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Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Weekly Post: THE TONGASS: Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees (#201+) by Robert Glenn Ketchum

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees
by Robert Glenn Ketchum


In 1985, I began a 2-year commission to explore the Tongass rainforest, the largest forest in the United States Forest Service (USFS) system AND the largest temperate rainforest in the world. It was a unique, old-growth environment under siege from industrial logging. The resulting investigative book I published helped to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Bill, protect 1,000,000 acres of old-growth, and create 11 new wilderness areas. This is the story of how that was achieved.
~Robert Glenn Ketchum




Tuesday, October 3, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #366
Tongass, #366:  
As I near the end of this Tongass blog, I am going to repost a number of images that marked the best of my various trip experience over the four years I spent working there. I was commissioned to work in the rainforest by Barney Mchenry who previously provided me with my Hudson River commission. Barney thought the best way to be introduced to the Tongass was aboard Boat Company boat which was owned by Michael McIntosh, so he introduced us. Michael was happy to have me join the other members of the boat, and one of the first places we visited was the very small community of Warm Springs. Warm Springs overlooked a large, and raging, waterfall, which Michael wanted to fish. When he got near the waterfall, the scale of my coming Alaskan adventure became clear.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 29, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #365
Tongass, #365:  
The morning after my plane flight, weather rolled in and our cove was in a deep fog, so instead of going back too bed, I threw my parka on over my pajamas and wandered out on deck to find the shoreline of trees steaming in the morning sunrise.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 15, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #364
Tongass, #364:  
I had never flown in a small plane, so Michael McIntosh thought I should as it would give me a very different perspective of the Tongass. I had never shot from an airplane either, so I would learn something new on this flight. Just a few minutes after we departed from Warm Springs, we flew over this high alpine lake, and I began to realize how very different everything looked from up in the air.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #363
Tongass, #363:  
As I near the end of this Tongass blog, I am going to repost a number of images that marked the best of my various trip experience over the four years I spent working there. I was commissioned to work in the rainforest by Barney McHenry who previously provided me with my Hudson River commission. Barney thought the best way to be introduced to the Tongass was aboard a Boat Company boat which was owned by Michael McIntosh, so he introduced us. Michael was happy to have me join the other members of the boat, and one of the first places we visited was the very small community of Warm Springs. Warm Springs overlooked a large, and raging, waterfall, which Michael wanted to fish. When he got near the waterfall, the scale of my coming Alaskan adventure became clear.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 1, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #362
Tongass, #362:  
Endicott Arm is a deepwater fiord that does not offer an anchorage, so our boat anchored in the shallower waters near the mouth of the arm and we took the smaller tenders to voyage up to the calving glacier.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #361
Tongass, #361:  
My kids and I had come to Juneau to board one of The Boat Company’s boats for a tour of the fjordlands to the south. We had been into Tracy Arm several times but not the adjoining fjord, Endicott Arm, so that is what we would explore on this visit.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 18, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #360
Tongass, #360:  
After leaving our week stay at Camp Denali, my kids and I took the train back to Anchorage where we overnighted, then flew to Juneau the next day. Population-wise, Juneau is a relatively small city. It is also the last port for the numerous cruise ships before they head south. As you can see here, when three of them are in town at the same time, their collective passengers are nearly as great as Juneau’s entire population.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 11, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #359
Tongass, #359:  
After a week at Camp Denali, which included hiking every day, when we got on the train to head back to Anchorage, all the activities finally caught up with my kids, who then passed out cold for most of the trip.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 4, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #358
Tongass, #358:  
Another roadside attraction in Denali National Park.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, June 27, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #357
Tongass, #357:  
Another advantage of staying at Camp Denali besides the great field trips, is that the naturalists know some really fun things to do. After a morning hike, our naturalist that day took us to a ‘“special” place for lunch. We climbed a slope covered with deep, lush tundra, and at the top where we stopped to eat, we were afforded great views in every direction. Most assumed that was the point of coming to this location. However, when we had finished eating, our fearless leader informed us the view was not the point of our location, and with that, she threw herself down the hill rolling head over heels. She was “tundra rolling”. Of course that immediately set off the kids who threw themselves down the slope after her. Hysterical! That is my son, Travis, in orange, and he is doing it backwards.


photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #356
Tongass, #356:  
Here the Camp Denali naturalist has my kids multi-tasking. Travis is using a spotting scope to watch a family of loons swim about on a lake, and Talja is picking berries for a little snack.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, June 13, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #355
Tongass, #355:  
On the opposite side of Wonder Lake, the shore is formed by a large dome called Strawberry Ridge. A favorite dayhike of Camp Denali is to start at the far end of Wonder Lake, surmount the dome and hike back to camp. It is a long hike, but not difficult, and lunch is consumed along the way. As it is a nice warm day on this particular hike, after lunch both of my kids took short naps.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, June 6, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #354
Tongass, #354:  
While the tourists staying in the hotels outside the park ride in and out on the main road, guests staying at Camp Denali get to explore the backcountry roads, and go hiking, something else the tourists never get to do. Here, on one of the dayhikes, the Camp Denali naturalist is teaching my children to identify various wildflowers.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, May 30, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #353
Tongass, #353:  
This is my daughter, Talja, kissing a moose sculpture at the Denali visitor center. Her lips have been busy on this trip, she kissed two whales in Seward, and another in Juneau.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, May 23, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #352
Tongass, #352:  
The morning routine at Camp Denali evolves. Everyone has had breakfast and now the staff is delineating the various adventures we can choose for the day, after which we will all make our own lunches and then depart in the vans.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, May 16, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #351
Tongass, #351:  
The bus ride to the end of the road and Camp Denali is 10hrs., so after you board at a nearly 1/2-way point, the bus stops adjacent the Toklat River and serves dinner. It is well planned and organized by the Camp Denali staff, even for the most inclement weather. The bus has a huge tarp on the roof, and all the meals have been preprepared family style, so a big table is set up under the tarp and everyone lines up for a more than hearty meal.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, May 9, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #350
Tongass, #350:  
Another point of amusing interest in Anchorage is this semi-psychedelic underpass. The street above is lined on both sides with many restaurants and several large hotels. There is a lot of foot traffic that crosses back and forth, but there are no traffic lights on the busy street, so the tunnel is the safest way to get from one side to the other.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, May 2, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #349
Tongass, #349:  
In the Tongass rainforest the Tlingit is the largest tribe, and because they are surrounded by an endless forest of trees they express their art in their houses, boats, and totem poles decorated with very distinct, stylized designs. In the Bristol Bay region, the two predominant tribes work in a very different way. There is little forest to provide wood, so these tribes have chosen to work with things salvaged from the shore, and hunted from the sea. The mask above has many elements. The lighter objects are Walrus ivory, The mask and arms are wood, The face details are sea shells and abalone. The headdress are Raven’s feathers, and the two concentric circles that surround the face are whale baleen.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, April 25, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #348
Tongass, #348:  
On the various trips I made with my children to Camp Denali, we would arrive a day or two before catching the train there and wander about in Anchorage. To me one of the most interesting aspects of Anchorage is that there are a lot of art galleries featuring Native crafts. Masks are one of the most common items, and this store has masks from dozens of different Alaskan tribes.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #347
Tongass, #347:  
Along with taxidermy animals, Anchorage hosts numerous galleries that sell Native Alaskan art, many of which are masks. There are more than twenty tribes in Alaska, and each tribe has its own style and designs. I always find browsing in these galleries interesting, and my home in Manhattan Beach is decorated with some fine pieces that I have purchased over the years.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #346
Tongass, #346:  
Travis is being stared down by this Polar bear.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, April 4, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #345
Tongass, #345:  
I spent a fair amount of time in Anchorage because I served on the board of the Alaska Conservation Foundation for 9yrs., so I knew Anchorage well. When I would take my kids to Camp Denali we would go by train from Anchorage and overnight there for a day or two, so everyone could goof around. There is no shortage of stuffed animals in town.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, March 28, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #344
Tongass, #344:  
Another great feature of touring the Tongass when aboard one of the Boat Company’s boats is that they all have ship-to-shore tenders. These smaller boats carry guests ashore for day hikes, and serve as fishing platforms. They also allow for more intimate sightseeing being able to go where the larger boat cannot. On this particular day Talja, Travis, and I are watching a very active glacier calve. Our guide also knows that you will get cold without some activity so she has brought along several thermoses of soup and hot chocolate.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, March 21, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #343
Tongass, #343:  
It does not get more fresh than this. On days that you go fishing aboard any Boat Company boat, you literally eat what you catch for your dinner. On this particular day, we got in some excellent salmon fishing, and now the chef is preparing the fillets that we will have for our evening meal. Yummo!


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, March 14, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #342
Tongass, #342:  
Aside from Camp Denali, my other Alaskan experience that I love best is to be aboard one of the Boat Company’s boats exploring the islands of the Tongass Rainforest. They operate three boats in southeast, all of which are about this size. There is generally a staff of twelve or so, which includes naturalist guides and a superb chef, that hosts about 25 guests on a 10-day trip. On board there is plenty to do, but every day you also go hiking, or fishing, or both. The particular pleasure of being aboard one of these vessels is, unlike kayaking and camping, when you have a day, or several days, of miserable weather, you are in a cozy stateroom when you sleep.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #341
Tongass, #341:  
My kids were with me on this trip, so at the top of the pass on the Richardson Highway I had some fun with them and challenged them to see who could balance on this rock with just one foot. I won. Hahaha!


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, February 28, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #340
Tongass, #340:  
The view at the top of the Richardson Highway looks back down in the narrow Valdez fjord and offers an expansive overlook of the surrounding mountains, which in the winter months have become a favorite destination for extreme skiers.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, February 21, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #339
Tongass, #339:  
About halfway between Whittier and Cordova, a long arm branches off of Prince William Sound, and it terminates in the town of Valdez. Valdez is not as interesting to me as Cordova, but it gives access to a highway that is a pleasant drive and circles back to Anchorage. At the end of town, the Richardson Highway begins to rise rather quickly culminating in a scenic pass before passing through to the interior. I always stop at the top of the pass to climb the rocky knoll and take in the view.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #338
Tongass, #338:  
On the day I took my kids on the drive up the Copper River delta, it was raining hard and near the terminal bridge there was a good view of the glacier that entered the river from the other side (last post), so we parked the car and watched the glacier calve while we ate lunch. The glacier was quite active, I suspect stimulate by the rain, so we hung out for several hours At the time, it did not occur to me that all that water was making the river rise, but when we began our return to Cordova, we came to a number of sections of the road that were completely underwater as you can see here. Never a dull moment.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, February 7, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #337
Tongass, #337:  
Not far outside of the town of Cordova is the Copper River delta. The Copper is the tenth largest river in the U.S., and the delta host a vast complex of braids that extend for miles. On this map link the cluster of red tags to the left are Cordova, and to the far right you can see the delta. A gravel road runs out of town, crossing over the delta and then paralleling it to the east, terminating at the Million Dollar Bridge. It is an enjoyable drive where you often see wildlife, and when the salmon are spawning, the run up the Copper is astounding, and there is wide agreement that the Copper River salmon are the best tasting in the world.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, January 31, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #336
Tongass, #336:  
Just past Girdwood on the road that parallels Turnagain Arm, there is a short road that turns east and goes through a tunnel in the mountain emerging in the town of Whittier. I find nothing attractive about Whitttier, but I don’t go there to stay in the town. I go there to catch the ferry that will take me across Prince William Sound to a town I do like very much, Cordova. Cordova is small in size but big on fishing, and besides a harbor full of boats, there are several fish processing plants at the waterfront Anywhere fish are processed there are a loi of birds and in the case of Cordova, thousands of seagulls as you can see here, flocking the water behind Travis and Talja.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #335
Tongass, #335:  
On the way to Seward and the Kenai Peninsula, you pass the town of Girdwood, home to the Alyeska ski resort. At the mouth of the Girdwood Valley is a bakery and restaurant that provides tasty Alaskan-sized meals. Talja ordered pancakes.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #334
Tongass, #334:  
No one lives on the far side of Resurrection Bay, so bears and birds are free to roam and feed, on the now dead spawned out salmon. Many people drive over to Fourth of July Beach to see the bears and birds, but the rules of behavior favor the animals and not the humans. Travis and Talja know their mother does not like bears, so of course they wanted me take this picture so they could send it to her.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, January 10, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #333
Tongass, #333:  
When you are in Seward there is a good deal to explore, and when the salmon are spawning they are doing so in the many creeks on the far side of Resurrection Bay. at a place called Fourth of July Beach. Once the salmon spawn, they die, and their dead bodies choke up the creeks and wash up on the shore, which attracts hordes of birds and also quite a few bear.


photographs) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2023,
@RbtGlennKetchum @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, January 3, 2023

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #332
Tongass, #332:  
Another of my favorite cities is Seward. It is easy to reach with a beautiful drive from Anchorage, and it is built adjacent to a huge bay that opens to the Pacific. Resurrection Bay is not only wide, but also quite long, nonetheless, in earthquake prone Alaska, because it is open to the pacific, it is not immune to tsunamis. In fact, the locals joke about the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 which leveled every single building in Seward. As a consequence, many fires were started, and the joke is that the city would have been reduced to an ash pile had not a massive tsunami come in, sweeping over the entire city, and putting the fires out. Hahaha!


