In what amounted to an Americana-themed roller coaster ride, I nearly made a complete circle around the country during the last week of May and early June, flying from Alaska to San Francisco to Baltimore and back (with layovers in both Denver and San Diego). Seeing such a variety of terrain in such a short amount of time — the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic, the San Francisco Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, the Chugach Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and Great Lakes — really brought home how amazing it is that it comprises one country.
The trip to the East Coast was for a women’s weekend put together by a friend at her place in Rehoboth Beach, a place I’d never been to before. Equal parts retreat and workshop, top of the weekend’s agenda was our democracy and how tenuous it actually is as we head toward the next election. We talked about privilege— who has it and who doesn’t— misinformation and extremism. A couple of college students and recent Brandeis University grad were also in attendance, offering their perspective of what’s been happening on campus as the war in Gaza exacts an ever increasing toll. Filmmaker Ken Burns had just given thekeynote at Brandeis and people were still talking about his address, which didn’t skirt any of the issues Americans are facing:
“There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, "The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed." The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, "a bigger delusion", James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.``
Being so close to D.C. made the blaring headlines all that much more vivid and Burns’ words more pressing. Within a half hour of landing, the former president’s guilty verdict was announced (we all cheered). On Sunday, we went for a bike ride and rolled past the place where current president Biden was staying for the weekend, passing both a red-white-and-blue mailbox in the shape of an elephant and another American-flag themed mailbox, this one shaped like a donkey.
The East Coast landscape, physical and cultural, was a marked contrast to Alaska with its mountains, glaciers, wildlife and gallery of local characters with extensive back stories. One day I met a Kenya native who originally came to Alaska as an exchange student, fell in love with both the state and his future wife, and 20 years on, now enjoys ice fishing (but still visits Nairobi each year). Another day, we encountered both a Cambodian lawmaker who, having escaped his country after an assassination attempt, now drove for Uber when he wasn’t testifying about human rights (we learned a lot on in that 11-minute ride), and a raised-military songwriter whose Christian-leaning brand of Americana music was decidedly different than ours.
Our last full day in Alaska, we drove to Talkeetna, a town at the confluence of three glacier-fed rivers — the Susitna, the Chulitna, and the Talkeetna. The town Talkeetna sprung up around the railroad in the early 1900s and now serves as the base of operations for Denali expeditions. The cloudy skies turned clear on the drive and we had a breathtaking view of the 20,000-foot mountain from the Riverfront Park.
Alaskans don’t take their long, warm summer days for granted! The streets were full of a mix of tourists just off the train, mountain-fit visitors and summer residents. There was a small local-crafts fair where a man sang songs about his animals as two climbers set up ropes in preparation for an aerial acrobatic exhibition. The woman staffing the local museum was only there for the summer job; she’d moved to a larger town for the dark winter.
“I will never stay anywhere any longer than six months!” she said with some pride. She’d only recently returned to Alaska, she said, but couldn’t say if she’d stay longer than a year. After we told her where we were planning to hike she nodded and gave us a tip. “If you see a moose, stand behind a tree and let it go by,” she said. “Everyone is worried about running into a bear but it's the moose you need to worry about.”
“And don’t fall into the river.” The Talkeetna River-fed Susitna River water was moving fast along the edge of town. It looked dangerous, and it was. The woman at the museum told us about dogs and people falling in. Erosion has been an issue and without intervention — large rocks now lined its banks —it was easy to see how the river could quickly infiltrate the small city’s streets. Typing that last sentence, I see it could be about democracy as much as the Susitna River.
“Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint.”
― Heather Cox Richardson, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
In Talkeetna, we sat on the riverbank for a few minutes in silence, taking it all in. A small flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers and Common Redpoll flew into a small willow.
“Excuse me,” a man with a long-lens said. “Will it bother you if I take a picture here?” The birds flew away. He stood closer to the water to get a shot of the mountain with his long lens.
Across the river I could see an Arctic Tern flying low over the water. The Terns had just recently returned to Alaska to begin their breeding season, having flown from the Antarctic to get there. During our trip, I saw them nearly everywhere we went, feeding along the shore in Anchorage, at the Westchester Saloon, along the shore in Seward and now fishing the Susitna. In late summer, the terns will embark on their 25,000-mile flight to Antarctica for summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
Bird migration — and this long of a migration — is amazing. How exactly they do it is still a mystery though Arctic Terns (and other birds) are thought to navigate during migration guided by the stars as well as earth’s magnetic field. Maps and borders as we know them are meaningless to an Arctic Tern. During their migration Arctic Terns fly over both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. They nest in Eastern Russia as well as Iceland, Alaska and Canada. Due to the wonders of eBird, I can see that the same day I was watching an Arctic Tern in Alaska, a birder in Arkhangelsk, Russia was watching another Arctic Tern there.
One of the worlds largest migration migration corridors funnels millions of birds over Israel and Gaza as they make their way along the flyway between Europe and Africa twice each year, including this one. Which is not to say modern human’s maps and borders and wars aren’t having an effect on the birds. Like too many bird species, Arctic Tern numbers are in decline. It remains to be seen what effect the wars in Ukraine and Gaza will have on wildlife.
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I’ve been looking forward to this post. Thanks for sharing your travels and insight.