Over the past decade, the state of Alaska has taken increasingly extreme measures to “remove” predators from the landscape. Employing an incremental, step-by-step approach, members of the Board of Game have joined high-level administrators in the Department of Fish and Game to establish wolf- and bear-kill policies that are unprecedented in state history.

My moods, like the weather, have been taking great swings lately as I anticipate the winter solstice and Christmas. As I’ve written before, that’s not so unusual for me at this time of year. In fact I am predictably unsettled as we pass through the darkest days of the year and the holiday season. For all my inner turmoil, I recognize I am blessed in many ways. And there is indeed much to celebrate, when I stop to reflect. Still, the unease is real. With the guidance of others, I’ve learned it is better to embrace the darkness, make peace with the shadow, rather than deny it.

In the past week, I have spent considerable time analyzing and commenting on the state’s Draft Chugach State Park Trail Management Plan Issue Response Summary (or IRS). Yes, that’s a mouthful. The title of this document is nearly as hard to digest as the 92-page IRS, and the overall planning process of which it’s a part.

A lot of attention has been given recently to a proposed new “access road” inside Chugach State Park, and rightly so. The road is a bad idea for many reasons, some of which I’ll document below. But first I’d like to present some additional concerns that I (and many other park advocates) have with the new Chugach State Park (CSP) Management Plan that’s out for public review.

It’s hard to believe that a decade has passed since the attacks of 9/11/2001. The images, the shock and horror, remain vivid to this day. Like people across the nation and around the world, I solemnly and sadly recall the events of 10 years ago. In the spirit of that remembrance, I offer an essay I wrote at that heartbreaking time, “On a Day of Tragedy, Finding Solace in Bird Song.”

Back in October 2007, a local TV crew went to Kukaklek Lake, on the upper Alaska Peninsula, to investigate a legal but controversial brown bear hunt in Katmai National Preserve. The story and video that the team brought back shocked and upset many Alaskans, hunters and non-hunters alike.

Last week I wrote a Compass piece for the Anchorage Daily News, which reflected upon the parking situation at Chugach State Park’s exceedingly popular Glen Alps Trailhead (see “Glen Alps Parking Appropriation: Yes, with Reservations,” below). Here I’d like to add a few more thoughts for consideration.

Like many veterans of World War II – and likely many veterans of all wars across the ages – my father didn’t talk much about his time in combat once he returned home to family and friends. Ed Sherwonit served in the Pacific, fought against the Japanese military. He brought home some medals, ribbons, pictures, his Army uniform, a trench knife, and likely some other belongings and memorabilia that I didn’t see or have forgotten. He also brought home memories he didn’t wish to share. And, I suspect, some internal scarring that he kept hidden.

On Mother’s Day, my mom and I will attend the late Sunday service at Anchorage Lutheran Church, her adopted congregation since relocating to Alaska in summer 2002. Afterward, we’ll go to Simon & Seafort’s for brunch. Simon’s is Mom’s favorite Anchorage restaurant (mine too) and we go there two or three times a year, on special occasions. For several years I would invite some friends to join us, but it’s become simpler to make it a mother-son outing.

In my world, this seems to be the season of fundraisers. As I write this, both of Anchorage’s public radio stations are at the tail end of their spring membership/pledge drives. Next week the Alaska Center for the Environment will have its Annual Spring Auction (which this year happens to coincide with Earth Day) at the Anchorage Museum. And last Friday, the 49 Alaska Writing Center staged its first-ever fund-raising Raven Write-a-Thon at Snow City Café (and elsewhere).

I suppose it was inevitable that Alaska’s wolf-control proponents would gripe, moan, and loudly whine after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision earlier this month to reject the state’s plan to “remove” several wolves from Unimak Island using aircraft and guns. Wolf (and bear) kill advocates have gotten so used to having their way in recent years, that they can’t handle any sort of setback.

I came late to this local land dispute. Until this past week I knew hardly anything about the years-long effort to protect West Anchorage’s Michelle Byrum Memorial Garden and adjacent public lands along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. And while I make no claim to fully understanding this battle’s long and complicated history, I now know enough to join the Turnagain Community Council (TCC) and many area residents in urging the Municipality of Anchorage to keep the garden and neighboring wooded lands in the public domain.

With apologies (and thanks) to Alice, of Wonderland fame, the more I learn about state and federal efforts to address Unimak Island’s much-diminished caribou herd, the more I find this fiasco to be getting curiouser and curiouser. Not in any wondrous kind of way, but in a nonsensical manner.

I wish to add my voice, again, to the many and diverse Alaskans who oppose the destruction of a Cook Inlet salmon stream for the sake of a coal mine. And I urge other Alaskans to join the effort to stop the proposed Chuitna coal strip mine, by either attending a public hearing in Kenai on Jan. 19, or by sending comments to the state’s Department of Natural Resources – or both (details below).

I have never shied away from birthdays; in fact as I’ve gotten older, I’ve more fully embraced my birthdays, sometimes stretching my celebration of them over a few days. Perhaps it has something to do with the realization that most of my birthdays are behind me now, so they remaining ones have become more precious. In honor of this, my sixty-first birthday, and as a sort of giving back, I would like to share some reflections about my long-ago boyhood, excerpted here from my book “Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness.”

A PLACE OF REFUGE

In honor of the Winter Solstice/Christmas season, I offer this essay (written a couple of years ago) about a holiday ritual along one of my favorite hiking trails:

On a blustery, gray December day, I leave my home and head for the forest at Anchorage’s southern edge. My mood matches the weather: somber, even gloomy.

To Gov. Sean Parnell –

I awoke in the darkness this morning, head spinning and stomach churning. Several things were playing on my mind and gut and one them, it slowly dawned on me, was Alaska’s gubernatorial race. Like many other Alaskans, I’ve been fascinated – and distracted – by the contest being waged for the U.S. Senate. Since the August primaries, that zany, turbulent campaign has pulled my attention from the statewide race that matters most to me: the one for governor.

It’s easy to get dismayed by Alaska’s politics if you happen to be a left-leaning, greenie sort of person, especially one who pays attention to our state’s increasingly radical and regressive wildlife management system. But this election season has been so loony, it’s proved remarkably entertaining, thanks in large part to Joe Miller. A guy who touts himself as a Constitutional fundamentalist hires a security detail that handcuffs a journalist?

I remember being annoyed when Ted Stevens’ name was attached to the Anchorage International Airport. The act seemed especially inappropriate, since it honored a still-living politician. And it prompted me to wonder: what the heck are his political disciples going to do after he dies? Now we know: Stevens’ name has been attached to a couple of natural landmarks that will surely outlast both the airport and any memory of Stevens.