Artist in Residence Sets Gates of the Arctic to Music

Stephen Lias takes in the tundra in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Photo Courtesy of Stephen Lias

Bettles, AK – America’s National Parks have served as a back drop for some of the United States’ best known artwork.  Much of that work was created long before the National Park Service established an ‘Artist in Residence’ program.  The Park Service only recently started inviting creative individuals to apply for the program.  One man has just completed his fourth residency in Alaska and his ninth in the United States.  KUAC’s Emily Schwing caught up with Stephen Lias (lie-us) in Bettles to find out how he turns a backpacking trip on the arctic tundra into a classical music composition.

More than 80 years ago, composer Ferde Grofe wrote the Grand Canyon Suite.  The third movement is arguably Grofe’s most famous: it’s his interpretation of a donkey, trotting through the Arizona desert.

Dalelynn Garder is the coordinator the ‘Artist in Residence Program’ at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve north of the Arctic Circle.  She says Grofe’s work is the precursor to a now vibrant and growing program.

“Early artists are some of the reason why parks were created some of the paintings done of Yellowstone and Yosemite that were brought into people’s lives who would never have visited these places and it inspired this awe in people that just telling them about a place doesn’t do,” she says.

Not every National Park in the United States has an annual Artist in Residence.  But of the twenty three National Parks in Alaska, Composer Stephen Lias has done a residency program at four, including Denali, Glacier Bay and Wrangell Saint Elias.  He just returned from a ten day patrol with a Park Ranger in Gates of the Arctic.

“Each park presents its own experience , but this one was by far the most immersive,” says Lias. “It was the longest it was the one that pushed my boundaries the furthest.”

This summer, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival showcased a composition Lias created after his experience in Denali in 2011. The National Park Service also hosted a concert inside the Denali Park Boundary this summer.

Lias says he tries to avoid expectations prior to his residencies, but when he landed in Bettles in late July, and started planning his adventure in Gates of the Arctic, he did have one specific goal in mind.

“To migrate with the caribou,” says Lias, with a smile.  “and so they had done some reconnaissance with aircraft and we were getting reports form rangers and scientists who were in the field and saw probably over a thousand caribou in the last ten days.”

But Lias is quick to point out that what his music evokes is somewhat intangible.  You may not for example hear the musical version of a caribou…

“It’s more likely to be what did it feel like to look at the caribou, than what does a caribou sound like, although I will say as I listened to the sounds there are some very musical sounds out there: the wolves howling, the sound of a loon.” 00:19

He uses writing and photography in the field to keep track of his feelings and his senses.

“I stand on the tundra and I photograph because visual images capture so much of the experience and it’s easy to retrieve later,” he says.  “Sometimes I am journaling what my thought process is.  Sometimes it’s just something that we did today, other times it little musical melodies or just shapes on a page.  If I want a big blob of brass playing something staccato, followed by percussion going ‘bum, bum, bum, bum.’ You know I just scribble things on the page to try and capture them so I don’t lose them,” he explains.

When he returns, it’s not with sheet music.  That comes after he’s had time to sort through his photos and flip through the pages of his journals.

“Since I am a classical composer,” he says, “it’s not really something you can’t do in a tent, so I usually do the composing afterwards, but I come back from the residency with lots of solid ideas, many of which end up in the piece itself.”

Lias has completed residencies in five other national parks including Rocky Mountain in Colorado and Big Bend in Texas.  All of his music will be compiled to mark the centennial celebration of the Park Service in 2016.

A Bash in the Bush Brings Bettles to Life

Schwing/KUAC

The tiny community of Bettles, nestled along the Koyukuk River, just south of the Brooks Range may have become Alaska’s farthest north concert venue this weekend.  A handful of musicians and two Alaska bands flew north of the Arctic Circle for the First Annual Bettles Bush Bash.

Outside the Bettles Lodge on any given day,  the rumble of tires on gravel is a common sound.  Bush planes touch down and take off on the mile-long runway a few hundred feet ahead.

But this weekend, the residents of Bettles were treated to something a little different.

