River of Play

Unsustainable Arctic, Unsustainable You

A friend spent a late afternoon and evening with us a week ago, and I’d add that she’s a new friend, but pretty much all our friends up here are new friends, so the phrasing seemed redundant. We were talking about the ship poised off the west coast of Alaska that’s set to deliver diesel to Nome—a maneuver that will require the ship to run about a mile or so of pipeline over landfast ice to the town. We both started to giggle: what could possibly go wrong?

After we refreshed our tea, we started talking about sustainability in the far north. It’s clearly an issue because we can’t grow enough plant-based foods or supply enough fuel for almost any of us to live up here. Yet, here we are. And many of us are deeply concerned about the environment. So, really, what the hell are we doing up here? 

Not an easy question to answer, particularly if you look beyond the charisma of the landscape, which has both grandeur and subtlety—a particularly attractive combination, but not a sufficient answer to the question.

We decided to flip the question, though. 

When we lived in the lower 48, and a lot of us have come from somewhere else (really, it’s almost as bad as living in Atlanta), how many of us had truly sustainable lifestyles? What happened to us when we came up was that our attention became very focused on the illusions, and illusions get stripped away pretty quickly up here. This place is not a temperate zone, and when it’s forty-five below zero, you can’t just suck up your gut and brave the cold. No one can. You will die. Quickly. Brown bears and wolves live within walking distance, and you are a tasty and easy snack unless you’re prepared. Those are easy examples, but you can walk into a grocery store and tell immediately if the latest truck broke down on the way up. Or, for example, I couldn’t buy grapes today. Simply none were on the shelves. But how many times did I buy grapes in January wherever else I’ve lived and not given another thought to the supply chain?

That issue of the supply chain, and the very odd gaps that appear in stores, becomes the foundation of every choice you make up here. But of course it’s the foundation of every choice you make everywhere. Almost everywhere else, though, the chain is invisible, and that’s what frustrates those of us devoted to environmental issues. 

 

Designing Global Warming

Dana and I went to get new cell phones recently (thereby completing our move of resources up to Alaska—our phone numbers had languished as Nebraska numbers), and I had had a conversation fairly recently about issues surrounding anthropogenic global warming. Together, these topics had me thinking about teleology. 

Not teleology in the formal sense, but a more general feeling of “onward and upward.”

Since our families are not anywhere near the Arctic Circle, and our jobs require us to travel, we went with smart phones that are part of an international provider’s network instead of a local carrier. It’s easy to be seduced by the seemingly unstoppable implications of Moore’s Law—OMG a better camera! better reception! more…stuff! And we fell for the seduction.

As we were figuring out how to set up voicemail, it struck me that these phones are not the future. I mean, of course they are the future, but they aren’t what’s going to make life better, reset our economic imbalances, or solve the pressing issues of food and energy. The phones—and the technology they represent—are important pieces of the solution, but they are also, and perhaps equally, part of the problem. 

We speed along though, don’t we, without thinking about the issues. We might well need more energy…but why? We must upgrade the apps, design, and capabilities of our phones, microwaves, cat box systems, and so on. The idea of not moving forward seems against nature, against evolution. 
As if evolution was teleological. 

Teleology is our own, human, creation. Like money. Like justice, or fairness, or art. Any solution to global warming will rely in part on technology. It seems clear that we will not be content to give up our smart phones, Wii consoles, and movies on demand. It also seems clear that we will not be able power those devices by long-dead biological matter. What we need beyond focus and attention (which is to say, engineering) is an evaluation of our own interests, a better sense of our needs. 
When we come to the issue of needs we come to a dead end. Who ever wants to reconsider—or closely consider—our needs? And do you want to share your resources with people you’ve never met, on the other side of the planet, who might not understand you and your culture? But our technology won’t solve that problem. The technology has no design beyond its own, and the bigger engineering challenge is the larger design. But that design, that progress, always and only relies on us. 

To steal a phrase, we must be the teleology we want to see in the world. The re-engineering of our approach to our wants, though, looks to be much harder than building a multi-touch screen for your coffee table. And in a consumer society you simply don’t get the message to want less. I’ve learned some fun things to do with my phone, so I hope you’re better than me.

