Though I grew up along the edges of rural Connecticut, I have spent nearly all of my adult life in urban settings: first Lewiston, Maine and Tucson, Arizona (both in the USA, and where I attended college and graduate school, respectively); then the Los Angeles megalopolis, where I somehow survived six years despite never feeling at home; and finally, since 1982, Anchorage, Alaska, the 49th state\u2019s urban center.<\/p>\n
Schooled in the geosciences (I got an MS from the University of Arizona), I changed careers in my late twenties and became a journalist, which in turn led me eventually into my current life as a freelance nature writer and activist for both wildlands and wildlife (I explore that evolution in Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska\u2019s Arctic Wilderness<\/em><\/a>). It was only after I\u2019d begun to seriously observe and write about Anchorage\u2019s \u201cwild side\u201d in the 1990s that I began to more fully appreciate\u2014and examine\u2014the delights, mysteries, and importance of urban nature. I have written about my adopted hometown\u2019s wild riches in essays and two books (Changing Paths<\/em><\/a> and Living with Wildness<\/em><\/a>) and will use my initial TNOC posting to share some of what I\u2019ve noticed and learned about Anchorage\u2019s wild nature, which has relevance to other discussions presented on this site.<\/p>\n A city of nearly 300,000 people, Alaska\u2019s largest community is rarely lauded for its wild nature or frontier aesthetics. Many rural Alaskans consider Anchorage to be a northern incarnation of Lower 48 excesses. They derisively call the city Los Anchorage, a not-so-subtle comparison to Southern California\u2019s smog-enshrouded, freeway infested, urban-sprawl megalopolis (this description perhaps revealing some of my own prejudices about L.A.). Other Alaskans, including some residents, ridicule Anchorage as Anywhere USA and claim its only saving grace to be its close proximity to \u201cthe real Alaska.\u201d<\/p>\n Outsiders\u2014anyone living beyond the state\u2019s borders\u2014have also gotten in their digs. John McPhee<\/a> took perhaps the most famous swipes at Anchorage in his best seller Coming Into the Country<\/em><\/a>: \u201cAlmost all Americans would recognize Anchorage, because Anchorage is that part of any city where the city has burst its seams and extruded Colonel Sanders. It is virtually unrelated to its environment. It has come in on the wind, an American spore. A large cookie cutter brought down on El Paso could lift something like Anchorage into the air.\u201d<\/p>\n Ouch.<\/p>\n The truth stings: Anchorage largely deserved McPhee\u2019s late 1970s jabs. It still merits them and, to some degree, those of rural Alaska critics. Poor municipal planning has led to haphazard development and some mighty ugly architecture. Sections of the city are an appalling mix of malls, fast-food restaurants, boxy discount stores, massive parking lots, and ever-expanding service stations and quick stops. Even now, when the city is in the midst of rewriting its land-use laws to make Anchorage a more livable city, with a higher quality of life, there\u2019s substantial pushback from businesses, development interests, and some politicians (including our mayor), whose credo seems to be \u201cdevelop, develop, develop,\u201d with little regard for how that development is done. Too many of the country\u2019s mega-chains have heard our politicians\u2019 declaration that Anchorage is \u201copen for business,\u201d turning sections of the city into versions of Miracle Mile. And those of us who care about Anchorage\u2019s wilder aspects are constantly battling efforts that would diminish trails, greenbelts, and parks.<\/p>\n Yet for all this laying down of asphalt and mushrooming of boxlike buildings, pockets of wetlands, woodlands, and other wild areas remain scattered throughout our municipality. You just have to know where to look. And to be honest, those areas aren\u2019t hard to find; Anchorage has some wonderfully large parks and a world-class trail system<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those natural areas sustain a wide diversity of wildlife and native plants: the bowl is seasonal home to some 230<\/p>\n species of birds, five types of Pacific salmon, and 48 different mammals.<\/p>\n Anchorage\u2019s patchwork of greenbelts and forested municipal parks<\/a> is threaded together by a network of bike trails and walking paths. From Anchorage\u2019s much-beloved Coastal Trail<\/a>, bicyclists, joggers, and walkers can occasionally spot pods of ghostly white beluga whales, chasing fish through the inlet\u2019s murky waters. Along that trail and others, people may also meet moose, lynx, great-horned owls, black bears, and even the occasionally grizzly. Beyond the Coastal Trail is a state wildlife refuge, a place of surprising wildness and solitude on the city\u2019s western flanks, with sedge flats and mudflats and ponds inhabited in spring and summer by all manner of songbirds, shorebirds and waterfowl, from savannah sparrows to Arctic terns and Sandhill cranes.