In the past week, I’ve tried elk, a lot of cheese, birch syrup, and Alaskan honey. This mostly happened at the Saturday market. The elk tasted like reindeer, and the birch syrup tasted exactly like the date syrup we put on لقيمات in Ramadan.
I attended a daylong research workshop on cryosphere issues. The crysophere is the part of the earth that is icy, this includes river ice, snow, glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, etc. The workshop consisted of cryosphere specialists presenting their research, and then working on cyrosphere sustainability issues. Most of the main takeaways I had from the day were scientific, but it was clear that information and research sharing was a big hindrance in the development of the field. There were 80 cryosphere specialists in the conference hall. My gut feeling tells me the world doesn’t have a whole lot of them. Nevertheless, many of them did not have access to each other’s research, to university archives, and to proper data. Since all three of these exist, there seemed to be a tremendous problem of communication, access, and sharing. When it comes to such wide-scale, long-term, environmental projects, data sharing is crucial. These are not specific technologies that need to be patented; it is an emerging field of research where specialists need as much information as they can. Plans to increase cohesiveness and accessibility of research and data soon took centerfield in the workshop.
Another work-related experience came with a shaking of my building one afternoon. I thought my low blood pressure was kicking in, and I was ready to close my eyes to get through the dizziness. But, my tea was shaking. I sat at my desk for 10 seconds. I was certain my table was shaking too. My boss came out a minute later with a smile and said, “These earthquakes… they always make me feel funny”. Sophie, an intern at my office from Stanford who lives in Alaska, giggled. I caught on pretty quickly that these 15-second shakes were common here. I just wish I knew I was experiencing my first earthquake. It would’ve upped my excitement and lessened my confusion. I am on the lookout for the next one. According to the Earthquake Hazard Program, they happen on a daily basis, but some of them are not as strongly felt in all parts of Alaska.
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Post-earthquake, we had a meeting with Tom Case, the newly appointed Chancellor of the University of Alaska. He is a soft-spoken man. The meeting took place amidst classical music, and a large collection of native artwork. When he asked me where I was from, I said “Bahrain”, and he smiled calmly and said, “I’ve spent some time there”. He is a retired 3-star Air Force Lt. General, who headed the Alaska Aerospace Corporation, but has maintained positions at universities in the past two decades. We talked about synergies between the Institute of the North and the University and the creation of joint ventures.
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| Saturday Market. Courtesy of Ali Vivinetto. |
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| Saturday Market. Courtesy of Ali Vivinetto. |
Today, I watched Grizzly man. It follows the adventures of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell. I think the documentary is meant to be inspiring, but I was deeply disturbed by it. Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers in the wilderness of Alaska with bears. He strongly believed that he was one with the bears, that they trusted him. He also found their way of life more fascinating and simpler than that of human beings. I think what stuck with me the most was the real footage. It was clear that over the years he went from curious, to staunchly believing that he was supposed to be with the bears until his end. After 13 years, he was eaten by a bear that he had been accustomed to being around. The documentary emphasizes the eating, with multiple descriptions of how it happened. In the real footage, Timothy Treadwell saw the bears as loving, magnificent creatures. He would cry several times, and tell them that he loved them. He would also say that he would die for them and for their wilderness. The incident is clearly ironic, but from a straight-forward ecosystem narrative, it is the simplest concept. Timothy Treadwell would cry and cuss when he would see how the bears ate their own during times of need. This humanizing of animals is not necessarily loving them in their wilderness, but searching for a stereotypical harmony. I think this harmony exists on a more macroscopic level of an ecosystem, rather than in the individual actions of animals in the wilderness, as they need to prey in order to sustain themselves. Depending on what kind of environmentalist you are, you might not see preying as the most harmonic processes of wilderness. His life was superb, but after watching the real footage, I do not think he would have necessarily thought of it as tragic.
