Chasing Alaska : a portrait of the last frontier then and now

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Title:

Chasing Alaska : a portrait of the last frontier then and now

Author:

Bernard, C. B.

ISBN:

9780762778461

Physical Description:

viii, 280 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm

Personal Subject:

Bernard, C. B.-Travel-Alaska.

Subject Term:

Indians of North America -- Alaska -- Antiquities.

Geographic Term:

Alaska -- Description and travel.

Summary:

"Alaska looms as a mythical, savage place, part nature preserve, part theme park, too vast to understand fully. Which is why C.B. Bernard lashed his canoe to his truck and traded the comforts of the Lower 48 for a remote island and a career as a reporter. It turned out that a distant relation had made the same trek northwest a century earlier. Captain Joe Bernard spent decades in Alaska, amassing the largest single collection of Native artifacts ever gathered, giving his name to landmarks and even a now-extinct species of wolf. C.B. chased the legacy of this explorer and hunter up the family tree, tracking his correspondence, locating artifacts donated to museums, and finding his journals at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Using these journals as guides, C.B. threw himself into the state once known as Seward's Folly, boating to remote islands, hiking distant forests, hunting and fishing the pristine landscape. He began to form a landscape view of the place that had lured him and "Uncle Joe," both men anchored beneath the Northern Lights in freezing, far-flung waters, separated only by time. Here, in crisp, crystalline prose, is his moving portrait of the Last Frontier, then and now"--

Holds:

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	917.9804 BER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	917.9804 BER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	917.9804 BER	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Alaska looms as a mythical, savage place, part nature preserve, part theme park, too vast to understand fully. Which is why C.B. Bernard lashed his canoe to his truck and traded the comforts of the Lower 48 for a remote island and a career as a reporter. It turned out that a distant relation had made the same trek northwest a century earlier. Captain Joe Bernard spent decades in Alaska, amassing the largest single collection of Native artifacts ever gathered, giving his name to landmarks and even a now-extinct species of wolf. C.B. chased the legacy of this explorer and hunter up the family tree, tracking his correspondence, locating artifacts donated to museums, and finding his journals at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Using these journals as guides, C.B. threw himself into the state once known as Seward's Folly, boating to remote islands, hiking distant forests, hunting and fishing the pristine landscape. He began to form a landscape view of the place that had lured him and "Uncle Joe," both men anchored beneath the Northern Lights in freezing, far-flung waters, separated only by time. Here, in crisp, crystalline prose, is his moving portrait of the Last Frontier, then and now.

Author Notes

C. B. Bernard, winner of several Alaska Press Club awards, has written extensively for Alaskan Southeaster, Pacific Fishing, Professional Mariner, and Gray's Sporting Journal. He lives with his wife, Kim, in Portland, Oregon. Visit him at cbbernard.com.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Bernard, a reporter who lived in Alaska for several years, has crafted a memoir of his time there that neatly dovetails with his discovery that he was not the first Bernard to run away from a mundane life in order to explore Alaska. Joe Bernard, C.B.'s Arctic-exploring relative of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, left behind a set of journals of which excerpts are sprinkled throughout. They're gripping tales of men freezing to death on the ice, Inuit life, and survival under the harshest conditions. It's not surprising that Bernard's contemporary musings on Alaska seem lackluster in comparison, but when he rides along with an overextended Alaskan state trooper or flies with a Search-and-Rescue pilot charged with hundreds of miles of surveillance, he's able to peel back his romanticizing of the earlier age to ask intriguing questions about the nature of life in the wilderness. His finest chapter is spent with his distant cousin, a man who knew Joe, knows Alaska, and cannot be summarized. While Bernard overworks tiresome tropes about the shallowness of Alaskan tourists, the story of Joe Bernard-and his descendants' attempts to understand him and each other-makes this worth a read. B & W Photos. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

After moving to Alaska for work in 1999, Bernard discovered that distant relatives had relocated there a century before and that one of them, Captain Joe Bernard, was buried just a few feet from his new home. In the years that followed, Bernard tracked Joe's adventures, reading his unpublished memoir, meeting his direct descendants, and finding him in the works of famous Arctic explorers like Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Bernard tries to understand what Joe was looking for in Alaska, and why he himself felt compelled to live there. He writes movingly of the northern climate and landscape, of solitude and distance, of feeling utterly transformed. There are moments when he cannot avoid casting a disparaging eye at tourists (nearly every Alaskan author feels compelled to do so), and his wish that a native Alaskan boy would idolize local fishermen instead of Deadliest Catch is a bit cringeworthy. Clearly, Bernard cannot resist romanticizing the state, but such flights of fancy do not diminish his illuminating quest to understand his fascinating ancestor and himself.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2010 Booklist

Part I Sucker Holes
1 Change	p. 2
2 Departures	p. 11
3 Trails	p. 16
4 Prospects	p. 24
5 Cathedral of Stillness	p. 30
6 Northern Lights	p. 40
7 Cities at Sea	p. 54
8 Sustenance	p. 65
9 New Beginnings	p. 74
Part II Liquid Sunshine
10 Better Than This	p. 82
11 Epsom Salts and Seasick Bears	p. 91
12 Signs	p. 101
13 Homecoming	p. 110
14 Dashed Hopes	p. 114
15 Shelter	p. 120
16 Trout Fishermen and Metrosexuals	p. 130
17 Too Far	p. 140
Part III End of the Road
18 Winnebago's Army	p. 144
19 Family Reunion	p. 152
20 Theme Park	p. 157
21 Occupational Hazards	p. 165
22 The Mistake by the Lake	p. 177
Part IV Crossing the Bar
23 Flesh and Blood	p. 184
24 Tragedy Strikes	p. 191
25 A Fleeting Condition	p. 197
26 Fish Oil and Snake Oil	p. 204
27 Black Friday	p. 213
28 Captain Bernard	p. 219
29 Convergence	p. 229
30 The Unfriendly Arctic	p. 240
31 Voices in the Wilderness	p. 248
32 Holding the Past	p. 259
Epilogue: Forty-Ninth State of Mind	p. 268
Notes	p. 276
Acknowledgments	p. 279

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Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

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