<\/p>\n Also threading through the bowl are several creeks, which connect hills to lowlands to saltwater. Some are filled in, paved over, or polluted before they reach the inlet, but others<\/p>\n are large and pure enough to have natural or rebuilt salmon runs. In Anchorage\u2019s most industrialized section, anglers pull 40-pound king salmon from Ship Creek. The bowl is also rich in lakes and bogs, which serve as important avian nesting grounds. Anchorage, in fact, is the largest U.S. city to support nesting populations of loons. And wolf packs roam the city\u2019s eastern edges, sometimes sneaking into homeowners\u2019 yards to kill domestic fowl or dogs.<\/p>\n Though I\u2019ve resided here since 1982, only since the early nineties have I truly delighted in Anchorage\u2019s greener, wilder side. In part that reflects a gradual shift in desires and priorities: once a newspaper sports reporter tied to newsroom desks and indoor arenas, I\u2019ve metamorphosed into a nature writer who chooses woodland trails and alpine meadows over noisy, sweaty gyms. I now prefer watching birds and bears and spiders to TV sports. And I\u2019ve re-learned the value of paying close attention to my home grounds, something I did as a boy, but somehow forgot in my early adulthood.<\/p>\n I believe my boyhood adventures in The Woods behind my family\u2019s Connecticut home and along the margins of a nearby neighborhood swamp helped establish a deep love and joy for wild nature that, while dampened or misplaced for a while in my late adolescence and early adulthood, would be resurrected after I\u2019d settled in Anchorage. This touches on themes made popular in recent years by Richard Louv<\/a> (Last Child in the Woods<\/a>, The Nature Principle<\/a><\/em>), David Sobel<\/a> (Beyond Ecophobia<\/em><\/a>, Childhood and Nature<\/em><\/a>), and others. And it points to a critical aspect of this \u201cNature of Cities\u201d movement: the absolutely urgent need for increased connections between children and nature in our cities, especially given the abundant\u2014and growing\u2014evidence that childhood experiences have a huge influence on how we relate to the \u201cnatural world\u201d as adults.<\/p>\n Another reason for my new perspective: relocation to the hills on Anchorage\u2019s eastern edge in October 1993. That move, as much as anything, clarified what my friend William calls the \u201cpower of place.\u201d From 1982 through 1988, I had lived the mobile life of a renter. Then I became a first-time homeowner. But like my earlier rentals, that cul-de-sac property failed to draw me into the local landscape. Needing solitude or a renewal of spirit, I would invariably go \u201cout there,\u201d to the wildlands beyond Anchorage.<\/p>\n But once settled on the Hillside, that wasn\u2019t necessarily so. I continued to love my forest and mountain walks in Anchorage\u2019s neighboring \u201cbackyard wilderness,\u201d Chugach State Park<\/a> and I certainly relished my longer journeys deep into Alaska\u2019s more remote backcountry. Yet I also began to find joy, surprise, connection, and, yes, even solitude on Anchorage\u2019s Hillside, an area of town that mixes modern suburban neighborhoods with older homesteads on the wooded foothills of the Chugach Mountains.<\/p>\n Everything wild seemed closer on the Hillside: the clouds, the mountains, the animals, the weather. It became easier, somehow, to slip outside at night and star gaze, stand in the eerie light of a full moon, or look for northern lights<\/a>. Easier to go walking and exploring. Winter comes earlier and stays longer. There\u2019s more snow. More wildlife. More frequent and stronger gales. Born along Alaska\u2019s Gulf Coast, high winds called chinooks come roaring out of the southeast and through the Chugach Mountains, then tumble down the Hillside as warm, dry, turbulent air, in gusts of 50 to 100 mph.<\/p>\n In my new home, all manner of things began to grab my attention in new ways: the chinooks; the pleasing rush of springtime creek water; the winter commutes of ravens, which fly daily between their nighttime roosts in the Chugach Mountains and the scavenging-rich environs of mid- and downtown Anchorage; the spruce bark beetle and its infestation of local forests. Nothing, however, grabbed me as deeply as the neighborhood\u2019s black-capped chickadees, whose bright presence drew me into bird feeding and watching and along the way transformed my world, showed me some of what I had been missing. In a way, they become my teachers.<\/p>\n In the spirit of telling \u201curban animal stories,\u201d I\u2019ll briefly describe here how chickadees helped deepen my awareness (there\u2019s a more detailed account in Living with Wildness<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n My enchantment began on a Saturday morning in 1993, shortly before solstice. Lolling in bed, I glanced outside. And there before me, several black-capped chickadees flitted about a backyard spruce. Inspired by their presence, I placed a bird feeder where it could be easily observed from the dining and living rooms. My first-ever feeder wasn\u2019t much to look at: an old, slightly bent baking pan covered with sunflower seeds.