In the Talkeetna Mountains of Alaska, at the headwaters of Purches Creek, north of what is today called Dogsled Pass, a giant boulder sits at base of the next pass crossing over to Upper Peters Creek Valley.

I’ve crossed Dogsled Pass maybe 30-40 times on foot and never closely examined this prominent boulder. Like so many “glacial erratics,” the great boulder had been carried to its current position by glaciers and gently set in place about ten-thousand years ago when the ice melted.

Camped near the boulder on the last day of a 13-day trip to the Kashwitna River drainages, I climbed onto the rock in the evening to have a look around. Clambering over the surface I realized that this boulder provided a lookout from which caribou could be spotted approaching from almost any direction in this glacier-carved bowl at the headwaters of Purches Creek. A lookout standing on the boulder could see far down into the valley where Purches Creek leaves the high-country tundra and brush and flows through the woodlands, then disappears from sight around the base of the mountains to join with Peters Creek and eventually to flow into Willow Creek.

At the end of a long, tough trip I just wanted to contemplate the scene and maybe take a few pictures---but the uneven surface provided no secure place to stand without feeling off-balance. Until, unexpectedly, I felt my feet locate two depressions that fit perfectly and comfortably into a spot where I could stand with ease. Examining these two depressions I realized that someone had carved them into the boulder.

I recalled something I had read---probably in a copy of the large, detailed book, “Shem Pete's Alaska: The Territory Of The Upper Cook Inlet Dena'ina.” Athabaskan hunters had once watched and waited for caribou in this high valley. Their stone arrowheads have been found here. Now, the most apparent artifacts are from mining.

As I stood there in the evening of a late summer day---my feet nestled in the carved footholds of an Indian lookout---a lone caribou bull appeared about a half-mile away. It was a rare sighting---caribou had been making a comeback in the Hatcher Pass area but since then have been pretty much hunted out yet again.

More than any actual hunting-gathering experience in Alaska, standing in those carved footholds was as close as I have ever come to feeling what it must have been like for a true, subsistence hunter.

THE MONEY ECONOMY: NOT THE REAL THING -

I spend a lot of time in wilderness without motorized conveyances. But I can never forget that I am a child of civilization---totally dependent upon modern industrial agriculture, modern industry, and the modern transportation and distribution system. The money economy.

No matter how I try to visualize and minimize the effects of civilization, at least in my mind, I have a hard time getting the feel of what true subsistence must have been like. I try to visualize what life would be like without everything modern. No watches, no cellphones, no GPS, no four-wheelers, no power boats, no Super Cubs, no tracked vehicles, no nothing.

I think about everything in my cabin, the homes I used to live in, the offices where I once worked---and throw out everything in them including the homes, offices and the vehicles. No electricity or computers. And the roads---the paved roads that change everything. I imagine them gone.

I mentally get rid of my Italian hiking boots---the German climbing boots must go as well. Goodbye, Sorels. Even artifacts such as “old-fashioned” wood and sinew snowshoes may look handmade---but if they contain modern materials or the touch of a factory I mentally toss them as well. In my quest to visualize true subsistence I must forget about nylon and Gore Tex. Everything modern must go.

I can hear the modern, gainfully employed, urban, road network, aircraft, pickup truck, motor home, four-wheeler, snowmachine, Alaska hunters now (their pride wounded): What do you want us to do? You mean you want us to actually walk? To give up all our vehicles and travel with dog sleds? To give up our guns and hunt with bows and arrows and spears? To use bent willows as snares instead of aircraft cable?

No, of course not---but stop calling it “subsistence.” And stop pretending that “consumptive use” is anything like subsistence. Stop pretending that you or you families will starve to death if you can’t politically lobby the State of Alaska to let you motor forth at will to kill wild animals.

