| WHERE MOUNTAINS ARE NAMELESS Passion and Politics in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Jonathan Waterman New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-393-05219-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-393-05219-2 | 280pp. | HC/BWI | $24.95 | |
When asked to name a "Mister Wilderness" — the man who they remember as delighting in, exploring, and making a lifetime of protecting wild places — most Americans would probably think of John Muir, the Scottish immigrant who came to love Yosemite and founded the Sierra Club in order to protect it.
Muir was not the first evangelist for the American wilderness, of course. Names like John Wesley Powell and Gifford Pinchot come to mind. And then there were the mountain men, like Jim Bridger, who may not have been so articulate or so well-connected in Washington, but who grokked in fullness the wilderness and made it their permanent home.
In our time we have David Brower, Edward Albee, Wallace Stegner, and many others. In Alaska, the sobriquet "Mr. Wilderness" belongs to Olaus Murie, of Norwegian extraction, who as a government scientist did the first comprehensive wildlife surveys of the Alaska Territory and especially the northeast corner that became the Arctic National Wildlfe Refuge. Olaus was assisted by his wife Mardy (Margaret) and his half-brother Adolf.
Jonathan Waterman is Murie's worthy successor.1 He travels the Refuge freely, having come to know it over twenty seasons. He generally travels alone but sometimes takes a colleague or student. He carries no firearms, because he's learned that stopping a grizzly is a risky proposition with the heaviest of guns. But this does not mean he is unarmed; wilderness wisdom is his armamentarium. He imparts a good deal of this lore in Chapter 6, "Kongakut River." Here is a sliver of that lore. It takes place during a kayak trip down the whitewater river,2 which flows north out of the Brooks Range to the Beaufort Sea. He and his less accomplished companion are chasing the migration of Porcupine caribou in yet another survey to gather evidence for the never-ending battle to preserve the Refuge (which no one in the know calls "an-wahr".)
At dawn I walked past basil-scented willow to the last canyon. I clutched a fishing rod and sang aloud to warn sleeping bears. Beneath a granite ledge, the tight-flowing skin of river repeatedly dimpled with a school of Arctic char, snapping at midges. I cast slightly upstream of the fish, let the current take my fly, and felt a char hit, swallow, then sound; my line tightened with the ukelele strum sound of a strike. The fish rushed downstream and repeatedly bucked up out of the river like a caribou sporting warble flies. I ran with it, lofting the rod tip skyward. On its fifth jump near the shore, I flipped my wrists and ungracefully yanked the fish directly from the air onto the sand. Red dots ran sixteen inches down its silvery flanks, which were tipped with white-rimmed fins. I quickly severed the head, fingernailed out a clutch of orange eggs, lobbed them into the river, and then scraped my hands clean with cold river and sand, resisting the urge to wipe my hands dry on my pants. No sense smelling like fish for the grizzlies. "Salvelinus alpinus is highly prized by both gourmands and anglers. Early Arctic explorers mistook the fish for salmon because of its distinctive-tasting orange flesh. Although the char is considered part of the salmon family, which die after three to five years and a single spawning, both female and male char return to sea after depositing eggs and milting in the gravel of rivers. These cold-water survivors repeatedly spawn, living up to thirty-five years longer than salmon. If you had to be any fish in the world, you could do a lot worse than the rarely fished Arctic char." "My partner torched up the MSR stove on the riverbank, while I parted the char's bones from flesh with my fillet knife. With the help of a small wedge of lemon, a part of butter, and a lightweight skillet, it took less time than the short drive from my home to the nearest restaurant to catch, clean, fillet and fry the char. The meat was firm and even fruity. The crisp skin of the fish, the ambience of the refuge, the lack of cloying waiters—I couldn't remember finer seafood. I passed the skillet. My partner deemed the char tastier than any of the five Pacific salmon species. Before my last bite, I mumbled a quick and silent thanks. Killing for gastronomic reward can never be taken for granted, especially within a wilderness where humans don't necessarily sit atop the food chain." – Pages 103-104 |
Born in Moorhead, Minnesota on 1 March 1889 to immigrant parents from Frimandsled, Norway, Olaus Johan Murie collected birds in the Canadian Arctic from 1914-1916 for the Carnegie Foundation. He became a government biologist and joined a six-year study of Alaskan caribou in 1920 for the U.S. Biological Survey. The government wanted to introduce domesticated reindeer to "improve" the herds and did not heed Murie's advice that this was a bad idea.3 They also censored his papers and speeches about wolves. Finally disgusted with their unscientific attitude and their persistent categorization of species as "good" or "bad" according to immediate utility, he quit in 1946 and became director of the Wilderness Society.