<\/p>\n Nothing happened that first day. But Sunday the chickadees returned. Seated at my dining room table, I watched with delight as a black cap landed on the tray, grabbed a seed, and zoomed to a nearby tree. Then in flashed another. And a third. For each the routine was the same: dart in, look around, peck at the tray, grab a seed, look around some more, and dart back out. Nervous little creatures, full of bright energy, they somehow penetrated the toughened shell of this former sports reporter and touched my heart. I laughed at their antics and felt an all-too-rare childlike fascination.<\/p>\n The chickadees were soon joined by several other songbirds. What started as mere curiosity blossomed over the next few months into a consuming passion. I found myself roaming bookstores in search of birding guides, spontaneously exchanging bird descriptions with a stranger, and purchasing fifty-pound bags of seeds. All of this seemed very strange to a fortysomething guy who had never been intrigued by birds (except for the occasional charismatic raptor) and had previously judged bird watchers to be rather odd sorts. I didn\u2019t know what it meant, except that a door had opened. And I passed through.<\/p>\n Now wherever I am\u2014city, woods, mountains\u2014I invariably notice songbirds and their assorted voices. They\u2019re everywhere, it seems. How did I miss them before? And I wonder what else beckons, that I haven\u2019t yet noticed.<\/p>\n I have since moved from the Hillside back to Anchorage\u2019s lowlands, in a residential neighborhood near the city\u2019s western, coastal border. There\u2019s still plenty of wild nature in my new environs, manifested in moose and fox, merlin and goshawk, chickadee and waxwing, spruce and birch, on and on. The opportunities to encounter wildness and learn more about my homeland are endless. But I can\u2019t emphasize enough that this recognition began with some specific experiences\u2014for instance moving to the Hillside, inviting chickadees to my feeder\u2014that opened my senses to the wild world that surrounds us, wherever we live. Even though I\u2019d been trained (as both scientist and journalist) to notice details, it seems I didn\u2019t naturally tune into, or relish, the city\u2019s<\/em> wilds, until some aspect of it grabbed my attention in a way that I couldn\u2019t ignore. This is something that I\u2014we\u2014need to remember as we work to increase the awareness of the general public to our cities\u2019 wild side.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2022<\/p>\n In recent years I\u2019ve come to believe strongly that this sense of connection, this love for wild nature, is a crucial part of our humanity, even in the twenty-first century. It\u2019s alive in us when we\u2019re born, no matter where that is. The question, then, is how do we nurture our wildness, rather than subdue and tame it?<\/p>\n In The Abstract Wild<\/em><\/a>, Jack Turner<\/a> argues that \u201cin many inner cities here in the United States and in the developing world people no longer have a concept of wild nature based on personal experience.\u201d (Many others have made similar observations, including on this blogsite.) I agree wholeheartedly with that. But I also believe it is possible to have \u201craw visceral contact with wild nature\u201d wherever we live, if we take the time, make the effort, and leave ourselves open to wonder and mystery. Then the challenge becomes: how do we reinforce and encourage this wild awareness in each other, in our children? I don\u2019t have any easy answers. But my life in this far north metropolis and my own discoveries of Anchorage\u2019s wild nature (some of which I\u2019ve shared here) has offered hints of what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n At first glance, my choice to settle in Anchorage may seem a strange one for someone who claims to be so passionate about the natural world. But in living along the city\u2019s eastern and western edges, I\u2019ve gotten the best of both worlds, natural and man-made (though of course the two are connected). I love the amenities that come with living in an urban center, with its coffee shops and restaurants, movie theaters and Performing Arts Center, universities and libraries and sports programs. Here I\u2019ve found intersecting circles of writers and outdoors enthusiasts and earth- and peace-loving activists. Yet I also have easy access to parks, trails, greenbelts, a coastal refuge, and a nearby mountain range, the Chugach, whose remotest valleys and peaks are seldom visited. And I reside in a landscape also inhabited by chinook and coho, goshawk and owl, coyote and lynx. But again I must emphasize that I only came to this awareness, and appreciation, over time, thanks in large part to teachers who grabbed my attention, chickadees (and bears and frogs) among them.