Changing Seasons, From Anvik

"september yukon windstorm"

I traveled smoothly from nulato to kaltag in under 8 hours, warm summer evening with sunsetting over nulato hills and a fishhawk weaving clean lines like calligraphy penstrokes in the pale blue sky with the smell of woodsmoke and salmon and spilled gasoline and village waste suddenly coloring the night and a dog barking and a 4wheeler coming down the riverbank from the village to where I pulled up on the low gravel bar. Similar routine at most places... throw camera and a few other essentials into backpack and head up to case the place out for location of school, tribal building, store. I remember some of these villages perfectly from before.



Stories are always different depending upon who you talk to, and the same is true for what I have been hearing this fall... I look forward to composing my thoughts more on this later...

But the truth is if you go to people and sit down with them and talk directly... teachers, social workers, firefighters, fisherman... professors, students at the college level and youth in the schools... people want what is best for their future and they want what is best for their community. If you cut through the media chatter... the everyday, regular people are interested in getting into the business of working for change, of working together to create positive solutions.


I believe that the network of leaders that I am building in these communities will give that extra effort and share what they have to offer and work together to bring this project to fruition. I believe in the power of this group's ability to offer true grassroots change thru authentic vision, intelligence and courage. That is what the Last Frontier Eco Alliance is all about: helping people become involved in creating solutions to the challenges we face, tapping into their true spirit, creative ingenuity, dormant talents ... and manifesting this revealed excellence thru deeply coordinated social innovation that will enable our state's culture to flourish and blossom into a role of global sustainability leadership.



I came down to grayling in two days from kaltag, camped beneath a bluff where a grouse had been killed feathers strewn everywhere amongst wet stones. Lit a fire and watched the wind sweep over the water and rake through the yellow leaves and rich tall grass blades swallowing the smoke and fanning the coals as night fell. Crouched there alone by my tent watching the flames and the stars gather themselves slowly... than later the next night a skiff stopping me, six guys from grayling with guns asking me if everything was allright... beartracks everywhere on the beach where I thought of camping than rowing toward Grayling into perfect calm and perfect silence with cold sky draped alive with constellations, shooting stars music on the cd player sometimes and a boat engine in the distance flashing my headlight and they pull up and we talk again and they say brown bear country watch the banks and I say you dont need to tell me i stopped to camp and saw sign everywhere and they laugh and said you make good time for a paddler and they push farther down river with a spotlight on the bank looking for bears and later just drifting in perfect silence, bundled up for the cold watching northern lights move in the sky against the stars back towards kaltag and true north... diamond sound of water droplets from oar blades crocheted into the sound of breath and the stars than the lights of grayling and the snap and pop and sparks of burning driftwood after the push into the grayling lights on the grayling beach and sleeping with the sound of wind in the trees and falling leaves brushing against the tent-fly like snowflakes.

Grayling is a great community, I did a presentation there yesterday and they have an impressive sustainability project at the school with chickens that produce eggs year around. I arrived there @ 240 Am and left in the early afternoon after eating lunch with the school kids in the cafeteria where one little girl got a laugh out of me when she asked "are you Indiana Jones?"...




Came into Anvik yesterday afternoon thru high winds, spitting snowflakes... first day on the water where I wore a jacket all day. One teacher here pointed out to me that this is the last indian village on the yukon... Just left the school after doing a presentation there, talked about the project and 350 climate action day... was going to go to holy cross last night but am glad the librarian convinced me to stay here, as there is a nice dusting of a few inches of snow on the ground and it is still steadily falling outside the windows of the tribal center where I type this post... and because I always feel empowered and renewed after speaking in schools. thanks for the support...

Notes from Nulato

Ended up flying from fairbanks to minto, as we could not land in Manley due to low cloud cover, than hitch hiked back to manley... didnt get out on the water that day (friday) until about 4-5 pm, rowed till dark and camped on gravel bar. Irony of all ironies Gov. Parnell was in Manley moose hunting, and if I had not forgot the charger for that camera and had to backtrack to Fairbanks I could have caught him at breakfast.

On Saturday I landed in Tanana early afternoon and stumbled into a spagehti dinner fundraiser hosted by local students at the school and made great connection with science teacher. All educators are real excited about the project vision of teaching youth film making. I have been discussing this directly with a lot of the different principals this year. I don't have a lot to post here, just updating some pictures and confirming that I believe that this whole thing is beginning to gell.





Two days to Ruby from tanana, than 1 real short easy day to Galena (with the wind at my back).. It took a lot longer to get from Galena up to Nulato last night with a head wind, and I came in here in the dark... actually could see the lights of town and ran into a low gravel bar spit on an end of an island and camped there till morning than paddled the remaining 1/4 mile into town this morning. Great people are letting me stay in the school here, and I am making some printouts, getting connected again and looking ahead to the exciting work of making this 350 climate action festival a reality in Anchorage. I am right on schedule, will be in Kaltag tomorrow and in Grayling sunday night to hit the school up on monday morning...

