Ceacy and Nancie in Alaska

Somehow the flight home from Anchorage to Portland, and then on to Boston, seemed much longer than the trip out. Big surprise---we were tired from the long drive from McCarthy to Anchorage and of course, we were ready to put the suitcases away and settle back into our familiar routine, however we still had a few details to sort out when we arrived back in Boston. Nancie's suitcase didn't arrive on our flight, so her brother Walter had a very long wait for us outside the terminal. Once we had done all the appropriate paperwork for the lost luggage, we then made the trip out to Nancie's brother Ralph's house for a quick visit and hello to family. Nancie is staying with Ralph for a few more days while he has his medical treatments, and I drove the three hour drive back to the farm arriving around 2:00 p.m.

Apparently the weather has been rainy and not been suitable for haying because none of our hay has been cut, and the scenery seems unnaturally verdant after the arid landscape of central-eastern Alaska. All these deciduous trees, fully-leaved and lush after muskeg and taiga, and those spindly black spruce trees. Even my garden seems to have gargantuan weeds, and the eight foot tall sunflower in the middle of the raised beds looks positively outrageous. When I left , my flower garden was full of blooming daylilies and it still is. Now too, the butterfly bushes, the Rose of Sharons, phlox, calamint ,and correopsis are all blooming to beat the band. My gardens look almost garish compared to the understated colors of McCarthy. However, Anchorage wins the prize for floral display as the gardens in the parks that we saw the last night we were there were absolutely over the top full of color. The long hours of sunlight results in huge flowers--- the foxglove and delphiniums, tuberous begonias, petunias, nastursiums, poppies, and all sorts of other annuals whose names I don't know were planted in giant beds of splendid swathes of bold colors intended to make a big statement and they did. Despite the grey and rainy evening, we were wowed with gardens and with the equally wonderful art galleries.

We had an hour and half wait to get into the restaurant of our choice and we happily spent the time gawking at all sorts of very original artwork by Alaskan artists and equally fabulous work by Native artists. It was very inspiring and made the time fly by.

Now that the trip is over I will not be writing this blog. I was unable to figure out how to print the essay I wrote but I am hoping to keep working on it in any case. Thanks for sharing our trip with us. I just posted some final photos of Kennicott. I suppose it will take a long time for this trip to works its way through my psyche, Alaska is a big place with the ability to make a profound impression. I was greatly affected by my experiences there and will never feel that I could take it all in, but one thing is for certain, I will also never forget my experience, or be the same person I was before I went there.

Now to go kiss my goats and hug horses...
Ceacy

The whole reason I started this odyssey was because I wanted to gain some insight and perhaps guidance from another writer whose work I have admired, Kathleen Dean Moore. When I saw that she was offering a nature writer's workshop, I was determined to further my commitment towards addressing climate change and stretch myself as a writer to do more. The writing workshop was at the Wrangell Mountain Center, a non-profit whose mission is to foster a thoughtful awareness about the environment and the unique qualities of mountain culture through support of the arts, scientific research, and education.
The center is based in the 100 year old Hardware Store that sits at one end of town right along side the McCarthy Creek.

The driving force behind the workshop was Nancy Cook, a part-time resident of McCarthy and a writer herself, as well as, a writing teacher. And Maria Shell, who brought her experience as both a McCarthy summer resident, a dedicated and inspired quilt artist and a creative writer. Kathleen Dean Moore was the big draw however, and she made the trip here very much worthwhile. Not only did I feel like I had found a kindred spirit, but she was a wonderful teacher of the craft of writing . She was also a nuanced and intelligent " voice" as a writer, and the number of times we got to hear her read her own writing never failed to move me.

Our mornings were spent working in the "classroom" on writing exercises and the other 15 women in the workshop came from all over--- New York State, New Mexico, Colorado, California, Oregon and of course, I came from Massachusetts.There were also participants from all over Alaska. The ages of the participants ranged from 21 to 56 and our varied life experiences brought a multi-faceted perspective to our discussions and our writings. We spent the afternoons going out into the various landscapes available around the area, including walking along the river and the melt water lake at the toe of the Kennicott glacier, a trip up to the mining town of Kennecott, and a six mile hike out and back to climb up on the Root glacier itself. We also spent time with Maria working on individual quilt blocks that were going to be assembled into a finished art quilt that would later be used as a fund-raiser for a worthy cause.

The last two days were concentrated on producing a finished essay to read out loud to an audience. I came to McCarthy to explore what it would take for me as a writer to write well enough to make other people care enough about climate change to take action. It was the focus of my attention for the entire week and the essay at the end of this blog entry was the essay that I read to the audience at McCarthy. Although the essay was, to a degree, written with certain people in mind who were part of my experience at the workshop, I will rewrite the essay when I get home to make it more universal. I was very gratified when the reaction to my reading was a deeply emotional one for many of the audience and that Kathleen wants to help me get it published . Whatever the the outcome for this particular piece of writing, I feel empowered to keep working on bringing awareness about the importance of taking action on environmental issues and I will continue to try to make climate change an issue people are inspired to take personal responsibility to address.

McCarthy was the perfect place for me to work on the controversial, and often very challenging, issues around writing about climate change.

If I can figure out how to post the essay I will, but right now I am a little too sleep deprived to attempt it. We are currently in the Portland , OR airport awaiting our flight back to Boston. It is 9:24 a.m. Boston time, 6:24 Portland time and 5:24 Alaska time. I have been up for the better part of 24hours except for the nap I took on the plane. Happy to be going home, but too weary to get excited about seeing our farm and friends. Hopefully, the cross-country flight will be more comfortable than the flight from Anchorage. We do already miss Celia and and Sandy, the very best dog to take on a road trip!
Oh, and Celia was pretty well-behaved as well. Ok, where can we get some coffee...

