Kodiak Spotlight: Wilderness mystery writer Robin Barefield
Robin Barefield knows the Kodiak wilderness. For more than 30 years, she has worked as a naturalist and guide at Munsey’s Bear Camp at remote Uyak Bay on the western end of the island.
Barefield owns the camp with her husband Mike, and they live there year-round. Using the knowledge she gained from earning a master’s degree in fish and wildlife biology from the University of Hawaii, she spends her summers taking guests bear viewing, whale watching and sport fishing.
Given her long-standing familiarity with Kodiak’s outdoors, it only made sense that when she started writing mystery novels, the island’s rugged terrain and tempestuous weather would factor heavily in her stories.
“Kodiak is just such a wonderful backdrop for anything,” Barefield said. “But for a mystery novel, you’ve got the environment, you’ve got the ocean, you’ve got the difficult terrain, you’ve got bears, the weather, so many different things that can play into it. I try to use the environmental aspects as much as I can.”
From the start, Barefield’s mystery writing has been deeply rooted in her own experiences. Her first story unfolded unexpectedly as she sat in the hospital with her mother, who was battling cancer.
“I sat with her every day. It was very depressing, so I started to write down my feelings,” Barefield said. Before she realized it, her anguished journaling had veered into the realm of fiction.
“I had this character who had been sitting in the hospital with her mother and she goes out on a drive to get away from everything for a bit. She started to think about all the things she would never be able to do with her mother again,” she said.
“Then, all of a sudden, this guy goes off the road and she goes to help him, and he tells her this mysterious message, and that starts the mystery. I just laughed because it’s like, here I am sitting here and I’m supposed to be writing my feelings down, and I murdered somebody.”
That brief scene sowed the seeds for a story that Barefield would work on for the next 10 years. It eventually grew into her first novel “Big Game,” which she self-published as an e-book in 1992. The story involves a band of politicians hatching a sinister plot in a remote Alaskan hunting lodge.
Since then, her mystery novels have come more quickly. The manuscript for her second book, “Murder Over Kodiak,” caught the attention of Evan Swensen of Anchorage-based Publication Consultants.
Swensen said that when he read “Murder Over Kodiak,” he knew right away that it was a book he wanted to publish.
“Most of our Alaska-themed books were nonfiction biographies. We needed a good Alaska mystery author, and we felt that Robin would fit that bill — we haven’t been disappointed,” he said. “She’s a book publisher’s ideal author. Readers of Dana Stabenow, C.J. Box, Joseph Haywood, Craig Johnson and Keith McCafferty will love Robin’s works.”
Publication Consultants has been publishing Barefield’s novels ever since. She followed “Murder Over Kodiak” with “The Fisherman’s Daughter” in 2017 and, most recently, “Karluk Bones” in 2019.
Although Barefield originally thought of her stories as straight mysteries with a “whodunit” angle — early influences included writers like Sue Grafton and Dick Francis — she has come to be known as a “wilderness mystery author.”
“I never actually read any wilderness mysteries and didn’t really think of myself as writing wilderness mysteries. I just set the characters in the place I knew, which is the Kodiak wilderness. So my publisher called me a wilderness mystery author, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I am a wilderness mystery author,’” she said.
For Barefield, though, the categorization of her stories seems of secondary importance to the writing itself.
“I started writing and I’ve just never quit. I love writing stories, I love telling stories, I love making up stories. I don’t have a background in writing, but I just use what I know. I studied and I learned as I went.”
What she knows is not only Kodiak but also wildlife biology. The main character in her novels, Jane Marcus, is a fisheries biologist who works at a marine center in Kodiak. Whale necropsies and paralytic shellfish poisoning have played roles in her plots.
Getting the science right in realms beyond biology is also important. For “Karluk Bones,” whose storyline involves the discovery of human remains in the middle of Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, Barefield did extensive research to figure out what information forensic anthropologists could glean from the study of bones, such as how long the person has been dead and how old they were at the time of death.
For many people, balancing life as a bear camp owner, naturalist and prolific mystery writer would be enough to keep them busy. But not Barefield. She also finds time to produce a true crime newsletter and podcast.
The online newsletter came first, stemming from her desire to find more readers for her books. There is a crowded market for mystery novels, so she was advised to create free content that would introduce new readers to her writing.
“If they like your writing, they’ll want to read more of it and they’ll be willing to pay for it,” Barefield said. “I thought, true crime is so popular, Alaska is so popular. True crime in Alaska has got to be a goldmine.”
For someone who mostly wrote fiction, which gives the author complete freedom of invention, she found writing true crime to be much harder than anticipated because of the research involved and the grisly content of the stories, not to mention the challenge of turning passive historical facts into engaging tales.
