FLUX 1998

Special Thanks To

etter

Paper and Ink

Connie Snyder Ballmer Becca Boustead Paul Brainerd

U

niversalize the individual experience. That has always been the goal of Flux magazine.

Communication tools are changing, but our medium is still the printed page, and our purpose remains the same. Magazine writers, designers, and photographers want to do more than just report the stor~es and record the images. We're trying to somehow forge the human experience in paper and ink.

In this issue of Flux, we recount a mother's perilous flight from Ecuador to the United States with her two children. An isolated Alaskan community rebuilds after a tragic multiple murder. We explore the rugged west coast of Canada's Vancouver Island and a kayaker's view of the river.

"We're trying to forge the human experience In paper and ink."

In addition to these distant journeys, we look inward at the ways we define ourselves. Join us and examine how we interpret cultural identity. Deaf people are still struggling to create their own place in society and bisexuals are fighting for recognition. Celebrate midwifery. Take a look at the ways our culture is changing. Acupuncture is slowly gaining acceptance and swing music is back, but old-fashioned barber shops are disappearing.

We hope this collection of stories entertains and informs you. But is that all? If we've quoted our subjects accurately, chosen the right type, and set the apertures correctly, then some would say we are successful journalists. However, art is created in the moment when passion ignites craft. When technique conveys even a small glimpse of the human spirit, the printed word can touch lives and inspire change. And we hope we have made a connection with ink and paper.

Campus Copy Eugene Print

Editor in Chief Ed Dorsch Senior Editors Laura Esterman Kaarin Knudson Managing Editor Allison Stormo

Art Director Kristin Cikowski

Copy Chief Pamela Huyser

Production Director Morten Bustrup

Associate Editors Rob Elder Sarah Gray Nicole Kristal Sarah Swanson Mark Yates

Art Associates Sarah Aichinger Jonas Allen Sunny Chao Jessica Obrist Chris O'Halloran Jay-E Shih

Duncan McDonald, Vice President of Public Affairs & Development

Photo Editor David Parmeter

Online Editor Katie Yahns

The mothers featured in "A Midwife's Tale"

Photo Associates Bradley Rife George Rowe

Online Designers Chad Patteson John Woodward

Advertising Director Rebecca Starble

General Manager Kara Barrett

Dean Tim Gleason Stuart Greenleaf Chris Hutchinson Assistant Dean Greg Kerber Assistant Dean Jennifer King Dick Lennox

Travis Omlid Paul Murray, Unisource PhotOregon

Faculty Advisor Professor Brett Campbell

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Sean Poston Rainier Photographic Supply Professor Bill Ryan Jan Ryan Mick Westrick

-Ed Dorsch

Professor Tom Wheeler

Interns Eric Collins Gwen Fitzgerald Tammy Salman Flux magazine is planned, written, edited, designed, and produced by students in the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. Almost all of the photography is the work of University of Oregon journal ism students. Staffers are selected by facu Ity through a competitive process similar to a professional experience and receive credit for their work. Flux is produced in the School of Journalism's Ballmer graphics lab and printed at Eugene Print in Eugene, Oregon. InFlux, the online version of Flux magazine, can be accessed at

http://influx.uoregon.edu/

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13 The End of the Road

By Kevin Coughlin

How does a small, remote community recover after the murder of nearly half its residents?

26 On the Beaten Path

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s

22 A Midwife's Tale Photo essay by Alana Listoe Story by Pamela Huyser

Celebrating the ceremony of natural birth with a midwife.

34 Promises on the Run

By Jeff Gailus

By Laura Esterman

Backpackers from across the globe seek the rugged beauty of Vancouver Island's West Coast Trail, but greater accessibility may destroy the beauty that attracted them in the first place.

As a single mother emigrating with young children, Patricia confronted dangers that men traveling through Latin America's underground railroad never have to face.

COVER: The Kennicott Glacier is twenty miles long, spans five miles at its widest point, and feeds the Kennicott River.

The river separates the town of McCarthy from the Outside.

See star)!, page 13. Photograph by Kevin Coughlin.

Photographic tapelift by David Parmeter.

42 Prisoner of Hope

By Rob Elder

Scholar, philosopher, and activist Cornel West fights social injustice on a battlefield of words.

FRONT

AND

6 The New Swing Thing

BACK

8 A Turning Point

By Kara Barrett and Kaarin Knudson

By Sarah Gray

The Cherry Poppin' Daddies hope their major-label debut, Zoot Suit Riot, will do more than just swing.

Acupuncture is gaining public support and acceptance within the medical community.

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10 Bi Ourselves

48 Talking Hands

By Nicole Kristal

By Allison Stormo

As they struggle to legitimize their identity, bisexuals face discrimination from gays and straights alike.

Advocates believe in a distinct Deaf culture, but others claim American Sign Language is just a way to communicate.

51 Real Men Don't Use Mousse

By Tracy Picha

Clipping and shearing under fluorescent lights and a mounted antelope head, barbers like Pete Peterson uphold a disappearing male tradition.

54 Rolling With the River Photo essay by Chris Taylor Story by Dan Nicholson

Whitewater kayaking is as much about respect as it is roaring rapids.

InFlux, the online version of Flux, features articles not found in Flux magazine. Many of the stories also offer related multimedia content. Experience it at http://influx.uoregon.edul.

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The New Swing Thing The Cherry Poppin' Daddies Put a New Spin on an Old Scene Story by Kara Barrett & Kaarin Knudson Photos by Sarah Aichinger /

The Cherry Poppin' Daddies' lead singer Steve Perry swaggers and sways at La Luna, an all-ages club in Portland, Oregon.

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ance hall days are back again, but club goers and music lovers are swinging to a whole new jive. The big band horns and hepster sway are still undeniably present, but there's something more. This swing rocks while it hops. Punk-bred swing bands like the Cherry Poppin' Daddies are peppering the airwaves with their own innovative reincarnation of swing, and that's got music fans whipped into a tizzy.

"One of the reasons swing is getting popular now is because it's completely different from grunge," explains Jason Moss, lead guitarist for the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. "It's positive, and it's all about dancing-real dancing, not just shuffling your feet. It reflects a very different attitude toward life."

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After more than a decade of Nirvanainspired nihilism, that attitude adjustment is exactly what mainstream listeners are searching for. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies' major-label debut, Zoot Suit Riot, went gold in May, just after the band was added to the 1998 Vans' WARPED Tour lineup. The album was compiled from eight years of material to satisfy swing- demanding fans and includes songs from the band's first demo recording in 1989. Only three members of the original Daddies remain with the eight-man band today-lead singer Steve Perry, trumpeter Dana Heitman, and bassist Daniel Schmid-but more than thirteen musicians have been a part of the band at one time or another. That continual infusion of musical influences has helped refine the Daddies' eclectic blend of ska, rock, and punk into a new synthesis of swing-one that hasn't forgotten its roots.

Swing history dates back to the 1930s and 1940s-when the big band sounds of Cab Calloway and Benny Goodman were all the rage. Swing music was revolutionary, acting as a vehicle to broach the volatile social issues of racism and sexuality, while shared frustrations were unleashed on the dance floor.

"It was a time when you couldn't say things overtly so people had to use their wit and intelligence. There was a lot of innuendo, both sexual and political," explains Bill Barnett, selfdescribed "songhound" and recording engineer for the Daddies at Gung-Ho Studios in Eugene, Oregon. After World War II, the swing scene faded until the 1970s, when artists like Bette Midler and Manhattan Transfer briefly rejuvenated the genre with their own versions of the classics. But instead of revising the old standards, the Daddies focus on melding their influences into a swing sound that's more than a romantic vision of what used to be.

"A Daddies show is not a swing nostalgia show; it's a Cherry Poppin' Daddies show," says Moss, adding that many neo-swing bands are placing more importance on the swing style than the songs. Most bands in the current swing revival agree that a lack of originality will end the movement before it truly begins. Big Bad

l

Voodoo Daddy's Scotty Morris told USA Today that the lack of original music is what killed swing originally, and it will do so again if bands don't come up with something new.

Creating ground-breaking sounds has never been a problem for the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, who were experimenting with swing before Madonna was voguing or flannel was fashion. "The Daddies got out and did it when no one was expecting it," remembers Barnett, who has been working with the band for almost a decade. "In a punk rock world, they went out there with a horn section and did the totally unexpected-in a punk venue."

During that time the predominant musical influences were oriented around the Seattle Sound, and the Daddies had difficulty breaking through to mass audiences. "We were considered really uncool because we weren't a grunge band," says Moss. "It's cool that these songs are finally getting some recognition because they lingered in obscurity for so long. It's almost like we waited around long enough and the trends changed."

But the Daddies' journey into the mainstream has not been without complications. Any band that incorporates swing influences today is quickly lumped into one generic category, although jump blues, big band, and retro swing are but a few of the genres within this current trend. Even a band that's been around as long as the Daddies is not immune. Zoot Suit Riot is billed as "The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies," but the music focuses on a jump-blues style, not blue-blooded swing.

However, few listeners know the difference and it was only after compiling an album of their "swing" hits that the Daddies were offered a record deal, MTV rotation, or the chance to record the new Love Boat theme.

And, as other bands have learned before, success based on a singular music trend generates categorized expectations.

"My greatest fear for them is that people will want son of Zoot Suit Riot and grandson of Zoot Suit Riot until it doesn't even mean anything," says Barnett. "I hope the American public will accept them and not demand the same thing over and over again."

Perry and the other seven Daddies will be sharing a stage this summer with Rancid, Save Ferris, and several other bands on the Vans' WARPED Tour.

The Daddies have tried to control their image and resist that categorization by touring with bands like Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and playing all-ages venues-where the band finds the audiences more accepting and open to "weirdness." But there is one venue, which seats millions, over which they have no control: radio.

"Today you hear a whole day of programming where if it isn't Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots, it may as well be," Barnett says. He sees th~ Daddies as having the potential to turn "niched-out" radio back into a more openminded and innovative form.

"It would be great if we could change radio even a little bit," adds Moss, "but it's a very daunting task."

"I think that radio definitely needs a shot in the arm," agrees Perry. "I think the movie and entertainment business in general is kind of fucked up. [Take] the whole idea of the blockbuster: try to make something just like something else. I think that screws up a lot of people's thinking-as opposed to developing artists."

So for now, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies are focusing on fulfilling their own artistic visionbut they've got one eye cocked to the current swing trend as well. "Hopefully, our bullshit detectors [will be] on through this whole period," Perry says with a laugh. "We're going to be kind of the watchdogs."

These Daddies don't want to be just the same old jive.

"In a punk rock world, they went out there with a horn section and did the totally unexpected ."

Kaarin Knudson is majoring in magazine journalism and fine arts. Kara Barrett is a magazine journalism major. ~

\!.!Y

For swing-dancing multimedia and more information about the history of swing, visit inFlux. http://influx.uoregon.edu/swing/

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ATurning Point Though Skeptics Remain, More Americans Are Using Acupuncture Story by Sarah Gray Photos by George Rowe & jolie Allen

Lifelike models display the many meridian lines and pressure points in the human body.

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obin Moffit feels another silver needle slowly pierce the skin in the back of her neck. She can't see what is happening, but she lies still as nearly a dozen inserted needles are connected to tiny wires plugged into a homemade black box. The needles begin to pulsate, sending a slight electric current through her neck and body. Moffit, a thirty-six-year-old bank employee in Eugene, Oregon, is familiar with the procedure now, but before her treatment began, she thought acupuncture was worthless.

More than a year ago, a car sideswiped Moffit's Honda Civic at 40 mph. All the ligaments in her knee were destroyed, and she suffered whiplash that left her with chronic neck and back pain. Surgery repaired her damaged ligaments, but she found no relief for her neck

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and back. She tried massage and physical therapy, but one year and thousands of dollars later, she still suffered daily. That's when a friend told her about acupuncture.

After her first treatment, Moffit's body was so sore she couldn't get out of bed for three days. But her acupuncturist persuaded her to return. Three months later, she says, "I'm the best I've been in a year and a half."

Despite lingering opposition, more Americans are seeking relief through acupuncture. A U.S. government health agency recently declared that acupuncture is an effective therapy to treat certain conditions. Traditional doctors are referring patients to acupuncturists, and insurance companies are taking notice.

Dr. Jason Eliot, a retired physician in Eugene, Oregon, became an acupuncturist after finding relief from his own chronic back pain through acupuncture. While he doesn't assert that it can replace modern medicine, he believes acupuncture is more effective for conditions like chronic neck and back problems. "I'm still in awe of how well it works," Eliot says.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that more than one million Americans receive acupuncture treatments every year. The NIH noticed this trend and decided to conduct research on this alternative practice. In 1997, the NIH found clear evidence that acupuncture effectively relieves nausea after chemotherapy and dental procedures. Acupuncture may be useful for numerous ailments, such as menstrual pain, carpal-tunnel syndrome, lower back pain, and asthma. However, the NIH did not find clear evidence supporting its effectiveness for mental illness, drug addiction, weight loss, or other conditions treated by acupuncturists.

Acupuncturist Tom Williams started his licensed practice in Eugene thirteen years ago.

He believes acupuncturists will eventually treat most chronic diseases. Williams says that because the NIH is a government research center, "when they say, 'yes, this does have a scientific basis,' it gives [acupuncture] a credibility with regular medical doctors and also insurance companies."

Acupuncture involves the theory of so-called energy flow, or Qi (pronounced "chee"), which travels through fourteen meridians in the body.

Disease and chronic ailments result when the essential patterns of Qi are disrupted. The treatment corrects the imbalance of flow through the stimulation of more than three hundred fifty nerve endings and pressure points along the meridians. Needles penetrating the skin at these points release the Qi and balance the body's energy flow. Most acupuncturists also practice "acupressure," which uses various techniques in place of needles to stimulate the pressure points.

The growing popularity of acupuncture has forced officials to regulate the industry. The FDA removed acupuncture needles from the category of experimental medical devices and now regulates them. Each state has requirements for becoming a licensed acupuncturist, and a national board certifies them. Most states require that acupuncturists become certified. This trend of government regulation may legitimize the practice in the eyes of some skeptics.

Whether convinced by testimonials or assured by government standards, more Americans are choosing acupuncture instead of drugs. Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychology professor specializing in risk decisions, says that many people reject the medications and often-ineffective therapies offered by the medical community. "People are starting to think maybe science doesn't have all the answers after all," Slovic says.

While Eliot acknowledges the theory of energy flow, he had a difficult time accepting the treatment without scientific proof. "It's the biggest hurdle for physicians to cross," Eliot says. "The whole crux of our training is on a scientific basis. We're taught that chiropractors and other alternative practitioners are quacks.

We don't know why acupuncture works, but we have to see that it does work."

Although Eliot can accept acupuncture, other professionals do not. Dr. Wallace Sampson, a retired professor of medicine at Stanford University, finds no scientific proof that acupuncture works. According to Sampson, studies indicate that acupuncture is no more effective than a placebo. "[The therapy] operates on a larger basis of suggestion and perception. It does not alter the course of any disease," he says.

University of Oregon physicist Rudy Hwa doesn't oppose the therapy but thinks people can misinterpret acupuncturists' use of "energy."

"There is a difference between acupuncture energy and physical energy," says Hwa. "The

average person could believe that energy is energy for whatever purpose-that's no~ true."

