More to come... Other writings can be found in Wild Places and Travels and in Writings. Watch my blog for updates as well.
A Selection of Self-Published Highlights
See also Stories of a Changing Greenland.
A Selection of Self-Published Highlights
- Cairns: A Photo-Essay from Four Countries (July 2022)
- Two Stories of Contemporary Art in Greenland (June 2022)
- The Taj Mahal at the Meeting Place of Life and Death, Splendor and Horror, Nature and Culture (July 2022)
- Toyota’s Long-Running “Keep it Wild” Ad Campaign is an Insult to the Wild (July 2022)
- Beyond Forever (towards the bottom of the North Slope 2018 page)
- Encountering Death on Lhotse (Written in 2022 about a 2019 expedition)
- Vanishing Ice
- Raven's Light (written description of photo project towards the bottom of the page)
See also Stories of a Changing Greenland.
Cairns: A Photo-essay from Four Countries with Reflections on Relations with Land and Water Across Cultures (7/2022)
In this short photo-essay, I take you on a journey to Alaska, Iceland, Nepal, and Greenland, centered around my photographs of cairns from each of those countries. It includes descriptions of their local significance in combination with some of my own experiences and reflections on human relationships with land.
In this short photo-essay, I take you on a journey to Alaska, Iceland, Nepal, and Greenland, centered around my photographs of cairns from each of those countries. It includes descriptions of their local significance in combination with some of my own experiences and reflections on human relationships with land.
How a New Partnership With the U.S. National Park Service Could Help Greenland Grow Sustainable Tourism (8/2022)
A publication in Arctic Today based on my time in Greenland in 2021 including conversations with a representative from the U.S. National Park Service and a tourism specialist in Greenland. It features quite a few of my photographs as well.
A publication in Arctic Today based on my time in Greenland in 2021 including conversations with a representative from the U.S. National Park Service and a tourism specialist in Greenland. It features quite a few of my photographs as well.
Stories About Contemporary Art in Greenland (6/2022)
Here are a pair of closely related stories about contemporary Greenland.
Both are closely related stories rolled into one, each on environmentally focused contemporary art in two different parts of Greenland. The first is centered on street art in Nuuk, particularly on a prominent piece known as “loading”, which highlights Nuuk’s speedy development. The second is on an international collaborative, Project 67, who are building structures in select Arctic villages along the 67th parallel using local and discarded materials. In Kangerlussuaq, I spent time with them as they built a powerfully symbolic structure of stone and wood.
Here are a pair of closely related stories about contemporary Greenland.
Both are closely related stories rolled into one, each on environmentally focused contemporary art in two different parts of Greenland. The first is centered on street art in Nuuk, particularly on a prominent piece known as “loading”, which highlights Nuuk’s speedy development. The second is on an international collaborative, Project 67, who are building structures in select Arctic villages along the 67th parallel using local and discarded materials. In Kangerlussuaq, I spent time with them as they built a powerfully symbolic structure of stone and wood.
Pulitzer Center Stories and Photos: Stories of a Changing Greenland (11/2021)
Online reporting on COP26 in Glasgow, climate change in Greenland, and new scientific studies related to the remnants of the Cold War military base, Camp Century, still buried within Greenland's ice.
Online reporting on COP26 in Glasgow, climate change in Greenland, and new scientific studies related to the remnants of the Cold War military base, Camp Century, still buried within Greenland's ice.
Tension and Trade-offs Between Protecting Biodiversity and Avoiding Climate Change (2/2022)
A published article I coauthored examining the difficult position we face between the significant environmental impacts of mining required for the renewable energy transformation, particularly the negative implications for biodiversity, clean water, and undeveloped lands, and the profound impacts of climate change.
A published article I coauthored examining the difficult position we face between the significant environmental impacts of mining required for the renewable energy transformation, particularly the negative implications for biodiversity, clean water, and undeveloped lands, and the profound impacts of climate change.
Satellite Data Offers a Broad Array of Policy Insights (5/2022)
A published article I coauthored summarizing how satellite data is rapidly growing in importance for informing crucial policy decisions. Insights offered fall into one of three main categories: energy security and assessment, emissions and environment, and human and national security.
A published article I coauthored summarizing how satellite data is rapidly growing in importance for informing crucial policy decisions. Insights offered fall into one of three main categories: energy security and assessment, emissions and environment, and human and national security.
From Glaciers to the Sea: A Journey Down the Entirety of Alaska’s Susitna River
Selections (The full article can be found here and an alternative version here).
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2013)
The experience of being in a place that could become so fundamentally altered was novel and thought provoking. I tried to imagine, with some difficulty, my camp and everything I had seen that day all disappearing underneath hundreds of feet of water. Could I really be one of the relatively few eyes to see this place, one of the last of my generation to float this river in its native condition? I took inspiration from the likes of Ansel Adams in the Sierras ("I have thought about the land while traveling through it and observing its precarious status quo: beautiful, yet on the verge of disaster…"). Or as though I were creating an Alaskan version of “The Place No One Knew,” a book of photography and prose about Glen Canyon in Utah prior to flooding by Lake Powell. While the Susitna through the proposed reservoir is very different aesthetically than Glen Canyon, while there I felt that it was an incredible and wild place. I wondered how it could possibly be lost.
More than any other state and most other land regions on earth, Alaska is characterized by its wilderness condition – a place largely untamed and undeveloped. Though many small-scale dams exist, especially in the southeast of Alaska, none of Alaska’s major rivers are currently dammed. The Susitna River runs entirely unimpeded, with only two road crossings and one rail crossing. It is exceptional for a river of this size and volume to be undammed anywhere on the planet.