“I always pick an Alaska crime or a mysterious disappearance that I hear about or read about. I’m always researching,” she said, adding, “It’s tougher and it’s darker because you’re writing about real people and real murders. … A lot of them are so crazy, I don’t think anyone would believe them as a plot.”
Eventually, some of her newsletter subscribers suggested that she start a true crime podcast. At first, she resisted the idea, but then she started looking into it and realized it might be another fun outlet for her urge to tell stories. Her husband built her a small office at the bear camp with a sound studio in the corner, and the “Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier” podcast was launched.
Her first episode was about a 1983 murder spree in McCarthy, Alaska, that was part of a convoluted, and ultimately unsuccessful, plan to steal a mail plane and blow up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. More recently, she did a podcast on the Birdman of Alcatraz, whose original crime was killing a man in a Juneau bar.
The podcasts have helped Barefield gain more attention for her work. She’s received multiple enquiries from the producers of true crime television shows who wanted to interview her, or who were searching for information on crime in Alaska.
“The podcast has been the most successful thing I’ve done by far, but it isn’t the thing I like to do the most. I’d much rather write my novels,” Barefield said. “But it reaches so many more people. I think it might be a sad statement that not many people read anymore.”
Yet another one of Barefield’s ongoing projects is her nature blog. Many of the posts about animals and the environment are inspired by questions that guests at Munsey’s Bear Camp have asked during guided excursions. Those questions, and their answers, grew into the idea to write a book about Kodiak’s wildlife, a project that Barefield has been working on for about 10 years.
“Our spring season last year [at the bear camp] was completely canceled, and then our summer was about 50%. I got a lot more writing done. I finally said, this is getting finished,” Barefield said.
The resulting book, “Kodiak Island Wildlife: Biology and Behavior of the Wild Animals of Alaska’s Emerald Isle,” will be released by Publication Consultants at the end of April. It will feature not only Barefield’s writing, but also her husband’s photographs.
Barefield describes “Kodiak Island Wildlife” as more in-depth than a simple guidebook. It focuses on the island’s endemic mammals, as well as those introduced to the environment by humans. Ocean and avian species are also covered, including sea otters, sea lions, porpoises, whales, bald eagles, puffins and arctic terns.
“The Kodiak bear is a huge section, of course. I talk about the biology, bear and human interaction, the crazy history the bears have on this island, management,” she said. “I didn’t spend a long time, say, on caribou because there’s some on the south end of the island but it’s not a major animal that most people are going to run into here.”
Aside from “Kodiak Island Wildlife,” other Barefield projects that will hit the shelves later in the year include her fifth mystery novel, which she hopes will be out by the fall, and a true crime book based on stories she has published in her online newsletter. She has about 60 stories — enough for two books — but will start by publishing a single volume with some of the major Alaska crime stories.
In the midst of all these projects, Barefield’s primary motivation remains a simple love of writing, which includes her dedication to bringing Kodiak to life for her readers.
“For me, writing just relaxes my brain. It’s a great pastime. It’s something I love. I don’t think you go into writing to make money. You hope that happens. But you go into writing because you love to write,” she said.
Hopefully I describe [Kodiak] well. The best compliments I get from people is when they say, ‘Oh I love this, it just brought back Kodiak to me when I was there or when I visited.’ That’s what I’m trying hard to do.”
Robin Barefield’s website can be found at http://robinbarefield.com, where she writes a blog about Kodiak wildlife. Her “Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier” podcast be found at https://murder-in-the-last-frontier.blubrry.net. She is also a charter member of Author Masterminds: https://authormasterminds.com/robinbarefield. Her books can be purchased online through Publication Consultants (https://publicationconsultants.com/).
Five lessons from a legendary cycling coach
Late last month, I read the news that renowned cycling coach Eddy Borysewicz had died from COVID-19 at the age of 81 in his native Poland. He was well-known, among other things, for preparing U.S. cyclists for medal-winning performances in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and for helping develop a young Greg LeMond into the first American to win the Tour de France in 1986. (Earlier this month, LeMond became the first cyclist, and only the 10th individual athlete in history, to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.)
Borysewicz, or Eddy B. as he was known, also played a key role in the development of an entire generation of young wannabe bike racers in the 1980s, including me.
I started racing in 1983 at the age of 15. At that time, detailed information about cycling was hard to obtain in places like rural Pennsylvania, where I grew up. My “training” consisted of riding 25 to 40 miles a day through the hills around my hometown – good enough to prepare me for small local events, but not enough to avoid getting thrashed at the regional level by faster, fitter cyclists.