 

Alaska and Punctuated Migration

I'll start by mentioning my recent--was it a week-and-a-half ago already?--reading for the UAF Midnight Sun Visiting Writer Series. The craft talk (Like an Off-Tempo Waltz: Writers and Editors) went well. Dinner at one of the local Thai restaurants was tasty. And the reading was well-attended enough that they had to add extra rows for the audience. It helped immensely that the other guy reading is the new Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. And it doesn't hurt that darkness comes early.

The reading reminded me of one of the core tensions for any place-based ecopoet: how do you start writing again after a move?

I read from my "Boomtown" manuscript, and several audience members talked to me afterward about their love of the midwest and Great Plains, and the difficulty they experienced expressing that affection--that identity--with people outside the region. Their reactions (and prepping for the reading) have helped me return to the manuscript with renewed energy. But with two sobering changes. First, I've had the feeling--and then the actual wording--that a book so closely focused on a town that is in flyover country won't garner any publisher interest. So I've had to scrub out some of the tight focus and reference. I'm deeply ambivalent about this shift. Second, I've moved to a new place.

That move really drives a deep engagement with a topic I've wrestled with, written about, and knew I had to face again: punctuated migration. I'm not one of the dirt elite (those lucky few who managed to live on the same land as their ancestors--and not as sharecroppers, freedmen (and women), or other marginalized population), and I live in the most mobile era of human existence, so I'm pretty much guaranteed not to spend my life in one place. So, as I've already mentioned: how to start writing again in this place?

The natural drama, aesthetic appeal, charismatic megafauna, ragged edge of civilization components don't help. It seems too easy, almost, like you could get lazy writing in a place like this with its fjords, granite ranges, polar bears, dog sleds, profound winters, northern lights... Zounds! What's not to love? And yet, that kind of surface can be blinding--and I'm of course most interested in the metaphorical way it can be blinding. Having grown up in an area of great physical beauty, and a concomitant tourist industry, I'm suspicious of surfaces. 

The dilemma then is that I very much want to get writing, but I don't trust my first reading, my first engagement (foxes and beavers on the way to work, black bears on the trail along the backyards, moose closing off lanes of traffic!). The great thing about my job is that a lot of research comes to me, so I'm learning a lot about the place quickly. As you might expect from a place so large, though, the diversity of climate and peoples is--well, it's as stark in its diversity as any chunk of land that you can separate into distinct regions. Barrow and Ketchikan both have water right next to the town, but they might as well be on different worlds (compare their weather forecasts, for starters).

And I'm on a different planet, entirely, here in the interior. So I wait. I listen. I try to get people to talk to me (not hard to do in my job). I start to think about travel, space, light, the choices any of us might make to come up here. 

There's poetry in that. 

Writer as a Listening Body

I was talking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago about writing about place. We’re both new(-ish) to Alaska, and we both try to engage the place we’re living—the idea of the place, the reality of the place, the deep history, the non-human… So many aspects. But Alaska is making us mute. Not literally mute, or even figuratively. And yet, we’re having a hard time with the words.

When I lived in Nebraska, writing about the place came a little easier. Though I wasn’t born there, the interest I had in the place felt like I was pouring water into a channel that was subtle—more so because it was ignored. The energy of the water moved smoothly; the water itself was welcome. In flyover country, you’re just happy to be noticed. Beats the hell out of being ignored and taken for granted.   

But Alaska… Alaska’s a tourist destination. It’s a state that conjures images of gold, oil, wilderness—Romance. People from all over the world want to travel to Alaska. And the stakes are much higher when a writer engages that energy.

The reverse of that energy is the protective feeling that the people who live there year-round harbor. If you’ve ever lived in a tourist area, you know what I’m writing about. And you’re immediately suspicious of anyone who drops in for a week or so, takes notes, and then zips away to write their “insights” into the place. I grew up in the Southern Appalachian region, and history of people coming down to tell us our errors and how to save ourselves is long. And hated.

 So what’s a writer and scholar interested in place supposed to do? In a word: Listen. To people. To history. To land. To the non-humans living in the place with you. Listen for complication, for confusion, for the awkward spaces where issues and populations overlap. I’m frequently not very good at it. But I’m trying. And this is a great place in which to be listening.