<\/p>\n Living in Anchorage, I\u2019m now constantly reminded that wildness is all around us, all the time, even in the city. It\u2019s just that most of us humans don\u2019t notice the \u201cwild side\u201d of our busy urban lives (some, it\u2019s true, are simply trying to survive their urban lifestyles, which leaves little, if any, opportunities for wild connections), just as I largely didn\u2019t for my first decade of living in Alaska\u2019s urban center. Of course, in many a metropolis you have to look hard to find even hints of the wild behind the elaborate layers of human construct that shield us from the rest of nature. Anchorage\u2019s juxtaposition of malls and moose, brewhouses and bears, or libraries and loons makes it easier to notice urban wildness here than in cities like L.A. or Tucson or even Lewiston, Maine, all places that I\u2019ve lived. This city, more than any other, has opened my eyes and enlarged my awareness of wild nature in a way that even the wilderness couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also been here that I\u2019ve come to better understand\u2014through personal experience, research and readings, and shared stories with other friends and colleagues\u2014that we humans do indeed carry wildness within us. We are animals, after all. And though many of our natural instincts are \u201ctamed\u201d\u2014or suppressed\u2014as we grow up, we carry deep within us a wild nature that\u2019s expressed not only in our need to eat, drink, sleep, and procreate, but also in our emotions, dreams, spontaneity, hunting instincts (expressed in a variety of ways), our draw to the outdoors, and the deep aliveness and sense of wonder we sometimes feel when making an unexpected connection with the larger, wilder world we inhabit.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written about this inner nature in an essay, \u201cIn Search of the Wild Man<\/a>,\u201d included in Living with Wildness<\/em><\/a>. As I discuss in that essay, this inner wild man, or wild woman, or wild child, is an important part of who we are. And it is nourished by connecting with what David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous<\/em><\/a>) has called more-than-human nature. This\u2014need I say it?\u2014is a good thing, and essential to a deeper, more respectful, and more joyful relationship with our original and primary home, the Earth, and the other inhabitants with whom we share this planet.<\/p>\n All of this can happen, must happen, in our cities.<\/p>\n A few final thoughts, pulled from my essay, \u201cIn Search of the Wild Man<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n Only by getting to know wild nature will we learn to embrace and cherish and preserve it, both within ourselves and as manifested in myriad other forms, in the larger, more-than-human world. Such a full embrace is possible, no matter how frightening, because at some deep level, we and all \u201cthe others\u201d are part of a larger\u2014and what some would call a sacred\u2014oneness. All of the world\u2019s mystical traditions teach this. Even Christianity maintains that we are all part of the creation: people and trees and hills and butterflies and bacteria. And though it doesn\u2019t normally use words like \u201csacred\u201d or \u201choly,\u201d science confirms it too.<\/p>\n The good news is that wildness reaches everywhere, from the far wilderness to the innermost pockets of our biggest cities. We can each choose where, in what form, and in what way we get to know the wild. But we must make some effort, if we care at all about healing ourselves, healing the world, keeping things whole. In touching the Wild Man or Wild Woman, we learn to better love the world. And in loving the world, we embrace our own richly wild essence. As I\u2019ve discovered in my own life, it\u2019s not necessarily an easy thing for us modern Homo sapiens<\/em> to understand or practice. But like Gary Snyder says in The Practice of the Wild<\/em><\/a>, \u201cI for one, will keep working for wildness day by day,\u201d in whatever small way I\u2019m able.<\/p>\n And, I might add here, that I will do so wherever I reside, even\u2014or perhaps especially\u2014in the city.<\/p>\n Bill Sherwonit<\/strong> I have been getting quite the education on \u201cThe Nature of Cities\u201d these past few months, while taking in the perspectives of academics, ecologists, naturalists, architects and urban designers, educators, and conservationists (some contributors wearing several hats). I have been impressed\u2014and at times overwhelmed\u2014by the scope of research, activism, and community programs dedicated to urban […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":7030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,273],"tags":[44,43,34,404,29],"coauthors":[185],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-art-and-awareness","category-essay","tag-art","tag-awareness","tag-experiencing-nature","tag-value","tag-what-is-urban-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/downtown-anchorage-266x200.jpg\" "\\"downtown")
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\nAnchorage, Alaska
\nUSA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"