Despite opposition, Malvin Finklestein, a Eugene acupuncturist, predicts that acupuncturists and medical doctors will work more closely together to treat patients. While he already receives some referrals from doctors, he envisions more in the future. "The integration is starting to happen more and. will happen more as the Western medical community acknowledges the efficacy of acupuncture," Finklestein says. "Certainly the NIH study and its conclusions ar.e nudging in that particular direction."

Health insurance companies are responding to clients' demands for acupuncture coverage.

Companies like California's Acupuncture Plus+ Healthcare Plan and Acupuncture Insurance Service provide comprehensive Chinese medical benefits and often cover modern medical treatments as well. However, some larger companies do not see an increased demand. Ken Strobeck, communications manager at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Oregon says that because often the employer decides what insurance is offered-and usually the most cost-efficient plan is chosen-we may not immediately see a rise in acupuncture insurance coverage.

"One or two studies will not change what insurance companies cover," Strobeck says. "It's going to take long-term research to do that."

While acupuncture has a long way to go before becoming mainstream, reports like those from the NIH help establish the treatment's credibility. For previous doubters like Moffit, relief is all the scientific proof they need.

Acupuncturists use needles to balance the bodis Qi.

"We don't know why acupuncture works, but we have to see that it does."

Acupuncturist Stuart Greenleaf performed the acupuncture on the model featured in this article. Author Sarah Gray is a senior studying journalism at the University of Oregon.

For information about acupuncuture certification, visit inFlux. http://influx.uoregon.edu/heall

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•

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urse yes

Bisexuals are searchingfor acceptance in a society that wants them one way or the other Story by Nicole Kristal Illustrations by David Parmeter

ence sitter." "Chameleon."

"Switch hitter." Like gays and lesbians, bisexuals face a catalogue of insults. But ironically, many of them come from homosexuals. Marginalized by gays and straights alike, bisexuals are struggling to define their own community and dispel stereotypes about their lifestyles. By blurring the lines that divide sexual identity, they force society to question the way that identity is constructed.

While bisexuals face many of the same problems and bigotry that plague gays and lesbians, they have not found support from others who have discovered an alternative to the straight and narrow. Trapped in the middle, they constantly defend a sexual identity that some argue does not even exist. Bisexuals face rejection, a unique set of stereotypes, and doubts about their sexuality. At the same time, many are tired of being told they "just don't know" who they are. Without a visible bisexual movement, bisexuals often turn to the gay community for acceptance. But instead of finding solace, they often find prejudice in its place.

"The gay community is definitely a club. Bisexuals just don't fit in," says Amy Jolly, a bisexual at the University of Oregon. Though she has been out of the closet for two years, Jolly has no interest in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Alliance, a student group on campus. She doesn't want to face possible rejection. The organization's leaders acknowledge

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" I feel like I have to prove that I am not a straightperson pretending. " 10

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that much more could be done to include bisexuals.

Even Jolly's gay and lesbian friends dismiss her sexuality.

While working at a movie theater with one of her close lesbian friends, Jolly gave her phone number to a male patron. Her friend was so upset that she stomped out of the theater. A little straight behavior was enough to ruin their friendship.

Bisexuals like Jolly also feel they must explain their sexual orientation more frequently because bisexual sexual identities cannot be defined by the gender of their partners.

While dating members of the same sex, they appear gay.

While dating members of the opposite sex, they appear straight. Married bisexuals combat this assumption on a daily basis.

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ays and lesbians often assume that bisexuals are confused, promiscuous, and apt to hide under the guise of heterosexuality when the going gets tough.

"When the shit hits the fan, do you stand with a woman or do you stand with a man?" is one jibe aimed at bisexual women.

According to the stereotype, they just haven't made that final step to fully embrace a gay lifestyle.

Some women stand with both. And they-along with men-still face many of the same problems as homosexuals.

"We're demonized for spreading AIDS and for being a threat to the traditional family. We can't be adoptive parents. We can get fired from our jobs.

The Department of Defense lists bisexuality as a reason to be discharged.

Things that affect the lesbian and gay community affect us. Lesbians and gays feed their own oppression with biphobia," says Lani Ka'ahumanu, bisexual activist and founder of BiPolthe first politically active bisexual organization in the country.

Her lesbian"friends" considered sexual involvement with men detrimental to women's power.

"There's sort of an assumption [among some lesbians] that when you're a lesbian, and you're with. a man, you give your power away and cater to that man," Ka'ahumanu says. "But I can maintain my identity and be with a man."

But maintaining that identity can be tough when others think bisexuals are just going through a phase.

"In the gay male community, there is an assumption that if you are bisexual, you're just confused, and in reality, you are gay and just don't know it," says Jim Ransier, president of a gay/bisexual organization at the University of Oregon.

Regardless of the homophobia they face, gays and lesbians are acknowledged as homosexuals.

While gay people can clearly identify themselves without question, bisexuals are often accused of experimenting or beginning a temporary transition into homosexuality. Most often, homosexuals assume they are just afraid to take that final step to accept who they really are.

Ransier identifies with this "bi now, gay later" mentality because he used to be bisexual and now considers himself gay. Like many gay men, he has known only a few men who were truly bisexual.

"Lesbians and gays feed their own oppression with biphobia."

After grappling with her sexuality for most of her life, Ka'ahumanu came out of the lesbian closet as a bisexual in 1980 after falling in love with a man.

Accepting her bisexuality was particularly difficult because she was a leading lesbian activist in San Francisco.

Ka'ahumanu feared becoming a victim of the same bisexual stereotypes she once perpetuated. She did not want to be viewed as a promiscuous swinger and risk rejection.

After revealing her bisexuality to her lesbian friends in San Francisco, her friends stopped inviting her to allwomen parties, she says. They gave her dirty looks. Some refused to talk to her.

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olin May, a bisexual at the University of Oregon, has experienced similar judgment from her lesbian counterparts. "If you're gay, then you're gay, and that's great.

For the most part, people don't think that you're going to change. But if you're bi, it's out of convenience," she

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says. "I feel like I have to prove that I'm not a straight person pretending."

May says that she experiences most of this prejudice in intimate situations. Her female partners have blamed relationship problems on her sexuality rather than her personality. She has also encountered similar prejudice from men who consider her bisexuality a threat. May takes attacks on her sexuality personally and often becomes quite angry. "I don't need this from you. You've been th~re!" she once said to a same-sex partner, referring to the discrimination lesbians and most nonheterosexuals confront.

Paula Rust, a sociologist who has studied lesbian cultures extensively, said the bisexual identity forces lesbians to face unresolved questions about who is and who is not a lesbian. Rust found that about 90 percent of women who are self-identified lesbians say they have had' sex with men and about 65 percent say they are somewhat attracted to men.

Therefore, many lesbians could be considered bisexual. But some homosexuals will not call themselves "bi" even if they are involved with a member of the opposite sex for one reason: They perceive bisexuality as a hindrance to their political agenda.

But Lani Ka'ahumanu envisions a world that acknowledges all lifestyles.

By demanding bisexual recognition at predominantly gay and lesbian events, she encourages the gay community to accept bisexuals as individuals with valid identities. BiPol holds fundraisers and writes letters to newspapers, magazines, and lesbian and gay organizations. This San Francisco organization promotes inclusion and makes bisexuality more visible.

Though forced to adopt labels in a world defined by words, Ka'ahumanu advocates for an even broader deconstruction of sexual identity.

"What I don't like about the word 'bisexual' is that it sets up an either/ or paradigm," says Ka'ahumanu. "Ideally, we'd all be sexual.

Because, who cares? Why do we have to boundary between straight and gay people, activists can protest discrimina- put labels on it? We live in a world where categories make people feel tion, unite citizens, and advocate safer." homosexual rights.

By struggling as a group united only But there is no room for bisexuals in this sexual dichotomy. By blurring these by their sexuality, homosexuals have created a new body politic to drive their lines, bisexuals force gays and lesbians fight for equality. Only as an "other" to question their political movement, group can they gain queer rights. But which is structured around the belief wl{lile gays and lesbians often doubt the that homosexuals are members of a , existence of bisexuality, some bisexual separate group. If there is no clear-cut activists doubt the validity of sexual boundary between straight and gay, identity itself. As gay activists continue then the"gay" rights movement can be to promote visibility and acceptance of more easily challenged. all lifestyles, they face an important John Lugo, former leadership question: Will they rely on categories to council member of Bisexual, Lesbian, promote unity, or will they find a place and Gay Youth of New York, says gays for those who fit somewhere between and lesbians do not want to be lumped straight and gay? with bisexuals because bisexuals undermine the validity of a homosexual identity. They don't want straights to Nicole Kristal is studying journalism at the University of Oregon. She first became interested in look at homosexuality as a passing the issues surrounding bisexuality at a reading by phase. Lugo says when bisexuals gain Lani Ka'ahumanu. the support of the heterosexual commuFor details of Lani's story, nity, it places pressure on the gay additional photography, and extra community to "just indulge in the resources, visit influx. http://influx.uoregon.edu/bi/ normal behavior."

"we live in a world where categories

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acing rejection from a community that could offer support, bisexual activists have formed their own support networks in citi-es such as San Francisco and Boston, but they have yet to establish visible, easy-to-find communities nationwide. And they ha;ve not been welcomed by some homosexual activists.

The gay-rights movement relies heavily on the rigidity of the homosexual identity. By drawing a clear

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make people feel safer. "

The dogs of McCarthy, Alaska, roam the dirt and gravel streets untethered.

There are no leash laws here and no police within a hundred miles to enforce them even if there were.

A loose affiliation of about a dozen mutts, they respect each other's territories and dispositions, often frolic when they gather, and rarely scrap.

When the dogs stray, they stray north, toward Kennicott, or up the hill east, toward the dozen or so cabins scattered through the woods between McCarthy and its gravel airstrip. Only McCarthy's natural boundaries limit their movement. McCarthy Creek borders town to the south and flows into the Kennicott River, the town's western margin. To the east and north lie thousands of square miles of mountains, glaciers, and river valleys. Before the summer of 1997, the Kennicott was traversable only by~hand trams and afterward only by footbridges.

Tourists sometimes bring city dogs not used to this freedom. And, occasionally, one of these well-groomed pets will loudly tangle with one or more of McCarthy's pack, which usually rallies to repel the OUtsider. The tourist dogs don't stay long anyway. flux 1998

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Kennicott. As a result, the only land route into MCCarthy in 1983 was to cross by means of a hand-powered tram.

Has tlngs had worked as a computer programmer at Stanford

One victim had been flown to Glennallen, a town one hundred miles northwest and home of the nearest hospital, to receive treatment for gunshot wounds to Ihis face and head.

On March 1, 1983, Louis Hastings attempted

t~

murder McCarthy,Alaska. By 2

P.M.

that day. six of McCarthy's dozen or so year-round residents lay dead while two IOOre were wounded. One cowered outside a greenhouse, tightly clutching her upper right arm to stem the flow of blood, while stifling the sound of her panicked breathing. The other had been flown by a neighbor to Glennallen, a town one hundred miles northwest and hane of the nearest hospital, to receive treatment for gunshot wounds to his face and head.

The thirty-nine-year-old Hastings was headed west on the lone road connecting Mccarthy to the outsi e world. He rode a snOWlOObile taken fran one of his victims. Each of the dead had received multiple gunshot wounds, including at least one single wound to the head.

After killing MCCarthy's residents, Hastings planned to sabotage the Alaska oil pipeline. ,The plot began to unravel, however, after Hastings's nearest neighbor survived two shots to his head and escaped to warn others.

The previous night, Hastings had played a board game with Chris Richards in Kennicott, a town of four about five miles north of Mccarthy. Hastings won. During the course of conversation, Richards mentioned that a couple of Mccarthy's residents were away on a skiing trip. Hastings seemed disappointed. Richards also warned Hastings about cutting firewood fran dead trees on land that had been subdivided recently and thus might be offlimits to such activity.

-He seemed to appreciate the fact that I was concerned about h~,- Richards said in a 1983 newspaper interview• The next morning, at about 8:30, he saw Hastings approach the front of his hane fran the south side.

Richards thought Hastings--Iarge, soft-spoken, balding, and bespectacled with an unkeupt red

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beard--was stopping by on his way to pick up the mail. Richards pushed the outside door ajar and invited Hastings in for coffee.

Hastings set down a heavy backpack and, before entering, took a deep breath. Richards turned his back to the door and continued preparing breakfast. Then he began to tum his head to greet Hastings.

The land surrounding McCarthy and Kennicott is severe and unforgiving. Temperatures can fluctuate from 50 degrees below zero in winter to 90 degrees in the sunmer. Annual snowfall averages fifty-two inches. AlIoost 230 miles east of Anchorage, Mccarthy and Kennicott are located in the middle of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Established in December of 1980, Wrangell-St. Elias encompasses an area roughly the size of West Virginia and six times the size of Yellowstone. Four major lOOuntain ranges converge in the park and nine of the sixteen tallest peaks in the u.S. rise fran within the park's boundaries. Unlike IOOSt national parks, the land along the Mccarthy Road and along the road fran MCCarthy to Kennicott is a checkerboard of private and public lands. More han a million acres within the park's boundaries are still private1y owned.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, in the ridges above Kennicott, prospectors discovered the richest concentration of copper ore ever unearthed. This prompted the creation of Kennicott, a bluecollar, company town, and then Mccarthy, its red-light sister. But by the 1930s, IOOSt of the ore had been depleted and copper prices had plunmeted. The mines closed, as did their company town. The abandomnent of Mccarthy soon followed that of Kennicott, and the two wilderness centers of industIY became ghost towns. The railroad that transported the ore to a port nearly two hundred miles away fell into disrepair, and the rail bed eventually became Mccarthy Road.

Mccarthy Road begins where the pavement ends, just outside of Chitina, sixty-one miles to the west. In 1983, the road was covered with gravel and often scarred by washouts and washboard ruts.

Railroad ties and spikes occasionally resurfaced and shredded the tires of unsuspecting motorists.

Ten years earlier, floodwaters had washed out the bridge at the east end of the road where it crossed the Kennicott River into Mccarthy. The local inhabitants resisted state department of transportation efforts to build even a footbridge to span the

University in the late 1970s. He and

his wife left California for Alaska in 1980, initially moving into a duplex in east Anchorage, where he operated a computer services company out of their home. In the sunmer of 1982, about eight IOOnths before the murders, Hastings and his wife bought a vacation hane in Kennicott. By the winter of 1982, both Hastings'S business and his marriage were failing. He began to spend more and IOOre time alone at the Kennicott cabin, while his wife remained in Anchorage. In Kennicott, Hastings began refining an attack he had been planning for nearly a year.

Hastings had fled the overdevelopment of California for t~e wilderness of Alaska. Instead he found the state in the throes of development, largely due to the opening of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which winds fran Prudhoe Bay south to the port of Valdez on Prince William Sound. The eight-hundred-mile pipeline cost $8 billion to build, renewed the natural-resource economy in Alaska, and now is responsible for transporting 25 percent of the total u.S. oil production.

When he lived in California, Hastings had once volunteered to clean oil-soaked birds following an offshore oil spill. Shortly after he arrived in Alaska, he began to target the pipeline. According to one psychiatric report, Hastings -was disturbed by the population growth and influx of lOOney into the state and detennined that the best way to interrupt this was to destroy the pipeline and thus cut off Alaska's wealth and consequent growth. - Destruction of the pipeline would be the end to his MCCarthy ranpage.