Something essential was lacking in my training program. Then, in early 1985, along came a book titled “Bicycle Road Racing: A Complete Program for Training and Competition” by Eddy Borysewicz. It opened my eyes to the concept of carefully planned, year-long training programs. To be competitive in May, I learned, training started in December, and each day of the week must be dedicated to a specific aspect of race fitness: endurance, tempo, intervals, sprints, recovery.
My copy of “Bicycle Road Racing” was lost years ago, and much of its 20th century wisdom has long since been supplanted by updated training techniques. But I recently looked through an old copy of the book at the local library, which helped jog my memory about a few of the other ways Eddy B. influenced my approach to the sport.
1. Bicycle racing is hard, so toughen up
Sample quote: “In Poland I have trained when the temperature was 5-10 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). There was no such thing as saying, ‘Oh, it’s so cold. We will train if it warms up tomorrow.’”
As a young, ambitious cyclist, I took Eddy B.’s admonishment about training in bad weather to heart. I was out on my bicycle in all conditions, whether it was endurance rides in the chill air of January, intervals in the steady rains of April, or sprints on sweltering afternoons in July. There was a sense of accomplishment, even pride, in returning from a hard, three-hour training ride soaked to the bone and frozen half to death. As I have grown older, I’ve become less dedicated to cycling in inclement weather, but sometimes it can’t be helped: In June 2019, I signed up for the 130-mile Michigan Mountain Mayhem event near Traverse City. During the first four hours of my seven-hour ride, rain poured from the clouds and the temperature hovered in the mid-40s. The reward was finishing the tough, hilly course in the beautiful, warm sunshine that followed the storm.
2. Intense, sustained concentration is required
Sample quote: “Racing takes great power of concentration. Many a rider has failed to concentrate for one moment and suddenly found himself at the rear of the field. This is the most dangerous position because there is no self-determination.”
This is one of the hardest aspects of bicycle racing, which those who have never participated in the sport have trouble understanding: the need to maintain laser focus from start to finish, even throughout a four-hour race. One momentary lapse in awareness could mean being out of position during a crucial point in the race or, even worse, going down in crash. Over the years, I have also dabbled in running and even trained up for the 1997 Los Angeles Marathon. Although I would never describe running 26.2 miles as “easy,” the luxury of being able to zone out for minutes at a time over the course of four hours made it far less mentally taxing than even the shortest bike race.
3. Bicycle racing is a contact sport
Sample quote: “If you bothered me when I was racing I would hit you with my rear wheel – bang it right into your front wheel and knock you down if you weren’t a good bike handler. I would say, ‘You want to play? What kind of game do you want? I’m ready for anything. C’mon!’”
Thankfully, the majority of cyclists (including me) never indulged in such dubious or dangerous tactics. But we needed to be prepared for those who did. More often, though, contact during races was unintentional, the result of riders not paying attention (see previous lesson), or swerving to avoid a dropped water bottle, or simply lacking the skills to hold their line through a corner. Dealing properly with unexpected physical contact while speeding down the road at 25mph meant honing bike-handling skills on easy training days: for example, finding a grassy field to ride across at slow speed with teammates while bumping elbows, handlebars, and wheels. The object was to learn how to ride straight, stay upright, and, if necessary, push back without going down. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that many road racers in the U.S. still have not embraced, and too many of them don’t spend time developing these skills. As European cyclists are fond of saying, Belgian grandmothers have better bike-handling skills than most American professionals.
4. Data and metrics can improve training
Sample quote: [After nine minutes of hard effort on the indoor trainer, stop and take your pulse.] “Do this with your fingertips on the carotid artery beside your Adam’s apple. … If it is 170 beats per minute this schedule is perfect. If it is 160 or less the work was too easy and you should use bigger gears. … When you get 180 or more the work was too hard and you should use lower gears. When your pulse exceeds 180 on the first set you won’t be able to handle the second one.”
This was the first time I had heard about paying attention to heart rate. Of course, using your fingers to take your pulse in the middle of a training ride is less than ideal, and has long since gone the way of the dodo thanks to technology. Also, it is woefully unscientific to suggest that all athletes should train based on the same heart rate levels. (According to the old 220-minus-age formula, my maximum heart rate should be 167, but in practice I still reach the low 180s during interval sessions.) Now, with heart rate monitors and power meters dominating the training landscape, it’s hard to remember that long-ago era when I measured my cycling efforts purely according to my own perceived exertions while chugging up the hills of central Pennsylvania.
