Alaska Magazine
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The Dogs Come First

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Wildlife & Nature

Wait, are cougars in Alaska?

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Travel

Adrenaline & Personal Growth: The School You Always Wanted

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Culture

Escape to Caribou Country

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Looking for game and enjoying being in the mountains is how most hunters actually spend their time when out there. Here, the author’s brother contemplates caribou country. Photo by Bjorn Dihle. MC, my better half, exhaled like an enraged grizzly and flung an antique rocking chair against our home’s wall. Hell knows no fury like an Alaskan woman who wants to go hunting but can’t get time off from work. “If I can’t go caribou hunting you sure as Peter Piper’s pickled peppers can’t either!” she yelled. MC had been a gentle vegetarian when we met, but on our second date, which took place deep in the wilderness, she was faced with a situation where she had to kill or be killed. There, beneath the aurora dancing across the night sky, as wolves howled in tribute, she tasted the blood of the beast for the first time and there was…

Wildlife & Nature

Living with a family of tiny owls

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A northern saw-whet perches outside the nest at the author’s home in Palmer. Photo by Fredrik Norrsell. At one time people thought northern saw-whet owls were rare. They’re not. They are just tiny—only seven and a half inches tall—and nocturnal, so few people see them. However, in early March, you can often hear the rapid whet-whet-whet of a male saw-whet establishing his territory and trying to attract a mate. These loud, repetitive calls sometimes continue all night. Last spring, my husband, photographer Fredrik Norrsell, and I had the pleasure of having a family of northern saw-whet owls grow up in our backyard. Over the course of sleepless nights from April through June, we watched and photographed these little owls raising their family. On April 1, we were enjoying the sun on the porch when Fredrik noticed a sleepy head sticking out of our nesting box. A female saw-whet owl had…

Wildlife & Nature

A sloth of bears, and other inventive names for Alaska wildlife

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One could make the argument that bears seem slothful while sleeping, but once awake, they are eating machines. Photo by Donna Dewhurst. Chances are you’ve heard of a “murder” of crows, but what about a “parliament” of owls or an “asylum” of loons? As a naturalist, I decided to research the origins of these unusual terms. What I found in many cases was unexpected, a reflection on how language often incorporates humor and the human perspective. First of all, a collective noun in the English language for a group of animals is called a “term of venery” with the original meaning related to Medieval hunting. The oldest reference is The Book of Saint Albans, an essay on hunting, published in 1486. One of my favorite names tracks back to that reference, where a group of bears is called a “sloth.” Sloth comes from the Middle English adjective “slow” and is…

Wildlife & Nature

Close encounters with Alaska weasels

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Weasels, also called ermines, live one or two years. Their fur turns white in winter and brown in summer. Photo by Eric M. Beeman. In the last century, when my wife was but a wee tyke, she spied a small hole in the bank overlooking a drainage ditch. An inquisitive lass, her rampant curiosity led her to insert her arm to see what treasures lay entombed inside. A muffled chittering and a quick brush with silky fur necessitated a hasty retreat, but not before a set of sharp white teeth buried themselves into the soft flesh of her thumb. My future bride shrieked and flailed her arm to no avail, as the marauder was firmly attached. A final bash loosened its grip and our young adventurer sped off to the solace of her grandparents, curious no more. Most introductions to Alaska’s smallest furbearer are less traumatic, although perhaps as brief.…

Travel

A 50-year-old ‘system of dreams’

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Denali State Park’s Kesugi Ridge with the Alaska Range in the distance. Photo by Bill Sherwonit. More than once, while perched on a high mountain ridge above Anchorage and surrounded by a wilderness landscape of peaks and valleys that extend to the horizon and beyond, friends and I have agreed: if this were anywhere else in the United States, we’d be standing in a national park. But here along the edges of Alaska’s largest city, we’re blessed to be part of a half-million-acre wildland that’s among the grandest pieces of an unparalleled state park system that this year marks its 50th anniversary. And what a system it is: established in 1970, Alaska’s Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation now encompasses more than 3.3 million acres, spread across nearly 160 units from the state’s Panhandle to its Southwest and Interior regions. Those units include recreation areas, historic sites, trails, and more;…