It would begin when the weekly mail plane arrived. Hastings would kill anyone who showed up at the Heglands' place--and most of MCCarthy's residents usually did. With IOOSt of the residents eliminated, Hastings would hijack the mail plane and kill the pilot.

He then planned to land the plane near the pipeline at a punp station about eighty miles west of MCCarthy and rig the plane to take off again with no one at the controls. At that point, Hastings would

conrnandeer a fuel truck and ram the pipeline while shooting at it. He theorized that the cold winter weather would congeal the oil in the broken pipeline, thus minimizing enviromnentally damaging spillage while disrupting the oil flow. The fuel truck would burst into flames, charring his body beyond recognition.

Hastings thought that because the ~tire town would be dead and his body would be unrecognizable,' he could destroy the pipeline and commit suicide without revealing tQ his family that he had been a murderer and a suicide.

Officials would believe he had died, along with the rest of Kennicott and MCCarthy, at the hands of an unknown killer.

In a 1997 interview, the prosecutor in the Hastings case described Hastings as -a veIY bright guy, a nerdy academic whose wig is on probably a little too tight •••There are a lot of parallels to this guy [admitted Unabomber Theodore] Kaczynski.-If you really distill it down .•. Mr. Hastings thought he was going to be the savior of the Alaska wilderness,- Hastings'S public defender said at Hastings'S psychiatric hearings.

Although Kennicott's 1983 popUlation was in single figures, about two dozen people lived year-round within a fifty-mile radius of neighboring MCCarthy.

Maxine Edwards, fifty-two, and her husband J~, also fifty-two, hanesteaded in a house they built on the west side of the Kennicott River in 1953.

Called -Maxine the Diligent- by a friend, Edwards was described in 1983 as -a hard-working woman who could operate a bulldozer by afternoon and serve dinner on linen and cIYstal at night.-

The mines closed,and the two wilderness centers of industry became ghost towns.

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15

March 1, 1983, Maxine Edwards crossed the frozen Kennicott River to visit the Heg1ands, pulling a small plastic sled behind her. They lived less than one hundred yards from the west end of the McCarthy airstrip amid a spruce forest on a bluff overlooking McCarthy. The Edwardses were going to celebrate their twentyfifth anniversary in two weeks.

Les, sixty-four, and Flo Hegland, fifty-eight, had lived in Alaska for twenty-seven years. In 1967, they IOOved to MCCarthy, where they built an addition on their front porch and always left it unlocked so that groceries delivered by the weekly mail plane would not freeze and their neighbors could cane by any time to pick them up. Locals considered the Heglands to be McCarthy's unofficial postmasters.

The Heglands also made daily weather observations using a small meteorological site at their hane. They radioed this information to the Federal Aviation Administration's flight service station in Cordova, Alaska. The Heglands' two-way radio was the only one in McCarthy powerful enough to contact the world outside of WrangellSt. Elias. Without it, McCarthy was totally cut off from the outside world.

Tim, thirty-eight, and Nrrj Nash, twenty-five, had been married OUtside, the Alaskan term for anywhere outside of Alaska, during Christmas of 1982 and returned to Tim's nearly completed log cabin in MCCarthy on Valentine's Day of 1983. A friend in MCCarthy gave them a quarter of a IOOOse and a mincemeat pie with a heart carved in it to celebrate the occasion.

Tim, who had lived in MCCarthy for seven years, worJted construction in Glennallen and, following a divorce, had been living alone in the cabin he had been building with hand tools. He met Nrrj in the summer of 1982 when Nrrj ventured to MCCarthy as a tourist.

Since 1966, Harley King, sixty-one, and his wife, Jo, had lived on a hanestead fifteen miles west of MCCarthy off MCCarthy Road. Prior to his retirement, Harley King served as a commercial fisherman out of Cordova and as a hunting guide. In the 1950s, he hunted wolves in a predator-control program alongside another guide, Jay Hammond, who later became governor of Alaska.

On the lOOming of March 1, 1983, Harley King gave Donna Byram, thirty-two, a ride on his snowmobile, known as a -snowmachine- in Alaska, to the MCCarthy airstrip. Byram, who lived off MCCarthy Road between On

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the Kings and MCCarthy, was planning to fly out on the mail plane.

Chris Richards, twenty-nine, who worked summer construction and collected uneuployment insurance and food stanps during the winter, was preparing his breakfast using no modem appliances. In 1983, MCCarthy had no running water, no telephones, and no electricity except for that produced by individual generators.

MCCarthy is not a place where saneone stumbles into residency.

These pioneers made conscious decisions to live in isolation and under spartan conditions. Yet, despite their fierce independence and self-reliance, the citizens of MCCarthy formed close bonds.

And on Tuesdays, these far-flung neighbors would gather at the Heglands' home to socialize and wait for the weekly plane that delivered their mail. Tuesdays were often the only chance neighbors got to see each other. March 1, 1983, fell on a Tuesday.

Hastings lacked clarity and patience.

He failed to trUly see McCarthy and Alaska and acted on these misconceptions.

As Chris Richards turned away from preparing his breakfast to greet Louis Hastings on the morning of March "

1983, he felt something strike his ri ht cheek, sanething that shattered his glasses. He ducked his hea~ instinctively and then felt sanething hit the top of his head. He spun around to see Hastings approaching with a rifle. Richards and Hastings began to struggle.

Richards screamed for Hastings to stop. Hastings replied, -Look, you're already dead. If you'll just quit fighting, I'll make it easy for you. - Richards grabbed a knife fran the drain board of his sink and stabbed Hastings once in the upper left chest, slightly wounding him, and once in the right leg. Richards then escaped into waist-deep snow wearing only socks and one slipper, a T-shirt, and light corduroy pants.

Hastings "was disturbed by the popUlation growth and inflUX of money into the state. He determined that the best way to interrupt this was to destroy the pipeline and thus cut off Alaska's wealth and consequent growth."

H~ scrambled three-quarters of a mile up a steep hill to a nelghbor's unoccupied cabin. Hastings fired several shots at the fleeing Richards, nicking his right arm. At the cabin, Richards got boots, .a parka, and snowshoes. From there he stumbled about one-tenth of a DUle southwest to the newlywed Nashes' cabin, which was situated on the trail connecting Kennicott to MCCarthy. At the cabin, as the Nashes attend~ to his wounds, Richards told them what had happened.

The Nash s sald tha they. had seen Hastings heading toward MCCarthy 7 twenty DUnutes earller. R1Chards then insisted that they arm themselves and go to the runway to warn the others who were sure to be congregating there for the mail plane.

The Nashes rode a snowmachine, pulling Richards behind in a sled, to the airstrip. At the north end of the airstrip, they met Gary Green, a local pilot and guide who was cleaning snow off one of his planes. Green said that he too had seen Hastings about twenty minutes earlier, heading toward the Heglands'. The Nashes an~ Green decided that Tim Nash would go check on the Heglands whlle Green warmed up his plane to fly Richards to Glennallen about a forty-minute flight away. ' After ~ng ~p his .engine, Green taxied to the end of the runway to load R1Chards lnto hlS plane. Nrrj Nash then noticed her husband running d~ the strip approaching them. Green got out of the plane and met Tun Nash on the runway. Tim told Green he had just been to the Heglands'.

There, Tim had smelled a heavy concentration of gunsmoke and saw blood allover the inside of the house. Tim thought that the Heglands were d~d and noticed that saneone had atteupted to clean up the b~ood ln the Heglan~' kitchen. While Tim was standing in the kltchen, he s~w Hastlngs on the back porch. Nash fired a shotgun blast at Hastlngs that struck a doorjamb and Hastings returned fire striking Tim in the right leg. ' Green and the Nashes decided that the Nashes would remain to warn others away from the airstrip while Green took off with Richards to

7

get help. As Green lifted off, he saw Tim and Nrrj Nash walking toward each other on the east side of the runway. On his way to Glennallen, with Richards bleeding in his back seat, Green contacted the incoming mail plane that was scheduled to land at 11 A.M. and told the pilot not to land in MCCarthy. He then radioed the state police in Glennallen.

In the meantime, Hastings had backtracked toward the airstrip along a dog-sled trail. The trail snaked through dense brush behind a large lOOund of plowed snow across the runway fran the Nashes.

Hastings crawled atop the lOOund and, after Green took off, fired at least ten rounds at the Nashes two hundred fifty yards away. The Nashes fell.

Hastings walked to within fifty feet of their prone bodies and fired another two shots. He continued to approach the Nashes and fired two IOOre shots from close range into their heads.

Hastings then dragged the Nashes to the top of the snow bank opposite his sniping location to hide them in deeper snow. At about that time, Harley King and Donna Byram arrived at the north end of the airstrip on King's snowmachine. Byram saw Hastings walking over the snow bank on the west side of the airstrip and then saw blood in the snow on the east side. She wondered who would be butchering animals on the runway. As they drew abreast of the Nashes' bodies, Hastings started firing at them. Byram, who was standing on a sled that trailed the snowmachine, saw bullets hit King

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17

and the snowmachine. One bullet hit Byram in her upper right arm.

King accelerated the snowmachine as more bullets hit it. Traveling south, away from Hastings, King lost control of the snowmachine.

His leg had been broken by one of Hastings's shots. The snowmachine threw King and Byram to the runway near the path that led from the airstrip to the Heglands.

As Byram attenpted to load King back on the snowmachine, Hastings approached from one hundred yards away. Byram froze. King told Byram that he couldn't move and that she should save herself. Byram hurried toward the Heglands'. As she entered the spruce woods, she heard Hastings shoot King twice.

When Byram got to the Heglands, she noticed that the door had been kicked in. She was afraid to enter, so she hid outside the Heglands' ~eenhouse. After killing King, Hastings began to look for Byram. He approached the Heglands' house, calling out, ·One not dead. One not dead.· Byram cowered outside the nearby greenhouse, tightly gripping her injured arm. All she heard was Hastings'S bootsteps on the Heglands' porch and the wind whipping the Visqueen sides of the greenhouse.

Hastings abruptly ended his search for Byram and sped off on the Nashes' snowmachine. His plan was starting to unravel. Hastings thought the police would respond in a fixed-wing aircraft and that, if he got away from the airstrip, he would be safe. However, the first state troopers to respond left Glennallen in an.;;unmarked helicopter. They saw Hastings heading west on snow-covered MCCarthy Road. When the troopers landed, Hastings waved and offered no resistance. He said that he was Chris Richards and that Lou Hastings had ·gone berserk· and was •shooting up MCCarthy.· The troopers knew RichardS was already in Glenallen receiving treatment for his wounds. They also had a description of Hastings. Based on the fact that Richards was already in Glennallen receiving treatment for his wo~ds and based on the description of Hasti'ngs that Richards and Green had given them, the troopers arrested Hastings.

They then flew on to MCCarthy to search for survivors. At that point Hastings told the troopers: ·I'm your man.· OUtside the greenhouse, the police found Byram. She shared the fortyminute helicopter ride-to Glennallen with the police and Hastings. Inside the Heglands' house the police found Les and Flo Hegland and Maxine Edwards stacked in the bedroom ·like cord wood,· according to one trooper. They also found several spent cartridges in the kitchen and in the back porch areas. A bloody, fur-covered silencer sat on the nightstand next to the bodies.

-There was a lot of shooting that went on inside that house,· said one state trooper in 1983. ·There were a lot of bullets sprayed around.·

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Every Tuesday, the Heglands' place was where distant neighbors congregated, shared news from Outside, and exchanged gossip over tea and coffee.

What seemed to surprise locals most b:fsw~~t c~~T~i~dt~~ t t~e murders were comml t ted.

. . em. erhaps his lack of conversation distanced Hastlngs most fram his neighbors. Long-time residents are practiced raconteurs, their narrative skills honed fram years gathering at the Heglands' to get their mail and visiting isolated neighbors in the winter, when time is marked sinply by firewood cut, books read, and stories told. Other than Hastings' lack of narrative skills, however, little else abo t him stood out.

On March 15, a resident who was out of town when the murders occurred filled out a police report. In part it read: • ••• in the winter my exposure to Hastings was limited to mail days, when most everyone got together, and at the home of Chris Richards, where the three of us would play cards and talk. My general inpression fram these meetings was that he was quiet and reserved, not going out of his way to socialize, and seemed to want to be left alone for the most part. Talking about science and technology, the world situation, the future of Kennicott, I felt he was certainly intelligent and fairly knowledgeable on these topics, but disillusioned and down on society in general. He seemed not well prepared in skills or supplies to live out in the Kennicott area and it seemed a bit odd to come and ~o as. he did to and fram Anchorage. In general, people are accepted, ln splte of arrt differences, by the others in the McCarthy-Kennicott area, and a live-and-let-Iive attitude seems to prevail, so much of what I mentioned here did not seem unlike things that could be noticed in others living out here.· Loy Green, a MCCarthy-area resident since the 1960s, considered Hastings'S clothing ·strange.· But in a 1997 interview, he recalls a conversation with Gary Green, the local bush pilot unrelated to Loy.

The Greens were standing on a MCCarthy path when ~stings approached. Loy said, ·You know that Lou? He's klnd of strange.· ·Well, so are you,· Gary answered. ·We all are.

So what?· Loy echoes that two-word refrain and anplifies it. ·Everyone here is a little strange in their way,· Loy says. ·So, OK, here's just another strange guy and he's not doing anything. He's antisocial, but we're not tremendously social arrtway. And so we really don't pay too much attention. So Lou's strange, so what?· But then Hastings killed six of Loy Green's friends and neighbors. At that time, Loy had been up MCCarthy Creek at his reoote winter cabin. He heard about the murders over his portable radio. ·It wasn't necessarily a surprise,· Green says. ·However, [Hastings] wasn't the one that I thought it probably was.· Green doesn't elaborate.

Jim Miller had left MCCarthy a few weeks before the murder~ •. He too first heard about the murders on the radio, while he was drlvlng to work. ·It was a ••• I kinda figured it might've happened,· Miller says. ·1 dunno: If arrt~ was going to do it, I figured it might've been [Hastlngs], beln' a loner arrtway. But, at first, it was kind of a shock••• I suspected three or four different people, but ••. • Miller doesn't elaborate either.

Given that Hastings wanted to stem Alaskan developnent, his McCarthy target also s~ to surprise both investigators and townspeople.

But, clouded by hlS depression and urged on by his suicidal tendencies, Hastings lacked clarity and patience. He failed to truly see MCCart?y and Alaska and acted on these misconceptions. . I~ ~stlngs had been paying attention, he would have seen the irony ln kllllng a town where the residents knew each other by their boot tracks, a town that existed with no electricity, running water, or telephones, to protest what he perceived to be an overindustrialization of Alaska. . ·In the ~ of Alaska, he destroyed part of Alaska and the Alaskan llfe~· Hastlngs's prosecutor said in a 1983 newspaper article, ~allln~ MCCarthy ·a place where the spirit of Alaska lives on. The lrony.ls that he comes up fram overpopulated California, moves into the nudst of such beauty, and then in order to protect the beauty he singlehandedly wipes out a whole town.· ' ·A nobody came in here and wiped out the pillars of one of the few self-sufficient communities in Alaska,· Bonnie Morris said in 1983 as she stood near the body bags of her neighbors. ·These people lying arou~d h~re were not your average people ••• These are the people who lnsplred the rest of us when we came here to build a sane healthy life.· ' NOw, fifteen years later, as MCCarthy struggles to control a burgeoning tourist industry, old-time residents still grapple with the effects of th mu:ders. ·Th~s ain't Chicago,· Chris Richards says 7 on an August mornlng ln 1997. R1Chards sits at a picnic table on the porch of MCCarthy's pizza place. ·It's not New York. We're not anonyIOOus. Even the [neighbors] I don't necessarily get along with

all the time, they're precious to me. Here it was a major, devastating impact. If somebody killed 50 percent of New York or Chicago, Christ, they'd declare nuclear war over that. I mean it would mean the end of the world. And the equivalent happened here. It wiped out our elders, or most of 'em. It wiped out half the coomunity·--a coomunity that now finds itself changing despite, or perhaps because of, its reooteness. And old rriendships are being tested by new developnents ..