5. Proper nutrition is important (but don’t always take dietary advice from an old-time European coach)
Sample quote: “You may burn twice as many calories in a four-hour road race as a factory worker will burn in a full day. To replenish these calories you must eat food that is necessary as well as food that you like. For example, I never ate horse meat in my life until an eight-year period when I was racing. Horse is considered very good meat because it has no fat. In Europe riders eat it a lot. It is also much cheaper than beef and pork. But horse meat? It didn’t sound good at all. At first I ate only a little, then more, and then I was eating a lot. I rode well on it. When I stopped cycling I stopped eating it.”
This was one of the most memorable passages in the book, and in the 1980s it resulted in baffled parents of young cyclists across the country fielding queries about where to source horse meat. But it did help me realize that I had to put more thought into what went into my body to fuel my training and racing program – a lesson that seems increasingly important as I grow older.
Above: The author in action in a bike race somewhere in New Jersey circa 1988, while riding for the New Age Cycling Team based in State College, Pennsylvania.
Kodiak Spotlight: Bear biologist Joy Erlenbach
This article was originally published in the July 17, 2020, edition of Kodiak Daily Mirror newspaper.
Joy Erlenbach didn’t spend much time outdoors as a kid. One of four children of a single mom who was always working, Erlenbach never really had the chance to go outside except to do chores.
So to this day, she says, it boggles her mind to think about how and why she became enamored of wilderness experiences.
The love affair started when she was a teenager in Burlington, Washington.
“When I was in high school, a friend and I saw an advertisement for a search and rescue organization that needed volunteers, and so I joined and went through a bunch of training,” she said. “That was my introduction to backpacking and surviving in the woods. And I just sort of fell in love with being outside.”
Meanwhile, Erlenbach had always harbored a love for animals that made her think she would someday become a veterinarian, but as she spent more time outdoors, she realized she didn’t want to become a zookeeper or spend her days working in a vet’s office.
“I wanted to be outside with the animals,” she said. “When I was researching degrees for college, I stumbled upon wildlife ecology, and I read the description and it was like light bulbs went off – this is it, I get to be outside with animals, this is what I want to do.”
In 2004 she started the wildlife ecology program at Washington State University, which is home to one of the few facilities in the world that houses adult brown bears for research.
“I guess that’s where it all started because I got to interact with bears at pretty close range like most people don’t get to do,” Erlenbach said, adding that her early volunteer work at the research facility mostly consisted of “just shoveling poop and helping feed the bears a couple times a week.”
But she also began getting a sense that each bear had a unique character, at a time when there was not a lot of discussion among wildlife ecologists about animal personality.
Her interest in bears was reinforced when she was asked to join a research project in Yellowstone National Park, during which she spent a summer tracking bears and measuring what they were eating. She got to see firsthand how resilient and adaptable wild animals could be, as they survived in an area characterized by frequent interactions with park visitors.
“The bears could switch from day-active to nocturnal, and mediate those risks between encountering humans in the park,” she said. “They could exist by doing all these different strategies. Some bears ate elk calves, some bears didn’t. Some bears hung out at streams, some bears hung out at high elevations. The variety really got me.”
Erlenbach went on to earn her master’s degree, with a focus on the nutritional ecology of bears — what they eat and why — as well as some study into behavior. Not considering herself to be a “standard academic type,” she thought her university career had reached its conclusion. When the opportunity to apply for a Ph.D. program in Alaska arose in 2014, her initial response was to say no.
At the same time, she recalled photographs of Alaska that a graduate student had shared with her when she was an undergrad, and she also knew she wanted to keep working with bears.
“Just seeing the pictures, I fell in love with the scenery and had in the back of my mind this idea that I wanted to go to Alaska,” Erlenbach said. “The Ph.D. project was really amazing, and I talked to a lot of people and they sort of convinced me that I just had to do this.”
The project involved spending four years in Katmai National Park studying the link between coastal bears and the marine environment — more specifically, what consequences oil spills, climate change, ocean acidification, warming water and other factors might have on the animals.
The project also brought Erlenbach one step closer to Kodiak. During her research, she would spend a month camping along the coast while conducting bear observations, and then head back to civilization to shower and restock food before returning to the coast for another month.
“I had spent four years over in Katmai staring at Kodiak,” she said. “Kodiak was one of our ways that we reported weather. If we could see Kodiak, that meant it’s a good day because there weren’t that many rain clouds between us and Kodiak. So I stared at Kodiak for years and always went, ‘Gosh, I wonder what’s over there.’”
After the Katmai project was completed, Erlenbach returned to Washington. She was preparing to defend her Ph.D. when some friends told her they had seen a job posting for a bear biologist at Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge that seemed perfect for her.
She looked at the posting, agreed that it was an ideal fit for her experience and interests, and promptly applied. She was in the middle of a trip to Thailand — a pre-graduation present to herself — when she was notified that she was going to have an interview for the job, which she ultimately landed.
