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dailyunsolvedmysteries · 7 months ago

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Christopher McCandless, The Man who Hiked to Death

Born February 12th 1968, in Inglewood, California, Christopher McCandless was immediately plunged into a chaotic family. His sister, Carine McCandless, documented in her book ‘The Wild Truth’ that they shared their home with six half-siblings. Carine also alleged that her parents were abusive, both physically and verbally, toward the McCandless children. She documented how her father was an alcoholic, and their mother often fed off his evil energy, inflicting her own abuse upon them.

The McCandless never stayed in one place for long as Walt McCandless worked for NASA as a rocket scientist, taking him across the U.S. Eventually, the family settled in Virginia long enough for Christopher and Carine to graduate.

Following his graduation from university, Christopher knew he needed to travel. He had spent much of his childhood moving from town to town, state to state, and this had a profound impact on his outlook on life.

He only stayed in one place for a short time, seeing the beauty in exploring the world. In mid-1990, Christopher left Virginia for new pastures and began driving West. He stopped in towns and cities along the way, picking up odd jobs to make ends meet. By April of 1992, Christopher was itching for another adventure, and that is when he decided to make his way to Alaska, the final frontier of the U.S.

Incredibly, Christopher managed to hitchhike from Carthage, South Dakota, to Fairbanks, Alaska, a whopping 3,000+ miles through Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Yukon, Canada. Eventually, he arrived, and he began planning his largest expedition yet. He wanted to hike through the Denali National Park. The park covers over 6,000,000 acres in the middle of Alaska. Communities are few and far between, with many Alaskans congregating near large towns and cities.

Despite the harsh weather conditions of Alaska, Christopher McCandless seemed ill-prepared. Fellow hikers and locals recalled seeing Christopher arrive in Fairbanks carrying only a backpack. He also stood out for his ‘Hippie-like’ appearance, choosing to remain unkempt and dirty. April 28th 1992, would mark the last day that Christopher McCandless would ever see the seeds of civilisation.

That day, Jim Gallien was flagged down by Christopher, who was looking for a ride to the Stampede Trail in the Denali National Park. Gallien later told author Jon Krakauer that he had doubts about the 24-year-old’s survival from the start. When he got into his car, Christopher had minimal clothing and a backpack. Christopher explained that he was carrying a 10 lb bag of rice, a Remmington semi-automatic rifle and a pair of Wellington boots inside his bag. Gallien was, in fact, so concerned that he offered to drive Christopher to Anchorage so that he could purchase the necessary equipment for him. He knew how harsh and unforgiving the Alaskan landscape could be, and per population, it has an alarmingly high missing persons rate. Throughout their drive, Christopher assured Gallien that he would be fine and had hiked many times before.

It wasn’t until months later that Gallien learned Christopher’s real name, as when he had picked him up, he had simply given the name ‘Alexander Supertramp’. The only item that Christopher accepted from Gallien was a map. Before leaving, Christopher asked Gallien to snap a picture of him at the Stampede Trail, making this one of the last photographs ever taken of Christopher McCandless.

For two days, Christopher hiked the Alaskan wilderness, soaking in the beauty of the Denali National Park. After a gruelling march, Christopher made it to an abandoned blue and white bus. Whilst the exterior was rusted and hadn’t been loved for some time, Christopher recognised it was the perfect shelter and base camp. He wasted no time setting up his gear and prepping his new home.

The blue and white bus that would become a notorious tourist hotspot was not Christopher’s intended finish line. According to his diary, which was later discovered with his body, Christopher had planned to hike through the park and to the Bering Sea. Christopher remained at the blue and white bus for two months, eagerly journaling every step. Christopher wrote in his diary that he had begun consuming the roots of the Hedysarum Alpinum plant. Christopher also detailed in his diary how he had trapped and hunted small game and wildlife. He had successfully hunted a moose/caribou with his rifle. However, the meat was rotten by the time he came to consume it. With just 10 lbs of rice and foraged plants, Christopher rapidly began losing weight.

The lack of food and people was beginning to get to Christopher, who heavily documented his trip via his journal and camera. On July 3rd 1992, Christopher packed up his things, leaving the blue and white bus behind.

With a map in hand, Christopher hoped to reach civilisation once more, but the landscape had changed and he became distressed and returned to the blue and white bus to wait out the days until the river froze over once more.

On July 14th, he also began to incorporate the seeds of the Hedysarum Alpinum plant into his diet, as was documented in his diary. The meagre diet of plant material and small animals was nowhere near enough to sustain Christopher, who continued to waste away. As he continued to weaken, he lost his energy and ability to forage further afield for plants and fruits.

Christopher McCandless made his final diary entry on what he noted as ‘Day 107’. The entry simply reads, “Beautiful blue berries.” Author Krakauer noted that days 108 through 112 had / (slashes) but no words, and after Day 113, no more entries were made. Sometime around these final diary entries, Christopher wrote, “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye, and may God bless all.” It is clear Christopher knew his end was coming, and he had made his final preparations and peace with his fate.

It wasn’t until September 6th 1992 that the grizzly truth would be revealed.

That day, hikers in the Denali National Park came across the blue and white rusted van that Christopher had once called home.

These hikers had the same idea as Christopher and were eager to use the bus as shelter.

When they approached the bus, they found a note taped to the door which read “Attention possible visitors. S.O.S. I need your help; I am injured, near death and too weak to hike out. I am all alone; this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless, August.”

As they moved through the bus, they saw the familiar outline of a human in a sleeping bag. After reading the note, they hoped that Chris had managed to survive, but all hopes were dashed when the stench of decay overcame them. The hikers took a closer look, and their worst suspicions were confirmed. Christopher McCandless was deceased, his body decaying in a sleeping bag in the back of a rusted-out bus.

Alaska State Troopers and Denali Park staff were summoned to the bus where Christopher’s body was recovered. His family were notified of the terrible news, and preparations for his body to be returned to Virginia were made.

Christopher’s passing marked a turning point in the culture surrounding hiking and travelling. He had wilted away in the wilderness when a bridge and cabin were within a few miles of his location.

#christopher mccandless #unsolved #unsolved mysteries #creepy #missing

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netherator · 4 months ago

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I hope I'm more than just a random guy to you. Maybe I'm a random guy from Alaska, the last frontier and land of beauty.

And I hope you listen when I say please don't forget to vote because the alternative is trump and he's gonna open up pebble mine again which Alaskans have already voted against multiple times. I don't know how we're still a red state.

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coastielaceispunk · 2 years ago

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Another Frontier

Francisco Morales x f!reader (no descriptions)

Word Count: 4.7K+ (back with a bang!)

Warnings: fluff city my loves, language, established relationship, husband Frankie, soft Frankie, Frankie is a menace, Alaska things, lots of kissing, a couple of “good girl”s, nothing graphic but allusions to sexy times.

Summary: Having some vacation days, you travel with your husband Frankie to Yakutat, Alaska, his favorite place ever. His new job takes him many places and this is the one he wants to share with you. The Last Frontier is scary but you have your strong man to protect you every step of the way.

A/N: Yes, Yakutat is a real Alaskan village. It's actually my favorite place! My job took me there many times and it’s a beautifully wild, untamed village of wonder. All of the pictures in this post are my own from Yakutat! Refer to the mood board for the actual lodge I have stayed in and path hiked. Every time I found myself in this village I would think to myself, “Frankie would love it here.” Special thanks to my wonderful beta @lowlights. I hope you all enjoy this little adventure to the tundra with our favorite rugged man, Frankie!

MASTERLIST

+++++

Stale. The air is stale. The colors in the room are stale. How is it that even the lighting in this damn place is…stale? When Frankie wanted you to travel with him on his work trip to his favorite place, this is not what you had in mind. At all. You could not have even imagined this post-apocalyptic looking lodge if you tried.

The lodge you currently find yourself in is located in Yakutat, Alaska. You should’ve done more research before agreeing to join him on this particular adventure. Not that you aren’t into the outdoors, you love to be in nature with your handsomely rugged husband, to watch him in his happy place, he kills all the creepy crawlies for you and keeps you warm, but…this is extreme.

After an early military retirement, early as in he did his twenty years and got out at age 39, Frankie stuck with helicopters doing search and rescue, wildfire response, medical evacuations, you name it, everywhere you lived. His love for flying has brought you both many places but after so many years, it's time to leave it to the young bucks. Sweet man’s eyes are getting worse and you adore him in his thick framed glasses always, even though he hates to wear them. Like he's failing at something if he has them on. If anything he’s winning at the whole aging thing, damn him and his beautiful grays.

Frankie could never fully give up helos, and you would never ask him to, so he found his calling in instructing. You get to live in one spot, finally, finding your way back to you and Frankie’s hometown. Pursuing your career where you want to be, Frankie gets to travel all over the nation training pilots and crews in helo search and rescue tactics. It’s the dream job he never knew he wanted.

With an opening in your schedule he begged for you to tag along on this trip. His absolute favorite place to instruct.

“Alaska?!”

“Mi amor, come on, you have the days, let me share this adventure with you this one time,” he pleaded, tangled around you laying in bed one morning last week. He nuzzled your cheekbone and ear, his forehead against your temple, you could feel the pinch of his eyebrows as he continued, “come on. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon pleeeease.”

You smiled up at the ceiling, traveling with him would be amazing, you wouldn’t have to miss him this time, like every other time, and you do have the off days, so you let out a long sigh followed by, “okay.”

Frankie squeezed you so tight in his excitement you swear your back cracked and then he leaped out of the bed rambling about everything you both will need to wash and pack for the trip to the Last Frontier. You watched his gleeful frenzy from the bed with the biggest smile.

You are not smiling anymore though. Your mouth is a worried straight line. Last Frontier…more like a forgotten frontier. This village right here is the land that time forgot. And this lodge. My goodness. You know it's cleaned sure, but it looks…weathered.

Frankie is currently in the bathroom that is shared between two rooms. He will have to explain the etiquette for that later. He had to “hit the head” after the last long flight on the small eight passenger prop plane you arrived in. Frankie said he was so proud of how you took the flight with such grace, you did actually enjoy it. The flight was all beautiful mountains and glaciers. You enjoyed his praise too.

So, you are standing at the door alone taking in your surroundings. Yep, stale is still the word. Of course this is Frankie’s favorite place, there is barely anything in here. Bare minimum necessities, everything is simple and a shade of brown, more room for gear than anything, and there’s no tv or wifi. Off the grid, literally. Not complicated. Just a place to sleep after a hard day's work. With plumbing? Shit lets hope so, what does shared bathroom mean?

You place your pack down to inspect the rest of the room. Two full sized beds. How does his broad ass even sleep on these? Torn up carpets. Best to keep my shoes on in here. Crooked framed photographs of fish and ducks on one wall. Holy Alaska.

Frankie explained that there are no snakes or reptiles in Alaska but there are spiders and bears and wolverines and porcupines everywhere. Those are the ones you remember him mentioning anyways. He’s been rocketing information at you the whole way up here. His excitement was apparent. Most of the time you were distracted by his beauty when he talked about what he is passionate about. All darting expressive eyebrows, deep brown eyes, plush lips, and shining teeth. You zone out on his good looks often.

With critters in mind you approach the beds to inspect underneath. Like an uncomfortable child looking for monsters. Maybe Frankie should…nah fuck it you’re an adult. You kneel and lean forward to grab the bedding and pause. You rip the thick quilts up and hold your breath like you're going to find a damn moose under there. Nothing. More dirt and rocks and dust.

Frankie steps out of the bathroom to find you searching under the second bed, “Uh, sweetheart, what are you doing?”

You sit back on your heels to look up at him standing by the bags, “I, um, was just checking,” you stand up in your place, “Frankie, my love, this place is…rough.”

He puts his hands on his hips and shifts his weight to one side, “not to your standards, princess?”

“Shut up. This place doesn’t meet a caveman’s standards!”

“Hey now,” he mocks offense and you both laugh.

“But seriously, are there bed bugs? I don’t know about sleeping in the beds,” you cringe.

Frankie starts to open the large duffle he brought, “Rule number one in Alaskan villages, always pack your own sleeping bag and blanket,” he spins back around with both items held up in his hands, the sleeping bag unfurling on cue with a flick of his wrist.

“Ah. Smart, very smart,” you cross your arms to avoid the urge to touch anything as you continue to look around.

He walks towards you to place the safe sleeping items on the left bed, “Well, baby girl, I am…experienced,” he winks and wiggles his eyebrows at you. He’s such a dork and you swat him with a scoff to tell him so. Frankie huffs a laugh, you know he’s just trying to ease your nerves about the strange arrangement.

“So, Mr. Experienced, what’s rule number two?”

Frankie’s face goes from playful to serious in an instant as he smoothes the sleeping bag out over the bed. “Rule number two in Alaskan villages…crack the door first to inspect outside before stepping out and keep your head on a swivel for bears, moose, and wolves. They are not friendly.”

You stare at him with wide eyes with your hands clenching your arms where they are crossed. Oh my fucking god he’s dead serious.