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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #331
Tongass, #331:  
Most of the industrial sites in Sitka are near the ends of the road and not in the central city. This little jewel is tucked discreetly in what was formerly a clearcut. Very attractive.


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Tuesday, December 20, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #330
Tongass, #330:  
Although Sitka is one of my favorite cities, it is large enough to support substantial industries as well, most related to logging and paper. As I said in a previous post, none of the industrial locations like seeing photographers taking pictures of their sites, and this one in particular has posted signs saying “no photographs allowed”. What are they afraid of ?


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Tuesday, December 13, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #329
Tongass, #329:  
Sitka is one of the larger towns in Southeast, and besides fishing, it is home to various aspects of the logging industry. I wanted pictures like this for my book, so every time I visited Sitka, I drove to the various industrial sites and snapped a few pictures before I was spotted. These property owners did not like seeing me with a camera photographing things like this.


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Tuesday, December 6, 2022
THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #328
Tongass, #328:  
I often made the drive from Anchorage to Seward because I really liked Seward. It is a relatively small town, but it has some great restaurants and small shops to explore. It also has a colorful, if somewhat disheveled marina with a lot of strange objects scattered about rather randomly.


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Tuesday, November 29, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #327
Tongass, #327:  
Many of the small towns in the Tongass have unique characteristics. They all have waterfronts that harbored numerous boats, but there are other colorful things as well, so I would wander around on the docks to explore all there was to see. This is quite a collection of floats, ropes, and wire baskets.


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Tuesday, November 22, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #326
Tongass, #326:  
Many of the islands unfortunately offer this disgusting abuse of their natural habitat. Not one of these logs comes into the U.S. to be used in American manufacturing, and supporting American jobs. Every last tree felled is shipped to Japan. And, look at the wasted wood left on the ground to rot. It is shameful that the Congress allows this to be done to our public lands. Stop the cut. Restore Roadless Rule. Tell Biden to do something about this.


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Tuesday, November 15, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #325
Tongass, #325:  
Some of the Tongass' diverse habitats are vertical. This is the fjord called Rudyerd Bay, a little south of Ketchikan, and as you can see, the walls are straight up and down, but that does not stop them from being densely vegetated.


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Tuesday, November 8, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #324
Tongass, #324:  
Over the last month I have been showing examples of how the many islands of the Tongass rainforest sport very differing habitats. Here is another example. Deep into the old growth of Admiralty Island, there is a vast complex of blackwater swamps and acres of skunk cabbage growing in it.


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Tuesday, November 1, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #323
Tongass, #323:  
This island habitat is very wet and swampy, as a consequence there are not a lot of big trees, but there is a dense understory of ferns and the ever-dangerous Devil’s Club, whose every branch and leaf are covered with thousands of sharp spines. It is not a good idea to try and navigate this terrain.


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Tuesday, October 25, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #322
Tongass, #322:  
Here is an island at low tide, revealing several connections to what appear to be smaller islands at high tide. There is also a substantial kelp covering and a lot of exposed shellfish. Because many rainforest natives live a subsistence lifestyle, the Tlingit have a saying, “When the tide is out, your table is set."

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Tuesday, October 18, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #321
Tongass, #321:  
In the 17,000,000 acres of the Tongass rainforest, there are more than 1,000 islands. Some are very large, some are quite small. Most interesting to me, however, is that they are very different from one another. Over the next few posts I am going to show you how widely these habitats differ. In this image, I am on a relatively small island, the entirety of which is completely covered by a variety of mosses. There is no soil showing anywhere.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #320
Tongass, #320:  
On this relatively small island in the Tongass rainforest EVERYTHING on the island is covered by deep layers of plushy moss, even the trees. This image is of a rock, buried beneath multiple layers of differing mosses each growing over the other. It is a strange, spongy world in which to walk around.

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Tuesday, October 4, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #319
Tongass, #319:  
On this island in the Tongass rainforest it is very swampy with numerous blackwater ponds, and lots of moss growth. Some of the blackwater is so still you can walk into it without realizing that you have.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #318
Tongass, #318:  
Although there are about 17,000,000 acres in the Tongass rainforest, spread across 1000+ islands, there are many different habitats that vary widely from island to island. This image was made on Chichagof, part way up a mountainside where tundra meadows host small ponds, and lots of stunted trees. Quite a beautiful little microniche.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #317
Tongass, #317:  
Climbing down from the top of the rock dome on Chichiagof Island we encounter numerous, small tundra ponds, and verdant meadow complexes, all of it very squishy underfoot, like walking on a sponge.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #316
Tongass, #316:  
This is my wild child, pondering the landscape of the rock dome where we have climbed. I love the hair!

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Tuesday, September 6, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #315
Tongass, #315:  
Besides numerous kayak trips and river floats, the best way to get around in the vast expanse of the Tongass rainforest was aboard one of the small luxury yachts of The Boat Company. Carrying around 30 people, guests and staff included, the boats were capable of motoring into fjords and other places cruise ships could not go. On this particular trip, we anchored deep in the middle arm of Chichagof Island’s Kelp Bay, where we did some fishing, and went on a couple of day hikes. In this image, we have scrambled up through some tundra meadows to the top of a rock dome. To Travis’ right, you can see our boat in the distance, and we got to the base of where we are now by using the much smaller shore boat.

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Tuesday, August 30, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #314
Tongass, #314:  
The torrential rain never let up, so dinner was a stand-up affair under the cover of our blue tarp. Water flowed off the tarp in every direction, and the roar of the rain hitting it was so loud, it was difficult to have a conversation. The ground upon which we were camped had become a 1” pool of water. When our meal was over, there was little to do, so we all crawled into our tents that, thanks to great tech, remained reasonably dry. The fierce rain continued throughout the night, and got even harder with the dawn of the next day. We were due to be picked up, but we knew that was not going to happen because it was raining so hard you could barely see the shoreline in front of our camp, and it was only about 20ft. away. Knowledgeable campers always pack extra meals besides those planned for the days of camping, so we had food, and little else to do but eat it to stay warm. The rain never let up, and we tired of standing around in camp, so we took a very squishy hike in the forest behind us. That night when we all retired, the rain was still pounding down, but sometime around midnight, it began to break off, and the next morning it stopped. Visibility was good, and we knew our friends with the boat would be coming as we were a day overdue for pick-up, so we broke camp, and had just finished disassembling the kayaks when they appeared. The ride back to Petersburg was brief (and warm) and our friends informed us that it had rained 9” in the last 48hrs. We were all glad to have dinner in a restaurant, and a comfortable, dry bed to sleep in this night.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #313
Tongass, #313:  
The outgoing tide was sucking the ice pack with it, and because of the curvature of the southern shoreline of the arm, it offered us some relative protection from the flow of ice. We made fairly good progress, but when we rounded the walled shore to a place in the bay where you could see the glacial face, it was clear we were not getting much further. The Le Conte glacier was in VERY active retreat, and was calving massive amounts of ice which blocked the arm from shore to shore. Although we could see the glacier, it was still a good distance away, and there was no chance we could get through the ice cover and get any closer. So, we sat and watched for awhile, and had some snacks to keep ourselves warm, finding it amazing that the rain just kept getting harder and harder. During this down time, the tide turned, and began to flow back into the bay,..bringing with it all the outbound ice. Because we were watching the glacier, we did not notice this inflow for some time. When we finally did, it was almost too late as we were getting locked in, so we quickly turned our kayaks around, and got against the rock wall of the southern shore, where we could creep along slowly, and work our way towards the mouth of the bay. It took a good bit of time as navigating the ice had to be done carefully, but eventually we put most of the pack behind us, crossing the mouth of the arm, and heading back to camp. The rain was still relentless.

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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #312
Tongass, #312:  
Before our boat pick-up from Petersburg, we had planned one more day to explore Le Conte Bay. It was a short paddle from our crescent cove camp, around the peninsula at the mouth of the bay, where we hoped to work our way through the ice pack and get closer to the glacial face. By the time we entered the bay, it was pouring rain, and the bay was REALLY choked with ice. We picked our way through the pack, trying to take advantage of any open holes we could find, and we found we had the greatest success by staying close to the southern wall of the arm.

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Tuesday, August 9, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #311
Tongass, #311:  
It rained really hard throughout the night, but was kind enough to break-off for awhile so we could have breakfast. Our plan for the day was to paddle around the crescent hook of our beach camp, and enter the mouth of Le Conte Bay. Not long after breakfast the rain started up again, but that did not change our plans, so we geared up, and got into our kayaks, and set off on our adventure for the day. At the far end of the bay there was a large, and actively calving glacier and it was filling the bay with an impressive amount of ice. Nonetheless, we planned to work our way through cautiously, and get as close to the glacial face as we could to see some calving.

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Tuesday, August 2, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #310
Tongass, #310:  
It had been relatively clear and sunny on the day of our paddle down the North Arm of the Stikine river, to our new camp at the mouth of Le Conte Bay, and at dinner we were greeted with a spectacular show of late light (last post), and then a blazing sunset. We were enjoying the evening so much, we paid little attention to dark clouds settling in on the horizon. However, by the time we were ready to turn-in, they had moved over us and a light rain had begun to fall. During the night, the falling rain became a downpour that hammered away at our tents.

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Tuesday, July 26, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #309
Tongass, #309:  
The main branch of the Stikine river enters Frederick Sound near the town of Wrangell. We had alternative plans, however, and we turned to float up the North Arm so we would have a chance to explore Le Conte Bay Following two nights of camping at the mouth of the bay, we have scheduled a pick-up from some of our fishermen friends in St. Petersburg, a little further to the north. There was plenty of current in the North Arm so it was an easy transition, and about 3pm we merged into the waters of the sound, and the iceflow out of Le Conte Bay. We paddled through the ice to reach a beautiful beach cove on the north side of the bay, where we found a flat, protected, and very comfortable place to pitch our tents at the edge of the high tideline. This is our view from camp as we prepare dinner.

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Tuesday, July 19, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #308
Tongass, #308:  
On this particular evening, there was just enough moisture in the air, that when the sun dipped below the ridgeline of the mountain, a faint spectral rainbow appeared, and lasted for about half an hour.

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Tuesday, July 12, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #307
Tongass, #307:  
Here is one of our evening camps. The huge tree trunk has become our gear bench, and a table for our “kitchen”. If you look, in the distance you can see a portion of the river, and it is worth noting, that we have carried our kayaks up onto our sandbar, a considerable distance from the water, taking no chances that a fluctuation in the river might reach them.

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Tuesday, July 5, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #306
Tongass, #306:  
Because the Stikine river volume grew during the warmth of the day, and then shrank in the cool of the night, the immediate shoreline was regularly transformed. I walked those banks in the early mornings before the flow would come up, and found many graphically beautiful designs created by the current, and things it deposited.

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Tuesday, June 28, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #305
Tongass, #305:  
Another feature of the Stikine river environment is the river constantly changing its elevation. On some cold days the fluctuation is negligible, but on hot days it may be significant. On this particular day, we took a break from our float to hike up to a glacier. Our camp was on a sandbar in the middle of numerous braids, and when we left for the hike in the morning, we walked through very shallow water to get to the shore, and go inland. The water was never close to our boot tops. The day was hot, and we lingered at the glacier to have lunch. On our hike out, we arrived at the same place where we crossed that morning, to find everything had changed. The flow of the river was much faster, and the water was significantly deeper. All of these changes occurred because the heat of the day dramatically increased the melting of the many glaciers that feed into the river, adding to considerably more volume. Because we were wearing packs, we needed to proceed as cautiously as possible, so to steady ourselves we got some sturdy debris branches. What was previously was ankle-deep water, was now thigh-deep, and flowing with enough force to sweep you off of your feet, so the branches allowed us a supportive tripod. Once we reached our camp sandbar, we had to remove our boots, pour the water out, and wring out our socks. A portion of our sandbar was now underwater, also.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #304
Tongass, #304:  
As you can see here, this is the remains of a very large tree with a massive rootwad. Once this debris was grounded, the river piled tons of silt around these collected logs, and if you look past this, you can see that further down on this same sandbar, many other log jams are embedded similarly. Within the myriad of braids in the Stikine, the shores are lined with hundreds of these river-created landscapes.