“Just to have live music, it doesn’t happen very often,” says Jamie Klaes.  She runs Bettles Lodge and Air Service for her family.  She invited Fairbanks Band Sweating Honey to warm up the crowd on Friday night.  They played right in front of the lodge, just off the runway on a stage made of two trailers, an old military truck and a few sheets of plywood.

Klaes says Bettles community was due for a good time. “We had our 25^th anniversary of owning the lodge with my family five years ago and I haven’t had a part since and I thought, well if I’m gonna do a party I might as well do a really big party.”

More than 50 people turned out for the event.  Many of them work as summer employees for the few local businesses in town or the Tribal Council for the neighboring native village of Evansville.  Adam Mehlhorn works for the National Park Service.  He’s lived in Bettles for five years.  As a plane takes off, he says he’s never been to a concert like this before.

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“Most music fests I’ve ever been to haven’t been within a hundred yards of a runway with planes actively landing, so that makes it pretty unique,” Mehlhorne smiles.

Mike Stackhouse brought his guitar and harmonica north.  These days he lives in Fairbanks where he sings at the farmer’s market.  Sometimes he plays a gig at bar in Alaska’s second largest city.  But he may also be considered a Bettles local.  He homesteaded in the 70’s and 80’s more than 100 miles down the Koyukuk River.  He says he first brought his guitar upriver to Bettles in 1989.

“This is a unique gig playing outdoors like this,” says Stackhouse.  “As compared to the bar gigs where you see the same old drunks that you see all week!  Yeah it’s special to do this, especially one of the things I like are the kids running around here, mostly in the bar gigs you don’t see kids, it’s not something that happens,” he says.

There is only one resident in the Bettles area under the age of eighteen, but that number ballooned to more than ten over the weekend.  Band members brought their friends and family along to enjoy the sunshine, a pie eating contest and a barbeque.  Jamie Klaes grew up in Bettles  at 31 years old, she says it was nice to see her lifelong neighbors join the party.

“Well to me, I think rural Alaska is just getting smaller and smaller,” she says.  “It’s kind of sad to me when I walk around town and I don’t see anyone. Like it’s the middle of the day and you don’t see another person out and about, so something like this is a breath of fresh air.”

Members from the Anchorage-based band, Cold Country played their signature bluegrass tunes on Saturday.  The music went on into the early hours of Sunday Morning.  Jamie Klaes hopes memories of the weekend will last even longer.  Her goal is to turn the Bush Bash into an annual event.

Subsistence Fishermen Voluntarily Stop Fishing to Help Chinook Escapement

Eagle, AK – July brings sunny, breezy days to the Yukon River.  It’s the perfect kind of weather for a fish wheel.

“When you got your kid in the boat and you’re pulling up the wheel and you pull u[p to the box and you see the look on their face, that’s really… that’s really cool!”  says Mike McDougal.

He and his wife are raising six kids in the tiny town of Eagle. This is the last place for fishermen to catch Yukon River Kings in Alaska, before they pass into Canada.  For the time being, McDougal has decided not to put a wheel in the water.

“We just feel with the number returning at this point, if we were to take any fish, it would be under ten fish.”

McDougal caught seventy five King salmon last year.  That was enough to fill 12 cases worth of pint jars and feed his family for the winter.  But this year, the King salmon run on the Yukon is low – record low. McDougal says if he does fish a wheel this summer, he’ll be lucky if he even catches five kings.

“What we get from the five kings, is we’re getting our kids on the river, and we’re passing on those traditions and those values and the skills that go along with the fishing, ” he says.

“Yeah everything that mike said is the exact reason why we’re making the same decision.” Wayne Hall nods his head.  He and his wife, Scarlett, live six miles downriver from Eagle.  They have one son, who grew up working a fish wheel in the summer.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates that approximately 100-thousand fish make up this year’s Yukon River Chinook run.  In the 1980’s, run sizes were three times as large, but numbers started to decline in the late 1990’s.  Hall says harvest patterns have to change drainage wide, if the Chinook run is to survive.

