Into The Wild on Stampede Road

Stampede Road at its intersection with the Parks Highway, June 15, 2017

Several months ago while surfing channels on Comcast, we switched over to Netflix hoping to find an interesting movie. Scrolling through the selections, we were captivated by the brief description of a movie we had never heard of - Into the Wild.  Reading the description further we learned that it was a true story based on a book with the same title written by Jon Krakauer.  Because I had earlier read Krakauer's excellent expose Under the Banner of Heaven about the Mormon cult, I had a hunch the movie would be worth the time to watch. It turned out to be an excellent choice.

As with every other book by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild is a must-read

Christopher McCandless grew up in a well-off suburban Washington DC family.  After completing a degree and graduating with honors from Emory University in Atlanta, he left the trappings of his cozy life to find himself.  Doing so he drove west in a battered car spending time working in South Dakota, then to the Arizona desert.  He canoed down the Colorado River to its mouth in Mexico, then hitch hiked and rode the rails to the Pacific Northwest.  After several encounters with other vagabond travelers, he found himself in the California desert.  Long ago he had abandoned his car, tore up his identity, burned his money, and assumed the name "Alexander Supertramp."

His ultimate goal, through all of the trials and tribulations of self-discovery, was to travel to Alaska. His vision was to divorce himself from society and live off the land in the wilds of the 49th state.  In late April 1992, at the ripe old age of 22, while in Fairbanks, Alaska, McCandless hitched a ride with a man who was driving to Anchorage. Carrying a backpack, a small caliber rifle, very few clothes, and a 10 pound bag of rice, he traveled south to the Stampede Road near Healy and the Denali National Park. Here McCandless was driven west as far as the truck could safely travel and dropped out at the beginning of the Stampede Trail.

The man giving McCandless a ride offered him a pair of rubber boots and his phone number and told Chris to call him if he made it out alive.  He never did.

He lived for something like 120 days in the Alaska wilderness, surviving on edible plants, and birds, and moose that he shot. For shelter he moved into an abandoned City of Fairbanks bus that he later named The Magic Bus and here he lived out his fantasy.   However his fantasy turned to horror and some time in mid-August McCandless died.  His partially decomposed body was found by a group of moose hunters several weeks later and when it was removed by Alaska state police and flown to Anchorage for autopsy, his remains weighed 87 pounds.

At the time Krakauer wrote the book about McCandless, the dominant theory about his death was that he had eaten the berries of a plant that produces poisonous side effects.  Later analysis, however, revealed that the most likely cause of his death was protein poisoning or "Rabbit Starvation"  This rare malady occurs when someone's diet is completely devoid of fat.

From the records found in notes McCandless made while living in the Magic Bus, it appeared that his ability to obtain protein was severely limited and eventually all he could find for food was plants and their seeds. Continual consumption of food containing no fat caused his metabolism to be severely out of whack and eventually he perished.  

Regardless of how he died, whether it was from eating poisonous seeds or from not enough fat in his diet only McCandless knows.  The point is he died and he did so doing what he wanted to do where he wanted to do it.

We watched the movie in awe and the following morning I watched it again.  I saw many parallels in my life to Chris's, including his penchant for running away, his passion for solitary experiences, and his desire to go places that people don't typically visit.

The following morning I watched the movie a third time and then a fourth.  Later I bought the book and we downloaded its audio version and listened to it intently on a weekend road trip to Tallahassee.  After several experiences with the story I realized that I wanted to at least see where the end of the story had its beginning.  That opportunity presented itself with an already-planned trip to Alaska.

As part of a stop in Fairbanks after visiting Barrow, it was my intention to spend the day watching birds in nearby boreal forest before attending an Alaska Goldpanners baseball game to be played on the most northerly baseball field in the world.  That birdwatching plan changed when it occurred to me that I had more than ample time to drive from Fairbanks to Healy, explore a bit of the Stampede Road, and return to Fairbanks in time for the 7:00 p.m. baseball game before my departing flight aboard Alaska Airlines at 1:30 the following morning.

On June 15, 2017, I left Fairbanks several hours after sunrise (sunrise that day was at 3:00 a.m., so everything is relative) headed southwest on the Parks Highway toward Denali National Park and Healy.  As I drove south I tried to imagine what was going through Chris McCandless's mind that April morning long ago when he was a passenger in a pickup truck with the last human being he would ever see.  Arriving at the intersection with the Stampede Road I turned west and followed it to the end of the easily traversed hard surface road and completed my journey at the start of the Stampede Trail.

Stampede Road headed west after the asphalt ended

Because of my incurable case of wanderlust as I drove along the road and listened to birds singing (and hoping for a Grizzly Bear or a Caribou to make an appearance) I tried to imagine myself as Chris McCandless.

Tundra and mountains of the Alaska Range along the Stampede Road

Finally at the end of the road I parked and looked down the length of the Stampede Trail and tried to imagine his one-way walk into the wild until he found the Magic Bus.