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #303
Tongass, #303:  
The Stikine river meanders widely, undercutting tree-lined riverbanks, and dropping those trees into the river. Carried along by the swift current, they are tumbled, broken, in some cases, literally shredded, and many then get lodged in shallow water where sandbars begin to build around them. They also capture other logs floating by, and a damming effect is created. Some of these sandbars are huge, broadening to hundreds of yards wide, and extending for great lengths along the riverside. When we would camp on them, I spent a good deal of time exploring the many features of this landscape.

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Tuesday, June 7, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #302
Tongass, #302:  
In the last post, I said we had a nice big fire every night while floating the Stikine River, fed easily because there was so much driftwood available, so I thought you should see this to know that I am not kidding. You could have a fire every night of the year and not exhaust supplies like this. OMG!

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Tuesday, May 31, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #301
Tongass, #301:  
Sandbars are everywhere on the Stikine River, and they literally line the banks. There were no accessible forests to camp in, so we used the sandbars every night. They offered lots of room to spread out, made for comfy, flat tent floors, and we could safely have a big fire every night, which was easy to do because there was so much driftwood available.

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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #300
Tongass, #300:  
After our multi-day visit to the Thunderstorm homestead, our merry band of adventurers assembled our kayaks and began our float down the Stikine River. The Stikine is wide, and fast flowing, with a gazillion braids, and lots of debris. Choosing the right channel to stay in the deepest water is critical because lots of the lesser braids are laced with shallow sandbars, and getting a heavily loaded kayak stuck is a nightmare.

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Tuesday, May 17, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #299
Tongass, #299:  
Off the mountain, we hit the road leading back to the Thunderstorm homestead just as it got dark. Shortly thereafter, we had another good meal, and then went to bed early because the next day we would assemble the kayaks, and begin our float down the Stikine River, With kayaks prepped, and packed, Carey is making last minute adjustments to her paddling wardrobe, and then we are off. The river has a strong, fast current, so we move right along, but it will still be 10-days before we reach the Tongass, and southeast Alaska.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #298
Tongass, #298:  
The summit behind the Thunderstorm homestead was a long, and steady, ascent that finally offered a fantastic view of the Stikine River valley, and the surrounding mountains. Without a cloud in the sky, the day remained sunny and warm, so we had a leisurely lunch, and lay in the soft grasses drinking in the view until quite late in the afternoon. Finally, we had to get going so we could be off the mountain before dark, so it became time to strap the packs back on, and start the descent. The dog appears to be unmotivated to do anything other than sleep in the sunlight, although Leaf is saying, “come on, let’s go."

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Tuesday, May 3, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #297
Tongass, #297:  
After a huge dinner of venison stew, and a ton of fresh vegetables from their garden, everyone retired early because it was decided that the next day would be spent summiting the mountain behind their homestead. In the morning the skies were clear and the day was warming, so we began creating a lunch stash, and packing our daypacks. Of their several children, most were too young to make the all-day climb, but the oldest of them, Leaf (to the left), would join us. Neighbors came over to watch the other children while we were gone, and of course, everybody had a dog,..or two,..or three, so there was quite a posse in yard as we prepared to depart.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #296
Tongass, #296:  
To maintain their large subsistence garden, some work must get done everyday. As it is now late in the fall, Lynn Thunderstorm is busy harvesting the last of the edibles, and tilling the organic debris left over back into the soil. At the moment she is pondering what to do with this last extravagant section of her crops. Some of it will appear on our plates tonight. You can’t be more farm-to-table than that!

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Tuesday, April 12, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #294
Tongass, #294:  
Our flight has carried us over the ranges that border the Stikine River, and now we have dropped down low to fly up the valley and land at the small town of Telegraph Creek. We will spend a few days at the Thunderstorm homestead before we begin our downriver float back to the Tongass, and the Thunderstorms will pick us up at the airfield, and bring us to their home which is outside of town. To let them now we are arriving, we overfly their complex which you can see here. They live almost entirely subsistence lifestyles, which takes a lot of farm work to sustain enough food for a family of four, and occasional guests.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #293
Tongass, #293:  
Across the top of the icecap of the Stikine River Valley, we are now on approach to our destination, the small town of Telegraph Creek, and we are beginning to drop in altitude. The river is once again visible, and serval miles south of our destination, one last large glacier winds its way out of the mountains and down to the shore of the river. In 3-4 days, once we start our river float, we will encounter this glacial face and have to deal with ice it is calving into the fast moving waters of the Stikine, one of many things floating around us that make the river tricky to navigate in kayaks with rubberized shells that can be easily punctured.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #292
Tongass, #292:  
Suddenly, the turbulence is gone, as are the clouds, and we arrive at the top of the ranges in full sunshine. It is blindingly white, and expansive snowfields and glaciers extend in every direction. As earlier in this flight, the summits of numerous mountains jut up through the ice, but what you see is only 800ft. of a 4,000ft. mountain, the rest is buried beneath the glacial fields. Our pilot says that many of these peaks only recently emerged because the warming climate is melting the icecap.

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Tuesday, March 22, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #291
Tongass, #291:  
Flying above the ranges of the Stikine River Valley, the extensive icecaps generate their own weather. We will have brief sunny periods, and then encounter something like this. It is not dangerous as we have good visibility, but it does make for some unusual views of the landscape, and there is a fair amount of turbulence given the mixing of cold and warm that is generating the various cloud formations.

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Tuesday, March 15, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #290
Tongass, #290:  
On our flight up the Stikine River to the small town of Telegraph Creek, Canada, we are above the mountain ranges that define the southern shore of the river, and it becomes clear why the river flows with such volume. The ranges are smothered with ice fields from which numerous glacier descend into, or drain into, the river valley. This makes for some very dramatic whitewater on the river, and spectacular flightseeing above it.

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Tuesday, March 8, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #289
Tongass, #289:  
As our small plane climbs slowly up into the ranges that form the southern shore of the Stikine River Valley, glaciers and expansive ice fields extend in every direction. Just the tips of numerous large mountains stick up out of the ice, although some rise 3,000ft+ from the valley floor. That is quite a deep icecap. Also, as it is much colder up here, these fields of ice generate their own weather, which we begin to encounter as we fly farther north.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #288
Tongass, #288:  
The Stikine River meanders hundreds of miles from its headwaters in Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park in Canada to its mouth in southeast Alaska’s Tongass rainforest. It is also a broad river, that moves a large volume of water at a relatively high flow rate. As a consequence, there are many classified whitewater sections on the river. We are headed to a small town in British Columbia called Telegraph Creek, where we will spend a few days at the home of the Thunderstorm family, and then John Siske, Carey, and I, will float over 60 miles of the river back to Southeast. As our flight take us farther up river, numerous large mountains define the southern shoreline.

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Tuesday, February 22, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #287
Tongass, #287:  
After our adventures in Tenakee Springs, Carey and I, caught the weekly ferry back to Juneau, and began organizing our gear for a kayak trip down the Stikine River with our friend, John Siske. From Juneau we would fly south towards Wrangell, where the muddy delta (above) of the Stikine pours into Frederick Sound. Then, we would turn north, and follow the river many miles into the mountains to a small town called Telegraph Creek. In Telegraph Creek we would spend several nights with the Thunderstorm family, before beginning the paddle back down the river to the mouth. Because the trip will cover miles and miles of river, even paddling with the current will still take us at least 10-days to complete the journey.

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Tuesday, February 15, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #286
Tongass, #286:  
One day we spent kayaking around Tenakee Inlet, occasionally getting out to stretch, and wander along the shoreline being exposed as the tide was dropping. Being with Craig Mapes, and his partner, seemed to attract large animals to us. On our walk in the forest (last post), we encountered the evidence of a big grizzly, but while kayaking we met some even bigger residents of the inlet. Not far from home, we were pointed toward the shoreline, when a pod of Orca broke the surface in front of us. There were three, or four, of them, and Craig said we should change the angle of our kayaks, NOT to get away from them, BUT TO INTERSECT THEM. Carey, and I, thought that sounded like craziness, but we all found ourselves adjusting the angle of our paddle. As we got closer, they got bigger, and Craig suggested we lay into a couple of powerful strokes, and then take our paddles out of the water. Our glide path took us right into them, and at one point, we had porpoising Orca on either side of our kayak, so close we could have reached out and touched them. They were clearly aware we were there, but they were busy fishing, so they just went on about their business.

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Tuesday, February 8, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #285
Tongass, #285:  
Carey, and I, were going to take the next ferry to arrive in Tenakee, back to Juneau, but that was still several days away, so in the meantime, Craig Mapes, and his partner, took us on some hikes, and we also kayaked around the inlet. One day we followed a trail next to a beautiful river, that led us to a small lake where we did a little fishing. We knew there were bear around, so we were armed, and we made a lot of noise while we walked. We fished for awhile, and then ate lunch, before starting back to Tenakee. There were berries everywhere, and we would occasionally stop to graze on them. The trail was muddy, and on the way in we saw no prints, but on the way out, we discovered a huge, berry-filled poop in the middle of the trail, with some gigantic paw prints next to it. Time to be heading for home.

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Tuesday, February 1, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #284
Tongass, #284:  
Lastly, this part of the Kadashan forest is right out of Jurassic Park. This is a blackwater swamp festooned with mosses, and fostering skunk cabbage patches. On this day that we visited, there was no wind in the forest, and this blackwater was dead still, with perfect reflections. When I went to set up my tripod for this shot, I discovered I was 6” deep into the swamp, and did not even know it, because on approach, the complex reflection camouflaged the actual water’s edge.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #283
Tongass, #283:  
Other parts of the old growth Kadashan forest are menacingly impenetrable. The large green and yellow leaves that appear to be floating about in this image are Devil’s Club. The leaves are connected to those long stalks, and every inch of those long stalks are covered with vicious spines. Even the leaves have spines. There is no going through this, it is part of the terrain to be avoided as much as possible, and further exploring requires a work-around.

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Tuesday, January 18, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #282
Tongass, #282:  
The old growth forest of the Kadashan drainage is spectacularly diverse. Beneath the huge trees, the understory is a patchwork of micro-niches. Where there is flowing water, there are lush mosses, and a world of tiny plants and ferns. The forest floor is spongy, and blanketed by various forms of absorptive vegetation. There are a lot of squishing noises while we are walking around.

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Tuesday, January 11, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #281
Tongass, #281:  
Ashore, and with the boat now anchored, we ate a brief lunch, and then began to walk the banks of the river, back into a dense old growth that lay at the foot of some considerable mountains. As we walked, the tide began to drop, and the shore upon which we were walking grew wider and wider. Thankfully, it was not salmon season, so we did not encounter any grizzlies on the beach. After a mile or two, Craig determined that it was time to leave the river’s edge, and thrash our way into the understory of the forest. And thrash we did!

