Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska's Wildlife

by Bill Sherwonit

Overview

These timeless, beautifully written essays share encounters and observations on a variety of Alaskan wildlife and include natural history information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941821305
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
Sales rank:	982,732
File size:	723 KB

About the Author

For more than three decades, Anchorage-based writer Bill Sherwonit has written extensively about wilderness, the natural history of animals and plants, wildlife management, connection to place, conservation issues, and notions of wildness. He’s contributed stories and photos to a wide variety of national publications and is the author of over a dozen books about Alaska. He also teaches nature and travel writing in his adopted hometown of Anchorage.

Read an Excerpt

In the Company of Bears It’s cold out here. Fingers and toes are tingling. My small field thermometer reads in the upper forties, but with the gusting winds, the chill is probably closer to freezing. Classic hypothermia weather. So, here I am, behind a shelter and cloaked in wind shell, fleece jacket, capilene shirt, nylon pants, wool cap with rain hood pulled over it, and fleece gloves—and starting to shiver. Meanwhile bear, lying on an exposed bench and faced into the wind, shows no discomfort at all. If he’s not chilled at all on a day like this, does he overheat on the bright, sunny, warm days of summer (which admittedly seem to be few and far between here)? The bear naps more than an hour before rising. Immediately, he resumes feeding. He does little else for the next two hours except chew mouthfuls of tundra greens. He barely lifts his head, except to see where the next patch of food might be, and seldom has to take more than a few steps to get there. He continues to ascend a rocky rivulet surrounded by low-lying but lush green plants, until reaching a rubbly pile of lichen-bearded boulders. He then tops a brownish knoll that apparently has little to tempt him, and ambles to another lush swale, where he resumes his feasting. It would appear the grizzly has entered the late-summer phase that biologists sometimes call hyperphagia: an almost around-the-clock gorging, in preparation for winter’s months-long fasting. At one point the bear finds a spot so luscious, all he can do is sprawl in the midst of it. The more I watch the grizzly, the more I’m confident he’s a heavily muscled mature male, perhaps in his prime. He has little to fear, except, perhaps, for a larger bear—which seems unlikely here—or hunters bearing guns. That’s one good thing about this weather: no hunters are likely to come this way today.

Table of Contents

Introduction/Author’s Note I. Meeting the Neighbors The Songs of Robins Stretch Across Time and Space The Hidden Lives of Hares and Shrews Living with Moose Through the Seasons and Across the Years Watching Belugas Point Woronzof’s Spectacle of Swallows Squirrelly Behavior Leaving the Nest Ravens in Winter Redpoll Serenade: Celebrating the End of Winter Of Bears and Bird Seed Listening to Owl II. Along City and Highway Fringes A Gathering of Swans Called to a Primeval Presence: Anchorage’s Sandhill Cranes Nesting Goshawks Arctic Terns, the World’s Greatest Long-Distance Flyers Campbell Creek’s Silvers On the Trail, Finding Lynx Valley of the Eagles III. Backcountry Encounters In the Company of Bears Crossing Paths with Porcupine Looking into Wild Eyes Seeking Caribou, Touching the Arctic Refuge’s Coastal Plain Fourteen Ways of Viewing Alaska’s Wild, White Sheep Meeting a Legend: Wolverine Paddling with Porpoises Wilderness Music: Sharing a Valley with Howling Wolves IV. Oddities, Surprises, and Dilemmas A Gift of Halibut Leonard Peyton’s Redpoll Project Otter Catastrophe “Nice” Weather Gets Seals Hot Mystery of Alaska’s Deformed-Bill Chickadees An Overlooked Marvel: In Search of Anchorage’s Wood Frogs Of Waxwings and Goshawks and Standing Up to Power A Tale of Two Wolverines and One Beloved Dog

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Essays from this book were chosen for the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology: "In the Company of Bears" (2007) and "Twelve Ways of Viewing Alaska's Wild, White Sheep" (2014)

