Last Frontier Eco Alliance Blog: November 2009

"Ride your horse along the edge of a sword; hide yourself in the middle of flames...." Zen saying

Its black friday. The day after thanksgiving. I am in the city. Snowstorm yesterday went thru the night and stopped late this afternoon clearing you could see the moon over the mountains clear in midtown than downtown at townsquare gauzy white clouds people drinking cups of cocoa and children singing carols at the tree lighting ceremony in the damp cool air with everyone gathered in winter jackets and the lights draped over the trees bright in the night.

I don't have the patience to be cliche and write a list of things that I am thankful for. We all need to find flow. The hardest thing in the world to do is to be yourself. I don't believe in painting a picture on here that is not real or authentic. At this moment the world seems beautiful and broken, natural and fake...

Climate activists all over the world have been clamoring for an international pact at Copenhagen to reduce CO2 emissions. Obama will attend on his way to receive the Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway. U.S. Leadership is lauded as the missing link...

Our day to day lives are far away from all that here in Alaska, our sense of interconnectedness is frayed if not severed. Sure the interrelated issues of Energy, Climate, Food Security hit us hard here (Weak Levels of King Salmon Hurt Alaska Fisherman)... but mainstream people are slow to accept the connections between implementing practical local solutions and a treaty in Copenhagen. I remember all my 350 presentations and I look at the 'leaders' of the climate movement and I am disenchanted. Local non profits are not trying hard enough to improve and collaborate, the state is run largely by politicians not public servants... both are bogged down with bureaucracy and are failing to reach people in need. The system needs to be reinvented on so many levels, from capitalism to healthcare to education to energy to sustainable development. I can do better myself and need to work harder at building a team to achieve our evolving set of goals. We need young and inspired people to set themselves on fire and rekindle grassroots hope in their communities. Communities need to look for and embrace people who come bringing solutions, people with energy and vision.

After my trips down the Yukon the past two falls I had a missionary-like believer sensation of floating, detached but wholly present... Time spent alone will give you that unreasonable confidence, that clarity of mind. In this work you have to believe that there will be a way thru the closed door to the dream. You have to believe that you will find a way to intuitively connect with your vision. Its about spirit.

I learn more every day and honestly am becoming more and more confident in the potential to overcome lots of these challenges in Alaska. I still think my potential lies in not what I am going to accomplish as a person but in my ability to inspire and unlock talent in other people (Paraphrased from a quote from Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Subject of political documentary Street Fight which Filmmaker Marshall Curry just donated to our Yukon River Media Project). I haven't realized the potential of reaching out thru film yet myself, have done lots of amateurish editing with imovie re footage from canoe trips the last two falls... but have not released anything yet (remember I am learning as I go...). I know I can do better on this, I also know I can do much better in terms of using these "climate expeditions" to catalyze our projects. I have plans for a spring adventure that will conclude in Juneau during the Alaska Legislature session... more details soon.

I see the Last Frontier Eco Alliance potentially evolving into an Incubator for local Social Entrepreneurship projects with regional co-working spaces in Alaska that naturally attract local visionaries and provide them with support and mentorship expertise, exposure/ connections, crowd sourced funds, and other shared assets etc. On one level this will enable me to stop trying to do everything myself... but instead to create a healthy space for innovative solutions to be birthed and implemented, a place for teams to be built and for idealistic inspiration to find its foundation in business skills and partnerships (Contact if Interested in Investing becoming involved). I am becoming more and more interested in the potential of exploring the intersection between developing web technologies and social change in the Arctic, have been fascinated w/ potential of innovative startups like Vittana (which brings microfinance principles to education) and Enzi Futures which helps eliminate the financial barrier to education through people to people social investing.

One definite part of the immediate strategic plan (There is a lot more going on than this, will update details later) is to launch a pilot Youth Film Making Program in four remote villages along the Yukon River fall 2010 around September 11th. I am looking for four sets of photo/media/film professionals to collaborate with me on this. The idea of working with pairs of people is better on all accounts. The truth is some of the larger communities like Galena or Fort Yukon already offer some sort of basic film class. This is a phenomenal opportunity that will be an awesome service and cultural experience, truly expand the mind and body-of-work for those that choose to rise to the challenge. Think of a meaningful getaway vacation for 1-2 weeks to the last wild place in the world... Contact me if interested A top-shelf resume item, and an experience that you will remember your whole life...

