There are countless reasons to ‘buy local' ranging from defining and maintaining local character to strengthening the community to stimulating local entrepreneurship and keeping money in the community. In a community like Sitka that can, more often than not, present a suite of challenges, primarily, a limited capacity to produce certain goods and commodities that other communities have easy access to. Not only are we limited by capacity, we are physically isolated and rely heavily on a barge system to provide us with many of the building blocks of an autonomous economy.

The solution is simple, build a local economy around the materials you have, wood. As part of the transition framework, the USFS is diverting away from ‘big timber' and devoted to diversifying forest product economics. This includes a Land Management plan that moves towards small scale, sustainable timber harvesting within roaded, young growth areas. SCS has worked to highlight this transition through community projects that demonstrate young growth and local wood as viable building materials. This shift in Tongass management opens Sitka up to develop a local workforce centered on our assets and ensures that we will capture the economic value of our resources within the local economy. The harvesting, processing and installation of local materials leads to jobs throughout the SE. This type of economy results in not just more jobs, but enhanced social capital in our communities, healthier buildings and the beginning of a robust building supply chain. Local materials means less CO2 emissions tied up in transport and less money leaving our community.

Today, more and more architects and builders are choosing local, sustainably harvested, produced or recycled materials. Enter Jamal Floate, local entrepreneur, builder and owner of Renaissance Construction. Despite the many challenges faced here in Sitka, he is buying and building local. He constructs projects with energy efficiency in mind and uses local, sustainably harvested wood products. His current project is a private home here in Sitka. The external and support components consist of wood products sustainably harvested and milled in Wrangell. Floate hopes to use locally harvested and milled Sitka Red Alder from False Island for interior finish work. If he does, the alder can be kilned and processed right here in Sitka by Todd Miller.

Floate is equally committed to energy concerns, not only are the bulk of the construction materials locally and sustainably produced; the house will be highly energy efficient. That starts with the design and size, the building footprint is only 780 square feet, and the finished square footage will be around 1000 square feet. Despite the modest foot print, the house will include a great room with vaulted ceilings, a large loft bedroom and master bath, guest bedroom, second bathroom, kitchen, utility room and covered outdoor deck. This is due in part to the materials, as well as the building envelope, technology and design techniques. The design incorporates a radiant floor heating system that is more conductive than other types of radiant heat, and will run off of water from the home's water heater. The house will also have a zero clearance wood-burning stove, providing exceptional heating capacity and improving indoor air quality.

Floate maintains that this construction model can be replicated in Sitka, and the cost per square foot is no more expensive than traditionally produced homes made with imported building materials. The combination of design and materials will result in a healthier house and distinct character. It starts with a paradigm shift, that spaces can be smaller and with more thoughtful design and planning they can be unique and efficient. This model is linking local businesses and strengthening the community. The possibilities are endless and could result in other opportunities in the retrofitting and renovating sectors of construction as well.

Charlie Wilber found his way to Alaska over 40 years ago, and it didn't take him long to decide he wanted to stay. This week on Voices of The Tongass, Charlie shares what exactly has kept him in Alaska, and lessons he has learned along the way. To hear this week's show, scroll to the bottom of this post. To continue the story, keep reading.

Photo by Berett Wilber

Charlie Wilber came to Alaska in 1971 as a smoke jumper, parachuting into remote areas of the interior to put out wildfires. "I'd hardly ever flown on an airplane. I got to Seattle and the state of Alaska had a person hired at the gate to try to convince you not to come to Alaska because there were no jobs…I thought I would only spend a summer here, but here I am, still here." When smoke jumping got "boring," it was time for the next adventure. "I wanted to make Alaska home," he says. "I felt like there were a lot of opportunities here for a young person. I still feel that way. I tried to figure out what I could do so I could live here. By a weird series of coincidences I had a friend with a hand troller in Icy Strait. I worked with him for about a week, thought ‘Hey, this might be something', and it took off from there. I bought my first boat in 1979 and never looked back."

We had to clarify: "So you bought a troller and became a fisherman after only one week of fishing?"