He finally turns his head towards you after a moment realizing you hadn’t said anything, he sees your fearful state and leaps into your space to grab your shoulders to bring you into his chest.

“No, no, no, sweetheart, it's ok! I promise!” He peppers you with kisses and holds you tight, “I didn’t mean to scare you, it was a half joke. Besides, rule number three is that You will never leave my side or sight, okay?” Frankie pushes you back to look in your eyes, now softened within the safety of his sturdy arms.

“Yes, um, okay. Good,” you clear your throat and will away the residual fear of this wild place, “you’re going first everywhere as my bait that's for damn sure!”

Frankie belly laughs with you as the lightness reenters the room. Almost brightening the whole space before your very eyes, everything will be just fine. Frankie has always got you.

“Alrighty,” he pulls away to put his jacket on, you already miss his warmth, “the sun doesn’t set around here until 10PM so I want to spend the remainder of our free time today somewhere magical. Get your day pack and your jacket, I will grab us some water, and we will stop by the general store before heading there. Sound good?”

“Forgot about the forever sun, hm, okay. Where here is magical?”

“You’ll see, sweetheart, let me show you what’s past all the dust and danger,” Frankie sends you a hopeful smile which you return then go about following his instructions.

When you are ready to go, Frankie opens the door and commences with rule number two. He gives you the okay, no danger this time, and you follow him out the door. The damn thing doesn’t close properly so he has to help you pull it shut. It put up a good fight because even Frankie grunted to lock it.

“Alaska is hard,” you mock complain and he laughs.

Momentarily you relaxed and forgot your surroundings. Turning towards the beat up rental, Alaska roads are even rougher apparently, sensing a pattern between the cars and buildings here, you’re thinking to yourself as you round the car to get in the passenger side. Out of the corner of your eye you see something black as night and furry. You YELL.

“OH FUCK SAKE!” you cover your whole face when the animal comes into focus. A damn dog.

Took you a second to notice that Frankie was already beside you with…his handgun out? That’s right he packed that. Also smart. Form of deterrence, nothing more, he told you while packing. He's giggling at you as he tucks the pistol into the back of his waistband…why is that hot?

“It’s just a pooch,” the dog runs to him happily as he kneels down to give the large mutt a couple hard pats, “this good girl is here to protect us, yea? Yea she is, what a good girl.”

The gun handling, good girl…this man. You shake your head, no, you have to stay alert out here. Frankie can’t be distracting you like that, goodness.

“I really keyed you up with rule number two, I’m sorry, just stay alert and I am right here. I’ve got you, mi amor, I promise,” Frankie opens your car door and places his hand on your lower back to help you inside. You can’t handle this man, your protector…he's everything.

Once seated in the SUV he shuts the door with a slam because apparently all doors in Yakutat hate people. Has to be the harsh weather, you reason. You buckle up and turn to watch your tall, broad husband fit himself through the driver side door and into the seat. He stretches back and rolls his hips forward to situate. Oh God. The small swell of his soft tummy rests above the belt in his jeans as he settles. Fuck.

“What?” Frankie asks when he finds you staring at him, “You alright?”

“Hm? Hmhm. Yes. Fine.”

Frankie flashes you a smile, puts his seatbelt on, and starts the vehicle. You’ve turned back towards the cracked windshield when he reaches his right hand to look over his shoulder to back out of the dirt parking lot. You swear he’s doing all of this on purpose now, damn him. In your heart though you know this is all just Frankie being Frankie, he never has to do much of anything to get you all riled up for him. Large hand and fingertips lightly brushing past you, strong arm and shoulder supporting his turn, and then his long freckled neck on display. Again…fuck.

You start the journey to find magic with a stop at the village store, the only store, the store that was the grocery, clothing, hardware, appliance, and everything else you can think of store. Then with road snacks in hand, the SUV started down the road into the wilderness. It was instant, the transition from almost civilization to nothing but the outdoors. Chilling but beautiful.

Either side of the dusty gravel road is framed by tall evergreen trees. Acting as the two thick walls that prevent the human race from affecting the untouched nature any further. Sentinels for the pristine environment that is the Alaskan tundra. The seclusion and forced direction is eerie. You lean forward to place your camera in the dash to capture the beauty of the empty road.

“Incredible isn’t it?” Frankie states breaking the appreciative silence that fell over the bumpy ride.

“Yes,” you breathe in awe of your surroundings, “this is magical, Frankie.”

He smiles at you and turns back towards the road ahead of him, “you’ve seen nothing yet, sweetheart.”

He says it with such hope and finality you couldn’t possibly think of what this surprise will be. You’ve already flown over snowy mountain tops, seen glaciers even with it being the middle of July, gasped at the clearest ocean waters you’ve ever seen, and watched him is his element. There’s more magic? You are starting to see why he wanted to share this place with you. Despite the unsettling lodge that somehow erased some of the awe. Hey, it’s a scary beautiful place. Some darkness and uneasiness within a stunning wild atmosphere. Oh. Now you are really seeing why this is Frankie’s favorite place.

He feels you staring at the side of his face again, “You ok? Really, tell me, is this all too much?” He reaches across to place his hand upon your jean covered thigh, rubbing his thumb back and forth in comfort he thinks you need.

You hadn’t even noticed how long you were looking, the time passing quickly while you were stuck within your thoughts, you cover his hand with yours and squeeze, “I am more than okay, Francisco, I promise. Just in awe of where we are…and of you.”

Frankie blushes, “Good. We are just about there, after we drive across a little rickety bridge then we are at the trailhead.”

“Trailhead?”

“Right, sorry, it’s a very short hike to the magic.”

“Frankie…our definitions of short hike are very different!”

He laughs as you shove his shoulder playfully, “It’s your definition! I swear!”

Both of your laughing fades as the SUV approaches the bridge. Oof Alaska, caring for your roadways must be real tough. Frankie retracts his hand so both are back on the wheel for full driving focus. Um, yep necessary, because these guardrails don’t look like they would help much. You brace yourself and he grunts as the shitty rental bounces over the first severe pothole…his poor back and also, damn him for sounding like that in broad daylight. Night light? What time is it?

The bridge was so horrendous you barely noticed the rushing water beneath and at the other side is a small gravel turn around. The end of the road. Like, that's all the road of Yakutat, you’ve seen all of it already. Village life.

Frankie scans the area around the vehicle and you wait with bated breath. You don’t see anything but he's the trained one so you are going to follow his lead. You’d follow him anywhere, to the ends of the Earth, do anything he tells you. Ok, getting distracted again, pay attention this is actually scary.

“Rule number two is clear, let's go sweetheart, stay close,” he winks at you as he climbs out. First thing he does is stretch with his hands pressed into his lower back, a sliver of his skin showing and you forget how to use a door handle. As you struggle with the door you realize it's actually like the lodge door, thank god. Does he really make you that stupid? Well…yes. Frankie comes around to help you out as you laugh to yourself.

“Alaska is haaarrrd,” he mocks you from earlier, chuckling, and you roll your eyes.

“Yea, yea, Alaskan doors hate me. Ok…” you throw your arms out, “magic me, Mr. Experienced!”

A devious look flashes across his features along with one that looks like surprise at your words, hm that did something, file that away for later when we are sharing his sleeping bag.

“Careful what you wish for, baby girl,” Frankie abruptly pulls you close by your backpack strap to smash his lips to yours in a heated kiss that could melt an Alaskan glacier field. When he pulls away you are breathless, how are you going to hike now? He holds you close as he slams the shit out of the car door getting it to shut, with one strong arm, did it just get hotter out here? Shit.

“I am so happy you are here with me, mi amor, my favorite person in my favorite place is making my entire life right now.” You can feel the warmth of his words above you as he continues, “I am also happy no one else is out here currently so we can have all of the magic to ourselves. Let’s get down the trail, stay right behind me ok?”

“You got it, handsome,” you lean up to quickly kiss the patch of grays in his beard before he walks away towards the entrance of the forest. You follow behind as instructed trying to keep up with his long confident strides.

The trail is absolutely incredible. The canopy of the trees creates a natural tunnel and the low moss and ferns give it a bright green, almost prehistoric vibe. Again, the only human touch being the trail, like the road, but somehow showing a little more care and maintenance. Starting to see the Alaskan priorities more clearly.

Your tall, broad shouldered husband fills the whole space of the narrow path. His presence is natural. He’s comfortable and you can tell by the way he's walking, he is at ease completely. His gait opened, planting his feet heel to toe. On alert of course, but his spirit is still. In his element of the calm outdoors, Frankie is serene. Your eyes begin to water in the happiness of this realization. No matter what he is taking you to see, this right here is the magic. This man has worked through so many traumas, struggles, and hardships, he deserves whatever good in the world he can find. The world owes it to him. Frankie always shares with you that you are his peace, he is yours, but you are proud to see him find it in something else too. Just for him. And he wants to share it with you.

You go to wipe the one errant happy tear that slides down your cheek and slam directly into Frankies pack, “OOF! What is it…”

“Shh,” Frankie cuts you off as he throws his arm around your shoulders and takes you with him as he drops to one knee, “sorry, heard some rustling, trying to locate from where.”

Panic. All the panic hits you as you cover your mouth with both hands, your breathing suddenly way too loud in your own ears. He is scanning the woods calmly as your eyes are darting every which way. You are safe though because he is holding you so close. His even breaths start to calm you. That's when you see it.

“There?” You say as quietly as you can and point straight out into a small mossy clearing, something big, round and spiky.

“That’s my girl!” Frankie shouts lifting you up into a hug keeping an eye on the creature in the distance. “Good girl! Good eyes! Wow, look at that porcupine, it’s huge!”

“Why are you being so loud?! Is it safe?” You are muffled in his chest with your hands on his sides, shaking a little bit because you’re still scared as shit and oh yea, you got a good girl. Shiver.

“Yes! It’s safe because that big boy is in this area, meaning nothing else will be. He’s scary to other animals but harmless to us. What are you gonna name him?”

“What?”

“You spotted him, eagle eye, you get to name him,” Frankie smiles down at you then turns to watch the animal waddle through the clearing.

You also watch the gorgeous guy as a respectful trespasser to its home, its slow waddle is so cute, “I’ve got it!” Frankie turns to take in your sly smile, “Pope!”

Frankie cracks up, shaking you both with his deep laughter, “oh my god, I can’t wait to tell him that!”

“Let me get a picture,” you giggle at your cleverness and break away to get a good photo. Pope looks right at you as you call his name and it's the best wildlife photo you’ve ever taken.

After a few minutes of watching the safe, wild animal from afar, Pope disappears and you continue your hike, Frankie promising it’s only a few more minutes. The hike is nearing his definition of short.

You can see an opening in the distance, is that water? You did cross a bridge so it’s probable. You don’t really notice when Frankie lets you take the lead as your curiosity takes over and you hike the rest of the way with him right behind. The constant tunnel of greenery gives way to a large rocky path. You have to look at your feet to be careful where you step, bigger pieces of granite and quartz leading to a short course gravel shore with subtly lapping water. When you're more sure of your steps, you look up.

Then…

Fucking MAGIC.

All you can do is open your mouth to gasp, but no sound comes out. Standing stalk still with hands by your side you marvel at the majesty of what you are standing in.

From the gray rocky shore you take in the crystal clear lake that is filled with snow white and chilly blue floating icebergs of all shapes and sizes. What’s even more magical is the absence of any noise. The silence is all encompassing. Beyond the lake are the largest and barest mountains you’ve seen yet. The high night sun coloring them in purplish grays and highlighting their snowy peaks. They protect the silence of this valley lake filled with moving ice. The air is still and cool. Goosebumps. Refreshing after the trek out here. All that is heard is your heartbeat and it starts to sync with the rise and fall of the floating, pulsing, changing ice on the water. It is, in fact, pure magic.

You realize you are crying and it is just your body’s reaction to the scenery. You aren’t sad or happy, you are even. That’s when you turn to face Frankie who has been letting you take it in on your own. He is already looking at you. Your crying eyes meeting his own watery ones.

“Francisco…” you finally speak after who knows how long, “I have no words.”

Frankie finally approaches you, the sound of his footfalls upon the rocks cutting sharply through the silence, he takes your pack off your shoulders to place with his on the shore and pulls your back flush with his chest. Both facing the magic. With his warm arms around the top of your chest he hugs you close, resting his chin on the top of your ball cap. Your hands hold onto his forearms as you lean into him further.

After a few more silent moments together, Frankie speaks quietly, “I wanted to bring you here for a specific reason, besides just liking my favorite place more, my love.”

The emotion in his voice causes you to turn around in his arms, looking up at him, quietly waiting for him to continue.

“Your reaction to seeing this place, same reaction I had when I found it,” Frankie swallows what seems to be a lump in his throat matching his glistening eyes, “this is exactly how I felt the first time I saw you all those years ago. Comfortably still. At ease. Silent. Calm.”

Now you are full on sobbing as you take his face into your hands and jump up to kiss him desperately. Frankie swallows your cries with his soft lips as you both murmur I love you’s into each other's breaths. The action causes both of your ballcaps to fall to the ground, never breaking the silence around you.