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Tuesday, January 4, 2022

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #280
Tongass, #280:  
Kadashan Bay will give us access to some primal old growth forests, but it will also expose us to a huge tidal flux, and a lot of grizzly bears. The above is a low tide aerial of the bay. At high tide, everything in the picture, except the shoreline trees, will be underwater. To get as close to the forested area in which we will hike, we enter the bay at the highest tide, and drive our boat well up into the treed shoreline. Since it will be a lowering tide when we finish our hike, Craig uses some Alaskan ingenuity to keep the boat from being left high and dry. Called an “Indian anchor”, Craig placed the boat anchor on the bow of the boat. Then he attached a long line to it. He then pushed the boat out from the shore where we were, letting it float until it drifted over the deep main channel of the river, at which point he jerked the anchor of the bow, positioning the boat about 400yrds. away from us, into the bay.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #279
Tongass, #279:  
Craig Mapes, and his partner, hosted us for several days at their home in Tenakee Springs. Bart and Julie Koehler took the ferry that visited weekly, back to Juneau and their jobs, but Carey and I stayed on because Craig wanted to show me some key locations in the forests of Chichagof Island that surrounded Tenakee. Using both his power boat and kayaks, I would have many excellent opportunities to make pictures. On this particular day (above), we are crossing Tenakee Inlet, and headed for Kadashan Bay, where Craig thinks some of the most spectacular old growth stands reside. Kadashan is a big bay, fed by a sizable river, and it goes nearly dry at low tide, so timing our visit with the tide table is essential, lest we strand ourselves ashore for 6hrs.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #278
Tongass, #278:  
At the edge of the forest, at the back of Craig Mapes' house in Tenakee Springs, was Craig’s work area, and his current project was a rowing dory he was building to use for fishing. All the wood was logged from the surrounding forest, scaled, and cut by hand. Working with “old school” craftsmanship, Craig held everything together with pegs, and no metal was involved. The dory was nearing completion and Craig worked on it a little each day, hoping to have it completed in time for the salmon run. Craig also had a motorized skiff which we would take when we went for the day hike in the Kadashan forest.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #277
Tongass, #277:  
The boat that brought us here, dropped us off and left, because we had been invited to stay for several days at the home of Craig Mapes, and his partner. Across the inlet from Tenakee Springs was a section of the forest known as Kadashan, a stunning section of mature old growth, and a deep bay at the river mouth, and Craig, and his partner, planned to take us for a visit to that forest, and kayaking around the inlet for the next few days. Craig was a wood craftsman of considerable skill, and he had built by hand the home in which he and his partner lived. The home was modest and efficient, much like Earl’s home where we stayed previously, before coming to Tenakee Springs. The garden surrounding Craig’s home, however, was extravagant, and massively productive. This (above) is a view of part of it, where Julie Kohler (back), and Craig’s partner, harvest greens for the evening meal.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #276
Tongass, #276:  
Eventually our boat from which we had been exploring Hoonah Sound, arrives at the small community of Tenakee Springs, home to about 100 people. Tenakee Springs residents all live subsistence lifestyles, growing their own food, foraging herbs and berries, and hunting for their meat. They DO NOT want the forests surrounding them to be logged, and they DO NOT want to be connected to any road system. Their opposition to this is widely known to be fierce. Some months before our visit, a new regional forester came to town to “reason” with the inhabitants about the planned logging, so they all gathered in the largest building in the village, and not unexpectedly, many of them were armed. The arrogant forester, showed maps of the planned cuts, which were booed, and then he said that since so many of them lived by subsistence hunting, that the clearcuts would help them, “because deer browse at the edges of clearcuts.” At that point the clicking of rifle bolts could be heard throughout the room, and the forester was hustled back to the boat that brought him, by rangers that accompanied his visit.

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Tuesday, November 30, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #275
Tongass, #275:  
Although Bart is not very happy about this flight in a small plane, I am loving it. Our pilot is flying low staying beneath the cloud layer for the best visibility, and the overcast light makes for ideal conditions to be taking pictures. Hoonah Sound is fed by many rivers, and as we fly by, one after another reveals their verdant deltas. We occasionally see bear, and clearly, Chichagof Island is densely forested. We are flying down the north arm of the sound, and at the point it separates from the south arm, there is a large bay, where we can see our boat awaiting us. After smooth water landing we disembark, and are greeted by our host, and some more food. It is cold, and clammy, with a light rain on and off, but we go out in the skiff, and do a bit of exploring anyway. We will spend several days on this boat, as we work our way towards Tenakee Springs, but for tonight we remain at anchor in this bay, which offers a clear view of a river delta with a big meadow. As we sat on the back deck having “cocktails,” two HUGE grizzlies encountered each other in the meadow and began fighting. They stood on their hind legs and traded vicious punches and face slaps. Grizzlies have gigantic claws, and at one point, one of them raked those claws down the chest of the other. We were all watching through binoculars, and when we saw that, Bart dryly commented, “Boy, I bet that hurt.” Just another entertaining night in the Tongass rainforest.

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Tuesday, November 23, 2021
THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #274
Tongass, #274:  
At the end of Lisianski Inlet is a stretch of old growth forest floor that runs through a valley for several miles and then opens onto Hoonah Sound. Hoonah Sound forms a shoreline of Chichagof Island which offers many square miles of Roadless area old growth forests. Our plane will take us from Earl’s home in the Inlet, through this valley, and into Hoonah Sound, where it will deliver us to a boat that awaits us in one of the sound’s bays. Unfortunately for Bart, he HATES small planes, so he has not been looking forward to this transfer. What is worse, the morning of our pick-up arrives with weather, and low clouds. As a consequence, we fly through the valley relatively blind, but the pilot is not worried because the flight path is a straight line. Nonetheless, Bart breathes a GREAT sigh of relief when Hoonah Sound comes into view (above).

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Tuesday, November 16, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #273
Tongass, #273:  
After a day of walking through, and photographing, the old growth forest at the end of Lisianski Inlet, it is time to return to Earls’ home, drink some beer, and prepare a dinner. The beer drinking starts as soon as we get back in the boat, however, because Early planned ahead and stashed many in a cooler he brought. Of course, during our return we had to pick-up some food from the “store,” so we visited one of Earl’s crab pots, to find it completely loaded. What you see here is Earl sorting the correctly sized ones for our dinner, and the smaller ones get tossed back into the water. There will also be Dungeness crab omelettes for breakfast, before a plane is to pick us up, and fly Bart, Julie, Carey, and me, to Hoonah Sound, quite nearby.

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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #272
Tongass, #272:  
In our walk through the tidal marsh and forest at the end of Lisianski Inlet, Earl had assured us there would be bear around, but that his tiny dog, Huggy, would be there to protect us. Nonetheless, everyone accept Julie, Carey, and I, were packing. Bart had a rifle, and a handgun, as did Earl, and Earl’s friend also shouldered a rifle. That is her “bear” dog you see in this picture.

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Tuesday, November 2, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #271
Tongass, #271:  
Not far from Earl’s home, Lisianski Inlet terminates in a grass and seaweed tidal marsh that edges into some prime old growth forest, which unfortunately, has been proposed to be clearcut. Our plan for our fist day was to hike in this forest, so I could make pictures. We would be joined by a friend of Earl, who would talk to us about the forest’s diversity, and the logging plans. Earl also assured us that there would be bear around, but Huggy would be there to protect us. Too funny!

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Tuesday, October 26, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #270
Tongass, #270:  
Earl’s home, deep into the Lisianski Inlet is ingenious. Created entirely by hand, and with no one else helping him, Earl harvested, and cut all of his own lumber. The home is located on a steep bluff, with a beautiful view of the inlet. It sits above a small, rocky tidal cove, where he anchors his skiff. To ease the labor of getting supplies up the many tiered staircase, he built this (above), a ramp with a trolley, so he can ferry materials up without having to carry them. Huggy, his dog, likes to ride the trolly down to the boat, when they go out to fish. They house has a solar array to save on fuel consumption during the summer months, but like most Alaskans living remotely, the main power source is a fuel-driven generator. I asked Earl about his, because I could not hear it (they are usually notably audible), and he responded that he didn’t move into the wilderness to hear a motor droning away, so he took me out behind his house, where an elevated boardwalk went off into the forest. Quite some distance out, we came to a nicely constructed shed, and I could hear the purr of an engine, but not loudly. When we went inside, I realized he had fully soundproofed the shed, in the middle of which sat a HUGE 8-cylinder, generator. I had to ask how he got this beast to this point in the forest, and he said it was manufactured in England, and shipped to Juneau by boat. It was then brought to Pelican on the ferry, and towed down to him on a float. To get it off the beach, and up the hill, he hooked the generator up to a winch, and using its own power, it pulled itself up the hill. Using that same trick, it pulled itself through the forest to where it now sits. Earl did not find the path that it dug through the forest floor very aesthetic, so he built the boardwalk above it.

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Tuesday, October 19, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #269
Tongass, #269:  
Bart, and Julie Koehler, Carey, and I, are joined in the small restaurant that was part of the village of Pelican, by several “friends” of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) for whom Bart and Julie work. Several village residents, and one personnel of the US Forest Service, eat with us also while we discuss the USFS plans to log part of the Lisianski Inlet old growth. The residents are uniformly opposed to the plan, and the USFS employee said he thinks the cut is a waste of tax dollars as there will be no profit to the Treasury from the logging. Around midday, and a few beers into the afternoon, our host arrives at the dock with his skiff to transport Bart, Julie, Carey, and I, to his residence farther down into the fjord. Earl is accompanied by his dog, Huggy, whom he claims is the best bear dog in southeast, Alaska. As you can see (above), Huggy, is quite small, so when I ask if he is joking about the dog, Earl says that Huggy does not engage with bears, he just smells them long before they can be seen, and his frenzied barking assures Earl that they are nearby.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #268
Tongass, #268:  
Bart and Julie Koehler, Carey, and I have come to Pelican to see this remote village, have a famous hamburger served by the only restaurant in town, and then ultimately, we will meet a resident of Lisianski Inlet that will take us deeper into the fjord, where he has hand-built his homestead. When the ferry pulls up to the docks, there is a lot of activity involving the offloading of equipment, and supplies, but aside from us, none of the other passengers disembark. There are many people aboard, but they are all continuing on to larger cities that have more facilities, Pelican is just the first stop of the morning. Our group hoists our gear, and we step off onto the over-water boardwalk that connects all of the houses and buildings. Our resident host won’t be here until midday, so we wander in search of the restaurant, and the famous hamburger.

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Tuesday, October 5, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #267
Tongass, #267:  
Bart, and Julie Koehler, Carey, and I, left Juneau on a 6a.m. ferry, and the journey to Lisianski Inlet is not that far, so we arrive in the early morning hours, and motor down a good length of the fjord. The town of Pelican, our destination is halfway down the fjord, and as we continue on, the surrounding mountains grow higher, and the fjord narrows. Pelican is primarily a fishing, and fish processing village, almost all of which is built on wooden pilings, out over the water, and above the 18ft+ high tideline. Much of the town is still in the shadows of the morning. Boats, and birds are everywhere, and the docks, and processing plants, are abuzz with activity.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #266
Tongass, #266:  
While Carey, and I, have been exploring the roads of Juneau, Bart and Julie Koehler, working on behalf of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), have set up a trip to a fjord-river system that hosts significant old growth trees which have been targeted for logging. The Lisianski Inlet is across the sound from Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and cuts deeply into Chichagof Island. It is a narrow, long fjord, and about halfway down the fjord is a very small town called Pelican. We will take a ferry from Juneau to Pelican, talk with a few of the people in town, eat one of the “famous” burgers made at the only restaurant, and ultimately, we will be met by a resident of the inlet, that has a hand-built home near the end of the fjord, where we will spend several nights. In this shot, the ferry is about to enter the inlet, and I find this perspective of a long-liner fishing set against the backdrop of the mountains in Glacier Bay, most dramatic.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #265
Tongass, #265:  
Off of the main road out of Juneau, which follows the shoreline, there are some branches, likely created as logging. or mining, roads that take you up into higher elevations. As Carey, and I, are just killing time in between specific trips, we wander up several of these spurs to explore. This was an especially lush, swampy meadow which we came across, and stopped to enjoy for awhile. As it would turn out, this is the image the editors at Aperture chose as the cover of my book, The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rainforest.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #264
Tongass, #264:  
At the end of the road out of Juneau, Carey, and I, have been taking a walk along the very verdant shoreline of Berner’s Bay. Above the saltwater tideline, rocks have become gardens draped with ferns, lichens, and deep carpets of moss. Unfortunately they are all big rocks, so there is no chance I can kidnap one, and bring it home to decorate my garden.

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Tuesday, September 7, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #263
Tongass, #263:  
Near the end of the Juneau road that follows the shoreline, one rainy afternoon, Carey, and I, found a particularly verdant rock beach with ferns, and mosses, covering everything that the saltwater did not reach at high tide. As you can see here, this rock is barely visible, and has become a veritable garden of diversity. What an amazing habitat,..it is not just the trees.

