(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate gallery picture page)
Freshly back from my glorious 11-day trip in Finland in September 2023, I have begun seeing a surprising number of articles on Finnish saunas.
On November 24, 2023, the BBC ran a multimedia spread under the banner “Saunas: The essence of Finland’s heartbeat,” featuring a refreshingly accurate video by Maria Teresa Alvarado, aided by producer by Natalia Guerrero. The video began showing a scene of a typical Finnish sauna, with a Finnish voice saying, “A Finn without a sauna is like a polar bear without ice and snow.”
A traditional outdoor sauna, located next to Lake Saimaa, north of Savonlinna
A month earlier, on October 24, 2023, the famed British news service ran another glowing piece called “The 10,000-year-old origins of the sauna – and why it’s still going strong,” on this ancient Finnish tradition of taking hot air baths in wooden sheds that stimulate excessive sweating, often followed by immersion in cold water, snow, or cold weather.
Finland’s Baltic neighbor Estonia shares an equally old sauna tradition, and its sauna traditions this year are getting buzz thanks to the film “Smoked Sauna Sisterhood” (“Savusanna Sõsarad” in Estonian), a 2023 documentary on that country’s ancient sauna tradition and the women who partake in it. It just won the best documentary film award on December 9, 2023 at the European Film Awards.
Saunas: hot, hot, hot everywhere!
Yes, saunas are clearly the sweaty, hot ticket in many spaces.
Even in the U.S. medical establishment, which has never embraced practices that can’t be tied to for-profit enterprises that prioritize profit over health, some medical researchers are suddenly acknowledging the extensive and documented health benefits of saunas.
The modern Finnish sauna is but one of many “sweat lodges” and saunas that emerged globally, but none more famously than the Finnish sauna.
The BBC’s October 24, 2023 story by Clare Dowdy explored the history of the sauna in Finland and the Baltic region and its cultural significance to Finland, from the past to present: “In Finland, the sauna is ‘one of the key national symbols’, says [Dalva] Lamminmäki, precisely because it’s very much an everyday ritual for Finns, with 3.3 million saunas in a country of 5.5 million inhabitants. ‘Everyday practices are relevant to national identity also because over time they form a widely shared understanding of the culture and what it is like to be a citizen of a country,’ she adds, ‘It’s said that sauna creates a basis for understanding what Finnishness is.’”
This week, I stumbled on still another glowing article, published in The Guardian on December 6, 2023 , on the foundational importance of sauna’s to Finland’s enviable status as the “happiest country in the world” six years in a row.
Writer Miranda Bryant visited Tampere, “sauna capital of Finland,” and explored its well-known public saunas—the city boast almost five dozen of them. Bryant praised the tradition and suggested they are a foundation to Finland’s success creating national wellbeing.
“Unlike in other countries, where saunas are usually marketed as an expensive activity for the few, in Finland they have a far more everyday role,” writes Bryant. “Many people have saunas in their homes; lots of older Finnish people were even born in saunas. But they are also considered a sacred space and a place to find community as well as peace.”
The difference between real and fake sauna experiences
It could be that I’m more aware of saunas because I used them and sought out traditional and public sauna experiences during my trip in Finland.
Rudy Owens experiencing the pleasure of a traditional wood-burning sauna next to Lake Saimaa.
I also think saunas are now trending as the latest “it” thing in wellness or boutique healthcare that really is a mask for old-fashioned narcissism.
This week, I saw a mobile sauna being advertised for a price of $45 for an hour at a Portland event. The branding of this new fad in “Instagram poseur” imagery typically leans heavily into maximum cleavage and/or a hot yoga bod, with the sumptuous sauna user looking sumptuously fulfilled.
From what I can tell, that is how many sauna services and products are marketed to U.S. consumers—something for “special” people, meaning those who are sexier, more charismatic, and definitely healthier than you. They definitely have a hotter bod than you too!
Public sauna, Helsinki, and not a hot body in sight
I eventually hit a breaking point on the corruption and meaning of saunas, to human health and to their egalitarian and cultural roots in Finland, but also Estonia, other Baltic countries, and also Russia through hot baths called banya.