Al Gagnon. joins Jim Miller, <¥1er of the pizza place, and Richards. At sixty-one, Gagnon has ~pent thirty-three years in the MCCarthy area and lS one of the few remaining town elders fram 1983. ·I'm out here at the end of the trail because I'm an outlaw,· Gagnon says. ·Al talks about everything--water, sewer, putting in electricity,· Miller says with a knowing grin. ·Al's always got forty scams goin' at once.· Gagnon's latest idea is to drill for ·commercial water· on his property in Kennicott.

He plans to offer running water and a septic system to Kennicott's growing number of residents and businesses--including Richards's home and a site where Miller hopes to move his pizza place.

Miller and Gagnon haggle over what Gagnon will charge for this service. Miller half-jokingly threatens to throw an ·outhouse party•• Miller's and Gagnon's Kennicott properties abut. One corner of Miller's land falls within a two-hundred-foot radius of Gagnon's proposed well. Legally, you can't drill a well within two hundred feet of an ·established outhouse.· If Gagnon's price remains unreasonable, Miller will dig an outhouse and invite people over to ·establish it.· Miller and Gagnon will amicably work out their differences-they always have.

Gagnon points to MCCarthy's natural boundaries ~d its. weather as natural means of security. ·The rlver, ln the sunmertime, keeps you honest,· he says. ·The snow, in the wintertime, keeps you honest because you can be tracked.· ·This is a country where there's no 'ifs' or 'maybes,'· Gagnon adds. ·It's 'yes' or 'no.' And there's no 911 and mom isn't here and tears don't do arrt good. You're on your own.· ·No, we don't call 911,· Richards says. ·We call our neighbors ••• Anybody starts shooting around here, we're gonna take out the people we don't know first. We'll figure out what your problem is later.· Richards has told his story of the murders dozens of times. He considers it therapeutic. He says that, as the years of telling it have slipped ~, it becomes easier to tell. He no longer grits hlS teeth or feels the adrenaline rush. He has regaled dozens of voyeuristic tourists, strangers who look for the scars and ask what it's like ~etting shot in the face by your nearest neighbor ln a ghost town. .

But who Hastings killed, not how many still pains Richards, who now flies a skull and crossbones outside his cabin. As he recounts his near-death struggle, he maintains his CQlll>Osure and sense of htunOr. But he breaks down when he thinks of those who were murdered, particularly the Heglands.

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And for weeks, they nearly sleepwalked among daily reminders of the murders--blood stains soaked deep into the snow.

Thanksgiving, you can have Christmas, but it's not as iDportant as Tuesday. Everybody meets at the Heglands' house to visit and get the mail. Mail plane day, I mean you live for that. It's correspondence. I check ~ mail box every day. They got [mail] once a week ... and made contact.· People in MCCarthy still conversationally refer to mail day simply as ·mail~· like it's a place or an event. They still say, ·I'm going to mail. IX> you have anything going out that you want me to take?· But mail is no longer the event that it was when the Heglands hosted it. The townspeople now gather on the gravel airstrip outside a small mail shack. Because the shack is a simple wooden structure about ten feet by ten feet, neighbors now quickly sort the mail, then mill about on the airstrip.

In the sunmer, some work their way down to MCCarthy, a mile away, to congregate at Miller's pizza place.

From Miller's porch, Richards recalls how it used to be. ·We'd sit around, have tea and cookies. It was, you know, the big social event of the week. And everybody from miles around that could get there would usually get there and swap bullshit and get their mail and leave. It was a good time. I miss it. It's not the same anyrore, not the same at all .•• •

The survivors of Hastings's

rampage continue to be nagged by

·I've got nothing but total respect for them,· .says Richards, his eyes watery. •They 're oldtimers. They were all here before I even thought Qf coming here. They had been there, done that, had a successful homestead, and raised healthy kids. All I could say is good stuff about them. I mean they were the original item as far as people living back here. They were the original pirates, even if they didn't consider themselves that. None of those people ever had a harsh word to say to me. They were good people. They lived a good life. Shit, we can't afford to waste 'em--too precious. [Hastings] got rid of a whole bunch of 'em all at once right there. And I would think a lot of people remember them and respect them. They were the good people...

That took a major chunk out of this place. It changed the way it will be, no doubt, forever.· Not only did Hastings kill a large portion of the town elders, but he nearly killed the most inportant day in MCCarthy--mail day. , Every Tuesday, the Heg1ands , place was where distant neighbors congregated, shared news from Outside, and exchanged gossip over tea and coffee.

•See, Tuesday is mail plane day,· a trooper who helped arrest Hastings said in a 1997 interview. ·You can have Easter, and you can have

20

hindsight. Almost all of them can remember something that they now feel should have clued them in to Hastings'S murderous intentions.

Loy Green, who no longer greets the mail plane.thinks back on the times that he made what he thought were benign ccmnents, only to have Hastings glower at him, his lip twitching. ·So after he did his nwnber,· Green says, •I'm think· ng, 'Oh, ~ God. I saw something in that man. I definitely saw something.' But I wrote it off as just 'So what?' ·And right then I said to ~self, 'OK, if I ever see that in another person's eyes, I'm not going to stand idle. Period.' I am not going to say, 'Oh, well, blah, blah, blah.' No, I am going to do something. I don't know what, but something.· A few years later, a couple of young fundamentalist Christians had tenqx>rarily moved to MCCarthy and were hoping to make their stay permanent. Green engaged one in religious debate. ·1 saw the same look,· Green says, ·the same lip curl, and he walked away.· Green reported this to the proprietor of the MCCarthy Lodge, who had been helping the two men get started. When he heard Green's story, he said, ·OK, those guys are out of here. No support, no land.· Chris Richards carried a handgun around in his back pocket for eight years after the murders. The only time he didn't have it on him was when he slept. ·It wasn't like I was afraid for ~self,· Richards says. ·It was, more or less, I owe this to ~ neighbors. I can't lose any more of ~ friends and neighbors, even the ones that I don't like. They're ~ neighbors. Excuse me, I don't need any

other assholes comin' around and shootin ' 'em. They're precious to me.

I think of 'em more as a big tribe of people. Most of us live here because we love this place and we have that much in ccmoon.· For weeks, MCCarthy's survivors devoted nearly every conversation to the murders and, at least indirectly, how to redefine their carmunity. And for weeks, they nearly sleepwalked among daily reminders of the murders--blood stains soaked deep into the snow.

1IIpronptu meetings were held. Options were considered. One person said, ·We can't trust anybody that comes in here anyrore.· Another countered, ·Wait a minute. If we do that, in a larger sense, Lou's the winner.· Loy Green said, ·If we don't trust anybody, if everybody who comes in is a suspect, then we are putting out negative energy and we're creating a suspicious atmosphere and then we can't expect to have people here. Better if we open our anns now to everybody--aaah, but have a little caution.· .

The old trams became the natural focus. Their cables sagged dangerously close to the Kennicott River, and they were difficult to use. Locals had begun to plan for new trams prior to the murders because they feared the state would build an automotive bridge that would threaten MCCarthy's isolation.

At that time Loy Green said, ·If you could drive to MCCarthy, it wouldn't be here.· After Hastings'S murders, however, the trams took on a new meaning, and a heightened sense of urgency. The carmunity got together and secured $90,000 from the state. Residents cut logs for support towers and salvaged unused cable from the mines. Because of their lives on the Alaskan frontier, all were handy with tools. Jim Edwards, Maxine's widower, designed the tram cars. A statehired foreman quit because no one would follow his orders. Within two sunmer months, the new trams were conpleted. ·We felt like a carmunity that had acconplished something and was together,· Green says. ·That was a healing catharsis. You bet it was.· But the new trams helped slowly increase tourist traffic. Then, in 1997, the state built a pair of multi-million-dollar footbridges in preparation for a surge in tourism. In the last decade, several businesses have opened-Miller's pizza place, two air services, two guide services, a coffee shop, and an upscale lodge, to name a few. With this increased development, political and business bickering

has increased among long-time neighbors .. Louis Hastings, who is: currently serving a 594-year sentence at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, wouldn't recognize the town he tried to kill enroute to stalling Alaskan development.

While local differences seem to occur more often than in 1983, none resonate like the murders. Oldtimers simply remind themselves of March 1, 1983, for a dose of perspective. .

And while' the dogs of MCCarthy donit have to contend with tourist vehicles yet, they still consider the increasingly numeroUs visitors with wary eyes.

The images appearing on pages 15, 18, and 20 are photo illustrations and first appeared in their original form in the Anchorage Daily News.

Additional photography by Morten Bustrup, Kevin Coughlin, Laura Esterman, and David Parmeter. All images have been stylized by David Parmeter. Kevin Coughlin is a second-year Master's student from Virginia. He has spent two of the past three summers in Alaska and will return to McCarthy this August. He is currently writing a book based on the McCarthy tragedy.

Left to right: Malcolm Vance, Bonnie Morris, and Jim Edwards walk away from the airstripthe site of three of the murders--but not the memories.

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21

Opposite Page., Top:- After twenty-five years as a midwife, Clarebeth has helped deliver hundreds of babies, including these newborns.

Opposite Page, Bottom: Following traditional midwifery, Clarebeth encourages all fathers to catch their babies during childbirth.

This Page, fop Left: Because midwifery does not use sonograms, palpitatingfinding the position of the baby- is an essential part of prenatal care.

S

usan Hodges, president of Citizens for Midwifery, estimates that $13 billion to $20 billion a year could be saved in health-care costs if the United States developed midwifery care, demedicalized childbirth, and enc'ouraged breastfeeding. Citing safety concerns, some in the medical profession continue to oppose midwifery. "Unfortunately," says Hodges, "the 'free enterprise' interests of the medical profession stand in the way of midwifery."

It was only a century ago, when modern medicine emerged in the West, that people began to treat birth as an affliction rather than a natural event. In the U.S., as hospital obstetrics became more and more technologically advanced, women were excluded from the medical field. This was when men became the birth practitioners.

But Clarebeth says that most men, having never given birth themselves, are unable to approach childbirth with the

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intuitive knowledge and wisdom of a woman.

Midwives connect with mothers, fathers, and their families. During prenatals, Clarebeth massages a woman and talks to her, forming a bond of trust that will reassure her during labor. She prepares the woman emotionally, telling her that she has a choice: "You can take a I this energy, and you can go down this path that's full of fear and problems or down the path that's just opening up."

When a woman goes into labor, the usually vivacious Clarebeth becomes serenekeeping everyone calm is important so the parents can focus on the birth.

Whether the labor takes two hours or two days, Clarebeth will be there with the family if they need her. Sometimes she has the mother take a bath or go for a walk during contractions, but she never provides drugs to induce a birth. The babies set their own pace.

This Page, Center Left: Clarebeth is following in the footsteps of her greatgrandmother who was a midwife in Sicily.

This Page, Top Right: Clarebeth promotes breastfeeding because it strengthens the maternal bond as well as the child's immune system.

This Page, Bottom: Chia listens attentively as Clarebeth talks about the position of her baby.

Pamela Huyser is a senior majoring in magazine journalism. Alana Listoe is majoring in public relations. Each time she goes to the midwifery clinic, Clarebeth asks, "Are you pregnant yet?" ~

~

To see more photography illustrating midwifery, visit inFlux. http://influx.uoregon.edu/midwife/

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25

I feel lucky to have seen them. Commercial whalers all but emptied the oceans of greys by the early twentieth century. These are a few of the eighteen thousand individuals that now ply the waters of the eastern Pacific, a testament to human compassion and foresight.

They signify hope, these whales, that even the most harmful human behavior can be reversed with concerted commitment and hard work.

This vantage point is our first stop on a seven-day hike of the West Coast Trail (WCT), a bone-jarring trek that stretches, roughly, along forty-five miles of Vancouver Island's pristine western coastline in Pacific Rim National Park. Originally carved out of the landscape to rescue shipwrecked sailors, the WCT has become one of North America's most rugged coastal treks, hosting thousands of backpackers a year from all over the world.

Ironically, this notoriety has forced the WCT into an untenabIe position. Excessive and irresponsible use has created an identity crisis that threatens to spoil the paradox-rugged coastal beauty that is both remote and accessible-that made the trail such a mecca in the first-place.

This'problem is not unique to the WCT; it plagues all our wilderness and recreation areas. National parks, especially those near large urban centers, like Banff National Park in Canada and California's Yosemite National Park, are becoming increasingly overcrowded.

Both Canadian and American wilderness administrators have begun instituting a whQle range of expensive permits and sticky regulations to keep overuse manageable.

"Unfortunately, with increasing populations and no increase in wilderness, that's the future," says Bruce Mason, coordinator of the University of Oregon's Outdoor Program. "Professional recreation programmers have made access so easy that they've encourI

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aged overuse. Build it and they will come-and they are."

As the popularity of the WCT increased in the 1960s and 1970s, trail improvements were made to protect hikers and the fragile ecosystem from each other's treachery-boardwalks cover easily damaged sections of the trail, ladders and bridges help hikers negotiate steep gullies, and cable cars span the many rivers and creeks that turn swift and dangerous in the rainy season. A quota and permit system was instated in 1992 to keep the number of trail users to a sustainable eight thousand hikers a year. Now administrators are considering more so-called improvements to reduce impact and injury.

"The management of the trail is up for review because the users are changing," says Rod Blair, coastal marine assets manager of Pacific Rim National Park. liThe West Coast Trail used to be for seasoned outdoors people who had lots of multinight backpacking experience. That's not the case anymore. Now we get people who have never backpacked before. We need to take that into consideration."

Critics, mostly the hard-core outdoor enthusiasts who once ruled the trail, charge that these improvements have already ruined the WCT. Before the quota, the complaint was crowds, but the issue now is quality, not quantity. The increasing number of inexperienced hikers has left WCT administrators with three choices: maintain the status quo and allow everyone to try their luck on a difficult route; force users to fulfill an "experience requirement" to qualify for a permit; or continue to undermine the integrity of the trail so it is accessible-and hazard-free-for everyone.

Bud Ettinger, an outfitter who has hiked the West Coast Trail seventeen times over the last twenty-one years, has witnessed this metamorphosis firsthand. "A lot of experienced backpackers already sneer at the WCT. But the quota has reduced usage to a sane level. There used to be huge waves of more than one hundred people hiking the trail, staying in campgrounds that only had room for twenty-five. It may be time to screen users so only those with the necessary experience-and attitudes...:....-get on. You've got to ask yourself, 'Is the trail only for present generations, or should it also be kept for future generations?'"