Manley...

Classic: had to hitch-hike back 2 Fairbanks because forgot charger for camera batteries... Had a good easy trip down from Nenana, saw swans, bald eagles, lynx @ dusk in slough. Looking at some mileages from this link: http://www.qnet.com/~dpostma/r-notes.htm. 70 to tanana, 130 2 ruby (some people were telling me 180-200?),58 2 galena, 32+23 2 nulato, 41 2 kaltag...total of 768 miles from manley hot springs 2 st marys. It will be cutting it close with weather, we will see what happens. 2day 9/11 goes back to original project vision, start trip on 9/11 symbolic gesture of peace spliced into brilliance of fall.

River Trip and Alaska Climate Action Day Festival Application

Here is link to basic event doc with info for prospective Exhibitor, Sponsor and Supporter information.

Payment on right hand side of blog.
https://buzzword.acrobat.com/#d=59e34Hj-jEyQPlRwEOHAcQ

Will be hitchhiking down to Nenana tonight and hopefully headed out on the river tomorrow. Thanks for the support.

Last minute details & Announce October 24th Alaska 350 Climate Action Day Festival

I honestly almost didn't get back into this work. With the encouragement of some friends here I am... regaining momentum and energy and rolling. I would not be typing this without the support of other people....

I drove up here to Fairbanks a few days ago... camped in Mckinley village on a cold windy night with raindrops pattering against the tent-fly and the state flag snapping in the wind against a dark sky and blowing some of falls first yellow leaves across the road where it winds thru the mountains. I woke up and drank coffee and drove down into the rolling flats into what felt like summer... sun flowing everywhere and fireweed changing color in old burns on the hills and ditches still flush with wildflowers and whitestones in dry creeks glinting like broke glass and the sun moving on the water of the Tanana river when I got to Nenana with the bridge hanging over it against the blue sky transcribing the passing vehicles gracefully like some gothic monument using sign language to tell the story of migrating birds.

I staged my canoe there with the same good people who let me store it at their place last year. Like last year they wouldn’t take my money and all we did is shake hands and talk about the fire season and how I was getting an earlier start now. I don’t remember the date but last fall I remember watching the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden at the local bar (only place to get tv coverage) with about a foot of snow on the ground and my canoe and gear staged down by the ice-rimmed river. A combination of good people telling me I was crazy and another 6 inches of snow mixed with a dip in temperatures that night convinced me into postponing the rest of my journey until now. The next day I hitchhiked back to Dawson to get my truck than went to work canvassing voters thru an environmental organization in support of our current president. A lot has happened in the last year.

I have been busy here the last few days. I drove into town on wednesday and met with Northern Alaska Disaster Relief (NADR), the umbrella group of representatives from leading organizations that are involved in coordinating assistance for flood victims in rural Alaska. They have been meeting each wednesday in the pres. church on college road and I got to the meeting a little late, was clearly the youngest one there... felt a little out of place with my crewcut and carharts; kind of like a restless kid in school again.

They are clearly good people doing good work, and it is great to see people getting together to face a challenge and the non profit sector filling in where State and FEMA assistance ends .... I will be distributing their contact information on bulletin boards along the Yukon from Tanana down to St. Marys over the next few weeks. The idea is that they will be able to help families and individuals get funds to replace a snowmobile or sofa etc., items needed to live and get thru the winter in addition to the funds FEMA has available for homes etc.. Still learning how all this works. I have a lot of commitments but did discuss volunteering with them some after the river trip. There are a lot of articles about the rebuilding effort and impact of floods, here is one (http://www.newsminer.com/news/2009/jul/29/tanana-rebuilds-after-spring-floods/).

It should be noted that when the floods were declared a disaster last spring ... that the obvious link to the root issues of climate change, energy, and food-security etc. ( the issues that originally jump started the Last Frontier Eco Alliance ) was not drawn very well in the media. There are clear parallels to what happened in New Orleans with Katrina and disadvantaged minority communities to what happened last winter in rural Alaska and the Yukon... where high fuel prices and low returns on salmon etc. ripple effected into an ugly survival situation (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/25/nation/na-rural-alaska25).

Our new Gov. Parnell recently appealed to the Federal Government to declare the Yukon Fishery a disaster as well...: (http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/081509/fis_20_002.shtml). We all need to support this. I am critical of the state’s work in terms of rural Alaska and energy... I organized the event last spring, attended the Renewable Energy Fair in early August and also the recent Chena Hot Springs Fair... and I know that there is a lot of energy and good people trying hard on this complex challenge... But the proven solutions are taking a long time to arrive to the people in need.