"Yes," he says, chuckling. "And I would not do that ever again, nor would I encourage anyone to learn that way. The smart person would become a crew member for an experienced fishermen. I said, ‘this looks pretty easy, I could figure this out,' and it was fairly painful for a number of years. It wouldn't be the first time I learned something the hard way. Someone told me once you aren't really fishing until you have every penny in it, and you owe money. And then you are seriously fishing because failing really isn't an option at that stage."

In the process of collecting stories for Voices of the Tongass, we have talked to several "fishing kids." Charlie is the first "fishing dad" we've interviewed, and we want to hear his perspective on parenting on a fishing vessel. "I suppose probably some of the most enjoyable times is when I had my two daughters on the boat with me. I've really enjoyed developing a working relationship with my daughters. One seemed to take to the water, and the other decided that probably wasn't in her interest. And I think that's a good thing, that the two of them have found their own path." Through summers spent on the boat, Charlie has passed his well-weathered wisdom on to his kids. "You know, if nothing else, I wanted my kids to have an appreciation for the environment that we were in - for the ocean. Wanted them to have an understanding of what I was doing...and I think they do both have a real sense of appreciation for the environment. When they were little we would go somewhere and they could spend all day with their little nets checking out bullheads on the rocks. There's not many places you can do that."

And then we have to ask: What has he learned about fishing, in thirty-four years on the water? "In order to be good at it you have to be very observant," he tells us. "A lot of it is by hunch: there are a lot of nuances. You can't see the fish, but you can see the fishermen. You can learn quite a bit from that."

We pepper him for the stories of the what else he's learned and the unusual things he's seen on the ocean: comets and waterspouts, trolling through herds of humpback whales, the northern lights, sharks, sunfish flopping on the surface of the water. But he makes it clear that one of the things that's most important to him is not something you need to be out on the ocean to see. "Not a day goes by where I don't still see the novelty of being able to walk out my door and be in the forest. And its not just recreation: I feed my family with deer, and obviously with fish. In order to have healthy salmon runs, the environment is very important. You can't have successful fishing when there's not habitat for the fish to spawn in. My living depends on having a healthy environment on land and on the ocean. The word sustainability gets used a lot these days, but it's the honest truth. Fishing isn't just a hobby. I've got a serious investment in equipment and everything else. It's how I make my living. I want these fish runs to be healthy for a long time, for long after I'm gone, I hope. To see the salmon returning each year…it's almost an inspiration. You can go to Indian River right now and almost walk across it without touching the water. It's really phenomenal. How many thousands of years has that been going on?"

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This week on Voices of the Tongass, Alaire Hughey takes us up into the alpine on her family's annual opening day hunt. To hear Alaire's story, and her views on subsistence living, click the play bar at the bottom of this post.

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Today brings another poetry episode of Voices of the Tongass. Berett Wilber's collection of poetry,Lesser Known Marine Mammal's Lesser Known Love Songs, is inspired by her life in Southeast Alaska. To hear Berett read hear poem, TheContingencies of Chance, scroll to the bottom of this post.

the contingencies of chance

where does the outside end?

when the air enters your lungs?

in the beds of your fingernails?

 

let yourself feel

terrified.

 

up against the edges

of your skin, fear

will rip your lungs into sails,

tear down the lines between things and

 

collapse you.

breathe yourself in:

the scent of lilacs at night,

the silver of the river at our ankles:

the oxygen in your blood is

already just air

and so you are

already just everywhere.

 

we are vessels, pitchers, open bowls

and the sheer strain of living

tears holes in us

that we cannot repair ourselves.

we can only fill each other:

give yourself away.

(you become hollow if you

board yourself up

if the walls inside of you echo,

splinter through them).

 

the tiny sutures of your eyes,

your voice: rope yourself to the world.

it will stain you irreparably and you

will build yourself into it,

stretching spindly bridges

until they crumble and fall.

 

in the moments

where you have to strip back the paper

of your walls, and

raze the scaffolding of your life

to the ground -

 

curse if you must.

but if you would like to keep yourself alive,

open your mouth

and pour yourself out.

