Bodies of Water
Dad used his hands to make things. Music stands and desks, adze and axe handles, balconies and cabinets, bread boxes and bird houses, a laddered library, frames for Bobbi's stained glass, a dollhouse, a sauna, a dock. Used his hands to make sonatas and concertos on a piano. Made me a wildflower press for high school Biology. Built stone walls of rocks we took from a scree slope in the mountains to terrace a garden. Made a long staircase with my grandpa, his dad, down to the lake. Spent a summer erecting a tall fence to thwart deer. And a thousand other things. I was two weeks old the first time he took me sailing. I grew up trying to absorb all the knowledge he could pass on. He taught me to read wind on water, telltales sewn into jibs, the signals transmitted through a tiller into fingertips. Especially when the moon was full, we’d sail at night on Coeur d’Alene Lake. The first time we went over to the coast and spent a couple weeks on the ocean, alive with tides, I gained a completely different take on the moon I thought I knew. I went back to landlocked Idaho with a changed understanding of lakes, too, no matter how long, deep, or windy they might be. The world was bigger than I thought, but reachable.
The Warbler's Answer
Yeah Write · History on Paper and in Person
For years before Anchorage was founded, maps of Alaska showed McCarthy and Kennecott, but not Anchorage. While Anchorage eventually grew and grew into Alaska’s largest city, McCarthy’s size has ebbed and flowed. It hasn’t regained the size it had during the copper and gold mining era, but can still produce some impressive crowds, like the one that packed the charming, volunteer-run McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum for its grand opening this spring. The event featured Eagle River-based historian, professor, and author Dr. Katie Ringsmuth presenting her latest book, “At Work in the Wrangells: A Photographic History, 1895-1966”. Published by the National Park Service, it “aims to illustrate the interconnected work of humans and nature that together made history in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.”
Interview: Tom Kizzia
“This was a book that started with a bulldozer in a national park. In that sense, the original newspaper stories naturally introduced some of those big themes you refer to, themes of wilderness and modern attitudes toward nature and the mythology of American pioneering. It was only after I interviewed Papa Pilgrim over the phone, and found his self-presentation to be weirdly fascinating, that I decided I should try to go meet him.”