“It was all pretty crazy,” she said. “I knew there was a history of a lot of really great bear research here (in Kodiak), and so to be able to come into a position where I knew there was a history of good research and an opportunity for good future research was pretty appealing.”
Erlenbach arrived in Kodiak on March 1 to take up her position as the refuge’s new bear biologist, and promptly sprained her ankle on her third day here. The injury prevented her from immediately making it out into the field, but gave her plenty of time to start digging into the data that has been collected over the years about the island’s bears.
“The first thing I’m doing is taking stock of what all the past surveys are saying, and … making sure we really understand where we’re at with populations, and whether there’s any reason for concern going forward or if we think everything is fine,” she said. “Kodiak bears are so iconic and it’s so well known for its hunting. I think the main issue is just making sure that we continue to keep the bear population thriving.”
Erlenbach said there’s a fair amount of evidence showing that changes in salmon populations are occurring around the world, so it was important to look at salmon abundance in the areas where refuge bears are consuming them, how changes in salmon abundance might be affecting the bears, and what can be done about it.
“Everything is connected, right? So it’s hard for me to point a finger at any one thing, especially at this point with being pretty new to the area,” she said. “But I think food supply is really high up there on my list of concerns. If animals are being affected by a dwindling food supply, then things like hunting can become more of a pressure than they were in the past. We just need to make sure that we don’t trend that way.”
As for Kodiak itself, Erlenbach said she has been “pleasantly surprised” by the town and the island.
“Never having been here, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it’s beautiful,” she said. “The people I’ve met have been really warm and welcoming.”
With her ankle sprain healing, she has also been able to get out and enjoy some of the local hikes, including Termination Point, Pyramid Mountain, Sharatin Mountain and Cope Mountain. But what she’s most anticipating is exploring more remote areas of the island away from the road system.
“I’ve been able to get out, and the hiking is awesome,” she said. “But I can’t wait to see the refuge because I hear it’s also pretty fantastic.”
Kodiak backyard hikes: Mission Beach gallery
Mission Beach is only about 1.5 miles from our apartment. Getting there involves walking through quiet neighborhoods rather than trail hiking. The beach is usually calm and quiet. People sometimes come to exercise their dogs, collect seaweed for fertilizer, or launch sea kayaks. We come to walk on the stones and the rippled black-and-tan sand, looking down in search of sea glass, looking up to breathe deeply and take in the ocean and the wide sky. On some days, silver-gray water melds with silver-gray clouds on the infinite horizon; on others, the blue waves shimmer with unimpeded sunlight. We’ve seen sea otters swimming and bald eagles searching the shoreline for food. We’ve skipped rocks, and we’ve simply sat watching the sunrise or the fishing boats coming to and from the harbor.
Kodiak Spotlight: Dedicated voter Margaret Hall passes away at 101
On October 28, I conducted a phone interview with 101-year-old Kodiak resident Margaret Hall about her lifelong commitment to voting, and how she considered participating in elections to be an “obligation” and a “duty.” She was friendly and sharp-witted, and at the end of the interview she thanked me for calling and listening to her opinions.
Two days later, she passed away. But her wise words resonate, particularly on this contentious Election Day, and are worthy of noting down for posterity.
Margaret was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1919 – one year before the enactment of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Having gained this hard-won freedom in her lifetime, Margaret’s mother made sure her daughters grew up understanding its importance.
“I first voted in 1940 at age 21,” Margaret said. “It was very exciting because my mother had taken us three girls to the polls with her every single year, all the time, and she was always an advocate for women to vote.”
And so began Margaret’s lifelong commitment to voting, which she saw as the foundation of a democracy “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Like her mother, she also sought to pass her enthusiasm down to her own four daughters and two sons.
“The Constitution doesn’t say ‘we the president’ or ‘we the senators’ or ‘we the Supreme Court.’ It was written so it says, ‘We the People,’” she said.
The only presidential elections she missed were those in 1952 and 1956, following her move to the then-territory of Alaska in 1948. She said she found the inability to vote during that time “very frustrating.”
“For the first election (in 1952), I had just recently become a resident of Alaska,” Margaret said. “I could have still voted absentee in Minnesota had I not done that, but I had become a resident of Alaska so I couldn’t.”
When Alaska achieved statehood in 1959, she was finally able to start participating again in 1960.
“Probably the most memorable election would have been the first time I was able to vote in Alaska (in 1960) after I had not been able to vote for two elections because we were still a territory,” she said.
Margaret made her way to the polling station in every election thereafter, even as she saw a disappointing drop in interest in politics among her fellow citizens.