As the deep kiss continues, you both pour all of your emotions into it and that's when Frankie’s legs give out, sliding you both down into the pebble shore to kneel directly in front of the other, arms around waists, hands grasping shirts, his tummy pressing into yours. Crying gasps turn into heated pants as you climb into his lap to straddle his narrow hips. Frankie starts kissing down your cheeks and neck, licking away your tears. Your arms fall around his shoulders and your fingertips find his curls to pull his lips back up to yours. He whimpers into your mouth and you quiet him with your tongue, making both of his hands drag up your torso, your arms, up your neck to spread his large hands over either side of your face. Frankie holds you still with his fingers in your hair to lick even further into your mouth as he tilts his head. Now you are the one breaking through the silence with a moan that is not appropriate for the pristine environment you are in.

Suddenly, a thunderous sound makes you jump within Frankies arms and yelp. He laughs breathlessly holding you close to his chest. “It’s okay, gorgeous.”

“What the hell was that?”

Frankie taps your thigh and maneuvers you to turn and sit between his legs facing the lake again. Damn you almost forgot where you were. When did we get down here? Frankie leans you back again and points out across the lake.

“See over there, between those two big ass mountains?” You nod your head smiling as he continues, loud as hell because he's excited and can’t control his voice in the quiet. “That sound was the glacier calving. That’s where all the chunks of ice come from and float out onto the lake to later melt small enough to flow down the river.” You’re following his finger, biting your lip as he explains the path. Oh there’s more. “The bluer the ice is, the newer it is because it turns white the longer it sits out exposed to the sunlight.”

“That’s incredible, baby, thank you for showing me all of this. I am so happy I could come with you.” You feel him smile into the crown of your head at your words. You could listen to him all day.

After an appropriate amount of time of appreciative silence, admiring the magic within each other’s arms on the cool rocky shore, you finally stand. Frankie stays sitting, legs sprawled out in front of him as he watches you take some pictures of the scenery. It is breathtaking to be here.

Frankie brings your pack to where you are crouched touching the clear, chilly water, “hey beautiful, are you ready to head back?”

You let out a long yawn as you stand and give him a nod as he helps you situate your straps over your shoulders. It has been a long day and he's got an early morning. Frankie scoops your ball cap back on your head and gives you a quick kiss before leaving the most magical place ever. You both turn around at the entrance to the trail to take it all in one more time.

“Back to the stale lodge I guess, farewell magic!” You wave at the iceberg lake and Frankie giggles, taking your hand to start hiking back to the rental.

“It’s not that bad, sweetheart.”

“Francisco…we are about to share a sleeping bag on top of a full size bed.” You deadpan stepping over a tree root trying to keep up with him.

“Ohh, we’re sharing are we?” Frankie raises his eyebrow and you realize you’ve given yourself away.

You shoot him the same raised eyebrow, “you can’t make out like that with me in the most magical place ever and not expect me to want more! You’ve been making me burn all day for you, lover,” you stop him and press your hands to his chest grasping his shirt, “my confident, capable, intelligent, protective, strong…Mr. Experienced.”

Frankie licks his bottom lip and shudders at the way you husk out the last few words. He pulls you against him and you can feel his want.

“Come now, my good girl, let's go make our own magic.”

When you arrive back at the lodge safe and sound it doesn’t seem so scary anymore. Frankie brings light to anything and everything in your life. His very own magic.

+++++

Another A/N: I want to apologize for my absence and lack of posting fics. Last year was a rough year of insane change and moving. This year my goal is to be more present! Just saying, there is lots more to come and I am excited to share it with all of you <3

Join my TAGLIST!

#my fic #a little adventure for my loves!#frankie fanfiction #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie x reader #frankie catfish morales #triple frontier fanfiction #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedro pascal

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gothdaddyissues · 5 months ago

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It really is a shame that cults have ruined getting together with like minded people who have ideals, opinions and everything in common with what they worship or follow.

Cults suck. I just want a homestead like the Last Alaskan Frontier.

agreed...

we should probably just pool all our money together, buy a castle somewhere, and start our happy little co-operative collective!

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o-craven-canto · 21 hours ago

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Medieval Persian folklore includes mention of two outstanding conquerors who invaded Iran from opposite directions: Eskandar of Rum, and Afrāsīāb of Turan. Eskandar is known to be Alexander the Great ("Rūm" = "Rome" i.e. Greece). But who on earth is this Afrāsīāb person? "Turān" is the old Persian name for the Central Asian steppe. But we know nothing of the Achaemenids' dealings with the people on their eastern borders; almost all of our knowledge comes from Greek writers who focused on the western portion of the empire. Some think that Afrāsīāb is a fictional character (like another villain of the Shahnameh: the demon-king Zahhāk, who derives from the mythical dragon Aži Dahāka). But I think it's also possible that he was a real person—perhaps some Scythian warlord—who fought against Persia and was remembered for it in Persian mytho-history. A good comparison here is with Attila the Hun, another would-be conqueror from the steppe. Like Afrāsīāb, Attila was remembered and commemorated in the folk traditions of the local people—in this case, Germanic poems like Widsith, the Nibelungenlied, and the Poetic Edda. The difference is that in Attila's case, we also have contemporary, reliable historical accounts which historians can use to corroborate (or not) the references to Attila in poetry: no need to uselessly speculate on who this mysterious "Atli" figure was or whether he existed. No such corroborating witness exists for Afrāsīāb. So we can't even know if he was real or mythical.

A modern Persian wanting to learn about the earliest history of his or her civilization is much better served by reading Herodotus than Ferdowsi. Likewise, a modern Greek is going to get much better information about earliest Greece from the records of the Egyptians and Hittites than from the poetry of Homer. Adopting a discerning eye towards different sources of historical evidence often means that the most accurate and reliable history of a culture doesn't come from that culture at all, but from outsiders—this is a point which modern commentators of Native American history often don't want to accept. Who knows the most about the early Alaskan Tlingit? People who can read Russian, that's who. The flipside, however, is that when documentation for a period is sparse, people can start to confuse lack of evidence for lack of incidence: "we don't know a lot about the eastern Persian Empire, so not a lot must have happened." But that's not going to be the perspective of someone from ancient Persia—certainly not if they're from one of the eastern satrapies after their village has been sacked. To assume that everything of significance that happened in Persia happened with Greece is to make the same mistake as that critic ("What is this to me, the duel between Iran and Turan?"). Modern histories of Persia ignore Afrāsīāb; they can only go where the evidence takes them. But the Shahnameh apparently puts Afrāsīāb on roughly the same level as Eskandar—that fact might (might!) be a clue that something big did happen out on the eastern Persian frontier, which could be compared to Alexander's invasion. Maybe. The record is silent.

Trying to reconstruct the history of the frontier-beyond-the-frontier is a tricky business. Sometimes you get lucky, like with the Kiowas (on whom more in a future post): where written history, oral history, archaeology, linguistics, and winter counts all come together to form a coherent picture of the Kiowa past which reaches back a thousand years. And sometimes you get unlucky, like with the Arapahoes, who are invisible to the archaeological record and whose early history is a giant mystery. And then there are enigmas, like the Suhtai, on whom all a person can really do is guess. All of this is of course highly relevant to any attempt at making a map of peoples who lived beyond the reach of recorded history. Crumbs... And as for the Bloody Falls Massacre: the Wikipedia article tells me that "in 1996, Dene and Inuit representatives participated in a healing ceremony to reconcile the centuries-old grievance." I can't really argue with that, I suppose. Healing is good, reconciliation is good. But it is hard to hold a healing ceremony for a massacre that nobody remembers. Did you take notice of the fact that it has a name: "the Bloody Falls Massacre"? Why? Who named it that? Do you suppose it would it have a name, or be remembered at all, among the Chipewyans, still to this day, after 248 years, if no one had been there to write it down? Perhaps... but I'm inclined to think likely not. It was just one raid, after all. One among thousands of sanguinary struggles that took place on the lonely tundras, of which the world knows not.

#history #deep time #<- not really but raising adjacent feelings

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spd-magenta-ranger · 1 year ago

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Transformers Rescue Bots: Dakota

Full Name: Dakota Nilgak

Age: 21

Species: Human

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

Cybertronian Partner: Tundra

Bio: Having to grow up with absent parents in the Alaskan wilderness, Dakota learned to value her small community. Her life was turned upside down when a Cybertronian landed in her backyard when she was 18. Fixing her up and naming her Tundra, they became the town's search-and-rescue duo. When Dakota was 21, content with her life, she and Tundra were plucked out of the wild and into the small town of Griffin Rock, via a recruitment offer for a polar rescue duo.

Personality: In contrast to her warm and friendly partner, Dakota is cold and hardened from her time in the wilderness, but caring when she opens up. She can come off often as abrasive and rude to those she doesn't know. She has a fierce protective instinct, especially towards those who threaten her home (Alaska has very large oil deposits, and there's plenty of people who would steamroll over others to get it). She doesn't trust easily, but when she does, you have a friend for life.

Powers and Abilites: No extraordinary abilites, but is athletic and hardened to intense cold. Above average intelligence. Skilled snowmobile rider and mechanic.

Fun Fact: Kade is her least favorite teammate, and as for her favorite, well, they're a rather *lofty* sort....(winks)

Memorable Quote: "A community such as mine protects their own. No matter how annoying they get."

Rescue Bots OC time! Meet the cold-hearted gal from the last frontier, Dakota. I'm honestly surprised the show never had a polar themed Rescue Bot, so me and my friends are rectifying that in a new story. Hope you enjoy!

(ALSO PLEASE BE NICE TO ME IT WAS MY FIRST TIME DRAWING INUIT INSPIRED FASHION AND I WAS TRYING MY BEST!) (Taps fingers together)

#transformers #transformers au #hasbro #takara tomy #transformers rescue bots #inuit #maccadam

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historyofguns · 2 months ago

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In the article "Flying in Alaska — The Last Frontier" published on The Armory Life and written by Will Dabbs, MD, the author recounts his experiences as a helicopter pilot stationed in Alaska during his military service. Hoping for an assignment in Europe, Dabbs was instead sent to Alaska, where the challenging weather and rugged terrain became his new reality. He describes the transformative experience of flying CH-47D Chinook helicopters across vast, pristine landscapes, including daring missions and breathtaking natural beauty. The narrative highlights the harsh conditions and unpredictable wildlife, such as wolves and grizzly bears, and the camaraderie formed within his unit. Dabbs shares stories of unique survival exercises and historical aircraft wrecks encountered, ultimately expressing both the hardships and the profound impact of serving in America's last frontier.

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kwebtv · 4 months ago

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Character Actor

Gerald Mohr (June 11, 1914 – November 9, 1968) Radio, film, and television character actor and frequent leading man, who appeared in more than 500 radio plays, 73 films, and over 100 television shows.

From the 1950s on, he appeared as a guest star in more than 100 television series, including the Westerns The Californians, Maverick, Johnny Ringo, The Alaskans, Lawman, Cheyenne (as Pat Keogh in episode "Rendezvous at Red Rock"/as Elmer Bostrum in episode "Incident at Dawson Flats"), Bronco, Overland Trail (as James Addison Reavis, "the Baron of Arizona", in the episode "The Baron Comes Back"), Sugarfoot, Bonanza (as Phil Reed in the episode "The Abduction", as Collins in the episode "Found Child", as Cato Troxell in the episode "A Girl Named George"), The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive (episode "Till Death do us Part"), Death Valley Days (as Andrés Pico in "The Firebrand"), and Rawhide. In 1949, he was co-announcer, along with Fred Foy, and narrator of 16 of the shows of the first season of The Lone Ranger, speaking the well-known introduction as well as story details. The narration was dropped after sixteen episodes.

Mohr guest-starred seven times in the 1957–62 television series Maverick, twice playing Western gambler Doc Holliday in "The Quick and the Dead" and briefly in the conclusion of "Seed of Deception", a role he reprised again in "Doc Holliday in Durango", a 1958 episode of Tombstone Territory. In one of the other Maverick episodes, he portrayed Steve Corbett, a character based on Bogart's in Casablanca. That episode, "Escape to Tampico," used the set from the original film, this time as a Mexican saloon where Bret Maverick (James Garner) arrives to hunt down Mohr's character for an earlier murder.

Mohr also guest-starred on Crossroads, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, Harrigan and Son, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, It's Always Jan, Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Lost in Space, Ripcord and many other television series of the era, especially those being produced by Warner Bros. Studios and Dick Powell's Four Star Productions. He sang in the 1956 Cheyenne episode "Rendezvous at Red Rock". He also essayed Captain Vadim, an Iron Curtain submarine commander, in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode "The Lost Bomb". In the series' fourth and final season (1968-69), Mohr guest-starred in the episode "Flight From San Miguel" on The Big Valley. This episode was broadcast posthumously in April 1969.

Mohr made guest appearances on such network television comedy shows as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1951), How to Marry a Millionaire (1958), The Jack Benny Program (1961 & 1962), The Smothers Brothers Show (1965) and The Lucy Show (1968). He had the recurring role of newsman Brad Jackson in My Friend Irma (1952). He played "Ricky's friend", psychiatrist "Dr. Henry Molin" (real life name of the assistant film editor on the show), in the February 2, 1953 episode of I Love Lucy, "The Inferiority Complex". His repeated line was, "Treatment, Ricky. Treatment".