Beginning of the Stampede Trail on which Chris McCandless made a one-way walk into the wild

This self-portrait of Chris McCandless was found among the undeveloped film in his possession when his remains were discovered

McCandless's death has made him sort of a cult figure and traveling to the Magic Bus (about 20 miles from the end of the Stampede Road) is now high on the list of many adventure seekers. For me, however, traveling in his footsteps was not a cult thing but more of an adventure of awareness especially because I could identify so closely with what McCandless did and why he did it.

Curiously every person I met in Fairbanks before and after my jaunt to the trail not only knew about the book and the movie but also had a theory about his death.  Even now, 25 years after Chris McCandless perished, people are debating how he died but few take into account why he began the journey in the first place.

Before leaving on my trip to Alaska I packed some winter clothing that is no longer needed in Florida - things like wool socks, a wool stocking cap, a heavy sweatshirt, a pair of mittens, and a Colombia brand windbreaker.  While in Alaska I picked up a cheap pair of hiking boots to wear when I visited Barrow.  My intention in bringing the extra clothing with me, plus adding the hiking boots, was to leave them in a pile not far down the start of the Stampede Trail.   

My last action before turning around about 500 meters down the trail was to leave all of those clothes in a bundle where they could be easily found.  Its my hope that when someone finds them they leave them in place and they understand that they are there for the next Chris McCandless who walks into the wild from the end of the Stampede Road.

Barrow Alaska - Almost The Top of The World

Growing up in northern Wisconsin made me no stranger to cold and snow.  I'll never forget January 1, 1974, when at dawn the air temperature (there was no wind) was -62 degrees F.  Walking from our barn to the house I spit and just like in Jack London's story To Build a Fire it was a little ball of ice before it hit the snow. Three years later, on January 11, 1977, the air temperature in Rice Lake, Wisconsin dipped to a chilly -60 degrees F.  This time some local resident decided to cash in on the weather and produced a bumper sticker for all of us to proudly proclaim that we had survived that wicked weather.

The words say it all

My fascination with cold and cold climates wasn't restricted just to the wilds of northern Wisconsin. As a child, every Saturday morning I watched Sergeant Preston of the Yukon as religiously as some pseudo-Christians attend church.  Preston's adventures in the Yukon (despite the show being filmed in Colorado) fueled a sense of wanderlust and helped me create fantasies about moving to Canada, running a trap line, and living off the land.  All I needed was a dog sled and a trusty lead dog like Preston's "King" and I was set.

About the same time I became fascinated with living off the land in northern Canada, my father began subscribing to Alaska Magazine.  Back in the early 1960s, and continuing to the present day, Alaska Magazine had a section titled "From Ketchikan to Barrow" that was filled with information about interesting things to see and do from the southernmost to the northernmost corners of the massive state.  The first issue of Alaska Magazine that I read contained a story about whale harvesting in Barrow and after digging out a map and discovering just how north Barrow lays, my thoughts of being Sergeant Preston faded.  Now I wanted to travel to Barrow if for no other reason than its the most northerly place in the United States.  Situated at 71 degrees 18 minutes north latitude its only 1,294 miles from the North Pole; its actually closer to London England than it is to Sarasota, Florida.

Barrow Alaska is a long way from almost everywhere else

In my first 16 trips to Alaska I had traveled as far north as Anaktuvuk Pass in the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve,  I'd been as far west as Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea just 40 miles from Russia, as far southwest as Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands as far south as Ketchikan on the Panhandle, and as far east as the border with the Yukon Territory near Tok. However despite all that time and travel in Alaska I had never made it to my most sought after place - Barrow. Something clearly had to change.

My oldest daughter lives an hour north of Anchorage and while making plans to travel to Alaska to see her in June 2017, I was struck with the idea that since I'm in the neighborhood, why not finally travel to Barrow.  In this case, "in the neighborhood" means 725 air miles from Anchorage but that is much more of a neighborhood than the 4,089 air miles from Barrow to Sarasota, Florida.  I couldn't pass up traveling there again.

My plan was a simple one. After visiting my daughter I would fly to Barrow, spend a day there, and then fly to Fairbanks to watch the Alaska Goldpanners play a baseball game at the northernmost baseball field in the world.  Alaska Airlines charged me only 15,000 frequent flier miles for the trip and soon it was apparent that I would be a fool not to go.

On June 13, 2017, my quest since childhood became reality when Alaska Airlines flight 51 trundled to the end of runway 27 at Anchorage International Airport and became airborne with Barrow in its cross hairs.

Flight path of AS 51 on June 13, 2017

Our route took us north by northwest (not the movie) to within a few miles of Mount Denali allowing for spectacular views of "The Mountain" for those of us on the port side of the plane.

Mount Denali from 13,000 feet over its summit

An Inupiat woman seated next to me flung herself across my chest and pointed her camera out the window trying in vain to obtain a picture of Denali.  When I asked her if she would like me to take a picture for her she replied saying "You would do that for me?"  