Thomas Friedman hit the nail on the head with his recent NYT op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23friedman.html) where he spoke of how “policy solutions should be as integrated as nature”. Though I work at the true grassroots and don’t wear a tie or shape policy... I believe his analogy is consistent to what I have been instinctively trying to do since I started this work last fall. Anyone can look back at this blog and see the awkward beginnings, stumbles etc. but in a year we have made significant progress. From the start I feel like I was driven by a gravity-like internal need to express and solve simultaneously, guided more by motivation and an intuitive thinking style than anything else. I always go back to my analogy of a free style rapper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_rap) to best explain the way I try to build and connect ideas into solutions...

Yesterday I met with the UAF film professor. She has been working with others to bring a film major program to UAF... currently there is a minor thru the theatre department. There is no film program at UAA. Film and media are unrivaled in terms of influence over mainstream culture, and we really need to get this film major implemented @ UAF and get some sort of program going at UAA. I have lived and worked alongside lots of good people from rural Alaska and have lots of friends in remote places and have personally been interested in trying to make a film about climate change for several years... so I completely understand the intense frustration that comes with having a lack of opportunity to express yourself or a creative vision stifled by circumstances. Take a look at these articles re suicide in Alaska (http://www.adn.com/life/health/story/798378.html & http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14alaska.html). A significant quote... “A recent audit of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council, launched in 2001 to reduce suicide numbers across the state, found that the legislators who sit on the council rarely showed up for meetings and that several seats sat vacant for years.”

My idea I approached UAF prof Maya with, and that I mentioned briefly in the interview with Daphna that was linked to in the last blog post... is to create a program that gives interested UAF film students opportunity to teach film in rural schools, learn good event organizing skills by fundraising for digital video camera donation and trip, valuable culture and service experience. And to make it a sustainable model by partnering with the university... new UAF film students each year pull from their personal network to fund more cameras and trips to growing network of villages. Rural Youth learn valuable skills to communicate thru media re social and environmental justice, restore balance to lives and communities via healing process of creative arts and media production. Perhaps showcase work in short film competition format at green events in cities, or collaborating with other established film festivals... Looks killer on everyones resume and connects youth with progressive material and global community, gives them voice, influence of positive role models (thru UAF student leaders and also thru films donated thru Yukon River Media Project)etc. I have a lot of more developed ideas but hopefully you can see the potential and vision for what it is: promising. Maya offered some great leadership and I hope we can collaborate on this...

In the 50in52 interview I talked about a shift in focus to a Green Employer Council rather than the Alaska (Anchorage) Green Jobs Corps workforce training program (which would include a green employer counil) that I had been envisioning from the beginning. It seemed more practical and I had been gone working all summer, my energy dulled by months of 16 hour days. But I did connect with an awesome friend who I actually met at our April 11th event last spring. This person brings additional energy, motivation, talent and business skills and is interested in collaborating re the Green Job vision. I have not given up on the Green Jobs front and we are moving in the direction of learning from the Ella Baker Center and looking at ways to innovatively implement their inspiration... the Berkley Study produced by SFSU Urban Studies Prof Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes (http://bss.sfsu.edu/raquelrp/) and watch video here (http://www.revision-dallas.com/?p=225). I tried to pull together a steering committee / board for this project with the event last spring, but didn't have the ability 'team of talent' to execute. Building the team of talent and connections to deliver change is something I intend to focus much more on in the future.

The last thing I need to mention in this blog post is that we are rolling with an October 24th Alaska 350ppm Climate Action Day Festival in the Cook Room of the Egan Center in Anchorage on October 24th. The focus is translating global inspiration into local action and the more community involvement the better so please email if there is anything you would like to contribute. Event sponsors $500, exhibitor booths $300, and supporter $20(funds will be used to cover our expenses than be channeled to develop our projects). You can support the event via secure online payment on right hand side of blog screen. I set this up as no-one seems to use checks these days, and because I will be off the road system for the next few weeks traveling form Nenana out to Tanana on the tanana river... than down the Yukon toward the Bering Sea. Check out www.350.org for more information behind the science of 350, event inspiration... watch on youtube: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY). The focus is climate change Solutions and Awareness. Interested speakers, artists, exhibitors: email me to get involved!

Cities are so key in sparking social change and creating opportunity... All of our plans in some way or another incorporate leveraging the power of urban communities to drive culture in the direction of sustainability. I love all of Alaska... the small remote towns, the villages and the cities of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau... and I really believe Anchorage is going to come thru on this and make the October 24th event something to remember for years. I grew up here as a person and all of these places have shaped me in some way or another into the person I am becoming and I want to spend the rest of my life improving these communities, preserving our wilderness, and helping people constructively become involved in creating solutions to the economic and environmental challenges we face.

Today I have been getting last minute supplies, reserved storage space for truck, developing promo material for event to email to prospective supporters, exhibitors, pulling together some basic material for school presentations and handouts. There are a lot of logistics and details. We really need Alaska to get behind this 350 Climate Action day festival, buy booths and support this 1 time effort to bring global awareness to this important issue... Alaska is the poster state for Climate Change and we need to become a leader on solutions.