“I think it’s important for the mentality to get take what you need and not what you want,” says Hall.  “That means voluntarily cutting back.” 00:!0

The Halls and Mike McDougal usually get together with Andy Bassich to work a fish wheel each summer.  Bassich serves on the Eastern Interior Subsistence Regional Advisory Council as part of the Federal Subsistence Management Program. He says he knew the day would come when he might not put his wheel in the water.

“This isn’t the first time that a resource has declined,” says Bassich.  “The one thing that has changed though is the commercialization and the dependence on the fish for the economy up and down the river, and it’s not just the lower river, it’s all up and down the river,” Bassich says.

Most of the commercial fishing on the Yukon River takes place in the lower region, hundreds of miles downriver from Eagle. It’s been several years since a commercial fishery targeted king salmon, but they can end up as by-catch in nets set for other species, like chum.   Fishermen on the Lower Yukon generally see high numbers of fish and a greater species abundance compared to their up-river neighbors.  In the 30 years since Bassich started subsisting on Yukon River fish, he says he’s seen lots of change.

“The social structure is changing in villages.” says Bassich.  “People are a little less subsistence oriented.  They’re tending to eat more western food, which they have to purchase.  And so, how do you do that?  You have to make money.  How do you make money in western Alaska? There’s not many resources to make money with.  Fishing is one of them.”

Bassich says the only way to solve the problem is ton start utilizing other resources.

“So we’re hoping we can begin to set an example for people that yes, it’s not the normal way to do things,” he says, “but we have to start changing with the times and the availability of the resource.  When the resource declines to the point that is now, what’s the next step?  Management will have to close it.”

All three families say they remain hopeful.  Fish and Game has projected a summer run of chum salmon between 1.5 and 2 million fish.  Currently, that run is on the high end of the forecast.  Those numbers may indicate a good fall chum run in September as well.  Bassich may still put his wheel in the water this summer to catch a few, smaller male Chinook.  He says he has definite plans to target the chum run in the fall.

Remembering Isaac Juneby

A well-respected chief from Eagle Village was killed last week in a car accident in Anchorage.  70 year old Isaac Juneby (June-ah-bee) was a charismatic man, known for his humor and his smile.  He served in the army, worked for the National Park Service and he was heavily involved in Eagle’s Historical Society.  Eagle locals say his nick-name, Ike, can still be found etched into the railing of a dredge near Slaven’s Cabin on the Yukon River.

Juneby was one of Alaska’s last fluent Han language speakers.  He recently began a master’s degree at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks focusing on the language and culture of his people.

KUAC’s Emily Schwing sat down with his wife, Sandi to remember him.

photo courtesy of NPS. http://1.usa.gov/NdVKq2

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Intrigue and Concern Over a Proposed Cell Phone Tower in Eagle, AK

Communication in Alaska’s bush communities has always been limited.  In Eagle, next to every telephone, you’ll find a nearly infamous sheet of paper that lists most of the phone numbers in town. If you ask for a phone number, the locals usually only give the last four digits.  It may all change if Eagle gets a cell phone tower.

“I guess I have mixed feelings,” says Eagle Village Council Chief, Joyce Roberts, “but I think it would be really nice, because we’re in a rural place and there’s times I want to call my husband and ask can you pick up this, or stop by here?”

Roberts says the village is likely to get a tower within the next year. The plan has Eagle residents both intrigued and concerned.

The electric telegraph was invented in the 1830’s, but it took nearly 60 years before congress signed off on a project to stretch a line between Valdez and Eagle.  Residents there waited another eight decades before a telephone came to town.   In the 1980’s, the only phone in Eagle was housed in a British-looking, bright red booth, on First Avenue.  Today, cell phone service cuts out just east of Tok, 170 miles to the south.

“There are no bars in Eagle!”laughs Ann Millard.  Millard serves on Eagle’s City Council.  She’s also the principal at Eagle Community School.

“Maybe there should be places like that where you can’t get on the internet and people can’t use their cell phone.  I know people who come here for the summer, that’s one of the reasons they like to come here.”