Gear

Bring this to stay safe in bear country

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Eagle Enterprises Electro Bear Guard UltraLite Fence I used to stick my nose up at the thought of using an electric bear fence, but after grizzlies made contact with my tent a few times (including a good ol’ fashion trampling with me in it), I’ve come to the conclusion that bears are lousy tentmates. An electric bear fence can make all the difference in keeping you and your gear intact. In some places in Alaska you’d be crazy to camp without one. Eagle Enterprises, which specializes in outdoor survival, safety, and rescue gear, offers a variety of custom-made electric fences that can be used to protect your camp, plane, cabin, or other wilderness assets. They’re an old-school Alaskan company. You call them up and discuss the sort of fence you want, then they build it for you. I was stoked to test Eagle Enterprises’ UltraLite fence, which, at two pounds,…

Culture

Documentaries capture life in Sitka

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Chuck Miller in episode 16 of the 14 Miles project. Courtesy 14 Miles. Despite how they might be labeled, people living in rural America lead complex lives and develop dynamic communities. The documentary project 14 Miles is a series of short three- to five-minute videos that aim to shine a light on some overlooked stories in the remote community of Sitka, which takes up a roughly 14-mile stretch of land in Southeast. The 37 videos in the project’s library include a profile of a young woman’s past trauma, a behind-the-scenes look at the town thrift store, and a snapshot of community gatherings. “It’s about what we celebrate and care about living in a small Alaska community, but it’s also about the challenges,” says Ellen Frankenstein, who led the project. The episodes are available on 14miles.org and through video streaming platforms including Vimeo and YouTube.

Culture

Celebrating Fourth of July Alaska style

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Parade on Nome’s Front Street, 1916. Courtesy Library of Congress Loving liberty, Americans honored their nation’s birth in Alaska when it was still foreign soil. Two years before the United States bought the territory from Russia, the Western Union Telegraph Expedition’s Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Henry P. Fisher arranged its first July Fourth bash in the capital New Archangel, present-day Sitka. As guest of the Russian governor, Fisher had tired of the outpost’s routine and diet. The Brooklyn exile decided to celebrate Independence Day stylishly, helped by two supply vessel captains anchored in port. He requested the customary gun salutes and received Russian-American Company officials and their wives and daughters for a light meal on Clara Bell’s quarterdeck. Before music and dancing commenced, they all toasted Lincoln and the Tsar. Elegant shipboard dining continued to mark the anniversary: a Depression-era feast-day menu for the Inside Passage on SS Aleutian—a steamer considered “palatial”—boasted…

speedriding, skier with red bull parachute catches air
Authentic Alaska

Jon DeVore: From Juneau to Red Bull Air Force

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Jon Devore catches air during the filming of The Unrideables: Alaska Range in the Tordrillo Mountains. Scott Serfas/Red Bull Content Pool Jon DeVore has one of the most adventurous jobs possible. He’s been aerial coordinator and manager of the Red Bull Air Force for the last 17 years. Basically, he skydives and coordinates stunts for a living. DeVore was born in Colorado but grew up in Juneau after his parents moved there when he was a baby, a move that DeVore says he thanks his parents for every time they talk. “I think it shaped who I turned into,” he says. DeVore kept busy with many of the standard northern sports like skiing, snowmobiling and rock climbing. But he didn’t stop there. “I guess if you asked anyone who knew me, I was always seeking the adventure and adrenaline side of things,” he says. As a high schooler, DeVore and…

A woman in a blue coat pulls bat out of net with glove
Wildlife & Nature

Where do bats hibernate in Alaska?

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Jesika Reimer, Assistant Zoologist at UAA’s Alaska Center for Conservation Science (ACCS), retrieves a Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) from a mist net so it can be banded and radio tagged on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) near Anchorage, Alaska. Photo by James R. Evans/University of Alaska Anchorage. Until recently, not much was known about bat populations in Alaska. In 2016, white nose syndrome, the disease that is decimating bat populations mostly in the eastern continental United States and Canada, made a jump west and was discovered in Washington. “With this fungus spreading it means people are more interested, and funding agencies are more interested, in finding out about the little brown bat. Especially in somewhere like Alaska where we didn’t know a lot,” says Jesika Reimer, an Alaska-based biologist whose research is focused on bats. For a long time, people thought bats migrated outside of Alaska for winter hibernation. Based…

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