Cheers, Ceacy

I have spent three hours this morning trying to catch up and all I have managed to do is write about the town of McCarthy and not a thing about the rest of my experience there--- at the writing workshop , up on the Root glacier, or in the town of Kennecott. We are packing up, we are punchy, and we are heading down the home stretch. I spent quite a lot of time this morning trying to find the photos Nancie took of McCarthy itself but to no avail. We will try to get some photos off of Celia's camera but I don't have the right cord to connect her camera to my computer, maybe we can find one in Anchorage later today. We take a flight out of Anchorage that leaves at 1:00 a.m. tonight. I have been up since 5:00a.m.. It is raining today, a fitting bit of melancholy as we prepare to part ways with Celia and Sandy the dog. Celia and Sandy will spend the whole day with us and stay overnight in Anchorage so we can hang out in a hotel until we have to go to the airport tonight.

Celia and I have been friends for at least 28 years and had not been in much contact for the past decade and a half, and yet, from the moment I called her on the phone back in March when I was planning this trip, it has felt as though we had never missed a day. She has been such a great traveling companion and it makes us more than a little sad to be leaving her. It has also been hard that we only got to speak to Chris, her husband and my old friend since college days, over a satellite phone from his fishing boat out in Alitak Bay, part of Kodiak Island. I would so much have liked to give him a hug in person. Funny, how I had to travel so far to find something that I hold so close to my heart like those special friendships that last a lifetime.

I will try to write more when we have a moment to spare later today, after that it will be airports and airplanes, car rides and catching up with Nancie's family when we return to Boston on Monday, and finally home to Colrain on Tuesday night. It is hard to believe that we have been gone since the 16th of July.
So, what will today bring?

Here we go....
C.

McCarthy was a hard place for me to get my mind around; it was a place of contradiction at every turn. The town is the jumping off point for entrance into a vast wilderness, millions of acres of back country preserved in a national park, but as a jumping off place , it is also a funnel. There was an unsettling human presence here, straddling not only the rushing grey melt waters that poured in a torrent out of these startling mountains, but an identity as a community. There were those who wished to preserve the remote and privileged peace of a" wild" place and those who had designs on development; people who were attempting to foster a "green' awareness with off- the- grid technology and organic gardens, and folks trying to make a living using airplanes, atv's and diesel generators. I found McCarthy to be a hard place to love when it was crowded and noisy. I also found it a hard place to condemn because of the people I met there. I met some of the absolute kindest, most generous young people living their dream, sustaining themselves on little, and rejoicing in the natural world and the culture of self-sufficiency and mutual dependence that only a remote place can inspire. I was also charmed by the quirky personalities of the individuals who were willing to live in ramshackle cabins, dilapidated trailers, or sleep in tents, accommodate the lack of transportation services due to the ban on cars, and exude a laid-back acceptance of the contradictions there, all for the opportunity to live life on their own terms.

McCarthy was originally established as the "support' town to Kennecott, the company town five miles away that was the property of and under the sole control of the mining company that built it in the early 1900's around it mission to extract copper from the pure and profitable ore in the mountains there. McCarthy was where the forbidden brothels and bars flourished, and it still has a sense of rebellious disregard for convention or constraint that is the hallmark of its heritage. There is a divide between the residents who embrace a religious conservatism and those who resist its dogma and restrictive social values. There is most certainly a conflict between those who would open access to economic development and exploit the increasing numbers of tourists, and those who feel that wilderness access needs to be moderated; McCarthy was quintessentially Alaskan in that respect.

I did not love being in McCarthy when I had to cope with the noise of atvs each morning as I walked over the footbridge and then the half-mile or so
into town. I also found the amount of human- generated debris everywhere disconcerting, much of it the discarded stuff left behind when the mining company pulled out in 1938, or rusted abandoned motorized vehicles of other eras;there were many buildings in collapse or disrepair. The noise is downright annoying, and the sense that it is already too late to derail the on-coming development that will fundamentally change the natural landscape of the area felt ominous to me. Having said all that, every view out and away from the human presence was one of mountains and glaciers, jagged peaks cloaked in clouds, and coniferous forests, cottonwood and aspen trees, soap berry bushes, and wildflowers. Wild bears were a palpable presence due to either my actually encountering them as I did walking home one evening, their signs as in large piles of berry -filled scat and foot prints in the mud, or the daily reports of sightings nearby by other people in town, as well as, the pervasive written reminders to carry out trash and leave no food unattended where bears would be attracted to it.

It is unlikely that I will ever return to McCarthy, but I am not sorry that I saw it. I suspect that my visit here will continue to have an effect on me for a long time to come. It is a place whose paradox and promise cannot easily be pushed aside, and whose physical setting is is as big and beautiful, as controversial and contested, as any other wild place with so much to offer.

It is nearly midnight and we are finally back at the Slide Mountain Cabins on the Glenn Highway. I couldn't really get online the past few days and the drive out of McCarthy was long but totally gorgeous. Just to add a little excitement to the last few miles of our drive today, we saw three moose alongside the two-lane highway including one spectacular bull with an enormous set of antlers. We pulled over and watched him graze for awhile and then he was disturbed by another car and walked off into the brush. He was so healthy, and fat; a truly magnificent animal. I am too tired to say much tonight but hopefully I can catch up some tomorrow morning before we head off for our last full day in Alaska. So, much to say and so many fabulous photos to share...
Sweet dreams,
C