 

the world will never demand less of you.

 

we were not meant to stand empty for long.

This week on Voices of the Tongass, John Straley talks about what it means to succeed in the Last Frontier, from building a career to building a family. To hear the show, scroll to the play bar at the bottom of this post.

John Straley's father could not have predicted that moving to the Last Frontier would turn his horse-shoeing son into an intellectual. "He always thought I was better suited to be running a chainsaw," John says. "He was very proud when I became a writer, but he thought it was good that I had a back-up career as a laborer." John's father needn't have worried. While John didn't take the most traditional path to being one of Alaska's most celebrated modern authors, he certainly took an effective one. "Being a horseshoer turns out to be a good motivation to be an intellectual. Your back motivates you to read books." While it also might have helped that there weren't many horses around, any way you look at it, he seems to have subverted his father's expectations. From being a private eye to a youth conservation leader, there are few corners of the community that John has not have a presence in. And of course, his experience means has led to a life as no literary slouch: he has been published many times in many genres, serving as Alaska's writer laureate between 2006 and 2008.

But, like any reputable laborer, John isn't one to dwell on success. After almost forty years living in Alaska, he's come to value his work not by the quantity of his audience, but by it's quality. "I've been in a fancy hotel. And waited in the lobby for my driver and a Lincoln Town car to take me to a bookstore," he says. "I didn't make enough money that day to change anything. If I can give a reading at the library here, I'm happy. That's as much audience as I need. if I can go to a friend's house and read their kids to sleep, that's as much as I need."

And like his own father, John has learned to have his own expectations about being a father subverted. Attention to accurate description, necessary qualities for a writer and a poet, had some different effects when it came to fatherhood. He tells a story about teaching his son Finn some of the everyday joys of the Alaskan experience with his wife, Jan. "When we lived in Fairbanks," he tells us, "she got a hand lens, and when a mosquito landed on Finn's arm, she showed him what happens when a mosquito lands on him. Vividly. And when he steps outside the next day, and the screen door is just black with mosquitos, he starts screaming because the air is filled with monsters that suck his blood." There is a significant pause while John reflects. "This was a mistake," he admits.

But for any listener who has the opportunity to hear even a few of John's stories, it's impossible to believe that parenthood in Alaska was all tribulation - far from it. Near the end of his interview, John says something about the life he has built in the Alaska that rings true, even for those of us who have not spent nearly as much time in the wilderness as John has. "We've stayed here for now, jeez, almost 35 years or more," he says. "It's just become a fabulous part of our family. It changed all the stories I've written, the poems I've written. I'm sixty years old. I'm just happy to be alive. I can't imagine living any place else."

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This week on Voices of the Tongass we get to hear from Sitka native Torin Lehmann. To hear the show, scroll to the play bar at the bottom of this post. To read about the challenges of remote life, and why Torin feels lucky to be facing them, read on.

Photo By Berett Wilber

Torin Lehman is 23 years old and has the best commute in the Western Hemisphere. Maybe even in the world. It helps that the only way to get to work is by float plane. "We take off and we start heading south, fly over Camp Coogan. If it's really cloudy sometimes we'll have to fly all the way around the tip of the island, around Chatham. But if it's a sunny day we can fly directly over the island. When you get up there it's just mountains as far as the eye can see. Sometimes we'll fly closer to see if we can spot any goats or bear or deer, and on the approach into Deer Lake you can see the cabin and an awesome natural log jam at the mouth of the lake." Torin is a seasonal fisheries technician for NSRAA, and we managed to catch him for an interview on one of his rare days off in town. He works at a remote release station for coho salmon at Deer Lake, on the eastern side of Baranof Island. His job entails raising a stock of 2.8 million coho salmon until they're big enough to be released into the ocean, which is an eleven month process.