In addition I will distribute copies of the films donated to all communities as planned. We can build from this start. I want to raise funds or find four generous people/ organizations to sponsor us with four digital video camera donations so the cameras will stay in the schools for youth to use during the school year after the project(and have web presence for youth to post work). On an individual level I am still learning to navigate funding structures for all of this. I have met some true heroes working in the schools in the villages as principals and teachers, and I am excited to connect them with other bright and talented social change agents for this project. I believe it will catalyze grassroots education transformation, heal lives, restore balance to communities, fight the inequality and erosion of opportunity that is occurring in some of these wilderness outposts (NYT Alaska's Rural Schools Fight Off Extinction http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/us/26alaska.html)

The Anchorage International Film Festival begins in a few weeks. I attended it for the first time last year and Anchorage art and culture truly shined. There are good opportunities here to make connections for the Yukon River Media Project. In one year the project is a world more mature and focused and I will be doing my best to inspire some new partnerships.

A friend is working hard to organize a local 'carrotmob' campaign the begining of 2010 and I completely support her vision, and we hope to link this work with efforts around a green employer council which will be connecting local youth from established empowerment programs with 90 day Paid-On-The-Job-Internships at local socially responsible/ green businesses for the summer of 2010 tourist season.

Alaska recieved funds for Green Job Training recently: Cook Inlet Tribal Council will receive more than $67,000 and the state employment agency will get $800,000 ... if you followed our blog you will remember Gloria O'Neil CITC President was one of the main speakers at our Green Jobs Forum last spring... she is a dynamic leader and I am glad to see CITC follow thru on this. I am less optimistic about the states handling of federal funds from the Recovery Act.

The Somalian-Canadian Rapper K'naan posted on his twitter stream today "happy belated native land robbery day." There is truth there... A very controversial case with regard to Point Hope, Alaska Caribou Hunters has been storming across headlines for months, was a topic at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this fall. Please take the time to watch this moving spoken word presentation (http://aitc.org/?q=node/215) by one of the relatives of the accused. Regardless of how it plays out it brings forward many important questions about education, opportunity and justice in Alaska... questions that deserve further exploration in the context of how we will consciously choose to develop our future.

TRACKS FROM THE YUKON: Images Nenana 2 St Marys 09

"For The Raindrop, Joy is Entering the River" - Ghalib

"waiting on the grass for a ride into fairbanks @ manley, yellow leaves lapping blue sky"

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Nelson Mandela

"tanana fishwheel"

"nenana hills wildfire burn"

"barge passing in the night"

"eagle"

there were lots of eagles on the rivers, this was early just out of nenana but later on the yukon on the way to kaltag from nulato there was a duckling that followed me for miles one afternoon swimming parallel to the canoe and i could see the eagles following us down river, at one point i stopped and threw it some bread but it didnt take the bread and swam farther away so i kept rowing and it followed me farther but eventually fell behind and i could see the eagle circling over the lost duckling as i followed a bend in the river. last fall there were seagulls that followed me for miles up around circle where we worked a fire this summer the smoke was very thick too thick for aircraft we ended up traveling up river by skiff to a camp for most of the tour... you could see the impact on the banks from the floods and a cabin that had been there 5 miles up from our fire was destroyed. i remember how nice the cabin looked up against the steep bluffs the fall before when i was rowing down river before just entering the flats @ dusk about 15 miles upriver from circle.

"bluenightcampgravelbarrainsouthofmanley"

"waking to grassblades in wind on tent nylon" a nice way to wake up anywhere sleeping the night before without a gun with bear tracks where the tent is pitched nice solitary feeling of foreverness like ghosts and music, reading a book from an author you like with a headlamp listening. i was pretty smart about where i camped but there were a couple times i stopped after dark and woke up with some fresh tracks in area... just left food away from where i slept; no encounters

"bluff and sandbars"

"Blurred shot of lynx in slough" on this trip the only map i had was a state atlas which i began to burn the night i got to galena, i saw this lynx after taking the inside channel along this island which turned out to be the slough where Charlie and Robin Boulding live... it was late so i didnt stop but i could hear dogs barking and saw hundreds of red strips of salmon hanging to dry in the cool summer evening on spruce poles the cabin cozy with wood stacked and late flowers bursting through green grass showering the wild rugged thick growth of the river banks with welcoming light, woodsmoke and dogs howling mixed with the sound of oarblades in clear water moments after slipping out of the headphones and drifting on my back and than the lynx right there next to me fumbling to get the camera

"Tanana River September Swans" white swans like unmarked envelopes addressed to you beneath the word AMAZING

"morning fog"

"tanana afternoon" as mentioned in an earlier post i came into tanana after midday on saturday, dogs and children on the beach with people working salmon and skiffs cutting away from the village hot like august or july and sunburned and walking up the bank and a guy from kenai in a baseball cap was there hunting and helping the mennonite group with their volunteer rebuilding efforts some in the afternoons. he was walking to the school where there was a fundraiser dinner with plates of spagehtti and salad and brownies in the gym with little kids eating beside you spilling their food and drinking cup after cup of the red fruit punch. before i left the next morning talking to two old men, one a whitehaired volunteer from the midwest asked me if i was fishing on the trip and i told him i was trying to get this education project going and gave him my card. i was proud of the cards which i made in fedex in anchorage one night cheap and fast and rushed. the other man at the elders residence on the porch smoking looking out at the clouds and the light rain said theres no where to stop between here and ruby go in and get yourself some food. cough. yeah it flooded here. that will be some trip. havent been down the river that far.