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Tuesday, August 31, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #262
Tongass, #262:  
After our instructive walk-and-talk through the 2nd-growth clearcuts around Juneau, Carey, and I, hung out in town for a couple of more days, because Bart Koehler of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council was planning several visits for us to places we had not previously been. Juneau has a lot of coastline, and a road system that follows it, so we spent our days exploring the shore, and the vistas they offered. Here is one of my favorites, near Point Bridget State Park, and with the tide substantially out, late light of the evening.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #261
Tongass, #261:  
The Tongass has been called “America’s Climate Forest” because of its unsurpassed ability to mitigate climate change impacts. The Tongass stores over one BILLION tons of carbon, keeping that heat-trapping element out of the atmosphere. Each of the big, old growth trees is like a gigantic stick of carbon that has been taking up, and storing carbon for centuries. Recent research shows that logging old growth worsens climate change, and it takes more than 200yrs. for 2nd-growth forests to capture as much carbon as the logging releases. There is no excuse for continuing to log the Tongass!. It is not only impacting climate change, criminal clearcuts like this that mock “the rules” of buffer zones, and degree of slope, damage the lake and river systems, destroying the habitat for the mammals, birds, and fish, and robbing indigenous people, and the American public of one of the country’s MOST significant resources.
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Tuesday, August 17, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #260
Tongass, #260:  
Of the many atrocities committed on the Tongass rainforest by industrial logging, the most destructive is the practice of ignoring the regulations put in place. In previous posts I have shown you the laughable barrier of trees left in place to protect lakes and streams - 1 standing tree does not make a barrier. For reasons that it is a RAIN forest there are also restrictions on logging slopes with too steep a gradient, which is intended to prevent landslides and muddy runoff that destroys salmon spawning streams. Ketchikan is one of the wettest parts of the Tongass, receiving an average of 325” of rain per year, and this cut is only about 10-miles from downtown. As you can see, with no regard for the gradient restrictions, the massive rainfalls have triggered numerous mud flow gullies on just this one small slope.

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Tuesday, August 10, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #259
Tongass, #259:  
Speaking of grizzlies (last post), this is a blackwater swamp salad bar for the bears. Quite a patch of -- as yet -- uneaten skunk cabbage. Just a good place to wade in, lay down, and snack on a hot summer day.

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Tuesday, August 3, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #258
Tongass, #258:  
This is another good example of an old growth forest system. A mixture of different sized trees; a more open canopy to the sky; a fairly well developed understory; a good bit of down timber/nurse logs; skunk cabbage; and a blackwater swamp. All that is missing is a grizzly, and thankfully I do not see one at the moment.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #257
Tongass, #257:  
Some parts of an old growth forest are more extravagant than others, and this is a small island where that is especially evident. The terrain is layered in mosses and mushrooms, and it is quite literally EVERYWHERE. It is important to follow the naturalist guide exactly so as not to damage any of this spectacular forest understory. This is old growth that feels prehistoric, but no velociraptors.

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Tuesday, July 20, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #256
Tongass, #256:  
This post, and the next, conclude my tutorial on comparing old growth to 2nd growth forests. In post #251, I identified one of the principle vegetations of a flourishing understory, Devil’s Club, and here is another, Skunk Cabbage (the big green leaves at the bottom). Found all over an old growth forest, huge patches of it grow where the terrain is swampy. It is also a favorite of the bears, who will go into a patch and rip it to shreds. On my 10-day traverse of Admiralty Island, the group I was with was portaging between two lakes, which took several carries. On the first leg, a section of the trail went through a considerable cluster of Skunk Cabbage, all undisturbed. On the second leg, we found it completely torn up. Uh, Oh!

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Tuesday, July 13, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #255
Tongass, #255:  
This is an even older 2nd growth forest of 20yrs.+ The trees are spindly with little branch development, and there still is no understory except for some mosses. A forest like this offers no support for wildlife, and virtually no carbon sequestration. It is criminal to turn Tongass old-growth into this, and I am glad to learn that the Biden administration is moving to restore the roadless rule discarded by the Trump administration.

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Tuesday, July 6, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #254
Tongass, #254:  
Here is another example of classic old growth Tongass rainforest. This canopy is more open than posts #251 and #252, but there is a good mix of older, bigger trees, and various sized, younger ones. Obviously the understory is VERY lush, with mosses growing on everything. If you have followed this blog, you have seen many instances of old growth understories, one aspect of which has not been represented by these recent pictures. In the deep forest, water is everywhere, and there are innumerable blackwater swamps. The presence of all that water also makes the deep forest more humid, which fosters the moss and plant growth.

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Tuesday, June 29, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #253
Tongass, #253:  
THIS is a sad, pathetic, 2nd growth forest after a clearcut. It is 15yrs. old, and still there is NO developing understory. The trees that have been planted to grow back are spindly, and too close together, and there is little canopy to speak of, because the growth in the upper branches is scraggly. The old growth Tongass is one of the greatest carbon sequestration ecosystems on the planet. This forest (above) offers little-to-nothing in carbon sequestration. Trashing the Tongass is a serious human mistake, and Alaska is paying for it since it is experiencing some of the most significant warming of any U.S. state. You reap what sow!

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Tuesday, June 22, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #252
Tongass, #252:  
Here is another example of an old growth understory. As you can see, it is a crush of vegetation. Fallen trees decay into the forest floor, many becoming seed beds for younger trees; moss clings to the rotting wood; diverse plants species thrive; the forest is dark because the large trees close the canopy above, and last, but not least, there is Devil’s Club everywhere (those are the yellow and green “floating” leaves). Devil’s Club is the bane of all bushwacking in old growth, because the ENTIRE plant is covered thorns, stems, branches, and EVEN THE LEAVES. It is a nasty encounter, and it flourishes everywhere.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #251
Tongass, #251:  
After our day of wandering the Juneau road system in the rain, Carey and I return to the Alaskan Hotel and Bar to drink and eat, while we enjoy their live music. We turn-in early because tomorrow at 8a.m., we are having breakfast with a US Forest Service employee, Matt Kirchoff, who is a researcher of old growth forest habitat, and John Schoen, who is a bear biologist. After our meal, they take us into the field to show us the notable differences between old growth, and a second generation forest. In short, I will offer some images to better explain those differences. Above is a classic old growth forest, defined by trees of many different ages and sizes. There is also a very lush, diverse understory, and in this particular grove (above), it also quite dark in the deep forest because the big tree canopy has blocked out most direct light.

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Tuesday, June 8, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #250
Tongass, #250:  
Eventually, the light drizzle let up, so Carey, and I, got out of the car and decided to hike one of the available trails around the Mendenhall glacier. Some trails were lakeside, or woodland, but one climbed fairly steeply to the side of the glacier, and led to a valley from which a large waterfall could be seen pouring out onto the glacial surface. This was Nugget Creek. As that trail would put us above the waterfall, we would also be above the glacier, and we decided that was worth a look, so off we went. The trail was steep in places, and made slippery because of the rain, thus our progress was slow, but steady. Eventually, we did rise above the glacier, and we could see its expansive surface of crevasses, all glowing various shades of ice-blue. As we drew closer to the side valley, the roar of the waterfall increased, and we finally came through a section of trees to find a narrow slash in the forest raging with turbulent water, which eventually plunged over the edge of the slope we had just been climbing. I left the trail and bushwacked to this vantage (above), where you have some sense of the dense scrub I am in, the plunge, and the striated face of the glacier. There is no glacier to be seen at this point anymore. It has retreated more than 1/2-mile from where Nugget Falls occurs.

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Tuesday, June 1, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #249
Tongass, #249:  
The image I made of the rock in Mendenhall Lake, not only became an embroidery (last post), it additionally became the cover shot for this book. In 1992, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University organized, and displayed a 20yr. retrospective of my work that then traveled to the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach (FL), and later the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in CA. Up to this point, Aperture had published three of my books, The Hudson River and the Highlands; The Tongass:  Alaska’s Vanishing Rainforest; and Overlooked In America:  The Success and Failures of Federal Land Management. So Aperture decided to take advantage of this exhibit organized by Cornell, and they published The Legacy of Wildness:  The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum to accompany the traveling show. Legacy was an important book for me because it not only contained photographs from the three previous Aperture books, but it also included much of my early work, and other projects that had never been published in books before, even to this day. Those pictures include some hand-colored work from my post-graduate period at CalArts; B&W images made with a 4x5 camera that were among my first gallery sales; a large selection of photographs from the B&W portfolio, “Winters: 1979-1980”; a very representative selection of images from my color portfolio, “Order From Chaos”; a unique body of work supported by Polaroid, “Planetary Graffiti,” made using their instantly developing, B&W, 35mm film, PolaPan, (these images were never even exhibited); another series of color images also never exhibited, “Stoned Immaculate”; a selection from the embroidery work I had been doing in China; and lastly, photographs created during my Artist-In-Residence at the Sundance Institute, which were never exhibited, nor published as a book, either.

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Tuesday, May 25, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #248
Tongass, #248:  
Like “Colorful Leaves and Grasses,” this photograph of a rock at the near shore of Mendenhall Lake, caught the attention of Zhang Mei-Fang, the Director of the embroidery guild in Suzhou, with whom I was working through the UCLA-China Exchange Program. We had used an “in-and-out-focus” technique in previous embroideries by rendering the background “soft,” with less detail, and by making the foreground “sharp,” with more detail, so she thought we should do that again here. However, at the time, the traditional embroidered rock in China was done in something referred to as “Taihu-style,” and I thought it was sadly fakey, not looking like rock at all. I did agree to do this, but ONLY IF they rendered the rock EXACTLY as it is depicted in the photograph. She was willing to try, and when this piece was finished, she noted that stitching the rock in this way changed Chinese embroidery tradition from stylized, to “rendering from nature.” This is a 20”x 24”, two-sided, diaphanous, standing table screen, that swivels 360˙. Both sides are identical. It took 1-1/2yrs. to complete, and employs a hand-dyed matrix into which more than 20 different stitch styles are sewn. This embroidery is currently in the permanent collection of the Jonathan Club of Los Angeles.

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Tuesday, May 18, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #247
Tongass, #247:  
Not far down the road from our wander in the tidelands (posts 243-245), Carey and I come to the Mendenhall Glacier, so we drive to the visitor’s center where several trails originate. When we arrive and park, it is raining pretty hard, so we eat some munchies and stay in the car. The car is parked at the shoreline of the lake facing a peninsula that juts out from the opposite shore. Sitting there, snacking, the rain breaks off, and this (above) is directly in front of the car. I probably could have made the shot through the car window, but got out and set up my tripod for the Pentax 6x7 camera, to make the exposure from the sandy beach. This image played into my career in numerous ways, one of which was being published in the Aperture book, The Tongass, Alaska’s Vanishing Rainforest. If you click on the Google map link I have provided here, you will also learn something about the effects of our warming climate. Originally, before the visitor center was established, the glacier extended to the middle of the big lake on the left side of the peninsula. At the time of our visit in 1985, the glacier face had retreated, and was between the right side of the peninsula, and the mountains to the right. Since 1985, the glacier has retreated even more to where it is shown in this 2021, 3-D, Google satellite map. That is A LOT of ice lost!

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2021,
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Tuesday, May 11, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #246
Tongass, #246:  
This day out driving around in the rain with Carey, did not necessarily give me pictures pertinent to what would be published by Aperture in my 1986 book, The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rainforest, but it proved VERY productive for my career. As you saw in the last post, I spent some time, ankle-deep in a swampy area, aglow with fall colors. Several years later, while working in Suzhou, China with a textile guild as part of the UCLA-China Exchange Program, the process of choosing which of my images worth embroidering, grew from my edit of photographs that I thought they would find attractive as subjects. On my visits, I would bring 8-10 prints covering a wide range of subjects and colors. When Director Zhang Mei-Fang saw the previous image posted, she was attracted to it immediately because it offered her a chance to show me some embroidery techniques that we had not used on previous pieces. As it would be called, “Colorful Leaves and Grasses,” showcased two of the guilds unique skills. It gave them a chance to use many different stitch styles in one embroidery, which traditionally was not often done. Intermixed here are four established stitches, and then they invented one other just for this subject. They also put on display their astounding range of dye colors, using more than 800 gradations to define the leaves and grasses. This embroidery measures 20”x 24”, and took 1-year to complete. It is currently in the collection of Mr. & Mrs. Richard Smooke of Sun Valley, ID.

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Tuesday, May 4, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #245
Tongass, #245:  
Rain, rain DON'T go away... just don’t rain too hard! The drizzle and the bright overcast are a color photographer's wet dream, so our drive about is making me very happy. Above is one of my favorite details of the afternoon. We had to slog around a bit to get here, and we are actually standing in shallow water, but hey, that is why Xtratuf (@Xtratuf) boots are called Alaskan tennis shoes. You don’t go anywhere, or get anywhere without them. As we wend our way down the road out of town, we will eventually come to the Mendenhall Glacier, but for the time being, I am having way too much fun in the weeds.