I especially appreciated the photos of saunas that Bryant profiled in her Guardian feature story, and also on the City of Tampere’s tourism website promoting the city’s many facilities. That webpage, showing people of all different body types—not one a smoking beauty—notes: “Did you know there are over 55 public saunas in Tampere region for anyone to relax in, throughout the year? Finnish sauna culture is also a part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list.”
I decided to borrow some images I found on websites that showcase differences between U.S. and Finnish sauna imagery for editorial commentary.
These honest pictures matter, because they show a sauna is not the domain of Instagram narcissists. They show guys half naked drinking beer outside or people of all body types wandering outdoors in the cold after plunging into a frozen lake. That’s how they do it. And they are really wonderful.
After hitting my sauna boiling point, practically steaming, I kvetched to some of my Finnish relatives who live in Tampere (I know, isn’t that a cool coincidence!) on how American “entrepreneurs” are trying to turn saunas into snobby, high-end, upper middle-class, white, health salvation spas for the “right kind of people,” promoted by scantily clad sexpots showing beaucoup de cleavage and draped in towels. I shared it was driving me nuts. They all responded with funny emojis, and one of them suggested I needed to join them at Tampere’s Rauhaniemi folk spa, which has a nice, icy-lake, winter swimming option.
I’m glad we are seeing the far more realistic image of what saunas are like.
They are very democratic and plebeian, especially in countries like Estonia and Finland. Naked typical bodies are not oozing with steam like yoga skankiness. There, the sweaty bodies are rather normal looking. And in a sauna, you show the flesh in all its perfectly imperfect glory.
I normally try to avoid popular tourist dens when I travel.
I prefer to learn about new places and not expose myself to the corporate, global tourism culture that makes holidays to Bali, Cancun, and Paris all blur into bland rituals to relax those wealthy enough to fly around the world for temporary pleasure.
In late October 2022, when I took a long overdue short holiday, I had little time to plan for a true learning adventure. I found myself suddenly between two jobs and a small window to organize. That meant I needed to find a place that aligned with my interests and could be reached quickly.
My plot emerged overnight—to surf in warm, tropical waters. I had nursed this scheme for years. This also meant breaking my self-imposed travel rules.
After six years of surfing in the cold Pacific waters off Oregon’s shores, I craved warmth. By the time I booked this trip the last week of October 2022, I had been irregularly surfing the cold, feisty waters of the Oregon Coast since 2016. That also made me an almost entirely cold-water surfer. (I don’t count my few past efforts in Hawaii in 2009 or Australia in 2007 as real surfing outings.)
I booked a three-night, four-day trip to one of the most famous of tourist destinations in the Pacific, on the Island of Oahu. Traveling to Waikiki meant I was embracing its long-documented excesses symbolizing global tourism, especially for Americans and Japanese travelers.
The least I could do on the trip was learn more about the place.
I soon discovered after booking my trip that Waikiki was once a sacred site, rich in aquaculture and sea harvesting for native Hawaiians. The last century saw it paved, developed, and transformed into a tourist haven, attracting millions of annual visitors the world over.
That transformation damaged the local environment and displaced its original inhabitants, all through the historic systems of colonialism and global capitalism. My self-described adventure would reward this victorious new reality. My consolation would be honoring the sport Hawaii generously gave to the modern world—surfing.
I found a surprisingly affordable hotel, the Pearl Waikiki. It catered to budget travellers like me, by Hawaiian tourist standards. It also put me a short walking distance from Queens, a gentle surf spot, where I surfed for three days. I needed a place that allowed me to rent a board and put in the ocean without driving. I literally could pick up my board from the surf shop, walk two blocks to the famous Waikiki Beach, and paddle out.
Offshore adventures
As surfing goes, I am not that great. I rented mediocre boards, not a performance board. That was a mistake. The shop owners seemed reluctant to let me rent a nicer board, or maybe we had a simple misunderstanding. It may not have mattered, really.
Waikiki’s surfer sculpture was created by sculptor Robert Pashby and erected in June 2003.