The Susitna, like Alaska as a whole, is enormous. However, the size of Alaska is deceptive. Alaska’s nickname “The Last Frontier” is very appropriate in certain respects, but also unfortunate. It seems to imply that, like the “lower 48”, its land and waters will similarly succumb to taming - to being developed, managed, and carved up into oblivion. The “lower 48” was once thought of as an endless intractable wilderness by immigrants from the crowded European subcontinent, but today the frontier is closed and settled, while in places entire ecosystems are decimated. As an example, less than three percent of the original tall grass prairie of the United States still exists with less than one-hundredth of one percent still remaining in Illinois. According to Maude Barlow in his book Blue Gold, only 2% of all the rivers in the lower 48 with the capacity for a dam are left free-flowing (though this is in fact increasing with dam removals). Meanwhile, only about 2.5% of the total area of the lower 48 is protected from development as wilderness. The wilderness which remains is confined to a disconnected patchwork of areas that were difficult enough to access, unusable for development or resource extraction, of a high enough scenic quality, or unique enough to be deemed worthy of protection.
The Susitna currently flows from beginning to end without human obstruction – a rare phenomenon both within the United States and across the globe.
…
A short float the following morning brought me around a bend presenting a river beginning to spring to white life, bounded by a densely-vegetated, cliff-walled canyon. I was fully committed now. Before me was eleven miles of Devil’s Canyon. The Susitna erupts into some of the biggest runnable whitewater on the continent as it slices through the hard bedrock of the Talkeetna Mountains. The canyon “walls” are hardly less formidable – intensely dense thickets of alder, spruce, devil’s club, and others cling onto loose dark-gray boulders and steep cliffs where they can, giving way to bare rock at times, all cut through by sharp ravines plunging down to the river. I pulled over just shy of Devil’s Creek, packed up my boat, and began the first of several grueling portages. I caught an initial glimpse of the rapids from on high, but exclaimed in awe once I had a view of the whole. The sight of Devil Creek Rapid just below me was incredible – the foam and fury and speed and noise, cut through by gargantuan holes. One particular hole struck me with its dreadfulness – a surging explosion of power – a death trap. No wonder this place was regarded by the pioneers who named it as some concoction of the Devil itself.
Standing just above the rapids I was reminded of the AEA contract boat captain’s remark that he would never want to run the canyon and that “it’s even scary flying over it.” Andrew Embick writes about Devil’s Canyon in his book Fast and Cold:
Devil’s Canyon is the biggest whitewater on the continent, and some of the biggest ever run in the world. Sections of the Indus in Pakistan, the Yangtze in China, and the Stikine and Alsek in Canada are comparable. Described as the “Mt. Everest of kayaking,” the rapids have a roar which sounds like a couple of 747’s taking off. Standing on the banks scouting, one almost can feel the ground shake with the power of the awesome hydraulics. Flying in, a couple of thousand feet above the canyon, the huge waves are visible far below as their crests explode into spray and foam…For the few kayakers who attempt to run it, the mental impact of the run is greater than any other they’ll ever make…Devil’s Canyon veterans even a decade later can just shut their eyes and the whole run will come back to them, so great an impression does it make…The canyon is a classic “overwhelming force encountering an immovable object”…[and] Devil’s Canyon is not really a reasonable portage [so] potential canyon runners need to be highly committed.
Not a reasonable portage indeed, as I would soon discover.
The canyon has a colorful history. The river here has been run successfully just a handful of times and has been unsuccessfully attempted another handful. One of the early explorers of the area, gold prospector William Dickey (who infamously gave Mt. McKinley its official name), was stopped on his upstream trip by the canyon. The first successful descent was made by Walt Blackadar who used a kayak in a series of runs from 1972 to 1976. The first and only successful jetboat run through the canyon was an ascent by Steve Mahay of Talkeetna based Mahay’s Jetboat Adventures in 1985. It was a harrowing trip that pushed Mahay to the limits, despite a custom foam-filled jetboat and helicopter support. It is also rumored that a cataraft has gone through the canyon.
More recently, Jeff Shelton and some of his friends produced a video of their canyon run. While speaking to Jeff, I mentioned Embick’s description of the
rapids as sticking forever in the mind of someone who has run it. Jeff concurred, “thinking about it makes me want to shit myself, it’s just so big.” When asked about the single upstream dam’s effects on the river Jeff mentioned that the river would be controlled and so something significant would be lost. Additionally the water would be colder than it currently is in the summer, and the post-dam clarity might change the nature of the rapids because currently “when a gallon of water smashes into you a pound of silt comes with it.” He also mentioned that the run has begun to grow in popularity a bit in recent years. Recreation will certainly be affected by the dam and American Whitewater formally opposes it.
…
Ending at the ocean took me to the nexus of a significant portion of the Gulf of Alaska; a giant bowl with the Alaska Range forming its semicircular rim; one vast basin coming to a point; a good place to consider Alaska as a whole, its glaciers and rivers. Having visited the upper Susitna including the proposed damsite I can attest that this is a wild and special place, but one could reply, “Perhaps you are right in your defense of the wild, but this is just one place and its destruction is justifiable for the benefit it will provide in energy to humanity.” This would be a debatable claim in and of itself, but yes I will admit it is just one place, though a large one. It must, however, be seen as a piece in a much larger context, Alaska as a whole, the United States as a whole, the globe as a whole. As mentioned above there are very few places and rivers anywhere left in a wilderness condition. When considered at this scale the Susitna basin takes on a new meaning.
