I was fortunate enough to experience a month in Gustavus during the summer of 2022 while conducting a Levitt Summer Research project. The following is drawn from my research paper and personal experiences and truncated into a blog post.
The town of Gustavus in Alaska is a special place. With only about 500 permanent residents, it is off the roadmap and nestled in the wilderness of Southeast Alaska. The town is carved out of Glacier Bay National Park, among the Tongass National Forest, and along the Icy Strait waterway. Getting to Gustavus is far from easy, entailing traveling by six-hour ferry from Juneau or a small (and very expensive) plane. Most visitors to the National Park come by cruise ship, never actually stepping foot in the town itself, which technically serves as the gateway (“History and Geography – Gustavus Alaska : Gustavus.com” 2015).
The geologic history of Gustavus contributes to its unique character. Less than 200 years ago, the region was still covered in ice and glaciers, which formed the landscape as they rapidly retreated. Gustavus lays on a flat outwash plain, while the rest of the National Park is an ecosystem of temperate rainforests, mountains, waterways, and glaciers. This new and intact (relatively untouched) ecosystem that is continuously developing is a huge attraction for ecologists, biologists, and wilderness lovers. It isn’t often one gets to see an ecosystem evolve from ice just over the last 200 years with minimal exploitative or extractive human development. A lot of the people I met in Gustavus came to the town originally working for the National Park Service but fell in love with the place and decided to stay permanently.
The residents of Gustavus exemplify a special bond with the place– a concept that can be encompassed as place attachment. Place attachment is the emotional connection and affinity one has towards a certain place formed through physical and social interactions. It occurs as an accumulation of the physical environment, the people, and the relationships that one experiences within a space (Amundsen 2015, 260). A large part of place attachment for many residents was drawn from the physical environment, namely, the wilderness. It is not only the beautiful mountains on the horizon and glaciers in the park, but the direct integration of the town and surrounding environment. Interviewees discussed the family of bears living in their backyard, the ability to tap into the abundant resources through fishing and hunting, and the privilege to grow food and forage. Being so removed from mainstream society and surrounded by protected wilderness seemed to foster a special attachment to the physical environment as wild and natural. The relationships and people within Gustavus certainly contribute to residents’ sense of unique place attachment as well. The small size and remoteness of the town entail a necessarily close-knit community, where everyone knows everyone. Residents are deeply involved in the community by necessity– whether that looks like working on getting supplies in, weathering the harsh winters, or sharing resources. Living in Gustavus takes intention, one doesn’t usually end up there and decide to stay there all by accident.
A discussion of place and place attachment is incomplete without a critical understanding of the historical settling of the area and who is included and left out of the narrative. Gustavus is in the ancestral homeland of the Tlingit indigenous people, who still reside in the region, primarily in the close town (by boat) of Hoonah. The settling of Gustavus by John Muir-inspired homesteaders in the 1800s expropriated land from the Tlingit people, and the founding of Glacier Bay National Park prevented the indigenous community from accessing the land they lived and fished on for time immemorial (Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer 1994). The history of homesteading in the region certainly bleeds through to the present, as many residents discussed their affinity for self-sufficiency and ability to practice other homesteading skills.
What does it mean to be attached to a place one can only access because others no longer can? How do we reckon place attachment with colonialism? These questions, among so many others, should be raised and explored concerning concepts of place attachments.
References
Amundsen, Helene. 2015. “Place attachment as a driver of adaptation in coastal communities in Northern Norway.” Local Environment 20 (3): 257-276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2013.838751.
Dauenhauer, Nora M., and Richard Dauenhauer, eds. 1994. Haa Kusteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories. Vol. 3. N.p.: Sealaska Heritage Foundation.
“History and Geography – Gustavus Alaska : Gustavus.com.” 2015. Gustavus, Alaska. https://www.gustavus.com/history/index.html.
Pictures: Kaitlyn Bieber
