When I think about Alaska what comes to mind are glaciers, mountains, fjords, forests and snow, deserts not so much. But the other day I stumbled upon a story about the discovery of 10,000 year-old obsidian tools in an area called the Nogahabara Dunes in Northwest Alaska. It’s a relatively small desert compared to the vast Alaskan wilderness, but apparently it’s a rich archeological region for ancient tool kits. This oddly reminded me of the micro short story titled Proposal by Denis Johnson.
“Proposal”
by
Denis Johnson
The early inhabitants of this continent
passed through a valley of ice two miles deep
to get here, passed from creature to creature
eating them, throwing away the small bones
and fornicating under nameless stars
in a waste so cold that diseases couldn’t
live in it. Three hundred million
animals they slaughtered in the space of two centuries,
moving from the Bering isthmus to the core
of squalid Amazonian voodoo, one
murder at a time; and although in the modern hour
the churches’ mouths are smeared with us
and all manner of pleading goes up from our hearts,
I don’t think they thought the dark and terrible
swallowing gullet could be prayed to.
I don’t think they found the smell of baking
amid friends in a warm kitchen anything to be revered.
I think some of them had to chew the food
for the old ones after they’d lost all their teeth,
and that their expressions
were like those we see on the faces
of the victims of traffic accidents today.
I think they threw their spears with a sense of utter loss,
as if they, their weapons, and the enormous animals
they pursued were all going to disappear.
As we can see, they were right. And they were us.
That’s what makes it hard for me now to choose one thing
over all the others; and yet surrounded by the aroma
of this Mexican baking and flowery incense
with the kitchen as yellow as the middle
of the sun, telling your usually smart-mouthed
urchin child about the early inhabitants
of this continent who are dead, I figure
I’ll marry myself to you and take my chances,
stepping onto the rock
which is a whale, the ship which is about to set sail
and sink
in the danger that carries us like a mother.
