Saturday, June 22, 2024 7-8:30 p.m. in the Bear Gallery
The Bear Gallery is located on the third floor of the Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts building in Pioneer Park, 2300 Airport Way, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Join Fairbanks Arts for this reading and dive into the world of landscapes, memoirs, and essays with Michael Engelhard this solstice!
Fairbanks Arts Association will be hosting Michael Engelhard in the Bear Gallery for a literary reading from his books: What the River Knows: Essays from the Heart of Alaska; Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks Range. The talk will be interspersed with video clips from Bruce Nelson’s “Alone Across Alaska.” The reading will be followed by a Q&A session and book signing.
The timing of the reading could not be more perfect. The summer solstice is a time to be present with nature and immerse ourselves in all that we learn from the rhythmic cycles of the earth. “Summer solstice — it always tastes bittersweet, as from here on daylight dwindles again.” -Arctic Traverse.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, with a degree from UAF and fieldwork experience in Northwest Alaska, Michael Engelhard worked for twenty-five years as an outdoor instructor and wilderness guide in the canyon country and Alaska.
“I first discovered storied landscapes as an anthropology student. Accompanying Alaska Native elders on hunting and fishing excursions, I shared in the place-based experience of people who maintained fluency in nature’s idiom to an unequaled degree. Each slough, each mountain pass, each peregrine roost or bear den spoke to them of a past that is also present. The landmarks and associated stories express a worldview as much as they embody knowledge. They focus the traditions of people whose history and self-image largely reside in the land. They define home rather than wilderness. They endure as part of a moral universe, eloquent reminders that continue to shape the identities of groups and individuals.
Among the Colorado Plateau’s mesas and canyons I found my own voice. There as well, indigenous cultures had assembled a record of things that centered and grounded them. They spoke to me through their rock art and ruins, through legends and myths, through Navajo silver and Hopi pottery. Yet like the enfolding landscape, these artifacts yielded more questions than answers, confounding the newcomer. I traced some of my own civilization’s stories while roaming redrock mazes that converged upon Glen Canyon—which in the 1960s succumbed to Lake Powell’s inertia. In the process, I realized words matter more than I thought: an artificial lake should be called a “reservoir,” in debt to the truth. What began as a personal quest quickly grew into a book. Others soon followed. As a wilderness guide and writer I not only unearth extant tales but also sink roots deep into landscapes, creating new stories that drive and sustain me.”
-Michael Engelhard
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