat not by design but by necessity. But with summer firmly in the rear view, chilly autumn breezes served as reminders to write while the experience was still fresh.
Typically, I write about the places I travel to with some sort of grand unified theory in mind. In Maui it was whales and the lessons we can glean from them, in New England it was personal connection to the land and sea, and so on throughout my portfolio. But my aim with this collection is simply to put pen to paper (fingers to keys, I guess) and just see what flows organically. I’m going to share some of my highlights, my favorite natural history tidbits, and some photos I took amidst all the chaos of guiding, naturalizing, and trying to take it all in. Perhaps some sort of theme will arise, but I’d like to try and avoid the tired cliches around nature writing that prove a pitfall to many who endeavor to write about such places. So, here it is: four vignettes extracted from a summer teeming with them.
Big
The finer details of my first days in Alaska are sort of a blur. Jet-lagged and stressed from the pressures of a new job, my journal entries are incoherent. My photos are sloppy. My notes proved unbelievably unhelpful in preparing any sort of educational materials for clientele. But my impressions are incredibly concrete: I was gobsmacked by how big everything seemed. I have spent so much of my life outdoors, but so much of that time was spent in little pockets of wildness surrounded by the familiar sterility of modern living. I took pride in knowing about the fish and reptiles and birds and invertebrates that lived in my little Jersey Shore pocket of suburbia that might be alien to thousands of my neighbors, but everything seemed finite. It was as if the wild were little more than a terrarium whose walls were pavement and brick. As I traveled around the globe and experienced new wonders in far off places, that same feeling persisted- every place had a story and a unique natural history, but you could only walk so far until you were trespassing into someone’s backyard or place of business.
That feeling was utterly decimated in Southeast Alaska. As I cruised the Inside Passage, the circuitry that enables the vibrant bounty of this place, I was left with the opposite sensation entirely. There simply is not enough time in one human lifetime for a proper exploration of these great swathes of wilderness. Each valley beckoned with a siren’s song that reverberated off of its walls. As if architected intentionally to lure adventurers they amble into rolling green hills, fierce blue glaciers, and sheer walls of granite. Within each square foot of these valleys a drama raged on. Battered and berated by millennia of the ebb and flow of glaciers, lichens had painted themselves onto the surface of rock when icy conditions finally relented for but a drop in the bucket of geologic time. From this interaction a vast array of life explodes into being. Fueled by the driving, ever-looming rain and the nourishing summer sun the temperate rainforest From lush beds of mosses that adorn the forest floor and absorb the steps of the spellbound hiker to hemlocks that bend up the canopy. More than a feast for the eyes the Tongass National Forest, of which Southeast Alaska is almost entirely comprised, is a symphony for all the senses. The prick of devil’s club, unpredictable turns in the weather, and signs of bear activity are powerful and fun reminders of individual powerlessness against the forces of wilderness. Blueberries and the merry chorus of the Swainson’s thrush dash uneasiness and bring comfort.
The forest does not tell her story like the novelist does. There are no long paragraphs to introduce characters, no chapters dedicated entirely to the lore of generations gone by, and there are most assuredly no convenient conclusions. The forest speaks to us through subtle clues that the observer must fit into a narrative. When I came across a crab claw protruding from a stump overgrown with moss and fungus, I happened upon an unbelievable story. A crab survived the trials of planktonic youth and accumulated the nutrients to reach proficient size and succeed for a time in the life aquatic, feasting on the detrital wonderland that is Southeast Alaska. Somewhere at the intersection of sea and terrain that same crab had its life upended, was removed from the comforts of its dwelling, and found its unfortunate terminus within the food web. It is here where our story accelerates- this poor soul was dragged far into the forest where few of its kind have ventured and was deposited by a mink or river otter or bird or whatever into the stump we had met earlier. This stump grows atop a layer of thin soil composed of the trees that have lived and died long before our story takes place. Within that soil layer may be the remains of a select few other crabs that met the same end and dispersed the nutritional bounty of the Pacific into the forest. That forest nourished by the Pacific will in turn provide that same nourishment back, offering nutrient deposition and creating habitat for spawning fish. As that crab claw is repurposed by fungi and decomposers that story continues to write itself.