I often wonder if modern hunters---as they swing their legs over the Naugahyde-covered foam seats of their vehicles---ever give a fleeting thought to what it must have been like before…

I live in a cabin and haul my own water, but living just off the South Central road network doesn’t exactly give a subsistence “feel,” much less a subsistence reality. Sure, I’ve been financially broke---down to thirty cents and a few shotgun shells. I’ve gathered wild greens in the spring for vegetables to mix with my rice. Living the way I do has given me some vague idea of just how much food, how much water, and how many other items are required simply to keep one person going. But I’ve never felt as close to what an actual subsistence lifestyle must be like as when I was standing on that lookout boulder in the Talkeetna Mountains.

WHAT IS SUBSISTENCE?

My favorite definition of "subsistence," as it pertains to Alaska, means “to exist by a total or near total dependence upon wild food sources.” Traditionally, this also refers to gathering stuff like eggs, berries, plants and natural materials used for clothing, shelter, weapons and fuel for warmth and cooking. It also includes eating the stomach contents of herbivores as a kind of “salad.”

The American Heritage Dictionary is especially stark in it’s definition: “Subsistence 1. The act or state of subsisting. 2. A means of subsisting, especially means barely sufficient to maintain life.”

LIVING OFF THE LAND: THE REAL THING -

Once there was subsistence in Alaska. That was before the Russians arrived---with their muskets, cannons, slavery, resource extraction (the fur trade), “intermarriage” with Native women and the Russian Orthodox Church.

At one time all Alaska Natives lived a true subsistence lifestyle. They lived off the land in a literal sense. Completely and totally---except for driftwood they found with the occasional, and prized, nails or metal fittings still in it; or floating glass bottles and other useful debris.

The Inupiat around Greenland had some metal and other artifacts from the Vikings. And there was some commerce in non-Native goods that may have made it to Alaska and then inland by trade routes. Whalers brought some industrial goods which they traded with coastal Natives. But to survive in Alaska, “by any means,” you damned well better have known how to make do with natural foods and materials.

The Unangan culture had a complex ivory-bone-stone technology. They practiced surgery, acupuncture and harvested medicinal plants along the Arctic coast above treeline.

Athabaskans traveled upriver to hunt in the Killbuck Mountains. After they had made their kills they constructed boats out of willow frames and covered them with the raw hides of the bear, moose or caribou they had taken---with the fur turned inside. These boats were single-use. One moose hide carried one load of moose meat plus the hunter and his gear downriver. Once the destination was reached the boat was dismantled, the hide was reused and the frame left behind.

Standing on that boulder in Talkeetna mountains I realized that there was way more to subsistence than hunting and gathering. Those footholds in the boulder had been hammered out, stone on stone---not a trace of miners’ metal tool marks. This was a different concept of time, labor and materials that no longer exists.

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?

Three years ago, in the foothills just West of the Talkeetna Mountains, at a winter camp, we received some visitors: several local young men who trapped in their spare time. I thought their remarks were quite revealing. One said: “I got a wolf.” As in one wolf in an entire season. Another said: “I got a marten.” One marten. They were proud, actually, that they had managed to get anything.

In winter, when the snow is newly-fallen and smooth it is hard for animals to hide their tracks. There aren’t many. A more experienced trapper than the young visitors to our winter camp made a biting comment about the general area around Hatcher Pass and the Talkeetnas: “It’s a barren wasteland.”

A young Native man from the village of Anvik also stopped by our encampment with some local friends. We were standing on a ridge looking toward the Talkeetna Range and were discussing, naturally enough, the wildlife in the area.

The Native shook his head, “I couldn’t live a subsistence life style around here like I do in the Village.”

This used to be a land rich with wildlife. People actually lived a subsistence lifestyle here. What had happened since the time of Shem Pete? Where did all the wildlife go?

Rudy Wittshirk

[Next in this intermittent series “Wildlife and Wildlands in Alaska: “The Coming Of The Ship, Gun, Barge, Steamboat, Railroad And Log Cabin Culture“]