We passed over the massive Yukon River and then over the Brooks Range, home of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, and also the northernmost mountain range in the world.  I was saddened to see from my view point that despite it being mid-June there was virtually no snow remaining even on the peaks of the Brooks Range mountains.  With no snow at a maximum elevation of 8,976 feet above sea level it certainly makes me happy knowing that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to ruin our economy 

North of the Brooks Range we passed over the vast North Slope whose surface was dotted with almost endless wetlands.  From my vantage point it appeared that someone sprayed shotgun pellets over the landscape.  Were it not for the hordes of mosquitoes, it would be a treat to spend a few days counting waterbirds on just a few of those wetlands.

The surface of the North Slope is smothered with wetlands of all shapes and sizes

The shoreline of the Arctic Ocean appeared on the northern horizon as we began our approach into Barrow.  The ice was still landlocked but not far offshore you could see large areas of open water that later, it turned out, were smothered with waterbirds.

Large open areas of water in the Arctic Ocean were clearly visible as we made our final approach into Barrow

Alaska Airlines deposited us a few minutes early at Wiley Post/Will Rogers Airport in Barrow where, as I stepped from the plane wearing shorts, the air temperature was 36 degrees.

The northernmost commercial airport in the United States

I spent the night at the very homey and comfortable Airport Inn, just a couple minutes walk from the airport.  Later I enjoyed dinner at Sam and Lee's Restaurant reputed to have "the best Chinese in the Arctic".

You can't go wrong staying at the Airport Inn, just a few minutes walk from the Barrow airport

I met a pair of Inupiat women in Sam and Lee's who were more than eager to fill me in on their town. One of them had gone to high school in Somerset, Wisconsin, about 40 miles from my home town. They told me about whale hunting, and Inupiat culture, and about the seemingly endless winter night.  "The time to come to Barrow," one of them said, "is in July and August when it warms up to 40 degrees every day."

Located so far north of the Arctic Circle, at this time of year Barrow is under constant sunlight 24 hours a day.  When I asked about the sunlight on December 21, the shortest day of the year, one of the pair said "We see a glow in the southern sky where the sun is supposed to be.  It takes forever to see the sunrise again."

As I walked around Barrow, I was pleasantly surprised to find Snow Buntings so very common in town. They were singing from the roof of houses and undoubtedly the most conspicuous songbird in town.  I have seen thousands of Snow Buntings, having grown up in Wisconsin and having lived 6 years in North Dakota but those birds were always in winter and always in huge, silent, flocks.  It was a real treat to see and hear them on their nesting habitat for the first time.

Snow Bunting is by far the most conspicuous songbird in Barrow

After dinner I strolled down to the shore of the Arctic Ocean where I searched for and found a Polar Bear that had been seen in town the last two days.  There is nothing more Arctic than a Polar Bear and seeing this bruin gave me a complete sweep of having seen all three species of bear that occur in Alaska. 

I slept with the window of my room open and listened to sled dogs barking all night long.  With the "black out" shades in place it was difficult to tell the time but at 3:00 a.m. I opened the shades and saw brilliant sunlight.

The Midnight Sun at 3:00 a.m. in Barrow, Alaska

Excited by where I was and unfamiliar with my surroundings I was out of bed by 6:00 a.m. and searching for birds and whatever else I could find.

One of the main streets in Barrow.  Traffic congestion is not a large issue here - unless a couple of dog teams collide at an intersection

One of my objectives for the morning was to visit the Inupiat Heritage Center operated by the North Slope Borough and in cooperation with the National Park Service.  If you visit Barrow and have time for nothing else, be certain to stop here to learn what you can from the fascinating displays of Inupiat life.

I spent most of the morning at the Inupiat Heritage Center and enjoyed every second of it.  If you tell them that you are an "elder" (someone over 55 years old) admission is free

As I walked the 25 minute walk from the Airport Inn to the Heritage Center in 33 degree temperatures with a 20 brisk wind whipping across the landscape from the nearby Arctic Ocean, I met and talked with several local residents who, like the women the night before, went out of their way to be helpful and courteous and more than willing to share their heritage with me.  This was a most unexpected and pleasant surprise because in some other native villages in Alaska, most notably in Bethel, being Caucasian can be a dangerous situation.  Not so among the Inupiat of Barrow who went out of their way to not only welcome me to their town but to encourage me to "return in August when the temperature reaches 40".

After leaving the Heritage Center I returned slowly to the airport and along my route I flushed a pair of Federally-Threatened Steller's Eiders from a wetland.  This was an exciting discovery because I had only seen this species once before in my life, on May 26, 1989, from The Point at Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.  For any number of reasons the population trend for this unique duck is declining which was the impetus for listing the species as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act.  My former agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, maintains an office in Barrow in summer where biologists are working on the biology of the bird and also helping to educate the local population about the species status.  With luck, the education effort will help to keep Steller's Eider from becoming Endangered or worse yet, becoming extinct.