Randy, Steve, and I left the whales behind and spent the first night at Michigan Creek. This campground, at the northern end hf the trail, is named after a wooden steam schooner that ran aground off the coast in 1893, one of over fifty ships that have found eternal resting places on the ragged western edge of North America. Much of the trail's history is steeped in these shipwrecks. On January 22, 1906, the 5.5. Valencia sunk on a rocky reef off Shelter Bight; one hundred twenty-six people died. This prompted politicians to improve a narrow track along Vancouver Island's wild west coast, once used by repair men to maintain the telegraph line, for use as a life-saving trail. With a few improvements, this is the same route hikers use today.

The next morning we started the two-day trek to Tsusiat Falls, alternating between the inland trail and long stretches of sandy beach. Just past Trestle Creek, a careless footstep sent Randy over the edge of the narrow trail and down the steep hillside. After snapping a photograph of his Tilley-clad head nestled among the skunk cabbage and sword ferns, Steve and I hauled him back onto the trail, laughing, relieved. It had been a long time since we had been able to laugh together. We

had all grown up in and around Canada's Rocky Mountains, and we had all waited tables at the same restaurant in Calgary during our university days. But convocation had scattered us across the world. For months I had been craving a taste of solitude in Canada's wide-open emptiness. Steve had hiked the trail the year before and saw this as an opportunity to escape the pressures of his busy job. Randy was drawn by the challenge.

"The trail's reputation is legendary-seven rugged days in the world's most beautiful, remaining temperate rain forest," Randy said. "I wanted to finish what is reputed to be one of the most arduous hikes in the world."

It's easy to see why Tsusiat Falls is the trail's most popular campsite. The beachfront waterfall looks like a mini Niagara, fifty feet across and thirty feet high. The hurried water dashes over and down the rocks, only to wait in a shallow pool before it flows south along the beach and out into the nearby sea. We shucked our packs and clothes and stood naked under the cold, clear water, letting it wash 'away three days of aches, pains, and sweat. When I stepped out of the spray to dry in the sun, I noticed algae in the water. Trail administrators try to educate users about lowimpact hiking. All permit holders are mailed information packages weeks in advance and must watch educational videos about trail etiquette before embarking on their journeys. But the algae is evidence that somebody hadn't paid attention-or just didn't care-and had washed with nonbiodegradable soap in Tsusiat's natural shower.

At Tsuquadra Point, signs instructed us to leave the beach and rejoin the trail. This is the Tsuquadra Indian Reserve, one of numerous Native American communities that continue to thrive along the WCT. But because various cultural artifacts, including burial sites and petroglyphs, have been vandalized over the years, hikers are no longer welcome to tarry along the beach here. I shook my head in disgust. It is this sort of carelessness, this senseless destruction, that forces overworked administrators with shrinking budgets to make more rules and charge more fees-and that destroys the very things we have all come here to experience.

We retook the inland trail and carried on through the

ancient trees toward Nitinat Narrows.

My melancholy was shortljved. The coniferous giants above Tsuquadra Point are magnificent, and the trail offers stunning vistas of surf pounding against endless beaches. We watched two bald eagles soar high over the tree tops, their white heads just visible against the cerulean sky.

Carl Edgar, Jr., is a'thin belt of a man, a proud Native American whose dark, weathered skin testifies to the number of days he spends outdoors. During the summers, he brings his family to live on Nitinat Narrows, where he runs a ferry service across the deep, swift water. I asked him about the eagles we had seen over the ridge.

"Oh, they are brothers," he said softly. "I remember them when they were all brown, but now you can see their black-andwhite feathers. I watched them grow up."

I envied Carl. He obviously perceives the world much differently than I do. For him, eagles are not something to be exalted on annual holidays. They are members of the community, important neighbors Carl had taken the time to watch mature, just as he would a cousin or a nephew. He recognizes them as individuals who deserve his respect, and I couldn't help but wonder if the eagles' keen eyes regarded Carl in the same way.

The three-minute boat ride took us to the other side of the Narrows, where we discovered that Carl's friends were helping him build an impromptu snack shack that sold cold beer and hot dogs. This was a surprise, and more than a small disappointment. I had come here to get away from our pervasive fast-food culture, and yet here it was, Budweisers and Oscar Mayer wieners in the middle of one of North America's most rugged coastal trails. I didn't resent Carl for it.

This was his land, part of one of the many First Nations reserves along the trail, and he had every right to build

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whatever he wanted on it. I just wished he wouldn't, and frankly I didn't see how such a business could surviveuntil Randy came over with three beers, the red and white cans sweating in the warm afternoon sun. He thrust one of them toward me; I hesitated. I wrapped my hand around the cool metal and touched it to my forehead. And then, compelled by both thirst and contrition, I guzzled the beer quickly.

If I were forced to choose the single most beautiful spot on the trail-and it would be like choosing the most radiant star in the night sky- would choose Carmanah Point. The surf and measureless time have eroded the sandstone shelves into short, stubby pedestals, turning the northern edge of the point into a moonscape. Large, deep tidal pools teemed with life-aggregating sea anemones, purple shore crabs, green and purple sea urchins, and elegant blades of eel grass that danced in the @bb and flow of the tide. Off the point's tip, dozens of Stellar sea lions slept on a rock the size of a tugboat, while 1,000pound bulls battled over the best sunbathing spots.

After a steep climb to the Carmanah Lighthouse, we descended through a stand of alders and walked along Carmanah's long, crescent-shaped beach. We found shelter from the stiff flux 1998

wind at the mouth of Carmanah Creek, where we erected our tents amid legions of driftwood. We sat on the edge of the creek, soaking our swollen feet in the frigid water and staring up at some of the world's biggest Sitka spruce, trees that were old when James Cook landed on Vancouver Island over two hundred years ago. Feeling refreshingly insignificant, we watched the dusk sky turn from peach to indigo, and then to a pitch black, speckled with the ancient light of the stars.

The next morning we headed south along the beach, past the sea stacks off Bonilla Point. The sand here is bone dry and fine, and our heels sunk deep, shortening our strides until it felt like we were walking backwards on a treadmill. To escape the sand we walked far out onto the tidal shelf around Vancouver Point, where it is possible to walk all the way to Logan Creek. But it means crossing a wide surge channel-Adrenaline Surge-that earned its aggressive name for good reason: People have died trying to cross it.

Hikers must either negotiate a narrow ledge along a bulging cliff face, made slick by a waterfall, or hop onto a slippery rock in the middle~ of the channel. Either way, even a slight misstep means being sucked out to sea by powerful currents.

At Walbran Creek, bravado gave way to common sense; we decided to leave the infamous surge channel behind and walk the overland route instead. We piled our packs and bodies into the cable car and pulled on the heavy ropes. On the south side, we met a woman hiking the trail for the fourth time, this time alone. I asked her what kept her coming back.

"Perhaps it's the trees," she replied softly, as if she were

whispering to a friend in a church. "Or the sea. Or the unending beaches. Maybe it's just the silence and the solitude.

Whatever it is, I just can't stay away." She moved toward the cable car, and it became obvious she didn't want to stay and chat. Like the few people we had encountered on our trip, I suspected this woman had come here to get away from people, to lose herself in the aura of ancient trees and the endless sea.

Solitude is perhaps the most alien part of any wilderness experience. There are few people and no cars or televisions around; the only sounds are the constant roar of the surf against the beach and the odd gust of wind through the tree tops. The absence of distractions and the long hours of toil force you to look inward at parts of yourself you might never before have encountered. And that can be as frightening as coming face to face with an angry bear.

Each evening, after setting up the tents and devouring my supper, I left my companions and walked down the beach, alone but for my camera and a notebook. One night I encountered a bald eagle preening itself on an old snag. The eagles that seemed to follow us along the trail had come to symbolize freedom and perseverance- another species, once endangered by human pesticides and shooting, now fighting its way toward stability. I sat and watched through my telephoto lens for more than an hour, until the bird flew away, leaving me to myself and the wind. I turned to look out at the flat, grey line of the horizon. For the first time, I felt comfortable being alone.

On our detour around Adrenaline Surge, the tra~l became an obstacle course. We' shuffled across long, mossy logs that bridged deep ravines, and climbed over trunks and stumps that littered the trail. Some had been carved into stairways, leaving the damp air redolent of cedar. Everywhere we looked, giant spruce, hemlock, and cedar blocked the sky from view, leaving the forest reminiscent of Tolkien's Mirkwood.

As we rounded a corner, we encountered the novices Rod Blair had told me about. A woman and a man struggled up a steep natural staircase made of tree roots.

She wore running shoes and no backpack.

She walked stiffly on two driftwood crutches, her knees wrapped tightly in white bandages.

"My knees gave out the second day/' she explained in a thick Australian accent. "My friends divvied up my gear. I'll just have to struggle on." .

"Hang in there," I offered. "You can be evacuated at the Carmanah lighthouse, about six miles ahead."

"Forget that," she said stubbornly. "I came here to finish the trail. And that's what I'm going to do."

These types of attitudes are forcing trail administrators to reconsider the future of the WCT. Armchair adventurers with an increasing amount of disposable income and leisure time have caught on to the mental and physical health benefits of spending a week in the Great Outdoors. But their lack of experience, and the wilderness ethic that goes along with it, means they bring their irreverent urban attitudes with them. Most make it through unharmed, but the toll on the trail is heavy. And every year the Coast Guard rescues about seventy hikers with a variety of maladies, from hypothermia to compound fractures, and once in a tragic while there is a fatality.

Checking for proper equipment or requiring a certain level of experience would help, but making the trail easier is not the answer. A relationship with wilderness is like any other-it requires hard work and entails a certain amount of risk.

And the harder the work and the higher continued on page 33

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continued from page 31

West Coast Lighthouses Shine On Automation loses out to preserve Canadian heritage

By Jeff Gailus As hikers approach from the north, signs in fifty languages welcome them to the Pachena Point Lighthouse, one of two lightstations that keep watch over the Pacific coastline of the WCT. The hand-painted signs are the work of lightkeepers Doug and Gwen Fraser, who allow hikers to fill their water bottles and enjoy the view. Weary hikers can sometimes find melt-in-your-mouth fudge for sale.

"There isn't a week goes by in the summer that we don't lend a hand gluing boots, supplying water, bandaging an ankle," Fraser told Explore magazine. "We can give out a Band-Aid or. relay information in an emergency. We can even do medivacs by boat or helicopter."

Until recently, staffed lighthouses along the WCT were in danger of extinction, a result of the Coast,Guard's controversial plan to automate lighthouses in what the Canadian 'government called a cost-cutting move. Canadian Fisheries Minister David Anderson announced in March that the program to destaff West Coast lighthouses has been halted. The move was made, Anderson said, because "lightstations are an important part of Canada's heritage."

The decision not to automate the lighthouses comes as a relief to the lightkeepers, but even more so to the hikers of the WCT. Lighthouse keepers not only watch over the coastline of the western Pacific, they provide a sense of comfort to hikers on a long, isolated trail.

Bud Ettinger, an experienced guide and WCT veteran, knows firsthand how important lightkeepers are to safety on the trail. Two years ago at Logan Creek, an O-ring on his camp stove failed, spraying his legs with burning gas. A fellow hiker hurried to the lighthouse at Carmanah Point, where the keeper arranged to have Bud evacuated. Bud spent two weeks in the hospital with third-degree burns. The next year he donned his pack and hiked the trail for the seventeenth time.m

the risk, the more intimate the relationship. In fact, that is what makes the WCT special. It's an opportunity to engage the landscape on its own terms, to reach out to it without asking it to compromise. If that means having to cancel your trip because of bad weather or an unforeseen injury, then so be it.

The trail was taking its toll. Despite the salubrious beauty that surrounded us, and a daily dose of Advil, walking in deep, loose sand and climbing huge stumps wearing a heavy pack was wreaking havoc on our joints. The last afternoon we argued about where to spend the night. Randy wanted to push on to Thrasher Cove, where we could camp for the night and catch the first boat over to Port Renfrew the next morning. One of his Achilles tendons was swollen and painful; he had had enough of the wilderness and was looking forward to a hot shower. But darkness was descending, and Steve was coming down with the flu. I suggested a restful night under the trees and a short hike in the morning. We finally agreed to spend our last night at a small campsite in a peaceful glade just north of 150 Yard Creek.

We ate our last supper in silence, listening to the wind sigh through the cedars that towered above our two-tent village. An eagle cried somewhere deep in the forest. I thought of Edward Abbey and his polemic against industrial tourism in national parks. He abhorred roads and the "insanity" of development and believed that the national park system

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should preserve the wilderness "intact and undiminished."

But he also proposed building trails to liberate people ."from the confines of their automobiles."

Despite permits, boardwalks, and eight thousand hikers a year, I think Abbey would have approved of the West Coast Trail-as long as no further "improvements" are made. There are no roads and relatively few people, and routine maintenance keeps impact to a minimum. The ladders, suspension bridges, and cable cars have not spoiled the experience; instead, they have transformed it from an impossible journey reserved for hard-core survivalists into a challenging possibility for experienced backpackers. And that is a good thing. For those who journey here come away fundamentally changed. To be on the WCT is to be isolated in the heart of a landscape older and richer than our urban imaginations can conceive.

Jeff Gailus is currently working on his master's degree in creative nonfiction. His understanding of the paradox of the outdoors and overusing it began long before he visited the West Coast Trail. "I'd be completely content living in a small shanty on the West Coast Trail for the rest of my life," he explained. "But, of course, then I'd be contributing to the problem." ~

~

For more glimpses of the WCT, information about recreational areas nearby, and the First Nation's efforts to maintain it, visit inFlux.

http://influx.uoregon.edu/wild/

UNLUCKY

EITH ER WAY, YOUR CORNER STORE HAS WHAT YOU NEED.

OF

13TH & KINCAID M-F 7:45-6 SAT 10-6 SUN 12-6

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UNIVERSITY OREGON

market route into the States, they give up the safety of an organized system of law enforcement. There is no police presence to discourage aggressive behavior, no legal ramifications for thugs to fear. This compromise leaves the travelers vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation, including robbery, extortion, physical abuse, rape-even death. In addition to the myriad brutal dangers that accompany illegal immigration, Patricia's young family faced distinct hazards simply because she brought her children across the borders by herself.

Her decision to make the journey was not an easy one.

Today, nearly eight years later, Patricia still has trouble understanding what transformed her ex-husband from a hardworking, devoted family man to an abusive playboy who spent most of his time drinking with his brothers and flirting with his mistress. "He just changed," she sighs.

The day after that fateful night in 1990, Patricia kick,ed Juan out of their home. As he walked out the door, she told him she was seeking divorce proceedings.

At first Juan was dismissive of her plans. "I won't pay the lawyer," he threatened. He was the manager of Patricia's plan, to escape with her children from Ecuador and a successful factory in their city of Quito, while Patricia had live with her sister in New York, left them at the mercy of the never held a job outside the home. vast underground network of illegal passage trade through "Don't worry," she responded, her dark eyes flashing.

Latin America. Because it would take close to ten years to "I'll pay." obtain the formal documentation necessary to lawfully enter "Oh, you have a boyfriend?" he asked in surprise. the U.S., Patricia opted to try to enter the country illegally. She Patricia shook her head. "No," she retorted. "It's not knew coming to the U.S. without formal papers was dangernecessary.