Or maybe some kid on a hike a few weeks prior showed his dad the claw and then laid it to rest where I happened upon it. Either way, a story is written daily in the Tongass. The story is big and has no beginning or end - for even after the forest and the planet ceases to exist its molecules will construct a new narrative somewhere else in the universe. Perhaps the most marvelous property of nature: despite all our attempts at composing grand epics, she weaves a better story without the aid of language.
I’ll Have What They’re Having
I will not pretend to make any sort of grand pronouncements on the interconnectedness of Alaska’s salmon and its way of life. Scientists work diligently to prove the molecular connection between these fish and their habitat. Locals have mastered depictions of their ecology in totems. The only new thing that will come of this section is my perspective. I have seen great fish spawns and kills during my life in the mid-Atlantic, but they pale in comparison to what I had the privilege to witness in Alaska.
The rudiments of ecology are transactional. It is simply the ways by which energy, chemicals, and nutrients maneuver through the universe - organisms are but a conduit for that movement. For the naturalist this is the fundamental way in which we must view nature. Energy and matter are finite, and by understanding that the biotic world is acting in ways to garner and conserve these resources our time in nature will be more rewarding. Through this worldview we may set ourselves up to see the orchestrated violence of the food web, predict the times and places at which we may see seasonal migrants, and properly fathom the intricacies of our planet. The beauty of complete wilderness is that it invites further unpredictability into this equation through the addition of increased variables. More plants, fewer pesticides, reduced habitat fragmentation - all of this invites wonder into our experiences in the outdoors. In Southeast Alaska these magnificent transactions often manifest themselves in and around salmon spawning streams.
Much like a city center, the salmon stream is alive with nutritional inputs from around the globe. Those who spent years acquiescing the riches of the Pacific set out to fulfill their ultimate destiny in these streams: to spawn and to die. As the salmon produce their progeny their once powerful anatomy betrays them. The vibrant colors of the breeding season fade to the dull beige of autumn. Powerful sprints against the unending force of water peter to a halt. Indeed all salmon will meet their end here, some in a slow malaise, but others in a blaze of glory.
It is untrue to say that the vast majority of anadromous fish ever born will fail to meet their full potential. Sure, most salmon will die some time before the opportunity to produce young manifests itself - but the evolution of these fish and those they share a habitat with has ensured that this is merely the order of things. A female salmon will deposit hundreds of eggs into a redd and of those hundreds but a handful will go on to perpetuate the species. Countless others will never hatch. Some will be picked off by birds the instant they do. One might get stuck in a shallow pool on a hot day. Fly fishing. Killer whales. Algal blooms. Freezing. Starving. One might live the greatest life in salmonid history, return to the stream swollen with roe, and during her one final leap above a fall into her natal stream be plucked out of the air by a waiting brown bear who will happily share all of those roe with her cubs long before they’re inseminated. Such is the way of the salmon. They exist not strictly to breed but to be a conduit for that great nutritional exchange. If salmon were to hosts high-school style reunions I imagine they’d end in a similar fashion: all participants would dread going for fear of being seen a failure only to discover that virtually none of their peers accomplished the great things they said they would in their youth but instead filled some other useful purpose in the universe.
And indeed it is at these streams where this energy exchange is at its most supercharged, and it is far from a strictly salmon feast. Sure, harbor seals and bears and gulls will all delight in the salmon run, but far more is happening here. Peregrine falcons await those birds that are perhaps too stuffed to nimbly escape. Bald eagles delight in the scraps of lunch left to rot. Sea stars and anemones gorge on a newfound array of detritus and foreign stream inputs. Humpbacks feed at their saltwater mouths, their fishy prey perhaps attracted to the scene by the great nutritional bounty bound for fresher waters. Carcasses dragged and dropped into the forest will be send vitally important nutrients found nowhere but the open ocean into the forest. It is violent but controlled, generally predictable but with occasional moments so shocking that you have a hard time putting them into words. It is blissfully quiet until the moment it is the loudest thing you’ve ever heard as an animal is shredded to pieces or a cluster of salmon rush through the water at once. The air smells sweet with petrichor and terpenes until you whiff vile, rotting, fishy flesh. It is the altogether beautiful and ugly, peaceful and chaotic. This is nature in the raw.