"mud cutbank" i was rowing close to the bank very fast saw ducks ahead and stopped to get the camera, canoe spinning in the current, ducks took off before i got a good shot... a skiff on the other side of the river where two guys were stopping to get logs, floating them downriver to ruby or galena that afternoon we passed each other back and forth several times their chainsaw cutting the silence, grey silhouette of skiff on the far bank, rowing fast with headphones

"birds flying south"

"stone water sky" stretch of river with islands and steep bluffs in late afternoon traveling to ruby alone with clouds moving in shapes like children painting loosely and it coming out so right that it stops you and you stand up in the canoe alone with the wind just barely thin and cool and dark water spilling around the points of islands fast and pure and white than sucked past with the loose soil and roots and trees torn with erosion fading into gravel beaches and cutbanks

"twin swans clouds mountains"

"rhino peaks"

"Ruby Lights" it was cold and i was in a t shirt coming in at night listening to the black eyed peas, the one other paddler i saw the whole trip earlier that day in a kayak sitting up on a box on top with the stern really low in the water in a long sleeved shirt. he was from DC area and worked overseas but we were both vague with each other circling like gunslingers in the middle of the yukon with the leaves changing around us both wearing sunglasses talking boats. sort of mutual admiration in each others craziness. he said he didnt really plan the trip just flew to fairbanks bought the boat and came out here. people told him it was too late in the season. i told him i didnt plan much either and just tossed gear in the canoe put the truck in storage and headed out on the river. i said it snowed on me pretty good last year this time. he was going to fly out of galena but was contemplating going out to the mouth. we raced a little bit for several miles. we stopped again and talked again, drifting. he was going to camp on an island this side of ruby and be in galena the next night. i told him i was going to ruby tonight than straight to galena. he asked me whats in ruby why are you going there tonight theres not much in these towns is there there is a good store in galena and i told him the schools in ruby. thats whats in ruby. the school. I talked to the principal there but didnt start giving presentations till farther down the river.

"Ruby hydro Project"

"bluff"

"view of the river northwest to galena from the church" a lot farther up the hill to the school

"looking back at still late morning beauty of Ruby"

"galena sunset" it was a fast trip from ruby to galena with the wind at my back, i rigged a sail at one point with the tent fly and lots of duct tape and sat back and tried to steer with a paddle. saw the radio tower on the hill and the road leading out to the galena airfield. a barge passed me during the day and was there unloading. not sure where to stop pushed past the main part of town and beyond the barge to where skiffs were on the bank and it was dark when i got out. a fire up on the bank with people around it. jet boats bristling with returning hunters ripping the last light quiet. pulled the canoe up on the bank and camera in pack and headed up to the lights, heavy sound of generators ducking under the arm-thick cable that held the barge to shore. Asked a couple kids standing by a boat who I mistook for men if there was a store open. Sure up there to the left than straight past the post office. (in a youth voice) will i see it? it will be on your right past the post office. thanks man. at the store talking to a teacher who comes in and the store clerk and two beautiful dark haired women buying last minute things... I ask for directions to the schools and discover two different schools in galena, 1 a school that pulls youth from all over interior villages. back to the river. ripping the atlas apart. lighting a fire. cooking food. pitch tent up next to the trees. sleep. the next day hitched to the school in a pickup with two women driving and the river passing thru the branches and in the principal office he asked me were you the one who asked my sons for directions and showed me on the map how a friend of his took a jet boat from galena to unalakleet.

"Solar panels outside galena school"

"photo of migrant woman with children inside secretay office nulato school" this photo really stuck a chord with me, it had been a long last push into nulato against the wind (opposite than trip to galena when it was at my back ) and i stopped at koyukuk just because i wasn't sure what it was but it was too late in the day to speak at the school and there were loose black dogs following me up the road into the village. i knocked on a door at a cabin with a 4 wheeler out front and a high school kid and his girlfriend were there watching TV. is this nulato yet? No they laugh. 18 miles up river. 18 miles huh? Yep. Ok. The dogs followed me back past the airstrip and dead grass down the rutted path to the beach and i light a fire and cook food fast than push off with the dogs watching, smoke still lingering in the air in a swarm of bugs following me out onto the water. I ended up camping at about middnight when i ran into a gravel bar literally just out in front of nulato, could see the lights in the dark. that picture of the migrant woman makes me think of all the seasonal work that is built into the lives of so many Alaskan's (myself included), and all the families that come here to settle and seek new opportunities...