I'll start working. I can do that." Juan smirked, but ous and dishonest, but leaving her home country was Patricia soon found a job working as a secretary at a law necessary for the survival of her family. office. Her girlfriends helped her with the kids and the house, '. Crossing international borders without official documenand Patricia obtained a divorce from Juan a few months later. tation is risky for anyone-especially women traveling alone Juan was not happy about the divorce. Over the next two with children. When travelers choose the shadowy blackyears, he hounded Patricia, Gina, and Pedro, his ubiquitous presence serving as a constant threat from which they were *All names have been changed to protect the identities of the people in never free. Although the house was legally Patricia's-she this story.

o, don't hurt my mother!" Gina's* screams pierced throug.h the still of the dark night, waking her fiveyear-old brother, Pedro. She sat up in bed and continued to shriek as her father slapped her mother, barely three feet away from them.

Her mother, Patricia, horrified that her children were watching this violent display, turned toward eight-year-old Gina and tried to smile reassuringly. Juan, Patricia's husband, took the opportunity to punch the five-foot-tall Patricia in the nose, sending her sprawling backwards. As she struggled to maintain her balance, she saw stars and felt warm, sticky blood dripping down her face.

Patricia ran into the living room and called the police on the elegant antique telephone in the corner. Juan was behind her in an instant, slamming the phone down before she could describe what was happening. Fearing he would hurt her again, Patricia picked up the heavy old phone and yelled, "Get out of here!" as she smashed it in his face. Juan grabbed his broken nose and crumpled in a heap. Panting and shaken, Batricia again called the police before looking up into the terrified faces of her young children.

For Patricia, this grim incident was the last straw. Her marriage was clearly over. Although divorce was uncommon in Ecuador-a failed marriage was still a source of shame in much of South America during the 1980s-she couldn't allow her children to witness their parents beating each other up again. She usually tried to shield her children from her disagreements with Juan; they had most of their serious discussions behind closed doors. This horrific display was unacceptable. As Patricia wiped the blood off her face, she realized they couldn't continue living this way.

Although she didn't know it at the time, Patricia's decision to leave her husband set her family on a quest for saJety that would span four countries in six anxious weeks.

N

As Patricia Wiped the blood off her face, she rea!' d they couldn't continue living this way.

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and her aunt had inherited it after the death of her father three years earlier-Juan came to the house nearly every night, ringing the doorbell or parking outside and honking the horn over and over again. He played cruel psychological games with little Pedro, telling the wide-eyed boy not to call him father anymore, that the child was "like a dead person" to him. Juan also called Patricia at work, threatening to kill them all if he saw her with another man. She obtained an order of protection from the courts, but Ecuador's prevailing machismo attitudes made it difficult to enforce.

Patricia tried not to let Juan see that his constant intimidation was affecting her, but the stress caused by his harassment eventually led to her collapse from nervous exhaustion. She'd awoken one day and found, to her horror, that she could not move her legs. A doctor told her this was the result of nervous tension and ordered complete bed rest. With the aid of an intravenous line to provide nourishment, she slept for eight straight days.

When she was strong enough to arrange it, Patricia moved her family into her friend Dolores's house. They were safe there-Juan didn't dare try to harass Patricia in the presence of Dolores's husband-but Patricia knew this was a temporary solution. She couldn't rely on the generosity of her friends forever. She feared her plight, considered unworthy of serious attention by the largely patriarchal Ecuadorian society, meant that she and her children would always be at the mercy of her ex-husband's terrorism. She had to figure out a way to get Juan out of their lives for good, but she didn't know how.

"Why don't you think about coming here?" asked Patricia's sister, Rosa, from her home in New York City.

Patricia hadn't seen Rosa in over ten years and had spoken with her only very occasionally during that time span.

Although they were sisters, Patricia and Rosa barely knew one another. Rosa was ten years older than Patricia, and they had grown up in separate households as well. After their

mother died when Patricia was just six years old, Patricia and her father had moved from:the city of Guayaquil to Ecuador's capitol city, Quito, where they lived with Patricia's aunts.

None of Patricia's three older sisters moved with them-by that time, they were old enough to live on their own-and she'd had sporadic contact with them ever since.

Rosa had emigrated to New York some twenty-five years earlier, when she was just sixteen. She'd come to study and

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she left Ecuador to provide a safe upbringing for Gina and Pedro -- a prospect she'd risk anything to ensure. share in the countless economic opportunities America offered-all of the U.S. television shows and product advertisements promised that life in the States was carefree and fun, that everybody was rich and there was enough wealth to share, if you were prepared to work hard. Lured by the myth of the American Dream, Rosa had come to seek her fortuneand she seemed to be a success story. She was now a U.S. citizen who owned a house and a factory with her Americanborn ex-husband, and when Patricia told her about the problems she was having with Juan, Rosa offered a simple solution.

"You can work here in my factory. And I live alone with my son in my house. We can live together; I have room for the kids and you. We'll have a nice time together. What do you think?" Rosa asked.

"Wow," Patricia replied, her head swimming. "Maybe. Let me think about that." At first it seemed impossible to make such a major move. She had never lived in another country, and, while Rosa promised to provide everything they would need, it would mean uprooting the three of them from everything and everybody they knew.

Still, it was exciting to contemplate. They could finally be free from Juan's persecution. He couldn't follow them to America; she wouldn't even have to tell him they were leaving. She would have to give up both of her part-time jobs as a secretary in a law firm and as a production assistant at a local television station. That would be difficult, but she figured she would be able to provide even more financial support for her family with the job she'd have in Rosa's factory. After all, in Ecuador, as in much of Latin America, everyone believed the United States provided a better life. No matter how good a family's life might be at home, the quality of that life would take a tremendous leap forward once they stepped on U.S. soil.

She discussed it with her children, who were at first reluctant to make the journey. Patricia showed the kids pictures of New York, and they soon warmed to the idea. "I was worried about how different it would be here," Gina remembers, tossing her pin-straight long hair. "But I also felt

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37

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like she was going to be better, because she was all stressed [in Ecuador] because of my father. So I felt like, we were really going to be good if we change and we go away." A second phone call to Rosa clinched it, and they began making plans for Patricia and the children to corne to the States.

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btaining a visa for entry into the United States is tricky business. Although Rosa was officially a U.S. citizen and could therefore apply for an 1-130, a Petition for Alien Relative from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for Patricia and her children-a process more commonly known as sponsoring a resident visa-the wait for the visa was about ten years. Another option was' to enter the U.S. on a legal tourist visa and then stay in the country beyond the specified period of admission. A tourist visa would not grant Patricia working privileges, but Rosa promised that a work permit was unnecessary for Patricia to work in her factory. She also promised that they could get the necessary documentation to register Patricia's children in public school in New York.

Rosa employed many people with similar circumstances in her factory-mainly South Americans and Central Americans who had no legal status in this country. The INS estimates that there are currently about five million undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S., a population roughly that of Washington state, and this figure rises by about 275,000 people each year. There are no official estimates of the number of women who illegally enter this country alone or with children. The vast majority of immigrants entering this country without documentation are probably male, according to Carmen Bauer, executive director of the Centro Latino Americano immigration agency in Eugene, Oregon, and their primary reason for coming to the U.S. is economic. Many Latinos live in such alarming poverty in their native countries that the relatively high wages they can earn here make the inherent dangers of illegal entry worth the risks. But Patricia's motives for coming to New York were different. She left Ecuador to provide a safe upbringing for Gina and Pedro-a prospect she'd risk anything to ensure.

New York is home to an estimated 540,000 undocumented immigrants, trailing only California and Texas. The vast majority of immigrants hail from Mexico-some 54 percent, or 2.7 million-while 55,000 people have come to the U.S. from Patricia's native Ecuador. According to INS estimates, between 2,000 and 4,000 undocumented Ecuadorians immigrate to the U.S. each year. Most native Mexicans who are here illegally gain entry into the U.S. by crossing land borders between official ports of entry. By contrast, most undocumented immigrants from other parts of the world arrive here as legal tourists and stay beyond the allotted vacation period.

That was Patricia's plan. She filed a family visa application without much concern. She had already been to the U.S. once on a tourist visa when she had visited Rosa in New York as a teenager. She figured this earlier trip would indicate to the immigration authorities that she was not likely to remain in the U.S. beyond the specified period this time, either.

But Patricia's visa application was denied. Immigration officials told her that a family visa required proof of more money remaining in an Ecuadorian bank so that Patricia would have a strong motivation to come back. She called Rosa immediately, fearing she would have to cancel all their plans. She had already begun selling her possessions to raise

money for the trip, and by now everyone was mentally prepared to move to New York. She couldn't believe she'd have to give up before the journey began.

They pondered other ways of corning into the country.

Patricia was reluctant to try to enter the United States illegally-crossing the land border between Mexico and the States was too dangerous and difficult for a single woman with children. But Rosa thought there was still another way.

She knew a man in Ecuador who, through the contacts he had, could fly them to New York in an airplane. It would be easy, she promised, and not dangerous at all.

Rosa arranged everything. Patricia and the children were to fly to Guatemala, a country they did not need a visa to enter, and meet a man named Rafael who would take them to New York for $5,000. Although Patricia was working at the TV studio and the law office, she did not have access to that kind of money. But Rosa took care of everything-her U.S. factory was very successful.

Patricia went over the plans several times with Rosa and the children, and she made preparations for their journey. She sold most of their possessions and gathered what she thought they would need while traveling. But how does someone prepare to leave behind everything she knows? It was difficult to leave her friends and her jobs, but the whole family was excited about what lay ahead for them. On June 13, 1994, filled with equal measures of hope and trepidation, Patricia, Gina, and Pedro left their life in Ecuador and arrived in Guatemala City.

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hey took a taxi to a hotel, where they would stay for a week until Rafael arrived to take them to New York. At first, they enjoyed themselves. They took strolls around the city, and Gina and Pedro, now twelve and nine, played in a park near the hotel. By the beginning of the second week, however, Rafael had not yet shown up, and Patricia began to worry. She visited a large cathedral near the park and, clutching the tiny cross on her necklace, prayed for God to show her what to do. Every few days Patricia called Rafael's phone number in Ecuador, but he kept telling her to wait just a little while longer. After a couple of weeks, Rafael no longer came to the phone. At first, Patricia was angry, but her fury soon gave way to fear and despair. Four weeks after they arrived, now numb with dread, Patricia's family was still waiting in vain at the hotel.

Patricia knew nobody in Guatemala and, realizing that Rafael had abandoned them and taken her sister's money, she began tightly rationing what little money she now had left.

She knew first of all that she must not let the children know she was afraid. They knew that the plan had gone awry and were asking Patricia what they would do now. She remained cheery and untroubled during the day. But after the children went to sleep at night, though she was exhausted, she tossed and turned in bed, softly crying and trying desperately to conceive of a way out.

She thought about returning to Ecuador, but she had sold and given away all of her possessions there. Her aunt was

living in Patricia's house, and she'd given up both her jobs.

She would be right where she started from, with none of her problems solved, and she'd have to start over with nothing in her own country. In the States, they'd have her sister's home to live in, her sister's factory to work in. She didn't want to give up on that so easily. Going back to Ecuador was not an option.

But she knew she'd have to do something sOon. The hotel was expensive, and by now Patricia had very littie money left.

She befriended Mercedes, one of the hotel's..maids, and explained what was happening. Mercedes told Patricia that she'd keep an eye out for them and ask around for help. She had a baby of her own and sympathized with their misfortune.

she clutched the tiny cross on her necklace and prayed for God to show her what to do.

She offered to cook rice, beans, and other simple food for them behind her boss's back if Patricia bought the groceries, so Patricia wouldn't have to spend extra money taking her family out for meals.

Later, Mercedes introduced Patricia to the hotel manager.

The manager said he could help them get out of Guatemala.

He knew of another guide, known as a coyote, who could bring them through Mexico and across the U.S. border.

Patricia swallowed hard. It sounded so dangerous-she'd heard stories of people dying during such journeys, running from corrupt Mexican police officers or starving from lack of food. She met Paco, the new coyote, that night. The trip would be very safe, he promised, but the protection would come at a steep price: $9,000 in U.S. currency for the three of them. "You look very delicate," he told Patricia. Crossing with women and children, he explained, was more difficult and therefore more expensive.

Nine thousand dollars! Patricia didn't know if even Rosa had that much money. She bit her lip nervously, and tears sprang to her eyes. "There is another way," Paco said softly, drawing his hand across Patricia's cheek. "You are so beautiful."

"No!" Patricia replied in horror. "I do not want to be in bed with anybody. Don't touch me. I have something; I can hurt you." All she had was a small nail file, but Paco didn't know that.

"No, no," Paco said, backing off. "I won't do anything."

He smiled, but Patricia couldn't tell if he was being honest.

Uneasily, PatrIcia told him that her sister might be able to send the money.

After some initial hesitation, Rosa agreed to send the money, but first Patricia had to find a way to get from Guatemala City to the Mexican border. Paco bought them a bus ticket in exchange for all of Patricia's and Gina's jewelry.

As Patricia handed over the jewelry, she made it clear to Paco that throughout the journey, her children would remain at her side at all times. They would never separate. "Okay," Paco assured her, sending them off on the bus. He'd meet them at a hotel by the border in three days. Although these instructions echoed those from the scheming Rafael, Patricia and Rosa knew enough this time to pay Paco in installments, ensuring his arrival at the hotel.

you help me when we travel?" he asked Patricia. "I've never taken care of my son before. I don't know what I have to do."

His wife, he explained, was waiting for them in the States.

Patricia, remembering Paco's "offer" and warily eyeing the scene around them, quickly replied, "Yes, but you have to give me protection in return. Paco told me he wants me in bed. I'm scared of that, and I'm scared for my daughter."

"Don't worry," Jorge smiled. "Nobody hurts you. I'll take care of that."

And with that agreement, Patricia happily bathed and fed Carlos, quieting his cries and playing with him alongside her own children. True to his word, Jorge stayed close enough to Patricia and the kids to discourage any unwanted attention from Paco or any of the other leery-eyed men lurking around.

The deal benefited everyone, but although it gave Patricia some peace of mind, she never felt comfortable enough to sleep through the night. Throughout the trip, Patricia remained silently on guard, too nervous to sleep but not allowing Gina and Pedro to see how scared she was.

This was very important to Patricia. She knew they could sense the tension enveloping them-they were very attentive he border hotel was rough-run-down and dirty, and well behaved, obeying her requests quickly and without with dozens of loud men and prostitutes milling arguments.

Both Gina and Pedro also helped care for little about. Patricia kept her kids close to her side and Carlos.

It was almost as if they stopped being kids for a while. remained in her room, hyper-vigilant, as much as possible.

Of all the challenges she faced on the journey, Patricia felt the There they met other people who would be traveling to the biggest, without a doubt, was ensuring the welfare of her U.S. with them: Hondurans Jorge and his three-year-old son, children.

She tried to act in their best interests at all times, Carlos, both dark skinned, with curly hair and coal-black often struggling to remain calm and conceal her own fears. eyes, and fifteen-year-old Manuel, also from Ecuador, who But this responsibility was also Patricia's savior. Caring for was dirty and never said very much.

Gina and Pedro, and even Carlos, gave her the strength she Patricia saw that Jorge was having a difficult time taking needed to carryon. care of Carlos. The child refused to eat with him, instead In cars, vans, trains, and buses, with nights spent at a running over to Patricia. Pedro and Gina began playing with network of houses, their two-week journey to the U.S. border little Carlos, and Jorge wandered over soon after. "Please, can

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side of the wall. Patricia shuddered. It didn't seem possible that her family would ever be able to cross safely.

"Who wants to pray with me?" Patricia asked suddenly.

