ALASKA V3 CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST

FIELD TRIP TO THE FUTURE— FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

field trip—a group excursion for the purpose of firsthand observation, as to a museum, the woods, or a historic place (www.answers.com)

2010

I’m riding in the back seat of a brandclean, navy blue Chevy Suburban, owned by the University of Alaska. The eight of us here (plus two other truckloads of artists and scientists) are headed on a field trip from Fairbanks (population 32,000) into the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest, then down the hill for lunch by the Tanana—that broad, silty river whose cocoa-brown water flows relentlessly, with power and ease, toward the ocean.

Sitting next to me, quietly, is ecosystems scientist Terry Chapin (a.k.a. Dr. F. Stuart Chapin III). I’m trying to think of a way to ask about his work.

“You mentioned this morning that your current research is centered around fire. Does your work focus mainly on North America? Or do you also study fire in Siberia and the Russian Far East?”

“No. Right now it’s just Interior Alaska.”

Such a simple statement, I’m thinking— “just Interior Alaska.” A huge stretch of land, and yet, only one small part of the Circumpolar North.

“Were you always interested in fire?”

“No. I started out by studying the physiology of a particular plant.”

A plant!? This surprises me. Did this man begin his career, then, as a botanist?

Later I discover that the “particular plant” is Alaska cotton grass—that wily, woolly little cotton ball: 14 species in Alaska. It thrives in small patches or whole meadows— a frolic of pure-white fuzzies on sturdy green stems that sway in the breeze like tropical island dancers, beckoning to any human who appears.

Terry’s voice continues: “Then I realized I couldn’t understand the plant without studying the particular environment of the plant. So I studied that…Then I realized I couldn’t understand the environment without studying the ecosystem, and the place of the plant and its environment within the ecosystem. So I studied that.”

This scientist, I realize, is telling me a story. In his humble voice, he’s telling a story. “Then I realized I couldn’t understand the ecosystem without studying the relationship between the ecosystem and disturbance. So I studied that…Then I realized I couldn’t understand the ecosystem and disturbance without studying the relationship between humans and the ecosystem and disturbance. So I studied that…And that is what interests me most now: the relationships between humans, ecosystems, and disturbance.

“You know, we used to think, as scientists, that the best way to learn about and understand an organism—such as a plant, or a place—was by seeking it out and studying it in its most natural state. But maybe now we’ve come to see that nothing is ‘natural.’ Or rather, everything is. Including humans. And disturbance.”

2050

Forty years from now, in 2050, I may turn 99. More likely, though—like my father and my mother now—I’ll be gone from this Earth. But what of my small cabin on the northwest side of Chena Ridge? What may become of it by then and of its habitat—its 1.98 acres of birch forest and the 90 quiet wooded acres, beside it and below?

Well, I’ve studied the findings* of forestry scientists Scott Rupp and Anna Springsteen, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, as well as the work of other scientists and social scientists. Based on “moderate” emissions models, here is what I’ve learned about my home…

It seems likely that, by 2050, the pond and wetlands on the 90 acres adjacent to mine will disappear. And when so much wet habitat dries up, much or all of the Alaska cotton grass found there will also disappear.

It’s possible that the log walls of my cabin will become more vulnerable to damage from carpenter ants and perhaps from species currently located further south, such as carpenter bees or powderpost beetles. Increased rain and sleet, when flung at the logs by increased wind, may also help lead to my cabin’s demise.

The birch trees, too, may become more susceptible to changes in climate. Warmer, longer, drier summers may encourage birch defoliators, including the birch skeletonizer, the birch leafminer, and that destructive beauty currently found in Alaska: the spearmarked black moth. Defoliation alone may not kill the trees, but it can weaken them and make them susceptible to other threats, including the most serious insect pest of the paper birch: the bronze birch borer.

As if that weren’t enough, micro-organisms may also flourish and enter my trees, including more stem cankers, decay-causing fungi, and root-rotting fungi that cause cracks— called “collar crack”—at the base of the tree.

The projected increase in average annual temperature in Alaska’s Eastern Interior of

*Projected Climate Change Scenarios for the Bureau of Land Management Eastern Interior Management Area, Alaska, 2001-2099. T. Scott Rupp and Anna Springsteen, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Prepared for the U.S. Department of the Interior / Bureau of Land Management, October 16, 2009.

ALASKA V3 CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST

about one degree Fahrenheit per decade, coupled with a projected increase in winter precipitation by as much as 25%, suggest that by 2050 my forest will no longer experience fluffy white snow, stillness, deep cold, and lack of wind. Instead, each winter season may bring a mixture of heavy snow, frequent melt, pelting rain, cold sleet, and ice, as the temperatures and the weather fluctuate.