How much of our world are we willing to suck the life process out of so that it can provide us with trivial conveniences? Is there ever to be a line where we say here and no further? Is anything valuable in and of itself besides human life and comfort? What could we possibly create that is more valuable than the self-creative, ever-changing display of wild nature? Will we allow the given - nature’s spontaneity - anywhere except in relatively tiny, managed parcels of land? It is this which protected areas designated as wilderness, parks, and preserves have sought to protect, but these are managed areas and so have lost something in the process. The Susitna is remarkable in its essentially unmanaged wildness which is simultaneously open to human-scale use, yet free from large-scale, exploitive industry - this as much or more than anything else is what makes it unique. Here is a place that is genuinely wild, one of a few left. Here is a large river that runs unimpeded to the sea, globally rare. Know this, and if we as human beings still choose to sacrifice that for our purposes then let us at least acknowledge fully what we are choosing to do. Let us be honest. Places like the Susitna and its watershed are an integral part of what makes Alaska unique; rare, glorious, and irreplaceable. Here I have written about the Susitna River and the proposed dam but I am also writing about our interactions with the world at large. Are we as human beings mature enough to ask ourselves these questions in all that we do?
Selections (The full article can be found here and an alternative version here).
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2013)
The experience of being in a place that could become so fundamentally altered was novel and thought provoking. I tried to imagine, with some difficulty, my camp and everything I had seen that day all disappearing underneath hundreds of feet of water. Could I really be one of the relatively few eyes to see this place, one of the last of my generation to float this river in its native condition? I took inspiration from the likes of Ansel Adams in the Sierras ("I have thought about the land while traveling through it and observing its precarious status quo: beautiful, yet on the verge of disaster…"). Or as though I were creating an Alaskan version of “The Place No One Knew,” a book of photography and prose about Glen Canyon in Utah prior to flooding by Lake Powell. While the Susitna through the proposed reservoir is very different aesthetically than Glen Canyon, while there I felt that it was an incredible and wild place. I wondered how it could possibly be lost.
More than any other state and most other land regions on earth, Alaska is characterized by its wilderness condition – a place largely untamed and undeveloped. Though many small-scale dams exist, especially in the southeast of Alaska, none of Alaska’s major rivers are currently dammed. The Susitna River runs entirely unimpeded, with only two road crossings and one rail crossing. It is exceptional for a river of this size and volume to be undammed anywhere on the planet.
The Susitna, like Alaska as a whole, is enormous. However, the size of Alaska is deceptive. Alaska’s nickname “The Last Frontier” is very appropriate in certain respects, but also unfortunate. It seems to imply that, like the “lower 48”, its land and waters will similarly succumb to taming - to being developed, managed, and carved up into oblivion. The “lower 48” was once thought of as an endless intractable wilderness by immigrants from the crowded European subcontinent, but today the frontier is closed and settled, while in places entire ecosystems are decimated. As an example, less than three percent of the original tall grass prairie of the United States still exists with less than one-hundredth of one percent still remaining in Illinois. According to Maude Barlow in his book Blue Gold, only 2% of all the rivers in the lower 48 with the capacity for a dam are left free-flowing (though this is in fact increasing with dam removals). Meanwhile, only about 2.5% of the total area of the lower 48 is protected from development as wilderness. The wilderness which remains is confined to a disconnected patchwork of areas that were difficult enough to access, unusable for development or resource extraction, of a high enough scenic quality, or unique enough to be deemed worthy of protection.
The Susitna currently flows from beginning to end without human obstruction – a rare phenomenon both within the United States and across the globe.
…
A short float the following morning brought me around a bend presenting a river beginning to spring to white life, bounded by a densely-vegetated, cliff-walled canyon. I was fully committed now. Before me was eleven miles of Devil’s Canyon. The Susitna erupts into some of the biggest runnable whitewater on the continent as it slices through the hard bedrock of the Talkeetna Mountains. The canyon “walls” are hardly less formidable – intensely dense thickets of alder, spruce, devil’s club, and others cling onto loose dark-gray boulders and steep cliffs where they can, giving way to bare rock at times, all cut through by sharp ravines plunging down to the river. I pulled over just shy of Devil’s Creek, packed up my boat, and began the first of several grueling portages. I caught an initial glimpse of the rapids from on high, but exclaimed in awe once I had a view of the whole. The sight of Devil Creek Rapid just below me was incredible – the foam and fury and speed and noise, cut through by gargantuan holes. One particular hole struck me with its dreadfulness – a surging explosion of power – a death trap. No wonder this place was regarded by the pioneers who named it as some concoction of the Devil itself.
Standing just above the rapids I was reminded of the AEA contract boat captain’s remark that he would never want to run the canyon and that “it’s even scary flying over it.” Andrew Embick writes about Devil’s Canyon in his book Fast and Cold:
Devil’s Canyon is the biggest whitewater on the continent, and some of the biggest ever run in the world. Sections of the Indus in Pakistan, the Yangtze in China, and the Stikine and Alsek in Canada are comparable. Described as the “Mt. Everest of kayaking,” the rapids have a roar which sounds like a couple of 747’s taking off. Standing on the banks scouting, one almost can feel the ground shake with the power of the awesome hydraulics. Flying in, a couple of thousand feet above the canyon, the huge waves are visible far below as their crests explode into spray and foam…For the few kayakers who attempt to run it, the mental impact of the run is greater than any other they’ll ever make…Devil’s Canyon veterans even a decade later can just shut their eyes and the whole run will come back to them, so great an impression does it make…The canyon is a classic “overwhelming force encountering an immovable object”…[and] Devil’s Canyon is not really a reasonable portage [so] potential canyon runners need to be highly committed.
Not a reasonable portage indeed, as I would soon discover.
The canyon has a colorful history. The river here has been run successfully just a handful of times and has been unsuccessfully attempted another handful. One of the early explorers of the area, gold prospector William Dickey (who infamously gave Mt. McKinley its official name), was stopped on his upstream trip by the canyon. The first successful descent was made by Walt Blackadar who used a kayak in a series of runs from 1972 to 1976. The first and only successful jetboat run through the canyon was an ascent by Steve Mahay of Talkeetna based Mahay’s Jetboat Adventures in 1985. It was a harrowing trip that pushed Mahay to the limits, despite a custom foam-filled jetboat and helicopter support. It is also rumored that a cataraft has gone through the canyon.
