At the firmament an assemblage of islands, inlets, fjords, and coastlines. Boreas a galloping cascade of sleeveless coattails descending the mountain’s face. Glacial, limpid waters define the arena; but in the naked open it is abruptly uneven and now eight-foot crests are blasting the bow in sonorous rhythm. The locals munch chowder and shrug. The others hold fast and wave away the proffered mug of soup. They stop going out when the swells reach ten feet or so; the day-trippers tend to grumble and fret.
My hiking companion says the bright, dry months are for berry picking, open air exploration, simple recreation, and prostrating in luminous glory. The dark, wet months are for domestic projects, intemperate dissipation, unread novels, and entrepreneurial pursuits. By nearly anyone’s measure, the bright months are very bright, but the dry months are wet. Likewise, the dark months are very dark, but the wet months are very wet. If it is spring on the trail then pack your bear spray—grumpy beasts stir anew.
For me, the Cascadia bioregion’s northern reach touches southeast Alaska. Seattle, not Anchorage, is the urban hub. Liquid sunshine reigns. Boats and planes are the critical modes of transport when an unconnected road system ranges just 14 miles.
When I visited southeast Alaska in 2018 I was struck by being firmly landed in “The Last Frontier,” while simultaneously experiencing a familiar hominess. The small-town grocer with a salmon mural on its outside wall reminded me of the co-op market in Arcata. The Sitka marina reminiscent of Newport on the Oregon coast. Astoria can be spotted in Ketchikan.
Aside from its temperate rainforests and its history as a commercial fishing and logging station, perhaps the most obvious marker of Cascadia in southeast Alaska is its churlish, craggy charm. Infinite ways to interpret this character exist. Rugged individualism juxtaposed with communal reliance. Libertarian sentiment melded incongruously with egalitarian tendencies. Nuanced common sense. We’re all we’ve got here, gotta stick together! Leave me alone. Conservation bumper stickers and gun racks. Camo and Birkenstocks. Xtratufs and hash pipes. Oysters Rockefeller and smoked deer jerky.
Everywhere boats. A life lived close to the water and oriented to its contours. An oceanic climate, an oceanic economy, and an oceanic culture. Tide tables. Shuttered canneries. Purse seining. A mere 15 miles inland and it’s welcome to the great forested nowhere; human communities give way to undomesticated varieties. All the people, all the hubbub, all the coffee, all the circa 1998 internet connections are found where terra firma collides with gelid waters.
The bioregion’s boreal corner holds its own set of mysteries, revels in its isolation, belies its otherness. Tucked away from the rest of it all, southeast Alaska whispers in repose, contented by clandestine solitude. Coalescing, an ancient essence and a recently faded newness; a foreign curiosity coupled with a wonted disposition; a northern edge of Cascadia, somehow at the center of it all.