Nesting Black-legged Kittiwakes with Yellow Monkeyflower, Resurrection Bay, Gulf of Alaska, June 22, 2013. This is an example of spot-color photography.
We miss our C-dory. A lot. Photographs such as the one above can’t be made without a boat, not to mention the role Gillie played in filling our freezers with tasty halibut, lingcod and rockfish. And for a pleasurable day of leisure, it’s difficult to top fair weather on a calm sea.
While we lived on the Chignik River, we found a shallow-draft welded-aluminum scow to be more practical than the larger fiberglass dory, and so we sold Gillie. Regrets followed. She would be perfect here at our new home on the shores of Prince William Sound. In the peripatetic lives Barbra and I have lived both prior to and during our marriage, with each move we’ve effortlessly let items pass through our lives: beautifully crafted Christmas ornaments, artwork, cherished pieces of furniture, treasured books… even valued fishing tackle. The few items we take pains to keep in our possession mainly come down to cookware, photography gear and fly-fishing equipment. After all, most things are replaceable, and so the metaphor of the bookshelf constitutes an important element of our life philosophy.
The metaphor of the bookshelf is our way of thinking of… things… in a life where we find benefit in living slim and where we appreciate each move as an opportunity to pare down. The idea is to always leave room for the new, and if there is no room, to create it. So rather than fill up shelves with books we’re unlikely to read again, we don’t. Because if your shelves are full, there’s nowhere to add new items to your life – unless you keep adding shelves till your home is crammed full of shelves. It’s lovely to move to a new place and find that you have abundant blank spaces to populate with new treasures. Most things are easy to replace (a first edition copy of A River Runs Through It I allowed to slip through my possession being a noted exception).
Norman Maclean’s classic fly-fishing memoir, Gillie… it’s a short list. Art is replaced by other art. Souvenirs from one place have been let go of to make room for new keepsakes from new places.
We also let go of our aluminum scow when we left the Chignik, and so, taking the optimist’s view and embracing the metaphor of the bookshelf, it appears we now have a space in our life begging to be occupied by a new – or new to us – seaworthy vessel. Something to look forward to.
Barbra waiting for Sockeye Salmon to hit her net on the mighty Copper River near Chitina, June 22, 2012.
Iconic Alaska. Hike in along a canyon trail, then down a steep, more narrow trail to water’s edge. The river’s chalky, clay-colored glacial till reveals nothing. But the fish are there. Upwards of a million Sockeyes will ascend the Copper, and that’s after the commercial fishing fleet has taken a similar number from the sea near the river’s mouth. Armed with a net on a big hoop attached to a 15-foot pole, you find a fishable perch along the canyon wall and ease the net into an eddy. If you’ve timed it right, huge schools of fish are passing in front of you within feet of the shoreline. It doesn’t take long till you feel the morning’s first solid thump as a Red hits the net. If you’ve got the patience and don’t pull in right away, you might feel another thump, and then another – three fish in one scoop. And you feel a connection with people who have been fishing for salmon this way for thousands of years… grateful that there’s a place where it can still be done, not another person in sight except for the companion you’ve hiked in with. You get the feeling this isn’t going to last… which makes you appreciate it all the more. Iconic Alaska.
Hard to say where this bear, a mere dot on this icefield, was coming from. Somewhere across that vastness, heading toward Exit Glacier, down to salmon rivers. To a place I suppose he thinks of as home. 6/13/2011
The hike to Harding Icefield is a little over four miles up a mountain trail, more or less following a ridge above Exit Glacier. Patches of snow, wildflower meadows, birds, bears, maybe other wildlife along the way. There are many vast landscapes in Alaska. The view out over the Harding Icefield, the great mother ice lake that feeds Exit and dozens other glaciers is… otherworldly. We were on a rock outcrop overlooking part of Harding’s eleven hundred square miles. I was preoccupied with alpine flowers when Barbra noticed a trail across the snow-covered ice. It didn’t make sense. Till we spotted the bear.
Moving on from the photos we took in Mongolia, I’m now going through “Alaska Summers.” Some of these catalogues predate our trip to Mongolia. As I come upon images I really like – such as the above composition – I’ll share them here and on Instagram. jackdonachy, if you’re interested in following there. I also put most of these photos on Facebook – Barbrajack.