Still I was able to catch my requisite number of rides, most on my final day. I will never forget my final ride and the sounds of the board slapping on the wave face as I rode a beautiful break to the shoreline.
The waves were at most four feet high, and the swells came in irregularly. Most of the time I spent in the water with other surfers consisted of gazing at the sea, bobbing in the small swells, and waiting.
In short, I did what surfers mostly do.
The water sparkled a rich, aqua-marine blue. Best of all, the water measured a very warm 79-81 degrees Fahrenheit. For an Oregon surfer, who has always worn a 5-4 wetsuit for cold water, this represented a radical change. I could wear board shorts and a rash guard surfing shirt and not once shiver.
For some of my hours floating in the water, rainy clouds painted rainbows above the nearby Diamond Head crater and the skyline filled with bland, tall Waikiki hotels. The surf reports I followed predicted larger swells. They never rolled in.
Out in the water, I found some nice moments of surf fellowship with some older local men. They rode old, beat-up long boards. They were as hungry for nice waves as I was. Like me, they came out in the early morning, just after 6 a.m., enjoying surf time, but taking it seriously too. Surfing is serious business, even if its spirit lies in finding moments of peace.
Finding a wave also requires a mixture of patience and positioning. One waits, while constantly reading the ocean for signals where to paddle one’s board for just the right ride. When they come, everyone moves into position.
Over the three days I surfed, I saw about a dozen male surfers who could be called hot shots. Some were haoles, or white guys, who to me looked like corporate lawyers in surfing gear. They didn’t smile much as they confidently popped up and cut their lines effortlessly in front of beginners to remind them who the alphas were, even at a mostly tourist surf break. Most of the surfers at Queens were visitors, like me.
I also could not believe how fit and beautiful some of the local women surfers looked. They resembled advertisements for women’s sport fashion brands, with perfectly sculpted bodies that came straight from a Patagonia women’s swimwear photo shoot. I had not seen such fit and good-looking people like this in a long time, at least in the water. They reminded me how much this sport attracts the beautiful, the confident, and the strong.
There were other locals who did not look like statuesque surf pros I see on YouTube channels dedicated to global surfing. But one could tell they lived here. They had the moves, knew the waves at this break, and mastered the take offs at always the right second. I loved their style.
Mostly, I appreciated the laid-back vibe. Even when the irregular good wave came, with a dozen riders paddling at once to catch it, no one barked at newcomers for violating the unwritten but clearly known surf etiquette. Those globally recognized norms, which create order when there could be chaos and real conflict, were egregiously violated by nearly everyone.
Even then, no one yelled or gave the “stink eye” glare of surfing displeasure. After one wave, I quickly apologized to a surfer my age, who I thought I had cut off, and he waved it off saying, “No worries, man. This is Waikiki.”
Onshore adventures
When I wasn’t surfing, I explored the area just east of the Waikiki strip that includes the state monument site called Diamond Head. The caldera can be seen nearly every post card ever taken at Waikiki and looking east on the shore. Geologist suggest the crater was formed about 300,000 years ago, during a single and explosive eruption.
Today most of the site is protected, but accessible to hikers for a small entrance fee to hike to the crater’s rim, with its surrounding slopes off-limits to all. The state estimates more than 1 million visitors a year visit the crater, trudging up to the crater overlook that points to Waikiki’s hotel skyline.
From my hotel door out and back, going around this extinct volcano, I estimated the distance at six miles, with change. It was a perfect runner’s outing too. The air temperatures both mornings were a bit warm, at 85 degrees Fahrenheit. I came back a sweaty mess, the way a good run should leave one. My foot-only adventures turned into my unexpected trip surprises, taking me to a famous local spot, but one rich in beauty and natural wonder.
My running route, and also one used by perhaps tens of thousands of runners before me, passed on a bike path and multi-use trail surrounding the crater. Even as a natural monument, it also is fully surrounded by developments and high-end homes on its southern face looking onto the Pacific Ocean.