“I think voting has changed over the years. I don’t think people think it’s an obligation or a duty or a privilege anymore,” she said. “They just don’t feel it. They think ‘I can vote or not vote. I don’t need to vote. Nobody cares if I vote. I don’t know who to vote for.’ They have every excuse in the world for not voting.”
She also noticed a “definite” decline in civility among politicians — a shift that she said is readily apparent when older political speeches are compared with those offered up by some of today’s candidates.
“It’s changed. Well, the only word I can really think of is ‘uncouth,’” she said. “When one candidate gets up there and says he’s going to kick someone’s butt, I don’t care for that kind of language. I don’t use it and those things can be expressed in many other ways … I’m afraid it’s changed forever. I don’t think we’re going to go back to the same kind of polite, sensitive conversations we used to have.”
Margaret was also less than thrilled by the increase in over-the-phone polling in the days leading up to elections.
“I do not like people calling and asking me for my opinion on an issue,” she said. “I’m firmly convinced that the secrecy of the ballot is important.”
The deterioration of respectful political rhetoric aside, Margaret continued to believe in the integrity of the electoral process. She also had a message for those who have grown jaded about U.S. politics or who don’t think voting is worthwhile.
“Two things I would say: You need to wake up and realize that an organized minority can overrule an unorganized majority of the people of the country,” Margaret said. “And you also need to realize that you, as ‘the People,’ have an obligation and a privilege to vote that many people in many countries do not have.”
Kodiak backyard hikes: A spine-tingling animal encounter
Kodiak Island is a wild place. My wife Pauksi and I never set foot in the forest without carrying bear spray, and rare is the bike ride outside of town when I don’t spot at least one Sitka black-tailed deer crossing the road.
During a hike last weekend, we had an unusual encounter with a wary species of mammal that, up to that point, we had not yet seen on the island.
We started our walk by heading for Pillar Mountain, the base of which is only a few blocks away from our apartment. The sun was shining, and the temperature in town was cool but had not quite dipped below freezing during the night. As we gained elevation, though, we saw more frost as well as a few puddles topped with an icy glaze.
We hiked about three-quarters of the way up the 1,240-foot (378-meter) peak on the gravel access road, and then followed a forest path that branched off to the north and descended for a mile to a paved road leading out to White Sands Beach.
Another half mile of pavement walking brought us to a dirt lane leading not to White Sands Beach, which was 5 miles farther along the paved road, but to a coastal cove with black volcanic sand that we had previously seen from the mountaintop but had never visited.
After spending an hour or so eating lunch and hanging out at the beach, we set out to return home the same way we had come.
While walking back along the short stretch of paved road, I spotted movement in the bushes bordering the left shoulder up ahead. At first, I thought it was a small dog, but when the animal stepped out onto the road, I saw that it was a red fox. In its teeth was what appeared to be the spine of a rather large animal, which it was laboriously dragging across the road.
My wife and I stopped and watched from afar, but when the fox reached the other side of the road, it suddenly noted our presence, dropped its prize, and scampered up a steep embankment into the forest.
We slowly walked forward, stopping to look at the spine, which appeared fresh and bloody. I thought it might have belonged to a deer but wasn’t sure. I couldn’t imagine how a fox could have taken down such a large animal, and thought it more likely that the deer had been killed by a bear or hit by a car.
As we contemplated these possibilities, we realized the fox was still there, sitting motionless and observing us from the trees with its sharp, intelligent eyes. Was it merely curious, or was it waiting for us to leave so it could come back down and reclaim its food? For a few minutes, we watched the animal watching us. Then we moved on, retracing our steps over the mountain and back down to our neighborhood on the other side.
Kodiak backyard hikes: An autumn morning in North End Park
After a week of stormy weather that brought heavy rain and gale-force winds to Kodiak, the first Saturday in October dawned bright and clear. My wife and I were keen to get out of the house and enjoy the crisp fall weather.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of Kodiak is the amount of exploration that can be done without the need to get into a car and drive somewhere. Forest trails and beaches abound within a 3-mile radius of our apartment.
On this day, we headed for North End Park, just 1 mile from our front door on Near Island, which is accessible by bridge. With the previous week’s storms now passed, as we crossed the bridge, we were able to catch our first view in many days of the mountains to the west.
We entered the park the back way on Channelside Trail, which at the start is lined with salmonberry bushes that bear fruit in the summertime but whose leaves were just beginning to show the discoloration of approaching winter. Farther along, Sitka spruces and some deciduous trees started appearing. The mossy forest ticked with water droplets from the all-night rain that had tapered off shortly before we left our apartment.
