The conditions must be just right. The Taiga, the immense boreal forest of the North is here. Its members are not as impressive as the towering Lords of the Tongass, the massive temperate rain forest further east and south, but the expanse is undeniable. Elements of the Tongass, the altitudinous Sitka Spruce, Hemlock, and cedars, are present on the east and southeast side of the peninsula, but this is a different world – individual members less dramatic, the collective magnificent.

The transition down the Sterling Highway from Tern Lake to Kenai Lake still has the feel of the Chugach Mountains to the north. Daves Creek, Quartz Creek, both small, lovely and wandering through the glacier-carved U-shaped valleys, the peaks some 4,000 feet above, the road taking me to Kenai Lake and Cooper Landing. But, on the west side of Cooper Landing, swinging north from the Kenai River, climbing the grade past Jean Lake, the charred remains of the boreal forest come into view. The landscape spread before is scantily clothed, courtesy of the Swan Lake Fire of 2019; in total 170,000 acres of forest destroyed. I’m curious to see the recovery.

The low-elevation plateau that is the western Kenai stretches all the way to the Cook Inlet, a land of lakes and bogs, the land of the boreal forest. Old friends from the Northwest Temperate Rain Forest are not to be found, although, eventually, other old friends will be encountered. I’m pretty sure the small trees growing here, some barely more than shrubs, are the Black Spruce portion of the Taiga. They are explorers, pioneers in new landscapes, usually the first to arrive and repopulate, especially around the bogs and wetlands. Closer to Sterling, moving out of the burn, the taller trees are most likely the White Spruce – thicker trunks, narrower, more-conical crowns on display.

I’m not at all confident in my ability to distinguish The White Spruce from the Lutz, the latter which is a natural cross, a hybrid, between the Sitka Spruce and the White. I know that, courtesy of the Sitka, the Lutz is typically a taller spruce than the White. I know it also has a greater girth, and a different feel to its needles, also a cross between the stiff, spikey needles of the Sitka and the somewhat softer, more flexible needles of the White. What I do know is that the Lutz Spruce is a favorite of luthiers the world over, much prized for its use as the tonewood, especially in guitars.

The deciduous members of the boreal forest here are a little easier to deal with as they are old friends from other places. The Aspen is here, as is its Willow-family cousin, the Cottonwood. The third member is the Birch; not a Willow at all, but so close in appearance to the Aspen that one might be forgiven for thinking so.

The Kenai River is known for its sport fishing, especially salmon, and most especially the King (Chinook) Salmon, with individuals caught that approach 100 pounds. The Grizz is here (they like salmon too). So is the Moose. But it is some of the waterfowl I’ve come looking for.

Histrionicus histrionicus is present, navigating some of the faster-water sections of the river. The male Harlequin Duck has a spectacular appearance, but seems no more prone to histrionics than any other male duck I’ve observed. Nevertheless, there are no other ducks in the world belonging to the genus, and so the Harlequin is monotypic: it’s an only child, there’s no other duck like it. In eastern Canada, with a relatively higher human population density the genus is endangered. Here it is a “species of concern”; something of a step up. I hope.

Cygnus buccinator is also here: the Trumpeter Swan. The largest waterfowl in North America, it stretches five feet from bill to tail, and eight feet from wing tip to wing tip. Jet black bill, elongated neck, blindingly white color, it is an extraordinary sight. It is also an extraordinary story. Hunted right to the knife edge of complete extirpation in the Lower 48, there were only 69 individuals still living there in 1935. Extirpation. Such an ugly word. Its etymology is literally “to root out”. “Extinction” somehow seems a bit… kinder? At least there is a possibility that the end was circumstantial, not intentional.

A recovery program was launched at the time, but with limited success. That all changed in the 1950’s when nearly 2000 individuals were discovered in remote Alaska, primarily in the Copper River country. The Copper River community has been a source of reintroductions in other places since. Progress has been slow in much of the original range across the northern tier states of the Lower 48, but the Kenai Taiga has been a welcoming environment.

Standing in the Primeval woodland, the words of Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer dancing before me: “…your main crop is the forest that you did not plant”. The swans gliding on the surface of the lake are his confirmation: “Practice resurrection.” We are engaged in an act of resurrection, it can be done.

This is the Landscape Primeval. The landscape of our birth. Our birthscape. We, along with our siblings, grew up here. The list is not long: Homo habilis, H. naledi, H. erectus, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, H. antecessor, H. heidelbergensis, H. sapiens. Eight siblings in the Homo family; a birth date a little over two million years ago – at the beginning of the Pleistocene Ice Ages. In the long history of life on Earth, we are but a moment, a late arrival to the party, and children of an unusual time. In all that long history, there are only a handful of times that have seen the world plunge into The Great Freeze, the Age of Ice. And yet, this was our nursery, this was our world: The Pleistocene. In two million years we covered the planet, our home.

And yet, by the end of the Pleistocene only one sibling remained.

On the one hand, H. erectus, our common ancestor barely made it through what is known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which occurred 900,000 years ago, and which was a time of extreme global glaciation and climate desiccation. Some studies suggest that Homo may have been reduced to a breeding population of only 1,300 individuals. On the other hand, the younger siblings first appeared after the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Even so, by about 50,000 years ago, only H. sapiens remained.

Extinction? Extirpation? Are we siblingless and monotypic by circumstance? Or by choice?

Standing in the forest I did not plant, pondering circumstance and choice. The circumstance is before me: the primeval landscape, the landscape of our birth. Choices? Do we not have an incumbency for the stewardship of this landscape? Is it not an imperative for future generations of H. sapiens that we preserve our birthscapes, try to understand the mysteries and, perhaps if we are wise, recognize the answers we might find there?

This primeval land has provided the means for resurrection before; the re-introduction of the Trumpeter Swan is not the only effort we’ve made. Is there more here than our obligation to provide a place where other living things can simply live? In a deep, diverse, complex ecology, can the means of resurrection be found?

Like the birth and death of an individual, extinction of a species has been part-and-parcel of life on Earth. Extirpation? Somehow that seems different. That seems more a violence directed against life and land. We are the sole sibling remaining, have named ourselves Homo sapiens, The Wise…

Perhaps practicing resurrection should be our only vocation. Tomorrow I will start again; hopefully I will do better.