Alaska Story Project

Brad Matsen has been fascinated and writing about water and the ocean for over forty years. He is the author of, "Death and Oil: A True Story of the Piper Alpha Disaster on the North Sea"; "Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King"; "Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss", a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2006; the New York Times bestseller, "Titanic's Last Secrets"; "Planet Ocean: A Story of Life the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record" with artist Ray Troll, and many more. Brad has written for numerous publications, was the editor of Alaska Fisherman's Journal and the Pacific Editor for National Fisherman. In this podcast, Brad reads from his essay, "Salmon in the Trees". Shocking Fish Tales"Planet Ocean".Descent"Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King", Titanic's Last Secrets".The Book of the Tongass".Brad shares some of his reflections at this station in life. He also recounts a road trip with his twenty year old grandson, "Just dig how cool it is to be alive—this experience of being here! It's astonishing. It's really wonderful!"

This podcast features the work of author, editor, and teacher, and FisherPoet, Lara Messersmith-Glavin. In each essay from her recently published book, "Spirit Things", Lara holds an object or detail from her early life aboard the family's Kodiak seiner and then takes us beyond into realms of history, science and story. In the Introduction to "Spirit Things", Lara writes, 'When we live with things, imbue them with use and care, when they become extensions of our bodies to work, to create, to touch the world, they take on their own quiet power. I like magical objects and the histories they carry inside of them." Lara reads Chapter 4, 'Wave' Lara reads Chapter 9, "Shell" Lara's website: https://www.queenofpirates.net Show notes: https://www.alaskastoryproject.com/podcasts Podcast music by Christian Arthur: https://christianarthur.com

Bruce Rettig recently published Refraction, An Arctic Memoir. Refraction is a Pushcart prize nominee, and has received recognition and multiple awards including an award for non-fiction with the San Francisco Writing Contest, an International Chanticleer Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Award. Bruce also writes literary short stories, creative non-fiction, essays and flash fiction/nonfiction. He continues to be at the helm of his advertising and graphic design agency with the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association as an important client. Refraction recounts his experiences as a young man working in Prudhoe Bay. His writing includes both the human intensity of heavy industry as well as the vastness of the non-human world. Refraction, "Show notes at https://alaskastoryproject.com Bruce Rettig: https://brucerettig.com/ Special thanks to Christian Arthur for his music: https://christianarthur.com

Brendan Jones lives in Sitka, Alaska with his wife, three daughters, six chickens, and one dog. He first came to Sitka as a young man to land what work he could find. Soon he was writing for the Sitka Sentinel, and has gone on to write for a range of publications including The New York Times, the Smithsonian, GQ, Washington Post, Patagonia and others. He has recently won the 2022 Green Earth Book Award for Whispering Alaska. All the while, he balances writing with being a father and spending time in the wilds as a fisher, hunter and outdoorsman. This podcast conversation includes: We Need Alaska’s Tongass National Forest Now More Than EverA Canadian Threat to FishingOriginal Music by Christian Arthur: https://christianarthur.com/ Show notes: www.alaskastoryproject.com Brendan Jones: https://www.brendanisaacjones.com/

Dan hosts John and Becca Wolfe, co-authors of Alaska Adventure, 55 Ways, Southcentral Wilderness Explorations, published this summer by Mountaineers Books, Seattle, Washington. This 50th anniversary edition of 55 Ways, first written by Helen Nienhueser, represents three generations of wilderness exploring and collaborative writing. Helen writes in the Forward: “It gives me great pleasure that my son and granddaughter are the coauthors of this new incarnation of 55 Ways, thus continuing what has become a family project for more than fifty years. We share the pleasure of guiding you into the places we love and ask that you join us in becoming stewards of these lands, taking care of them as you use them, and leaving no trace.” The podcast conversation includes: Alaska Adventure, 55 WaysOriginal Music by Christian Arthur: https://christianarthur.com/ Show notes: www. alaskastoryproject.com Alaska Adventure, 55 Ways: www.55waysalaska.com

Award winning author of several books, including The Only Kayak and Jimmy Bluefeather, Kim Heacox is also an opinion piece writer for The Guardian US. He’s published some 18 pieces—10 in the last year with The Guardian. Kim: “My Guardian pieces are framed within my credo of activist writing, that it’s not only my right but my responsibility to challenge power & the prevailing order, to speak out as best I can, using story, humor and a few numbers, maybe even a little parody. Taped onto the upper right-hand corner of my laptop is a small piece of paper with this quote from Carl Sagan:” In this podcast, Kim reads two of his Guardian pieces: “Birds are remarkable and beautiful animals—and they’re disappearing from our world”. “What we can learn from Rachel Carson as we fight for our planet. Host Dan Kowalski offers further context to Kim’s environmental writing by reading an excerpt from Kim’s book, John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire In his prologue, Kim writes: “The only thing that counts is that which can be counted” said Galileo 300 years before Muir. Together with René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and others, Galileo gave us our modern scientific revolution, our Age of Reason, the triumph of the rational mind. And while he and his brilliant contemporaries carried us forward, they also crushed things in our path, They separated us from nature, rather than making us participants in nature. They made us clever and powerful, but not wise. Muir was a revolutionary of another kind; he said, there's much more to good science—and right livelihood—than connecting data and dissecting frogs. There's a deeper meaning than conventional analytical reason. Experiment is not enough. Good science also requires experience, a deep knowing and sense of wonder that comes from being out there. barefoot in the meadow, alone on the ice, naked in the storm. “When we try to pick out anything by itself,” Muir would write, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Thanks musician Christian Arthur for his original compositions Show notes: www.alaskastoryproject.com/podcasts

