Tag Archives: Alaska

07.09.24
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La Grand Tour dans La Mauvaise Époque: Meditations provoked by traveling with grandchildren

Steinbeck and Charley by Luiyo, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Steinbeck traveled with a dog named Charley.

I travel with grandchildren named Elsie and Tristan. And their mother Katie. And their grandmother Joelle, to whom I have been married more than fifty-four years.

Gentle Reader, if you’re exhausted by the mere mention of such treks, welcome to the club.

“Pantaloon – The Sixth Age Shifts into the Lean and Slippered Pantaloon” engraved by William Bromley. Public Domain.

. . . The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. . . .

—William Shakespeare, “the Seven Ages of Man”

The Native Hue of Resolution

In all innocence, we decided to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary in 2020 by going to Italy. We would take Katie and her kids along to help us celebrate. It would be fun, we thought.

Also, it would be educational—broadening, don’t you know?—for the children. Katie had traveled widely in Europe but had never experienced the grandeur of Italy. Elsie and Tristan, ages ten and seven, had never been abroad at all.

“The Prince’s Cicerone.” Sir Walter Lawrence, 15 June 1905, Vanity Fair illustration by Leslie Matthew Ward (English, 1851-1922).

Young men from Britain or the Americas used to take long European sojourns as way of capping their formal education. This practice, known as “the Grand Tour,” had roots in the burgeoning world of the mid-17th century. It continued through the complacent era just before the outbreak of the First World War—a time now remembered as “La Belle Époque.”

“The primary value of the Grand Tour lay in its exposure to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent. It also provided the only opportunity to view specific works of art, and possibly the only chance to hear certain music. A Grand Tour could last anywhere from several months to several years. It was commonly undertaken in the company of a cicerone, a knowledgeable guide or tutor,”

says Wikipedia.

Being the Astute Reader that you are, I’m sure you already know the Grand Tour was experienced only by scions of wealthy families. Who else could afford such a long ramble and the expensive company of a personal tutor? Moreover, it was only the sons, not the daughters.

Democracy in Action

But, this is America! This is the Twenty-first Century! Travel has been democratized. Even if we can’t go in high style, at least we can travel. Ignore the fact that we swelter in giant sardine cans hurtling through bumpy skies while we watch epic films on seven-inch screens, with prefabricated salads in our laps; at least we are going.

We will get there. We will be there. We will come back. Millions of us.

We hoped to expose Elsie and Tristan “to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.” We, ourselves, would be the cicerones.

What happened next, Dear Reader? Can you guess? . . . That’s right:

COVID.

Starting on March 13, 2020, all transglobal sardines’ wings were clipped. No Grand Tour could be scheduled.

But Resourceful is our middle name. We pivoted.

“Peninsula State Park, Door County WI” by Wickanninish is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

For the benefit of readers from afar: Door County is an idyllic peninsula in northern Wisconsin—a sort of stretched-out Martha’s Vineyard—that hosts thousands of visitors every summer. In late spring of 2020, Door County had not yet become alarmed about covid; it had hardly touched their peninsula. Business—that is, tourism—went on, with just minor precautions. 

We took the kids to Door County. We swam and dined and shopped and campfired to our hearts’ content. Tristan, now 8, and Elsie, still 10, enjoyed themselves immensely. We came home, illness-free, just as the pandemic was getting worse everywhere. 

A grizzled Alaskan enjoys a fresh shore lunch, untroubled by covid fears. “Grizzly Bear Alaska” by Shellie from Florida, USA is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

One year later, we tried again. But we still couldn’t schedule Italy, which by then was melting down with covid. So we went to Alaska instead. Alaska has plenty of fresh air. The grizzlies and moose at Denali National Park posed no threat at all, from a public health perspective. Local precautions were bearable. The good folks of Alaska were touchingly glad to see us. With all cruise ships lying idle in their home ports, we had America’s Last Frontier almost to ourselves. The kids—now 9 and 11-turning-12—really, really had a great time. 

Liberation

Early in 2022, Joelle started her third attempt to plan our Italian anniversary vacation. Covid by now was in retreat everywhere—even Italy. At last, two years late, we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary by taking our grandchildren to Italy. We added Croatia and Slovenia to the itinerary. We had to mask up on public transports in Italy, but otherwise it was all clear.  Despite Europe’s hottest summer in living memory, Elsie and Tristan—who by now were 10 and 12-turning-13, loved every minute of their democratized 21st-century Grand Tour.

We were greatly satisfied by the whole, long-delayed, itinerary.