I like this photograph for the way it recalls a quote by Bob Dylan that describes Barbra, and me, and maybe this bear, and maybe you.
I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so, I’m on my way home…
The sun hadn’t yet crested the horizon when we came upon a covey of these strikingly marked fluff balls – Daurian Partridges in Khustai National Park, Mongolia. December 30, 2014
I’d been shooting for about four years when I took the above photograph. Still not sure what I wanted to photograph, our Lightroom catalogue was becoming populated with images of wildlife, portraits, landscapes, fishing, food, family events and so forth. But no doubt about it, birds have always held a fascination – and, though I didn’t know it at the time, would become my pathway forward.
It may be that for most of us a general approach is the most logical entry into a new endeavor. But based on my own experiences as well as observations of others, it seems that it is not until we specialize that rapid growth begins. So the angler eventually finds her way into fly-fishing, and not just fly-fishing broadly, but a specific type of fly-fishing. A cook becomes a chef when he undertakes to master a specific culinary repertoire. And so on. The interesting thing is that as one specializes, broader skills and knowledge are acquired and sharpened. So that even catching bluegills or frying an egg is performed with greater proficiency… while simultaneously a leap into a new kind of fishing or cooking, launched for a base of expertise, is also made easier.
A generalized approach feels comfortable, particularly at the start of a journey. The broadness, the lack of pressure to get one thing right, feels safe. But if one truly wishes to master a vocation, it is sound advice to not linger overly long with as a generalist. Specialize. Pick an area and dive deep. Take what is in front of you. Doable. For a couple of years, the best angling available to me was carp fishing. Not my first choice of fish, but I lived within a short bicycle ride of a fine river with a good population of the cyprinids, and so I threw myself into it… and saw my skills in virtually all areas of angling improve. Surely this is the way it is with most things – photography, culinary arts, writing, art… Begin the journey with a broad approach, but with eyes open for a narrowing path.
Red-billed Chough, Mongolia. This was one among about a dozen choughs in an open field, gathered around the remains of one of their own – feathers, blood. It appeared that a raptor had made a kill; and the choughs were holding a funeral service.
I must’ve been around 13 years old, walking up the Route 322 hill to my summertime job at Martin’s Exxon Plant when I came upon a stunningly bright Indigo Bunting hovering and circling madly back on forth from nearby brush to the shoulder of the road. There on the stony berm, lifeless, was a brown bird of similar size and shape. His mate. The victim of an automobile – most of which, in this man’s opinion, are permitted to travel far too fast for anyone’s safety and sanity… this unending modern obsession with “getting somewhere.” I digress.
Male and female Indigo Buntings. Plate by Louis Agassiz Fuertes in Birds of America (1917) edited by Thomas Gilbert Pearson (1873-1943) et al.
It was my first encounter with the deeply rooted connection – emotions – birds can feel for one another. Fearing the frantic male’s behavior would result in him joining his mate as a victim of the traffic whizzing by, I picked her up and placed her in an open area in the brush away from the highway. So that he could mourn more safely.
As years went by I witnessed other examples of similar behavior among various species of birds: crows, magpies, a pair of Narcissus Flycatchers – the one fallen and the one who would not leave his or her mate’s or offspring’s side. A group of Magpies that would not leave an injured member of the flock. A family of Ravens appearing to search for a child that had gone missing.
But the behavior of these Red-billed Choughs was a first for me: not merely a pair of birds bonded through nesting and breeding, but a small flock, gathered on the ground, unwilling to leave a fallen brother or sister. I wish I had thought to make a video record of the event.
On the other side of the rock the chough in the above photograph is perched upon was a jumble of feathers, bony, disembodied feet, blood. The remains of a friend, a loose circle of other choughs pacing solemnly around those remains. I have since wondered what, if anything, the bird in the photo’s perch on the rock, slightly above the others, may have indicated about its status.
We came across this herdsman tending goats in Khustai National Park, Mongolia. August 7, 2013
I rendered this as both a monochrome and a color image – a coin flip as to which I prefer.