Surely, God would help them. She had to believe that. She grabbed the hands of her children, and several other frightened people joined their circle. "Oh, please God, help me," Patricia said, her head bowed. "Bless us. Can you take care of the helicopters?"

Nothing happened at first. Patricia tight ned her grip on Gina and Pedro. Then, slowly, one by one, the helicopters began to disappear. The cars and the horses stopped crossing in front of them. It seemed a miracle, that God really had been listening. Patricia looked at the faces of the others, who looked ; back at her with the same incredulity. Could it really be?

"Run!" yelled their guide.

With no hesitation, Patricia herdedher children in front of her and scrambled through the hole under the wall. Everyone was moving quickly around them. They had crossed into the U.S., but there was no time to think about it. They had to keep running, keep the pace moving. They raced along a dirt road between the grassy hills. The coyote, running in front of them, motioned for them not to stop, or at least not for long. They could rest for a few minutes at a time, but the beams of lights were searching again. If they got caught, all of this would be for nothing-they'd have to return to Ecuador. took them across the Guatemala-Mexico border, through the Eventually, they were able to slow to a walk, but after two turbulent state of Chiapas, to Mexico City, through the state of hours, the children were so weary they could barely put one Sonora, and finally to Tijuana. Their luggage, which was foot in front of the other. Gina was having an especially traveling separately, had mysteriously disappeared by the difficult time. She collapsed on a road along an airport time they got to Tijuana, but stolen possessions were the last runway, unable to continue moving. Patricia was beside thing on Patricia's mind. They had made it to the U.S. border, her in an instant. and all that was left was the final crossing.

"Mommy, go ahead. I can't run anymore," Gina mumbled.

"Why do you say that?" Patricia replied in alarm. "No, you have to keep going." atricia nervously ushered the kids out of the taxi.

"I don't care anymore." Gina was exhausted. Patricia had This would be the hard part; this was where all the to do something to encourage her daughter. When she herself protection her sister's $9,000 bought couldn't help felt too tired to continue, Patricia was spurred on by her them. The U.S. border, marked by a fifteen-foot metal wall a determination to bring her kids to safety. Gina had no similar few miles beyond the Tijuana field they had stopped in, was impetus to push on. Ahead, Pedro had stopped running and shrouded in the darkness. Patricia concentrated on the had turned to see what happened. In desperation, Patricia instructions she was receiving. The coyote explained that they asked God to give her daughter the strength to continue. would walk for a bit and climb a hill before reaching the wall, She let Gina rest a moment longer, then explained that under which was a hole they would have to crawl through. they were in this together. She could no more leave Gina on .

The children were fidgeting, and Patricia knew their nerves that road than she could leave her left arm. Sure, it was tough were equally on edge. for the three of them, but they had to draw strength from each They began walking north. Helicopters buzzed all over other. It wasn't much further, she promised; soon, they could the sky, their search lights shining in sophisticated patterns as they inspected the ground in hopes of catching some unfortustop running.

Gina didn't respond at first, and Patricia wasn't sure she'd nate illegals making a run for the border. Patricia tried not to been listening. look at them. They had been walking for at least a couple of "Okay," Gina finally replied, slowly rising to her feet. She miles when they came to the hill, which was much steeper looked at her mother and said, "Let's go!" than she'd thought it would be. This was more than she'd bargained for, but they had little choice but to keep going. The Patricia is now living in New York City with her children and kids were getting tired, but she encouraged them to press on. fiance. She is still waiting to obtain legal status in this country.

When they finally reached the border, they joined hundreds of others waiting for an opportunity to cross. Patricia could now Laura Esterman is a graduate student from New York. She met Patricia, Gina, and see that the helicopters were not the only danger: Border Pedro in the summer of 1997. She is currently writing a book about their police were whizzing past in cars and on horses along the U.S. experiences entering and living in this country.

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But he knows how to work a crowd.

West gives powerful, sermon-like lectures in a cadence that reflects his Baptist upbringing. His thick Afro is reminiscent of the black awareness movement of the '60s and '70s, while his blue, three-piece suit pays tribute to black Baptist preachers and academics like W.E.B. DuBois. "A fully functional, multiracial democracy cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest social dialogue," West said to a packed house of eight hundred at the University of Oregon last January.

He folded his arms in front of. his chest as he talked about the need to overcome "historical amnesia." With exaggerated facial expressions, he in-

In conversation, West addresses people as "brother" or "sister." He makes a point of treating everyone with respect and compassion. At a book signing at the University of Oregon, one audience member waited almost three hours to meet West.

When the crowd finally thinned, West leaned across the table and hugged the stranger. The man told West that he enjoyed the speech, but that he couldn't afford West's new book, Restoring Hope. West immediately pulled out his wallet and bought the man a copy. He signed it: "Stay strong brother John! Cornel West."

Raised in the church, West learned to stand his ground in the schoolyard. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 2, 1953, West's family relocated to Sacramento five years later. West's mother, a schoolteacher, and father, an Air Force civil servant, brought

"White supremacy was a serpent wrapped around the legs of the table on which the Declaration of Independence was signed." sisted that their two sons and two daughters to church Americans every Sunday. West learned love and caring, admit to .but he mouthed off at school. Wiry and quick, the privi- he was never afraid to back up his words leges that with kicks and punches. His older brother come with Clifton told The New Yorker that West white skin. thought he could whip everybody. When He empha- West's elementary school teacher sized the dif- slapped him for refusing to say the ficulty of self Pledge of Allegiance-West felt the flag reflection by did not live up to the equality it was backing away supposed to symbolize-he punched from the podium her in the face. West was expelled.

As a teenager, West spent hours on and placing his hands on his cheeks. Just when the wide Sacramento streets discussing he signaled to the crowd that Marxist thought with members of the he was about to yell, raising his Black Panthers. He admired their combiarms like exclamation points, he nation of military-like discipline and charitable works. However, he could not whispered instead.

embrace their rejection of Christianity or their condemna tion of black religious movements. Oscillating between the opposing worlds of church and Marxist activism, West learned that both sides had something to contribute in the fight against oppression.

Before he graduated from high school, West was already learning to pick and choose the rhetorical weapons he would use later in life.

This unusual approach has not been without controversy. West's association with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has produced frowns of disapproval from his supporters. Farrakhan's loud voice and fist-shaking style inspired hundreds of thousands of African-American men to congregate in Washington, D.C., for the Million Man March in 1995. However, Farrakhan is openly anti-Semitic and xenophobic. How could West, co-author of a

Yet he also praises conservatives for advocating rugged individualism because it generates "a sense of agency" that encourages the downtrodden and prevents them from feeling like victims. But can West marry these competing viewpoints? He argues that each approach is incomplete on its own. Conservatives overlook the reality of urban strife while liberals pigeonhole themselves as caretakers of the underprivileged. As it stands, the left and right are like two hands on the same body that refuse to cooperate. West wants to see this change.

By appealing to liberals and conservatives, West generates doubt among both. That also makes him hard to pin down. His approach often confounds listeners because he seems to want it both ways. Critics feel he's trying so hard to be a part of the academic and activist worlds that he falls short of both. Reviewing Race Matters for College Literature, Keith Byerman wrote: "Race Matters is best understood as a manifesto of black Christian Marxism rather than an analysis of the issues it raises. West makes little effort to examine

"The L.A. riots that followed the Rodney King verdict were the result of America's failure to address social problems rooted in history." book dedicated to healing the relationship between blacks and Jews, rub shoulders with such a man? West told the Jewish journal Tikkun that people must often work with individuals with whom they disagree.

Although West does not condone Farrakhan's anti-Semitic statements, he recognizes Farrakhan's strength as a leader.

West said, "I've never given up on those in the progressive, liberal, or even conservative movements ... so I refuse to give up on Minister Louis Farrakhan or any other black person because of his or her xenophobic sensibility." West believes in working with people and pushing them beyond where they are.

In Race Matters, West praises liberals for advocating urban renewal, welfare, and education as a means to alleviate suffering.

the sources of the problems he identifies in American culture generally and African-American culture specifically." Byerman goes on to write that West offers few solutions to the problems he identifies.

But problems can't be solved without "open, honest social dialogue," West says. For now, he would be satisfied if people simply began talking.

And West will use a wide assortment of cultural references to encourage dialogue about the social structures that propagate racism and oppression.

At the University of Oregon, West won over the crowd by paying tribute to the school's most famous athlete, runner Steve Prefontaine. He then began his speech with a rhythmic incantation, honoring those who had struggled and continue to struggle against oppression: Sojourner Truth, Marcus Garvey, John Brown, Elijah Lovejoy, Lydia Maria Child, Cesar Chavez, Russell Means, Grace Bogs, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, and Audre Lorde. There was someone for

everyone as his voice dipped in and out of a whisper.

Then he encouraged the audience to consider something "distinctively un-American": history.

"Americans lack historical consciousness. We don't really have a sense of history," West said, resting his hands on the lectern. "Americans don't want to deal with pain and suffering, and history is very much about struggle, pain, suffering, death."

West wrung his hands. He let the impact of his statement sit with the standing-room-only crowd for a few moments. Then he took a deep breath and asked, "What do we say to a nation that fails to fundamentally come to terms with the fact that white supremacy was like a serpent wrapped around the legs of the table on which the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Founding Fathers? . .. It haunted America then, and over two hundred years -later, it still haunts America."

West cited the L.A. riots that followed the Rodney King verdict as the result of America's failure to address social

problems rooted in history. Issues of class, poverty, existential despair, and social injustice all came together and erupted in what West called a "justified rage." He said that change only occurs when people know where they've been. The decision to ignore the historical reality of racial inequality was the catalyst that led to the tragedy of the riots.

According to West, history forces people to examine the very definition of race. In his speech, West said that the"construct of black" evolved from America's need to subordinate the slaves, to differentiate them from the white majority. He contends that before America there was no "black" or "white."

Cleopatra was Egyptian; Mark Antony was Roman. But in America, generations of European immigrants could disappear into the white background while African-Americans and immigrants of color had no choice but to stand out and bear the brunt of prejudice. That's history. To overcome its legacy of oppression, people must organize and talk about what they see.

West says he is a prisoner of hope, which he defines as being thoroughly convinced that what he is doing is moral and right. It ,keeps him fighting regardless of the consequences.

But getting people to talk can be a dangerous occupation. the consequences. He wants his words to creep into the hearts West raises issues that provoke the very hatred he tries to expose. and minds of the people he speaks to, argues with, and struggles When he lived in Princeton, his house was attacked six times. In against. Somewhere down the line, West believes this will lead Boston, his house and family were attacked five times in seven to a higher level of organizing and mobilizing. Eventually, months. He has installed a home security system but refuses to society may change. wear a bulletproof vest-he says it doesn't go well with his suit.

But optimism comes hard for someone who pays attention He also refuses to carry any type of personal protection. Guns to suffering. West told his University of Oregon audience that the run counter to his pacifist ideals. countless men and women who "The worst was the gun in have dedicated their lives to the my wife's face," West said. fight against oppression have "That's what really got me upnot ended the pover~ racism, set. She's not part of this; she and sexism that tear at the seams' shouldn't have to deal with that. of society. Still, as a captive of Me, that's different. But for her, conviction, West can't ignore that's ridiculous." West said the call to arms: "[It's] difficult most attacks take the form of now to engage in any grand anonymous phone threats or brohope for fundamental transforken windows. mations given the social misery "You've got some brothers in our midst. And yet, in the and sisters out there who are in name of those who came before, deep pain and who have a certain kind of sickness in terms and in the name of the most precious idea-self determination, of wanting to intimidate and terrorize people. But again, democracy-we must be audacious, we must speak, and we must that's a human thing, par for the course. Anytime you try to act-even if it is against the grain and against the odds." come forward and speak out, you know that's gonna happen."

Like other activists before him, West perseveres despite the University of Oregon junior Rob Elder waited four hours to speak with Cornel threats and attacks. He says he is a "prisoner of hope," which West for this article. Elder is also the publisher of the Oregon Voice. ~ To learn about Cornel West's endorsement of the Obsidian Society and West defines as being "thoroughly convinced that what he is to hear excerpts from his speeches, visit inFlux. doing is moral and right." It keeps him fighting regardless of ~ http://influx.uoregon.edu/west/

Before America there was no "black" or "white."

Cleopatra was Egyptian; Mark Antony was Roman.

I

UNLUCKY

EITH ERWAY, YOUR CORNER STORE HAS WHAT YOU NEED. UNIVERSITY OF

13TH & KINCAID M-F 7:45-6 SAT 10-6 SUN 12-6

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Talking Hands Does a Common Language Signify a Separate Culture?

Story by Allison R. Stormo Photos by Bradley Rife

Jo Larson-Muhr communicates with her eyes as well as her hands when using American Sign Language.

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s Eric Henderson stepped into the breakfast line, he scanned the room and saw only strangers. For the first time in his life, he was surrounded by people who were just like him. Yet he still felt alone. As Eric sat by himself, he watched the other students speaking with their hands. After he finished eating, Eric went back to the dorms.

Soon he realized everyone else was gone. At this school, students carefully followed the clock.

They had all headed for class without him.

Eric grabbed his notebook and asked a janitor where his classroom was, awkwardly spelling out each word with his hands, one letter at a time. The janitor pointed down the hall. Eric signed "thank you," one of the few complete signs he knew. As he walked into the classroom, all the students turned and stared.

As a seventh-grader, Eric moved to the Oregon School for the Deaf (OSD) to escape the isolation he experienced in public schools. But he still felt like an outcast. He was one of the few students at OSD who did not speak the school's dominant language, American Sign Language

A

(ASL). Living in a community where people don't value oral communication, Eric furiously wrote notes and tried to talk with his peers the best he could. After six months, he was able to use ASL in conversations. Within a year, he could sign fluently.

For Eric, signing was more than just a language. It enabled him to experience things other teenagers took for granted, but in a whole new way. He met girls and went to dances, but dances at OSD were a little different than the ones at his old school. Rather than listening to the music, students danced to vibrations pulsating from speakers at decibel levels dangerously high for any hearing person. Eric and his buddies enjoyed clowning around and signing smart remarks to each other that no one else could understand.

While advocates for the Deaf argue that ASL offers a way to enter a unique culture, others claim that it is merely a different language.

(When capitalized, Deaf refers to the community of deaf people who use ASL.) Debates over the legitimacy of ASL as a second language have emerged on college campuses nationwide. The controversy is based on one question: Do deaf people become a part of a distinct culture when they learn ASL or is sign language just an alternative form of communication for people to use regardless of culture?

"A light turned on for me at OSD," Eric says.

When he mastered ASL, he found a way to connect with others for the first time in his life.

Eric considers this connection a link to a separate culture. Though this culture doesn't have different foods, clothing styles, or holidays, its members share one impor-

tant thing: a common language. As their sole means of communication, sign language shapes the way deaf people express themselves, develop relationships, and record their history.

ASL incorporates the perceptual differences experienced by deaf people. Most deaf people live in a world of vision, body language, and exaggerated facial expressions. Signs were developed to create a picture in one's head. For example, pulling the thumb and forefinger twice across the face-a gesture that evokes whiskers-signifies the word "cat." This emphasis on images makes deaf people particularly keen observers. Eric's stepmother, Barbara Shaw, has a difficult time concealing her emotions when she's upset. Eric can walk into a room, and, almost instantly, he knows what she's feeling. "It is almost impossible to lie in sign language," says Shaw. "Everything about who you are is part of the communication."

