Wild edibles overnight class at Asx̱’ée, twisted tree (Eagle River delta) in 1989
The outdoor kitchen: How habitats feed the animals of Lingít Aaní
For the 6th annual teacher seminar, we’re tag-teaming with Tlingit traditional foods specialist Vivian Yéilkʼ Mork. Our 4 outings will alternate between Steve & Richard’s natural history—a ‘who eats who‘ approach—and Vivian’s cultural connections to the land.
For me, these outings will be somewhat of a ‘homecoming.’ Even before our founding in 1989—through our ‘mother company’, Ken Leghorn’s Alaska Discovery Inc—adult classes on wild edibles were among our most popular offerings. With Scott Brylinski, Discovery Southeast’s first director, and Cathy Pohl, we held most of these ‘foody sleep-ins‘ at Asx̱’ée, twisted tree (Eagle River), where I was caretaker from 1980 to 1992. That, naturally, will be the site of our last-day’s cookout in the 2024 series
Here’s a list of resources you may find helpful for exploring the trophics—basically the science of food webs—of the northern coastal rain forest, and of energy-exchange across its more generous transitional habitats or ecotones. Unless you’re a porcupine or sawfly, the shady conifer forest can be a hungry place. Human gatherers, hunters and gardeners gravitate more to edgy places, Like ideally, where land, sea and river come together. We call that intersective feeding frenzy an estuary.
First, our required texts:
● Carstensen, R. 2015. Why do we live here? Investigating Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Áak’w and T’aakú Aaní. Discovery Southeast for Goldbelt Heritage Foundation.
● Newton, R & M. Moss, eds, 2009. Haa Atx̱aayí Haa Ḵusteeyíx̱ Sitee, Our food is our way of life. USFS R10-MR-50.
Strongly recommended:
● Pojar, J. & A. MacKinnon, eds. 1994. Plants of the Pacific Northwest coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. Lone Pine Publishing, Redmond, WA. (most recent edition is 2016 but so far I don’t see enough new in it to merit retiring the old one)
Core resources for ethnobotany and wild edibles:
● Deur, D & N. Turner, 2006. Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. University of Washington Press. ● Multi-author collaboration on the revelation that northwest coast cultures were not passive collectors of nature’s bounty, but active managers; transplanting, fertilizing, weeding and enhancing production of favored species.
● E-flora BC Best for taxonomic status and distribution of our SE AK species
● Hulten’s 1968 Flora of Alaska, I just discovered there’s a lovely free digital version of this standard reference on Alaska’s vascular plants. Specimen maps & line drawings.
● Moerman, D. 1998. Native American ethnobotany. Timber Press. ● Nancy Turner recommends Moerman’s ethnobotany database as the continent’s most comprehensive source on native plant uses. Just type your plant into the search box.
● Mork, V. Planet Alaska Facebook ● Mork & Faith Prescott Planet Alaska Postcards from the planet, Juneau Empire column
● Schofield, N. 1989. Discovering wild plants: Alaska, western Canada, the Northwest. Alaska Northwest Books
● Turner, N. 1995. Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples (Royal British Columbia Museum Handbook). Vancouver: UBC Press.
There is no free lunch. And it’s so delicious when you pay. Illustration by Ray Troll.
Links within JuneauNature:
● Wild watershed. Sobering trophics above the middle school, 1997
● Natural & cultural history of Asx̱’ée. 16-minute slideshow, created 2004.
● Nexus: Estuaries of Southeast Alaska. Discoveries, 2004 Fall issue.
● Asx’ée (Eagle Beach) maps & historical series, 2020
● Tracking Asx’ée. Journal from Discovery staff training day at the scout camp. Includes air photo pageflipper series; best way to visualize changes to the delta over time.
● Nancy Turner at Eeyák’w. Journal from her walk at Eagle Valley Center, 20090814. Download 3mb pdf here.
Geopdfs for field navigation LiDAR for the central Áak’w village of Aanchg̱altsóow, nexus town (Auke Rec) is the first area where I was able to recognize a cultural site on what cartography geeks call “bare earth.” On Thursday evening we’ll use it to try to center ourselves within specific clan house outlines. Instructions for downloading and using Avenza are on the Navigation page. Download 4mb pdf here.
Last summer CBJ commissioned new orthophotography, so here’s hot off the press 2023 color infrared for thursday’s walk 20mb download
For our Saturday hike on horsetram trail, here’s another pair:
Bare earth with 10ft contours and our wetlands from the 2014 surveys. Download 14mb pdf here
And the same area on last summer’s CBJ orthophoto: Download 13mb pdf here
For our Sunday walk to Asx̱’ée, twisted tree (Eagle River delta) another pair of geopdfs for Avenza:
LiDAR hillshade with 2-ft contours. Download 7mb pdf here.
2023 CBJ orthophoto. Download 17mb pdf here.
As of 20240618, the scoping doc and daily journal for our 2024 teachers’ outing is a work in progress. But I’ll try to load it here, soon after the class. I’m also slowly retyping an edibles course handout written with Cathy from 1989. (Surprisingly informative! But our dot matrix printer was so pixelated that OCR spews jibberish). Meanwhile, enjoy these other windows onto the places and processes we’ll be tasting.