Award-winning author and naturalist Hank Lentfer returns to the Alaska Story Project with an audio piece, “10 Sounds That Make You Feel More Alive”. Hank reads from his book, Ravens Witness, the Alaska life of Richard K. Nelson, a passage from his earliest memories living with the Iñupiaq in the Arctic. “We yearn to pull together with neighbors and celebrate our collective success. So why do we find ourselves living in such rancorous times? How did stories of unity get buried by the din of voices tearing us apart? When did caring for our country become a partisan issue? And by country I don't mean a flag, song or pledge but our actual home ground the soil, rivers, forest, tundra, air and climate that make life possible.” Reflecting on what makes a good story, “I'm drawn to stories that blur boundaries, stories that work against our tendency to cut the fabric of life into neat squares and organize it— to label people as Democrats or Republicans or evangelicals or atheist, or the world as natural or unnatural. So any story that helps stitch those squares back into their proper orientation. And a good story in my mind reveals the pain, the folly and darkness of isolation. A good story can illuminate and celebrate the restorative powers of connection. And the best stories do both.” From a published essay, “if I were imprisoned in a windowless cell and allowed out for just one week a year, I choose seven days centered in September. I come home to my Alaska cabin in the woods and clean a few pounds of spruce needles out of my neglected kayak, oil up a fishing reel, pack a three day lunch and paddle up river.” And finally, “Pay attention, hone in on any story that blurs boundaries or awakens us from the delusion of separateness. Retell the story at the dinner table, at church, the grocery store. And remember this you don't have to write a book or produce a podcast to be a storyteller. Our lives are stories, every decision, each interaction, the choice between generosity and greed, between gratitude agreements, kindness or callousness, tells a story. And our stories are not finished. We get to write a little each day. I try and remember that when I wake up, that the hours in front of me are a blank page and I get to choose the story I tell before I go to bed. ASP host Dan Kowalski, “We're recording this in a time of increasing darkness for the human condition. We're in the midst of a historic shift, as a despot has unleashed mind-bending brutality and suffering on the souls of Ukrainians and also hapless Russians. The Alaska Story Project is dedicated to offer stories that have the power to connect and heal as something of a counterpoint or antidote to what's all over the news right now.” Show notes: www.alaskastoryproject.com/podcasts

Ray Troll's Ichthyomuse, Art and Rock & Roll Planet Ocean

A thought and theme from Wendell Berry, “coming into the peace of wild things.” Hold Fast

Jonathan White is a writer, surfer, sailor and educator. His work has been published in Orion, The Sun, Fine Homebuilding, and Natural History. His first book, Talking on the Water, (Sierra Club, 1993), explores creativity and the natural world. It grew out of "Seminars Afloat" with writers Gretel Ehrlich, Ursula Le Guin, and Peter Matthiessen, along with other visionaries, activists and artists, such as poet Gary Snyder, whale biologist Roger Payne, and Gaia hypothesis co-founder Lynn Margulis. His most recent book, Tides, The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, (Trinity University Press, 2017), takes the reader around the world to where the tide is most dramatically at play. He goes to the arctic, Panama, Chile, Europe, China, and Alaska, among other far corners, to explore the cultural and scientific stories of the tide. “White goes deep beneath the surface with the grace of a poet,” writes Susan Casey, author of The Wave. “Be prepared for some serious magic when you read these pages.” Dan and Jonathan discuss: GrotowskiTidesThe Log from the Sea of Cortez.

Spring Patterns and Surviving a Glacial Tsunami.

The Art of Listening

Stories of Connection: Barry Lopez; Faith of Cranes & Sandhill Cranes; Raven's Witness & the life and work of Richard Nelson; sound recording. Raven's Witness:

Growing up with salmon, fishing for salmon, and transboundary mining issues.

In conversation writer Holly Hughes: Sailing by Ravens. Passings Hold Fast.

More on Alaska's Humpback Whales.

33 years of behavioral research with Alaska's Humpback Whales.

Treadwell Gold, An Alaskan Saga of Riches and Ruin.

Alaska Writer Laureate 2008-10, Nancy Lord. Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore. Green Alaska. Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North; Ph: A Novel;

Writer, Educator, FisherPoet Lara Messersmith-Glavin. Reflections on growing up a Kodiak fisher.