Blink and You'll Miss It
Blink and You'll Miss It
There were certainly moments when I longed to be away from Alaska. Infrequently I missed urban convenience, more often I longed for independence from the obligations of work, and more often than that I missed the people and cultural routines with which I was familiar. Alaska, to her immense credit, made a habit of destroying these instances with great speed and fervor.
All one has to do in a place like Alaska is exist free from distraction and wonder floods in. That may sound like a tall task to those of us accustomed to the digital deluge, but it can be easily done when you’re dozens of miles from the nearest bar of cell service. It is a sad commentary on modernity that most of us would opt to view the glowing rectangle in our palm than the world just beyond it, but it is one that I am sure you are already well aware of. It is one that is also hardly any fault of our own - our neurobiology has been successfully hacked in order to sell us goods that sell our information and so on, but freeing myself from its shackles was powerfully revelatory. It dawned on me somewhere along the line that I had kind of just forgot my digital “needs” after a while. I didn’t compulsively check Instagram after I slumped into a chair, nor did I wake up in a cold sweat wondering about the Mets, nor did I lament not sharing any of my experiences with friends. It came as quite a shock to learn of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and it was even more shocking to know that a funeral was hours away by the time I got the news. Events beyond the scope of my control felt just that.
People occasionally ask me for advice on living more in tune with nature and or starting a career similar to my own. I always do whatever I can to offer practical help, but the fact of the matter is that the best way to reap the rewards of wilderness is to immerse yourself in it. Eventually after repeated exposure the longing for technical luxuries fades and the desire to live a life in accordance with the outdoors triumphs. Those of us who do the work of educating, governing, and advocating for nature do so because she has called us to it. If only more among us spent their time so intimately enjoying the outdoors it would hardly be work at all.
Below are some images I captured in precisely those moments (note for those on mobile: view these in landscape mode). Surrendering to the flow of wild I allowed the environments to speak through me. I am always cautious to offer much by way of advice but the following I am certain of: allow it to seize you, and nature’s grasp is eternal.
“Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.” -Mary Oliver
Full Circle
Often the work of the naturalist proves less rewarding than many expect. Unlike those in traditional education spheres, we typically do not see the fruits of our labor. We have a limited window during which we engage people to the fullest of our abilities and hope that, through our shared experiences and teachings, they enact change in their life that positively impacts the biosphere. After your brief engagement most pupils will never follow up on invitations to stay connected and continue a dialogue. This can be a jading concept. Occasionally there is temptation to phone it in on suspicion that an audience may be unwilling to listen. On particularly rough days you wonder whether your work makes any difference at all and you question all of your personal and career decisions. The most important that myself and others in similar lines of work grapple with: do our endeavors into the wild do more harm than good for the places and creatures that we seek to protect?
Do not conflate these observations regarding my profession with complaint. I love my line of work and consider it a tremendous privilege to be paid to do what I love. Each hour of study and sweat are well worth their pain. But as in any line of work, questions of worthwhileness gnaw unrelentingly. For myself, repeatedly asking these questions (and in particular that last one) of myself has solidified a deep resolve in me to ensure that I do work that I am proud of. Realistically there are but two ways to do this: to abandon this line of work altogether or to hone my craft and maximize my potential for creating positive externalities. Among these options the latter was highly preferable - and so about half way through my summer I resolved to do so. I crafted more engaging materials and lectures, studied wildlife with greater intensity in the library and greater intent in the field. This renewed commitment was incredibly fulfilling. I awoke early each day with the passion required to do good work and the discipline such work mandates. Redoubling my commitment to scholastic integrity and positive interactions helped eradicate the doubts I had about the efficacy of my work. Perhaps most importantly I laid the groundwork that will allow for my future self to eliminate these same doubts. Through increased resolve I made a lasting difference in the lives of a great many traveler this summer, and that’s all I can ask of myself.
The ultimate payoff from this labor of love came when a group of people who travelled with me named a humpback whale in my honor after enjoying a lecture I gave and doing some whale watching. In order to do so they made a sizable donation to a non-profit organization working to protect our seas. I don’t know if I ever foresaw a life for myself in which having a whale named for me could be counted among its dozen or so greatest honors, but I sure am glad I’m living it.