1987 - Done in Asheville, Linda Dashes West; "Conifer Coyotes" (their Kids); Serving the Alaskan Peoples; Exploring the Great Land
Click on the arrows below to open each topic
The Juneau Icefield: hundreds of square miles of ice rise from the sea at the outskirts of town, climbing to a 3000-to-4000-foot elevation. In winter a ferocious wind rolls off the frigid expanse. They call it “the Taku”.
They both knew kickass thunderstorms and sea gales. But this wind had volume, timbre, changing notes. It sounded like the earth itself was chanting, rolling deep gutturals that increased in pitch to a near bellow, then easing off to a long moaning hoarse sigh, to repeat again and again as the wind shifted, a Gaian concerto. Rolling down into the town, freezing eyebrows and mustache alike, that wind-song hit them as a reminder if one was ever needed of the wildness of nature, and them perched precariously to feel and to marvel.
Come Spring (still deep winter to “the Outside,” the lower 48), they group-skied with guides on the lower reaches of the icefield, overnighting in cabin/chalets. Twice they helicoptered onto the higher portions of those scapes.
All evoked in them awe, an almost wrenching appreciation and joy, and a commitment to earn those experiences by doing good.
Poets grasp to express what it is like to see and feel the Aurora.
It can be life-transforming; the heavens rippling to the cosmic breath, a caressing touch of light-speed sun particles across the upper atmosphere, creating light-strings, chords that evoke resonant heart and soul chords within. In Juneau, an underground telegraph lit up the phone lines whenever the skies lit up. Sub-zero temps, middle of the night, they’d bundle up and walk or hop-drive to where the northern skies opened, to stand amazed and in awe. A few times, when flying, the lights hung suspended halfway to the heavens, curved with the upper atmosphere of the planet, curling it seemed beneath and above the plane.
Their take-home was simple: joy and wonder being alive, the heavens and the skies crooning hello.
After their Arby and steak sizzling early months together at age 19, they became vegetarian. Not strictly vegan, they accepted non-fertilized eggs, cheese without rennet, but mostly were protein-compliment veggies. They had their reasons: the suffering of the slaughter industry; the methane and land destruction of factory and grazing herds, the ethics of non-violence and spiritual callings, the fact they could rarely afford meat…
On riverbanks in the Alaskan Autumn they witnessed shoals of salmon surging upstream, the culmination of their life cycle, thrashing in orgiastic frenzy, then spent, settling into the shallows to expire.
Seemed like a waste of sorts. No agony or suffering, indeed, the opposite. A life well lived and fulfilled, totally natural – they decided it was OK to eat salmon, especially smoked salmon. And even relaxed their reticence about crustaceans, especially snow and king crab.
The Inside Passage has the depth to allow deep-draft cruise ships all the way north to Juneau, then another 15 to 20 miles to Haines Alaska, the northernmost reach of the Alexander Archipelago’s Inside Passage. The warmer river water from the Interior stays ice-free into the autumn, churning with spawning salmon. As salmon do once they’re done spawning, they float to the shore where there hundreds of bald eag les convergeto feed upon them.
The Eagle Council.
Linda brought her family there each of the years they lived in Alaska, driving along the river, chill but evaporative tendrils looking like steam wafting off the surface. On the shore, in tree branches and the crowns of arctic pine, bald eagles thick as crows came and went by the dozens.
Relatively commonplace in Alaska, at least not rare, her family felt and remembered it as spectacular, perhaps once in a lifetime.
They remembered.
The spectacular scenery, “like when the world was young” as Linda exclaimed, enlivened and uplifted every day. But the wildlife equally astounded and delighted them.
Wolf. On the glacier lake a block from their home two trails ascended the embracing rock cliffs that contained the Mendenhall Glacier. One winter-dark afternoon scrambling up the trail, rounding a corner in the deepening gloom, six feet away and eyeball to eyeball stood a large black wolf. At least waist-high. The wolf’s expression if one could be discerned was chagrin, or perhaps embarrassment how 2-legged oafs came upon him unprepared. The rock slope was glacier scraped clean except for a straggly bush or two. But in a heartbeat the wolf pivoted, and despite peering intensely after it, disappeared without a trace, without even a tremble of the close-by bush leaves.
Other close and farther-off wolf encounters ensued over those two years. Linda sought out a locally famous painter, and gifted to her husband a representation of those moments, those spirit-guides, the wolves.
Orca. The northern Inside Passage narrows into a fjord: Juneau to the east, and across a narrow straight connected by a bridge, Douglas Island on the west. A paved road on Douglas follows the shoreline north, sparsely settled as it goes and only a few scant feet above the high-tide waterline. In winter darkness stars alone cast enough light to see. Orca surfaced and surged forward, eagles hovering a few feet above for the offal from the feeding. A dozen yards offshore, close enough to hear them breathe, no whistles but an occasional deep near sub-sonic grunt, or belch: the orcas’ icy vapor and the moment took their breath.
Griz. While not showing the best of these magnificent and unpredictable creatures, landfills certainly brought them out, ambling and rooting amid the refuse, while parking humans 100 feet off held their nose when wind shifted, yet gazed rapt.
In their more appropriate habitat, a Denali brown bear encountered them across tundra. At first sighting from far away, it looked like glowing golden haystack against the talus. After casually ambling toward them over the next 30 minutes, each clearly aware of the other, the grizzly stopped below them and became motionless. On the steep slope above the braided Tolkat river it stood sideways for minutes in splendid display behavior. “Keep your butts off my territory” his ursine pose clearly declared. They did, circling in a wide slow arc that descended to the gravel road below.
Whew. All of it.