In 1954–1955, he starred as Christopher Storm in 41 episodes of the third season of Foreign Intrigue, produced in Stockholm for American distribution. During several episodes of Foreign Intrigue, but most noticeably in "The Confidence Game" and "The Playful Prince", he can be heard playing on the piano his own musical composition, "The Frontier Theme", so called because Christopher Storm was the owner of the Hotel Frontier in Vienna. Foreign Intrigue was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1954 under the category "Best Mystery, Action or Adventure Program" and again in 1955 under the category "Best Mystery or Intrigue Series".

Mohr made four guest appearances on Perry Mason (1961–66). In his first appearance, he played Joe Medici in "The Case of the Unwelcome Bride". In 1963, he played murder victim Austin Lloyd in "The Case of the Elusive Element". In 1964, he played the murderer, Alan Durfee, in "The Case of a Place Called Midnight". In 1966, he played agent Andy Rubin in the series' final episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout".

He continued to market his powerful voice, playing Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) in the Fantastic Four cartoon series during 1967 and Green Lantern in the 1968 animated series Aquaman. (Wikipedia)

#Character Actor #TV #Gerald Mohr

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themareverine · 14 days ago

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BED OF BONES

─ Logan Howlett x fem!OC

synopsis: When he promised her something different, she didn't think it would be this. Alaskan stars, scraping to survive, trying to feel. Anonymous faces in a forgotten frontier. It isn't much, it's barely living—but really all she needs to live is him.

warnings: comic adaptation, pre-established relationship from my Mare & the Wolverine series, angst, survival aesthetics, mentions of hunting, dead carcasses, extreme minimalism, blood, mentions of Logan's time at Weapon X, implied sexual content.

a/n: after listening to the podcast drama Wolverine: The Long Night and its sequel, Wolverine: The Lost Trail, i'm kinda obsessed with Richard Armitage's take on Logan. tortured, angsty, deeply raw and emotional—sign me right up for that. there's a scene that describes Logan's living conditions when he makes his home in nowhere Alaska, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION

Conditions beyond the four walls of the high-woods cabin would be not far removed from that of frozen hell, if laid out parallel to the everyday eye. Void of sunlight at dinner hours. Harsh wind howls, clawing the boards of the condemning thing so bravely titled architecture—even at this altitude, as the crow flies from the water.

Mountain landscape is wild, unforgiving—snow manages to hurricane in sideways, somehow, snaking between trees and low brush, rock. Drives a hard blanket of heavy wet to the once-lush forest floor. Thick trees Goliath tall in an unmovable, chaotic troop. Lowlight, and you would never see the slatwood slapped together with tar and faith—evergreen fronds sentinel away the world, strong walls taunting the world beyond the reach of woods.

When the sun breaks the horizon over the water, the world will be still. Canvas of untouched snow, pure like a virgin, will breathe life into the forest again. Creatures will cull from their caves and beds, will roam freely the fresh from God—breathe air normally unthinkable to mortals. Mountain stone, miles away in the untouched Yukon, will reach jagged fingers to heaven, as if they themselves in their might will rip God from heaven. Kissed with snow even at a distance, they impose harsh laws of the wilderness—survive or die. Life, or death.

There are no lines to walk in Alaska when it comes to the games of living and dying. They are the masters, humanity but an unwise player at the table of chance. Fools before the slaughter. Life, here, is fickle—left up to the false gods of chance and fate. Day and night. Sun and moon, life falls on the blade of time.

Time, and most often attributed by headlines and big-city newscasters, luck—either kind. Four-leaf, or devil-may-cry. The fortunate see the colors of sunrise, breathtaking and pure, over crystalline waters whitecapped with rage and promise. The not-so, well—

—they become quickly acquainted with that throne the mountains try to steal from God.

For those who try to die and don’t—for them—it’s another thing altogether. An Eden, the holy-of-holies away from the battle of living, the war of the being seen. Paradise lost to the knowing. A forgotten frontier, cursed and barren in the hands of men ill understood of the way the wolf walks, the hunger of prey scratching at ice in spring. Fruitless and forbidden, existing on maps as No Man’s Lands and undesired terrains— spinning in the hearts of those who cry someday and never again.

A simple life with little reward beyond morning, Alaskan wilderness reeks of chore and survival. Mundane and petulant. Concepts now lost in the age of machines, swipe right, thumb left; technology’s far-reaching lust of instantaneous gratification. Such things scream louder than the cry of fresh air and escapism, of ample and simple.

Man is blind to the fruit of the earth, lost to concrete. And concrete always wins—the machines. They always win.

“Where are you, Logan?”

Pacing the threadbare boards of the cabin—minding the one every fifth step, it wobbles with the threat of breaking—has yielded no different answer to the question Mare Howlett has asked four other times, checking the sky outside as if the night will change as the hours do. Fire snaps from the hearth on the west wall, blasting heat throughout the small, single-room space like an oven. Sweat has started accumulating between her shoulders, the river of her spine.

It’s after one. In the morning, at least. It’s hard to judge the night by the black veil of the sky, but, she’s learned over the years. Watching the moon, forces of habit—the amount of hours spent not sleeping in the darkest midnight would make God laugh. It had become life, just another part of heartbeats and pulses, blood and living—sleep was, most of the time, a luxury. Expensive, if you knew it. Dangerous.

Palms slick with worked-up perspiration, two more paces has her in a staring contest with the door. Her eyes flick to the slide-board lock—-it’s knocked back, any wind could force it open. And that makes the corner of her mouth lift with amusement, the thought of the wind—he would be furious.

Time and countless time again in the six months they’d been squatting here on Alaskan rock he’d checked this very lock. Like it was his religion, and in a way, it is. Staying alive is a form of religion to those not guaranteed daylight again, Logan had always told her that. Full time job stayin’ this side of the dirt, honey—just to see the next sunrise. I’ll get you to the morning, sweetheart, don’t you worry.

If staying alive was religion, they wrote books.

Logan may as well be a priest.

Back teeth gnaw at the mesh of her cheek, canines pinching the chap of her bottom lip nearly to the point of blood—any second she expected the sting of copper on her tongue. Rocking forward on her toes only to fall back to her heels, her arms cross at her chest, leathers of her jacket groaning with the effort. Eyeballing the door may as well be willing it to vomit what she knows it doesn’t have, so she turns on the ball of her foot—thick wool from her sock catches on the callous of her heel. Doesn’t care, hasn’t ever cared. These were the same pair of socks she’d been wearing since Christmas—last year.

Low hunger gnaws at her guts like a wolf biting at the marrow of bones, sucking every last drop only to burn again tomorrow. It’s only been a four hours since he’d taken north, but it may as well be eternity—even God had created oceans in less time, had knit man together out of dust. Perfect, savory meat boils in delicious broth in the thick pot at the hearth, simmering like it has for hours even before the sun had fallen. Bread, laborious bread warms on another of the hearth’s rocks, golden. Glistening. Practically the food of gods.

And butter—she hadn’t had butter in weeks. It taunts her from its little throne, a pewter dish sat not a stone’s throw from that very hearth, far away to keep soft but not destroy. Logan had surprised her with convenience groceries two weeks ago, coming up the mountain from the water—even the growl of the truck had felt heavier. She’d heard the thunk of something in the bed as he’d pulled up to the door, heightened senses triggered by the crunch of snow, the little squeak of extra weight on the shocks.

“Figured some food we didn’t have’ta kill would make your day,” not that fresh game had been an issue—Logan was an excellent hunter. It came with the territory—with the Wolverine. Venison, rabbit, goose—they hadn’t starved, by any stretch of imagination. Field dressing just didn’t top her list of favorite activities, even as a wife.

He’d almost smiled when she’d popped up from her place before the fire, dropping the rucksack off his shoulder to his feet. Presenting it as if it would cleanse him of sin, “Would you believe they had butter. And honey,” her smile couldn’t have been any brighter, giggling like a child at the feet of Christmas as she’d curled her arms around his thick neck, chilled with the bite of night and dusted with snow and cigar smoke. His nose had brushed into her hair, hand at the back of her neck as he’d pulled her close. “‘Sweet’n you up a little, hm?” She hadn’t expected him to have the jar on his person, but he’d plucked it from his pocket with gusto, like a proud child.

“Excuse me?” her nose had crinkled, shoving his hand down in favor of running her nails along the line of his jaw, through his beard. Mutton chops. Features that belonged to her. “You saying I ain’t sweet?”

How he’d laughed—“Darlin’. If you were any sweeter, my teeth would rot outta my head.”

Nevermind such a thing being the opposite of possible—-they’d found creative ways to use the precious commodities of honey and sugar. She’d never seen him be so greedy. Quick work fo the goodies aside, the rest of the haul she’d squirreled away in the corner, among their provisions—provisions not so playworthy. Due for water, which is what had sent Logan north, away from her. Two kliks to the stream, the hunting grounds. He’d check her traps and trails—pastimes for him, duties for her when he was away earning greenbacks on the water.

Even here in the woods, away from the living, money was a god.

It never took him this long—an hour, maybe. Logan was nothing if efficient, especially on nights like tonight when the weather challenged even the unkillable. Not that he actively worried, being unkillable, but for her sake he made tracks and kept them quickly. He was on the water so often, every second he was here she kept him here—memories of simpler days chiseled her into a desperate little thing. Reduced to the ashes of wanting him close, of fighting to keep his body. How had she ever not wanted him around, survived distance? Opposite schedules? Grueling nine-to-fives, endless missions that always seemed over before they began.

Cursing memories hadn’t ever been something she’d imagined herself doing, but, she did. Multiple times an hour. If being mutant—if being unkillable—meant holding onto every memory, in vivid and living color, God must’ve really stretched His hand the day He had given Logan breath. Some days never seemed to end, trapped in this prison of cabin in the hell of the woods, alone with her own thoughts. Memories of the living, of the dead. They cut deep like adamantium, unforgiving thieves.

A bed of bones, the place of nightmares coming to life like Lazarus from the grave.

Walking on the tips of her toes, hands fiddling with the buttons of her flannel, the snap of the fire almost oversings the unmistakable crunch of snow beyond the walls. Heart kicking heavy behind her ribs, pain flares in her chest—and for a moment, she thinks maybe it has touched bone, but quickly disregards it when blood hurricanes through her skull. Pupils blown wide with thrill, heat floodgates down her spine, sending lightning energy through every nerve in her body—-she all but leaps like a cat.

Flesh between her knuckles split, mutation coming full force without even thought. Habit, like breathing—-takes little thought. Hardly removed from sucking air into her lungs, it’s muscle memory. A slight trigger of muscle, a flick of the wrist—she’d gutted men with less effort. And it doesn’t even take suspicion, being afraid, not like before. Once, maybe—but now it’s daily motion. The nine-to-five.

The little thrill of clotting blood has her glancing at her weapons, her bones. It marveled her still, how beautiful and precise they were. How, somehow, they looked like her—how bones could look as if they belonged somewhere. Considering them for all of a few second has the porch step moaning like a lover, creaking in the way it had since they’d paid the deposit. Floorboards vibrate with weight, tremble with the weight of presence, and before she can even think to maybe, by chance, consider it isn’t Logan—-it kicks open, bounces on the hinge as it hits the wall, light from the fire bleeding out into the open maw of midnight beyond their haven.

Fractions of seconds and he’s still lingering in shadows, Logan stepping through the front door. Thick snow clings to his boots like a bad habit, which he knocks off on the frame. Cheeks blazed with color, if he were anyone but the Wolverine he’d surely be aching with dangerous cold, but, he isn’t—barely kissed by the weather. Merely flirting with the idea of conditions. Facial hair frosted and eyelashes blinking away remnants of snow, he looks more Hallmark than he does Survivor—Logan has always thrived, though. Any celebrity pales in comparison, even in the blood and guts of survival.

He doesn’t miss the weapons drawn at either of her sides, elephants in rooms of their own power. Brow triggered up in surprise, his eyes flick up to hers. Not upset, but the cant of his head suggests amusement.

“Jumpin’ at shadows, pretty?”

Tension that’s been hanging like a lead ball in the center of her breastbone releases, and like barbed wire it releases down her spine, cutting away stress hormones and adrenaline. Loosens the knot between her shoulder blades that kicks like a mule. Snikt. And as soon as the claws come, they leave.

“Shadows are better company than suspicion.” Disregarding his jibe that teases the edges of her resolve, she approaches, holding open the door with a foot. He finishes knocking off his boots at the door, “It’s been hours, Logan. I was beginning to worry.”

He chuckles, and it’s like honey whiskey—low and warm, setting her blood on fire like it’s gasoline. “Always worryin’,” his lips press into a thin line, “when you stop, hell’ll be as frozen as my ass.” It’s untruthful, but, the point lands—his brows lift at the muscle in her jaw ticking with the strain to not smile. Soft eyes flick over her features carefully, wrinkles drawn around their corners with a lift of a barely-there, quicksilver smirk.