My run hugged Kapiʻolani Regional Park, past the Waikiki Shell performance stage and Honolulu Zoo, up Monsarrat Avenue, and the around the crater’s outer walls. In addition to the expensive homes with ocean views on the south side of the crater, I passed Kapiʻolani Community College and the State of Hawaii Department of Defense headquarters.
I took this selfie of me and and Diamond Head at Kapiʻolani Regional Park, which was once a sacred area to native Hawaiian people.
Best of all, my route gave me a perfect overlook of two amazing surf spots called Cliffs and Lighthouse. From this overlook I could see the local “heavies” riding beautiful waves in the mid-morning when I did my runs.
At the overlook, I talked to a local man in his late 50s, who likely had Chinese ancestry, or maybe mixed heritage, as do so many in the state. He was smiling and still dripping wet. He had just wrapped up his morning set with a short board. He let me know both spots would welcome newcomers.
He said he didn’t have a good outing, but his face was beaming that glow a surfer wears when they come out of the water. I felt a bond with him as only surfers can feel discussing the waves and surf locations. Unfortunately, my trip did not involve renting a car or getting to know the local surf spots.
A short trip into Hawaii’s past
My second unexpected highlight happened during my day-trip to historic sites in downtown Honolulu. I reached them using the island’s reliable and renown local public transit system called “TheBus.”
Downtown Honolulu seemed like a ghost town when I went there my second day on the island. The downtown historic, government, and cultural area surrounds the modernist State Capitol building and colonial style state judiciary and pre-statehood administrative buildings. The area is walkable and well worth a half-day visit.
These were residences of white missionaries from the newly formed United States. One of the earliest missionaries, famed Vermont-born Congregationalist minister and colonialist Hiram Bingham, arrived to the islands in 1820 with other devout Protestants.
Like many of his stern Protestant peers, Bingham was uncomfortable with the culture and indiginous residents he observed. His goal was to replace local culture in the name of Western progress.
In his accounts written 27 years after his “first encounter” with the still unknown culture, Bingham wrote: “As we proceeded to the shore, the multitudinous, shouting and almost naked natives, of every age, sex, and rank, swimming, floating on surfboards, sailing in canoes, sitting, lounging, standing running like sheep, dancing…attracted our earnest attention, and exhibited the appalling darkness of the land, which we had come to enlighten.”
Today, the sights of Hawaiians expressing their indigenous culture that so worried Bingham is the same media-conjured image and Hawaii brand drawing visitors the world over to the state.
A tribute by Bingham’s relatives to the New England preacher is still inscribed in stone on the front wall of the historic Kawaiahaʻo Church that Bingham founded, found next to the mission homes. The engraved homage celebrates his and his New England peers’ colonizing efforts and reads like a painful artifact of white, American expansionism.
The missionaries’ played an important role in creating a dominant, white colonialist culture—amid the arrival of many other immigrants from Asia and Portugal—that influenced the island’s development in the 1800s. One researcher on the impact of the first missionaries, Anatole Brown, noted the missionaries’ impact expanded far beyond the missionary period that formally ended a few decades after their arrival: “By the time the U.S. Navy took interest in the Islands by mid-nineteenth century, the American colonial process was in full swing, as Bibles moved onto guns.”
The colonial process launched by the white settlers ultimately paved the way for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in January 1893 by the American government and business interests, in what can be consider an act of war. That cultural and political assimilation almost crushed local Hawaiian culture and cultural traditions in the process, like surfing and hula, which are now the living symbols of Hawaii in the minds of the world.
I next stopped to pay my homage to the statue of the legendary Hawaiian King Kamehameha, the monarch from the Big Island of Hawaii, who invaded at Waikiki in 1795, defeating the island’s local ruler, Chief Kalanikupule. He then unified all of the islands in 1810, when King Kaumualii of Kaui island surrendered peacefully. His statue stands proudly in front the Al’iolani Hale Justice Building. Within a century of Kamehameha’s triumph, the islands would succumb to outside conquerors and far more deadly diseases.