The Federally-Threatened Steller's Eider is one of the most beautiful species of waterfowl in the world (Image by the US Fish and Wildlife Service).  Barrow Alaska is one of the most important nesting sites for this species in its limited range.

All sorts of shorebird species were present on the recently-thawed wetlands that I passed as I returned to the airport. Living in temperate or tropical climates I regularly think of shorebirds as being fragile or frail but nothing could be farther from the truth.  As I walked across the tundra at Barrow I found Baird's Sandpiper, White-rumped Sandpiper and Buff-breasted Sandpipers.  Each species spends the winter in the southernmost reaches of South America (and I've seen each species there in winter) but in the spring, just like Arctic Terns, they wing their way more than 10,000 miles north to set up territories, lay eggs, and hopefully hatch a brood of chicks on the nearly frozen tundra at the end of the world.

Although seemingly sterile to the untrained eye, tundra at Barrow was teeming with bird life

Other than a vending machine with wildly expensive candy bars, restrooms for both genders, a few chairs to sit on, and a check in counter, there aren't many amenities in the Barrow airport.  At least the goons at TSA weren't complete asses like they are in most other airports

With a considerable amount of sadness I boarded my mid-afternoon flight and headed south to Fairbanks.  When we lifted off from Barrow the air temperature was 33 degrees with a brisk 15 mile per hour wind from off the Arctic Ocean. One hour and 10 minutes later we landed in Fairbanks where the air temperature was 72 and where I felt like I was in the subtropics of Florida in comparison to where I had just been.

As with too many other unique places I have visited in my life my time in Barrow was too short. There were just too many places that I needed to explore but couldn't and there was way too much more to learn about the Inupiat and how they survive at the edge of the continent.  I could easily see myself spending a summer in Barrow looking for birds and learning how to hunt whales and maybe learning how to skin a seal. However at the first hint of autumn, which is some time in mid-August, you'd find me on the first Alaska Airlines jet headed south.  Wisconsin or North Dakota in winter are enough to convince me that winter in Barrow would be way more than I could bear. 

Is Diving With Sharks Unethical or is it Educational?

Me (to the shark's left) diving with a Lemon Shark offshore from Jupiter Florida June 18, 2017 (Image by Catherine Hayslett using a Go Pro)

Who among us didn't grow up being told fairy tales about scary animals?  Stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears put me on alert about the dangers of bears when I was only three years old. Later my parents read to me the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf and I was instantly petrified of wolves.  It didn't matter that there is only one documented, scientifically-proven, instance of a non-rabid wolf attacking a human being (that was in Latvia in 1917), after hearing about the travails of Little Red Riding Hood I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with wolves.  You could shoot them all as far as I was concerned and I would be a very happy, not to mention safe, camper.

If an unfounded fear of bears and wolves wasn't bad enough, in 1975, the movie Jaws, a fictional story about a Great White Shark menacing summer tourists off the New England coast, convinced me that to simply put a toe in the ocean water would cause me to be eaten by the nearest shark. The several sequels to Jaws only reinforced my belief that certain death awaited me when I entered the ocean.

Life experience has taught me however, that bears and wolves are generally more afraid of us than we are of them.  When my two daughters were little we took them to Churchill Manitoba on three different trips where we hoped to see Polar Bears and finally on the third trip we saw five of them. We saw them from a safe distance and as we explained to my girls, if you respect the bears and don't cause them to feel cornered or unsafe they are less likely to harm you.  

The same, it turns out, applies to Gray Wolves, with or without Little Red Riding Hood's influence. The first Gray Wolf I ever saw was actually three of them that raced through my campsite on Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior in hot pursuit of a young moose.  Minutes after passing 10 feet from me, the wolves killed the young moose that later became dinner.  They could have cared less about me and probably didn't notice me standing there in mortal fear as they darted past me.  A few years later, while conducting a Breeding Bird Survey in northern Wisconsin, a Gray Wolf crossed the road a few feet from me as I stood by my car counting birds.  It didn't see me until I quietly said "Good Morning Brother Wolf" at which time it hit the after burners and darted away into the forest.

In the late 1980s in Denali National Park, Alaska, I rode on the National Park Service bus to the visitor center about 60 miles from the park entrance.  Along the way we encountered 6 Grizzly Bears and one Gray Wolf.  Each of them wanted to make tracks away from humans as quickly as possible.  They wanted nothing to do with us as long as we respected them and gave them space. Those experiences and several others with bears and wolves helped to greatly reduce my unfounded fear of both animals.

The same could not be said, however, for sharks.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Every year one of the cable television networks sponsors a week long scare-a-thon about sharks called "Shark Week."  During that week of almost nonstop scary images of sharks attacking everything that moves, set to ominous sounding dramatic music, viewers come away with the feeling that I had - stick one toe in the ocean and you are filet of human for the next Great Hammerhead Shark to swim by.