Channelside led us to the Northend Trail system. We followed the path to a set of wooden stairs that descended to a rocky beach. The tide was low, and the shoreline was strewn with seaweed, tangles of bull kelp, and other debris washed up by the previous week’s high waves. At one end of the beach, a small, temporary waterfall cascaded down the rocks.
Re-entering the forest on the other side of the beach, we picked up a trail that took us to land’s end, providing a clifftop view of the ocean and local fishing boats heading to and from Kodiak’s two harbors.
From there, we followed the forested coast, where mushrooms sprouted in the shade beneath the trees and, on one occasion, an unseen but vocal squirrel bombarded us with pinecones from high up in a Sitka spruce tree.
We stopped at another small beach, drenched in sunshine and caressed by the cool wind blowing off the ocean. The calm was occasionally broken by small aircraft landing at the Near Island floatplane base.
We later happened across another interruption in the natural splendor of the forest in the form of a rusted vehicle dating back to World War II – a remnant of the U.S. military forced deployed on Kodiak to defend Alaska from invasion from Japan.
We eventually made our way back to the first beach, where the tide was reaching its highest point and the morning’s waterfall was now silent.
We climbed back up the stairs and followed the forest path through the tunnel of trees to exit the park at the main parking lot. A short walk back across the bridge to Kodiak Island had us home before noon.
Ghost Dog Gone?
Most of Fort Wayne’s numerous haunted places are said to be frequented by spirits that are decidedly humanoid in aspect: the ghost of one Lt. Philip Ostrander roams the city’s namesake Old Fort; a mysterious woman wearing a white, flowing gown is sometimes seen crossing Main Street Bridge west of Van Buren Street; the restless phantom of a maintenance man prowls the dark backstage of the Embassy Theatre. The list goes on.
A notable exception is Wells Street Bridge, which legend says is troubled not by a spectral biped but rather by a devil-dog with glowing eyes that barks at – and sometimes chases – cyclists who ride across the span late on dark, cold nights. The general advice for those who encounter this creepy canine is to forget the “Dog Halt!” spray and instead put the mettle to the pedals, and get out of there as quickly as your legs can spin.
Wells Street Bridge is a landmark of downtown Fort Wayne. The 180-foot-long structure across St. Marys River was built in 1884, closed to motor vehicles in 1982, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It’s one of only a handful of 19th century iron truss bridges built in U.S. urban areas that have survived the inexorable march of progress.
For decades the bridge was a fairly quiet, isolated place, but it now anchors the west end of Promenade Park, a 4-acre riverfront development project opened in August 2019 that includes such amenities as an amphitheater, a craft been café, a floating kayak launch, a tree canopy trail, and a children’s playground. The $20 million project took two years to complete.
Now, this promenade is obviously a nice little addition to Fort Wayne’s growing list of attractions, but my worry – in the midst of all the breathless hoopla surrounding the park’s grand opening – is that the months of noisy, intensive construction might have displaced the legendary ghost dog from its home on Wells Street Bridge.
In recent weeks, as the nights have grown longer, darker, and colder, I’ve climbed aboard my bicycle and indulged in a series of nocturnal “test rides” across the venerable old bridge in an effort to coax the devil-dog into appearing. So far, no luck – but I like to think that the mystery still lurks there, biding its time until the nights are even longer, darker, and colder before it once again harries brave or foolhardy cyclists who dare to cross the river in the wee hours.
Fort Wayne bike shop serves homeless community
Early in his adult life, Michael Brown worked as a city planning consultant in Chicago. Eventually, he came to believe that rewriting zoning ordinances and establishing great landscaping designs were not the real solutions to community problems; the real issue, he said, was “the condition of our soul.” The realization prompted his shift to a new career as pastor for a suburban Chicago church.
In 2003, Brown moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to serve as co-pastor at Mission Church on Cass Street. Five years ago he established Heart of the City Bicycles at the church, a bike shop for the homeless community and those who use their bikes as a main source of transportation. Open Fridays from 9am to noon, the shop averages 15 to 20 repairs a week, as well as 125 to 150 earn-a-bikes a year.
How did you get the idea to start Heart of the City Bicycles?
When I was a pastor in Chicago, our church had a very large group of cyclists. I was trying to find a way to really give back to the community instead of focusing on, “Hey, we’re doing all these really great rides.” So we started volunteering down at the Men’s Rescue Mission. We’d go in quarterly and fix up bikes. Then I became a co-pastor at Mission Church in Fort Wayne. We acquired our current building six years ago, and for five years we’ve had Heart of the City Bicycles.
What services does the shop provide?