"After Murie's exemplary work collecting Arctic specimens for the Carnegie Museum, the U.S. Biological survey hired him to study caribou in Alaska. Rather than protecting the wild herds, the survey sought to introduce herds of domesticated reindeer. Murie's agency had been created after locusts devastated Midwestern crops at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a utilitarian bureaucracy, it studied animals, then classified them as 'good' or 'bad' according to what they ate. Then yet another branch of the government, Predator and Animal Control, would set about poisoning, trapping, bombing, drowning, or shooting the 'bad' species." "The survey's scientific findings were often overridden by the outcry of farmers and ranchers whose crops and animals needed protection. Murie's letters home complaining about his boss's disinterest in science showed that he understood the government's blundering science and politically driven agendas. But he felt that by being sent north, he was given a chance to make a difference on a frontier that, while torn asunder by gold miners, was still largely undisturbed by agriculture." – Pages 40-41 |
Based in Moose, Wyoming, Murie continued to explore and document the Arctic until his death from cancer in 1963. He wrote four books and numerous articles, made sketches and paintings, and shot many photographs and movie footage of wildlife. He had a gift for people too, and in trekking the north country made friends of whites and indigenous people easily. Seeing his ease in the bush, Alaskans accepted him as the genuine article.
"Someone had to do the thankless work of promoting this wilderness idea among the backwoodsmen and visigoths of Alaska—yet no one in government had the peculiar credentials for that task. But Alaskans would listen to Murie, who knew how to hot load a gun, flip a dogsled whip, and hawk a crackling loogie at fifty below. The fact that people addressed him as "doctor," or that he could give respected testimony in congressional hearings meant nothing to the Sourdoughs." – Page 55 |
This, as much as his scientific knowledge, enabled him to succeed in promoting the Refuge.
This gives a taste of Waterman's familiarity with wilderness. Read the entire book, and you'll discover the depth of that familiarity. The book, I believe, represents a rite of passage for him, or at least a transition to a more mature phase of life, when day-to-day involvement with family and civic matters takes greater precedence.
It also represents his decision process on the perennial question of oil versus wilderness. The book makes it clear which side he's chosen. But, true to the ideal of neutrality to which he holds when teaching his University of Alaska course of that name, he does no advocacy in this book. He merely presents facts. They speak for themselves. For example:
Senator Ted Stevens sponsored legislation that let the Iñupiat and other native peoples own shares in one of the Alaska Native Corporations. Stevens reportedly made millions on the deals (page 21n). The first oil that flowed out of Alaska came from a USFWS wildlife refuge, the Kenai Moose Range. Douglas McKay, Eisenhower's first Interior Secretary, became controversial for selling the oil leases cheaply (and for letting an Alabama company harvest Oregon timber.) Oil began filling the pipelines there in 1958, to the tune of 900 barrels per day. McKay left office and Congress outlawed leases on all federal ranges and refuges. But the new Interior secretary began crafting an exception for Alaska. "Setting a pattern for future northern development," Waterman notes on page 149, "saying 'no' to the generous and powerful oil companies became political suicide." That pattern holds true in our own day, even beyond the publication of Waterman's book.
The oil companies are also running true to the pattern Waterman outlines. He describes the wreck of the Exxon Valdez in detail, and notes that the Trans-Alaska Pipeline leaked from its very inception.
"When oil finally ran down the pipe on June 20, 1977, the Anchorage Times headline proclaimed "FIRST OIL FLOWS (after 8 years, 4 months, 10 days)." Four minutes after oil gushed into the pipe, a valve leaked and ignited a catastrophic fire and explosion, killing a man. The would-be Eighth Wonder of the World reopened nine days later, until the next of a dozen leaks—a quarter of a million gallons, rich with toxic benzene and toluene, spread over eight hundred miles and two dozen years—shut it down again." – Page 182 |
The map in Appendix B reveals 53 exploratory wells drilled in the coastal plain, on small offshore islands or in the Beaufort Sea itself. The vehicles that support the land-based wells and associated seismic testing have exposed the permafrost, which has begin melting. The USGS estimates a 95 percent probability of recovering 5.7 billion barrels of oil from the area. This oil lies in multiple formations, not a single pool. Getting it will mean building extensive facilities: roads, pipelines, causeways to the islands, docks for tankers and supply ships, housing, airstrips. Far more land than the 2,000 acres the oil interests claim will be needed, and all of it underlain by permafrost that is already melting. The likelihood of disrupting the caribou and other wildlife populations is high. Waterman understands the difficulty.
"Out here on the thawing ground, it was obvious that it would take an impossible feat of engineering for the oil companies to preserve this place." – Page 55 |
Waterman describes oil production in Alaska and its effects — including political corruption — in several places. But central to the issue is his Chapter 8, "Fairbanks." There he covers the hearings conducted in that city over the proposed restriction of development in the northeast corner of the state by means of what was then called the Arctic National Wildlife Range — a level of protection short of a refuge. The hearings were conducted by Senator Bartlett, who favored development. Waterman reproduces a good deal of the testimony pro- and con-ANWR, the latter coming from miners like the hard-core Joe Vogler,4 who thought he should be able to drive his bulldozer Cat into the region.
The culmination of all this activity was Public Land Order 2214, which created the Arctic National Wildlife Range on 6 December 1960. It was a victory for the Muries and their allies,5 who turned back the tide of pro-development sentiment encouraged by Senator Bartlett.6 However, it was a mixed victory, for the land order opened the Prudhoe Bay area to oil production. Furthermore, though it prohibited mining within the range, its fine print allowed oil and gas exploration there. Just as the oil spilled in Prince William Sound killed legislation granting leases in the Refuge in 1989, this year's gusher in the Gulf of Mexico may derail the process now.7 But I make no prediction.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.