The Allure of Building Alaska

I frequently watch a series on television called Building Alaska. It’s broadcast on the DIY Network, and each episode features three groups of people building homes in the Alaskan wilderness. Some of the people profiled hire professional builders while others do the construction themselves. They all face common challenges, including costs, weather, and transportation (on a recent episode, the windows for one home could only be delivered after being slung from the underside of a helicopter). In every episode, we see the homeowners and builders manage to deal with stress, and we observe their abilities to persevere and use creativity and ingenuity to carry on with their projects.

What draws me to this series? Part of it is the location. Alaska is the only U.S. state I haven’t at least passed through (for instance, I can count Idaho because I spent about an hour driving through the state on my way from Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming to Salt Lake City in Utah). As a result, Alaska is a state that’s long been on my must see list. When I was a kid, my maternal grandfather had hopes of taking our entire extended family on a vacation to Alaska, but incompatible school vacation schedules stopped those plans. Since then, I’ve toyed around with travel arrangements to Alaska, and I’ve even occasionally considered moving there for work. Now, I have two different friends who live in Anchorage with their families, and hopefully someday I’ll get there to say hello.

In addition to the allure of the location, another draw of the show for me is the scenery. Many of the homeowners choose building sites with spectacular lake or mountain views. It amazes me that our planet holds such beauty. Maybe if I lived surrounded by such scenery on a daily basis, it wouldn’t surprise me so much to see it on television. But for me, it’s a treat to take in such views, even if only on a small screen once in a while.

Aerial photograph of a mountain lake in Alaska. (USFWS National Digital Library/Steve Hillebrand)

Another draw of the show for me is the engineering aspect of it. This might be surprising, since I have no background in engineering. However, I enjoy watching the process of homebuilding. It’s interesting to see people start with plans on paper and progress through various stages of construction. For example, I never knew there were so many choices when it comes to foundations. But, the builders on the show each deploy different foundation systems depending on the terrain of the various building sites (in a recent episode, one builder used metal shipping containers as the foundation for a house that would be built atop them, while another used screw-in piles to accommodate rocky soil). They also use different construction methods, such as building log homes, timber framed homes, or stick-built homes, to create different styles of houses. Seeing a home emerge from a simple clearing in the woods to become something several stories tall and several rooms wide is fascinating.

I also enjoy observing the different people who are profiled on the series. One thing I’ve noticed is they each have different motivations for building. One recently profiled homeowner was building his home with the aim of eventually completing a weekend getaway place for his family. Another homeowner was building a home that he hoped could be used not only by his family but also by the families of veterans needing a respite from stress and trauma. Yet another couple was building not just a house to live in but also a base for their dog mushing business. As the homeowners focus on building the varied houses, each one also displays a different personality. Since I’m someone with an academic background in the humanities, it probably comes as no surprise that the human interest aspect to the series draws me in. I get emotionally attached to the homeowners’ stories, their ways of interacting with each other, their hopes, their disappointments, and their eventual successes.

I’ve written before about another television show I enjoyed called The Zoo: San Diego on Animal Planet. What these two shows have in common is that they are both educational. Whether learning about animals or learning about construction, I like to challenge my mind. I enjoy encountering new thoughts, ideas, people, and processes. What do you most enjoy about your favorite television show?

All About Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

As you may have gathered from my blog post about birding, I enjoy observing nature, even if just through a window. Therefore, you might not be surprised to learn that when I lived in Tucson, I visited several state parks, national parks, and national monuments throughout Arizona. I’ve been to what’s probably the most famous national park in the state, Grand Canyon National Park, twice, once while I lived in Tucson and once after. I also went to Saguaro National Park frequently, as it’s located on the outskirts of Tucson. Another of the state’s well-known national parks I visited is Petrified Forest National Park. There are so many state and national parks, monuments, trails, historic sites, and the like that I visited in Arizona, I couldn’t possibly list them all. If you’re curious, you can check out the National Park Service and the office of the Arizona State Parks and Trails for more information.

Today I want to focus on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is located in the southern part of Arizona, right on the border with Mexico. As the National Park Service (NPS) explains, this is the only place in the United States where the organ pipe cactus lives, with the rest of its natural habitat located in Mexico. The NPS also explains that Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was declared an International Biosphere Reserve in 1976 by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, in recognition of its unique Sonoran Desert ecosystem.