I’d been interested… very interested… in photography ever since my early teens, but I didn’t pick up a camera and use it in any meaningful way until we traveled to Arctic Alaska, four years prior to the above photograph. I could have benefitted – perhaps a great deal – from a formal course of study in the subject. I guess. I’m not sure. Generally speaking, there are both benefits and drawbacks imbedded in the process of learning from others; just as there are benefits and drawbacks to learning on one’s own. Despite four years of somewhat purposeful shooting in Alaska, when we arrived in Mongolia I still didn’t really understand how a camera works. Nor did I have a vision of what kind of images I hoped to make. But once in a while I saw something I liked and I did what I could to make a capture… camera settings often somewhat randomly chosen, insufficient thought and visualization as to what the final, retouched image might look like (or what I hoped it would look like)… and any time a human subject was involved, struggling to overcome what is at times almost crippling shyness and apprehension on my part in order to get the picture. Often failing to overcome that apprehension and letting the moment pass.
So the question remains: Would I have benefitted from, for example, attending formal classes in photography at a respected institution under the guidance of expert instructors? Well, yes, for certain in regards to speeding up my learning curve with respect to technical and scientific aspects as to how a camera works and how film or an image sensor interprets light, and to gain a better understanding of the interplay between camera bodies and lenses. I read, on my own, and viewed a number of instructional videos addressing these subjects… and can report that while they were somewhat helpful, there is a lot of misinformation, and incomplete information, and misleading information on these matters – much of it dispensed by experts and by people who present themselves as experts. People who perhaps know what they are talking about or writing about, but who are not teachers and who don’t know how to teach and who have a difficult time imagining or understanding what a student needs to know… or how a student will receive and apply a given piece of information. Setting that aside, I suppose the answer is probably “Yes,” I – or anyone new to photograph – would benefit from interactive instruction where the primary purpose is to acquire knowledge of how a camera works and how light works and how a camera interprets light.
I suspect such a course of study would be helpful in the same way that prior to writing a novel or a magazine article, it’s necessary to have acquired an understanding of punctuation, syntax, paragraph structure and plot. Understanding basic structures – in any endeavor – can spare one from a lot of fumbling around.
But I wonder if, after 10,000 hours of mindful practice (a concept toward mastery I fundamentally accept), the person who began the journey initially studying under a master doesn’t end up more or less at the same place as the person who embarked alone, and vice versa. After all, whether the matter at hand is photography, writing or fly-fishing, once basic skills are acquired it is left to each individual to determine their own path as to how they hope to develop those skills. Realistic or conceptual; poetry or prose; salmon rivers or saltwater flats.
A problem with instruction beyond basic concepts is that it can end up creating a box around the student.
So… I think that, if it’s an option, by all means find someone from whom to learn the fundamentals – in any endeavor. But don’t linger there. Get the basics. And then go out and put them to use… learning more basics along the way, but more importantly, freeing oneself to pursue one’s own passions and to thereby develop one’s own vision.
I suppose the main thing, in any endeavor, is simply to get started.
Looking out across the Chukchi Sea from the very tip of Tikigaq Peninsula. Near Point Hope, Alaska, August 12, 2012.
It was a two-and-a-half mile walk from our home in Point Hope to the terminal point of Tikigaq Peninsula where it hooked into the Chukchi Sea. Cape Lisburne lay to the north; other rocky sea cliffs lay to the southeast. Dense colonies of seabirds – murres, puffins, various ducks, gulls and other birds – nested in these natural sanctuaries, and if you stood at the tip of the peninsula you could watch the adult birds fly back and forth all day long in the summer, in one direct bills and bellies empty, on the return their bellies crammed full of food and what they couldn’t fit in their bellies hanging from their bills. Sand Lances and other fish to be presented to nesting mates and offspring. It was a difficult hike out, a good bit of it along a pebbled beach. At that time in our lives we hadn’t yet made a study of wildflowers, but they were abundant and brightened the path. And you never new when you might come across an Arctic Fox, a Snowy Owl or something else of interest.
Hiking for any distance along a sand beach becomes work, and If you’ve ever walked far along a pebbled beach you know that pebbles make for an even more arduous hike. The ocean breeze was almost always cold at that latitude above the Arctic Circle.
Wishing at times to travel light, we did not always take camera gear.
