In 1983 I went to see a movie that was adapted from one of my favorite books, 'Never Cry Wolf' by Farley Mowat. I did not expect anything amazing or necessarily memorable. I was simply hoping that the movie would be fairly faithful to the book, which I had found enchanting, hilarious and, at last, a serious call for conservation of our natural heritage. I was simply hoping for a good movie. The lights went down, the music started, and I realized that I had been completely unprepared for what was about to happen to me.
I was born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1957. I don't remember much of Anchorage or that time, except for a trip that my mother took all of us kids on, a grand sight seeing tour around Southeast Alaska when I was four or five. My clearest memory of that time is scrounging in rapt fascination among the tidal pools on the shores of the town of Homer. I was intrigued by the richness of life in these small pools- snails, crabs, larvae and starfish were present everywhere. I succeeded at prying a fair sized starfish from a rock and, after staring at the million waving feet, solemnly took it to the cook in the restaurant. There was a sign posted stating that if you could catch it, they would cook it. He accepted it gravely, a tall man with a white chef's hat and white apron, and promised to make it for my dinner. What I ended up with, looking back on it with the eyes of knowledge, looked suspiciously like cod, though, at the time, I thought the starfish was quite tasty.
It was when my father took a job on Annette Island that I really became aware of the landscape around me. Annette is home to the Tsimpshian indians, a Canadian group transplanted there in the 1880s when the priest they were following, one William Duncan, was evicted from the home village in Canada for his Christian preachings. He took a few hundred converted villagers with him and they eventually settled on Annette Island, founding the village of Metlakatla.
Metlakatla was a revelation to me. The proximity of the ocean and the wildlife on the island were endlessly fascinating. Coupled with the relative freedom that we were allowed living on an island, (how far could you go, after all), life was like an eternal field trip for a seven year old. I spent hours laying on the city dock, watching reed fish, herring and a vast array of every other type of sea animal waving through the slanted sunlight that drove through the dock slats in summer, lighting the kelp and waving anemones. Sea birds clustered around the cannery dock, screaming at each other where the detritus of the salmon canning operation was sluiced into Gilbert Bay. Dogfish, which look like miniature sharks, perfect in every detail, hung around the drop point in the water, contesting the free food with the birds with silent, gliding efficiency.
When we weren't fishing for smelt for breakfast or running to the theater to watch a movie for twenty five cents, we were on the beach, which was the most constant entertainment we had found. On any given day, and especially after a storm, there were always treasures to be found, brought with the tide for us all, Lords of the Earth that we were. There was the diamond ring my sister found one day, every shape of driftwood you could think of, and some you could not, bits and pieces of furniture and wood, and many a Japanese blown glass fishing float. There was even one very angry octopus, about 18 inches across, stranded at high tide and exhibiting zero sense of humor about the situation. After my brother picked it up and promptly learned that octopi possess sharp beaks that are perfect for disciplining incautious children, an elderly Tsimpshian came along, reached into the center, extracted the beak and guts with one smooth tug, then took the rest home to eat.
The whole area was wrapped by a constant mist that usually hung halfway up the mountains to the north and shrouded the ocean surface to the south, cocooning the island in an enveloping globe of mystery. Between the mountains flowed an 800 foot waterfall down to the bay, a constant living punctuation mark to the beauty and quiet fascination of the place.
This is simply to say that Alaska had been living in me for some time when I went to see 'Never Cry Wolf'. But I was not prepared for the beauty of the landscape that unreeled on the screen. It was stark, crowded with suspense and reminded me immediately of the personality and intimacy of the Alaska I had known. But even as the images were visually stunning, it was the music that cut into me like a knife.
I had never heard such music. It felt as though it was speaking directly to me. Every note was completely new, yet sounded so familiar that I could almost hear the composition before it was played through the speakers. From the restrained and secretive opening, bleak but limned with an undercurrent of fierce life, to the triumph and loss of the final notes, it seemed a liquid distillation of the time when I had lived in that landscape, taking part in the day to day changes it went through, watching the eagles gliding from tree to tree among the shadows of the clouds on Purple Mountain. As far as I knew, the theater had ceased to exist.
Exactly what it is in me that responded, and still does, so viscerally to the music I do not know. It is somehow a part of me, and a part of the land and the time I spent there. It reaches an area in me that is welded to that place with bonds of iron and lives in my memory, surrounded in bright mist and smelling of the sea.
Alaska is a special world, one that has a beauty, and a music, all its own. If you have not seen it, you should go before the wild places and wild animals that live there completely disappear. However, I would caution you about one thing. If you value your freedom, if you prefer to be loose in the world to go where ever you want, do not go there. You may fly back from such a trip in a very modern aircraft and go to work like every other day, but you will never really return from there.