Reason number 3,574 why I love Alaska

This headline from the Anchorage Daily News pretty much sums it up:

"85-year-old woman wields shovel to stop moose stomping."

But it leaves out one important detail: 85-year-old Dorothea Taylor's shovel-swinging likely saved the life of her 82-year-old husband George Murphy. Here's the slightly longer description: "An agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off."

Equally impressive? Their compassion for the offending moose. Per the ADN:

It might just have been stressed from an especially harsh winter, with extreme cold temperatures and heavy snow.

"They don't actually have a heckuva lot to eat," Murphy said.

"And they don't have enough stamina," Taylor said.

"They're just at the end of their rope," Murphy said. "They'll just strike out at anything."

He is not upset with the moose. Neither is his wife. They don't want anyone to try to kill it. No one could be sure they got the right one, anyway.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

 Yup.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

An agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpyAn agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

New Year's Camping

To prepare for 2012, I spent a few days of the week between Christmas and New Year's backpacking in New York's Harriman State Park, spending one night in the Tom Jones Shelter, above, where a very persistent raccoon made for a fitful night's sleep. But overall, a great little trip--it's always fun to stay in these old lean-to's in Harriman, which are usually empty this time of year, and there's nothing like a good solo trip to clear the head before the start of a new year.

Happy New Year. See a few more Harriman photos here.

Graveyard Point: Group Photo 2011

This is a short video I put together showing the "behind the scenes" action as photographer Corey Arnold rallied a group of commercial fishermen for a group photo on July 12, 2011. The fishermen in question are all part of the summer community at Graveyard Point, at the mouth of the Kvichak River in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where Corey and I have also fished for the past three summers. The photo graced the back cover of the December 2011 issue of Alaska magazine as part of an ad campaign opposing the proposed Pebble Mine. Read more about it over on Corey's blog.

If you look really closely at the final photo, below, you might be able to make out Corey and me in the middle of that scrum of raingear-clad fishermen.

Weekend Retreat File: the Rockpile

For those of us who spend too much time imagining the perfect woodsy retreat, architect Harris Armstrong's "Rockpile" cabin in DeSoto, Missouri, calls out with its alluring mix of simplicity and whimsy. Armstrong, a St. Louis architect active from the 1930s through the 1960s, was an influential Midwestern modernist. According to architect Mark Raimist, who wrote a book about Armstrong's work,

"The upper level contained a large fireplace and beds. The lower level (sometimes prone to flooding) contained a very basic kitchen. Armstrong built it himself during World War II, when there wasn't much construction acitivity. Unfortunately, it burned down in 1972, just one year before Armstrong's death."

For more photos of Armstrong's work, check out Raimist's excellent Flickr set. For more fuel to stoke the cabin/retreat daydreams, check out the addictive site The Modern Cabin.

Go West, Young Man

I've been saying it for years, but this beautiful time-lapse video from Uncage the Soul Productions, shot over six months, says it more eloquently: Oregon is the place. I spent at least part of every summer of my childhood in Oregon--my dad's from Roseburg, in southern Oregon--and have been up and down the peak you see below, Mt. Thielsen, probably a dozen times.

Finding Oregon from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

My hope is that the vicarious thrill of this video will be enough Oregon for most people--we don't want it getting crowded out there.

Ice Cube expounds on Eameses, Architecture

Best line delivered in front of the Eames Case Study House in Pacific Palisades, CA, probably ever: "This is going green 1949-style, bitch! Believe that." That's some truth, Cube.

Part of a series of videos put together in support of Pacific Standard Time, the ongoing survey of 20th century SoCal arts and culture, it's full of revelations. Did  you know Ice Cube studied architectural drafting before becoming a rapper?

If you're in LA and have the chance, I highly recommend the "California Design, 1930-1965: 'Living in a Modern Way'" exhibit at LACMA, which features a full-sized reproduction of the Eames living room, complete with furniture and decor from the actual house.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Rep. Don Young embarrasses self, Alaska.

