WEDNESDAY,
SEPT 4:
Spitting
rain still this morning. Hard to
understand how this is labeled a “cold desert” – meaning they only get a few
inches of liquid precipitation a year . ..
guess it’s all in late August/September!
This is
our last day here. A good day to be
inside at the Museum of the North on the University of Alaska campus.
We’d read that this was an outstanding
museum, and it was! It combines
cultural, artistic, natural, and scientific exhibits.
The large
art gallery wing contains Alaskan art and cultural artifacts, ranging from a
prehistoric ivory-carved mother and child to 21st century pieces,
and many classic Alaskan paintings of well-known landscapes.
Another gallery is devoted to presenting the natural
and cultural history of each of the 5
main geographical regions of the state:
Southeast, SouthCentral, Interior, Western/Arctic Coast, and Southwest. This is a great way of organizing the vast
amount of material in this collection, especially that related to the
indigenous people who lived in each area.
For us, it served as a kind of summary and reminder and re-cap of our
trip, as we’d spent time in each of these regions except the last.
This last
region includes the Aleutian Islands, and a large part of the exhibit space for
that area was dedicated to portraying the little known and awful chapter in the
Aleuts’ history during WWII, when they were forcibly evacuated, ostensibly to
prevent their being occupied if the Japanese forces should get that far (the
Japanese had bombed nearby Dutch Harbor).
But history strongly suggests that, like the Japanese-Americans on the
U.S. west coast, they were suspect of turning to help the Japanese. A strictly racist idea. So the U.S. gov’t gave them 24 hours notice
to pack 1 suitcase per family, and they were taken to Southeast Alaska, to live
in places like abandoned cannery buildings, which were never built for winter
occupancy. No doctors were available
(they were all either in the Armed Forces, or out with the Aleut men the gov’t
had convinced to hunt seals, for the govt’s huge profit), and when a measles
epidemic broke out, many children died. If
that weren’t enough to suffer, the army trashed any homes they didn’t burn,
stole the priceless icons from the Orthodox churches there, etc. Not the Japanese Army, the U.S. Army. And when the war was over, we certainly
didn’t welcome them back home nor make it easy for them. Absolutely despicable and shameful. It wasn’t until the 90’s and the 1st
Bush administration that the gov’t finally issued an apology and gave some
reparations. But the cost to those poor
people’s souls was enormous.
On a much
lighter and more inspirational note, there was also a special exhibit
commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first conquest of
Denali.
This exhibit was more in depth
than the one we’d seen at the Eielson Center in Denali Nat’l Park, which served
as a great intro for this one. This one
had lots of artifacts from the actual expedition, including pages from each
man’s diary, which made for fascinating reading. You
really got a feel for their individual personalities. It also included filmed interviews with the
original climbers’ descendants.
The
museum also showed 3 20-minute films; we watched 2 of them. One was on the northern lights, offering a
scientific explanation geared to us non-scientists, along with great footage of
the borealis displaying itself. We were
hoping to see the northern lights here in Fairbanks, as this is as north as
we’ll get, and they often appear here.
But this film might be the best we can do at seeing them, as the sky
needs to be pretty clear.
The other film we saw was entitled, “Winter,” and was a wonderful look at
what winter is like here in the Interior, from the residents’ points of
view. Far from discouraging us, it
almost made us want to extend our stay here!
I really do think that I could withstand the cold, dark winters here much
better than I could withstand the year-round milder but constantly rainy
climates of some other Alaskan places.
For one thing, the darkness isn’t really complete blackness – there’s a
lot of twilight there, which is a magical, evocative time for most people,
myself included. And I’ve always loved the changing of the
seasons. While extreme here, the wide
variations in both temperatures and daylight are a constant reminder to
appreciate the present moment for its unique qualities. Which we’ve been doing a lot of on this trip –
grabbing and appreciating the sunny hours for outdoor activities, resting &
doing quieter, indoor things when skies are grey & murky. And enjoying the pitter patter of the raindrops
on the RV roof.
The
museum exterior itself is a unique architectural structure – the only building
of any architectural interest on the campus. Its shimmering white lines suggest
jagged mountains, steep glaciers, even the tail of a breaching whale.
The afternoon flew by; it was 7:00 and closing time
before we knew it. Came home to our
leftover salmon. Hope that Bill gets a
chance to do some more fishing. Doubtful
that it will be salmon – I’m almost sure that their runs are over. But maybe grayling, or possibly trout??
Tomorrow
we head for Tok again, and from there to Dawson City, Yukon and down south and
east. Ready to get home, but also
melancholy about leaving this wonderful state where we’ve been immersed for the
last 13 weeks or so. We are soooo
glad and grateful we were able to do it
the way we did . . . taking our time, getting a real flavor of each place we
visited, getting to spend some time visiting with the locals, sometimes waiting
out bad weather for spectacularly gorgeous days. We doubt if we’ll ever get up here again.
(Although time & again, we heard people say, “Yeah, we didn’t think we
would make a return trip either, but after a while it really starts beckoning
to you . . .”) But if not, we’ll never
feel short-changed. We’ll always feel
that we really saw and experienced Alaska and what she has to offer.
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