When he's not feeding millions of coho fry, Torin still has to find ways to stay busy. Fortunately, growing up in the Tongass has given him a lot of practice at creative entertainment. "I remember being six, seven years old and running around in the woods pretending I was a knight or a soldier. You're given this stretch of land and you kind of build a story for yourself to interact with, you go out and use your imagination to build upon that." Torin thinks that the place he grew up and the amount of time he's gotten to spend outdoors contribute to the creativity he now has when it comes to life in the Togass. "I think growing up here encourages you to go out and explore and use your imagination and be creative with your surroundings. Down south, one of the things I noticed, at least with the friends I made, was that the things to do were to go to the mall or play video games." Experiencing life "down south" reminds Torin how lucky he feels to be from Alaska. "How many other kids got to go whale watching from the minute they were born til now?...It teaches you not to take things for granted because there are millions of people who don't get to enjoy the things we do here."

Even with a lake full of tiny fish to keep him company, and no matter how creative he gets, Torin is out for weeks at a time. It can feel isolating. It's hard to see his friends and family in Sitka, let alone maintain the connections with people he knows outside of the state. For people who live in the Lower 48, this might not seem like a big deal, but for many young Alaskans, it's a major challenge. If you grow up in a small town, you know that maintaining good relationships with people you care about can have a huge impact on your happiness. "You know, I went to school in Maryland," Torin says, "And trying to keep in touch with people from back there…" he trails off and shakes his head. "You have to work at it. On the East or West coasts, if you haven't seen a friend in a while, you can just hop in your car. Here, if you want to see someone you went to school with, you have to buy a [plane] ticket, and figure dates out." For young people in Alaska just entering the job market, it makes trying to find a balance between their relationships and the place they live both frustrating and expensive.

Despite the challenges of rural life, Torin still has a great attitude. His approach to staying positive is close to the hearts of Sitkans of every generation: "Living in Sitka, you have to enjoy the rain, that's for sure. But it definitely makes the sunny days that much better," he says. As we all know, Sitka has had a particularly sunny summer, and the night of Torin's interview is beautiful. "I'll probably go to the gym for a little bit after this, go on a hike with the dogs," he says with a smile. "Have a beer. Watch the sunset." After all, it is his weekend.

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This week's show takes us under the breaking waves for a night dive with Taylor White. To hear more about Taylor's relationship with the ocean, read on. To hear her episode of Voices of the Tongass, scroll to the bottom of this post.

photo by Berett Wilber

Taylor White is 22 years old and she shares her office with a killer whale skeleton. She is the Aquarium Manager at the Sitka Sound Science Center. Whether it's describing a night dive off the coast of Baranof Island or a kayak trip launched from her front yard, Taylor talks about the ocean like it's a member of her family. It has drawn Taylor back each year to dive and snorkel her way into a job. "Leaving the ocean made me realize how much I wanted it in my life," she says about her four years spent studying marine biology in the frustratingly landlocked Eastern Washington.

"I always wonder about how I would be if I grew up in a suburb," Taylor says. She wouldn't call herself a hard core crazy outdoors person, but because nature is literally at her doorstep it has become an integral part of her life. "I think any place where you grow up shapes who you are." More specifically, Taylor feels that growing up in Sitka, Alaska, has grounded her and given meaning to the way she lives her life. "I'm appreciative for the perspective that Alaska gives you...you're more a part of it, and more a part of the natural process than you would be in other places...Those sorts of experiences that don't happen in other places." Like the summer her friend got attacked by a bear while biking. "They make you stop and think about the place in the wider picture….it just makes you think more."

When Taylor thinks about her four years in Washington, she remembers feeling pressed to meet deadlines and "living life not necessarily day by day." One of Taylor's favorite things is landing in Sitka on the narrow runway that juts out into the water. Her first stop in town is at Sandy Beach, where she loves to run into the water, no matter the season. "When I come back here it's kind of nice to just stop and find my place again, instead of getting wound up with what I might call less of living and more of just doing." She adds, here I think I live with more of a purpose and I understand better where I belong in my community, and in my surroundings, and that's because of all those experiences of growing up and going away and coming back."

If the play bar doesn't pop up below, try clicking the link.

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Over the course of the summer, I had a chance to talk to a huge number of fishermen, but our conversations did not happen just at the harbors, docks, or in Sitka's Pbar. Instead, they occurred on tenders.