More recently, Jeff Shelton and some of his friends produced a video of their canyon run. While speaking to Jeff, I mentioned Embick’s description of the
rapids as sticking forever in the mind of someone who has run it. Jeff concurred, “thinking about it makes me want to shit myself, it’s just so big.” When asked about the single upstream dam’s effects on the river Jeff mentioned that the river would be controlled and so something significant would be lost. Additionally the water would be colder than it currently is in the summer, and the post-dam clarity might change the nature of the rapids because currently “when a gallon of water smashes into you a pound of silt comes with it.” He also mentioned that the run has begun to grow in popularity a bit in recent years. Recreation will certainly be affected by the dam and American Whitewater formally opposes it.
…
Ending at the ocean took me to the nexus of a significant portion of the Gulf of Alaska; a giant bowl with the Alaska Range forming its semicircular rim; one vast basin coming to a point; a good place to consider Alaska as a whole, its glaciers and rivers. Having visited the upper Susitna including the proposed damsite I can attest that this is a wild and special place, but one could reply, “Perhaps you are right in your defense of the wild, but this is just one place and its destruction is justifiable for the benefit it will provide in energy to humanity.” This would be a debatable claim in and of itself, but yes I will admit it is just one place, though a large one. It must, however, be seen as a piece in a much larger context, Alaska as a whole, the United States as a whole, the globe as a whole. As mentioned above there are very few places and rivers anywhere left in a wilderness condition. When considered at this scale the Susitna basin takes on a new meaning.
How much of our world are we willing to suck the life process out of so that it can provide us with trivial conveniences? Is there ever to be a line where we say here and no further? Is anything valuable in and of itself besides human life and comfort? What could we possibly create that is more valuable than the self-creative, ever-changing display of wild nature? Will we allow the given - nature’s spontaneity - anywhere except in relatively tiny, managed parcels of land? It is this which protected areas designated as wilderness, parks, and preserves have sought to protect, but these are managed areas and so have lost something in the process. The Susitna is remarkable in its essentially unmanaged wildness which is simultaneously open to human-scale use, yet free from large-scale, exploitive industry - this as much or more than anything else is what makes it unique. Here is a place that is genuinely wild, one of a few left. Here is a large river that runs unimpeded to the sea, globally rare. Know this, and if we as human beings still choose to sacrifice that for our purposes then let us at least acknowledge fully what we are choosing to do. Let us be honest. Places like the Susitna and its watershed are an integral part of what makes Alaska unique; rare, glorious, and irreplaceable. Here I have written about the Susitna River and the proposed dam but I am also writing about our interactions with the world at large. Are we as human beings mature enough to ask ourselves these questions in all that we do?
Two Ways
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2017)
There are two ways to be in the world.
Imagine a tree. If you like, pick the ubiquitous tree of the philosophers – general, universal, floating in some heaven or other; or, better yet, a particular tree – perhaps a giant live oak draped in Spanish moss, living on a square in Savannah. Perhaps you’ve climbed it – or at least had fantasies of doing so.
Now the majority of people on this little planet are up in the branches somewhere, admiring the leaves, flowers, and fruits. This is a fine place to be, or, for consistencies’ sake, way to be. A few of us, though, may venture down the tree at times – may even grab a shovel and dig a conceptual hole, wherein we will proceed to wonder about the roots that hold up this apparently rather sturdy tree. This being the alternative way.
As you might expect, this is dirty work – hard too. But someone has to do it, right? Examining the roots of things, of our ideas, is a worthwhile endeavor. Here is just such an examination: root -> radish -> radical. How else, besides this kind of careful examination, are we to know that, for instance, the rather widespread belief in certain kinds of progress would be thought odd, even laughable, by our forebears. Why, some Ancient might ask, would you entrust your fate to your own artifice, confuse your instruments with your reason, and call this inevitable and objective?
Perhaps this tree is found to be a bit rotten after all. Perhaps it needs a little push.
In the end, though, it’s good to take a break from root-gazing. Or maybe you should take the metaphor literally, and spend more time wandering the woods and fields, wondering at them as you go – finding roots and trees more fleshy than formal. Maybe find a friend who will climb trees with you. Philosophy after all, has its limits:
“In one of Plato's most brilliant and scintillating dialogues, Socrates is asked by Phaedrus why he never ventures out beyond the walls of Athens to wander in the open countryside. And Socrates answers him with these words: ‘Look Phaedrus: I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town will.’” *
* Abram, D. (2001). Reciprocity and the Salmon Water-Borne Reflections from the Northwest Coast. Tikkun Magazine. Berkeley, CA
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2017)
There are two ways to be in the world.
Imagine a tree. If you like, pick the ubiquitous tree of the philosophers – general, universal, floating in some heaven or other; or, better yet, a particular tree – perhaps a giant live oak draped in Spanish moss, living on a square in Savannah. Perhaps you’ve climbed it – or at least had fantasies of doing so.
Now the majority of people on this little planet are up in the branches somewhere, admiring the leaves, flowers, and fruits. This is a fine place to be, or, for consistencies’ sake, way to be. A few of us, though, may venture down the tree at times – may even grab a shovel and dig a conceptual hole, wherein we will proceed to wonder about the roots that hold up this apparently rather sturdy tree. This being the alternative way.