 

 

North to NewPages.com

After a sustained three months of madness and abused endurance, we are finally (mostly) settled in  Fairbanks, AK. I am reminded of our extraordinary setting every morning as I head away from the Ray Mountains, push up the steep incline of the bike path to join up with the Johansen Freeway as it passes over the train depot, and look to see if I can spot the Alaska Range. On a clear day, I can see Denali. And that’s a good omen for us all.

I’m not sure where to begin. The excitement and rush around the job posting, interview, and offer negotiation? The six day drive up through Canada to the Alaska Highway and on to Fairbanks? The blow out about three hours into the trip? Or getting settled in with our boxes and boxes of stuff (no outright breakage but plenty of ding-n-dent)? As I said, hard to know. 

Right now, the girl’s asleep, Dana’s knitting, and I’m thinking about near-arctic living.

Near arctic? Yes. So an all-wheel-drive car with complete winterizing kit (sure, a block heater, but also a battery heater, and advice to get a thermal-rated extension cord). Long thinking jags about over-mittens and snowshoes, about uninsulated storage and about snow up to my shoulder.

And near to the end of the world. All the big department stores (and many others) around here do bush flight deliveries. Tourists zoom by packed in cruiser-weight buses from one scenic drive to the other. I’d guess they’re doing a loop from, say, Homer along the Wrangell-St. Elias mountains, across the eastern edge or the Alaska range, up to Fairbanks, and then back down through the Alaska range, past Denali, and down to Anchorage. I assume they’re hoping to see caribou (done it), moose (seen many), bison (somehow larger and shaggier up here), bears (yes to both black and grizzly), and other charismatic fauna.

I’ll be honest: I don’t blame them. 

There’s more to say, of course, but I’ll end this brief post with a note about something that surprised me: smell. The air smells different. Almost like incense. More balsam than pine, more dry than the leaf mold smell of eastern forests. Definitely worth the drive.

Ah, and I missed something when I drove up here: I had an interview on NewPages.com. Go read it!

 

Turn of the Seasons

The last two months have been moving too fast for me to keep any sort of posting up to date. During the first week of April, the University of Alaska Press posted a job listing for a new acquisitions editor. I was encouraged by friends, colleagues, and mentors to apply--the job certainly sounded good to me--so pulled my resume and application letter together and entered the market. 

A week after the job closed, I got a call to schedule an interview. The next week.

After a harried weekend studying the U of Alaska Press, I interviewed. I thought it went pretty well, and  week later I got an email asking to schedule a call to talk about the job.

By the end of the week, we had reached a deal. I think that was the sixth of May. We decided that June 13 would be a good start date, so we've been running around like possessed people trying to extract ourselves from Lincoln and find a way to insert ourselves into Fairbanks, AK. We've been 
busy lining up housing, and I've been training my replacement at the magazine.

A week from today, I roll out of Lincoln and head north through the Dakotas before tacking northwest across Canada and on into Alaska.

We're looking forward to learning about this new, and very different, landscape. And... Well, just about everything. We'd be more excited if we weren't so frantic.

And right now, I should head home and keep packing.

Folklore, Women, and the Great Plains

I'm still early in this poetry project, a handful of early drafts of poems, and I'm beginning to feel a bit of momentum as well as a sense of the various attractors. So it seems like a good time to step back and look at the concerns of the project. 

Since I'm working from an ecopoetic stance, I have a sort of mental checklist of what I want to look toward as basic materials. History. Science. Culture. And this ecopoetry is place-based, so I'm trying to absorb more information about the place around me. Place meaning land, the non-human lives  on that land, and the people who interact with those others. My last project built out from a narrow focus, and I wanted to go larger. Plus, I wanted to explore a bit of the fantastic, a bit of whimsy, something more fictional and fun. So I turned to folklore.

