Encounters in Alaska

You'd think after living in Alaska for so many years--as in all my life--that there wouldn't be much I don't know about our fair state. Oh how wrong that would be.

In fact there are tons of things I don't know which is why I have developed a love for a certain radio show. It's called Encounters and it airs every Tuesday afternoon on our local KSKA public radio station. I catch it while I'm heading to the school to pick up the kids and invariably I tell them "shhhh!" as they get into the car so I can hear the last few sentences.

It's a strange show, really strange actually, because it's an hour-long monologue from Dr. Richard Nelson as he travels around the state to narrate different scenes of Alaskan life. Now that may not sound that exciting but Nelson has a doctorate in cultural anthropology and has lived in Alaska for 40 years in places as exotic and isolated as Wainwright, Sitka and Kodiak. He has this talent for sitting down in a scene of Alaskan wilderness and telling you what he's seeing and making it sound so appealing and interesting that if you closed your eyes you'd swear you were sitting next to him. Though I wouldn't advise doing that while you're driving. Not safe.

During one program he watched a hummingbird feeding frenzy and you could hear all the buzzings as if you were right there, on another he watched a pod of humpback whales bubblenet feeding and yesterday he talked about how Native Alaskan people--specifically the Inupiat--handled the extreme temperatures of the North Slope. Fascinating? Completely. And it's doubly amazing that I'm a fan considering that I'm not what you'd call an "animal person," it just shows you how good the show must be.

If you like hearing about Alaska or are at all interested in the natural world I'd highly recommend catching his program. You can sign up for the postcasts here, click on the itunes button and have the shows sent directly to your ipod (like me!) If you scroll down the podcast feed page you can see a list of past episodes and catch up.

Sometimes you can get things from outside of the state--last year he traveled to Australia and did a series of Encounters from all over the continent, talking about bats and kookaburras and kangaroos and all sorts of amazing creatures and I hung on every word. One thing you might try--if you have children who like nature programs (that would be us, I swear I should have an honorary degree in zoology)--you could play the programs for them at night as they're falling asleep which has been popular around here.

Squeeze that education into them any way you can, right?

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