Friday, July 18


Sitka brings together three attributes of Alaska that we have been exploring on this trip: an active Tlingit community producing and sharing their art, great opportunities to experience nature, and immense historical significance . It lies in the largest temperate rain forest in the world; its ferns, mosses, and lichens glow in vivid shades of green, and its Sitka spruces and hemlocks grow incredibly tall. It also rains a lot. It was for this that we bought a tent canopy for our camper, and here we perfected the technique of detaching and reattaching it as we explored the city.



On this day we headed for the Sitka National Historical Park, which does an excellent job of bringing Sitka's nature, history, and Tlingit culture together. In one arm of their visitor center they provide studios for native artists to work, and we met one of them today: Tommy Joseph, Sitka's preeminent wood carver. He is currently carving a totem pole commissioned in memory of a Japanese photographer who spent more than twenty years filming the Alaska wilderness and was killed by a bear. In my picture, his young apprentice is doing some clean-up work. When we met Tommy Joseph in his studio he was just putting the finishing touches on a beautiful bowl in the shape of a shortened dugout canoe. We would see many more examples of his art, both in Sitka and beyond.