After a few seconds beneath his gaze, she shifts—ignores the something, whether it’s heat suddenly kicking around the cradle of her pelvis, or the pang of hunger in her gut, she isn’t sure which. He fights a smile, she can see the muscle in his jaw tick. Watches the swell of his tongue tracing his front teeth as he watches, studies—concentrates. When his eyes lift from their stalking of her abdomen, he takes a more serious tone.

“Hungry?”

He’s able to hear her gut sounds, she knows that. Being an endless abyss is, well—there’s nothing like it. A lifetime before her mutation, she’d eaten like a bird. Now food is a culture, a thing which to obtain, treasure. Worship. Either of them were always hungry—insatiable creatures always prowling, snatching when well within reach. Bears before hibernation and after, equal amounts of desperate and always empty. Fact which prompts the growing supply of kill buried in the shed beyond the cabin, hanging carcasses and squirreled-away skins. Normal, since her mutation—hunger came with rapid-fire metabolism, with regeneration. Logan had been consuming food like a cretin since before she knew him, certainly.

She lies. “Not really.” Hell fed on such lies. And Logan knew it.

Audacity to call her on her bull had always been one of Logan’s strongest suits in their relationship, even before the vows binding them together in the sight of God and Canadian law—he doesn’t hesitate to call her BS. “Well, that would be somethin’, wouldn’t it?” His lips dust hers in a chaste kiss before he’s leaning back outside the door, reaching for full water canisters. Already dusted with frost and sloshing with the slush of chilled, partially-frozen snow.

Passing one to her, “Too bad I don’t believe you.” The back of his knuckles are warm, somehow, skimming along the line of her jaw. Logan runs hot, always had—part of that regeneration that won’t say die.

The question hadn’t been so much a genuine investigation as Logan’s roundabout way of admitting he was on the hunt for something for his gut, a practice only time would perfect to know. Years together had shown his hand—she knew him pretty well. Wolverines, after all, were sheltered. Hideaway creatures by habit, preferably unseen and unknown outside of their own order. At their genesis, she hadn’t been—had been privileged, really, with what he’d let her see.

Now, she’s one of him. Two of a kind, two of a breed—two where there, once this side of heaven, had only been one. God had willed it. Genetics executed. Two Wolverines, running in the same lines, stalking the same moon—she didn’t, wouldn’t, wear the name, but it was the same class, different act.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she gestures with her head towards the fire, their feast awaiting. It’s one in the witching hour, but who couldn’t eat? “Stew and bread, on the hearth—knew you’d be hungry.” And she does, like so many other things.

Lips tipping up, he chortles. Pleased. The housewife in her keens. “Y’know me pretty well.”

Keening into his lingering touch, his appreciative hum is deep. Echoes off the adamantium in his chest, a low thing that rises her womb from the frozen wastelands—he’s tired. His deep eyes hold hers, unwilling to let go—dangling on some precipice, the edge of glory. And she can see the shadows fall in like soldiers, demons. Frothing, uncaged phantoms that lap up the blood of his living, his being. Wolves that pick him from between their teeth—had, for centuries. For nearly two centuries, he’s been mummified in unknowns, in could’ves, should’ves, maybes. Such memories, such living, came calling when the sun was low and sleep was little more than a dream.

Taking the canister from her, Logan rests the pair in the corner, beside the standing bath bucket and towel. Limp accommodations compared to a lifetime ago, in mansions and gardens. What she wouldn’t give for a deep, lava-hot bath in a swirling tub of bubbles and bought water, champagne and silk. Faraway dreams, certainly, but beautiful ones—-sugarplum, delicious. Kicking the door closed, she drops the sliding lock, moving to the fire to roust the stew.

Checking the bread with the back of her fingers, which has swollen to a delectable, Betty Crocker-gold, she lifts the lid of the thick pot with the hem of her flannel. Thick broth bubbles with heat, the swirl of meat and carrots all but mouthwatering. Eyes moving to consider him, he stretches his hands while glancing out the window. Thumbs rubbing hard, deep circles into the heel of his palm— shrugging out of his heavy jacket, brushes off the remnants of hell outside.

Laying it out before the fire, he sheds his best and outer flannel. Squats to begin unlacing his boots in nothing but jeans and that faded, almost-stand-in-the-corner t-shirt they’d nabbed from a boutique in NOLA, dodging agents and suspicious eyes. It needs washing, she should take it to that north stream and beat the living hell of it on the rocks, but—another day. Better time. She’s too enthralled with the idea of his boots being sat in the corner, empty, to worry about laundry.

It lifts her brow. Logan doesn’t ever not wear those God-heavy things, even inside. It’s one of the habits of an all-soldier mindset, that little piece of go, go, go that never leaves the living who have crawled beyond blood, through bone. Actually, in the last year—since X, since…since the labs—she’s maybe seen Logan’s actual feet a handful of times. Even in bed, when he so gorgeously steals her breath. Makes a prayer out of her name. Reminds her to whom she belongs—they’re there. Tangled up in bed, hard against the soft heat of her feet, their tomorrows. Always on, symbols of a living weapon.

She should be more careful, Learn by example, pretty. But freedom is rapturous, too good to spoil with adrenaline and survivor’s guilt, cold fear. Tastes sweet—forbidden fruit.

Kicking them off with a groan, Logan sheds thick woolen socks. Lays them before the fire beside his outer layers, like sacrifices. And they are, in a way—and, nose even scenting the savory pull of stew and warm, carby bread on the hearth, the entire room fills with his scent. Cigars and snow. Cold and pine. His freshwater kiss still lingers on her lips—the scent of the stream clings to his clothes, even before crackling flame. She can feel him move even in the depth of her bones, which practically sing with every breath he draws—how he stands in front of the hearth, fire kicking shadows over his features.

Everything about him is like living color. Heightened senses, hunger. King returned to his castle, he takes up the air like it’s a throne. Turning from the fire, Logan drops one of the cut oak stumps before the fire. Makeshift furniture for a keeps-out-the-wind home, she swears to Christ she can hear the shift of adamantium in his skeleton as he lowers onto it. Watching her intently, he nods to the pot. Elbows on his thighs as thick, calloused fingers scratch through his facial hair.

His back arches in a catlike stretch, a small smile trying to play on his lips. “Smells like jackrabbit,” that roundabout way, smells good, “what else you got in there, pretty?” Pretty. Even now, years later—it raises pink to the apples of her cheeks. Fondly, Mare remembers the first time Logan had ever graced her with such title, title he’d been using for years—even in the blood and sinew, even in the waist-high sludge of the stay-alive.

Pretty, not aesthetically— in soul.

Turning, she retrieves the bread from the stone hearth and tosses it his direction. He catches it like a pro. “Carrots, the last of the potatoes. A hit of whiskey,” his brow raises suspiciously as she smiles, “I’ll have to get some staples from the store next time you leave me with the truck.”

She stands to retrieve the hollowed gourd bowls, balancing them in her palm before stooping to dip them into the stew. Handing one of them over, she receives the half loaf he’s split for her.

Sinking to the floor, cross-legged, it takes seconds before the bread is gone. Warm, in the pit of her gut. Logan is practically licking his bowl, “I was thinking we could get some rope—I’d like a washline,” she shrugs a shoulder, nodding towards the door, “and we could use some lumber. Couple of the boards are rottin’ out—I’d rather not heat dirt.”

He knows. Nods, “I’ll make it happen,” and it won’t be difficult—Logan makes good money working the rigs. Cash, no questions—no fed papers or taxes, identification is laughable. Half the men on the crew are probably anything but Jim, Jack, and Johns, but she prefers it that way—even if Logan refuses to use another name.

Money is good—and money spends anywhere, just as easy as anything. And it’s low man’s work, but Logan doesn’t care, simple work means clean breaks when the time comes. Less complicated, less messy. One thing they could never get enough of is cash, and if the work is honest—well. Can’t ask for more’thn that, darlin’.

Get around Benjamins, Logan called it. Cash moved, and one could go anywhere for the right price.

Precisely why she’d been trying to drive through his thick skull her want of a job. Not anything long-hour or even long-term—this makeshift home was her first responsibility, her priority. But, if she could work in town, off the mountain and with people, she could keep an eye on the happenings. Scout out the bodies, the gossip—something Logan couldn’t do for days out on the water. She’d already been approached for some work in the bar, and contacts at the local watering hole weren’t a bad thing. Network was everything, the grapevine was even faster than Google.

And God never said discounted booze was an unwelcome thing, either. But Logan had been adamant she stay on the mountain—selfish reasons. Out of sight, out of mind. Beyond the press of curiosity.

He, after all, worked the water in a town primarily built on the foundations of fishing. One woman in Burns for every five men, and it didn’t take Hank McCoy genius to do the math. Two weeks—ten days for her to beg the truck off of him, and he’d done so with such reluctance that she’d had to practically fuck logic between his ears.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care, got a high off controlling her. Logan hadn’t ever superimposed harsh rules in their union, just expectations and thrills. Satisfactions and proud-ofs, she knew the things that stoked his trust and kept him coming home. Logan was a simple man, and he didn’t need much from her—he wanted, but never towed the line. Wanted her to thrive, to love, and that was a fine line to draw in the sands of marital relations—especially from a man who knew little to nothing about lasting love.

In simpler days, he asked very few questions. He’d cut out his heart and hand it over, if the situation were right—hedged bets on her, even in the early days of her mutation rearing its ugly mug. Cared very little about outside opinion, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Watertight confidence and grave-tight faith —in her. In other people, well, that was another shitshow.

Logan didn’t trust anyone even farther than he would be able to toss them off his claws.

After a few heartbeats of quiet, she stands. Sets aside good-enough dishes, blows out a long breath between her lips. Rising on her toes, she about-faces on the ball of her heel to face him. “Logan—” stops short when she notices his attention is welded to her in an unshakable way that implies the study of fine artwork. Some soft, dreamlike look on his face—wrinkles around his eyes deepen, smile growing a little more lopsided, a little more white. Her brow furrows, head canting to the side. Never unappreciative of his attention, she managed a little chuckle, “—pfft. Staring much?” She fingers one of her curls behind her ear, which has fallen from her half-loosened bandana.

Dismissing her with a little shift of his shoulder, he lifts a hand and crooks a finger for her to come. “You gonna blame me?” Can’t argue with logic that knocks the wind from her bones, sends her knees together like some kind of schoolchild. “C’mere, darlin’.” Leaning forward, his elbows find his thighs —she can’t do otherwise.

Foot over foot, she crosses to him in a handful of steps. She lifts fingers to card through his hair, his big hands anchored on her hips. Strong thumbs rub gentle circles as he shuffles her a little closer, leans to nuzzle his nose beneath her breast, against her ribs. Breath heavy against the apex of her heart, her nails gently rake through his mutton chops, one of his hands moving behind her thigh, nudging her to lower to his lap.

“You gonna let me ask you something?”

He hums, nodding once. “Depends what you wanna ask, honey.” Ask me later. Much, much later. It’s there unspoken, in the depth of his eyes and the half-cocked smile that deepens the wrinkles at his eyes.

Familiar territory—he’s due on the water in two days. Never knows how long he’ll be gone, it’s always a heartbeat too long. Hours may as well be days, days small eternities in the eyes of heaven. Being alone is a burden, high in the air, among the silent evergreens and giants of mountain shadows. Logan left her too often for a man who promised never to—promised life. And this may not be much of a life, but it was theirs together—and all her living really needed was Logan, anyway.

Dropping her full weight to his lap, the boards beneath his oak stump creak a little, surprised. Resting her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs trace his defined collarbones lazily, the muscle of his arms and familiar veins alive with his moving, breathing blood. His palm presses hard around the back of her neck, thumb tracing over her steady pulse—other fingers dip into the soft curve of her hip. A flick of his wrist tips her pelvis forward, against his. Hardly feeling her weight, her hand presses against his abs, feeling their definition. Engaged, riveting. Almost trembling.

And suddenly the room is barely contained, a dreamstate of everything and nothing at once. Logan’s fingers, working buttons on her shirt steadily, like a pro. Flesh seeking flesh, fingertips brushing against breastbone. Deep breaths, the steady pulse in his chest is strong, alive—possessive, hers. He eats every one of the shallow breaths she manages between biting the corner of her lip and the tip of her tongue.

Keening, drunk on the dark of his eyes, how the fire moves in and out of them like dreams—the methodical way he fingers aside the front of the flannel hanging open on her frame. And it’s so intimate, at its finest— heart-to-heart, bone to bone. Logan’s bed had never been anything but this, close. Open, unified. Everything he’d ever wanted, all he’d ever asked—-share, honey. Share me. And she does, willingly, gives what he asks, even unto the half of her soul.

His head tips back just enough to manage a half-cocked smirk at her as her fingers curl into his shirt, skips through the hair on his arms. He pulls the bandanna from her hair, lets it fall from his fingers. Chuckles at the way her cheeks flame, hair wilding away every direction as his fingers pick, play with it like it’s a plaything, amusing. Her eyes fall to the floor, but two strong fingers on her chin pull her attention back.

