Tag: Alaska

Photo by Gabriela on Unsplash

Morning at the Marsh

1 June 2026 /

Nonfiction by Susan Pope

In early May at the shorebird festival in Homer, Alaska, I was invited to read my goshawk attack story at the site where it happened. Since the assailants were not yet nesting, I felt safe from any potential assault.

The event was a fundraiser for the land trust that had rescued a piece of forest and wetlands from bulldozing for development. Here was an opportunity to support a cause I believed in, plus a chance to plug my new book. Birding, hiking, storytelling, snacks. A perfect fundraiser. Local merchants donated food, the trust handled the logistics, the festival advertised the event, my friend Nancy provided bird identification assistance, and my husband Jim supplied the moral support. All I had to do was show up at the trail head, hike to the viewing platform, and read for ten minutes.

I visualized. I timed. I practiced out loud.

I was ready.

But not for leading the hike because the official leader, having no childcare, was forced to bring up the rear with her squealing, squirming toddler. Or for the frequent stops and starts to accommodate the grandma who thought she had signed up for pre-school story hour and kept sprinting off the trail to capture her rubber-booted fleet-footed three-year-old dashing after squirrels. Or for the six-year-old junior birder so eager to find those birds she slammed into my heels each time we paused to listen for one.

Or for the young moose who blocked our path and would not move—despite our clapping, shouting, and pleading—until she’d devoured every last fiddlehead fern. Or for the helicopter circling overhead at the viewing platform where I was to read my story.

Or for the Wilson’s snipe punctuating the roar of the helicopter’s rotors with a furious ack, ack, ack each time I imitated the goshawk’s scream in my story. Or for the pair of Canada jays who swooped in to raid our unguarded snacks when no one was paying attention.

But none of this mattered as I shouted my story in a very non-literary way to people politely trying to listen. The sun shone, the birch and willow leaves popped open, the wrens trilled and twittered, the sandpipers, ducks, geese, and cranes frantically fed or nested or headed north, and parents and grandparents did their best to ensure that the next generation had a chance at this one unpredictable and magnificent life.

Susan Pope’s work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction Short Reads, Alaska Magazine, River Teeth Beautiful Things, and The Bluebird Word Literary Journal, among others. Her memoir Rivers and Ice follows five generations of one Alaskan family in the rapidly changing landscape of the North. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Photo by George Hiles on Unsplash

A Night in Alaska

1 February 2024 /

Poetry by Ellen Skilton

There are raccoons in the floorboards,
and to-dos sprouting from my ears.

                                                            The dog wedges himself under the bed to
                                                            monitor anxiously the vermin’s every move.

The Philly basketball announcer gets
hyped up about a free-throw parade.

                                                            But her enthusiasm doesn’t shake
                                                            my seeping sadness. Like the melting
                                                            ice outside, it finds every crevice to fill.

Across town, a man dreams of a night
in Alaska, so cold there is no hospitality.

                                                           He tells his son — being an old husband
                                                           is kind of like being a baby. Now, I can’t
                                                           un-see the word hospital in how we care.

I may have lied about my vision to get ugly
glasses in 1972, but today I am forgiven.

                                                          This morning’s sunshine on the winter trees
                                                          makes now seem so distinct from then.
                                                          Like a ski-lift, I float high above old mistakes.

Ellen Skilton‘s creative writing has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Literary Mama, Ekphrastic Review, and Dillydoun Review. In addition to being a poet, she is an educational anthropologist, an applied linguist, and a Fringe Fest performer. She is also an excellent napper, a chocolate snob, and a swimmer.

Photo by Joel Holland on Unsplash

Wednesday in the Neighborhood

22 October 2023 /

Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian

Because my dearest friends are dead or distant
I eavesdrop on the sparrows’ whispered conversation in the blue-green grass.

Because the red-hot scream of chainsaws makes the forest weep,
I bury my face in the cool fountain of lobelias.

Because the flag is like a furious fist,
I melt into the marbled eyes of my old-lady dog.

Because lies multiply like hawkweed on the highway,
I harvest the truth of blueberries.

Because the longed-for heat of summer became instead a fiery furnace,
I rejoice in rain and the chance to pull on socks again.

Because the whirling hulla hoop of years slows and settles,
I putter among exuberant late-blooming lilies. They have no foretaste of grief.

Because these burdens must not win the day,
I beckon to the easeful gulls to lift our weight.

Bonnie Demerjian lives in Southeast Alaska and much of her writing is flavored by this place of forest and ocean. She has written four non-fiction books about the region and her poetry has been published in Blue Heron Review, Pure Slush, Tidal Echoes, and Alaska Women Speak, among others.

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