![]() The grocery store, school, and clinic sat in between them, with a 100-year-old Russian Orthodox church named for Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the day in June 1786 when Russian explorer Gavril Pribylov landed on the island. It stretched across a saddle of land, with rows of brightly painted houses - magentas, yellows, teals - stacked on either hillside. Town appeared beyond a rise, framed by towers of rusty crab pots. The sandy road from the airport in late March led across wide, empty grassland, bleached sepia by the winter season. In my notebook, tucked in my backpack, I’d written a single question: “What does this place preserve?” Paul, there was no wildfire - only fat raindrops on my windshield as I loaded into a truck at the airport. There’s a prickly anxiety humming beneath Alaska life now, like a wildfire that travels for miles in the loamy surface of soft ground before erupting without notice into flames.īut in St. I still think of it - people going through regular routines in a place that feels like home, but that, at any time, might come cratering down. But then, a hillside rumbled down, taking out a house and killing the people inside. The morning started routinely - a reporter on the ground calling around, surveying the damage. But the concept doesn’t quite capture what it feels like to live here now.Ī few years ago, I was a public radio editor on a story out of the small Southeast Alaska town of Haines about a storm that came through carrying a record amount of rain. I’ve given thought to solastalgia - the longing and grief experienced by people whose feeling of home is disrupted by negative changes in the environment. I’m convinced the questions Alaskans are grappling with - whether to stay in a place and what to hold onto if they can’t - will eventually face everyone. The idea of abandoning long-occupied places echoes deep into identity and history. You can’t separate how people understand themselves in Alaska from the landscape and animals. Paul sits 800 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska. Increasingly, my stories veer from science and economics into the fundamental ability of Alaskans to keep living in rural places. People in Alaska have always had to adapt.Įven so, in the last few years, I’ve seen disruptions to economies and food systems, as well as fires, floods, landslides, storms, coastal erosion, and changes to river ice - all escalating at a pace that’s hard to process. Alaska Native people have inhabited this place for more than 10,000 years.Īs I’ve reported in Indigenous communities, people remind me that my sense of history is short and that the natural world moves in cycles. Some Alaskans’ connections go far deeper than mine. I grew up in Alaska, as my parents did before me, and I’ve been writing about the state’s culture for more than 20 years. Alaska news is full of climate elegies now - every one linked to wrenching changes caused by burning fossil fuels. Paul’s recent story has become a familiar one - so familiar, in fact, I couldn’t blame you if you missed it. I was traveling there to find out what the villagers might do next. Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea. Paul, about 800 miles west of Anchorage, where the local economy depends almost entirely on the commercial snow crab business. Some 330 people, most of them Indigenous, live in the village of St. I saw a lone island village - a grid of houses, a small harbor, and a road that followed a black ribbon of coast. Paul Island cut a golden, angular shape in the shadow-dark Bering Sea. I had a 29 Chinook that fought far harder than the 39. 8' lemon/green crank working fine for me with 25lb fluoro.My small turboprop plane whirred low through thick clouds. You want at least a Loki and associated suitable reel and line. Great fun, I highly recommend trying it for the few quid it costs for a 24 hour pass.īe warned though, your Jigwinner will not cut it. I have had Chinook to 39 despite not knowing anything about the place, doing what I do irl and having a cast per step working my way downstream. I didn't go there in search of the unique 70+ Chinook or to discover all its secrets just yet, just wanted to see what it was like having such a large variety of fish willing to take the same type of lure. ![]() So much fun just wandering the river with crankbaits catching different types of salmon. So out of curiousity I bought a 24 hour pass for Alaska because I'm only level 30.
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