Saying nothing but managing a low hum, he kisses her. Deeply. Almost hurts how good he feels—how she can taste the water of the stream somehow, still, in his mouth. Push and pull, give and take—Logan pulls a whimper from somewhere along her spine, guides her arms around his neck. She obliges, folding against his chest—-chest to chest, she can feel familiar muscles in her musculature itching. Burning between her knuckles, begging. Starving, craving.

Kissing her hard and rough, heat curls low in places only God had designed. “Hold tight,” before his hands slip under her ass, lifting her as if she’s nothing with little more than a huff and a flex of muscle and heat—and she isn’t nothing, but that’s aside for a mutation that enhances everything all at once.

Kicking the stump aside, it rolls noisily until it thunks against the wall, her legs firming up around his waist. She smiles, touching her forehead against his. Nose nuzzling the end of his, his heavy feet carry her the God-knows how many steps to the corner—-their corner. And before she can even haul in another full breath, her toes kiss the thick spread of hide as he lowers her to her feet—deer, bison. Elk, bear, wolf. Prizes from six months of survival, success. Need for blankets doesn’t exist when you have the whole of the woods to suffice, and Logan had learned how to cure hides years ago.

The warmest, safest bed she’d ever slept in.

Big hands practically shove the flannel off her frame, toss it somewhere in the abyss of existence beyond the positively filthy way he suckles a thick mark to the flesh of her neck. Greedy, like a man just fat on hot stew and bread—his fingers curl over the waistband of her jeans, old Wranglers she’d been making due for over a year. A tighter fit than before—she’s gained weight. Fresh diet and good air, peace made her fat. And while Logan may be the chiseled sun to her Icharus, she’d never been lean, never been built right—he hadn’t ever cared. Still didn’t, his low moan in her evidence enough.

Taking his face between her hands, she softly presses her lips against his. Nips at his bottom lip, takes her time—slowly manages to her knees. His fingers in her hair tips her head back enough to look her in the eye, an amused glint lighting up the flick of a smile on his mouth. Closing her eyes, her fingers curl into the denim clinging to his thighs, breathing in a heady whiff of him as her nose gently bumps the front of his belt buckle.

Forehead brushing the hair on his abdomen, she feels him shed the t-shirt she still needs to take to the stream. It takes herculean will to not lose track of her surroundings—the makeshift cabin in the deep woods, the fire that seems to roar a stone’s throw from their nest. Food that’s low and warm in her belly, the small shed with hanging meat for tomorrow’s another-stew. Washing that needs done, wood that needs split—there’s a dozen things that need doing, but that’s the way of this life. This life he’d given her, fought for her. Logan had waged war against the coming future for this—this moment, this iteration of them far beyond the reach of Weapon X, the faraway memory of the X-Men. Of the secret they bury, deep in bones and marrow. In the depths of the living.

It wasn’t what they’d originally thought, not even close. A lifetime away, but it’s enough. He’s enough. God, and peace—-Alaska. Logan.

Taking her chin between his fingers, Logan crouches. Kisses her, sweetly—like in the early days, when this, this life would’ve been laughable. The stuff of nightmares. He reaches for the thick splay of bison hide, her favorite—draws it over her shoulders. His eyes land heavy in hers, searching, scouting and tracing the lines of the moment. She’s able to read it in his eyes—-he doesn’t want to leave. Will never want to leave, but the Wolverine has lived a life of doesn’t-wants. If it means her happiness, he’d stay. A thousand times and again, he’d forsake the world and weld himself here.

But going means safety. And that, she knows, he’d fight any long war for.

His brow pulls into a deep line, uncertain of the look on her face. “You ok, darlin’?” He tips her chin up a little, eyes shifting before his palm moves to cradle her cheek. The pad of his thumb traces the plush of her lips, until her hand at the buckle of his belt gently pushes him to the mess of deer and elk and bones they call theirs.

Drawing the bison skin tighter around her shoulders, she swings a leg over the cradle of his hips. Looks down on his quirked brow with a quicksilver smile of a thing she can’t quite put a finger on. And, with a brush of her fingers through the curl of hair on his chest, she shrugs a shoulder.

“I’m fine now,” lowering to kiss the corner of his mouth, she hums as his finger traces up her spine, down again. Callouses rough against her warm skin. “You’re here, and I’m just fine.”

And that, really, is the truth of God.

tags: @fandomxo00 @permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88

Based on the podcast─

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

Text

This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems, and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

The floatplane bobs at the dock, its wing tips leaking fuel. I try not to take that as a sign that my trip to Chirikof Island is ill-fated. Bad weather, rough seas, geographical isolation—visiting Chirikof is forever an iffy adventure.

A remote island in the Gulf of Alaska, Chirikof is about the size of two Manhattans. It lies roughly 130 kilometers southwest of Kodiak Island, where I am waiting in the largest town, technically a city, named Kodiak. The city is a hub for fishing and hunting, and for tourists who’ve come to see one of the world’s largest land carnivores, the omnivorous brown bears that roam the archipelago. Chirikof has no bears or people, though; it has cattle.

At last count, over 2,000 cows and bulls roam Chirikof, one of many islands within a US wildlife refuge. Depending on whom you ask, the cattle are everything from unwelcome invasive megafauna to rightful heirs of a place this domesticated species has inhabited for 200 years, perhaps more. Whether they stay or go probably comes down to human emotions, not evidence.

Russians brought cattle to Chirikof and other islands in the Kodiak Archipelago to establish an agricultural colony, leaving cows and bulls behind when they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. But the progenitor of cattle ranching in the archipelago is Jack McCord, an Iowa farm boy and consummate salesman who struck gold in Alaska and landed on Kodiak in the 1920s. He heard about feral cattle grazing Chirikof and other islands, and sensed an opportunity. But once he’d bought the Chirikof herd from a company that held rights to it, he got wind that the federal government was going to declare the cattle wild and assume control of them. McCord went into overdrive.

In 1927, he successfully lobbied the US Congress—with help from politicians in the American West—to create legislation that enshrined the right of privately owned livestock to graze public lands. What McCord set in motion reverberates in US cattle country today, where conflicts over land use have led to armed standoffs and death.

McCord introduced new bulls to balance the herd and inject fresh genes into the pool, but he soon lost control of his cattle. By early 1939, he still had 1,500 feral cattle—too many for him to handle and far too many bulls. Stormy, unpredictable weather deterred most of the hunters McCord turned to for help thinning the herd, though he eventually wrangled five men foolhardy enough to bet against the weather gods. They lost. The expedition failed, precipitated one of McCord’s divorces, and almost killed him. In 1950, he gave up. But his story played out on Chirikof over and over for the next half-century, with various actors making similarly irrational decisions, caught up in the delusion that the frontier would make them rich.

By 1980, the government had created the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska Maritime for short), a federally protected area roughly the size of New Jersey, and charged the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) with managing it. This meant preserving the natural habitat and dealing with the introduced and invasive species. Foxes? Practically annihilated. Bunnies? Gone. But when it came to cattle?

Alaskans became emotional. “Let’s leave one island in Alaska for the cattle,” Governor Frank Murkowski said in 2003. Thirteen years later, at the behest of his daughter, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, the US Congress directed the USFWS to leave the cattle alone.

So I’d been wondering: What are those cattle up to on Chirikof?

On the surface, Alaska as a whole appears an odd choice for cattle: mountainous, snowy, far from lucrative markets. But we’re here in June, summer solstice 2022, at “peak green,” when the archipelago oozes a lushness I associate with coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The islands rest closer to the gentle climate of those coasts than to the northern outposts they skirt. So, in the aspirational culture that Alaska has always embraced, why not cattle?

“Why not cattle” is perhaps the mantra of every rancher everywhere, to the detriment of native plants and animals. But Chirikof, in some ways, was more rational rangeland than where many of McCord’s ranching comrades grazed their herds—on Kodiak Island, where cattle provided the gift of brisket to the Kodiak brown bear. Ranchers battled the bears for decades in a one-sided war. From 1953 to 1963, they killed about 200 bears, often from the air with rifles fixed to the top of a plane, sometimes shooting bears far from ranches in areas where cattle roamed unfenced.

Bears and cattle cannot coexist. It was either protect bears or lose them, and on Kodiak, bear advocates pushed hard. Cattle are, in part, the reason the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge exists. Big, charismatic bears outshone the cows and bulls; bear protection prevailed. Likewise, one of the reasons the Alaska Maritime exists—sweeping from the Inside Passage to the Aleutian chain and on up to the islands in the Chukchi Sea—is to protect seabirds and other migratory birds. A cattle-free Chirikof, with its generally flat topography and lack of predators, would offer more quality habitat for burrow-nesting tufted puffins, storm petrels, and other seabirds. And yet, on Chirikof, and a few other islands, cows apparently outshine birds.

The remoteness, physically good for birds, works against them, too: Most people can picture a Ferdinand the Bull frolicking through the cotton grass, but not birds building nests. Chirikof is so far from other islands in the archipelago that it’s usually included as an inset on paper maps. A sample sentence for those learning the Alutiiq language states the obvious: Ukamuk (Chirikof) yaqsigtuq (is far from here). At least one Chirikof rancher recommended the island as a penal colony for juvenile delinquents. To get to Chirikof from Kodiak, you need a ship or a floatplane carrying extra fuel for the four-hour round trip. It’s a wonder anyone thought grazing cattle on pasture at the outer edge of a floatplane’s fuel supply was a good idea.

Patrick Saltonstall, a cheerful, fit 57-year-old with a head of tousled gray curls, is an archaeologist with the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak. He’s accompanying photographer Shanna Baker and me to Chirikof—but he’s left us on the dock while he checks in at the veterinarian’s where he has taken his sick dog, a lab named Brewster.

The owners of the floatplane, Jo Murphy and her husband, pilot Rolan Ruoss, are debating next steps, using buckets to catch the fuel seeping from both wing tips. Weather is the variable I had feared; in the North it’s a capricious god, swinging from affable to irascible for reasons unpredictable and unknowable. But the weather is perfect this morning. Now, I’m fearing O-rings.

Our 8 am departure ticks by. Baker and I grab empty red plastic jerrycans from a pickup truck and haul them to the dock. The crew empties the fuel from the buckets into the red jugs. This will take a while.

A fuel leak, plus a sick dog: Are these omens? But such things are emotional and irrational. I channel my inner engineer: Failing O-rings are a common problem, and we’re not in the air, so it’s all good.

Saltonstall returns, minus his usual smile: Brewster has died.

Dammit.

He sighs, shakes his head, and mumbles his bewilderment and sadness. Brewster’s death apparently mystified the vet, too. Baker and I murmur our condolences. We wait in silence awhile, gazing at distant snowy peaks and the occasional seal peeking its head above water. Eventually, we distract Saltonstall by getting him talking about Chirikof.

Cattle alone on an island can ruin it, he says. They’re “pretty much hell on archaeological sites,” grazing vegetation down to nubs, digging into the dirt with their hooves, and, as creatures of habit, stomping along familiar routes, fissuring shorelines so that the earth falls away into the sea. Saltonstall falls silent. Brewster is foremost on his mind. He eventually wanders over to see what’s up with the plane.

I lie on a picnic table in the sun, double-check my pack, think about birds. There is no baseline data for Chirikof prior to the introduction of cattle and foxes. But based on the reality of other islands in the refuge, it has a mix of good bird habitats. Catherine West, an archaeologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, studies Chirikof’s animal life from before the introduction of cows and foxes; she has been telling me that the island was likely once habitat for far more birds than we see today: murres, auklets, puffins, kittiwakes and other gulls, along with ducks and geese.

I flip through my notes to what I scrawled while walking a Kodiak Island trail through Sitka spruce with retired wildlife biologist Larry Van Daele. Van Daele worked for the State of Alaska for 34 years, and once retired, sat for five years on the Alaska Board of Game, which gave him plenty of time to sit through raucous town hall meetings pitting Kodiak locals against USFWS officials. Culling ungulates—reindeer and cattle—from islands in the refuge has never gone down well with locals. But change is possible. Van Daele also witnessed the massive cultural shift regarding the bear—from “If it’s brown, it’s down” to it being an economic icon of the island. Now, ursine primacy is on display on the cover of the official visitor guide for the archipelago: a photo of a mother bear, her feet planted in a muddy riverbank, water droplets clinging to her fur, fish blood smearing her nose.

But Chirikof, remember, is different. No bears. Van Daele visited several times for assessments before the refuge eradicated foxes. His first trip, in 1999, followed a long, cold winter. His aerial census counted 600 to 800 live cattle and 200 to 250 dead, their hair and hide in place and less than 30 percent of them scavenged. “The foxes were really looking fat,” he told me, adding that some foxes were living inside the carcasses. The cattle had likely died of starvation. Without predators, they rise and fall with good winters and bad.

