A Landlubber’s Logbook: The Alaska Field Seminar (F’22)

by Deion Hammond (F’22)

After a jam-packed week of introductions to my classes for my fall semester at Williams-Mystic, the time to set off to Alaska had quickly come upon me and my equally bewildered compatriots. We assembled in the Seaport parking lot at the crack of dawn, with all our worldly possessions contained in our own individual Williams-Mystic™ duffel bags, and set off that Sunday morning for The Last Frontier. In an almost 4,000 mile journey that would’ve taken a 19th century expedition months to complete, we flew from Boston to Seattle and finally to Juneau, Alaska in the space of only one day! (though we were all too tired from flying all day to appreciate the marvels of modernity in the moment) 

Rising through sheer willpower alone at 4am the next day, we reached our first destination in the form of Glacier Bay Lodge. Besides being one of the coziest hotels I’ve ever stayed at, it also provided the perfect jumping off point for exploring the breathtaking wonders that surrounded us on all sides. While most of these wonders were crafted by glaciers in prehistory, the first wonder we visited was a rather recent, manmade one: the Huna Tribal House. There we talked with Darlene See of the Huna Tlingit. She talked to us about the history of her people, their displacement from their home by both a glacier and a callous American government, and their enduring hope that they would someday return to their ancestral home. The soaring wooden beams that surround us there in Glacier Bay, carved with the clan stories of the Huna Tlingit, and the massive formline murals that covered the interior and exterior of the Tribal House spoke to the jubilation of a hope answered.

Students sitting outside the Huna Tribal House

The wonders we saw on Tuesday were entirely of Mother Nature’s design. From our Glacier Tour Boat, courtesy of the National Park Service, we spent the entirety of the day with our eyes glued to the horizon. There we saw flocks of cormorants, kittiwakes, and even puffins. A raft of sea lions, emanating a stench of sour fish that reached us hundreds of feet away, sunbathed on a small marble island. A lucky few even caught the flute of a killer whale! But more spectacular than any of these were the blue ice glaciers at the end of our long voyage. The last remnants of the great bulldozers that had carved out the North American continent thousands of years ago, the glaciers now stood as noble sentinels to herald the end of our voyage.

Carr House family photo

Raft of sea lions (very smelly)

Johns Hopkins Glacier

On Wednesday we would face our greatest challenge of the entire expedition: fog. The 10-person seaplanes to Sitka we had planned on taking that morning could not fly through the dense haze that had rolled in that morning, and so we returned to Glacier Bay for one more day. Making the most of our newfound time, we explored the intertidal zone to find a plethora of star fish and sea anemone and examined the 50-foot skeleton of the humpback whale Snow. By the afternoon the fog had dissipated, and so as the stars began to twinkle into view, our new flight to Sitka set off without delay.

Beginning our morning with a walk through the cedars and alders of the Tongass rainforest, Thursday would be a day of highs and lows for me. The highlights were plentiful. From meeting with Janet Clark and Sarah Tobey of the Sitka Sound Science Center to learn about the aforementioned cedars and alders to hearing the stories of Dr. Sonia Ibarra and her mission to educate academia on the importance of indigenous knowledge, one mind at a time, I realized just how little of the world I actually knew. And when we explored the intertidal around Magic Island before we donned our wetsuits and went snorkeling along the shore, I realized just how little of the world I had actually seen. But after these best of times, there was the worst of times when my hand was selected as the quarry of an ornery bee’s stinger, leading to my early retirement for the day.

Students preparing to snorkel around Magic Island shore

Fully-rested on Friday after 12 hours of uninterrupted Benadryl-powered slumber, my art-loving itch would be scratched once more at Sitka National Historic Park with a first-hand look at how totems are crafted in the traditional formline style by the exceedingly down-to-earth carver Will Peterson. We remained in the park for our meeting with Louise Brady, who taught us about the Tlingit war with the Russians and the continuing Tlingit war to secure their food sovereignty. After her presentation, we met my favorite speaker of the trip: Chuck Miller. Chuck, as a dedicated student and now teacher on Tlingit lifeways, spoke with the gravity of one that has been entrusted with a history that threatens to fade with each passing day, but also the humor of one who has had to endure many an obvious question of oblivious tourists. His words painted a picture of heartbreak, but also of hope for the next generation of elders. Even if I should forget the soaring glaciers, I’m sure I will still remember his stories. We finished our day touring the local fishing co-op and hearing about how Alaskan fishermen are finally beginning to work together from one Stephen Rhoads (though he might have been better styled as Captain Ahab with his outspoken hatred for sperm whales and their tendency to steal the entirety of his catch) and afterwards learning about the fight for equitable fisheries from Williams-Mystic alumna Linda Behnken aboard her fishing boat. Her dog, also aboard the boat, did not speak, but his presence was greatly appreciated nonetheless.