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2014
With half of the state designated as wilderness, Alaska is a mecca for wildlife enthusiasts of all kinds. None is more avid and articulate than Anchorage-based writer, naturalist, and wilderness advocate Sherwonit (Changing Paths), who has assembled 34 previously published essays on his encounters with some of the state's most iconic species (wolves, caribou, bears, and bald eagles) as well as wildlife of the backyard variety (robins, chickadees, and squirrels). For Sherwonit, there is no animal so insignificant that it can't teach us a profound lesson or embody some magical quality; each is therefore worthy of our respect and attention. In addition to describing the natural history of each animal, he examines broader themes such as the nature of wildness and the ethics of sport hunting. VERDICT While this book has a regional focus to be sure, wildlife enthusiasts in the lower 48 states will appreciate its author's passion for the Alaskan wilderness. (A map would have been a helpful inclusion for readers unfamiliar with Alaskan geography.) Recommended particularly for those who enjoyed Craig Child's The Animal Dialogues.—Cynthia Lee Knight, formerly with Hunterdon Cty. Lib., Flemington, NJ

Library Journal

In his ANIMAL STORIES, Bill Sherwonit reminds us that community is built and sustained not only by humans caring for one another, but by humans noticing, coming to know, and caring about their animal neighbors. From the black-capped chickadees at his feeder, to the wood frogs in an urban pond, to the wolverines he encounters on the alpine tundra, Sherwonit celebrates Alaskan wildlife in all its forms with his eyes, ears, heart, and curiosity wide open. In prose that’s clear as a rain-washed sky, he observes and writes as a true citizen-naturalist and nature writer.” —Eva Saulitis, author of Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas

“Whether tracking beluga whales in a citizen science project or tracking robins on his front lawn, learning lessons from a charging brown bear or stopping to listen to wood frogs, Sherwonit writes with grace and ease about his encounters with Alaskan wildlife. Commuting ravens. Insouciant wolverines. And the redpoll’s exuberant chorus of song. The author combines personal experience and careful research in a journey that will compel and delight.” —Sharman Apt Russell, author of Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist and An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect

“A well-crafted, eclectic, and engaging combination of memoir, natural history, and keen insight, ANIMAL STORIES delivers a fine read. Bill Sherwonit’s three-plus decades of experience with Alaska wildlife, and his love for them all, from grizzlies to robins, shines forth.” —Nick Jans, author of A WOLF CALLED ROMEO

“ANIMAL STORIES shows us once again that Bill Sherwonit has been assiduous in his exploration of Alaska’s wild places and wild life, persistent in his quest for knowledge, and determined to understand the world around us. For those of us in Anchorage he reveals an amazing array of wild species that inhabit our urban yards and parks, creeks, rivers, and the mountains and ocean arms that enclose us. Bears and moose we see frequently, but Bill offers us ‘hints of a hidden world’ of hares and shrews and birds that weigh an ounce, and mosquitoes enough to satisfy the fleet swallows that inhabit the cliffs at Woronzof. Wolverine is seen twice. Robins and bears, shrews and chickadees. . . . We share our landscape with these voracious insectivores. They are all around us leading secret lives.’ The land and its creatures offer us ‘the surprises and the mystery’ of life itself.
Sherwonit takes us around Anchorage and its fringes, and over much of Alaska, showing us creatures we rarely take time, or have the good fortune, to see, like the lynx on Turnagain Arm Trail: it is April, there are catkins and early mosquitoes, and right there, a lynx staring at him, becoming ‘part of his relationship to this forest trail.’ But he also takes us to Denali Park for Dall sheep, the Chilkat Valley for ‘this meeting of eagles, the largest in the world at the Bald Eagle Council Grounds.’ We go to Kodiak for brown bears and also discover it is ‘an unexpected treat to be paddling among porpoises’ off Homer. Bill shows us the fur seals at St. Paul, the wolf in the John River Valley whose howl will haunt his memories and dreams. Thought of it may haunt us too. He walks unarmed in bear country in the Brooks Range and calls to mind his totems: ‘bear is one, squirrel, chickadee, wolf, spider . . . they are teacher, messenger, guide’ for him and become so for us. ‘I want to understand what wilderness means to me. And what sacred means,’ Bill writes. And every account of animal, bird, or fish encountered includes a mini-encyclopedia of information about the creatures he sees. “Like porcupine whom the Koyukons call ‘the off the beaten path wanderer,’ Bill Sherwonit’s Animal Stories takes us on trips that ‘give us greater vision and a better understanding of our world.’” —Gary Holthaus, author of LEARNING NATIVE WISDOM and FROM THE FARM TO THE TABLE

“Whether writing about grizzlies, dancing cranes, or mad hares, Bill Sherwonit enchants and inspires, reminding us that wildness surrounds us, even if we don't live in Alaska.” —Tim Folger, series editor, THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING

From the Publisher