Bill Sherwonit - Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaskas Wildlife

Sherwonit takes us around Anchorage and its fringes, and over much of Alaska, showing us creatures we rarely take time, or have the good fortune, to see, like the lynx on Turnagain Arm Trail: it is April, there are catkins and early mosquitoes, and right there, a lynx staring at him, becoming part of his relationship to this forest trail. But he also takes us to Denali Park for Dall sheep, the Chilkat Valley for this meeting of eagles, the largest in the world at the Bald Eagle Council Grounds. We go to Kodiak for brown bears and also discover it is an unexpected treat to be paddling among porpoises off Homer. Bill shows us the fur seals at St. Paul, the wolf in the John River Valley whose howl will haunt his memories and dreams. Thought of it may haunt us too. He walks unarmed in bear country in the Brooks Range and calls to mind his totems: bear is one, squirrel, chickadee, wolf, spider they are teacher, messenger, guide for him and become so for us. I want to understand what wilderness means to me. And what sacred means, Bill writes. And every account of animal, bird, or fish encountered includes a mini-encyclopedia of information about the creatures he sees.

Like porcupine whom the Koyukons call the off the beaten path wanderer, Bill Sherwonits Animal Stories takes us on trips that give us greater vision and a better understanding of our world.

GARY HOLTHAUS, author of Learning Native Wisdom and From the Farm to the Table

Whether tracking beluga whales in a citizen science project or tracking robins on his front lawn, learning lessons from a charging brown bear or stopping to listen to wood frogs, Sherwonit writes with grace and ease about his encounters with Alaskan wildlife. Commuting ravens. Insouciant wolverines. And the redpolls exuberant chorus of song. The author combines personal experience and careful research in a journey that will compel and delight.

SHARMAN APT RUSSELL, author of Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist and An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect

A well-crafted, eclectic, and engaging combination of memoir, natural history, and keen insight, Animal Stories delivers a fine read. Bill Sherwonits three-plus decades of experience with Alaska wildlife, and his love for them all, from grizzlies to robins, shines forth.

NICK JANS, author of A Wolf Called Romeo

Whether writing about grizzlies, dancing cranes, or mad hares, Bill Sherwonit enchants and inspires, reminding us that wildness surrounds us, even if we dont live in Alaska.

TIM FOLGER, series editor, The Best American Science and Nature Writing

In his Animal Stories, Bill Sherwonit reminds us that community is built and sustained not only by humans caring for one another, but by humans noticing, coming to know, and caring about their animal neighbors. From the black-capped chickadees at his feeder, to the wood frogs in an urban pond, to the wolverines he encounters on the alpine tundra, Sherwonit celebrates Alaskan wildlife in all its forms with his eyes, ears, heart, and curiosity wide open. In prose thats clear as a rain-washed sky, he observes and writes as a true citizen-naturalist and nature writer.

EVA SAULITIS, author of Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas

Encounters with Alaskas Wildlife

BILL SHERWONIT

Text 2014 by Bill Sherwonit

The essays in this book have appeared, often in different form, in the following newspapers, magazines, journals, and books: Alaska; Alaskas Accessible Wilderness: A Travelers Guide to Alaskas State Parks; American Nature Writing, 2001; Anchorage Daily News; Anchorage Press; Appalachia; Backpacker; Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007; Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaskas Arctic Wilderness; Christian Science Monitor; Crosscurrents North; Danger! True Stories of Trouble and Survival; Defenders; Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey; National Wildlife; Orion; Pilgrimage; and Wildlife Conservation.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sherwonit, Bill, 1950- author.
[Essays. Selections]
Animal stories : encounters with Alaskas wildlife / Bill Sherwonit.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-941821-08-4 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-941821-30-5 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-941821-35-0 (hardbound)
1. AnimalsAlaska. 2. Natural historyAlaska. I. Title.
QL161.S526 2014
591.9798dc23

2014017708

Front cover photo 2014 by Tom Walker
Edited by Michelle Blair
Design by Vicki Knapton

Published by Alaska Northwest Books
An imprint of

P.O. Box 56118
Portland, Oregon 97238-6118
503-254-5591
www.graphicartsbooks.com

For the animals, who enrich our human lives And for my grandchildren, Tristan and Alyssa

I first began writing regularly about wild nature in the mid-1980s, while employed as an outdoors writer at the Anchorage Times. My interest deepened, and my approach shifted, when I began life as a freelance nature writer in the early 1990s. At the newspaper Id primarily written articles, but as a freelancer I became a student of the essay form, which has allowed me greater latitude in the ways that I explore the nature of Alaskas wildlife and wildlands. I have especially embraced the personal essay, which enables me to weave my own experiences, observations, perspectives, and insights, with what I learn through research plus interviews with people who represent a wide range of experiences and expertise, for instance scientists, managers, conservationists, hunters and trappers, and Alaskas Native peoples (recognizing overlap among those groups).

Over the past two decades, I have written scores of essays about Alaskas wildlife, which have been published in assorted newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. Some Ive included in my own books, either as essays or woven into a larger, nonfiction narrative. Here I have collected thirty-four of those essays.

These animal stories have a wide reach, in a number of ways. Besides essays about Alaskas best-known and most charismatic animalsfor instance grizzlies and wolves, moose and Dall sheep, bald eagles and beluga whalesI introduce readers to many of our states largely overlooked species, from wood frogs to redpolls and shrews. Other essays describe encounters with well-known animals that people rarely meet in the wilds, for example lynx and wolverines. The stories are also geographically diverse; they stretch across the state, from the Panhandle to the Arctic, and also from Alaskas urban center, Anchorage, to its most remote backcountry. Part of the intent is to remind people that we share the landscape with other creatures wherever we are, even where we least expect it. And that even the most easily overlooked or ignored animals lead remarkable lives.

The essays also show, and examine, the complicated relationships we humans have with other animals, and consider different ways of knowing, and relating to, these critters. In sharing what Ive learned in my own explorations (near and far), I intend to open up new worlds and possibilities to readers, just as my own life has been enlarged by both firsthand encounters and what Ive been able to learn from research and interviews. The essays are intended to be thought-provoking as well as entertaining: to increase readers awareness and get people thinking about their own relationships with our wild neighbors, our wild relatives, and the inherent value that these animals have, irrespective of what they give to us.