Saturday was our last full day in Sitka, and so after a lovely talk with locals Sarah and Eric Jordan on the basics of commercial fishing in Alaska, we were let loose to explore the town and purchase all manner of souvenirs to bring home with us. In the afternoon we visited the Sitka Raptor Center, and much to my disappointment, there were no dinosaurs to be found roaming around Jurassic Park style. However there were many eagles and owls, perched almost close enough to touch, that alleviated my disappointment. The last site we visited was a nearby landslide that had galvanized Sitka into forming a community-driven landslide watch group. Although not especially noteworthy compared to all the other sights we had seen, (sorry geologists!) I thought it was an appropriate ending. Like that landslide, one impulse had sent me cascading down a path I had never known I’d ever wanted to take, except instead of the end result being diorite and destruction, it was insight from instruction.

F’22 at the landslide in Sitka, AK

My greatest takeaway from my time in Alaska (besides a camera roll now replete with pictures of glaciers) is my excitement for further field seminars with this cohort. In such a small group, I have found a collection of some of the smartest, kindest, and funniest folks I have yet met. Whether furthering the culinary field by combining my cheesecake with an Italian Wedding soup, which Evan coined the Italian Divorce, or giving myself RSI (repetitive strain injury) playing ERS (Egyptian Ratscrew,) some of my most cherished memories are ones that can never be adequately described, only remembered. Dumb inside jokes like this are – in my humble and objective opinion – what relationships are built upon, and we have no shortage of inside joke bedrock from Alaska. 

While we were in Alaska we had a continual Leave No Trace policy, but try as we might, I’m afraid we broke it along the way. I had left with classmates and returned without them. I did, however, bring back newfound friends.

An Interdisciplinary Dance Class

By Zach Arfa (F’19). Zach is a senior at Oberlin College, where he’s studying dance and psychology. He grew up in Shelburne Falls MA, and is excited to find more interdisciplinary intersections between dance, psychology, and the environment after graduation.

This semester, we have been doing a huge amount of learning about the world. It’s not hard for us to see now that “maritime studies” isn’t merely a discipline with facts for us to learn. It is a way to see and understand the world — including some of the most intense and scary changes the world is going through. 

This Thanksgiving, I flew out to Oberlin for the first half of our break. I went to see my friends there, but I was also invited to guest teach a dance class. I study a dance form called Contact Improvisation, a partnering form created at Oberlin College in 1972. It’s based on momentum and weight sharing. When you lean into a partner or partners, a shared center of gravity is created. The technique of the form is keeping and manipulating that point of contact throughout an improvised dance together. I absolutely love it. There are lifts and rolls and falls. It can be so fast and wild that you can’t look where you’re going, and so slow and intimate that an entire hour can go by with only your heads touching ever so lightly. I’ve been dancing this form for three years now, with fairly intensive classes every semester so far. I’ve taught beginner classes on campus, and facilitated more advanced practicing groups. A great friend of mine has been teaching a beginner class while I’ve been at Williams-Mystic, and so when I told her I was coming to campus for a few days, she asked me to guest teach an evening.

Through such immersion in interdisciplinary education this semester, it’s been impossible for me not to make connections to the disciplines I’m familiar with. I’ve been thinking of psychology and music, but connections to dance have been running through my head and my body. Through movement, we can teach embodied concepts. Think of an anatomy class where you don’t just learn what a bone/muscle/tendon is called, you also learned to feel it in your body and feel how it helps you move. Movement bypasses skepticism and abstraction. It is only concerned with the intimate. And intimacy in an educational setting is deep understanding. It brings a relevance and connection that most people don’t find in school. It’s why it’s important not just to learn the names of animals in the intertidal zone, but to actually go to the beach in Rhode Island and see, hold, and touch them. 