Across from the statue’s outstretched arms is the last home of Hawaii’s monarchs, called the Iolanai Palace. The palace was built by Hawaii’s final king, Kalakaua, in 1882. It remained the house of Hawaii’s royalty until Queen Lili’uokalani, the king’s sister and successor, was overthrown in the January 1893 coup, engineered by a business cabal called the Committee of Safety and led by the U.S. military.
I did not go in, but walked around the expansive palace grounds. Just north of that one finds the State Capitol, completed in 1969. The modernist, square-shaped building has an open-air courtyard, where the midday sun shone down. The building was designed to be unlike most state capitols that mimic classical Roman architectural style. It’s considered one of the most accessible state capitols, where legislative and executive offices are open to the public.
Hanging on its front entrance, by the bronze statue of the overthrown monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani, hangs the 15-foot wide, massive bronze state seal. The emblem shows the state’s royal coat of arms, the seal of the former Hawaiian Kingdom and the 50th state since 1959.
I next walked west across the street from the Iolani Palace, to visit the Hawaii State Art Museum. The museum is free and found on the second floor of the Capitol District Building, a Spanish Mission revival style building built in 1928.
During my visit, the Turnaround Gallery of the facility was hosting a collection of black and white photos taken by photographer Ed Greevy. The collection of remarkable black and white photos document his decades-long collaboration with Hawaiian activist Haunani-Kay Trask. They show different chapters of the state’s environmental and social justice movements. The photos are found in the book “Kūʻē: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawaiʻi.”
The images show resistance protests for Hawaiian sovereignty, starting in the 1970s, and scenes of civil protests against forced evictions, loss of affordable housing for local residents, and the building of the interstate highway across the backbone of Oahu’s mountain range separating the north and south shores.
The gallery exhibit also revealed the clashes on the Islands that began far before the protest period. They continue to this day. Throughout the decades of conflict and change, Hawaiian culture thrived. That can be seen most clearly through the sport of surfing and the first global ambassador of the sport, who grew up in nearby Waikiki.
Waikiki’s legend
If it wasn’t for the legendary exploits of famed Oahu and Waikiki native Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the forced cultural assimilation by outsiders might have succeeded. His life both reflects and embodies how his Waikiki childhood home turned into its meta-mythical destination for visitors like me.
Kahanamoku was born into Hawaiian royalty in 1890. By that year, Hawaii’s native population had dramatically dropped due to imported diseases brought by missionaries, explorers, and whalers. The imported epidemics of infections, including measles, smallpox, and whooping cough, wiped out Hawaii’s population. It fell precipitously from approximately 300,000 at the time of Captain Cook’s first arrival in 1778 to 135,000 in 1820, and 53,900 in 1876. Kahanamoku grew up in the aftermath of this radical change that nearly destroyed his people.
During his 73 years, until his passing in 1968, Kahanamoku achieved global fame in multiple fields and became a living embodiment of his people. Kahanamoku was the first person to be inducted in the Surfing and Swimming halls of fame, a testament to his life in and around water on Oahu.
Kahanamoku rose to stardom first as an Olympics swimmer and Hawaii tourism promoter.
The island’s business elite paid for his participation in events like the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, in San Francisco in 1915, to promote the Islands’ emerging nascent tourism industry. There he performed the hula, played the ukulele, and posed for photographs in traditional Hawaiian clothes. He also competed for the U.S. team in three Olympics: 1912 in Stockholm, 1920 in Antwerp, and 1924 in Paris, last competing at the age of 34. All told he won three gold and two silver medals for a country to which Hawaii was still relegated to territorial status, and only recently occupied militarily.
In the 1920s, he lived in southern California during the early years of Hollywood. He found bit parts as a minor screen actor in more than 25 films. Unfortunately, he was cast in “ethnic” roles because of deep racial biases in the studios and wider culture. But his legend as a surf promoter took root.
Kahanamoku also had achieved renown as a surfer and surf ambassador. In 1915, he traveled to Australia, to Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, introducing the Hawaiian sporting tradition to the continent that is now synonymous with surfing.
