Sketchmap of fish highlights in Áak’w, little lake (Auke Lake)
When a hydrologist lives on a lake
All of Dan and Beth’s now-adult children grew up on the shores of Áak’w, little lake, playing with baby salmon and chasing waves of metamorphizing toadlets across the lawn (a sadly eclipsed phenomenon). This is one of the earliest Environaid reports, written 5 years before I started working with Dan. Titled Auke Lake Community College: land-water investigation, it’s basically a complete natural history of the lake and its surroundings, from one who knew it more intimately than any other 2-legged I can imagine.
Nothing in this report says anything about the client, or purpose. Presumably it was commissioned by someone with the Community College, now known as the University of Alaska Southeast.
By the way, if you know the artist who created this lovely campus cover illustration, please let me know. I can’t read the signature in lower left. I suspect the same person also drew the oval dam-&-dipper logo that would shortly become the standard cover-header for Environaid reports. That pairing symbolized Dan’s conviction that people and their environment could grow mutually beneficial relationships, if we just pay closer attention.
Leigh Smith and I, somewhat disrespectfully, began to address Dan as the Big Dipper, in recognition of that optimistic expectation.