"There is a different mode of life and a different way of seeing things," says Shane Stalcup, a deaf twenty-seven-year-old senior at the University of Oregon. "Language is directly attached to how you see the world. The culture is enshrined in the language. If you can speak the language, you can see everything."

Signing requires direct eye contact at all times-and such close observation can be claustrophobic. "[Arguments] are done really quickly," says Stalcup. "You don't really want to stare at someone who is really pissed off at you."

When deaf people want to end a conversation, they can simply turn around. It's impossible to force a person to communicate in ASL or "yell" at them if they walk away.

The esoteric nature of ASL makes it difficult for hearing people to enter the culture. Many would-be ASL learners become frustrated by the visual characteristics of the language. Using hands to form words often feels unnatural to people who have expressed themselves orally since childhood. In addition, unlike other languages, ASL has no associated homeland, and people often perceive ASL as a means of compensating for a disability rather than as a language with its own value.

Once people break through the language barrier, however, they find a tight-knit community. Stalcup says that deaf people don't often communicate outside their own culture. Many hearing-impaired people spend much of their childhood with their peers in private boarding schools for deaf people. As a result, members of the Deaf community often depend on each other as much as-if not more than-:-their own families, whose grasp of the language can be less

The sign for Ilculture."

developed. Only 10 percent of deaf people marry a spouse outside of the Deaf culture, and deaf people often participate in club-sponsored activities together.

Many linguists argue that these common elements are sufficient to constitute a separate culture. But some social scientists insist that Deaf culture is actually a subculture, primarily because ASL does not have a written form. They note that it was developed in the United States and is spoken largely by Americans. Without a written language, the complexities and unique characteristics of the culture are difficult for those who don't sign to understand. Some critics claim that without a written history, a separate culture cannot exist. Phil Young, a University of Oregon cultural anthropology professor, says that culture involves the sharing of common beliefs, patterns of behavior, and knowledge among the members of a community. Young claims that a one-to-one correlation between language and culture does not exist. For example, he notes that most Americans speak English, but the United States comprises many cultures and subcultures.

"If you can speak the language, you can see everything."

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&mg

Real Men Don't Use Mousse Men Can Be Men at Barber Shops - But for Hoy\! Long?

Story by Tracy Picha Photos by George Rowe & David Parmeter

Eric uses a combination of body gestures and facial expressions to complete the language of signing.

"With emotional issues, I have a very difficult time expressing myself with spoken or written language."

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On the other hand, some argue that language and culture are interrelated. "An oral history exists, but it is not accessible to people who don't know the language," agrees Jo Larson-Muhr, an instructor of ASL at the University of Oregon.

Larson-Muhr grew up in a predominantly deaf family. Both of her parents, her maternal grandparents, and members of her extended family are deaf. As a child, Larson-Muhr learned ASL first and later learned English through her parents' hearing friends and videotapes. She acted as the gq-between, translating for her parents at parent-teacher conferences and restaurants.

For Larson-Muhr, the separate language clearly reflects a separate culture. "With emotional issues, I have a very difficult time expressing myself with spoken or written language," says Larson-Muhr, who considers herself bilingual and bicultural. She often substitutes signs for her spoken language in the middle of a discussion with her husband to more effectively convey her message. When Larson-Muhr got married, her husband had to learn ASL to understand her signs.

And the existence of a separate culture is often the litmus test used by college campuses to determine credit for second languages. Currently more than eighty universities accept ASL for fulfillment of second-language requirements.

However, many universities have rejected ASL as a foreign language on the claim that deaf

people compose only a subculture. In 1994, the University of Oregon rejected ASL as a fulfillment of its language requirement on the basis that a Deaf culture does not exist.

However, one year later, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill giving authority to the State Board of Higher Education to offer ASL for credit if enough students enroll and instructors are available.

Fluency in ASL helps bridge the gap between the hearing and the deaf communities. Over 90 percent of all children who are deaf are born to hearing parents, and learning ASL facilitates their communication. Hearing people who know ASL can also communicate with deaf coworkers, schoolmates, and neighbors.

Once he was conversant in ASL, Eric spent six years at OSD learning about Deaf culture.

Although he was content in the Deaf community, he decided he wanted to experience the "outside" world. Eric, now twenty, is equipped with communication skills, confidence, and a community of his own. He has moved back to live in the hearing world and hopes to combine the best aspects of both cultures.

Allison Stormo is an Aurora, Oregon, native and a senior studying magazine journalism. Stormo began work on this article in January of 1998 and researched Deaf culture issues extensively for this piece. ~

~

For more details about Eric's story and information about Deaf culture, visit influx. http://influx.uoregon.edu/deaf/

ete's 4 P.M. appointment is late. "His mother called this morning," Pete says, looking at his watch. "He was supposed to be here by now."

When Nick comes bounding up the cement steps to the Red Rooster Barber Shop with two seventh-grade friends in tow, Pete ribs him for being late and presses his half-finished cigarette into a seam in the brick wall before heading back into the shop.

"My mom only just told me!" Nick tries to defend himself.

To watch this exchange is to wonder if fiftyfive-year-old Pete Peterson is cutting the hair of a nephew or grandson. But he's not. He is

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grooming a thirteen-year-old boy who was brought to the Red Rooster for his very first haircut about ten years ago.

Nick's friends seat themselves on orange vinyl chairs at the back of the shop to wait, watch, listen, and occasionally gawk at the mounted antelope head that sprouts regally from the wall above them. Neither one of them goes to barbers. They go to Supercuts instead-a chain of unisex salons that began in the 1970s and were the first to offer low-priced haircuts for the whole family. The boys aren't sure why that choice was made. Regardless, they're not likely to experience at Supercuts the same kind of exchanges that Nick and Pete share or see photographs and trophies from their hairdresser's latest hunt.

It's likely that later generations of boys won't have to choose between the salon or barber shop at all. Barbers who remain in business today are fast on their way to retirement, and there are few younger barbers waiting in the wings to take over. The barbers' shops-which serve as a kind of male sanctuary-may well disappear, too.

"It's the last place in the world for [men] where they can come in and tell a joke and spit and scratch and do whatever they want to do," Pete explains. He says he's conscious of maintaining the Red Rooster as a masculine space, and he has the sports memorabilia, the hunting trophies and photos, and the Playboy magazines on display to prove it.

Men have other places in which to relate in the relative absence of women-football stadiums and stripper bars come to mind. But while those two sites of male bonding may not be vanishing, the barber shop is. And there doesn't appear to be a replacement on the horizon for those shared spaces where, through the centuries, one man has dutifully attended to the whiskers of another.

Things have changed in the barbering profession over time. Nowadays barbers don't even shave their clients, let alone pull their teeth or blood-let their clients as they did before the sixteenth century in Europe. Concern over such blood-borne diseases as hepatitis B and AIDS has

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Above: Once inside the door of a Eugene barber shoPI customers can relax while getting their hair cut.

Right: Pete Peterson says 1199.9 percen(1 of the clientele he has served is male.

inspired restrictions on barbers' services. They have had to keep up with society's changing fashions, attitudes, and regulations. As of late, however, the profession has shown signs of stress because of the close competition with its rivals: the cosmetologists.

Cosmetologists (or hairstylists, beauticians, hairdressers) do more than cut hair: They style it, perm it, color it, extend it, and straighten it.

Some of them pursue training in cosmetics, too, which includes work done on the nails or face.

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Three kinds of human groomers have emerged since the establishment of such places as Supercuts. Barbers specialize in men's hair, charge little, and do speedy work; cosmetologists charge more for their services, which include manipulating the hair with chemicals and color; and Supercuts stylists do a little of everything, catering to men and women alike with their reasonably priced services. As fashion and grooming have grown more diverse-for men as well as women-some barbers have struggled to keep up with the competition.

Gordon Scarbrough struggled and lost.

As the former owner and operator of Oregon's last barber college, Scarbrough says he was forced to close his Portland school when Oregon's House Bill 2182 was enacted in December of 1995. It is a piece of legislation that recategorized barber colleges as career schools and subjected them to different, more restrictive health and safety regulations. Had Scarbrough remained in business, he would've been prohibited from teaching chemical work (perming, coloring, and straightening). But with the majority of his students hoping to gain skills that would equip them for work in either a salon or a barber shop, Scarbrough felt he couldn't compete with cosmetology schools that teach a wide array of skills. The result of this closure?

"From Sacramento to the Canadian border, there are no longer any barber schools," Scarbrough says. And cosmetology schools don't emphasize the same techniques barber colleges do.

"Those poor people in the beauty schoolsthey may get issued a pair of clippers," Pete says. "But they really never learn to use them."

Indeed, tools are one of the main things that distingufsh the two professions. Hairdressers in salons rel'y primarily on their scissors, while barbers begin every job with their clippers-a device that looks like an electric razor, hums like a hedge-trimmer, and slashes the barber's cutting time in half.

"Oh, I'll use my shears to clean things up at the end," Pete explains. "But why stand there all day long going 'snip...snip...snip'?" If he approached a head of hair in the leisurely fashion a hairdresser in a salon does, Pete would have starved long ago. On average, Pete grooms fifteen to seventeen male clients per day and makes a decent living charging $11 for a haircut.

As with salons, prices for barber shop haircuts are relatively proportional to the size of the city or town in which the shops are located. Typically, a barber shop haircut ranges from $9 to $15

and takes fifteen to twenty minutes to complete, allowing time for telling jokes and showing pictures of the latest fishing expedition. Comparatively, hairstylists can take upwards of an hour per client to do all the grooming requested-not including the time devoted to pitching the latest hair products. The cost for salon grooming-once again, depending on what is done and how urban the location-can have a price tag that ranges from $25 to $125.

There is nothing legal a barber could do for a client that would cost $125.

Pete's clientele is "99.9 percent" male, and it's his inexpensive, sure-fire, no-frills approach to haircutting that attracts some of those men.

The atmosphere Pete maintains at the Red Rooster differs markedly from a salon's clinical studio of pampering. Unlike most salons, barber shops are places highlighted by experiences, not aesthetics. What gets showcased are accomplishments, not the latest look.

The wall-sized mirrors of Pete's shop are bordered by photos of Oregon track legends, green and yellow posters celebrating the Oregon Ducks, and snapshots of Pete looking tan and fit holding the fish or game he has caught over the years in the outdoors of Eastern Oregon. When Pete took over the shop in 1970 (it's been around since the 1950s), he made a point of retaining its original charm. He has added rooster-shaped trinkets and wall hangings found at garage sales over the years and included rooster figurines that customers have donated.

"It's Pete's place," says Travis Reiman, a University of Oregon student. "He's a local celebrity. I heard about this place from a friend and a high school principal who's been coming here for thirty years. There's a lot of bullshitting that goes on here," Travis explains.

Pete offers a kind of familiarity that is hard to find in the other product-filled, corporate-run places where human grooming is the business.

The slow erosion of the barber business and gradual disappearance of the barber shop may signal larger changes in society, too.

"Barber shops are a great example of public gendered spaces/" says Daphne Spain, associate professor of urban and environmental planning and associate dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Spain wrote a book in 1992 called Gendered Spaces, which explores how changes in spatial arrangements have affected women's status over time and across cultures. "Part of [the barber shop's] disappearance may result from a more casual, informal

IIHaircuts Done to Your Satisfaction II is the motto at the All American Barbershop in Springfieldl Oregon.

society as well as from more liberal attitudes about gender," says Spain. "Would your grandmother or grandfather have gone to a place to get haircuts .. .in front of the other sex?" she asks. "Probably not, since it revealed backstage, quasi-private behavior." While barber shops haven't disappeared entirely, Pete doesn't see his place being preserved as a tonsorial parlor after he has retired.

"Barber-wise, you can forget it," he says.

"Having a young barber come along-you can forget it." Pete agrees that won't mean the end of the haircutting profession entirely. "There's always going to be someone around who cuts hair," Pete says. "They just might not do it in the same manner and style that I do." And they'll probably do it in a place far different from the barber shop as well. For now, though, Pete provides a place "where you can be yourself."

And the boy seated in one of the wide, leather barber chairs smiles and agrees.

"Barber shops are places highlighted by experiences, not aesthetics."

Tracy Picha, who served as Flux's managing editor in 1997 and general manager in 1996, became interested in various hairstyling professions after discovering that her own hairstylist spent about $800 on his shears. ~

(..!!Y

For a virtual tour of the Red Rooster Barber Shop and more historic background information about the barbering profession, visit inFlux. http://influx.uoregon.edulbarbers/

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Rolling With the River Kayakers Work With - not Against-the Water Story by Dan Nicholson Photo essay by Chris Taylor

xtreme and radical are words many people think of when they hear about whitewater kayaking. However, from a kayaker's perspective, these words hardly express our passion for the sport. It's true that kayaking may involve paddling through intense rapids and dropping over steep waterfalls, but those of us who organize our lives around this activity do it for much more selfaffirming reasons than the mere purging of adrenal glands. We participate because kayaking enables us to reconnect with our earth, our community, and ourselves.

Kayakers develop an intimate relationship with the river and, in a larger sense, the earth.

Unlike rafts and canoes, kayaks ride low on-or sometimes even under-the water. Once the paddler gets into the kayak, the tight-fitting shell

E

becomes an extension of the body. The kayak responds to even the slightest body movements, enabling the paddler to have finer control than is possible with other water craft. Because we can feel all of the characteristics of moving water, like swirling eddy lines, frothy holes, and standing waves, we engage our bodies with the force of the river. This visceral experience of becoming one with the waterway evokes a feeling of consonance and connection with the natural environment. Many of us find our river experiences help recover the links to nature suppressed by the prevailing technocratic consciousness of our late twentieth century.

Paddlers feel not only a connection with the environment, but also with each other. By sharing interests and experiences, kayakers form a close community. Away from the river, we spend many hours together, regaling one another with epic tales of river adventures.

When paddling, we rely on one another to ensure individual and collective safety. Rivers can be dangerous places, and we are often required to depend on the judgment of fellow kayakers for protection-whether that entails finding the most appropriate path through a rapid or occasionally rescuing a friend.

We must also continually work together to preserve the places we have learned to love so much. Tne creeks of Oregon's Cascade Mountains and the Coastal Range are choked with debris and wayward logs that find their way down shorn hillsides, while dams flood pristine valleys, creating stagnant bodies of water where river habitats once thrived. Such eyesores make it clear that the prioritization of corporate profit comes at the expense of the broader natural community-of which we are all a part.

Perhaps the most vital part of any river experience is acknowledging the respect nature deserves. Respect for one another, respect for the river, and respect for what the river provides is essential for a fulfilling paddling experience. A successful down-river trip does not involve "conquering" the river, but interacting with the moving water. We realize there is no conquering of any natural element, only engagement.

Upper Left: jason Williams making liThe Leapll on Cherry Creek in California. Upper Right: Ed Fredette navigating Oregonls South Umpqua River. Bottom Left: Phil Zellner dropping over Campbell Falls on the South Umpqua.

Bottom Right: Gigi McBee scouting the same waterfall.

Dan icholson is a Ph.D. student focusing on cultural studies.

He has been kayaking since 1994. Chris Taylor is a journalism student specializing in photojournalism. He has been kayaking for the past five years.

For additional photographs of whitewater kayaking, visit influx. http://influx.uoregon.edulkayakl

,

Charles Melon popping an ender at Redsides Hole on the McKenzie River in Oregon.

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