According to one account of this trip, “Duke and Australian surfers sealed an eternal alliance.” His most legendary ride took place in 1917, when he reportedly rode the largest wave ever, towering some 30 feet, at Waikiki on his 16-foot wooden long board. Kahanamoku reportedly caught the monster at a surf spot called Castle’s, off Waikiki, and took it all the way to another surf break called Publics, by Kapiolani Park, then into Cunha’s.
In California, during his Hollywood years, he popularized the nascent sport, taking out his long wooden board and visiting now-famous surfing spots, such as San Diego, Newport Beach, Santa Monica and Malibu.
In the 1930s, Hawaii’s so-called “waterman” returned to his native home. Kahanamoku was elected sheriff of the City and County of Honolulu in 1935, and then held that role for 13 terms, including the entirety of World War II. For his final life act, he was appointed and served as the official “Ambassador of Aloha” after statehood was granted in 1959—a position that embodied how he lived his life, according to many from Hawaii.
“The Duke,” as he is forever and famously known to surfers and the wider public, died in 1968, just at the global sport of surfing was taking off with surf movies, global tourism, and surf-themed rock and popular music. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean at Waikiki.
Even before his death, his legacy was questioned because of his Christian faith (his mother was a devout Christian) and his perceived deference in the early 20th century to Hawaii’s self-named Committee of Safety—the powerful business group that two decades earlier had ousted Hawaii’s last ruling royal monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani. The group had employed him and bought him a home in his beloved Waikiki.
Despite Kahanamoku’s controversial ties from his early life, in an era of rampant prejudice, his fame has grown, just like the global sport and lifestyle he helped to pioneer. In fact, his name and legend continue to grow in value.
In recent years, Kahanamoku’s surviving kin and the super-rich elite of Hawaii have locked legal horns over ownership of his lucrative global name and brand. “More significant, though, is the anger that the war has aroused among native Hawaiians, who perceive it as an appalling exploitation of a revered cultural icon,” noted a Nov. 16, 2003, Los Angeles Times story on the legal dispute over his name and legacy. “The conflict brings into focus a growing tension in Hawaii, unseen by most tourists, but a bitter, daily reality to island natives—a stinging reminder of a culture lost to commercialism.”
Final aloha
Like many visiting Waikiki, my trip would not have been complete without watching a traditional Hawaiian music and dance show on Waikiki beach. It seemed to embody the clash of Hawaii’s surviving culture and the tourist-driven capitalism visible in the international hotels that overlooked this famous stretch of sand and water.
They paved paradise and put in a tourist spot.
Several times a week the shows take place at sunset at the Kuhio Beach stage, near the water’s edge, for visiting tourists. The Hawaiian performers, with dancers, singers, and instrumentalists, share traditional Hawaiian performances and songs after the sun sets and the last surfers pull out their boards from the water. I could effortlessly watch and listen to Hawaiian music and dance every day, and the performance I saw genuinely shared the aloha spirit.
Close to this spot, next to Waikiki beach, stands the popular bronze statue of “The Duke,” with has both arms outstretched and a his signature long, wooden Hawaiian wooden surfboard planted in the ground and towering above him.
During my short stay in Waikiki, the statue was constantly mobbed with visitors, who posed in front of it. Many smiled while mimicking Kahanamoku’s pose. Each time I passed by, I saw a line of visitors from Japan who must have known of his legend, judging by their eagerness to pose next to the bronze replica, adorned daily with fresh flower necklaces called leis.
Like them, and countless tens of thousands of tourists before me, I also snapped my obligatory selfie with my cell phone. As a passable surfer, I smiled in appreciation of the gift “the Duke” and the Hawaiian people freely gave to the world. It felt like a respectable thing to do, even when the world now claimed Duke’s ancestral home and the lands of the first Hawaiian people as a manufactured “paradise” for an escape from our realities back home, wherever home might be.
(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
In late winter 2021, trail users on Portland’s Springwater Corridor were suddenly greeted with Northwest, Coastal Salish, and Alaskan Native imagery on utility towers and graffiti-covered surfaces of the Ross Island Bridge.
The artist, Stephen Cutler, appears to be a Portland-based creator who has been using Native imagery for years in his work. I do not know if he has Native ancestry or if he has worked with Native artists. I also do not know if groups whose iconography he uses have weighed in on these creations.
