When people ask me about our trip to Alaska this summer, I tell them the land is big, beautiful, and wild, and the people are resilient. It feels like the frontier. In fact, it is the frontier. With 600,000 people in a territory 2.3 times the size of Texas, Alaska is mostly wilderness. The Alaska Highway traverses through Anchorage and Fairbanks and up to Prudhoe Bay, but 40% of Alaskans have no access to roadways and must use dog sleds, bush planes and boats to travel; no roads go in or out of Juneau or many of the other towns in Alaska. Native American and Russian cultures permeate a place slow to change in a place where permafrost lies below the surface, glacier-spread mountains cover vast expanses of the land, and fish remains a major food source in a place almost surrounded by water.

In 1796, the swampy floodplain at the mouth of the Cuyahoga was the frontier. By the time of the 1832 cholera epidemic, only 600 people lived here -- it was a frontier because it was remote, much as Alaska is today. General Moses Cleaveland oversaw the settlement on part of the Western Reserve tract of the Northwest Territory granted to the State of Connecticut, which was populated by Native Americans; Alaska's native population is evident. (Check out Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796-1996 (the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History) by Carol Poh Miller and Robert Anthony Wheeler). The first settler in Cleveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a log cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River; we saw log cabins all along the Chena River and in downtown Fairbanks. Native American populations and culture were obliterated by epidemic diseases, violence, displacement and intermarriage, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 without informing the Native Americans. Native Alaskans experienced the same catastrophic hardships as the native population living near Cleveland did.

Wikipedia reports that there's been little public opinion research on attitudes toward Native Americans, and a 2007 focus group study by the nonpartisan Public Agenda organization indicated that most non-Indians rarely encounter Native Americans and have only a vague understanding of Native Americans. That would not hold true in Alaska where native culture has been acclimated into the way of life.

It was an amazing trip. We started out in Vancouver and hit all the highlights of that city in the two days we visited it, always aware of the spectacular snow-capped mountains and waterways surrounding us. We spent time in Historic Gastown, the city's oldest neighborhood now glittering with refurbished buildings occupied by galleries and shops. Vancouver's Chinatown is reputed to be the second largest in North America, but we only caught a glimpse of it during our walk to and visit at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Classical Chinese Garden with its bamboo forests and pagoda platform overlooking the lily pond. We ate dinner at the Yorktown Brewery. Flowers grow big in the northwest, and we enjoyed them the next day as we walked through the financial district and then along the waterfront and harbor (the "Seawall") until we arrived at Stanley Park. We had a good walk past ponds and gardens until we ended up on English Bay Beach before traversing the forest again to walk through the city and back to our hotel. We found Vancouver to be an eclectic mix of Asian, Native, and European settler cultures.

The melding of cultures became the theme of the trip. We boarded the Veendam, a smaller Holland American cruise ship that would take us to the ports in the Tongass National Forest of southeast Alaska and the glaciers of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. We glided past hundreds of miles of glaciers and mountain ranges on both sides of our ship in the Inner Passageway. It was beautiful. I gave into it.

We hiked 1,500 feet up Deer Mountain in the rainforest of Ketchikan, with the sound of dripping water in the background and moss hanging from the trees while we kept a close look out for bears on our climb -- at the top we were rewarded with a misty view of the harbor below. We stopped by the Totem Heritage Center, Deer Mountain Salmon Hatchery, and Eagle Center run by Native Americans who are proud of their culture. The peoples of Southeast Alaska are the Tlingits, and when explorers first came upon the shores, they were spooked by the totem poles that rose from the ground like spectors. We enjoyed learning about the totem pole raisings and what the animal carvings represent. The story of the Raven is strong. While wandering the boardwalks of Creek Street, the old red light district (for the sailors and fisherman away from home), a river otter scrambled across our path.

We chose an itinerary that included Haines, and many ships are too large to dock at that port. Haines is reminiscent of Sicily, Alaska, in Northern Exposure, a small town with quirky residents who like to talk a bit. Formerly occupied by Fort Seward, the officer's quarters are now occupied by restaurants, salmon retailers, B&B's, and artists. We rode up the Chilkat River through the Bald Eagle Preserve and spotted the white-headed eagles and native clan houses around every bend from our rafts. Our river guide is the local writer and radio personality who could tell some amusing stories. The artist-mayor owns a pretty little house surrounded by the only picket fence in town where his wife works in the massive perennial garden and he sells his art. Just up from the docks is the log cabin gallery occupied by an architecture graduate of Stanford whose talent is displayed in every medium from wood carvings to T-shirts; native dances take place in front of the place in the afternoon. We tried the beer produced by the Haines Brewery, which was served in a Mexican restaurant who used to have a restaurant at the Grand Canyon.