In September 2011, I traveled to Boulder's Beach, South Africa to visit a colony of African Penguins. While there, despite the warnings of the South African government's shark awareness program, a local resident, was attacked by a Great White Shark, losing one leg and part of another.  Local authorities went out of their way to warn this man about the presence of four Great White Sharks but he persisted saying "I've swum with sharks before. I know what I'm doing."  Several days later, after surviving surgery to save his life, the victim was quoted in a front page story of the Cape Times that "It was my fault" the shark attacked him.  Yup. No doubt about that.  He didn't respect the sharks, didn't heed the warnings of others who informed him of the shark's presence and potential danger, and 1 1/2 legs later learned a huge lesson.

Don't get me wrong....there is every reason to be cautious of sharks, just like there is of wolves, and bears, and orange-tanned Republicans with an opossum for a hair piece for that matter. However if you use common sense and learn something about the creatures before running off with unfounded fears, you might discover that these creatures are inquisitive, quite docile, and an adrenaline rush to see.

When I began SCUBA diving I maintained a healthy fear of sharks. Each time I took a "giant stride" off the stern of a dive boat I imagined Jaws himself scarfing me up before I had time to deflate my buoyancy control device and descend to the bottom. In January 2017, while diving off the Florida Keys, I encountered my first shark - a Nurse Shark - which is about as dangerous as a Golden Retriever.  I could feel my anal sphincter tighten to a level not experienced since I saw my last tornado, and the shark eventually swam 5 feet beneath me.  It was "just" a Nurse Shark - but it was a shark just the same.

For the last couple of years the Sarasota (Florida) Scuba Club has offered a shark diving trip to Jupiter, Florida, where divers can have up close and personal encounters with sharks.  On these trips you are almost guaranteed to see a shark, and some shark dives off Jupiter have resulted in sightings of up to 7 species of shark including both Tiger Sharks and Bull Sharks - both of which can have a nasty attitude in the wrong situations.

The reason sharks are all but guaranteed on these trips is because the charter boat company feeds them.  Chunks of fish are placed in a chum box and those pieces of fish flesh, plus their blood, provide a tantalizing attraction for any sharks in the neighborhood.  In February 2017, I mentioned to the owner of a local dive shop in Sarasota that I was scheduled to participate in one of the Emerald Charter shark dives.  Before I could finish my sentence, the dive shop owner went apoplectic and urged me not to participate because of the artificial nature of the dives.

"Feeding sharks alters their behavior," he argued.  "Feeding habituates sharks to humans and makes them dependent on humans for their survival.  Plus it alters their behavior."  He then added, "If you have any ethics about wildlife I urge you not to go on this trip!"

As a retired wildlife biologist his argument hit home.  Its bad enough that we ascribe human qualities to wildlife (anthropomorphism), altering their behavior and habituating wildlife to humans can only make things worse.  Or so I thought until my first shark dive.

Against my better judgement and with an internal bias already at warp speed, I did a giant stride off the stern of a dive boat 5 miles offshore from Jupiter Florida on June 18, 2017.  I did so with 13 other shark divers, and 2 dive masters.  One dive master carried a camera to record the encounters, while the other carried a spear gun and a bait box to attract sharks.  We descended to 107 feet and looked around among huge schools of Bonita for a shark - any shark.  With our Nitrox supply rapidly being depleted at that depth, we finally saw (only briefly) one Blacktip Shark  that gobbled some chunks of Bonita and then disappeared into the murky waters. 

A problem with my left ear on the first dive precluded me from making the second scheduled dive.  By the time the third dive arrived, my ear issue had cleared up and we dove into 70 feet of water and drifted to the deck of a shipwreck where we positioned ourselves in front of the bait box and waited.  Actually we didn't have to wait because 11 Lemon Sharks were already there checking out the bait box that had been left at the conclusion of the second dive. Waiting with the sharks was a Goliath Grouper that easily weighed 400 pounds.  For the next 45 minutes we stayed in a collective state of awe as Lemon Sharks, some up to 8 feet long, swam by us often inches away.  One shark collided with me head first when I found myself in his path.  His reaction was to swim away from me without causing any harm.

Close encounters with Lemon Sharks are easily obtained on shark dives with Emerald Charters.  (Image by Catherine Hayslett using her Go Pro)

As I watched the swirling mass of sharks from mere inches away I was able to learn a great deal about them.  I saw one fish with scars all over its back, probably from territorial encounters with other sharks.  Another individual had a large fishing lure hanging from its lower jaw, evidence no doubt of someone's fish story about "the huge one that got away."  My only regret was that none of us could reach up and remove the hook from the shark's mouth.  Mostly, however, I learned that my fear of sharks was unfounded just like my earlier fear of wolves and bears (although I remain petrified of Republicans).  It was simply a matter of respecting the sharks, not behaving in a way that would cause them to feel threatened, and letting nature take its course. I now have a new found respect for and fascination with sharks and I can't wait for my next shark dive which will be in the Philippines in February 2018.