Which was, of course, a mistake.
One morning in early fall, we arrived at the point and – not knowing what we were in for – found ourselves looking out at more birds than we had ever in our lives seen. Quite probably, more than we will ever see again. Wave upon wave of puffins, murres, kittiwakes, shearwaters and I don’t know what else were streaming out from the cliffs and capes, chicks fledged, the season over. Most of these seabirds would not return to land again until the following spring when they would begin a new nesting season. We had seen films depicting African migrations of wildebeests and other ungulates, and in Alaska of great herds of caribou, and those films were called to mind. I once, in Kentucky, found myself amidst a late spring migration of Box Turtles; I pulled my car to the shoulder and assisted over a dozen of them safely across the country road I was traveling. If I had that to do over, I’d have stayed for as long as it took and helped more…
Surely that morning on the tip of Tikigaq, Barbra and I were witness to one of the world’s greatest migration events. We felt, suddenly, a deep connection with… something… overwhelming. Thoreau’s contact, or a final couplet from Wordsworth:
To me the meanest flower that blooms can give Thoughts that lie too deep for tears.
Blueberry picking on the Arctic tundra. This photograph was used in a Ted Talk about Climate Change. Sarichef Island, September, 2010
As is the case anywhere one might go, there are multiple realities in Shishmaref – or in any bush village. Some of these realities fit together neatly in a positive and even happy manner, like smiling faces after berry picking on a pleasantly crisp fall morning. Some realities exist more as collective memories, and you’d have to dig and observe closely to find their vestiges. Other realities contradict and clash and it can be difficult to understand how they are connected to the broader cultural, and still other realities go mostly undiscussed – pretended away – as they seep into village fabric like a sludgy toxin.
A reality in the “sludgy toxin” category in most bush communities we are familiar with are the schools. For anyone who was fortunate enough to be educated in a fairly decent k-12 system, or who has taught in such schools, the level of professional misfeasance and malfeasance – the combination of indifference, incompetence and outright corruption in Alaska’s bush schools – would probably defy belief. Before coming to Alaska, Barbra and I taught in good schools in the lower 48. So we know what that looks like. Nothing in that experience prepared us for what we encountered in the Alaskan Bush. The blame, when one talks to many teachers and administrators in bush Alaska, is placed on the children themselves and their parents. These educators and administrators spin their tales to state legislators, the governor’s office, department of education officials, university education departments and anyone else who asks, and Alaska’s state legislators, the governor’s office, department of education officials and university personnel nod along, agreeing that little can be done to improve matters.
But the reality is that any of the schools we taught in, visited or heard about from others could have easily… and I emphasize easily… been improved with a bit of competent administration. The acquiescence to self-serving fictions among Alaska’s leadership – the phony wistful sighs followed by reassurances among themselves that the problems can’t be fixed, so therefore they aren’t obliged to try – continues year after year.
Because it is easy to dismiss these bush schools and the Native communities they serve. After all, these are other people’s children.
Thank you for allowing me to finally get that off my chest. Comments, as always, are welcome. JD
This photo of a pair of Horned Puffins was taken in late May, right in the heart of their breeding season which runs from mid-spring through mid-summer. This is when their enormous bills are at their largest and most colorful – literally fluorescent. Males and females are monomorphic; that is, they show the same plumage. (Alaska Gulf)
Who knew that in some species of birds, bill shape, size and color changes with the seasons? Such is the case of the Horned Puffin, which grows additional layers of colorful keratin – the same material hair, feathers and fingernails are made of – during the breeding season. When the season concludes, puffins sluff off the additional material and their beaks become smaller and duller. The vibrant lemon-yellow coloration mostly disappears and the tangerine-orange becomes a more mellow peach. While relatively large, the bills of juveniles are smaller than those of adults and appear gray or a coal-dusted orange.
Juvenile Horned Puffin, Chignik Lake, September 11, 2021.The Chignik Drainage cuts through mountains, creating an avian corridor across the Alaska Peninsula at a point where it is about 40 miles across from the Alaska Gulf on the southwest side to the Bering Sea to the northwest. From passerines falling out in nearby spruce groves to oceanic species seeking refuge during storms or pausing during migration to forage, you never know what you’ll encounter along the Chignik.