As you might expect, this is dirty work – hard too. But someone has to do it, right? Examining the roots of things, of our ideas, is a worthwhile endeavor. Here is just such an examination: root -> radish -> radical. How else, besides this kind of careful examination, are we to know that, for instance, the rather widespread belief in certain kinds of progress would be thought odd, even laughable, by our forebears. Why, some Ancient might ask, would you entrust your fate to your own artifice, confuse your instruments with your reason, and call this inevitable and objective?
Perhaps this tree is found to be a bit rotten after all. Perhaps it needs a little push.
In the end, though, it’s good to take a break from root-gazing. Or maybe you should take the metaphor literally, and spend more time wandering the woods and fields, wondering at them as you go – finding roots and trees more fleshy than formal. Maybe find a friend who will climb trees with you. Philosophy after all, has its limits:
“In one of Plato's most brilliant and scintillating dialogues, Socrates is asked by Phaedrus why he never ventures out beyond the walls of Athens to wander in the open countryside. And Socrates answers him with these words: ‘Look Phaedrus: I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town will.’” *
* Abram, D. (2001). Reciprocity and the Salmon Water-Borne Reflections from the Northwest Coast. Tikkun Magazine. Berkeley, CA
The Raven Speaks
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2012)
“Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
A light, indecisive breeze blows, alternating warm and cool, keeping the mosquitoes down. The distant Brooks Range and I bask in the day’s last warm light. Cutting across Arctic Alaska, the treeless Range gives birth to the North Slope on one side and Interior Alaska on the other. The Koyukuk River springs from the southern, interior side, forming one of the major drainages of the Yukon. Remnant glaciers inject thinly consistent, ultrafine, glacial-rock powder, giving the River a gray-green tinge.
The Koyukuk forms the heart of this place – Koyukon country: A land of dense boreal forest – taiga – filled with sad, small, scraggly trees, primarily spruce, hanging on to life it seems. Or perhaps flourishing, slowly, growing oh so slowly, in the frigid north. The gravel bar here is wide – a vastness of fist to bowling-ball size rocks, gray and brown, angling shallowly into the river on this side, rising abruptly on the other as a steep cut bank. I sit on one of the larger boulders, cross-legged, eyes closed, facing the river, wind on my right – upstream side. I open my eyes and look left. The sun has descended behind gray, scattered clouds, turning them yellow and orange. The night is calm and quiet save for the river’s murmurs.
A faint sound emerges – pillowy and fluttering, followed by a speck over the thick forest on the river’s far side. Out of this speck of black formlessness, a raven emerges, flying towards me, splitting suddenly into two. They land next to me, directly behind my back, one of each side. I strain my head to see them – first to one side, then another, making every effort to sit motionless. Eventually they move into clear view. I admire their intricacies – pitch black, glistening in the Arctic sun, beaks and claws sharp as razors, eyes beady and stern. My admiration is suddenly interrupted when one swoops up slightly towards me. I raise my arm to my face in preparation for contact. But none comes. I sit still.
What do they want? A chance to have a close look at me? A bit of food? Or something else? I recall the mystical and religious connotations of the raven in Koyukon culture, as presented in Richard Nelson’s ethnographic study Make Prayers to the Raven. Nelson presents the Koyukon perception of the raven as both god and jester, somehow simultaneously brilliant and powerful, yet lazy and foolish. The Koyukon people believe the Great Raven created all things and is some form of God. One story tells of Raven bringing the sun to the sky and light to the earth. These ideas compel me – that somehow the raven is more than its presence in the moment – that it represents a larger power – something like God manifest. Was this God here before me? Or is God always before me? Can we ever look away from God?
Maybe these ravens knew I would accept them – they know that perhaps I am prepared to receive what they might offer. This moment, these ravens, bring me to another place, to another time. A memory flashes before me of an encounter with the presence of raven in the canyon country of southern Utah. It was presented to me in a lonely Utah canyon, in the Grand-Staircase-Escalante region.
I had been out for days in blissful solitude, lost in the simple meanderings of my thoughts and of the sandstone walls. I rounded a corner of the canyon, at a point where it had become somewhat wider, and out of the pure blue sky emerged a speck of black. It slowly fell towards the ground, growing slightly larger against the orange and red kaleidoscope of the canyon walls. As I walked along at my typical gait, the feather descended, spiraling down from the emptiness of nothing. It fell into my path, just shy of my feet. I paused a moment to contemplate it and the empty sky from which it appeared. The feather was light, delicate, and darkly colored – contrasting starkly with its hard bright surroundings. I felt its significance, at least partly. It was presented to me. It signified the earth and sky – the brilliance of rock, sun, and life: the seamless totality of all things. I kept this feather, took it home, and beaded its stem.
The pattern of beading begins with a layer of blue at the top, giving way to yellows, reds, and browns, mirroring the layers of rock into which the feather fell, descending finally to a clear, multiform at the symbolic creek bottom, all sliced through with a blue spiral.
Maybe these ravens knew.
Yet, as the memory fades and my attention returns to these Koyukon ravens, doubt – rational commonsense – interrupts these mystical glimpses. The raven is simply a scavenger and is probably hoping to collect a few food scraps from me. Maybe other people had fed them or left fish or caribou guts nearby. Or perhaps I was sitting too still and it hoped to gain sustenance from my unneeded flesh. Do they think I am easy prey – ready to die? The Arctic is a harsh place – sparse in calories. Maybe they only want calories. Maybe they are dull scavengers with a singular focus.
They caw and cackle, picking at things. One picks up a piece of charcoal and begins to draw a line on a rock. A message! Would it write more? It picks at the charcoal, but no more drawing. I had heard of Native North Americans speaking to ravens. Nelson writes about stories he had heard of ravens leading people to game. Other stories tell of the raven dropping its wing and rolling over to one side midflight. This is taken as a blessing by the raven and a sign of good luck. Undoubtedly ravens and humans can communicate across species borders – but to what degree? One caws to me – a throaty, gurgly sound. I caw back to them for a bit – a deeply flawed imitation. Again I am reminded of Nelson: "I found myself watching them and feeling watched in return…watched by something more than the ravens’ gleaming black eyes. I found myself listening to their calls, not just to enjoy their strange ventriloqual gurglings but also to hear what they might be saying."