None of this would have occurred, of course, had we not participated in a dive where the sharks were attracted to an artificial food source. Yes the situation was artificial, but I know of 13 fellow divers who now have a newfound appreciation for sharks and a greater respect for them, and most of whom I would bet are now strong advocates for shark conservation and protection.   And it all happened because of an artificial feeding situation that allowed for such close encounters.

Check out the close-up view of the pearly white's on this Lemon Shark.  (Image by Brooke Walters, Sarasota Scuba Club)

One thing my career with the US Fish and Wildlife Service taught me is that some times keeping animals and interactions with animals away from the public is not in wildlife's best interest.   Before I moved to Nebraska in 1987, it was the agency's policy that any time a Whooping Crane arrived on the Platte River during migration, our Special Agent (law enforcement) was informed and the location of the bird(s) was kept secret out of fear that someone would harm them.  In the process very few people had a chance to learn about Whooping Cranes and develop any sense of ownership of them.

That policy changed after my arrival in Grand Island, Nebraska where (without obtaining permission beforehand) the arrival of a Whooping Crane was instantly transmitted to the television, radio, and newspaper media (and especially the Grand Island Independent)  Regularly the arrival of a Whooping Crane was front page news (in about 80 font) complete with pictures.  Soon it was not uncommon to have up to 1,000 people lined up along a rural highway watching in awe as one of the rarest birds on earth strutted around in a corn field in font of them. By the time I transferred from Grand Island in 1993, local residents were referring to Whooping Cranes as "my cranes" and the Platte River as "my river" and woe be to anyone who even considered bringing harm to either. 

The same effect, I'm now convinced, can happen for sharks and shark conservation. If people are provided with an opportunity to feel a sense of kinship with the creatures, a sense of "ownership" of sharks, then they are just as likely to be protective of them as Nebraskans are of Whooping Cranes.  And if it takes artificial feeding of sharks to elicit that sense of ownership and protection for sharks then so be it.  

I'm all for it, and the owner of the local dive shop in Sarasota is completely wrong.

Diving Away in Margaritaville at Anthony's Key Resort, Roatan, Honduras

The entrance sign along the main road from the airport is difficult to miss.

We visited Anthony's Key Dive Resort during May 13-20, 2017, as a college graduation gift for Cathy's son Bristol. Despite the rave reviews Anthony's receives from many travelers I was not that impressed with the quality of the diving or with several aspects of the resort. First, however, the positives.

After emerging from Customs and Immigration in the tiny Roatan airport you are met by several representatives of Anthony's Key who transport your luggage in an open truck, and transport you in an air-conditioned bus, for about 15 minutes to the resort.  Luggage is then transported for you via the water taxi from the mainland to the key where the cabanas are located.  Check in is swift and the orientation is simple.  During orientation you learn which boat you are assigned to and who your dive master will be.  Cathy had dived here a couple times before and asked specifically for John Carter as our dive master. You should ask for him as well.   All your dive equipment is kept in lockers next to the dock so you don't have to lug it all over creation between dives or at the end of the day.  The dive shop is managed in a highly efficient way by Kevin and his associates who will take care of your every need.  Just ask.  Our cabana (#46) (with a shared balcony) offered superb views of the Caribbean and especially sunsets.  Another excellent amenity of the resort is the on-site medical office staffed by 3 bilingual physicians and a hyperbaric chamber (divers know the importance of one of these).

AKR offers stand up paddle boarding and kayaks (for free) as part of your package and one day they transport visitors to the south side of Roatan to Maya Key (that you fly over a few inches below you on final approach to the airport) for a shore lunch.  Thursday night is "Island Fiesta" night complete with a Spanish-speaking duo that sang Bob Marley and Peter Tosh songs in perfect Jamaican, mon.  The highlight of the Island Fiesta was the exciting Hermit Crab Races.  I studied the available crabs and chose one based on its apparent strength and endurance.  It came in dead last.  

Another facility of the resort is the well-stocked gift shop where, despite extremely high prices on virtually everything on the shelves, you can buy all sorts of t-shirts and other clothing to add to your "been there, done that" collection.

Staff of Anthony's Key are all bilingual which, unfortunately, most American's can't say about themselves.  I speak Spanish at a level slightly better than "survival" level and was impressed by how every Honduran I met at the resort would reply in crisp English whenever I asked for anything in Spanish.

The view of Anthony's Key from the top of nearby Carambola Mountain.  Our cabana was at the left-most tip of the island.

Now for the mediocre part of the trip.  I'm a retired wildlife biologist so I view natural communities differently than most other people view them.  Through the eyes of a wildlife biologist I was not that impressed with the diving on Roatan. Granted because of a medical restriction I was only able to make 4 dives (including one night dive) but on those four dives I was disappointed by the low diversity of reef fish compared to other West Indian islands like Bonaire or Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. Visibility was great - up to 100 feet at times but there was very little to see in that clear water.  The same cannot be said for beautiful Bonaire, and I long to return there - sooner rather than later.

