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Right on schedule, after packing up and saying our goodbyes, Todd and the TAZ arrived outside “the gut” to transport us back to the Gustavus dock.

Once again, Colton shuttled us, and our gear out through the narrow channel.

We had a lovely cruise back to the Gustavus dock.

From the dock, we went to the airport and made fond farewells as the Rhetoricians left, or stayed on a bit for a wonderful music party at Lou Cacioppo’s Outpost Gallery.

Here’s their lovely faces… my Tribe… who share a passion for this beautiful, irreplaceable planet.

I left an old friend and a significant piece of my musical history behind. The sturdy Ibanez acoustic-electric cutaway dreadnaught guitar was my primary touring guitar for over 20 years. I brought on this trip, knowing that I would probably find a new home for it. With all of the enjoyment it saw that week at the Institute, passing from hands to hands around the campfire and lodge, its next incarnation became clear.

If you ever are blessed with a visit to the Institute, play a tune on it for me, ok? And if you let me know you’re going, I’ll send you off with a new set of strings!

I can easily envision a songwriting session at the Institute for musicians who want to create music to help educate and inspire other humans to heal the Earth. An activist friend recently said, addressing a neighborhood celebration in my Bellingham hometown, that “it’s the artists who keep their fingers on the pulse of cultural shifts and upheavals.” As artists, we are often given the privilege and responsibility of stage time. I know I want to make the most of mine, not in a preachy sort of way, but by using the power of music and the songwriting craft to encourage greater connection and understanding, in the service of our Mother, for present and future generations.

It was an honor to live and learn with these excellent teachers and students in such an incredible environmental education center.

Please visit InianIslandsInstitute.org for updates on their work.

I know I will support their work in any way I can.

Let’s make the Earth sing again!

The Hobbit Hole had been named by Zach Brown‘s mother back in the 1980s. At the time, she was a deck hand on one of the fishing boats that regularly found shelter and community during the summer fishing season, when Icy Strait was a major commercial fishery. (Sadly, no more.)

Approaching the Hobbit Hole. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know it was there.

It was popular because of its extraordinarily sheltered bay, accessible by a small boat or skiff through a narrow “gut”. Fishing boats can enter in a high tide, skiffs when the tide is low. The tidal exchanges in the north land are large to huge, so when the tide is running strong in either direction, it makes for an engine straining ride and a vigorous (to impossible) paddle in the opposing direction.

The “Gut” looking out of the Hobbit Hole.

We shuttled ourselves and our gear and beer through the “gut” in 4 or 5 trips, greeted at the Hobbit dock by a young girl in a life jacket and two large, boisterous dogs. This was the family of the Inian Islands Institute caretakers, Colton and Lexie.

Colton and Lexie, caretakers of the Hobbit Hole.

Inside the Hobbit Hole, looking out at the dock.

Lexie’s “caboose” and lovely daughter.

Colton and Lexie served up truly amazing food all week long, no small challenge when fresh food can be a rarity in isolated communities. We ate wild-caught meat, garden greens, foraged plants from seashore and field. Every. Single. Meal. Fresh sourdough bread, waffles, biscuits, pancakes and even chocolate chip cookies! Homemade yogurt.

Once we and our gear made it up the boardwalk, we toured the facility. There was a plumbed “guest house” for anyone with mobility issues. Then the essential “shop”packed full of “fixits” that every homestead in remote AK must have in order to keep things working with expert “fixers” are far flung and expensive to bring in. Upstairs of the shop was a library filled with great reading material and !a pool table! (soon to become a convertible ping pong table…)

Our youngest staff member showing off the recently painted art in the “guest house”.

The third building housed the kitchen, dining and living and lecture room, with caretaker living quarters on the second floor.

Tucked into the bluff overlooking the bay was the bunk house and spacious living room area where the majority of us would stay. A few of us opted to pitch our tents in various secluded or convenient locations.