Scattered permafrost lenses beneath the topsoil in my forest may melt and cause the collapse of trees. And frequent ice storms could break and topple many birches.

By 2050, though, most likely fire will have come to this forest and my cabin. Fire—and almost certainly days and weeks, possibly even months, of smoke.

Lightning may cause that fire.

Or perhaps one day a person, hurrying up the futuristic Parks Highway in a futuristic vehicle, will flick a futuristic cigarette butt out the window—and a fire will be sparked in the invasive green and yellow grass, the purple vetch and white sweet clover.

Fire burns quickly uphill, especially on a hot, windy day.

If a human were present, she could open a notebook and write down what came true about the cabin and change. But up on this fire-cleared ridge there is no longer a cabin nor any house, and not a person for miles. The people of Fairbanks have migrated to the other side of the Tanana—which flows, as ever, toward the ocean, although with less water and no more silt, for the glaciers of the Alaska Range melted long ago. The water, once cocoa-brown, now runs clear. And on calm days, rainbow trout can be seen, flicking in the shadows.

April has become the single month of spring, September part of summer, and October the long and lovely month of fall. The land on the city side of the river—the south side—is flat and sunny-bright, well-drained at last and freed of smoke. The permafrost has melted and the spindly black spruce have toppled, or else they have burned in the great peat fires that smoldered for many years.

Out on that broad sweep of land, the human population of Fairbanks has tripled in ninety years and people grow crops—food to help nourish themselves and the billions of hungry humans crowding the planet. Like Saskatoon once was—the largest city in central Canada’s prairie province of Saskatchewan—the landscape of Fairbanks, at the center of Alaska’s Interior, is now characterized by grassland and the leafy highlights of deciduous shrubs and trees: willow, aspen, maple, mountain ash. Gone are the thousands of acres of spruce trees, alpine tundra, and cold-climate blueberry, bearberry, and black crowberry.

Instead, fields of wheat, barley, canola seed, and several new breeds of grain flourish in the long growing season and midnight sun. Northern-bred cattle, sheep, and goats feed on the forage, and animals formerly found at lower latitudes—including raccoons, skunks, coyotes, wild horses, and white-tailed deer—inhabit the expansive savanna. In April, the tall shrubs that took root decades ago, when the climate warmed, bedeck themselves in star- shaped white blossoms—transforming, with summer, into the delicious violet-colored berries called serviceberries, better known as saskatoons.

Here in Fairbanks, in 2099, the people work in one way or another for the production of food and the health and advancement of their large city. Each adult has a government-issued, carbon-and-methane rationing card, which helps to regulate the rate of emissions. Carbon and methane are traded as a virtual currency, and people swipe their cards whenever they pay money for transportation, home energy, food, or electronics. Gradually a low-carbon, low-methane society has evolved, as each individual and family has made changes, knowing that everyone else is making changes, too.

The gentle ridge by the Tanana River is still called, by people and on maps, Chena Ridge.

The asphalt road along its top has cracked and crumbled, and the large and small houses in all its neighborhoods have fallen back into the soil or been dismantled—to be rebuilt and re-visioned on the river valley floor. With the city of Fairbanks now located south of the Tanana, the ridge and the old Parks Highway north of the ridge have turned into green space: huge, unfenced areas dedicated to wildlife and plant species protection, foot-powered recreation, and scientific research.

Long ago, before outsiders, a small group of Lower Tanana Athabaskans roamed this place. Their name for the small river that joins the Tanana was Ch’eno’—“river of something”—an indirect reference to the presence of caribou here. Now this fabled ridge is once again returning to itself and to the animals. And on this particular September day, the green-gold grasses of late summer tremble in a breeze.

If anyone were to dig down, here on the northwest side of Chena Ridge beneath the tall grass, decaying plant life, and increasing topsoil, he or she might find these: the charred and insect-chewed remains of a few eight-inch, three-sided spruce logs, used to construct a cabin in 1983 on one of the parcels subdivided from Frank Dewey’s homestead. Also found might be a scrap or two of corroded metal roofing. It is unlikely, though, that a note has survived— written in round, neat letters with black ballpoint pen on a sheet of white paper, then folded into a straw-colored envelope and tucked by a middle-aged woman deep into the insulation of her newly renovated, green metal roof.

April 30, 2005, the note said—

Dear Dad,

This new dormer and skylight and roof are dedicated to you. I know your favorite color was red, but I think you might have liked this green, too. Since I didn’t get to see you before you passed away…

Just now in sunlight, a two-year-old moose is ambling the savanna and nosing the shrubs, stepping on this 1.98 acres and munching on willows and saskatoon. Flicking an ear in the humming warmth, the young moose moves further up the ridge— preparing, in its ancient brown self, for the return of darkness, snow-cover, moonlight, and ice. ■