Independence of spirit

We are back from our 10-day trip along the Alaskan Inside Passage – a wilderness of astounding beauty and magnificence. At one point on our small ship cruise we stopped at the little Alaskan outback settlement of Elfin Cove (summer population perhaps 100 or so, winter population last winter 12), and went in by inflatable boat to visit for a few hours. It made me think.

Elfin Cove got 24 feet of snow last winter. The whole settlement is connected by narrow wooden boardwalks, powered by its own little generator, pipes its water down from a local spring in the mountains, all maintained by the locals themselves – no municipal services, no government, no roads or cars, no doctor or hospital, a tiny little local store. Access is by boat or seaplane only, when weather allows. Mail comes in by seaplane once a week in good weather, perhaps once every two or three weeks in bad weather. Locals make their living largely by commercial fishing.

The locals seemed familiar to me – they looked exactly like our Iowa farmer neighbors I recall from my youth. Competent, sturdy, self-reliant, handy at fixing anything with whatever is at hand, able to improvise anything, able to roll with whatever nature throws at them. The clutter around the buildings looked exactly like my memory of our farm tool sheds – odds and ends of old machines, piles of lumber and piping, rolls of wire – never throw anything away because one might need it to fix something else someday.

The local who was our guide told us that her sons had learned commercial line fishing with their father when they were 10, and were in charge of the lines on one side of the boat (and therefore half of the family income) by the time they were 12. They were now in college, and doing well. Again it reminded me of my youth in Iowa when most children at 12 or 13, boys and girls alike, were able to plow or harrow a field, milk a cow, kill and dress a chicken, adjust the carburetor of a car or gasoline engine, and help fix the siding of a barn. (Those days may be past now that big agribusiness has largely replaced the small farm of my youth.)

The contrast with our comfortable urban life, and the sheltered upbringing of our urban children, was startling, and it reminded me again that nature and history both have a tendency to go through long easy, comfortable periods punctuated by difficult, demanding crises. In the easy periods, all sorts of new species emerge, most overspecialized for their environment. And in the crises most of these overspecialized species become extinct; only the strong, adaptable and self-reliant survive. When our next natural or historical crisis arrives – and it will eventually – I’m betting on these Alaskan outbackers – tempered and hardened by their rugged, independent lifestyle - to be among the survivors.