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Tuesday, April 27, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #244
Tongass, #244:  
In many places that experience the intermittent tidal fluctuations, tall, salt tolerant grasses flourish in the summer months, but when fall comes, and they die off, the tidal influx pushes them over, and leaves flow patterns in them. In this shot, you can see those patterns in the grass, and the brown vegetation is a huge fern that has died back. Again, the light rain that has been with us all day, has brought vivd color into everything, even the things that are dead.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #243
Tongass, #243:  
It was raining in Port Protection the next morning, as was predicted by the flaming sunset of the previous night, but our pilot had enough visibility to come for us, so Carey, and I, return to Ketchikan relatively early in the day, and then catch a commercial flight to our next destination, Juneau. We intend to do a number of interviews in Juneau, and two people, a bear researcher, and a USFS old-growth specialist, are going to take us on an educational hike. We take a room at the Alaskan Hotel & Bar, a favorite of ours, and rent a car so we can explore. Juneau has a lot of drivable road, although none of them connect to interior Alaska. As it is the state capitol, it is unique that the only way in or out is by ferry, or flight. The city literally sits at the foot of some very steep mountains, and a good portion of the homes are built up the scalable sides. A lot of people are connected by considerable staircases. Once you drive out of downtown, however, the land flattens out, and the forest grows dense. Juneau is also affected by the 18+ft. tidal exchanges that occur in Southeast, so much of the flatter terrain, is part of the tidal zone. It is raining for our cruise about, and the fall colors have become brilliantly saturated, so we get out often to walk about and make some pictures, the above being a good example of that. The greenish moss hanging in the tree is Usnea.

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Tuesday, April 13, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #242
Tongass, #242:  
For Carey, and me, this is to be our last night in Port Protection enjoying the company of Mayor Ed Mura, and his partner Lizzie. It has been an awakening stay in a very tight community. No roads connect to Port P, you come and go by boat or float plane, and we will fly back to Ketchikan tomorrow. In the meantime we have some considerable halibut to feast on, and way too much alcohol to drink, but we do. Hahaha! Then, as rather perfect compliment to the perfect meal, I step out onto the beach for some air and this screaming sunset sweeps in over me from the Pacific. Those clouds most likely mean it will be raining in the morning, but right now it is a fitting end to a MOST enjoyable visit. Light it/one up and enjoy the show!

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Tuesday, April 6, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #241
Tongass, #241:  
This is my homage to the 16th century Dutch Baroque still life paintings of food. As you can see, the tail of this halibut has been cut off, and then a cut is made down the length of the cartilage spine. After that, the fillet knife is inserted where the tail has been removed and pressed flat against the cartilage rib plate to the edge of the spine. Starting with a nice slow cut across the plate, moving towards the head, yields a boneless steak in one solid piece that weighs about 12lbs. A second steak will be cut from the other side of the spine. There is very little meat beneath the cartilage plate, as that is where the internal organs are. The “gift of god” is that this is such a simple fish to clean, AND it provides a massive amount of meat.

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #240
Tongass, #240:  
Ah, the subsistence lifestyle, always struggling to have enough food to survive. NOT! Certainly not this community, anyway. Yesterday we pulled up one of Ed Mura’s crab pots to find a bounty of Dungeness crab which provided us with dinner last night, and breakfast this morning, and there were still some to share with neighbors. Today, another of Ed’s friends went halibut fishing and caught two in the 35-40lbs. range, which once again will be shared. Halibut is one of the few fish that, to me, does not freeze well, and it is only savory when fresh caught. The halibut is also a VERY weird fish, that Natives see as a gift of god. A halibut is born with a normal head, and two eyes on each side of their nose spine, but as they mature they begin to live on the sea floor, with one side up, and the other side down, so the downside eye MIGRATES to join the other eye on the upside. All of the flesh meat collects this way as well, so the downside has very little, and the upside produces a massive, thick “steak,” as you can see above. That is about 12lbs. of THE most delicious fish you can image, all in one perfectly clean piece. Guess what we are having for dinner?

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Tuesday, March 23, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #239
Tongass, #239:  
As I knew it would be, crab omelettes, and fresh-made bread are a great way to start the day. After the meal, Ed Mura, and I, decide to stretch a bit, and walk off our two-meal pig-out, which gives me the perfect opportunity to offer you another unique part of this community. In the early days of Port Protection’s growing cluster of homes, there were only two ways to get around, the beach, which disappeared at high tide, and on well worn trails through the rainforest. Because no one wanted the trails to trample everything down, they all used the same paths, which unfortunately, due to the immense amount of rain, became deep, and VERY muddy furrows. This precipitated, a lot of boot cleaning, and mandatory boot removal before entering anyone’s home. The women, especially, tired of trying to keep things tidy, so they came up with a plan. While the men were doing most of the home construction, the women decided to build this, a brilliant, lengthy boardwalk that connected everybody, and provided bridges, or staircases, to get safely (and cleanly) to whatever house you were headed for. That is Ed, in this picture, taking in the radiance of the forest, glistening in the morning light.

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Tuesday, March 16, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #238
Tongass, #238:  
After the night of torrential rain in Port Protection, I slip out of the Mura home early in the morning, to walk the low-tide shoreline of the cove, while the rest of our happy party sleep. The long hours of rainfall have turned the black sand even blacker, and brought out luminous colors in the various drift logs deposited on the shore. The colors in these logs are made even richer, as the dark sand acts like a foil, making them seem more aglow. Then I happen upon this display. Definitely radiant, these logs look like they have been detailed with shimmering silver highlights, and I have not even had a mushroom omelette this morning,..well, as of yet. I spend about an hour chasing strange things on the beach that have emerged after the rain, and near the end of the cove, I look back to see smoke coming from the Mura chimney, so I know they are up, and crab is on the breakfast menu. Needless to say, I am heading back. Yum!

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #237
Tongass, #237:  
Wine, fresh Dungeness crab, some homemade bread with fondue cheese dip - this subsistence lifestyle is killing me. Outside the sky is falling in. As wood in the stove pops and crackles, making Ed and Lizzie’s home in Port Protection, snug, and oh-so comfortable thankfully, because there are many minutes where bursts of torrential rain literally drown-out our conversation. Ed concludes that “this is a big one,” and echoes my sentiment that it is not a good night to be in a tent. Eventually we all turn in, and fall asleep to the drumming sounds of the downpour. The background of that noise becomes such a part of our sleep rhythm that at 6:30 in the morning when the rain stops, it awakens me. Everyone else is still zoned out, so I quietly rise, and check the view to find the sky clearing. Inspired to see what has happened during the night, I don my gear, grab my camera, and slip out the door. The tide is way out, so I head down to the beach to explore what there might be to photograph, and look at what the first thing is there to greet me. The long, hard rain has saturated everything, and this beached log has been tumbled for quite sometime, to the point that it looks more like a well-sanded wood sculpture, now in which, the rain has brought out some stunning coloration.

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Tuesday, March 2, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #236
Tongass, #236:  
Well before the dinner is ready, the sky falls in, and the rain pounds down. You can hear the loud drumming on the roof, and the water splashing off of various metal things outside. We have no cell phones, tv, record player, or radio, so we enjoy conversation, alcohol, passing the pipe, and “listen to the rhythm of the falling rain” (Thank you, Cascades - LOL) Before it is too dark to shoot, I venture out onto a sheltered deck, and take this picture of homes across the cove, barely visible through the haze of the downpour. I am glad to have a roof over my head tonight. This would be far less fun in a tent. Bring on that Dungeness crab dinner that’s a’ cookin’!
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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #235
Tongass, #235:  
I think we are all glad that we got lucky with the first crab pot, because the rain is getting harder, and a chill wind is rising. So, with our ice chest loaded, everybody is glad to be heading back to a snug house. By the time we are back in the cove at Port Protection, the skies have grown VERY dark, and it is certain that we are about to be hit by a big storm out of the Pacific. We unload the skiff, thank the Sebastians, and head for Ed’s home. We arrive to an inviting warm house with an ice chest full of fresh crab, and as Carey, and I strip off our rain gear, Ed chooses three crabs that he is going to run over to the home of the elderly couple we interviewed this morning (post #232). Meanwhile, Ed’s partner, Liz Bauer, and Carey, begin preparations for the evening feast.

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Tuesday, February 16, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #234
Tongass, #234:  
There is a steady, light rain falling as we motor out of the cove into Keku Strait, between Prince of Wales Island / Port Protection, and Kuiu Island to the west. The crab pots are each marked with a buoy, and our host, Ed Mura, the mayor of Port P, has several in the area. We only need to have luck in one of them, and as it turns out, the first one we pull up is loaded. They are all legal size, and since we plan to share them with other families in Port P, we take everything in the pot. Ed is holding one up for me to see, and Joe Sebastian's wife is checking others to assure they are legal. People who live subsistence lifestyles are very particular about legal limits, as they do not want to deplete their food resources.

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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #233
Tongass, #233:  
After our morning spent talking to the eldest couple in the community of Port Protection, our host, Ed Mura, the mayor, says we have to “earn our keep,” and that if we expect to have dinner on the table this evening, we need to do some crabbing this afternoon. To facilitate that, we circle the cove, and go out to a dock at the extreme end of the shoreline. Here there is a couple that live on their boat, the larger one seen in this picture. The owner stands to the left, Bart and Julie Koehler are behind him in their yellow rain gear, and Ed is facing us on the right. Almost everyone in Port P has crab pots located somewhere in the cove, or further out into the open waters of the Pacific, and this afternoon, we are going to motor out to Ed’s pots, and see what has been collected. It is raining, but we are wearing rain gear, so we will go in the smaller open, white boat to the right. I am anticipating Dungeness crab omelettes for breakfast tomorrow. Yum!

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Tuesday, February 2, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #232
Tongass, #232:  
Our host, Ed Mura, the mayor of Port Protection, wanted Carey, and I, to meet the oldest couple in the community, who also were among the first to build here. He praises their skillfully designed home, and their related systems of support, but he is also impressed by their tenacity to continue living so remotely into their 80’s. A subsistence lifestyle in a village with no municipal services is demanding at any age, but it gets more complicated when you get older. So, one morning he takes us to call on them, and they come out to speak with us from their weather porch. The man of the house is growing increasingly blind, and walks with a cane, but they are both humorously sharp, and enjoy our questions, and conversation. All the while, she is smoking a cigar! You’ve got to love that! The only concession they have made to their age, is that it is harder to hunt and fish, but that is resolved for them by support from their neighbors, who share their collected food with them. Later today, WE are going crabbing, and Ed assures them that we will bring them some nice crabs this evening.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #231
Tongass, #231:  
This house belongs to the oldest couple living in Port Protection. Carey and I are staying with the mayor of Port P, Ed Mura, and his wife, and they have built themselves a pretty tight domicile, but Ed says THIS is the most “skookum” house in the community, with EVERYTHING perfectly dialed in, from the views, to water collection, heating, and food prep. This couple were among the first to help create Port P, and their home grew more detail-perfect with every passing year. When you are living a subsistence lifestyle, in a remote location, everything has to work, even in the worst conditions, if you expect to survive. In this village, you need to be waterproof, and winter-proof above all. Port P gets slammed by big winter storms directly out of the Pacific, and as you will see, it rains most days. On some days, it rains so hard that you cannot see the house across the cove from you.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #230
Tongass, #230:  
Another view of the Port Protection community. Big homes, little homes, and all hand-built. These are over-water platform homes, but at the moment the 18ft.+ tide is considerably out. When it comes in, it will go under the houses, and re-float the litter of logs in the foreground. Because this community leads a subsistence lifestyle, they all hunt and fish, so any game that is killed, or fish that are caught, are processed out at slack tide, so the blood and entrails will be carried away, and not become a scent attraction that brings bears into the township. It rains often, and torrentially, in Port P, so the weather is generally cool, and clammy, thus everybody has a big wood-burning stove, and a stockpile of cut wood to ward off the cold day. It is a great feeling to go from home to home through the drizzle, only to enter a snug, warm room upon arrival.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #229
Tongass, #229:  
The harbor of Port Protection is encircled by homes of various sizes and designs. The smaller brown one to the right, here, sports the over-water, platform design, which facilitates their sewage disposal, and gives them direct access to their log-raft dock. The much fancier house, built off the beach, sports three floors, and a satellite disk, making its owner one of the more prosperous in the community. The owner may even have a septic sewage system for this property, but if not, the classic Chinese method of keeping a bucket, or urn, for “night soil” is used, then dumped in the bay the next day. The industrial clearcuts that surround this community often use log rafts pulled by tugboats, to get the timber to the mill, but lots of logs are lost from these rafts, and can be found floating, or they wash up onshore. Although the companies deem it illegal to “collect” these logs and use them, everyone does it anyway, and who's going to argue with a township that is totally armed, many owning several weapons of choice?

