Ruminations on the Brooks Range - Robert Marshall

This was our day to pack and repack gear, return the bear barrels, buy a Brooks Range Aviation hat, and generally scurry around.  When we got on the plane to leave Bettles on the way to Fairbanks, I asked the pilot when drinks would be served.  He said, "No drinks served. Do as I do and have a couple before the flight."

It's always fun to discover interesting people, whether past or present.  Although I had heard about Robert Marshall related to conservation and nature, I hadn't read any of his work.  When I got home, I read "Alaska Wilderness, Exploring the Central Brooks Range." 

It was a fascinating description of the area that we had just experienced ourselves.  But much of the reason that we were able to enjoy it was due to Bob Marshall recognizing how unique the Brooks Range is and that it should be preserved for all generations.  

I'm getting ahead of myself.  Mr. Marshall was fascinated with blank areas of maps in the United States.  His training was in forestry.  He did much of his Alaskan exploration in the 1930's.  And he did it without goretex or capilene.  

He's not a great writer, but he's real.  He writes about mosquitoes:

"I also made the acquaintance  of arctic mosquitoes while boring spruce trees.  These insects were terribly thick; at one time I counted forty three between my waist and neck including my arms.  With hat and mosquito net rendering my head, face, and neck inaccessible to them, and gloves and gauntlets protecting my hands and wrists, and all the rest of me covered with normal clothing, I really was not bothered except when I occasionally had to remove my gloves; but I could see that anyone caught in this country for several days at the height of the mosquito season without special protection would surely be killed." (p. 7)

On the next page, he writes about tussocks:  "There we had our first taste of arctic sedge tussocks.  These curses are tufts mostly of cottongrass which gradually build up out of the swamp, the younger plants growing out of the dead remains of the earlier ones.  As they grow larger, they also grow wider so that they are much bigger on top than below, becoming more or less mushroom shape.  They get to be eighteen inches high, some even higher.  They are very topheavy, and when you step on them they are almost certain to bend over and pitch you off into the swamp.  When you try to walk in the  swamp, you have to step over these high humps, and sometimes they grow so close together your foot catches in between.  Three quarters of a mile of this seemed like five, and at one place we were afraid we could not get the horses through.  We were to find out later that this was easy compared with some places on the North Fork."

Bob Marshall mapped most of the Central Brooks Range in various trips, which filled in the blank spaces on the map.  Among many other credits, he was a founding member of the Conservation Society.  Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack at the age of 38.  I can't wait to read Arctic Village and some of his other works.