Travel, Photography, Culture
Totem Park in Sitka, Alaska
A response to the SNAPSHOTS technology and nature prompt
Ambling through the deep hush of the forest in Sitka, Alaska, it’s hard not to be slightly worried about encountering a bear, especially given the prominent markers announcing the last bear sighting (in our case, that very morning!) placed here and there along the trail.
We’d just spent a week cruising the Inner Passage aboard the Alaskan Dream, a thirty-two person catamaran, and were quite excited about seeing the Fortress of the Bear, the Raptor Center and Totem Park.
Words are, perhaps, the oldest form of technology which we humans possess. Whether etched into stone, papyrus, or wood, symbolic representations of our language and thoughts have endured throughout time in various cultures all over the world.
Here, in Alaska and in the Pacific Northwest, entire histories are carved into totem poles. Ravens, eagles and wolves, symbolic of native moieties (or clans) swirl up the trunks of massive cedar trunks.