An Organ Pipe Cactus in the Arizona Desert Southwest. (Pixabay/Mike Goad)

In addition to its natural wonders, Organ Pipe National Monument also has a significant cultural history. The NPS offers a pretty comprehensive timeline of important events in the history of the park. I’ll just highlight a few items from the timeline here:

• 1450: The Hohokam people (who, as I learned in history class in my college days, had been living in farming villages in the area since prehistoric times) dispersed into the Tohono O’odham and Hia Ced O’odham cultures (who, as I learned when I lived in Tucson, were semi-nomadic people at the time, moving north and south between current-day Arizona and Mexico depending on the weather).
• 1540: The Spanish explorer Coronado and other members of his expedition party crossed through what is now Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
• 1698: The Catholic priest Father Eusebio Kino established a mission nearby, which led to ranching in the area.
• 1821: Mexico, which the land holding the current-day national monument was part of at the time, gained independence from Spain.
• 1850s: Mining began in the area.
• 1853: The Gasden Purchase occurred, making land south of the Gila River, including current-day Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, part of the United States.
• 1937: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with opposition from local ranchers and miners.
• 1939: The Tohono O’odham tribe was granted permission to graze livestock in the national monument.
• 1941-1976: The United States government allowed mining in the national monument, at first in order to support the WWII effort.
• 1940s: The first border fence was constructed in the area.
• 1952: The first campground in the national monument opened.
• 1959: All grazing rights in the national monument were discontinued.
• 1975: The last cattle were removed from the park.
• 1990s-present: Various border control measures have been implemented in and around the monument.

Although the Tohono O’odham people are only mentioned a few times in this official timeline, reading between the lines implies that ongoing points of tension between the tribe and the United States government must have occurred regarding the land where the national monument now sits. For example, what happened when the traditional settlements in the north and south of the Tohono O’odham lands were split between Mexico and the United States with the Gasden Purchase? We can be sure the Tohono O’odham people have not been able to travel freely across their lands in quite some time. And what about the traditional grazing lands within the national monument that are no longer available to the Tohono O’odham people? Undoubtedly, some hard feelings resulted from that decision.

Recently, some new hard feelings have been stirred. You may have seen news reports from the BBC, NBC News, and CBS News, among others, about actions taken by the United States government to build a new border wall through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. These news stories use some strong language to describe what’s happening there, stating that the area is being “blown up” and “blasted” in order to build the wall.

According to these news reports, the blasting areas include burial sites significant to the Tohono O’odham people, including graves of ancestors as well as graves of members of a rival tribe, the Apache, who frequently skirmished with the Tohono O’odham, who buried them in proper graves as a mark of respect. Nonetheless, the reports indicate that the Tohono O’odham tribe was not consulted prior to the blasting taking place. Not only that, but the reports also explain that saguaro cacti, which are widespread in the area and considered sacred by the Tohono O’odham people, are also being destroyed, even though these plants are protected by their own national park not too far away.

You might wonder how protected species and native grave sites can be destroyed. Aren’t there laws in place to prevent these things from happening? In fact, there are. However, the news reports indicate that the Real ID Act of 2005, passed into law as an anti-terrorism measure in the wake of 9/11, have allowed those other laws, including the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Environmental Protection Act, to be waived by President Trump’s administration.

I certainly appreciate that national security is important. I never want to witness something like 9/11 ever again. But I wonder what cost we as a nation are willing to pay for security. How much value do we place on graves that are hundreds or thousands of years old? Do we continue to value the memory of the people held in these graves all these many years later? Or are they expendable? What about the cacti that are being bulldozed? Does it matter that to an entire tribe of people these plants represent their ancestors? Or does someone else’s sacred beliefs not carry any weight? Or does it matter that without protection, these plants could be erased from the earth forever? What value do we place on the ecological diversity that is necessary to support the current life forms we know of?

Further, has anyone assessed the chances that one of the people passing across our southern border could be a terrorist so that a wall is necessary? Is it 1 in 10? 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 1,000,000? Which percentage seems a reasonable one to put our environment and cultural history at risk? Or is protection from terrorism not a requirement for building the wall, even though a law passed as an anti-terrorism measure is being used to waive other laws that would prohibit it? Are there other reasons for building this wall that outweigh the natural and cultural values we’re risking? If so, what are they?

I’d like to hear more of these kinds of discussions taking place in our country so we could reach reasonable conclusions. We might not all agree with all of the conclusions reached, but at least we would know they were based on careful consideration of the multiple factors involved. If anyone knows of a place where these discussions are happening and where they’re being disseminated in a public way, please let me know