Module III

Module III:  The Landscapes of Life

This week, I really enjoyed the Cultural Connections section the most—all the videos were useful in sharing village stories.  I love “watching” as opposed to just reading text—I am a very visual learner, so the images combined with the audio is very helpful.  (One correction, though:  Fairbanks is on the Tanana River which connects downriver to the Yukon. . . ).  I was really impressed at the fish species ID by the biologist when they were just minnows —wow!  Those fish were less than 2 inches long!  That’s learned skill. 

The “Spirit of Subsistence Living” made me want to get up from my computer and go outside!  While I appreciate the resources provided in this class, this video absolutely made me want to do what the Natives were/are doing:  go outside and experience this the “natural” way myself instead of reading, watching, and typing all afternoon and evening.  That being said, I think I will keep my post brief this week and do just that with my 1 year old before our evenings  are shrunk to nothing but darkness.  Same with my kids at school—we need to get outside before ice & snow hit and appreciate Alaska’s fall season.

I didn’t experience the same “ah, ha” as last week, but this module was noticeably shorter, too.  I think overall I just felt a strong sense of pride that I have many of the same or similar experiences as our Alaska Natives.  Growing up here and living a subsistence lifestyle in a remote, one-room cabin for 4 months every winter with my parents and brother 20 miles from Minto (Athabaskan village North of Fairbanks), I really can appreciate what the land has to offer.  Accessible only by plane, dog team or snowmachine, this upbringing was unique and my fondest memories growing up without a doubt came from this time and place with my family. 

The Cabin at Lynx Lake

And now, as an adult I fish and we consume a lot of salmon, shrimp, crab and halibut as well as berries (Alaskan blueberries are my daughter’s absolute favorite!).  But doing this seems somehow different.  Hauling water from a lake & boiling it on the wood stove prior to drinking and cooking; dog mushing as a child zipped up completely inside the sled while my parents trained dogs for the Iditarod; eating beaver tail and beans—these experiences are something I cherish from my childhood, yet I worry my daughter will not get that, even when we go camping, fishing/shrimping/crabbing or stay at our nearby cabin on the Kenai Peninsula.  Somehow driving/boating to it & having all the urban conveniences of home takes away from the spirit of true subsistence, it seems.  I think Native Alaskans really have had something special.  Do they sense the same loss as I when they see their children and grandchildren utilizing more Western means of accessing and using the land, I wonder? Nonetheless, I still deeply enjoy exposing my daughter to nature by experiencing it as best we can, so here we are:

Prince William Sound 2010

Big Shrimp!  Yum!

Skiing last spring

I like to ski in the nearby swamp after school—the snowmachiners pack me a trail :-)

Landscape Forces provided some useful tools for in the classroom—I may consider using them when I teach environmental science next spring.   Rock Cycle Animation and Mountain Maker, Earth Shaker were decent, but perhaps a bit elementary for high school students (their attention span for this would be too short, I suspect).  But Pangaea “Plate Tectonics: An Introduction” is perfect.  Short, sweet, to the point and visually memorable.  I will definitely use this in the future.  Upon reading the intro to “Tectonic Plate Movement in Alaska” I was thrilled to learn about “the surprising finding that there are still aftershocks being measured decades after the 1964 earthquake.” But upon watching the video, nope, that was the extent of the learning.  What, how, why?  None of these were discussed.  I was bummed.  But it is cool to know that aftershocks are still being measured, I suppose.  I’m just a “who, what, where, why, when?” kind of person. 

I loved hearing about Dave’s “WTH” moment in college—that was great!  Thanks for sharing.

Cheryl’s picture of her father-in-law standing up to his elbows in a crack left by the 1964 Earthquake is incredible! 

Thank you for the video link Living on the Coast, Alicia.  I enjoyed seeing Nanwalek, a community in my own school district and just across the inlet from Kenai, but a place I’ve never visited.  It got me thinking, how exactly do the Natives get a sea otter?  They’re pretty big!  And the portion on New Bedford, Massachusetts was fun—what great accents they have!  I loved the pronunciation of scallops.  I have never heard it spoken that way before.  Fun!  But not that work schedule, whew.  Those are hard, long hours at sea.