I was one of the tent pitchers, and after the first couple of nights, my back remembered that it could be happy even on a thermarest on medium hard ground. Although bears are always possible, since they do know how to swim, there is no resident bear population in the Inians. Environmental awareness and good food hygiene are ALWAYS a good idea, though. No bear scat, no rub trees, no bear belly or digging holes were evident.

We were up and ready for class after a world class breakfast. Class started at 9 each morning with a discussion about John Muir meeting the Tlingits as described in Dan Henry’s book, Across The Shaman’s River. Dan and Zach traded off packing our brains full of rhetoric technique and natural history, and finally, composing and practicing our presentations around a campfire. Our schoolin’ seldom ended before 10pm. We topped off the long days with singing and playing music, members of the group slowly peeling off to bed according to our individual stamina. Daylight came early, around 3am and it was never completely pitch dark. So goes the long Alaskan days of summer.

After a lovely overnight visit with Tony Tengs, my dear friend, newly emancipated after 26 years of service on the AK ferries, I was dropped off at the Juneau airport at 2pm on Saturday, June 30^th.

This was the appointed time to meet my 11 fellow rhetoricians and 2 profs before we made the short hop via jet to the small (but not as small as it used to be) town of Gustavus, gateway to Glacier Bay National Park.

Four private vehicles met us at the airport to haul us and our gear a few miles to the Gustavus dock. We passed fields ablaze with fireweed and other wildflowers, with the gorgeous backdrop of the Fairweather Range, jagged and expansive, mantled in white that would remain the entire summer and into the first “termination dust” of autumn.

Many years have passed since I had the opportunity to visit this beautiful community in full blown summer. As a young adult, I worked at the Glacier Bay Lodge in the late 1970s, and on a small, 80 passenger cruise ship they plied the SE Alaska waters in the summer of 1983.

Subsequently, I had visited in the spring (after the SE Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau) or in the fall as part of an Alaska tour, but not during the golden and relatively raucous time of fireweed fields and Park and town abuzz with visitors, salmon runs and seasonal staff.

Todd’s “TAZ” water taxi service is well known in these parts, where small water-bound communities depend on water or air charters to get to the outside world, for work, play, appointments etc. Musicians from one or more of these communities may opt to group charter to SE AK music festivals, the State Fair in Haines, and other gatherings. Most of the smaller nooks and crannies of SE are not served by the Alaska Marine Highway System. And for the communities where the ferry DOES come, schedules sometimes change because of repairs and maintenance, or the scheduled runs are spaced too far apart to be practical.

Anyway, Todd and the TAZ provide a valuable service, and now our little group were the beneficiaries. In a few minutes, we and our gear were loaded, an assortment of suitcases, backpacks, duffels and a bit of beer (thanks to Zach) to fuel our upcoming 4^thof July celebration. After a safety briefing, we were on our way to the Inian Islands.

As I sat on the upper deck with my back against the pilot house, I watched the Gustavus dock recede into the wide V of our wake. I took stock of our group demographics. All appeared to be of college student age, undergrad to doctorate. Exceptions were… a long time Tenakee resident and retired educator I’d seen before at the Juneau Folk Fest, author and rhetoric instructor Dan Henry, and myself.

As it turned out, there WERE many students among us, in various stages of earning their degrees, as well as a number of working naturalists and guides. Dr. Zach Brown, Gustavus native and director of the Inian Islands Institute, had completed his doctorate a couple of years before raising the nearly million dollars in funds required to purchase the property from the Howe brothers.

So, we were scientists and sociologists, but it didn’t take long before the musicians and theater buffs of the group made themselves known. Easily half the group, during the course of our week together, picked up one of the two two guitars and three ukes and EVERYONE sang, especially on the 4^th of July, relaxed by a soak in the wood-fired hot tub and Zach’s beer. (We sang every song we could think of with the word “America” in it. “Make America SING again!”)

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After an hour plus on the TAZ, watching lightly inhabited or uninhabited (by humans) islands slide by, a few whale spouts and countless eagles and sea otters, we tied up to the floating dock outside the “Hobbit Hole”, our home for the next week.