"Walking Home: A Traveler in the Alaskan Wilderness...."

Today is a first for me -- I have a guest writer - my spouse wrote the following about "Walking Home" by Lynn Schooler. As he was reading this book, he read passages to me and we both thoroughly enjoyed it so I wanted to share my spouse's thoughts on the book as well as some quotes he shared from the book - enjoy this excellent book! pazt

Schooler is a resident of Juneau, Alaska, and has lived in the state often referred to as “The Last Frontier” for 40 years. He’s worked as a commercial fisherman, a shipwright, a wilderness guide, and an award-winning wildlife photographer. He’s also written The Blue Bear and The Last Shot.

In this 2010-published narrative, Schooler finds himself in middle age and at the end of Juneau’s worst winter in history. He’s been pre-occupied building a handcrafted home for he and his wife, and at the same time knows his marriage is in trouble. Good friends are dying while other locals jumping from bridges to their deaths … so Schooler escapes.

Walking Home is his story of his solo journey into the wilderness. He takes his small boat north, anchors in a cove, and hikes along the wild Gulf of Alaska coastline.

His narrative of course tells the story of his journey, but it’s also a story of the people who have made a living on this coast, those who have lived there, and those who have died there. The human story tells about the region’s Tlingit People, and trappers, miners, explorers, shipwrecked sailors, and hermits. Schooler also gives the reader stunning insights into the natural world of the Southeast Alaskan coastline.

Along the way, the author struggles with questions about his life, his wife, their relationship, but … most importantly … questions about his place in the world he inhabits – and loves!

One of Schooler’s observations that stands out is his encounter with flocks of birds heading north for the summer. A stiff north headwind had kept the northbound flyers grounded for two days, and now, a low-pressure system moves in and gives them a boost on their northbound journey.

“… the birds had gone airborne in masse to gain an energy-saving boost by surfing north on the oncoming pressure wave.

‘I understood all this intellectually, but there was also something else going on. High overhead I could see a long, wavering line of sandhill cranes. At sea level flock after flock of phalaropes sped by just outside the breaking waves. Most impressive of all were the flocks of sandpipers, which roared past by the thousands, parting to fly around me like water flowing around a boulder in a stream…

“I understood that the first bird I had seen, the lone fluttering sandpiper … was simply that, a single bird, alone in a harsh and vast landscape. In its solitude, it was inconsequential. But a thousand birds, or ten time ten to a hundred thousand, had become a single consciousness, flying in perfect unison.

“I knew that many of the birds would not survive the journey … For the individual there is no reasonable hope of a long life, but in the cyclical flocking, migrating, nesting, hatching, and migrating again, over and over through the centuries, there is continuity. And that, I understood, is what truly matters, for we, too contribute to our own kind’s continuation, whether through children and grandchildren or by building a sold home to provide a shelter for coming generations. Though we will inevitably die and be forgotten, as have the majority of kings and generals throughout history, it is a consolation that in the absence of any permanence there is continuity. In sum, it does not matter if we are forgotten; what matters is the effect we have on those around us and those who come after us. What matters is how our own lives affect the larger, perpetual community of the living.

“Slowly the flocks thinned out, and it began to rain. I made camp that evening … Rain drummed on the tent all night, but I was warm and dry inside. And some time in the night I decided to head back to Juneau. As with the birds, I realized, it is a connection with one’s own kind that matters the solitude of the outer coast was a grand, almost overwhelming experience, but now it was time to go home, to be with my neighbors and friends, sharpen my tools, and court my wife again. It was time to catch up with my own flock.”