Alaska’s largest telecommunications company, GCI, came to the rural community in 2007 with a proposal to erect a cell phone tower.  According to Millard, the company scouted three different locations, ruling one out because of its proximity to the Yukon River and the potential for flooding.  GCI also proposed to build the tower on school property.  As principal, Ann Millard saw an educational opportunity.

“We deliver instruction using internet access,” says Millard, “and the competition that the students face with students from other schools it’s unfair if they don’t have the same kind of access.”

So, she pushed for construction of the tower at the school.  This spring, an earth station was constructed just behind the school garden as part of the ‘Online with Libraries,’ or OWL program.  It’s statewide grant funded initiative to get Alaska’s public libraries online.  Millard was hoping the school could take advantage of both projects.  She says the location provided a clear signal, and because the earth station was already there, she didn’t see a reason not to build the tower.

But lifelong Eagle resident Sonja Sager disagreed.

“Well, I think personally that Eagle does not need a cell phone tower.”

Sager has six children.  Four of them will be enrolled at the community school this fall.  She says she was concerned about the health effects associated with cell phone towers.  The earth station is roughly 100 yards from the school.  Sager poured over medical research last fall, to find that the recommended distance is at least a quarter mile.

“I think it’s something we do need to take a little bit of time to pay attention to and ask ourselves if 20 years down the road, are we gonna be willing to face the scientific truth about how these do affect people and growing children,” says Sager.  “Could we live with ourselves if we have put it next to a school, when we have other options, you know?” she asks.

Radio waves are emitted from cell phone towers much like television signals.  It’s that electromagnetic radiation that has Sager concerned.  Within the last decade, researchers have begun to study cancer risks in connection with cell phone use.  According to the American Cancer Society, the evidence is inconclusive, but there are a handful of studies that suggest a connection.

“Even if we don’t know yet how safe cell phones are and even if we don’t know how safe the towers are, I do want people to feel safe to send their kids to school,” says Sager.

GCI did not respond to emails for comment on this story, but the other proposed location is just outside the Tribal Hall in the New Village.  It’s called the “New Village,” because Eagle’s old native Alaskan village was destroyed in a flood in 2009, and relocated to higher ground five miles upriver.  Ann Millard says if the tower doesn’t go up at the school, she’d prefer to see it erected in the village.

“They’re most likely to be isolated if the landline goes down,” says Millard, “and also because the Village Public Safety Officer and the clinic is out there.”

Against a strong wind outside the new tribal hall, Village Council Chief, Joyce Roberts says Millard’s vision is likely to become a reality.

“I think it’s very likely.” says Roberts with a nod.  “Next year, it’s going to happen.  All the people that live in the village already know about the plans.”

There’s no word on exactly when the tower might go in, or how far the signal might carry, but when it does, residents will surely wonder what will become of the phone list nearly everyone  has hanging on the wall next to their seemingly old fashioned telephones.

Bird’s Eye View: Eagle, Alaska

Eagle, Alaska – Eagle is full of both old and new and sometimes it’s hard to tell where ends meet.  A walk down Amundsen Street takes you past the old  schoolhouse, built in the early 1900′s. Further down the road, a brand new Toyota, recently purchased in Fairbanks, sits parked in front of a leaning, moss covered log cabin.  Head straight for another two blocks to find yourself on Front Street, overlooking the Yukon River, which has flowed past the tiny town for thousands of years.  A full (and slow) 360 degree turn provides sites of the old courthouse and the old well house, with a mountain bike parked in front.  There’s an old red telephone booth – home to Eagle’s first phone installed in the 1980′s – next to the old Power company building.  A pickup truck rumbles by on the dirt road, as a tanker truck passes in the opposite direction, spraying the road to keep the dust down.  John Borg has lived in Eagle for nearly four decades.  He is in his 70′s, but he nearly bounds up the stairs of the historic courthouse, for the  9 am tour.  A small child passes on a bright blue bicycle.  It’s an amalgamation of  old and new, young and weathered.  Eagle is a town, changing and remaining the same all at once.

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