Animal Stories: Encounters With Alaska's Wildlife
By Bill Sherwonit (Alaska Northwest Books, 2014)
Anchorage writer Bill Sherwonit, a Connecticut boy who started in Alaska as a geologist, then became a newspaper sports and outdoors writer, has for many years made a life of freelance writing about his interests in Alaska's wild places and wild animals. He has never shied away from calling himself a "nature writer" and an environmental activist, someone neither afraid to revel in nature nor to stand up for its protection. In this engaging book, he's drawn together his writings about some of his favorite Alaska animals, from unassuming chickadees and wood frogs to bears and wolverines.
"Animal Stories" isn't meant to be a guidebook to Alaska wildlife, but it might very well be used as one. Its organization begins around "home," the Anchorage Bowl, and then ranges out to other parts of Alaska, including the Brooks Range; the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary; Augustine Island, the volcanic island 70 miles west of Homer; the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and the Chilkat Bald Eagle Reserve near Haines. Sherwonit is an especially good guide to finding unexpected wildlife in and around Anchorage. Where might you spot belugas, wood frogs, lynx, wolverines, Dall sheep, nesting goshawks, sandhill cranes, bank swallows and arctic terns? The author doesn't exactly draw you a map, but he names his favorite trails, parks and areas in and around town where he's watched all these creatures. Alternatively, you're allowed to sit back in your easy chair and join the author vicariously as he kayaks among porpoises, catches a giant halibut and beats off swarms of mosquitoes.
What the heck's a porcupette?
Sherwonit's observations can be acute. Here's his description of trumpeter swans in "A Gathering of Swans": "… any sense of elegance was washed away when they went bottoms up to feed on aquatic plants rooted in the marsh muds. Rear ends pointed to the gray ceiling overhead, they were feathered buoys bobbing in muddied waters. And their hoarse honking calls, though vaguely trumpetlike, also stirred memories of clowns squeezing horns."
Along with his adventures, Sherwonit weaves in fascinating aspects of natural history and the histories behind wildlife and wilderness protections. Who knew that a flock of bank swallows is called a "foreclosure?" (Reviewer's note: A flock of tree swallows is a "stand," and swallows in general are a "swoop" or a "richness.") Or that a baby porcupine is known as a porcupette?
In "Valley of the Eagles," the author's admiration of the hundreds of eagles feasting on salmon at the Chilkat River in December is accompanied by a helpful discussion of eagle bounties pre-statehood and the history of the creation of the eagle preserve. Crane dance behavior and migration routes are similarly documented in "Called to a Primeval Presence." The history and philosophy behind the McNeil Sanctuary, where visitors can watch dozens of brown bears fishing at the falls, is well presented in "In the Company of Bears."
The author does a lot of exploring on his own, and describing one's responses to nature is not an easy thing to keep repeating in fresh ways. The most compelling pieces in the book are those that bring others into the story, especially others who add expertise to the narratives. Sherwonit has developed relationships over the years with a number of biologists, and he brings alive their passion for the work. Colleen Handel, for instance, has extensively studied chickadees with malformed beaks, and Sherwonit does a tremendous job of taking readers into that mystery (one without a solution yet). In one essay, Sherwonit joins former state wildlife manager Rick Sinnott in a hunt for sandhill crane nests, and in another he accompanies fish biologist Dan Bosch on a walking survey of Campbell Creek and its salmon. He takes part in organized "citizen science" activities tracking beluga whales and counting wood frogs. An absolutely charming piece is less about the wildlife (tiny birds, redpolls, being captured and tagged) than about the man with a passion for tagging, former Fairbanksan Leonard Peyton.
Wild philosophy
Sherwonit can also be philosophical, and from time to time takes readers into conundrums of living with wildlife, hunting and fishing and our relationships with other species generally. He describes how he came to refer to an animal not as an "it" but a "he" or a "she," his very mixed feelings about sport fishing for large halibut (the largest fish are females that produce lots of eggs) and what it means to value both science and spirit. He balances the harm research techniques can do to individual animals against the benefits of what is learned and can be applied to a species' protection.
In his penultimate essay, "Of Waxwings and Goshawks and Standing Up to Power," he uses an example of a flock of small birds mobbing a much larger bird of prey to consider collective action against corrupt political power.
In his introduction, Sherwonit wrote his goal was to "open up new worlds and possibilities to readers, just as my own life has been enlarged by both first-hand encounters and what I've been able to learn from research and interviews." If "Animal Stories" entices Alaskans (like a convocation of eagles or a congress of ravens, even a tidings of magpies) to explore their backyards and wild lands and to value the lives of other species, he will have succeeded.
Nancy Lord is a Homer-based writer and former Alaska writer laureate. Her books include "Fishcamp," "Beluga Days" and "Early Warming."
Bill Sherwonit wrote about his encounters with Chugach State Park wolverines in the Oct. 4 issue of We Alaskans.