Do the ravens speak beyond their biological function, their genetic identity? Do their caws have any meaningful significance? I don’t know…but I will listen. The pair begins to pick at each other as they scramble off from my rocky perch. A helicopter approaches from far away, further pulling me into the mundaneness of everyday reality, beating the air in low vibrations: closer, louder. The ravens fly back across the river. The helicopter lands somewhere in the distance behind me. The ravens fly away, towards the sun, calling as they go.
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2012)
“Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
A light, indecisive breeze blows, alternating warm and cool, keeping the mosquitoes down. The distant Brooks Range and I bask in the day’s last warm light. Cutting across Arctic Alaska, the treeless Range gives birth to the North Slope on one side and Interior Alaska on the other. The Koyukuk River springs from the southern, interior side, forming one of the major drainages of the Yukon. Remnant glaciers inject thinly consistent, ultrafine, glacial-rock powder, giving the River a gray-green tinge.
The Koyukuk forms the heart of this place – Koyukon country: A land of dense boreal forest – taiga – filled with sad, small, scraggly trees, primarily spruce, hanging on to life it seems. Or perhaps flourishing, slowly, growing oh so slowly, in the frigid north. The gravel bar here is wide – a vastness of fist to bowling-ball size rocks, gray and brown, angling shallowly into the river on this side, rising abruptly on the other as a steep cut bank. I sit on one of the larger boulders, cross-legged, eyes closed, facing the river, wind on my right – upstream side. I open my eyes and look left. The sun has descended behind gray, scattered clouds, turning them yellow and orange. The night is calm and quiet save for the river’s murmurs.
A faint sound emerges – pillowy and fluttering, followed by a speck over the thick forest on the river’s far side. Out of this speck of black formlessness, a raven emerges, flying towards me, splitting suddenly into two. They land next to me, directly behind my back, one of each side. I strain my head to see them – first to one side, then another, making every effort to sit motionless. Eventually they move into clear view. I admire their intricacies – pitch black, glistening in the Arctic sun, beaks and claws sharp as razors, eyes beady and stern. My admiration is suddenly interrupted when one swoops up slightly towards me. I raise my arm to my face in preparation for contact. But none comes. I sit still.
What do they want? A chance to have a close look at me? A bit of food? Or something else? I recall the mystical and religious connotations of the raven in Koyukon culture, as presented in Richard Nelson’s ethnographic study Make Prayers to the Raven. Nelson presents the Koyukon perception of the raven as both god and jester, somehow simultaneously brilliant and powerful, yet lazy and foolish. The Koyukon people believe the Great Raven created all things and is some form of God. One story tells of Raven bringing the sun to the sky and light to the earth. These ideas compel me – that somehow the raven is more than its presence in the moment – that it represents a larger power – something like God manifest. Was this God here before me? Or is God always before me? Can we ever look away from God?
Maybe these ravens knew I would accept them – they know that perhaps I am prepared to receive what they might offer. This moment, these ravens, bring me to another place, to another time. A memory flashes before me of an encounter with the presence of raven in the canyon country of southern Utah. It was presented to me in a lonely Utah canyon, in the Grand-Staircase-Escalante region.
I had been out for days in blissful solitude, lost in the simple meanderings of my thoughts and of the sandstone walls. I rounded a corner of the canyon, at a point where it had become somewhat wider, and out of the pure blue sky emerged a speck of black. It slowly fell towards the ground, growing slightly larger against the orange and red kaleidoscope of the canyon walls. As I walked along at my typical gait, the feather descended, spiraling down from the emptiness of nothing. It fell into my path, just shy of my feet. I paused a moment to contemplate it and the empty sky from which it appeared. The feather was light, delicate, and darkly colored – contrasting starkly with its hard bright surroundings. I felt its significance, at least partly. It was presented to me. It signified the earth and sky – the brilliance of rock, sun, and life: the seamless totality of all things. I kept this feather, took it home, and beaded its stem.
The pattern of beading begins with a layer of blue at the top, giving way to yellows, reds, and browns, mirroring the layers of rock into which the feather fell, descending finally to a clear, multiform at the symbolic creek bottom, all sliced through with a blue spiral.
Maybe these ravens knew.
Yet, as the memory fades and my attention returns to these Koyukon ravens, doubt – rational commonsense – interrupts these mystical glimpses. The raven is simply a scavenger and is probably hoping to collect a few food scraps from me. Maybe other people had fed them or left fish or caribou guts nearby. Or perhaps I was sitting too still and it hoped to gain sustenance from my unneeded flesh. Do they think I am easy prey – ready to die? The Arctic is a harsh place – sparse in calories. Maybe they only want calories. Maybe they are dull scavengers with a singular focus.
They caw and cackle, picking at things. One picks up a piece of charcoal and begins to draw a line on a rock. A message! Would it write more? It picks at the charcoal, but no more drawing. I had heard of Native North Americans speaking to ravens. Nelson writes about stories he had heard of ravens leading people to game. Other stories tell of the raven dropping its wing and rolling over to one side midflight. This is taken as a blessing by the raven and a sign of good luck. Undoubtedly ravens and humans can communicate across species borders – but to what degree? One caws to me – a throaty, gurgly sound. I caw back to them for a bit – a deeply flawed imitation. Again I am reminded of Nelson: "I found myself watching them and feeling watched in return…watched by something more than the ravens’ gleaming black eyes. I found myself listening to their calls, not just to enjoy their strange ventriloqual gurglings but also to hear what they might be saying."
