Alaskas Changing Landscape

Just like my mother and Reba I’ve chosen to live my life as a nomad, although my travels take me far outside my ancestor’s traditional land. I’ve yet to find a way to balance work and travel so when I get weary of the road and run out of money I head back to Alaska. Before I leave I always make sure to stop by my mother’s old property and think about the fun times we had in the woods. As I leave Alaska this time I don’t know if I will ever come back. The many extreme changes I’ve seen in the last few years have me worried that the land will never be the same again.

As a child I would look out of my window at the mountains above Anchorage, I studied the lines of light and shadow, the contrasts of rock and snow meeting the white clouds and blue sky. I tried so hard to capture this beauty with pencil and paper but all my efforts only produced simple lines and shading that required a lot of imagination. When I look at those mountains today I no longer see the snow that used to cap the peaks all year long and it makes me sad that they have lost some of their beauty. A couple of falls ago it snowed and I hiked up the same mountains overlooking Anchorage. Passing a woman skiing down, jokingly I commented that she wasted no time busting out the skis, she replied with complete sincerity “of course, this might be the only snow we get all year”.

In the last few years the rout for the world famous Iditarod dog sled race has had to be changed because there was no snow. Even with the changed rout they had to import snow from farther north to complete the race track. When I was little I remember all the hustle and bustle as people came from all around the world to watch the dog sled race. My mother would get ready to set up and sell her artwork for the massive tourist boom. Crowds and cameras from all over the world would line up along the streets to see the racers go by. 

Now there aren’t as many people at the Iditarod; it just doesn’t get much global media attention anymore. You could say it’s because of the 24 hour news cycle but personal I think that the media doesn’t want to give too much coverage to something that makes the truth of climate change so obvious.   
 

There have been changes in the Alaskan wildlife too; starving polar bears only scratch the surface. The warmer milder winters mean that parasites and other critters have more time to breed. My liver has holes from flukes that I got from eating wild hares. I had caught the hare in the middle of January, usually the coldest month of the year in Alaska with temperatures 40, 50, and even 60 below freezing. When I came into the doctor two months later complaining of pain I told them about the hare with worms but they just ignored me, usually parasite infested hares die off well before January. Luckily I had sent in a sample of the hare to Fish and Game and when the doctors saw the report they treated me with the appropriate antibiotics. I almost died that year; I remember shivering curled up in a ball, with pain I had never felt before in my life. I still feel pain now and then, my body is more sensitive to some foods now and I’m still learning what I can eat.

When I was a counselor natives from all across Alaska would tell me the stories of the changes they’ve been witnessing: eroding coastlines, less sea ice, dying trees, new animals farther north, I could go on and on. Even natives who are lifelong republicans that have made good money off of the oil industry admit to seeing these changes. Natives spend a lot of time outdoors in the wilderness; to survive we have to get to know the land very well that’s why we notice these things more. No offense to white people but when they do outdoor activities it’s much different than natives; natives will go deep into the woods with a boat and stay there for months at a time while white people will follow the road and camp in RV’s for at most an extended weekend. That’s why most natives I know will choose to accept the fact that we are changing the climate.

There are some Alaskans that think climate change will be a good thing for Alaska; I’ve often heard some people remark “Alaska used to be a tropical rain-forest”. In the last few years I’ve seen a huge influx of people from all over moving to Alaska, I suspect that they might have the same idea, these people haven’t seen the changes that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Traditional staples of the native diet and crucial links in the food chain are decreasing and dying off. There are fewer salmon in the rivers and the ones we catch are smaller, some even have strange open sores. More importantly trees are dying off by the acre.

As I was leaving Alaska this time I noticed something I had never seen before, dead and dying pine trees, acre after acre. It’s said that these trees are dying from bugs; now that the summers are longer and warmer the beetles breed more and kill more trees. I had heard this fact before but seeing it firsthand was not only astonishing but heartbreaking, millions of brown dry trees waiting for a single spark to ignite a conflagration.
As I finish writing this, I’m sitting by a lake in the Canadian Yukon watching a great massive cloud of smoke rise in the distance. Subtle differences distinguish it from the rest of the clouds in the sky; its a deeper milkier white, the way it rises and falls, the way the downwind haze clings to the land like thick fog. I’m entranced by its light and shadow and as the sun sets, I watch the haze cast off deep purples and blues. The majesty of nature has found a new beauty for me to admire to replace that which was lost in the snow covered mountains.