All semester, I’ve been inspired by what we’ve been learning and I’ve been creating scores. A score is a movement prompt. Choreography is concerned with how you move your body: an arm goes here, and then there at this point in the music. A score is a structure within which the exact movements are improvised. A score could be as simple as “take one minute, start high and end low.” It is just a structure that helps to focus an improvised dance. The scores I’ve been creating aren’t just about movement. They are about what we’ve been learning and experiencing this semester: climate change, natural disasters, environmental ecosystems. That is what I brought to this dance class at Oberlin. Four scores.

Zach holds a baby alligator during a swamp tour on Williams-Mystic’s Louisiana Field Seminar.

The first score was a variation on a very common score in Contact, the Earth Water Air Fire score. This score is normally a warm up, and a way to tap into different energy levels. You start on the ground, embodying the earth, feeling grounded and supported, moving and shifting so minutely, as the earth does. That transitions into water, flowing and spreading out. The speed may increase, and the resistance in your body is zero, like a gentle stream parting around the rocks. Then air, similarly low resistance but now standing, using more space in the room you’re in. Finally fire, fierce and hot. Strong, direct, movements. All the actual movements are improvised, but the score helps guide the energy through the warm-up. This score is quite common, and it inspired the first climate change score I created. 

I took that score, but I set it in Louisiana. Instead of the earth being supportive and grounding, what does it feel like in our bodies if it’s literally eroding out from underneath us, sinking away? And what if water, instead of being flexible and passive, is flooding and destroying homes and lives? The air is also gusting fiercely, throwing things around and is quite devastating. And then for fire, I brought it to the people we met in Louisiana. I thought of Mr. Chris saying that as long as there was one grain of sand on Grand Isle, he’d come back and rebuild and keep living there. The fire was the fierce love and commitment these people have for the land despite all the ways in which the elements can be hostile. These elements guided the improvisations, instead of the nurturing and peaceful versions.

The next score brought us to somewhere we love. Everyone was in pairs, and there was a supporter and a leader. The leader’s prompt was to imagine a place that they love, an outdoor place with living things. They then project that place they love onto the room, and guide their partner through it with their dance together. The leader can’t tell their partner where they are thinking of, but instead must convey what the place is and how they feel about it through the dance. The supporter does just that: supports their dance. Then they switch.

The third score was one that I created last year with a few friends of mine. It’s an animal embodiment wrestling score. I created it because I was watching a lot of Steve Irwin videos (he’s not just my absolute hero — I first started watching his videos because he’s an unbelievable mover) of him rescuing crocodiles by wrestling them. So in this score we bring out a bunch of mats, and we embody crocodiles or lions or any animal you want, and we wrestle. But instead of the goal being to pin your partner (as in normal wrestling) the goal is to keep them moving. I added prompts about connecting with the animals and really thinking about how they would move: not mechanically, but energetically. What does it feel like to become these animals?

This led us into the last score, a kind of environmental education score. I broke the class up into levels on the food chain in the Alaskan coastal ecosystem. One person was an orca, the apex predator. Two were sea otters, two were sea urchins and abalone and the rest were kelp, the foundational species of the ecosystem. As in the last score, we moved throughout the room as our animals. First, we simply embodied them — not mechanically (we didn’t flop like an orca would) but energetically, with the power and fearlessness that an apex predator would have. Then we had short dances with each other, between five and ten seconds, as our animals. The orca might be direct and forceful, where the shellfish might be slower but very purposeful, the otter would be quick and light, and the kelp wouldn’t move a lot through the room, but move a lot through their upper bodies. We put the ecosystem into the room, and felt the relationships between all these animals that share space. After that we ran out of time, so we stopped there. My idea had been to then go through the history of that ecosystem. What happens when the Russian hunters arrive and kill basically all the sea otters? The shellfish have no predators so their populations rise, so the dancers embodying otters would become shellfish. But then, they would eat all the kelp, their populations would crash, and then the kelp would rebound. And the orca would also go without the otters to eat. And so on. I’ll have to test that part out in a future class.