The shape of the island summarizes the controversy, Van Daele likes to say—a T-bone steak to ranchers and a teardrop to bird biologists and Indigenous people who once claimed the island. In 2013, when refuge officials began soliciting public input over what to do with feral animals in the Alaska Maritime, locals reacted negatively during the three-year process. They resentfully recalled animal culls elsewhere and argued to preserve the genetic heritage of the Chirikof cattle. Van Daele, who has been described as “pro-cow,” seems to me, more than anything, resistant to top-down edicts. As a wildlife biologist, he sees the cattle as probably invasive and acknowledges that living free as a cow is costly. An unmanaged herd has too many bulls. Trappers on Chirikof have witnessed up to a dozen bulls at a time pursuing and mounting cows, causing injury, exhaustion, and death, especially to heifers. It’s not unreasonable to imagine a 1,000-kilogram bull crushing a heifer weighing less than half that.

But, as an Alaskan and a former member of the state’s Board of Game, Van Daele chafes at the federal government’s control. Senator Murkowski, after all, was following the lead of her constituents, at least the most vocal of them, when she pushed to leave the cattle free to roam. Once Congress acted, Van Daele told me, “why not find the money, spend the money, and manage the herd in a way that allows them to continue to be a unique variety, whatever it is?” “Whatever it is” turns out to be not much at all.

Finally, Ruoss beckons us to the plane, a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a heroically hard-working animal, well adapted for wandering the bush of a remote coast. He has solved the leaking problem by carrying extra fuel onboard in jerrycans, leaving the wing tips empty. At 12:36 pm, we take off for Chirikof.

Imagine Fred Rogers as a bush pilot in Alaska. That’s Ruoss: reassuring, unflappable, and keen to share his archipelago neighborhood. By the time we’re angling up off the water, my angst—over portents of dead dog and dripping fuel—has evaporated.

A transplant from Seattle, Washington, Ruoss was a herring spotter as a young pilot in 1979. Today, he mostly transports hunters, bear-viewers, and scientists conducting fieldwork. He takes goat hunters to remote clifftops, for example, sussing out the terrain and counting to around seven as he flies over a lake at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour) to determine if the watery landing strip is long enough for the Beaver.

From above, our world is equal parts land and water. We fly over carpets of lupine and pushki (cow parsnip), and, on Sitkinak Island, only 15 kilometers south of Kodiak Island, a cattle herd managed by a private company with a grazing lease. Ruoss and Saltonstall point out landmarks: Refuge Rock, where Alutiiq people once waited out raids by neighboring tribes but couldn’t repel an attack from Russian cannons; a 4,500-year-old archaeology site with long slate bayonets; kilns where Russians baked bricks for export to California; an estuary where a tsunami destroyed a cannery; the village of Russian Harbor, abandoned in the 1930s. “People were [living] in every bay” in the archipelago, Ruoss says. He pulls a book about local plant life from under his seat and flips through it before handing it over the seat to me.

Today, the only people we see are in boats, fishing for Dungeness crab and salmon. We fly over Tugidak Island, where Ruoss and Murphy have a cabin. The next landmass will be Chirikof. We have another 25 minutes to go, with only whitecaps below.

For thousands of years, the Alutiiq routinely navigated this rough sea around their home on Chirikof, where they wove beach rye and collected amber and hunted sea lions, paddling qayat—kayaks. Fog was a hazard; it descends rapidly here, like a ghostly footstep. When Alutiiq paddlers set off from Chirikof, they would tie a bull kelp rope to shore as a guide back to safety if mist suddenly blocked their vision.

As we angle toward Chirikof, sure enough, a mist begins to form. But like the leaking fuel or Brewster’s death, it foreshadows nothing. Below us, as the haze dissipates, the island gleams green, a swath of velveteen shaped, to my mind, like nothing more symbolic than the webbed foot of a goose. A bunch of spooked cows gallop before us as we descend over the northeast side. Ruoss lands on a lake plenty long for a taxiing Beaver.

We toss out our gear and he’s off. We’re the only humans on what appears to be a storybook island—until you kick up fecal dust from a dry cow pie, and then more, and more, and you find yourself stumbling over bovid femurs, ribs, and skulls. Cattle prefer grazing a flat landscape, so stick to the coastline and to the even terrain inland. We tromp northward, flushing sandpipers from the verdant carpet. A peppery bouquet floats on the still air. A cabbagey scent of yarrow dominates whiffs of sedges and grasses, wild geraniums and flag irises, buttercups and chocolate lilies.

Since the end of the last ice age, Chirikof has been mostly tundra-like: no trees, sparse low brush, tall grasses, and boggy. Until the cattle arrived, the island never had large terrestrial mammals, the kind of grazers and browsers that mold a landscape—mammoths, mastodons, deer, caribou. But bovids have fashioned a pastoral landscape that a hiker would recognize in crossing northern England, a place that cows and sheep have kept clear for centuries. The going is easy, but Baker and I struggle to keep pace with the galloping Saltonstall, and we can’t help but stop to gape at bull and cow skeletons splayed across the grasses. We skirt a ground nest with three speckled eggs, barely hidden by the low scrub. We cut across a beach muddled with plastics—ropes, bottles, floats—and reach a giant puddle with indefinable edges, its water meandering toward the sea. “We call it the river Styx,” Saltonstall says. “The one you cross into hell.”

Compared with the Emerald City behind us, the underworld across the Styx is a Kansas dust bowl, a sandy mess that looks as if it could swallow us. Saltonstall tells us about a previous trip when he and his colleagues pulled a cow out of quicksand. Twice. “It charged us—and we’d saved its life!”

Hoof prints scatter from the river. At one time, the river Styx probably supported a small pink salmon run. A team of biologists reported in 2016 that several Chirikof streams host pink and coho, with cameo appearances of rainbow trout and steelhead. This stream is likely fish-free, the erosion too corrosive, a habitat routinely trampled.

Two raptors—jaegers—cavort above us. A smaller bird’s entrails unspool at our feet. On a sandy bluff, Saltonstall pauses to look for artifacts while Baker and I climb down to a beach where hungry cattle probably eat seaweed in winter. We follow a ground squirrel’s tracks up the bluff to its burrow, and at the top meet Saltonstall, who holds out his hands: stone tools. Artifacts sprinkle the surface as if someone has shaken out a tablecloth laden with forks, knives, spoons, and plates—an archaeological site with context ajumble. A lone bovid’s track crosses the sand, winding through shoulder blades, ribs, and the femoral belongings of relatives.

After four hours of hiking, we turn toward the lake where we left our gear. So far on this hike, dead cattle outnumber live ones, dozens to zero. But wait! What’s that? A bull appears on a rise, across a welcome mat of cotton grass. Curious, he jogs down. Baker and Saltonstall peer through viewfinders and click off images. The bull stops several meters away; we stare at each other. He wins. We turn and walk away. When I look back, he’s still paused, watching us, or—I glance around—watching a distant herd running at us.

Again, my calm comrades-in-arms lift their cameras. I lift my iPhone, which shakes because I’m scared. Should I have my hands on the pepper spray I borrowed from Ruoss and Murphy? Closer, closer, closer they thunder, until I can’t tell the difference between my pounding heart and their pounding feet. Then, in sync, the herd turns 90 degrees and gallops out of the frame. The bull lollops away to join them. Their cattle plans take them elsewhere. Saltonstall has surveyed archaeology sites three times on Chirikof. The first time, in 2005, he carried a gun to hunt the cattle, but his colleagues were also apprehensive about the feral beasts. At least one person I talked to suggested we bring a gun. But Saltonstall says he learned that cattle are cowards: Stand your ground, clap, and cows and bulls will run away. But to me, big domesticated herbivores are terrifying. Horses kick and bite, cattle can crush you. The rules of bears—happier without humans around—are easier to parse. I’ve never come close to pepper spraying a bear, but I’m hot on the trigger when it comes to cattle.

The next morning, we set out for the Old Ranch, one of the two homesteads built decades ago on the island and about a three-hour amble one way. Ruoss won’t be picking us up till 3 pm, so we have plenty of time. The cattle path we’re following crosses a field bejeweled with floral ambers, opals, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and shades of jade. It’s alive with least sandpipers, a shorebird that breeds in northern North America, with the males arriving early, establishing their territories, and building nests for their mates. The least sandpiper population, in general, is in good shape—they certainly flourish here. High-pitched, sped-up laughs split the air. They slice the wind and rush across the velvet expanse. Their flapping wings look impossibly short for supporting flights from their southern wintering grounds, sometimes as far away as Mexico, over 3,000 kilometers distant. They flutter into a tangle of green and vanish.

From a small rise, we spot cattle paths meandering into the distance, forking again and again. Saltonstall announces the presence of the only other mammal on the island. “A battery killer,” he says, raising his camera at an Arctic ground squirrel, and he’s right. They are adorable. They stand on two legs and hold their food in their hands. To us humans, that makes them cute. Pretty soon, we’re all running down the batteries on our cameras and smartphones.

Qanganaq is Alutiiq for ground squirrel. An Alutiiq tailor needed around 100 ground squirrels for one parka, more precious than a sea otter cloak. Some evidence suggests the Alutiiq introduced ground squirrels to Chirikof at least 2,000 years ago, apparently a more rational investment than cattle. Squirrels were easily transported, and the market for skins was local. Still, they were fancy dress, Dehrich Chya, the Alutiiq Museum’s Alutiiq language and living culture manager, told me. Creating a parka—from hunting to sewing to wearing—was an homage to the animals that offered their lives to the Alutiiq. Archaeologist Catherine West and her crew have collected over 20,000 squirrel bones from Chirikof middens, a few marked by tool use and many burned.

Chirikof has been occupied and abandoned periodically—the Alutiiq quit the island, perhaps triggered by a volcanic eruption 4,000 years ago, then came people more related to the Aleuts from the west, then the Alutiiq again. Then, Russian colonizers arrived. The Russians lasted not much longer than the American cattle ranchers who would succeed them. That last, doomed culture crumbled in less than 100 years, pegged to an animal hard to transport, with a market far, far away.

Whether ground squirrels, some populations definitely introduced, should be in the Alaska Maritime is rarely discussed. One reason, probably, is that they are small and cute and easy to anthropomorphize. There is a great body of literature on why we anthropomorphize. Evolutionarily, cognitive archaeologists would argue that once we could anthropomorphize—by at least 40,000 years ago—we became better hunters and eventually herders. We better understood our prey and the animals we domesticated. Whatever the reason, researchers tend to agree that to anthropomorphize is a universal human behavior with profound implications for how we treat animals. We attribute humanness based on animals’ appearance, familiarity, and non-physical traits, such as agreeability and sociality—all factors that will vary somewhat across cultures—and we favor those we humanize.

Ungulates, in general, come across favorably. Add a layer of domestication, and cattle become even more familiar. Cows, especially dairy cows named Daisy, can be sweet and agreeable. Steve Ebbert, a retired USFWS wildlife biologist living on the Alaska mainland outside Homer, eradicated foxes, as well as rabbits and marmots, from islands in the refuge. Few objected to eliminating foxes—or even the rabbits and marmots, he told me. Cattle are more complicated. Humans are supposed to take care of them, he said, not shoot them or let them starve and die: they’re for food—and of course, they’re large, and they’re in a lot of storybooks, and they have big eyes. Alaskans, like many US westerners, are also protective of the state’s ranching legacy—cattle ranchers transformed the landscape to a more familiar place for colonizers and created an American story of triumph, leaving out the messy bits.

We spot a herd of mostly cows and calves, picture-book perfect, with chestnut coats and white faces and socks. We edge closer, but they’re wary. They trot away.

Saltonstall, always a few leaps and bounds ahead, spots the Old Ranch—or part of it. A couple of bulls are hanging out near the sagging, severed rooms that cling to a cliff above the sea, refusing their fate. Ghostly fence posts march from the beach across a rolling landscape.

Close by is a wire exclosure, one of five Ebbert and his colleagues set up in 2016. The exclosure—big enough to park a quad—keeps out cattle, allowing an unaggravated patch of land to regenerate. Beach rye taller than cows soars within the fencing. This is what the island looks like without cattle: a haven for ground-nesting birds. The Alutiiq relied on beach rye, weaving the fiber into house thatching, baskets, socks, and other textiles; if they introduced ground squirrels, they knew what they were doing, since the rodents didn’t drastically alter the vegetation the way cattle do.

Saltonstall approaches a shed set back from the eroding cliff.

“Holy cow!” he hollers. No irony. He is peering into the shed.

On the floor, a cow’s head resembles a Halloween mask, horns up, eye sockets facing the door, snout resting close to what looks like a rusted engine. Half the head is bone, half is covered with hide and keratin. Femurs and ribs and backbone scatter the floor, amid bits and bobs of machinery. One day, for reasons unknown, this cow wedged herself into an old shed and died.

Cattle loom large in death, their bodies lingering. Their suffering—whether or not by human hands—is tangible. Through size, domestication, and ubiquity, they take up a disproportionate amount of space physically, and through anthropomorphism, they grab a disproportionate amount of human imagination and emotion. When Frank Murkowski said Alaska should leave one island to the cattle, he probably pictured a happy herd rambling a vast, unfenced pasture—not an island full of bones or heifer-buckling bulls.