Another frustration is that Anthony's Key offers (for an additional $100 plus tax) a 3-hour "shark dive" where participants are transported to the south side of the island to view Caribbean Reef Sharks.  I'm vehemently opposed to "chumming" or feeding sharks just to draw them into view.  My opposition comes from the very real fact that artificial feeding alters the normal behavior patterns of the sharks and makes them partially dependent on humans for food.  During the shark dive (which I did not participate in) people saw somewhere between 16 and 20 sharks, many of them just feet away.  Great video was captured but it was in a totally artificial situation. I would much prefer to have a random encounter with a shark or not see one at all rather than participate in an activity that alters the natural behavior of wild creatures.

Now for the negatives.

Anthony's Key puts great emphasis on tipping its employees. At the check in desk there is list of "Tipping Policies" with a suggestion of whom to tip and how much.  There is also a link on the AKR app informing visitors about whom to tip and how much.  I prefer to tip people based on the performance of the task they completed for me.  And I prefer to tip according to what I think is appropriate.  I do not like being told by management whom to tip and how much.  Tipping the front desk staff? Seriously? I will not tip them and I did not. Perhaps if Anthony's Key offered its employees a living wage (not that difficult in Honduras) they wouldn't have to pressure guests to cough up extra to tip everyone who walks down a path or opens a door for you.

Second negative is the food.  Actually the food in the restaurant was quite tasty and I recommend the Honduran breakfast which I tried every morning.  My concern is the variety of options.  Other than breakfast you are offered 2 options for entrees at lunch and at dinner. One is a fish dish and the other is either chicken, pork, or beef.  There is also a veggie option.  Thus at any given meal if you don't like the two main options you are sunk until the next meal.  Also the food is portioned out for you like in a restaurant and served accordingly.  It is not a buffet like arrangement. For one meal we asked if a second entree could be ordered and were told no.   Granted this process reduces the amount of wasted food and most importantly for AKR management, it reduces costs. However for guests it also reduces options for your meals and after 3 or 4 dives in a day you're usually famished.

The final concern is health. During our orientation we were not informed about the problem of Norovirus at the resort. In fact the only mention of it was a half-sheet of white paper sitting under the two bottles of purified water in our rooms. During our stay I know of several people who became violently ill and who missed almost all of the diving because of severe gastrointestinal distress.  I had a similar issue for 4 of the 7 days there.  On my final day I visited the clinic where they handed out some anti-diarrheal medicine that was like Imodium on steroids.  I told the person in the clinic what I needed and she said, as she gave me the pills, "There is something going around the resort."  No kidding!  It would have been nice to know about it especially since they knew about it.  Related to health was the super abundance of biting sand flies.  Cathy's back and legs looked like she had a case of the measles after two days of walking across the sand from our cabana to the water taxi.  Other people were similarly affected by these biting insects.  A bottle of "cactus juice" to help ease the itching was available in the gift shop for an extortionate $18.00!  Granted the sand flies are a seasonal annoyance but they are there and if you are the least bit allergic to their multiple bites you'll wind up with welts all over every exposed area of skin.

The closest I have come to the ultimate dive location is beautiful Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean, and our friends at Toucan Diving and the Plaza Resort Bonaire.  I'd return there in a nanosecond.  From what I saw and experienced I would not return to Anthony's Key to dive. There are too many other dive locations in the Caribbean that have greater biodiversity.  As I keep searching for the ultimate dive location I will remember that, for me, Roatan and Anthony's Key, are not it.  

I sincerely hope your experience will be more biologically fruitful and positive.

The Murders and the Murderers at Kent State University

"Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own.  This summer I hear the drumming; 4 dead in Ohio."....Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young


My book "Slices of America's Pie" tells the story of my successful quest to visit each of the counties or parishes in the Lower 48 states and Hawaii, and the Burroughs in Alaska. For the story I recount one memorable county or one memorable incident in one county in each state.  For Ohio I chose Portage County because that is where Kent State University is located and that's where the Ohio National Guard committed murder and stole my innocence on May 4, 1970, at 12:27 p.m. Eastern Time.

I wasn't a student at Kent State; thankfully I was more than 1,000 miles away from the murderous guns wielded by the chickenshit Ohio National Guardsmen who fired, without provocation or orders, on students exercising their constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression.  As long as I live I will never forgive the Ohio National Guard and I will never forget what they did that long ago day.  You should not either.

Below is my chapter on Portage County, Ohio, reprinted with my own permission as the manuscript was submitted to the publisher.

36

Never Ever Forget Kent State

Portage County, Ohio

At 12:27 p.m. on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard committed murder on the campus of Kent State University in Portage County, Ohio.  It was the single most important formative event in my young life and one that changed my personal and political views forever.

I was a freshman on the University of Wisconsin River Falls campus that day and I remember it like it was yesterday. It was one of the first warm days of spring that year and there was not a cloud in the sky. I was back in my dorm room, 209 Johnson Hall, studying when someone on the floor yelled "They're killing students in Ohio!" I thought at first it was just a normal afternoon drunken outburst on the floor. Then someone turned on a transistor radio set on WCCO Radio from Minneapolis. They gave complete coverage of the carnage, at least as much as they knew at the time. As we all sat around listening to the news a feeling of gloom set over us.

