{"id":668,"date":"2013-08-24T15:04:31","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T15:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=668"},"modified":"2013-08-24T15:04:31","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T15:04:31","slug":"journey-to-alaska-post-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"Journey to Alaska – Post 4"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pica<\/a>When the grand vistas are not visible you can always focus in on the small details, and they can be just as magnificent.\u00c2\u00a0 That is exactly what I had to do on my foray into Denali National Park which began on Monday, August 19<\/span><\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 From the precise time that I boarded the bus with thirty other journeyers to Camp Denali\/Northface Lodge, 89 miles into the park, it began to rain.\u00c2\u00a0 The rain did not stop until after we exited the park at noontime on Friday, August 23.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Denali is the name of the National Park which President Woodrow Wilson signed into law in 1917 after nearly 10 years of campaigning by Charles Sheldon.\u00c2\u00a0 Though white explorers called the mountain at the center of the park Mt. McKinley, for tens of thousands of years native \u00c2\u00a0Athabascan people called it Denali, meaning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the great one.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Its base begins at 2,000 feet, much lower than the base of Everest, which begins at 12,000 feet.\u00c2\u00a0 This means that <\/span>Denali, rising to\u00c2\u00a020, 320\u00c2\u00a0feet, has a greater vertical rise than Mt. Everest.\u00c2\u00a0 And she, the Great One, even produces her own weather patterns.\u00c2\u00a0 But <\/span>from inside the park <\/span>I was not privileged to catch <\/span>even <\/span>a little glimpse of her. <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\"Berries<\/a>So I looked elsewhere: down to the ground, between the trees and into their branches. I was enthralled by the wonderful colors and <\/span><\/span>carpeted patterns,<\/span> and creatures mostly <\/span><\/span>spotted from a distance.\u00c2\u00a0 It was then that I saw my first Pica, a small rodent slightly bigger than a mouse whose cute<\/span>ness grows on you.\u00c2\u00a0 But I wondered how such a small animal could survive in the harsh winters and predator-rich 6 million acre terrain.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Yes, how can this tiny creature flourish?\u00c2\u00a0 It made me think of Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153survival of the fittest.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Just the night before,<\/span> an ecologist lecturing at the lodge pointed out that Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory had been misunderstood, misrepresented and manipulated.\u00c2\u00a0 He felt that Darwin actually intended to show us the survival of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fit,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d referring to the plant, element, creature, and human that was able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into its symbiotic system, a system which would promote self and communal survival.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into the system, no matter how complex, those systems eventually come to find our individual and unique contributions necessary.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\"Ptarmigan<\/a>

Ptarmigan with a few white feathers showing<\/p><\/div>\n

Therefore this theory is not about domination, brute strength, power over or oppression; rather it is like the little pica that can find its home in the rocks in the tundra and build multiple caches of vegetation for the winter.\u00c2\u00a0 Or the ptarmigan that is smaller than a chicken but camouflages itself among the trees and bushes, turning white in winter to blend into the snow. These are indeed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fitting into ones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/span><\/div>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Although I did not see the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Great One,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I found valuable insight into survival for us all in the little ones who are least in the food chain and least in power and might.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The Great One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s base is embroidered by caribou and bears, bunch, crow, lingeon\u00c2\u00a0and blue berries and an ever-growing population of spruce among the scrubby tundra (the spruce are flourishing because of the rising temperatures). <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
National parks did not just happen.\u00c2\u00a0 More often it took heroic personalities and hard workers who understood stewardship of the land.\u00c2\u00a0 Challenges continue to confront the preservation of Denali:\u00c2\u00a0 Wolves are hunted in Alaska at the borders of the park, the climate is changing, the permafrost melting and habitats are disappearing. But thoughtful people can affect the common good!<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the grand vistas are not visible you can always focus in on the small details, and they can be just as magnificent.\u00c2\u00a0 That is exactly what I had to do on my foray into Denali National Park which began … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[116,126,128,127,125,124,63],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-2","tag-alaska","tag-berries","tag-darwin","tag-denali","tag-pica","tag-ptarmigan","tag-stacy-boorn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hkEw-aM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}