Alaska Worldschooling
Heskith Island with friends
Take ferries, kayaks, catamarans, canoes, or bush planes when you go to Alaska. And when you get there, go where the locals go. Follow their trails, listen to their stories, learn their traditions. Alaska’s wild beauty and rich natural resources attract wildly beautiful and naturally resourceful individuals who stay. The family from New Jersey moved there probably for the same reason the Alaska Natives settled there–beauty, abundance, fish, berries, whales, and forests. We witnessed subsistence living at its best: work hard, store well, share with your neighbors and make art.
The connection to the natural world is strong and powerful. We were fortunate to go to Alaska for nineteen days and all three of us felt the pull, the awe, and the love. We followed the moon and the tides and knew which salmon were running in which rivers. We fished and swam and learned to identify fireweed, cow parsnip, chocolate lily, and thimbleberry (yum!). Johnny got Xtratuffs (the steel-toed rubber boot of choice for locals) for his 9th birthday and met Travis Beals, the rookie musher from Seward who was the subject of Johnny’s third grade “Iditarod” research project at his school back in Colorado.
The richness of southeast Alaska–the geography, history, culture, and ecology–so easily became a place-based curriculum for worldschooling. We asked questions. We wondered. We learned. We had the privilege of meeting with a Chickaloon Elder and the Cook Inletkeeper and heard firsthand about local efforts to preserve Alaska Native culture and protect critical wildlife habitat.
Johnny in perspective at Point Aialik
We learned about the 42 Alaskan Native Villages in the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association that survive and thrive on wild salmon. We learned about how their lifestyle and subsistence are threatened by resource extraction. We felt the clash when large scale mining and oil and gas projects are sited on ancestral lands and critical waterways. When will the salmon come? Under the midnight sun, we listened, learned, and were moved to action.
Perhaps it was our first time seeing a humpback whale in the wild, or eating sockeye salmon the same day it was caught, but we are hooked on Alaska. And by hooked, I mean we are in love with Alaska and want to sing about it.