Britannic Majesty

However, since we as a family, unlike wealthy young men of old, could not stay in Europe for months on end, some bits were left uncovered. The British Isles, for example.

Tristan and Elsie, continents apart. Larry Sommers photo.

So this year, after a one-year hiatus, we took Katie, Elsie, and Tristan to Ireland, Scotland, and England—with a clever little layover in Reykjavik to see Iceland’s Golden Circle. It was wonderful. We saw Geysir (the original geyser), Gulfoss the rampaging waterfall, Thingvellir where the European and American plates come together. 

British military band prepares for the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Larry Sommers photo.

In Ireland, one or more of us went to Blarney Castle, the Guinness Brewery, the Titanic Museum in Belfast, and the Giant’s Causeway. In Scotland, it was lovely old Edinburgh with its mighty castle, followed by a visit to Oban and the exciting islands of the Inner Hebrides. Then on to jolly old England: Derby in the Midlands, followed by several days in London—Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, the Harry Potter studios, the Tower of London, HMS Belfast, the Churchill War Rooms. On our last day, we went to see Wicked on the stage of the Apollo Theatre. 

The London Eye never sleeps. Photo by Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA.

The kids loved the whole trip—so far as we could tell. We had no way to know, since they were always two hundred yards ahead of us. Did I mention that now they’re 12 and almost 15? 

“It’s hard traveling with old people,” they confided to their mother. We were slowing them down, you see. Katie reminded them they would not be traveling at all if not for the old people. 

In former times, I would have added, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!” But I’m reformed. No more promotion of tobacco products.

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Neither Joelle nor I gained any weight while on vacation—a first! We ate copiously, but the travel was just so strenuous. We huffed and puffed along in the wake of individuals who had  not even bothered to arrive on Earth until after we retired. 

Suddenly, it’s fifteen years later. Our age has begun to dawn on us.

Nevertheless, we’ll probably do the whole thing again. There are still places to go, and tempus does indeed fugit.

Tempus shown in mid-fugit. The Sinnington sundial by Pauline E, licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0

I’ll let you know how that works out.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

08.17.21
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North to Alaska

“Mormor, Bapa! Come on, there’s a lot of cool stuff at the top of the hill.”

Tristan, age nine, leaps and bounces in the trampoline-like mat of vegetation.

“You run back up there and learn all about it,” I say. “Mormor”—his grandmother—“and I will stay and rest a bit in the tundra.” 

“Okay, Bapa—if you’re sure.” And he leaps back up the hill.

Me enjoying comfy tundra. Jo Sommers photo, used by permission.

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Alaska has a way of wearing a man down. 

The first time we visited, in 2010, at age 65, there was enough bounce in my bones and enough tingle in my tendons to hike with a group up the mountain that overlooks the Mendenhall Glacier, near Juneau. We scrambled over exposed roots, clambered through corridors of rain-slicked rocks. It was a tiring, yet exhilarating, trek.

This trip, at age 76, Your New Favorite Writer—still an enthusiast—strategically avails himself of frequent rest opportunities. 

Elsie, Katie, and Tristan at top of impossibly high tundra hill, enjoying Sidney’s lecture. Jo Sommers photo, used by permission.

Our time on the tundra in the middle of Denali National Park is precious. The softness, the springiness, the sink-in-ability of that blanket of tangled vegetation covering the deep permafrost challenges the hiker to walk without falling down and taxes one’s pulmonary system—especially going uphill. 

On the other hand, should you happen to fall down, you couldn’t pick a better place to do it. You almost can’t get hurt falling into the soft tundra. 

It’s an even better place to sit and rest, watching the mountains and listening to the enthusiasm of younger hikers as Sidney, our mountain guide—the young lady who carries the bear spray—points out wild blueberries and other flora just up the hill, telling which ones humans can eat, which ones the bears like, and so forth.

It’s a fine, warm day. Denali, the mountain, was out a few minutes ago and we got to see its peak before it was re-cloaked by its very own weather system. 

Denali seen behind Wonder Lake. Denali National Park and Preserve photo by Albert Herring. Public Domain.

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We have come here because we like Alaska; but even more, we want share it with our daughter, Katie, and our grandchildren, Elsie and Tristan. This resembles nothing they have experienced and nothing else they will ever experience—possibly not even in long future lives. 

Panning for gold. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

For a time, we have lured them from their telephone screens into the powerful beauty of the real world.

Later today we will pan for gold in Moose Creek. Lucky Tristan will find a flake in his pan and have it laminated on a piece of black paper. A speck of gold to carry with him forever after. Or until he loses it, which is likely. But the important thing is, he will find it in his pan and will always remember that. 