Granted, UW River Falls wasn't a hotbed of political activity in those days but we had experienced our share of campus protesting of the intractable unwinnable unnecessary and illegal war in Viet Nam. Now Richard Nixon had expanded the war into Cambodia and our few campus activists were more agitated. I wondered as did most of the others on my floor if the Wisconsin National Guard was going to show up and start shooting us.

Kent State happened because of the over reaction of the Ohio National Guard in response to legally assembled (according to the United States Constitution ) students exercising their legal right (according to the United States Constitution) to protest an illegal war (the President never asked Congress for a formal declaration of war therefore it wasn't a legal war) and its expansion. I will never forgive the Ohio National Guard for what they did that day.

When it finally sank in that students were being killed, and the government that sanctioned this killing was a Republican government, I rejected all of the conservative mantra that my ultra-conservative mother ever spewed (if she was alive today my ultra-conservative mother would be one of the Tea Bag anarchists who think Sarah Palin has an IQ greater than a cucumber and that Faux "News" is fair and balanced). The next day May 5, 1970, I started to let my hair grow and I participated in my first anti-war sit-in. My politics and my outlook were forever changed. 

Just two days before the massacre, Richard M. Nixon made the following statement regarding the campus unrest. Never once in his statement did Nixon acknowledge that it was HIS actions that were causing the unrest.

“You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burnin' up the books, I mean, stormin' around about this issue, I mean, you name it - get rid of the war, there'll be another one. -- Richard Nixon, New York Times, May 2, 1970.   It is my most sincere hope that one day I get to piss on Richard Nixon’s grave. 

Despite the tragedy that day there were some positive outcomes. Most importantly for me is the very real fact that my political beliefs were forever altered. In response I have voted in every election since my first election in 1972 (the first vote I ever cast was for George McGovern and I feel proud of that vote). In that election I voted a straight Democratic ticket. I have never missed an election since that day in November 1972 and I have never once voted for anyone who was not with the Democratic Party.  I would eat a steady diet of used kitty litter before I would vote for a Republican.

Another positive outcome was a song with its haunting music and haunting lyrics written by Neil Young.  On May 4 1990 while living in Grand Island Nebraska, I contacted every radio station in town and in the surrounding area and asked them to play at the exact minute the murders took place at Kent State 20 years earlier "Ohio" by Neil Young as a memorial to the fallen students. All the stations agreed to do it but one where I was told by the programming director "We don't have the music or I would play it." I asked if they'd play it if I brought the music to them. They would.

I was standing outside the music store in Conestoga Mall at 10:00 a.m. when the door opened. I darted in and purchased the vinyl album and raced down to the south side of town to the radio station. I arrived there by 10:30 with 57 minutes to spare. Breathlessly I told the woman behind the counter that her station was going to be playing this song as a memorial to the murders 20 years earlier. She looked at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face not understanding a thing I'd said. Finally I asked her age. "I'm 19" she said. She wasn't even born when the single greatest formative moment in my life occurred. I would be afraid to ask the question again today.

The murders at Kent State were the catalyst in 1988 for the University to establish the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence.  The mission statement for the Institute reads:

* promotes interdisciplinary research on the causes and prevention of violence
* engages in the design, implementation and evaluation of community-based programs for violence prevention
* trains teachers, law enforcement personnel and other professionals on principles and practices related to violence prevention
* helps bridge the gap between science and practice to effectively inform public policy related to violence prevention

Some good has come out of the insanity of that day after all.

In 2005 I traveled to Kent State for the 35th anniversary of the murders. Stepping from my car in a University parking lot I asked a couple I saw walking "where's the Hill?" Without batting an eye they pointed to the west. As I walked toward the hallowed grounds that are the site of the murders several students came up to me and asked "were you there?" I told them I was there in spirit alone that day.  Approaching the Hill, I found four curious areas cordoned off with light fixtures. Asking what they were I learned that they were permanent memorials that marked the outline of where each of the four kids died that day. The first one I found was Alison Krause.

Standing on the Hill overlooking the scene I met a mother and her college freshman son. The son was showing mom the campus and brought her to the Hill. I saw them and made a comment about the tragic deaths that day. The mom, about my age, snapped back in reply saying "Those fucking kids DESERVED what they got that day."

Shocked I said "you mean Jeffrey Miller deserved to die for protesting something that was wrong?" Mom said "You're god-damned right he did. All of them did."

Her son then jumped on her case and supported what I was saying. They walked away yelling at each other. I guess there still is a lot of angst and anger and mistrust on the Hill.

Now the Kent State University Historic Site has been established and dedicated on the campus as a memorial to the tragedy of that day. I hope the memorial is completely successful in helping America to never ever forget Kent State.