In Sitka, we came to know about the Russian occupation of Alaska. St. Michael's Russian Church is the first Roman Orthodox church in the U.S. The shops are filled with painted eggs, nesting dogs, and ornate boxes. At the Historical Museum we talked to New Zealand woman who, with her husband, spent seven years traveling around the Pacific Ocean looking for the perfect place to settle down, and they chose Sitka. On the wildlife tour in the waters of Sitka Bay we saw sea otters, sea lions, humpback whales and gray whales. The National Park System hosts a totem pole park, which we found after exploring a local aquarium located on the harbor. Sitka's harbor has no docks for ships, so our ship anchored offshore and we took water taxis to the shore.

Juneau is situated along a beautiful channel, and the scenery is among the most picturesque we saw. We took the tram to the top of Mount Roberts as soon as it opened on the cold morning, but we were unable to hike due to the recent avalanche. We took a bike tour through residential and forested areas and on the campus of the University of Alaska until we arrived at Mendenhall Lake with its floating icebergs across from Mendenhall Glacier. Then we toured the Alaskan Brewing Company where the owners had to convince their financial backers that they could brew beer and distribute it from a place that is so isolated there are no roads in or out of it. We stopped at the State Capitol Building, a throw-back to the 1950s with its dark hallways and feel of the law. A mural along one of the adobe buildings depicts the birth of man surrounded by the raven, bear, and other animals of fables.

We could see whales from our ship. There were evenings where we found a quiet spot in a lounge and just sat and watched the scenery. We couldn't stop looking out the windows. And the glaciers -- until you get up close to one like Hubbard Glacier, you can't imagine what the walls of ice are like. Our cruise ship went right up the channel to Hubbard Glacier, and icebergs were all around us, and we could see and hear the glaciers calving (chunks of ice falling off the sides of the glacier) into the water -- it sounded like thunder. National Park rangers introduced us to the wildness of the country that is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

The temperatures were cooler along the coastline than they were in the interior. While on the ship, it was generally in the upper '40's in the morning and somewhere between 55 and 65 degrees for a high, but in Denali and Fairbanks the high temperatures were closer to 70. On our own the first morning in Denali, we rode the shuttle to the kennels and were able to spend time with the Park's sled dogs and the ranger talked about the dogs and winters in Alaska and their favored mode of transportation. While on our Tundra Wilderness Tour (an almost 9-hour trip through the park on a school bus), we saw grizzlies, moose, fox, caribou, dall sheep, and hare, but we never saw a lynx or a wolf. Unlike most Denali park visitors, we were able to see Mt. McKinley in all its great white glory against a deep blue sky on a cleared afternoon.

We were nervous to hike through the remote areas because of the bears and moose -- we saw tracks everywhere on trails near the Visitor's Center. At least one moose had recently borne a calf, and bears like to eat moose calves; on our last day there, a moose and her calf appeared right where we'd been hiking the day before -- we saw them while we were on a bus. A naturalist told us, when we were on a guided hike our second morning in the Park, that when you see a moose with its ears down, you're supposed to run, but when you see a bear or a wolf, you're supposed to stand up to it, which I can't imagine doing.

We ended the trip in Fairbanks where we went to an old gold dredge, stopped by the Alaska pipeline, visited a native Athabaskan settlement, saw a dog sled demonstration at Susan Butcher's house on the Chena River, and toured the Chena on a sternwheeler boat. Sled dogs, log cabins, and many other means of survival were initially invented by the natives and adapted by the pioneers. So in Fairbanks and remote villages, people live in log cabins built with moss between the logs and grassed sod for roofs. During our second day in town, we spent time in the galleries and antique shops of downtown Fairbanks in a constant rain before we holed up at the Public Lands Commission to watch two episodes of The Deadliest Catch featuring crab boats in the Bering Sea.

Between the wildlife, the history, the land, and the people, we now have a good feel for Alaska. It feels kind of like pioneering times in the lower 48 because the majority of the people still live that way, except that they now have television, cell phones, and the internet. But they may not have gas or sewer lines or cars. If they do have a car in Fairbanks, there's an electric connection sticking out from under the hood because they have they plug in their cars so the batteries will start. There might be a bush plane sitting next to their house or a boat at their dock or a kennel full of sled dogs in their back yard. People in Fairbanks, 120 miles from the Arctic Circle, live in a climate with a 2-month growing season and have adapted to January temperatures below -20 degrees Fahrenheit; sometimes it plummets to -60 degrees.

Experiencing Alaska means to know the wilderness and appreciate the spirit of the people who live there and choose to live differently than most of us do. It's not necessary to have a land tour in the interior, but the cruise ship provided great access to southeast Alaska without the fuss of the ferry system.

Cleveland was a remote wilderness when it was given the name "Cleaveland." There were no roads in or out and people had to learn how to survive by following the lead of the people the settlers drove away. Alaska is the last frontier because the native culture is kept alive by people dedicated to passing on the ancient ways.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller ctallerwritesATwowway.com
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