Elsie, age twelve, will find one too but lose it on the way to have it laminated. That will be all right, though, because she will find prizes of her own in the wilderness, including sightings of bears and moose and the chance to befriend a young adventurer, Rhys, traveling with his own family.

Katie and Mormor will not try panning for gold. They will opt for a horticulture hike instead, another rewarding adventure.

Old Bapa—Your New Favorite Writer—will stand in the creek swishing gravel around his pan, to no avail . . . but will bring home gold anyway.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

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(History is not what you thought!)

07.09.19
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The Newest, Latest, Last Frontier

Chet Huntley has got me thinking about frontiers. 

Chet Huntley. NBC Television. Public domain.

Huntley (1911-1974) was an influential broadcaster, a television journalist who co-anchored NBC’s evening news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, for fourteen years beginning in 1956. When his run at NBC ended in 1970, Huntley, then 58, became front man for the founding of the Big Sky ski resort in his native Montana. Earlier, he had written a memoir titled The Generous Years: Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood, published by Random House in 1968. This book was recommended and lent to me by my friend Jerry Peterson.

The Generous Years is a warm and interesting read. We learn much about the childhood of Chet Huntley but more importantly we learn about life in Montana in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Seen through the eyes of a boy who, as his adult self tells us more than once, was privileged “to know and remember a few years and a few scenes of the nation’s last frontier.” 

The Last Frontier

The Montana of Huntley’s youth was indeed, in many ways, a raw frontier. People made their livings by farming, by herding, by mining and railroading. It was a society that still went about on horseback; motor vehicles, other than steam locomotives, were rare. Old Doc Minnick, the blunt, persevering medico of Huntley’s remembrance, made his housecalls in a one-horse buckboard. The memoir includes those staples of frontier life: prairie fires, locusts, and even an enterprising bank robber foiled by the derring-do of local boys. It’s a tale worth reading, and I commend it to you.

But what of Huntley’s claim to have recorded America’s last frontier? Even while typing the phrase, I thought of Alaskan friends. “What about us?” they would cry. “What are we, chopped liver?” Alaska has been raw frontier much more recently than Montana. Many parts of Alaska still qualify for that distinction. That’s also true of vast swaths of Canada’s Yukon Territory and northern British Columbia. These places are truly “the last frontier.” 

Or are they? 

The Frontier Thesis

Frederick Jackson Turner. Public Domain.

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner put forth in 1893—eighteen years before Huntley’s birth in Montana—an idea that came to be called “the Frontier Thesis” of American history. Turner figured the frontier experience was the main thing that called forth the development of American democracy and other unique aspects of our civilization. Jackson’s Frontier Thesis became a mainstay in the scholarly interpretation of U.S. history. It has also been fiercely disputed; yet it still holds considerable sway.

Turner’s thesis took the frontier as a fact of physical geography. He proposed that when the frontier line reached the West Coast about 1880, the first phase of American history had ended. The frontier was no more. 

New Frontiers

Starship Enterprise. “1701-D” by kreg.steppe is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 

This has not stopped others from declaring new areas of frontier-like emphasis. One example is likewise rooted in physical geography, although it is extraterrestrial. The moon, by this thinking, is a new frontier—and so is Mars. In 1966, forty-four years after Turner retired from Harvard, actor William Shatner declared all of space to be “the final frontier” in the opening title sequence to the Star Trek television series. 

Gene Roddenberry. NASA. Public domain.

Whoever wrote Shatner’s speech (Gene Roddenberry, et al.) ought to have been more circumspect; because many more “new” and “final” frontiers have been proposed. 

JFK. Cecil Stoughton, White House. Public domain.

Senator John F. Kennedy, accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1960, said: “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. . . . Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.” The phrase “New Frontier” then became a label for Kennedy’s presidential administration—like Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” or Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal.” As political branding it stood for a vaguely-defined stance of confronting unknown but large national challenges of the future. In that sense, we will always have a “new frontier” to deal with. 

The Perpetual Lure of the Frontier

Davy Crockett, “King of the Wild Frontier.” Portrait by James Hamilton Shegogue, 1806-1872. Public Domain.

All this frontiersmanship makes me think that Americans have been so shaped by our frontier experience that we simply cannot do without it. We always need a frontier. Unless we are out on a frontier of some kind, we are not satisfied. 

I wonder if Italians, Poles, Vietnamese, or Pakistanis talk and think as much about frontiers as we do. Frederick Jackson Turner and I doubt it.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author