Birds are free, but they’re different. They vanish. We rarely witness their suffering, especially the birds we never see at backyard feeders—shorebirds and seabirds. We witness their freedom in fleeting moments, if at all, and when we do see them—gliding across a beach, sipping slime from an intertidal mudflat, resting on a boat rail far from shore—can we name the species? As popular as birding is, the world is full of non-birders. And so, we mistreat them. On Chirikof, where there should be storm petrels, puffins, and terns, there are cattle hoof prints, cattle plops, and cattle bones.

Hustling back to meet the seaplane, we skirt an area thick with cotton grass and ringed by small hills. In 2013, an ornithologist recorded six Aleutian terns and identified one nest with two eggs. In the United States, Aleutian tern populations have crashed by 80 percent in the past few decades. The tern is probably the most imperiled seabird in Alaska. But eradicating foxes, which ate birds’ eggs and babies, probably helped Chirikof’s avian citizens, perhaps most notably the terns. From a distance, we count dozens of birds, shooting up from the grass, swirling around the sky, and fluttering back down to their nests.

Terns may be dipping their webbed toes into a bad situation, but consider the other seabirds shooting their little bodies through the atmosphere, spotting specks of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to raise their young, and yet it’s unsafe for them on this big, lovely island. The outcry over a few hundred feral cattle—a loss that would have absolutely no effect on the species worldwide—seems completely irrational. Emotional. A case of maladaptive anthropomorphism. If a species’ purpose is to proliferate, cattle took advantage of their association with humans and won the genetic lottery.

Back at camp, we haul our gear to the lake. Ruoss arrives slightly early, and while he’s emptying red jerrycans of fuel into the Beaver, we grab tents and packs and haul them into the pontoons. Visibility today is even better than yesterday. I watch the teardrop-shaped island recede, thinking of what more than one scientist told me: when you’re on Chirikof, it’s so isolated, surrounded by whitecaps, that you hope only to get home. But as soon as you leave, you want to go back.

Chirikof cattle are one of many herds people have sprinkled around the world in surprising and questionable places. And cattle have a tendency to go feral. On uninhabited Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, the French deposited a herd that performed an evolutionary trick in response to the constraints of island living: the size of individuals shrank in the course of 117 years, squashing albatross colonies in the process. In Hong Kong, feral cattle plunder vegetable plots, disturb traffic, and trample the landscape. During the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, cattle came to occupy spaces violently emptied of Indigenous people. Herds ran wild—on small islands like Puerto Rico and across expanses in Texas and Panama—pulverizing landscapes that had been cultivated for thousands of years. No question: cattle are problem animals.

A few genetic studies explore the uniqueness of Chirikof cattle. Like freedom, “unique” is a vague word. I sent the studies to a scientist who researches the genetics of hybrid species to confirm my takeaway: the cattle are hybrids, perhaps unusual hybrids, some Brown Swiss ancestry but mostly British Hereford and Russian Yakutian, an endangered breed. The latter are cold tolerant, but no study shows selective forces at play. The cattle are not genetically distinct; they’re a mix of breeds, the way a labradoodle is a mix of a Labrador and a poodle.

Feral cattle graze unusual niches all over the world, and maybe some are precious genetic outliers. But the argument touted by livestock conservancies and locals that we need Chirikof cattle genes as a safeguard against some future fatal cattle disease rings hollow. And if we did, we might plan and prepare: freeze some eggs and sperm.

Cattle live feral lives elsewhere in the Alaska Maritime, too, on islands shared by the refuge and Indigenous owners or, in the case of Sitkinak Island, where a meat company grazes cattle. Why Frank Murkowski singled out Chirikof is puzzling: Alaska will probably always have feral cattle. Chirikof cattle, of use to practically no one, fully residing within a wildlife refuge a federal agency is charged with protecting for birds, with no concept of the human drama swirling around their presence, have their own agenda for keeping themselves alive. Unwittingly, humans are part of the plan.

We created cattle by manipulating their wild cousins, aurochs, in Europe, Asia, and the Sahara beginning over 10,000 years ago. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, who could never find a place in human society, cattle trotted into societies around the world, making themselves at home on most ranges they encountered. Rosa Ficek, an anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied feral cattle, says they generally find their niche. Christopher Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493, and they proliferated, like the kudzu of the feral animal world. “[Cattle are] never fully under the control of human projects,” she says. They’re not “taking orders the way military guys are … They have their own cattle plans.”

The larger question is, Why are we so nervous about losing cattle? In terms of sheer numbers, they’re a successful species. There is just over one cow or bull for every eight people in the world. If numbers translate to likes, we like cows and bulls more than dogs. If estimates are right, the world has 1.5 billion cattle and 700 million dogs. Imagine all the domesticated animals that would become feral if some apocalypse took out humans.

I could say something here about how vital seabirds—as opposed to cattle—are to marine ecosystems and the overall health of the planet. They spread their poop around the oceans, nurturing plankton, coral reefs, and seagrasses, which nurture small plankton-eating fishes, which are eaten by bigger fishes, and so on. Between 1950 and 2010, the world lost some 230 million seabirds, a decline of around 70 percent.

But maybe it’s better to end with conjuring the exquisiteness of seabirds like the Aleutian terns in their breeding plumage, with their white foreheads, black bars that run from black bill to black-capped heads, feathers in shades of grays, white rump and tail, and black legs. Flashy? No. Their breeding plumage is more timeless monochromatic, with the clean, classic lines of a vintage Givenchy design. The Audrey Hepburn of seabirds. They’re so pretty, so elegant, so difficult to appreciate as they flit across a cotton grass meadow. Their dainty bodies aren’t much longer than a typical ruler, from bill to tail, but their wingspans are over double that, and plenty strong to propel them, in spring, from their winter homes in Southeast Asia to Alaska and Siberia.

A good nesting experience, watching their eggs hatch and their chicks fledge, with plenty of fish to eat, will pull Aleutian terns back to the same places again and again and again—like a vacationing family, drawn back to a special island, a place so infused with good memories, they return again and again and again. That’s called fidelity.

Humans understand home, hard work, and family. So, for a moment, think about how Aleutian terns might feel after soaring over the Pacific Ocean for 16,000 kilometers with their compatriots, making pit stops to feed, and finally spotting a familiar place, a place we call Chirikof. They have plans, to breed and nest and lay eggs. The special place? The grassy cover is okay. But, safe nesting spots are hard to find: Massive creatures lumber about, and the terns have memories of loss, of squashed eggs, and kicked chicks. It’s sad, isn’t it?

This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists and was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

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rabbitcruiser · 1 year ago

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National Alaska Day

The largest state by area to join the U.S. and its last frontier to boot; is it any wonder we have a special day — National Alaska Day, held on October 18 each year — to celebrate this amazing place?

History of National Alaska Day

While the origins and founder of National Alaska Day remain elusive at the moment, we know plenty about how Alaska came to be a part of the U.S. Long before the Russians settled in this Arctic land, it was populated by indigenous people from tribes like Inuit, Yupik, Tlingit, and others. They hunted and lived on whale fat, beaver, and fish. Then, the Russians came and settled in Alaska, leaving only after 68 years of ruling. The history of U.S. rule in Alaska began with the setting up of a transcontinental telegraph line in Sitka, Alaska. The U.S. wanted to expand their territory, and the Russians wanted to leave — the decimated sea otter population meant this land was no longer profitable, and Russia was short on money after the Crimean War, making Alaska hard to defend. William Seward, the state’s secretary at that time, was the main hand behind the purchase. Alaska was purchased at $7.2 million. His championing of this cause was so prominent, the vast majority of Americans who thought this purchase was a mistake took to calling Alaska “Seward’s Folly.”

Then, in the 18th century, two prospectors found gold at the Klondike region, and thus began the gold rush era in Alaska. Numbers indicate upwards of 10,000 fortune seekers that were headed for goldfields at Klondike, and the beaches at Nome in western Alaska, another place where gold was found. The newfound popularity of this region was cemented by its strategic position during the Second World War. When the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands, parts of which are U.S. territory and parts belonging to the Russian federal subject of Kamchatka Krai, the American army had already been stationed there, ready to protect their border. After the Civil War, this Aleutian campaign — called the ‘One Thousand Mile War’ — was the first such battle fought on American soil. Alaska remained a territory until the 19th century when it became a U.S. state.

The 19th century also brought dog sledding to the forefront of American consciousness. A deadly outbreak of diphtheria in Nome threatened the lives of every single person living there. Additionally, the place was so isolated, that assisting them was very hard. This situation was worsened by an approaching blizzard, which ruled out air assistance. The only way to deliver an antitoxin was via sled dogs. Enter Leonhard Seppala. His fellow Norwegian Jafet Lindeberg — who struck rich in Nome — asked Leonhard Seppala to come work with him in his Pioneer Mining Company. Records indicate Seppala regretted this decision on account of the work being difficult. That is, until the day he became a sled dog driver, mushing supplies. A team of 20 was assembled, including that of Leonhard Seppala, who was a venerated musher by then. While the lead dog, Balto, became famous, many argue it was actually Seppala and his lead dog, Togo, who were the true saviors that day.

National Alaska Day timeline

1867

The Debate

A debate erupts in the U.S. about the purchase of Alaska from Russia.

October 18, 1867

From Russian Rule to U.S. Governance

The Russian flag at the governor’s house is lowered and replaced with a U.S. flag.

1868

Alaska Becomes a U.S. Territory

Alaska changes hands from Russia to the United States.

1897

The Gold Rush Era Begins

Prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris discover gold in the Klondike region, starting the gold rush in Alaska.

1898

More Gold is Found

Prospectors find gold on the beaches at an Alaskan city called Nome.

1900

Prospectors Pour In

232 ships carrying around 18,000 prospectors arrive in Nome.

1943

Alaska is an Important Frontier

Japan invades the Aleutian Islands and more than 140,000 American military troops are already stationed in Alaska.

January 3, 1959

Alaska Becomes a U.S. State

Alaska is number 49 to join the U.S. as a state.

National Alaska Day FAQs

What is Seward's Day in Alaska?

Falling on the last day of March, this day commemorates the purchase of Alaska by the U.S., negotiated by then-Secretary of State William H. Seward.

Can you see Russia from Alaska?

On a clear day, by climbing a hill on Cape Prince of Wales, you might see mainland Siberia, which is 50 miles away.

Can Alaska be sold?

The United States does appear to have the right to sell Alaska or give it away without consulting its debt holders.

How To Celebrate National Alaska Day

Visit Alaska: If you have the time (and the budget) plan a holiday to see the wonders of this Arctic state. Visit the immense Denali National Park and Preserve, which is home to glaciers, fossil records, and a study in geology. Take a trip to see Glacier Bay, which gives you a glimpse at a color of blue you cannot find anywhere else on Earth. If you are a fan of nature, you are in luck. The Alaskan wildlife is as diverse as it is abundant — you can see humpback whales in the bay, lumbering brown bears in the woods, or bald eagles soaring overhead. Explore travel websites for advice on when to visit and get started planning your trip!

Learn more about Alaska: Not bitten by the travel bug yet? Not a problem. Take a virtual tour of this place. Read up on the history of Alaska, its people, and the reasons that make it a special place unlike any other.

Watch a feature: Settle in for a fun Alaska-themed movie night with the family. Check out movies set in this region, like the rom-com “The Proposal,” the adventure drama “Into The Wild,” or the Disney feature, “Togo.” Want something longer-lasting? The “Gold Rush” reality TV series that aired on Discovery Channel is all about, you guessed it, the gold rush in Alaska. Whatever your fancy, there are many movies or TV shows across genres that are set in this place. So grab some popcorn and enjoy watching Alaska’s beautiful landscape on your screen.

5 Fun Facts About Alaska

Alaska means 'great land': The name 'Alaska' comes from the Aleut word ‘Alyeska,’ which means 'great land'.

Alaska has the highest mountain peaks: Alaska is home to some of the highest mountain peaks in the U.S., like Mount Denali.

The Alaskan flag was designed by a child13-year-old Native American Benny Benson designed the flag of Alaska in 1926.

Lowest population density: Alaska has only one person per square mile, making it the state with the lowest population density in the world.

A sled dog race in Seppala’s honor: The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is held every year from Anchorage to Nome, to honor Leonhard Seppala's mission to save an entire community.

Why We Love National Alaska Day

We get to celebrate Alaskan history: The Gold Rush. The Iditarod. 'Seward’s Folly.' There are so many parts to Alaska's history that we are uncovering. On National Alaska Day, we get a chance to learn about and share in this history and celebrate the fact that this amazing land is a part of the U.S.

Because we love Alaska: The land where the sun shines for 24 hours. The land with the Aurora Borealis. Forests, lakes, glaciers, national parks, hiking trails, islands — Alaska has a little something for everyone. This perfect untouched slice of land is a holiday lover's paradise.

We celebrate America’s history: Just imagine, if Seward had not purchased Alaska from the Russians, Americans could not claim this beautiful land as their 49th state. It’s part of their pride and joy and an attraction to travelers everywhere. Alaskan history is intertwined with American history, and National Alaska Day reminds us of this fact.

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