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Tuesday, January 5, 2021

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #228
Tongass, #228:  
After an exposed run along the outer coast, we finally turn into a deep, very protected cove, arriving at the aptly named Port Protection. When you look at it on this map link, the actual community is the side cove pinned as the Wooden Wheel Lodge. Around that side cove subsists a diverse community of young, elderly, poor, and prosperous. Regardless of their differences, they all have several things in common: they live subsistence; they built their own homes; they all have multiple boats; and collectively they oppose the USFS management of the Tongass industrial clearcut logging that is creeping ever closer to their town.The light green areas on the map link are those clearcuts, now sporting some secondary growth. In this view of the Port P diversity, we see two small homes, and a hot house growing vegetables. None of these homes have an integrated water source, so water is collected daily from streams, or rain fall is trapped by cistern. As you can also see, for the most part, the houses are built on platforms over the water which facilitates the need for a bathroom, the residue of which is carried out to see by the extreme tides twice a day.

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Tuesday, December 29, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #227
Tongass, #227:  
The floating log camp we visit, is about halfway up the long canal, so when the interview ends, we all get back in our boats and wend or way north, then west. After threading some narrow passages, we finally emerge in a bay that opens to the Pacific, and as we reach the outer waters of that bay, we are greeted by a host of whales that are “bubble net” feeding. It is a fabulous display to watch, so we kill our motors and enjoy the show. If you don’t know this, it is called “bubble net” because several whales swim in circles below schooling fish, which they are forcing into an ever-tighter cluster by blowing bubble “rings” around the outside of the “ball.” When the prey fish are in a compact ball, the whales then collect, side-by-side, and rush to the surface, passing through the ball with their huge mouths open, scooping in hundreds of fish. So much water, and so many fish are involved, some escape gushing out of the sides of the whale’s mouths, so birds flock in to pick them off. As you can see here, fish not engulfed when the whales surface, are leaping out of the water attempting to flee. There is a lot of activity, and the whales put on a great show, so our hosts are more than happy to drift, and drink, while letting me take pictures. A good time is had by all.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #226
Tongass, #226:  
Logging has always been a part of the Tongass economy, but not at an industrial scale. People living here need timber to build their homes, and their boats, and small scale, sustainable, local loggers, with just a few crew members do what is called “select” cuts. None of these loggers are out-of-state hires. They live where they cut, and no wood is shipped abroad or tuned into pulp. They harvest prime trees that yield excellent building material, and little is wasted. They also do not build endless miles of road, but rather they work from “floating” camps established offshore, cutting upslope trees, then dragging them down to the water to float, and tying them together, creating a raft they can tow to the mill. Because the crews are small, and there is a limited amount of heavy duty equipment involved, this is HARD work, and it is often cold and wet, as well. The head of this crew, took time off to speak with us in the meal shed of the floating log camp, where there was also a warm stove going, and coffee to be had. Talking with him is very enlightening, and gives Carey, and I, a VERY different take on logging in this forest. We are grateful he would do this. In case you are wondering, this guy is boring a tie hole through this log, so it can be lashed to others in forming a raft.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, December 15, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #225
Tongass, #225:  
Our multi-boat crew loads up after the midday meal at Sylvia’s in Tokeen, and heads out for Port Protection. If you are wondering what that is at the front of the boat (last post), it is a huge, shaggy dog from Port Protection who is riding on the bow, taking the wind like a dog in a car with its head out the window. To understand our journey today, be sure to look at this link. Tokeen is in the lower third. Port Protection is where you see the indicator for the Wooden Wheel Lodge, in the upper left. To get from Tokeen to Port P, we are traversing the huge bay to the right of Tokeen. Then we will thread our way through numerous islands, and turn up the broad channel that runs due north. At the farthest reach of the channel, it doglegs to the west (left), narrows, and once again we must slip through some small passages, to reach the larger bay which opens onto the Pacific. We will then navigate along the outer coast until we reach the bay that is home to the Port P community. Along the way we are going to stop for an interview at a small “local” logging camp. These guys are part of that camp and they are busy building a log raft to tow the cut timber to a mill in Ketchikan.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, December 8, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #224
Tongass, #224:  
It is about 11am when my wife, Carey, finishes her interview with Sylvia, and just in time, too. Outside the living room window we can hear the drone of several power boats approaching through the canal, followed by A LOT of hooting and shouting as two of the boats spin high speed circles in front of her house. This is the contingent from Port Protection who have come to share a meal, and then kidnap all of us and take us back to Port Protection. They are a pretty wild looking crew, and Sylvia immediately comments that they have already started drinking, which proves correct. The trip down has been rainy and cold, so that is their excuse. After some further antics and shouted greetings, everyone disembarks and comes into the house. Sylvia has had the bear stew cooking, and the bread baking, for some time, but before the meal gets started, Ed Mura, the “mayor” of Port Protection, insists we should all have some liquored up “tea” together to fortify ourselves for the trip back, and so we do. All of these guys live remotely, and support the “layered” look of dressing - several shirts, vests, jackets, and rain gear. Ed is particularly striking because he is over 6ft tall, relatively thin, and sports a dense black beard, and REALLY LONG black hair. All of them want the USFS to get the F*#% out of the Tongass, and to stop destroying this remarkable old growth habitat with the related hunting and fishing upon which they depend for their subsistence lifestyles.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #223
Tongass, #223:  
This is the heart of Sylvia’s outpost, the generator shed. As there are no “services” out here, you not only have to live off the land, but if you want to have lighting, and the internet (for home schooling), you need to generate your own power. Alaskans in remote locations take this VERY seriously. I am not talking about little units like many of us keep in our garages for emergencies. These are full blown engines of energy. They have to be towed in on a barge, and leveraged into place. Sylvia has two of these, “just in case” one or the other malfunctions. Among her MANY tasks, this makes her a mechanic as well. Living successfully this far off the grid, requires quite a diverse skill set.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, November 24, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #222
Tongass, #222:  
During my first summer in the Tongass, I was joined by my wife, Carey, and she did a number of interviews that would later be reflected in the book, The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rainforest that Aperture would publish. She has also joined me this summer to enlarge the scope of the interviews, and while I am outside Sylvia’s house making pictures of her property, Carey is inside talking with her at length. Carey and I live in Manhattan Beach, and spend a good deal of time staying in shape by skating long distances on the 26-mile strand bikepath. I also take my skates with me to New York, where I occasionally dance skate on the weekends in Central Park, or at night at The Red Parrot disco skate hall. There are a lot of good dance skaters in New York, and many of them sport the “not-laced-up” skate style. Sylvia has two daughters, one who is away at college in the Lower ’48, and this one. If you might wonder what a young child does to keep herself entertained in such a remote outpost, this one sings and dance skates unlaced in some pretty marginal conditions, yet she seems to be pretty happy to be doing so.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #221
Tongass, #221:  
The clutter of Sylvia’s complex is very interesting to me so I spend a good deal of time wandering in, around, and through the buildings. The weather continues to lift, and even the drizzle stops, so Sylvia decides to come outside and see what I am doing. The minute to door opens the dogs leave my side, and rush her at the top of the stairs, so she sits down and settles into a frenzied licking session. It looks like everyone is having fun. Sylvia tells me we are awaiting visitors who are coming from a community to the north called Port Protection, and after we have lunch altogether, Bart, Julia, and I, will go by boat back to Port Protection with them. As that is the case, I double down on my wandering around Tokeen, for this is a relatively short visit. I am also told we are going to have her specialty for lunch, bear stew with fresh-baked bread. Sounds interesting!  
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #220
Tongass, #220:  
I guess if you have multiple boat docks, you also have multiple boats, and Sylvia has a dozen, or so. The viable ones that she uses to hunt and fish are in the water, but there are numerous others that have been hauled up onshore. Many Alaskans, especially those living remotely, never throw anything away because they might be able to scavenge parts from the discards. I suppose that is Sylvia’s thinking in keeping these 6 boats stashed, but it is also clear the RAINforest is slowly rotting them away. To the right is one of several roofless buildings, that are part of the many structures in this curious complex. Sylvia’s house is built on a rock outcrop, well above the high tideline, but many of the other structures are built on dock platforms, and they are all connected by makeshift bridges and boardwalks.  
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, November 3, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #219
Tongass, #219:  
When Bart, Julia Koehler, and I arrive at Tokeen, there is no fog and we land effortlessly, taxiing across the water to a ramshackle dock and a collection of buildings. There are three dogs barking wildly at us, and a women (Sylvia) appears from a doorway at the top of stairs in what looks to be the best kept of the structures. We offload, exchange greetings with her, and watch the pilot depart. She then invites us inside for some breakfast, and while we are eating, fast moving weather rolls in out of the Pacific, and it rains torrentially for about 1/2 hour, eventually turning into a foggy drizzle. With the worst of the storm temporarily abated, I decide to take some pictures, and find myself outside, wandering the property, carefully watched by the dogs. This picture-within-a-picture (above) presents itself at the end of one of several boat docks.  
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, October 27, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #218
Tongass, #218:  
Bart Koehler has not been too happy about the blanket of fog and low clouds that hang above Prince of Wales Island, as he fears it will make landing at Tokeen either dangerous, or impossible, so he is relieved as we fly further west to see that the clouds are parting. Tokeen has a Native village nearby, and it also hosts a marble quarry managed by the University of Alaska, but we are going to visit a small complex of buildings that serve as the post office, and is also the home of Sylvia, who serves as postmaster. Sylvia has two daughters, and three dogs, while living a near-subsistence lifestyle. There are zero services at this remote outpost, so Sylvia both hunts and fishes to sustain the family, and occasionally, mail pilots will also bring her staples from Ketchikan. I will learn that both of her children home-schooled, and the big, barky dogs help keep the bears away. This visit is one of my first experiences to see an Alaskan family living so remotely.  
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #217
Tongass, #217:  
While much of our flight to Tokeen is over still-forested parts of Prince of Wales Island, at regular intervals the clouds part sufficiently to reveal the clearcut destruction I have seen so much of from ground level. The contrast between this and the stands of old growth are saddening, and sickening. The politicians allowing this to happen are criminals. Industrial logging wipes out bear, deer, and eagle habitat, and trashes productive salmon streams. This does NOT Make America Great Again, this is stupidly squandering our resources in a non-sustainable way. NONE of this wood enters the American economy, it is all shipped to Japan. Logging the Tongass has been a bad idea for 25yrs. now, and many Alaskan politicians still support further logging. It is time to turn them out! 
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd
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Tuesday, October 13, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #216
Tongass, #216:  
The Cianciarulos, and I, have a nice night in Ketchikan enjoying a great dinner, before we part ways in the morning. They are going to take the ferry to Juneau and explore more of Alaska for a few weeks, and I am to meet Bart and Julie Koehler from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, who are flying in from Juneau. When they arrive, we transition to a float plane which will take us to Tokeen, a very small outpost on the west side of Prince of Wales Island. If you have followed this blog, you will have read about my exploration of POW by car last summer, photographing the extensive clearcuts. Now I will have a chance to see a more expansive view of the island, and a part of it that the logging has not yet reached. I will also learn that Bart has a great dislike of flying in small planes. If it gets bumpy, it makes him airsick, and he just does not trust them anyway. It is not helpful that right after we take off, we encounter large sections of POW socked in with fog and low clouds. Bart frets that we might not be able to land safely at Tokeen. 
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd
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Tuesday, October 6, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #215 
Tongass, #215:  
Our flight out from Goat Lake arrives early as promised, so we load up, have a non-eventful take-off, and a nice flight-see back to Ketchikan. The lovely Gilmore Hotel, where I always stay, appreciates my numerous return nights, so they have an early check-in awaiting us, and after a good shower, we assemble in their restaurant for a great meal. I am to meet Bart and Julie Koehler in the morning, and fly out with them to a place called, Tokeen, a small community located on Marble Island, that is considered part of Prince of Wales, but for the moment, there is a light drizzle in Ketchikan, and plenty to see, as Kyrs, and Jan Cianciarulo, have not toured about it before. I rent a car, and first take them to Saxman, a Tlinkgit village outside of town, that has a famous totem-pole workshop, where tourists can watch craftsmen carve traditional totems. Then, I drive them out to Ward’s Cove, at the other end of town, so they can see the bustling waterfront, and eventually overlook one of pulpmills in operation in Southeast. Although they know the work that I am doing is intended to help stop the industrial, clearcut logging of the Tongass rainforest, they have never seen an expansive cut, and Ketchikan is surrounded by them, so our last stop before returning to the Gilmore, is to wend our way up a random logging road, where we find this. They are taken aback by the visual of such destruction, and we all agree that it is a shameful practice. After a bit of picture-taking, it is now time for a nice dinner, and perhaps some live music. In spite of my departure in the morning, Kyrs and Jan are going to linger for a few more weeks, and explore Southeast by ferry, planning to head for Juneau next. This is to be our last night together. 
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #214, 
Tongass, #214:  
The swarming insects are driving us nuts, and the longer we stay, the more seem to show up. We move our position one more time for this last shot, and then we flee back to the boat, and motor into the middle of the lake for some respite. In the morning, we are to be picked up, and flown back to Ketchikan, so after some snacks while afloat, and a last ponder of this remarkable basin which we have been exploring, the rest of the day is spent at the cabin, preparing the boat motor, and our gear for transport. Of course there is no point in taking back supplies you carried in, so there is a considerable amount of eating, and drinking, as well. (I would also have liked to have taken a can of something flammable, and blow torched the gazillion mosquitoes on the outside of the window screens, but that would be bad behavior in a wood cabin,..hahaha!) 
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020


THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #213, 
Tongass, #213:  
While Jan Cianciarulo holds our boat fast to the shoreline of an island in Goat Lake, her husband, Krys, and I, venture ashore delicately. The 400+ inches of rain that falls on this terrain, has grown some very extravagant gardens, and this is one of the strangest of them all. Lush mosses, mushrooms, and eccentric lichens abound, and when we come upon this tree, I am pretty sure we have found the entrance to the troll underworld. Kyrs, and I, must have been amusing for Jan to watch, because not only were we balleting around, trying not to step on anything except rock or meadow grass, but we were also fighting off swarms of insects,..and I mean swarms. Jans only purpose in coming ashore with me, is to take a cloth cape I brought with us, and right before I trip the camera shutter, he waves it around wildly in front of the lens, to blow the mosquitoes away. Had he not been doing this, all these images would show a screen of bugs between the camera’s eye and my subject matter. Thank you, Jan!
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020
THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #212, 
Tongass, #212:  
After our visit to the bonsai bench, there were several islands that during our previous scouting looked interesting and approachable, so we head for them next. When we first viewed them, it was more in passing, and we did not get up-close-and-personal, so today we are surprised by the astounding vegetation we find covering them. Clearly alien spores have taken them over. Strange lichen, moss, and other stuff (I have no idea what some of these things are) cover the rock, and although we can get ashore, the trick is not to step on anything. These rainforest festooned gardens are way too beautiful and delicate to be trodden upon. Jan ops to be one less pair of feet, and stays in the boat. Krys, and I, do some articulate ballet to avoid any destruction of property, finally accomplishing a few shots that attempt to explain all of this wonderful weirdness.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #211, 
Tongass, #211:  The screened windows of our US Forest Service cabin at Goat Lake have kept the interior mercifully free of the insect swarm outside, so dinner and doze go well. When we awake the next morning, however, the bright sunny day of yesteryear, has gone back to rainforest mode. It is not raining yet, but it sure looks like it is going to, and this being our last day, I specifically want to get out my Pentax 6x7, and re-visit the few approachable locations we have discovered on the lake, where we might get ashore. Hoping to do so before the rain starts, we rush through breakfast, pack our gear, and head for the boat. There are only two or three places where you can actually breach the steeply walled lake basin, and this meadow looked to be the most interesting, so it is our first stop. Several of these small streams meander their way through it, but what I found to be unusual was that every protruding rock had a wind-sculpted bonsai tree draping it. If I could have taken one of these home for my garden, I definitely would have.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, September 1, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #210, 
Tongass, #210:  To avoid the insect swarm, Krys and Jan Cianciarulo, and I, have spent this sunny day floating about Goat Lake, in the boat provided with the US Forest Service cabin that we have rented. It has been a “hot” day for a rainforest, AND very laid back. I have spent most of the time ponder the stunningly vertical walls that surround this basin. Streaming with water, and waterfalls, they are living tapestries of growing things, that are, quite literally, coming out of the rock. There is no soil up there. Now, as evening begins to draw down upon us, and we are at the far end of the lake from our cabin, we need to move in that direction, so before we fire up our little outboard motor, I take this one last shot of the hanging gardens and surrounding rocks bathed in the warmth of late light. Anon, to the cabin! Hope those window screens have held the bugs out, as it is still warm, I know they are awaiting our return.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 25, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #209, 
Tongass, #209:  Near the outlet of Goat Lake, where the waterfall pours off into the fjord below, the walls on the opposite side from the cabin are completely sheer, and numerous small waterfalls descend into the lake from the summits above. What is stunning about this display, is that the combination of the moisture from the waterfalls, and the annual 400+ inches of rain, have turned this vertical terrain into a virtual hanging garden. Big trees, and lush growth cover nearly every inch of the granite, little is left exposed. I know that the US Forest Service cabin where we are staying, was placed here, primarily for the use of goat hunters, because many goats do roam the exposed granite dome top that is above these verdant cliffs, but for the life of me, I can not figure out how any hunters get from the cabin to the top of the dome to hunt. Nor does it seem possible that after a kill, you could get the heavy carcass back down to the cabin. I think the hunters are WAY more at risk, than the goats.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #208, 
Tongass, #208:  After a bit of floating about in the middle of Goat Lake, we fire up the motor again, determined to tour the entire shoreline. While there are a few islands that can be approached, and an occasional terrace of moss and lichens that might be reachable, for the most part, the basin the lake is in is sheer and slippery. Rock shelves too tall to surmount, and covered with slimy algae, are crowned by an impenetrable forest of growth, from which I am sure there are bears watching us. Waterfalls and streams pour in everywhere, so there is a constant water noise, and occasionally a breeze sweeps through, so the trees rustle. It is a “chill” day for us, as we loll about in the sun, and we find several very cool, approachable benches, that we will return to tomorrow with my tripod and my Pentax 6x7. Given the insect swarm, it is clear that without a windy day, I am going to need both Chris and Jan to ward off the bugs while I try to work.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #207, 
Tongass, #207:  Our second day at the US Forest Service cabin at Goat Lake dawns sunny and clear. Krys and Jan Chianciarulo, and I, have a leisurely breakfast, and consider ourselves grateful to be in the cabin, which has screened windows. After days of rain, the warmth of the sun has awakened a fierce swarm of mosquitoes, and there are so many you can actually hear their collective whine as they buzz about outside the screens (probably being driven crazy by the scent of our bacon cooking, hahaha!) We do not intend to hide from them in the cabin all day, and we will avoid most of them by motoring out into the middle of the lake, so after breakfast, we pack daypacks with water and snacks, dress with bite-proof shell outer layers, cover our heads with headnets, and literally RUN down the steps to the boat launch. We are swarmed, but as soon as we push off, and head out into the lake, the insects abate. It is warm in the sun, so will kill the engine and float in silence,..well, except for the clicking of camera shutters - LOL! Studying the towering walls around us through my telephoto, I am astounded by the dense patches of BIG trees growing out of the rock cracks on the sheer granite faces.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, August 4, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #206, 
Tongass, #206:  As we have not gotten out of the boat on our first cruise around Goat Lake, the Cianciarulos, and I, stay dry in our good rain gear, but we get cold, and so we decide it is time to return to our US Forest Service cabin, fire up the stove, and have some food. As we begin that journey, the surrounding clouds come down low on the lake, and most of our surroundings disappear. When I took this picture, I did so, to show the low clouds, and the beginning of a very long spell of hard rain, but what I am now struck by is the astonishing green moss covering on the rocks. I am hopeful that this weather backs off for at least one of the days that we are here, so that I can take out my Pentax 6x7, find some place to come ashore, and try to capture the extraordinary lushness of the lake ecosystem that probably averages about 400” of rain each year.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #205, 
Tongass, #205:  As the Cianciarulos, and I, motor around Goat Lake, the constantly changing cloud cover plays peek-a-boo with the surrounding landscape. Summits, walls, and waterfalls, appear and disappear. Sometimes the entire lake is closed down and vanishes. What is constant are the sounds of the rain and its' drip, and the louder roar of descending water, sluicing through dramatic staircases of rock cut into the granite. The one above we could hear, but it was completely invisible until we were almost upon it, and then this happened. Just another lovely day to put on your galoshes and go splashing about. A warm meal tonight is going to be most welcome.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 21, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #204, 
Tongass, #204:  Having attached the motor we flew in with, to the boat provided for the cabin by the US Forest Service, Kyrs, and Jan Cianciarulo, and I, are off for our first exploratory around Goat Lake. Of the many things we discover, we are surprised to find the sheer walls dive directly into the lake, and afford only a few select places where we might go ashore. Perhaps the MOST extraordinary discovery, however, is how STUNNINGLY lush it all is. Every rock is covered with lichens and DEEP mosses, and saturated by the rain, they are aglow in the overcast. Numerous waterfalls descend into the lake as well, fed by snowfields farther up the granite walls, as well as the constant rain, which now seems to be getting harder. We all have good gear, so we are dry inside our rain suits, I just have to keep wiping my face with a neckerchief, to keep the water off my face from running down my neck.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 21, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #204, 
Tongass, #204:  Having attached the motor we flew in with, to the boat provided for the cabin by the US Forest Service, Kyrs, and Jan Cianciarulo, and I, are off for our first exploratory around Goat Lake. Of the many things we discover, we are surprised to find the sheer walls dive directly into the lake, and afford only a few select places where we might go ashore. Perhaps the MOST extraordinary discovery, however, is how STUNNINGLY lush it all is. Every rock is covered with lichens and DEEP mosses, and saturated by the rain, they are aglow in the overcast. Numerous waterfalls descend into the lake as well, fed by snowfields farther up the granite walls, as well as the constant rain, which now seems to be getting harder. We all have good gear, so we are dry inside our rain suits, I just have to keep wiping my face with a neckerchief, to keep the water off my face from running down my neck.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #203, 
Tongass, #203:  My assistants for part of this summer, Krys Cianciarulo, and his wife, Jan, and I, are sorting our gear, and having a midday meal, now that we have secured ourselves in the US Forest Service cabin at Goat Lake, high in the mountains of Misty Fjords National Monument. Several of the windows in our cabin face the lake directly, so while we organize, this is our view. It has been raining off-and-on all morning, and as the weather drifts through, the surrounding summits appear and disappear. In this moment, our location is more clearly revealed. The immediate foreground is the far shore of the lake. The layer of clouds immediately behind it are billowing up out of a fjord that plunges down a sheer wall of 1,800ft. The massifs in the distance are worlds away. Wet as it may be, we all have raingear (hey, it IS the Tongass RAINforest), and we are eager to explore the lake, so after snacking, we are out the door, and down to the boat to attach the motor, hoping for a revealing cruise-about.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, July 07, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #202, 
Tongass, #202:  After dropping, my assistant Krys Cianciarulo, his wife, Jan, and I, on the tip of the rocky peninsula at the foot of the US Forest Service cabin at Goat Lake, we offload our gear and the outboard boat motor, and haul the gear up to the cabin. The pilot waits until we confirm the cabin is in good condition, then he tells us when to expect his return, pushes off from the point, and taxis slowly to the far end of the lake. As it has been raining lightly all morning, we stand in the mist to watch his departure. His revving engine echoes off of the surrounding granite walls, and then the plane picks up speed and starts to skip across the mild wind chop on the lake. A little more than halfway down the lake he goes flawlessly airborne, and disappears into the low hanging clouds. For several minutes we can still hear his engine, but eventually the only sounds are the patter of rainfall, and the drip of the forest. We retire into the cabin to sort our gear, make our beds, and have some snacks. Rain or not, we all want to get into the boat later, and explore the lake.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #201, 
Tongass, #201:  The US Forest Service cabin at Goat Lake is situated on a rocky point with a spectacular view of the lake and surrounding mountains. It is large and will sleep 6. It has a wood-fed cast iron stove, that also serves to heat the cabin. It also has many screened windows that can be opened without letting the mosquitoes and deer flies in. There are few trails in this terrain. Getting around involves the available boat, and bushwhacking. Interestingly, our pilot suggested we rent an outboard motor from him, which we then flew in with. As you can see here, a staircase leads down to the boat launch, where the boat awaits us, and our motor. The cabin is clean, well kept, comfy to be in out of the rain, and the boat is also in excellent condition. It is a big lake, so it is a luxury to have the motor, and not have to paddle around.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RobertGKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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