Rep. Don YoungRepresentative Don Young (R), Alaska's "Congressman for life," has long been known as a crank with a great affinity for pork-barrel projects (particularly those that support his friends in the resource development community), an atrocious attendance and voting record, and a distaste for environmentalists. Which is why it's no surprise that he and historian Douglas Brinkley don't quite see eye to eye. Brinkley, who recently wrote a history of Alaska's conservation movement, The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, was giving testimony to a Natural Resources Committee hearing on ANWR yesterday when Young took offense to this pointy-headed, ivory-tower intellectual suggesting that he and the good people of Alaska shouldn't be able to drill wherever they please.

As the Seattle Post Intelligencer blog reports it, the incident went down something like this:

Young, who supports drilling in ANWR, set off the fiery exchange when he called Brinkley’s testimony “garbage” and then mistakenly called Brinkley “Dr. Rice.”

“It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice University is a university,” Brinkley said. “I know you went to Yuba (Community) College…”

Young, who is visibly angry in the video of the exchange, shouted back, “I’ll call you anything I want to call you when you’re in that chair. You just be quiet.”

Brinkley, of course, didn’t take those comments lightly or back off.

“You don’t own me,” the professor said. “I pay your salary. I work for the private sector and you work for the taxpayer.”

Committee Chairman Doc Hasting, R-WA, stepped in to break up the heated argument.

The Washington Post, which also has video of the exchange, says that Young's camp afterwards tried to characterize it as “a publicity stunt by Mr. Brinkley in order to sell books", while Brinkley, for his part, refused to back down, calling Young “a crazy zealot for molesting the refuge” and saying, “I was hoping for the chance to get into a heated debate with him, but, alas, it’s hard in that forum.”

Fifty years ago today: Michael Rockefeller Disappeared

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Michael Rockefeller's disappearance in the churning waters off the coast of western Papua's remote and headhunter-populated Asmat region. Rockefeller, who was in the region to collect Asmat art and artifacts, tried to swim for shore after capsizing the overloaded catamaran he'd rigged up using two local canoes. An extensive search turned up no trace of the young heir; the official conclusion was that he had probably drowned while trying to swim to shore from his swamped boat.

Absent a corpse, alternate theories proliferated: that he orchestrated his own disappearance, or was eaten by crocodiles or sharks,  or that he'd made shore and was eaten by cannibals or being held as a captive god. Decades of grisly speculation have yielded books, films, TV shows, and at least one song by a 1980s jangle-pop band from Georgia. Over the past year, the mystery’s cultural staying power has been reaffirmed, first with an off-Broadway play called “The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller” by playwright Jeff Cohen, and then with a documentary called “The Search for Michael Rockefeller” directed by Fraser Heston, son of screen legend Charlton Heston, that utilizes footage and interviews shot by a film crew that went looking for Michael in 1968.

An Asmat shield collected by Michael Rockefeller.For those looking to understand a little of what drew Michael to this fantastical part of the world, it's worth perusing the truly impressive array of objects he collected during his brief time among the Asmat. The objects--spears and shields and ceremonial poles and canoes and household tools--were shipped back to New York after his disappearance, and many are on permanent view in the Michael C. Rockefeller wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

And then, of course, there is my own contribution to the Rockefellerana genre. I first wrote about Michael's disappearance for Outside magazine in 2003 and subsequently helped develop that article into a television pilot for the travel channel, which I wrote and hosted. The companion article to the TV show, which also ran in Outside, can be read here, recounts our expedition to Western Papua as well as the travails of first-time TV hosting. For those who missed my brief foray into television, the trailer for the show is embedded below. 

Update on Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:00AM by Tim Sohn

Also, this Rockefeller article has been added to my profile at byliner.com, so be sure to check it out there.

This poster deserves a national campaign.

A sign made as a school project by a student from the village of Igiugig, on the south shore of Alaska's Lake Iliamna. Simple, direct, effective. A+.

See more photos from my recent trip to Alaska on my Flickr page here.

The village of Igiugig, at the head of the Kvichak River on the shore of Lake Iliamna.