When I sat down to write a few words about my journey
to the Brooks Range in Alaska, I stared at the blank screen for a ridiculous
amount of time. Finally, a random memory lodged itself in my mind. I couldn’t
shake it, so in a writerly leap of faith this account of Alaska’s
remotest region begins ten years ago on a crowded London subway.
I
was studying literature. Specifically, I was on my way home from a pub crawl,
when I pulled out a copy of William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It was a halfhearted attempt to
prepare for class, but as I read the poem I felt as if a beloved friend had
just slid into the seat next to me: How
do you know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of
delight, clos’d by your senses five? Across a span of 300 years, this voice
articulated ecstatic wonder toward the world: The howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the
destructive sword, are all portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. Blake’s
exultation appealed to something essential inside my own heart. Exuberance is Beauty! said he, and I
agreed.
The following week, I turned in a paper on the subject of Blake, but when the
professor handed it back to me he had a blatant expression of scorn on his face: “Chalk up
another one for Blake. That’s the sad thing about Blake fans: they all think
they’re the only one.” I was crushed by this dismissal. Apparently my
identification with Blake was a tired cliché.
I
sense the legacy of this incident in moments when I hesitate to speak freely
and deeply about what moves me. And here’s where the Alaskan wilderness comes
in: When we travel in a wild landscape,
our "normal" ways of thinking are quickly replaced by a soul-scouring rapture that
will clarify our understanding of human nature as well as the environment
around us. My journey in Alaska
was filled with this rapture and exuberance. I believe we humans are in great
need of these sensations, and it is out of a sense of urgency that I describe
my experience here.
We
had flown in from all corners of the country for an eleven-day trip on the Canning River. We were eight people in two
rafts, all wearing binoculars. During sunlit nights, we sat on tundra ridges
watching semi-palmated plover and short-eared owls. Infinitely changing angles
of light took our breath away, and we had run out of words to express our
amazement at where we were. Observing a wolf, we wondered what we humans
thought we were doing on the planet.
On the ninth day
we spotted a bird’s nest from the river. High on a cliff face, the nest was
massive and disheveled and held three gyrfalcon chicks: two sleeping, one
tottering around the periphery. They were huge bumbling things, fuzzy gray with
blue-tinted old man’s faces. The tottering one settled down and regarded us
with one eye open. The two sleepers awoke, and all of us by the river gasped as
the chicks bumped each other and nearly knocked the totterer out of the nest.
We worried when one of them choked on the stringy remnants of a meal. They
stretched their winglets. They cried out for food. They fell asleep, leaning
precariously near the edge of the only world they knew. We rooted for them with
all our might. We were a line of comrades in rain pants and goofy smiles: two
teachers, a man who led African safaris, a metal sculptor from New York City, a retired lawyer and two
guides who were as excited as we were. Our world became the world of the
chicks, creatures that would eventually fly over tundra and snow, over that
part of the map we call "refuge" and the part we call "petroleum reserve."
Who
are we if we cannot protect what is fragile? What have we become if we do not
speak out for the things that ignite our rapture and evoke our love? We will
live in that hell we create when we know what is right yet we go on living as
if we do not. He who desires but acts
not, breeds pestilence, says Blake, and I agree.
My cynical
professor had it exactly backwards: it is not sad, but amazing that Blake’s
words (not to mention experiences of the wild) empower us with passion. Our rapture is
a compass by which to direct our energies. By following this instrument, we
will steer ourselves back to a life in which we do what is closest to our
nature: we love and delight in each nest of chicks as if they were our own
blood. We protect their home as if our own children lived there.
