Home sweet home!

Explain:
In this lesson I have learned to look deeper into the connections of people and the geologic forces that dealt them the landscape they enjoy.  I was reminded of the diverse biomes that the people of this planet have made into  sustainable communities despite sometimes harsh conditions.  I am reminded to stand in awe as I look at landscapes and think of the people who lived there hundreds or thousands of years ago and were able to provide for their children from the land in a way I in some ways envy yet respect in full for its harsh and demanding ways.

Extend and Evaluate
As I contemplate land shaping forces and how that has influenced cultural connections to the places they live many cultures come to mind.  The first that came to mind was the Sherpa people of Nepal, high in the Himalayas, such a violent collision of the Indian Plate and Asian Plate, leaving a very unique place to call "home".  What lead these people to settle here?  That same question has been in the back of my mind in many of my travels around Alaska.

On my first trip with my new friend James to hunt we traveled by skiff for hours through meandering rivers and canals cut by the US Army corp of Engineers.  As the raven flies the route may have been only 10-15 miles from the village but, by boat it took most of a day. As I look around the same question went through my mind. Why here?  By the end of the trip it made more sense, this land can provide. 

by Kevin H.

Parts of Alaska are thought to have formed near the equator based on paleomagnetic signatures, brought here as the North America continental plate and the Pacific Plate push and slide against one another.  Alaska has been on the receiving end of these terrains making geologist work hard to understand this complex  Alaska geology



Pacific plate bringing terrain to Alaska

Why do people stop and make a place their home?  Maybe they can go no further, maybe they just planned to stay until the weather changed, maybe they found the resources they sought or maybe they just looked around and liked what they had around them.  When I teach Earth Science again these topics and the idea of connecting with the land will go hand in hand with the theory of how the landscape was formed, be it western sciences version or one I have yet to learn from the people who live there....

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