Wild Man Island
Page 14
During the 1990s I had been following the revolutionary discoveries in American archeology regarding when and how the Americas were peopled. Some of the most exciting developments were coming from caves on Prince of Wales Island, in southeast Alaska. Dr. Timothy Heaton’s excavations there uncovered a continuous record of bear, caribou, and other animal remains going back at least forty thousand years—throughout the last Ice Age, which previously was thought to have precluded the possibility of human coastal migrations. Archeologists were astounded by the implications, and so was I. If bears and caribou had survived there, then so might have humans.
As of now, the oldest evidence of humans in southeast Alaska, on Prince of Wales and other islands, is dated to around ten thousand years ago. There is good reason to believe that new discoveries will push this date back, perhaps much farther back. I began to think about writing a story in which a character makes a discovery that does just that. A cave would be the most likely place for him to make such a find. I could draw on my caving experiences in Missouri and New Mexico, and on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Admiralty Island, with its wilderness quality, promised the ideal setting. Its timeless old-growth forests suggested hidden secrets. I asked Jim Baichtal, a geologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Juneau, if karst formations (cave-bearing limestone) had been mapped on Admiralty. Yes indeed, he replied, and named several locales, including the Pybus Bay area, which are rich in karst but unexplored as yet for caves. This situation suited my fictional purposes perfectly. That the Pybus Bay area was one of the ice-free refugia in southeast Alaska during the Ice Age, and home to caribou and brown bears, is speculation on my part. The human remains found in my story and the date attached to them are fictional as well.
The factor that clinched Admiralty as my setting was some surprising news published by Friends of Admiralty Island in their Winter 2000 newsletter. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist had observed what almost certainly was a wolf, along with a feral dog, at a hunter-killed bear carcass. The two were exhibiting courtship behavior, which alarmed the biologist. If a small pack of wolves had swum from the mainland, they would have a profound effect on the ecology of the island, but interbreeding with dogs would jeopardize their integrity as wild animals. I could picture wolves as a factor in the novel, and the dog becoming a catalyst in the plot.
In addition to Jim Baichtal, I would like to thank Terry Fifield, an archeologist for the U.S. Forest Service on Prince of Wales Island, and Ed Grossman, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Juneau, for their generous assistance.
All characters in this novel are entirely fictional.
For further reading, I would point interested readers to “Hunt for the First Americans,” by Michael Parfit, National Geographic, December 2000; to Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America, by E. James Dixon, University of New Mexico Press, 1999; and to Dr. Timothy H. Heaton’s website www.usd.edu/esci/alaska/caves.html. Follow the links for caves on Prince of Wales Island, especially the fossil discoveries in On Your Knees Cave.
The ecology of salmon, seals, and brown bears in the cave stream described in Wild Man Island is based on an actual cave stream on Chichagof Island that flows out of Kook Lake. The abandoned cannery in this story, in a cove on the southern end of the island, is an actual place called Tyee, a tiny fishing port and cannery that shut down in the mid-1950s. Earlier in the twentieth century it had been a whaling station.
Admiralty Island was long the target of large-scale logging. Around 90 percent of the island—nearly a million acres—was spared that fate when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that gave it national monument status in 1978. Let’s hope that a thousand years from now, it will still be one of the wildest places on earth, still the Fortress of the Bears.
Durango, Colorado
April 2001
About the Author
Will Hobbs is the award-winning author of many previous novels for young readers, including FAR NORTH, GHOST CANOE, THE MAZE, JASON’S GOLD, and DOWN THE YUKON. Seven of his books have been chosen by the American Library Association as Best Books for Young Adults.
WILD MAN ISLAND was inspired by Will’s sea kayaking adventures along the coasts of Admiralty and Chichagof Islands in southeast Alaska. He also drew on his caving experiences and research into recent breakthroughs in North American archeology.
A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives in Durango, Colorado, with his wife, Jean.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
BOOKS BY WILL HOBBS
Changes in Latitudes
Bearstone
Downriver
The Big Wander
Beardance
Kokopelli’s Flute
Far North
Ghost Canoe
Beardream
River Thunder
Howling Hill
The Maze
Jason’s Gold
Down the Yukon
Jackie’s Wild Seattle
Copyright
WILD MAN ISLAND. Copyright © 2002 by Will Hobbs. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-196372-8
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