Alaska!
ALASKA–The 49th State and Our 50th!
(Pictures below. Layout is too hard in a free app.)
The mountain
Denali is a mountain that has held a special place in the hearts of Alaskans for thousands of years. The tallest peak in North America at 20,310 feet, and the furthest north of any mountain over 19,000 feet, Denali is subject to almost daily storms, violent winds, and extreme cold. It spends most of its days covered in clouds and invisible from below. Only about a third of visitors to Alaska will see it. We have seen it on two separate days. We are truly among the fortunate few.
Animals
We also saw plenty of wildlife in the park named for the mountain: barren ground caribou, Dall sheep (with a lamb!), Arctic ground squirrel and red squirrel, snowshoe hares, ravens, willow ptarmigan, giant mosquitos (still sluggish with the cold), and—of course—moose! It's been an animal-rich trip. We also saw musk oxen, reindeer and woods bison at a wildlife research facility near Fairbanks, and visited a sled dog kennel operated by four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King (1993, 1996, 1998, 2006), widely considered one of the greatest mushers of all time.
Mr. King demonstrated how his dogs train and run with the sled, told us some of the hardships and history of the race, and even let us hold sled dog puppies (!!) to help socialize them. We learned a lot about Alaskan huskies (not the same as Siberian huskies; not even a recognized AKC breed). They are descendants of arctic dogs that have been used for human locomotion for at least 9,500 years, and they are bred for their pulling drive and appetite, rather than a particular conformation "look." Their average lifespan is 15-18 years. Dogs are still used for human locomotion throughout Alaska, for recreation, exercise, racing, and freight hauling to remote areas in the winter. Our guide even roller skates and bikes behind her sled dogs in warmer weather.
Note: all my best wildlife pics are on my slr camera, which I forgot to bring the adapter for. I'll do a photo dump when we get home.
People
We've also been learning about Alaskan history and culture, visiting with Native interpreters in Fairbanks and Anchorage. Alaskan Natives group themselves into five major families: Inupiat in the North, Yupic in the South, Athabaskans in the Interior, and Tlingit and Haida on the Southeast coast. But there are 229 recognized tribes, and many modern Native people are descended from more than one. We got to see a salmon trapping and drying demonstration as well as explore typical homes of people from different regions. My favorite was a demonstration of some of the sports in the Alaskan Native Olympics, the Alaskan high kick and the one-foot and two-foot high kicks. Pretty impressive!
We also have learned about Alaska's early European explorers from Russia and the U.S.; the serial gold rush that sent fortune seekers into brutal conditions from Resurrection Creek to the Klondike to Nome to Fairbanks; about Alaska's 1956 Constitution, which predated statehood and "guaranteed" equal treatment of all people; about isolated villages accessible in summer only by plane or boat and in winter by dog sled and "snow machine", and about the intrepid men and women who punish their bodies and spend thousands of dollars to climb to the top of Denali. Only half of them make it to the top, despite careful vetting of potential climbers by Park staff. Altitude sickness, wind, and punishing snowstorms, along with cravasses and avalanches, turn back even the best climbers. Two climbers have already died this season.
50 States!
Joe and I have now visited 50 states! We flew last Saturday into Fairbanks, which is in the middle of the state, and have been slowly wending our way southward toward Seward. Alaska is amazing, with landscapes we have never seen before—tundra, mountains, glaciers, and glacial silt-colored rivers and lakes. The hotels are comfortable, the food is good, and the terrain is rugged. We've done some good hiking as well as visiting museums and cultural centers as we go. Alaska in June is an unpredictable thing. It's an unseasonably cool spring, and yesterday was our first day without multiple jackets, but we're not complaining. The chill means that mosquitos are sluggish and few. I killed a dime-sized one on Joe's forehead, but it hadn't bitten yet.
We are still activists
Just south of Fairbanks, as police attacked peaceful protestors in Los Angeles and ICE terrorized people across the country, we drove past a street demonstration in a tiny town along the road. We are everywhere! And of course our bus driver honked.
Yesterday in Denali National Park, Joe and I wore our RESIST! National Park t-shirts in solidarity with the workers there. About 6,000 Interior Department rangers and staff were summarily fired in February by the Trump administration, and another 3,000 have quit. A Denali ranger thanked us for our support. We will be wearing other RESIST shirts on Saturday for No Kings Day, and plan to join a demonstration at noon in Seward, along with several other folks we've recruited from our Road Scholar group. I have continued writing to my Congressman (such as he is), but honestly, I've been stepping away from daily news a bit. Sunday is our 40th Anniversary. We've been at this (marriage and activism) a long time, and we'll still be at it when we come home.
We'll see you out in the streets.
Denali in all her glory
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