I left that class feeling like each score could be its own semester’s worth. The first score was an investigation of the changing climate and natural disasters, and a reckoning with the fear and grief that evokes. The second connected us to the world, and might inspire more love for it, and perhaps more of a drive to help it. The third helps connect with other animals, letting their movement really inspire and unlock the animal in us (for we are wild animals!). And the fourth was environmental education, an embodied way to teach people how the natural systems of the world work. There are so many scores that could do each of those things. I feel like I’ve just opened up a whole storm of possibilities for this work! I’m planning on leading a class and exploring it with a lot of intention next semester.

For me, this was just another lesson that the world is interdisciplinary. It’s not enough to only do things one way. An environmental education class or a normal dance class would not have been able to create what happened that evening. We must be able to translate concepts, and create hybrid models (of learning and of cars) if we want to make a difference in the world. This is exactly what we’ve been learning to do this semester. We are able to go and work with people in ways that I certainly didn’t think I could do before. I’m not bold enough to say that this class, or this approach, will “change the world”. But I’ve heard that big change, like the change we need around the environment, is like an overflowing bucket. It may only be a few drops of water that tip it over the edge, but they accumulate atop thousands and thousands of other drops. We can be those drops.

A Field Seminar in Photos, Part II: Sitka, Alaska

This photo essay is by Fall 2019 student Johann Heupel. Johann is a Marine Science and Maritime Studies student at the University of Connecticut at Avery Point and a long-time aficionado of the history of our relationship to the sea. Having grown up in Mystic Connecticut, Johann’s future interests lie somewhere in educating a new generation about the wonders of the sea and our fascination with it, sharing maritime culture through art, science, song, and story.

This post is part of a series of photo essays depicting the Fall 2019 semester. For the complete series, click here. 

We’re excited to announce that we will return to Alaska as part of the Fall 2020 semester! If you will be a sophomore, junior, or senior at a US college or university, apply now to join us. We meet 100% of financial need and welcome students of all majors. 

(Above) View across Kruzof Island, students hiking toward the volcano.

It was difficult to leave the awe-inspiring views of Glacier Bay behind us, but everyone was excited to have a few days left to explore Alaska. Now, we travelled south to Sitka, arriving to a beautiful, sunny day in the small downtown we were going to be staying in. 

Living a stone’s throw away from the world’s last temperate rainforest took some getting used to. Waking up every morning to the view of the endless hills of the Tongass National Forest — nestled in the Indian River Valley a short walk away from Crescent Harbor, where the salmon would jump in the morning light — was spectacular. Bald eagles nested in the trees around the park, and children played in a playground ten yards away from an active salmon run. Everywhere we looked, people were in constant contact with the natural world. As we soon found out, they were also painfully aware of the ways that world was changing.

(Above) A local Tlingit doll craftswoman shares her tribe’s traditional techniques at the Sheldon Jackson Museum.

We were afforded the opportunity to meet some incredibly interesting locals: people from all walks of life invested in the maritime culture of Sitka. An elder of the local Tlingit tribe discussed their history with the Russians and native lifestyle in the shadow of beautiful Haida totems in the forest, close to the historic Russian architecture of downtown Sitka and a collection of tribal artifacts from all across the Pacific Northwest. An artist and teacher from a local school regaled us with Tlingit myths and stories, while he taught us how to draw indigenous form line designs of their sacred animals: Bears, Ravens, and Eagles. 

The rich landscape of Alaska’s panhandle lends itself to widespread study of natural science and gave us a unique learning experience. We consulted with researchers studying all aspects of the local environment, including many ecologists interested in the dynamics of kelp forest habitats in various ways, such as the trophic impact of sea otters or the preservation of giant kelp. The Sitka Sound Science Center (SSSC) across from our lodgings worked to breed pink salmon in a specialized hatchery. We got to talk with the workers as they processed eggs and sperm to repopulate the local salmon stocks.

(Above) Pink Salmon attempt to jump into the SSSC hatchery, where they will produce the next generation of the local fish stock.

The importance of the science and history linked to the region became all too apparent when we started to take a closer look at the logistics of Sitka. An official from the port authority told us about the challenges of living on the island, balancing the local fishing fleet and recreational craft with cargo vessels to bring in food and supplies, as well as the need to allow cruise vessels through for tourism dollars. Local fishermen described the difficult life of longline fishing to us. We got to speak to alumna and longline fisherman Linda Behnken (F’82), the head of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, about the threats their industry faces. Everyone spoke about the changing world with which they were confronted: sea level rise slowly encroaching on their home as the warming climate changes their environment.