Tenders are a very important component of Southeast Alaska's fishing industry and serve fishing boats that are far from their home harbors.

Robby Bruce stands in front of his tender the "Ginny C", which was serving gill netters in Deep Inlet, Sitka, AK.

Either stationary like the Shoreline Scow by Pelican or mobile like Sitka's Ginny C or Deer Harbor II, tenders serve our fishermen with paychecks, ice, and at times with rare amenities like hot showers and right-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. The job of tender boats is to unload the catch from fishing boats on the fishing grounds. On the tender boats, the fishermen's catch gets sorted, weighed, iced up, and packed away in a matter of minutes. During those minutes, there is a lot of physical and mental endurance by people who are typically behind the scenes in the fishing industry.

As a community organizer, I saw working on tenders as not only a way to reach out to fishermen about the Tongass Transition during the busy fishing season, but also as a way to get some sort of experience in the lifestyle and hard work that most people in Southeast commit to in order to make their living.

Picture the King salmon opening in July, which is one of the busiest times for salmon trollers and consequently for the tenders. A typical day for tender deckhands begins at 6 or 7 in the morning with greetings from fishermen that have been waiting to sell their fish since 3 am. There is not just one boat waiting to offload, but a line of 5 boats with more lingering close by. The hydraulics are turned on, the crane is in motion, and bags of fish are hauled one at a time from the fishermen's boat to a tray on the tender where the deckhands sort the fish for quality and weight.

The skipper and a deckhand aboard the Shoreline Scow around Pelican, AK sort Cohos to be weighed.

Once weighed these often heavy and large fish are grasped by the gills and neck, one in each hand, by deckhands that then simultaneously toss both fish into a tote with a repetition that fills the tote with layers of fish and ice in a matter of seconds. These deckhands have to be quick, to operate under pressure, to persevere with numb hands and hungry bellies as each fishermen offloads thousands of pounds of their livelihood onboard in the hopes to catch more in the next few days.

With troll caught Coho aboard, deckhands of the Ginny C and myself removed the ice from salmon bellies, weighed the fish, placed them in totes, and then stuffed their bellies again with ice.

After working on their feet for hours, moving around totes of around 1000 pounds of fish and ice, breaking apart new totes of ice with metal shovels, tossing around 12 pound fish with sore muscles and wrists, stuffing salmon bellies with ice, and then scrubbing the whole operation down with bleach, Joy soap, and water, the deckhands yawn themselves to bed around 2 am, quite possibly still covered in fish slime. Then they will sleep for4 or 5 hours, wake up, and do it all over again.

The Shoreline in Pelican, AK has been a woman-run operation for decades, and I was fortunate to join them for a few days and share in their hard, hard work, which helps our fishermen keep fishing.

Stay tuned! I will be posting a blog piece focused on the advocacy work I did on tenders entitled "You slay 'um, we weigh 'um": a mix of tendering and Tongass Transition advocacy in Southeast Take Two.A big thank you to KaiLea Wallin who coined the two slogans I have used as titles for these blog pieces.

This week's episode of Voices of the Tongass takes us deep under the surface of our coastal waters. To hear Tory O'Connell share stories from her underwater research career, scroll to the bottom of this post and click the play bar. To read more about why Tory chose to make her life in Alaska, read on.

Tory O'Connell's perspective on the ocean is usually reserved, well, for fish. Though she was raised in New Jersey, she first came to Alaska in 1978 to work on a bowhead whale survey in the Chukchi Sea. Her first gig in Sitka was working as a diver biologist for a rockfish survey earning $100 a month. It was the very beginning of the commercial rockfish fishery in Alaska, and Tory's life was about to become seriously entwined with one of Alaska's most colorful vertebrates.

"There's a little two person submersible called the Delta. It's this little yellow submarine, and originally in 1985, I was aware that there was this program called The National Undersea Program, and we were trying to figure out how many Yelloweye Rockfish there were. It was hard because they live in rocky habitats and deep water - normally you would just troll, but that doesn't work in rocky habits. And you can't tag them because rockfish have a swim bladder that inflates at the surface. So I got this idea to use the submersible. We wrote a grant and it surprised everyone when we got it." And so, Tory began to use the Delta to dive down and count Yelloweye Rockfish.