With puffin breeding colonies on nearby Alaska Gulf islands as well as additional sites on peninsula headlands, the estuary and seas near Chignik Lake are an excellent year-round place to encounter Horned Puffins. Here they feed on abundant herring, sand lances, juvenile salmon, sculpins and other forage. Dense, well-oiled feathers and wings that become flippers propel puffins to depths of 100 feet and possibly more. Feeding for themselves, puffins swallow most of their prey underwater. If you see one with a beak overflowing with silvery sand lances or herring, it’s undoubtedly taking them back to its nest.
It is reported that a Horned Puffin can carry dozens of small fish in its bill. I counted eight sand lances here. (Alaska Gulf near Chignik, July 28, 2020,)
In former times, puffins were shot and salted down for food by the barrelful. They were even considered acceptable fare on Catholic holy days when fish rather than other forms of meat was to be consumed. In Alaska, both Tufted and Horned Puffins were traditionally hunted with hooks baited with fish a well as with hoop nets on long handles. Also, a type of bola was thrown into the air to entangle seabirds returning to their nests. In addition to utilizing puffin meat and eggs, the skins and feathers were used in clothing. Historical accounts describe puffins as curious and friendly, but they are apparently still hunted in some areas and anytime that’s the case they can be challenging to approach.
Horned Puffins, so named for a small, fleshy point protruding above each eye (see the first photo in this article) are easily distinguished from Tufted Puffins, above. Both species are present in the Alaska Gulf near Chignik.
The best time to see puffins along the Alaska Peninsula is during the summertime breeding season. The weather is often mild, the seas calm, and the birds, hunting for themselves as well as for their chicks, can often be found close to shore. Look for the same sorts of current breaks you might look for when salmon fishing, as these rips concentrate baitfish.
In flight, they skim the seas like some form of exotic bee, chunky dark bodies pulled along by those wonderfully colorful bills, determined wings rapidly beating the air into submission. Suddenly they glide upward along the face of a rocky headland and unerringly disappear into a crevice where a chick or mate is waiting. Over and over they repeat the circuit – the flight out, the deep dives, the return flight – until one day they gather their forces and all the puffins and perhaps other nearby nesters as well head en masse out to sea where they will spend the winter months. Juveniles, no longer under the care of their parents, will struggle at first to tag along, often not making it far before they need a rest. And then, they too will find themselves over the sea’s depths. For the youngsters, it will be two years before they return to their natal headlands or island. But the adults return each year, finding familiar ledges and spaces between rocks, watching over a single egg, and joining other puffins, murres, auklets and guillemots over shoals of herring, sand lances and out-migrating salmon smolts. It is an amazing sight to behold.
Horned Puffin Fratercula corniculata Order: Charadriiformes Family: Alcidae Genus: Fratercula – Medieval Latin fratercula = friar for the semblance of their plumage to monks’ robes Species: corniculata – Latin for horn-shaped, referencing the bill
Status in Marine Waters near Chignik: Common to Abundant; rare or accidental in the freshwater drainage
Five degrees, calm, a raven’s throaty croak echoing across the ice. Gaining about four minutes of light each day now, the earth moving into position to give us back our beautiful sunrises.
After a big Sunday morning breakfast we hiked across the lake and up into the foothills for a couple of miles. Otters, mergansers, other ducks and a pair of Pacific Loons in the little bit of open water where the lake empties into the river. The acres of tundra where we picked berries this past summer locked beneath two or three inches of hard ice, the result of snow melt and rainwater accumulating atop frozen ground and another cold snap. Icy snow firm as hardpan. Soft crunch under our boots. Easy hiking.
Once in a while a Red Fox trots across the lake or along the frozen shoreline. Arctic Hare tracks everywhere the snow is soft enough to show them. Yesterday I counted 80 birds at the window feeders – Pine Grosbeaks, Redpolls, Black-Capped Chickadees, Oregon-race Juncos, a couple of Pine Siskins. Bears denned up two months ago. Gulls and eagles gone. Wolf tracks lacing trails just beyond the village. We keep watching for a wolverine in the place we’ve seen them before. Tomorrows forecast says rain. Hope not.
CutterLight 