Do the ravens speak beyond their biological function, their genetic identity? Do their caws have any meaningful significance? I don’t know…but I will listen. The pair begins to pick at each other as they scramble off from my rocky perch. A helicopter approaches from far away, further pulling me into the mundaneness of everyday reality, beating the air in low vibrations: closer, louder. The ravens fly back across the river. The helicopter lands somewhere in the distance behind me. The ravens fly away, towards the sun, calling as they go.
A Week in Bandelier
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2014)
It was a sunny, warm evening in late October 2014 when the last shuttle of the year dropped me off at the Bandelier National Monument Visitor Center minutes before closing. I had come south from Alaska, running from the impending winter, in order to get a taste of New Mexico’s backcountry. After a quick, painless permitting process involving some explanation of regulations I was out the door.
I began my hike up canyon, speeding past the main attractions of the Tyuonyi Pueblo and Alcove House, structures built long ago by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples. Aside from a few downed trees, the walking was fairly easy through a canyon with a small perennial stream. The Las Conchas Fire of 2011 burnt much of the park, leaving blackened snags both standing and down. Overall this didn’t create too much difficulty, slowing progress only a bit, and causing me to consider where I placed my tent so as not to get crushed if one of the standing snags were to fall during a midnight wind gust. Nevertheless, the early darkness of late fall caught me before I arrived in camp.
My real adventure began the following day after I climbed up the mesa overlooking Frijoles Canyon, hiked several miles across, and eventually dropped down to camp not far from the Rio Grande. The riverbanks were lush with vegetation and the riparian was alive with birds. Fluttering songbirds and squawking ducks were plentiful – especially loud at sunrise along with the smacking of a beaver’s tail. Flocks of sandhill cranes flew overhead in V’s, squawking loudly, having followed me south from Alaska. Bear tracks coated the brown muddy riverbank; an odd combination to me – I had no idea bears could be found in the desert.
I pressed on into Capulin Canyon, walking over sand interspersed with boulders in a canyon composed of volcanic tuff: ancient solidified volcanic ash with black magma formations in its lower stretches. After a couple of nights of solitude, it was a surprise to stumble into a large group of visitors from the local Cochiti Pueblo visiting the Painted Cave: a high indentation in the rock filled with red and white designs of people, hands, snakes, strange shamanic figures, and what looked like a monkey and a dinosaur.
The Puebloans told me that they lived “four canyons over” and were out for a day trip to see what their ancestors had made, not so much different I suppose than a Frenchman visiting Lascaux Cave. As I continued up the canyon, the sand began to dampen, eventually emerging into a stream and Ponderosa Pine forest. I pressed on for miles, camping out of the Monument in the Santa Fe National Forest’s Dome Wilderness.
I climbed out of Capulin Canyon onto another mesa, leaving all trails behind, walking across grassland dotted with the occasional tree and cactus, admiring the view of the nearby calderas. Eventually I reentered the Monument and caught a trail that led me through a gorgeous canyon filled with tall red-barked ponderosas, unscathed by the fire, looming over a dense mat of pine needles and huge white rounded boulders. I had dreamt of mountain lion the night before and I now sensed that this canyon was his home.
What had been a shallow drainage in the mountains quickly plunged hundreds of feet down steep, cliffy rock, reemerging in the desert as a low sandy wash. The trail led down onto an expansive plateau. Not far from the canyon’s entrance stood a great circle of stacked pumice rocks around two ancient, worn statues of mountain lions lying prone. Surely this canyon was and is the lion’s home. I tried to imagine the people of long ago coming to this circle from the nearby Yapashi Pueblo holding ceremony, at least in part to honor the sacred power and magnificence of this elusive creature. I continued across the plateau, stopping by the pueblo’s pumice ruins, camping on the mesa above Alamo Canyon. My tent was on white sand, surrounded by cactus and juniper. I was rewarded with more sandhill cranes, a sky filled with a burnt-orange sunset, moon, and stars.
Coyote’s howl woke me at dawn the next morning. I dropped down into Alamo Canyon and continued on, still alone. I had not and would not see anyone other than local Puebloans while in the backcountry during my entire hike. The desert wilderness has a way, with its silence, of truly giving one a deep sense of solitude. It is a wonderfully terrifying experience – simultaneously producing great homesickness and great peace. Though I appreciated the solitude, I wondered where people were. The weather was fantastic, the place was beautiful. Was it just the timing – midweek, school in session, or were people forgetting to take advantage of the wilderness at their doorsteps?
The canyon’s walls were again volcanic ash but fantastically carved, sometimes in great white cones. Birds sung and flitted about, hawks shrieked and circled overhead, ravens croaked, wild turkeys fled, a mother black bear and cub smashed through the vegetation just above me while I hiked in the canyon bottom. I continued for miles and miles; the stream came and went, emerging and disappearing into the sandy canyon floor; the canyon narrowed; the living forest transitioned into an endless burnt ghost forest, leaving its toppled corpses piled on the stream floor. The canyon narrowed yet more. Claustrophobia set in. I found an exit, scrambling up rock and sand, camping high up amongst the pines.
During the night a cold front moved in, bringing a great storm of cold rain and sleet, with snow up higher – the first of the year. My timing was perfect as this spelled the end of my trip. As is always the case after time spent alone in the wilderness, the transition back to pavement and traffic and people, though much longed for during the sojourn, was painful.