Flash forward to the present. Sitting in Tory's office at the Sitka Sound Science Center, her innovation and success no longer seem surprising. Tory is one of the premiere marine experts on the bottomfish of the Pacific. She has traveled all over the world talking about how to record and sample hard-to-find species in hard-to-access habitats, and racked up more than 600 dives in the Delta submersible, from California to Alaska. And though she has been SCUBA diving in almost every place she has ever been to, she says that the diving here at home is hard to beat. "Sitka, the outer coast of Southeast Alaska, has some of the best scuba diving in the world," Tory says, adding that while the water is not very warm, the visibility in deep water can be up to a hundred feet.

And there's more connecting Tory to this place than the time she's spent underwater. When we asked Tory how living in Alaska has changed who she is today, her response was that raising her two daughters in Sitka has had the most impact on her. "It's hard to figure out what's because of Sitka. I think I have become a better person because my children are such great people…I think this will always be home to them."

Because Tory grew up on the east coast, she can see how growing up in Sitka has been a different experience for her two daughters. "Popping tar bubbles with your feet in the summer in New Jersey. That I miss. And I miss downpours, thunder and lighting, I miss that in the summer and fall. Real bread, I miss real bread...fireflies. But on the other hand you get phosphorescence. And [Margot and Chandler's] experience has been pretty rich here...I can't imagine my life without Sitka."

Tory isn't the only one who feels like her life is intertwined with Southeast Alaska. Many Alaskans found their way here in their early twenties, like Tory, and came up with ways to stay. Tory started out as a research assistant making barely enough to get by, and in a few short years she was the point person running the Rockfish survey project. For Tory, Alaska was and is a place where she could make opportunities for herself, and literally choose her own adventure.

How have you shaped your life in Alaska? How has Alaska shaped you?

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By. Nora McGinn, Sitka Salmon Shares Organizer

The Sitka Salmon Shares office sits on Main Street in Galesburg, Illinois, approximately 3,000 miles from the Tongass National Forest and the communities of Southeast Alaska. Despite this distance, we share a commitment to the salmon, fishermen and public lands that make up the Tongass National Forest.

As we at Sitka Salmon Shares navigate connecting socially and environmentally conscious consumers in the Midwest with small boat fishermen in Sitka and Juneau we have continued to return to the story of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass poses a particularly compelling connection for many people out here in the Midwest.

In the conversations I've had and the advocacy letters I've read I have learned that, as proud Midwesterners, our members understand they need to support their fellow citizens and public lands beyond their regional borders. They identify with the inextricable connection between place, culture and livelihood. They can relate to the fine balance between stewardship and reliance on resources. And just as they enjoy supporting their local farms, dairies and breweries, they appreciate supporting their fisherman, who although not as local is just as fundamental to their food system.

But, for most of our members, their growing reverence for the Tongass National Forest comes down to something much simpler: the taste and quality of the wild salmon we deliver to their doorstep during the summer months. They know that the bountiful streams and rivers of the Tongass National Forest reared their wild salmon. They understand that the delicious and nourishing salmon that ends up on their dinner tables had a long journey -- a journey that connects them to their fishermen and to the Tongass as a whole.

When Midwesterners join Sitka Salmon Shares, we help them become aware of the Tongass National Forest as a national treasure. And for these reasons, they feel a responsibility to safeguard it for both those that rely on the Tongass for their livelihood locally, and for folks like them, thousands of miles away, fortunate enough to share in its bounty.

Therefore our members in Minnesota have been writing to Senator Al Franken, our members in Wisconsin have been communicating with Senator Tammy Baldwin, and our members in Illinois, Iowa and Indiana have been contacting the Chief of the Forest Service Tom Tidwell in order to advocate for the Tongass and the Tongass Transition. They all write to share their hopes for a healthy, sustainable future in the Tongass by prioritizing funding for watershed restoration, caring for salmon habitat and making sure fisheries remain strong so that communities, near and far, can thrive.