The folklore has been quite rewarding, but at this point, as I step back to look at what's going on, I see a glaring problem: women. Or, rather, the absence of women. This is fairly basic stuff, women's studies 101, really, but it's always a shock to come across it. Again. One of the small ironies, here, is that I'm relying on Louise Pound's Nebraska Folklore as a source. Of course, there are women in the book and in the stories. Usually, they are unnamed wives or wise women mostly working in the background to move the hero along. The Native American tradition fares a bit better, but I don't feel nearly as comfortable exporting that tradition wholesale. There's a bit of touchy history, and a great delicacy is called for. 

So. I'm thinking about women of the Great Plains. If anyone out there knows of folkloric women heroes, let me know. I don't want to expropriate Dorothy Gale, though. Maybe I'll ship Joan of Arc over...

One of the ways this point got driven home was a game group that meets on Sundays at a coffeehouse in town. The group is all male. Nice guys, but still, a curious experience.  

The Boomtown Cloud

Graphic overview of your book's obsessions? Sure, with Wordle!

I'll try to get a larger image up after a bit. Or you can go over to Wordle and search for Boomtown.

And Back Again

The trip to U of Northern Iowa was uncomfortable, but only as far as the driving was concerned. Rain mixed with snow. Thunderstorms. Wind hammering the car with 30 mph bursts of entirely unnecessary energy. My time with Jeremy Schraffenberger and his students (and, later, the family) was a treat.

They had been reading ecopoets and ecocritical articles the entire semester and engaging the idea of ecopoetry. They had also read my ecopoetry manifesto. The conversation we had was wide-ranging and exciting, but at some level it felt very odd to me. Who was this Engelhardt we were all talking about? Did he really write these things? Can we extend his argument? And, if so, why were they all looking at me?

Great students. It seems clear that UNI is doing a fine job attracting engaged, dedicated students. And if any of them of bouncing over to this post: hello!

I'll add a picture of the building in which we all huddled into a corner to talk about the outside world (though we had a bright green young pine tree outside one window that we used as an object lesson the entire evening).

Jeremy and I went for a very tasty dinner in the short length of Main Street that houses a cluster of neat shops, good coffee, and a clutch of good restaurants. We talked poetry, poetics, university politics, children, and on and on well into the night. If you're ever in the Cedar Falls area, look the man up.

The next morning, I rolled out of town, battled the elements, and prepped for Saturday's game day at the house. (Which games? Thanks for asking! Furstefeld, The Hobbit, and Municipium.) Later today, there's a poetry reading at the main Lincoln library. Busy weekend. And I'm still feeling good.

 

On the Road Again

I head out day after tomorrow to talk ecopoetics with my friend Jeremy Schraffenberger and his grad students ( doesn't Engelhardt & Schraffenberger sound like a German confectioner?). The weather will be classicly spring-like: chance of rain, mid-50s. As long as the rain is sporadic, it's not bad for driving. Lots of chances for roadside animal spotting. I expect to see at least one eagle.

My new poetry project is aggressively ecopoetic, so the visit should offer a great opportunity to bounce ideas around. I'm continuing to struggle with the continuum between avant-gardistes, post-avantistes, and the quiet smugness of mainstream poets--whatever the hell we mean when we put "main-stream" and "poets" together. I'm deeply interested in the making of the poem--hence the -poetics--but I find myself bristling when I'm told what I should be doing to be interesting. I especially don't like being dismissed as, essentially, 'uncool.' I mention that because I generally feel, when I visit other blogs and commentators, that my interests are not valued. I don't think I can go further than to simply articulate my impression. All the rest is strawmen and bitterness.

So I think the more useful direction to go is to reverse Hawk & Handsaw's subtitle. I've been thinking a lot about what sustains creativity. The bedrock answer is, as it is for all sustainability projects, energy. Energy, for my writing, comes from the land I'm in, the animals and other life I share the land with, and culture. All of these things add language, the material I work with, they direct my attention beyond the bony shell of my own, limited skull, and they excite the chemical-electrical wilderness of my brain. Plus, a bit of focus.

I enjoy--and appreciate--the shiny frontiers of the avants. At its best, the energy there is expansive, deep, and inclusive. There's certainly less self-righteousness about carbon neutrality. Every so often, I wish I would spend more time in (formerly) smoky bars and coffee shops, talking late into the night about the best, newest thing. But then I head out across the land and find out that I regret nothing.