We provide repair services on a weekly basis. We do an earn-a-bike program for those who would like to make strides toward getting their own bicycle, so they do community-related projects like cleaning up the Fort Wayne River Greenway and cleaning up the Wells Street Corridor. We also teach bike-repair lessons. We have an apron program. It’s like martial-arts belts – you can go Yellow Apron, Red Apron, Green Apron, Black Apron. The teaching is done by our four main volunteers. We’ll just kind of mentor somebody. The Yellow Apron takes about four weeks.
How does the program benefit the community?
We’ve recognized that poverty is not a financial issue. It manifests itself in all different areas, so we build relationships with these folks and help them learn life skills. We created a shop here that is relatively clean and organized, because many of these folks have a lot of chaos in their lives. From a very simple level, we think that a person having adequate transportation is a great start. Some of these folks don’t have the ability to acquire a driver’s license. Cars are expensive, and bicycles are a very effective form of transportation, as most of the rest of the world knows. We have a great infrastructure for bike paths in Fort Wayne, and we want to take advantage of that. If we can give folks the ability to get around to job interviews, jobs, healthcare appointments, and so forth, we think that helps with their quality of life.
Indiana’s poet laureate writes his truths
Adrian Matejka discovered his vocation as a poet in a roundabout way. His first love was not literature, but rap music, a creative calling that he soon determined was not meant to be.
“I was a terrible emcee, so I gave it up and decided to be a stockbroker,” he said. But during his second year in college, he heard American poet Yusef Komunyakaa reading in a coffee shop and felt compelled to try his hand at writing verse.
Despite abandoning his early dreams of musical stardom, Matejka (pronounced Mah-TEE-kuh) still finds inspiration in rap, which he describes as “the most popular example of poetry we have.”
“Rappers use the same language devices – rhyme, simile, metaphor, allusion – as poets. The big difference … is the goal of the language. Rappers are trying to team up with music in order to evoke emotion, tell stories or get the party going. Poets are teaming up with the reader’s imagination to do those same things.”
Musical and other pop culture references are among the means by which Matejka provides readers a non-intimidating entry into his work, with the goal of creating poems that “offer up stories and circumstances that I hope will be both familiar and surprising to the reader.”
The accessibility of Matejka’s work was perhaps one of the contributing factors to his appointment as the new poet laureate of Indiana by the Indiana Arts Commission. He began his two-year tenure on January 1, and will continue serving through December 31, 2019.
His published poetry collections include The Devil’s Garden (2003), Mixology (2009) and The Big Smoke (2013), the latter of which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and 2014 Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, Map to the Stars (2017), explores growing up in Indianapolis in the 1980s.
Matejka was born into an American military family in Germany, but settled in Indianapolis in 1980. After graduating from Indiana University Bloomington, he left the state for nearly 20 years to live in Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis and elsewhere before returning to Bloomington in 2012 to take up his current position as poet-in-residence at Indiana University.
“I rarely wrote poems that were influenced by geography before Map to the Stars. When I came back to Indiana [in 2012], I was struck by how little the place has changed cosmetically but how completely different the climate and culture is now,” he said. “So growing up in Indianapolis didn’t influence writing the poems as much as coming back did. I was able to think about my experiences here in the 1980s a little differently after being gone so long.”
Matejka’s other preoccupations as a poet include race, economics, family and masculinity.
“The racial conflicts in our country have been exacerbated by the current politics of ignorance and bluster, but all of this bigotry was here before. It just has a bigger megaphone in 2018,” he said, adding that while poetry “can’t change legislation, reduce gun violence or right electoral maleficence,” it can offer a way to speak out against oppression like sexism and racism.
“Poetry is a great enabler of voices,” he said. “The art has empowered many people who were previously disenfranchised, silenced or otherwise ignored in the larger public discourse. Poetry has the power to amplify the natural voice of protest, which I hope is happening in some of my work.”
He said one of his obligations as poet laureate is to remind people that poetry is vital and that anyone is “welcome to join us, as creators or listeners of poems in whatever way they would like.”
“Poetry can sometimes be intimidating because it has its own agenda for music and creativity, and it can feel like a party we’ve crashed without an invitation. At the same time, poetry often uses traditional English building blocks – words, syntax, allusions, even punctuation – that are familiar to many of us.”
Matejka also hopes to emphasize poetry as one of the oldest forms of communication, a means by which people remembered history, entertained and shared political ideas long before there were novels, radios or movies.
“[Poetry] is our most essential public art and there is room in it for everyone. It’s cheap to create and easily available. Once people accept that there is no right or wrong in poetry and there are no secret handshakes or initiation rituals necessary to writing poetry, creation naturally follows,” he said. “If you write your truths, you can learn the rest as you go along.”
Read Adrian Matejka’s poetry here:
Portrait Photo: Stephen Sproll
Late for Nowhere 