Sitka is a place where all these abstract concepts and disparate disciplines intertwine. The history of a longstanding colonial conflict and the heritage of Native peoples are juxtaposed with a thriving fishery and one of the most diverse environments in the world. This breathtaking biome of temperate rainforests and kelp forests contrasted against a bustling port town is a unique place to learn about the multi-faceted nature of the maritime world.

(Above) View of Mount Edgecumbe from a distance, seen across Kruzof Island.

A Field Seminar in Photos, Part I: Glacier Bay National Park

This photo essay is by Fall 2019 student Johann Heupel. Johann is a Marine Science and Maritime Studies student at the University of Connecticut at Avery Point and a long-time aficionado of the history of our relationship to the sea. Having grown up in Mystic Connecticut, Johann’s future interests lie somewhere in educating a new generation about the wonders of the sea and our fascination with it, sharing maritime culture through art, science, song, and story.

This post is part of a series of photo essays depicting the Fall 2019 semester. For the complete series, click here. 

We’re excited to announce that we will return to Alaska as part of the Fall 2020 semester! If you will be a sophomore, junior, or senior at a US college or university, apply now to join us. We meet 100% of financial need and welcome students of all majors. 

(Above) View from the Glacier National Park guide boat across the mountains.

A group of students from all across the country, we barely had three days to get to know each other. Now, we were waking up at 3 am to travel to Alaska. 

We spent the journey learning about each other, doing crosswords on the plane together or playing games in the airport, until we boarded three small six-seaters bound for Gustavus. 

The planes would take us to Glacier Bay National Park: just a short ride across mountain tops and forested valleys away, yet that plane ride was the most incredible experience of the trip. Suddenly confronted with the sheer majesty of the Alaskan wilderness – a seemingly pristine environment with the breathtaking beauty of a David Attenborough documentary – we felt out of place with the modern world. As we landed on the airstrip, it was clear my feelings of otherworldly euphoria were shared by many. No one could quite describe the experience.

Everyone was exhausted and exhilarated that night, looking out across the fjords from our woodland cabins. Local salmon and halibut served to us and a night beneath the northern lights completed the feeling of a camping trip at the Ritz: an experience of an unfamiliar and captivating wilderness from the lap of luxury.

 

(Above) Image of the Johns Hopkins Glacier as it “calves”, splinters into icebergs.

By morning, we were boarding a Park Service vessel to explore the Bay, blown away by the sheer vastness of the landscape. In the distance, whales spouted like early morning mist whilst several hundred sea lions sunned themselves upon the rocks, and mountain goats looked down on us from the rocky ledges. As we approached the ice sheet, the low conversations of excited passengers heightened to a fervent chatter as we all beheld the ice – then lowered to a pensive silence as we listened to the glacier crack.

The realities of climate change for this beautiful landscape became inescapable. The icecaps around the glacier were melting rapidly as the streams of freshwater carved grooves in the mountainsides. As our professors looked out across the landscape, there was a mournful expression turned toward the ice sheet, as if they may never gaze again on this marvel of an un-polluted world. The crew scooped a piece of the glacier from over the side, and we were able to hold a piece of history that had survived for thousands of years in our hands. 

(Above) Williams Mystic students marvel as Artie Claudio holds a piece of the glacier.

The rest of our time in Glacier Bay seemed too short. I wished I could have spent more time among the trees and on the water, kayaking the fjords of the bay or hiking mountain paths. The last night we had under the stars was spent among fast-made friends, remarking on the wonders of the natural world and our dream that it may be preserved, as we contemplated the ways in which young people like us could spark action and change.

I had never dreamed of seeing the majestic wilderness of Alaska before I came to Williams-Mystic, a transformative program based around travelling across the country while discussing important issues through multiple disciplines. This longstanding experiment of experiential learning allowed me to think about climate change in the very place the issue was most pressing, surrounded by experts to cultivate our experience and an incredible landscape worth protecting. I left with a sense of place that I had never gotten from a textbook or a classroom: an understanding and appreciation for the place where all these abstract ideas collide.