Bandelier, while not an especially remote area given its proximity to Los Alamos and nearby highways, has much to offer. It is remarkable in both its natural beauty and its enduring human history. I love the Alaskan wilderness with its much stronger sense of being untouched and unpeopled, due to its relative lack of human impacts, though it too has its human history where the occasional rotting cabin or rock inuksuk can be found; but I also appreciate the Bandelier Wilderness, which very prominently presents itself as once a home for people, and as I witnessed, is still actively utilized by the ancestors of those people and anyone else who chooses to come, as I did, and experience and revere the place.
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2014)
It was a sunny, warm evening in late October 2014 when the last shuttle of the year dropped me off at the Bandelier National Monument Visitor Center minutes before closing. I had come south from Alaska, running from the impending winter, in order to get a taste of New Mexico’s backcountry. After a quick, painless permitting process involving some explanation of regulations I was out the door.
I began my hike up canyon, speeding past the main attractions of the Tyuonyi Pueblo and Alcove House, structures built long ago by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples. Aside from a few downed trees, the walking was fairly easy through a canyon with a small perennial stream. The Las Conchas Fire of 2011 burnt much of the park, leaving blackened snags both standing and down. Overall this didn’t create too much difficulty, slowing progress only a bit, and causing me to consider where I placed my tent so as not to get crushed if one of the standing snags were to fall during a midnight wind gust. Nevertheless, the early darkness of late fall caught me before I arrived in camp.
My real adventure began the following day after I climbed up the mesa overlooking Frijoles Canyon, hiked several miles across, and eventually dropped down to camp not far from the Rio Grande. The riverbanks were lush with vegetation and the riparian was alive with birds. Fluttering songbirds and squawking ducks were plentiful – especially loud at sunrise along with the smacking of a beaver’s tail. Flocks of sandhill cranes flew overhead in V’s, squawking loudly, having followed me south from Alaska. Bear tracks coated the brown muddy riverbank; an odd combination to me – I had no idea bears could be found in the desert.
I pressed on into Capulin Canyon, walking over sand interspersed with boulders in a canyon composed of volcanic tuff: ancient solidified volcanic ash with black magma formations in its lower stretches. After a couple of nights of solitude, it was a surprise to stumble into a large group of visitors from the local Cochiti Pueblo visiting the Painted Cave: a high indentation in the rock filled with red and white designs of people, hands, snakes, strange shamanic figures, and what looked like a monkey and a dinosaur.
The Puebloans told me that they lived “four canyons over” and were out for a day trip to see what their ancestors had made, not so much different I suppose than a Frenchman visiting Lascaux Cave. As I continued up the canyon, the sand began to dampen, eventually emerging into a stream and Ponderosa Pine forest. I pressed on for miles, camping out of the Monument in the Santa Fe National Forest’s Dome Wilderness.
I climbed out of Capulin Canyon onto another mesa, leaving all trails behind, walking across grassland dotted with the occasional tree and cactus, admiring the view of the nearby calderas. Eventually I reentered the Monument and caught a trail that led me through a gorgeous canyon filled with tall red-barked ponderosas, unscathed by the fire, looming over a dense mat of pine needles and huge white rounded boulders. I had dreamt of mountain lion the night before and I now sensed that this canyon was his home.
What had been a shallow drainage in the mountains quickly plunged hundreds of feet down steep, cliffy rock, reemerging in the desert as a low sandy wash. The trail led down onto an expansive plateau. Not far from the canyon’s entrance stood a great circle of stacked pumice rocks around two ancient, worn statues of mountain lions lying prone. Surely this canyon was and is the lion’s home. I tried to imagine the people of long ago coming to this circle from the nearby Yapashi Pueblo holding ceremony, at least in part to honor the sacred power and magnificence of this elusive creature. I continued across the plateau, stopping by the pueblo’s pumice ruins, camping on the mesa above Alamo Canyon. My tent was on white sand, surrounded by cactus and juniper. I was rewarded with more sandhill cranes, a sky filled with a burnt-orange sunset, moon, and stars.
Coyote’s howl woke me at dawn the next morning. I dropped down into Alamo Canyon and continued on, still alone. I had not and would not see anyone other than local Puebloans while in the backcountry during my entire hike. The desert wilderness has a way, with its silence, of truly giving one a deep sense of solitude. It is a wonderfully terrifying experience – simultaneously producing great homesickness and great peace. Though I appreciated the solitude, I wondered where people were. The weather was fantastic, the place was beautiful. Was it just the timing – midweek, school in session, or were people forgetting to take advantage of the wilderness at their doorsteps?
The canyon’s walls were again volcanic ash but fantastically carved, sometimes in great white cones. Birds sung and flitted about, hawks shrieked and circled overhead, ravens croaked, wild turkeys fled, a mother black bear and cub smashed through the vegetation just above me while I hiked in the canyon bottom. I continued for miles and miles; the stream came and went, emerging and disappearing into the sandy canyon floor; the canyon narrowed; the living forest transitioned into an endless burnt ghost forest, leaving its toppled corpses piled on the stream floor. The canyon narrowed yet more. Claustrophobia set in. I found an exit, scrambling up rock and sand, camping high up amongst the pines.
During the night a cold front moved in, bringing a great storm of cold rain and sleet, with snow up higher – the first of the year. My timing was perfect as this spelled the end of my trip. As is always the case after time spent alone in the wilderness, the transition back to pavement and traffic and people, though much longed for during the sojourn, was painful.
Bandelier, while not an especially remote area given its proximity to Los Alamos and nearby highways, has much to offer. It is remarkable in both its natural beauty and its enduring human history. I love the Alaskan wilderness with its much stronger sense of being untouched and unpeopled, due to its relative lack of human impacts, though it too has its human history where the occasional rotting cabin or rock inuksuk can be found; but I also appreciate the Bandelier Wilderness, which very prominently presents itself as once a home for people, and as I witnessed, is still actively utilized by the ancestors of those people and anyone else who chooses to come, as I did, and experience and revere the place.
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