Appropriation of Coastal Salish, Tlingit, Haida, and other tribal cultural traditions has been going on for decades, sparking controversy about the rights of non-Native persons to use traditions that are not theirs. These important discussions about cultural appropriation have not ended—and the voices of those whose traditions are being used by others needs to be centered in all discussions and displays of such work.
At the same time, I also know that art is never meant to remain static. It never has been as long as humans have created art since they first painted wild animals in caves many millennia ago. Creation involves taking ideas and inspiration from others and reinventing those creations to make something new. In addition, anyone from the public who encounters art, I believe, can both like something that is beautiful and question the larger story around it.
As for these new murals, I like them, aesthetically. They are vital. They adhere to beautiful traditions I have seen first-hand in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, including in living studios of Native and First Nations artists in those places. These pieces also bring life to an area that is shared by the public. It is a space used all residents for biking, hiking, walking, and other sports, and it is a de facto home to Portland’s large houseless population, who live in the elements a stone’s throw from where you see these pieces. So far, no graffiti artists who tag the concrete and steel spaces in this area have covered these pieces. It appears there is respect by that community too.
If you find yourself in Portland, take a stroll. They pieces can be found just underneath the Ross Island Bridge, on the east bank of the Willamette River.
(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
I became a passionate cross-country skier mostly because I had the good fortune of living in Anchorage from 2004 through 2010. There I was blessed with a fabulous and publicly-owned set of multi-use trails and trail systems in parks. I could ski sometimes nearly six months a year, depending on when the first snows came and when the last snows melted.
I mostly remember skiing being very accessible to nearly everyone because the trails were close to home and because gear was not too expensive for the basic set up of boots, poles, bindings, and skis. You could even get used equipment.
The local group promoting the sport and maintaining the trails, the non-profit Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage, was committed to youth inclusion for all residents. That meant all young people, regardless of race.
When I lived there, Anchorage was more diverse than many outside of Alaska think, with about 65 percent of the residents who identified as white and 35 percent being non-whites, with the largest group being Alaska Natives. Some of that diversity could be seen in the faces of the young skiers competing for the high school teams and on the trails. But even then, in this very democratic and outdoor-oriented place, the faces I saw skiing were like me—white.
However, cross-country skiing in Anchorage is not like cross-country skiing in the rest of the United States. Today the almost entire lack of diversity of this sport nationally remains cross-country skiing’s great Achilles’ heel. That reality is not addressed with the type of debate that is needed.
In my view, everyone who does this sport, either Nordic or single-track style, knows this racial breakdown whenever they ski. If they do not, they are willfully fooling themselves from the facts before their eyes every time they clip into their skis and head out on trails in recreation areas that remain almost exclusively the domain of white Americans.
Race and country-skiing are mostly taboo topics in the multimedia world dedicated to the sport and those who do it. However I found one recent article on the racial divide in this sport I still love on the FasterSkier website. Refreshingly, it confronted the basic facts about the folks who do the sport and the factors contributing to its glaring and overwhelming whiteness.
In the United States, cross-country skiing remains an outdoor activity mostly pursued by whites, including the many winter recreational visitors to the Methow Valley (like the author).
Skier and writer Ben Theyerl wrote in an article published in August 2020: “The demographics of where the places that harbor Nordic ski communities are on a map allows this statistic to go unchecked. The trail networks linked to small rural towns and resorts that are historically, and presently, white, shelter us from having to confront and come to terms with our sport’s lack of racial diversity. So do the images of our heritage as a Nordic community, and of what it looks like to be an elite Nordic athlete. … We can choose as a community to stay on this sheltered path, or we can take the road less travelled for the Nordic community to finally discuss the overwhelming whiteness of our sport and the places that we do it in.”
Cross-Country skiing in Washington and the Methow Valley
Downtown Winthrop has kept its old West look and feel, even as the surrounding area has become a magnet for wealthy residents of Washington state who have purchased their winter and summer recreation homes here.
As a former resident of Washington state in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and then again through 2004, and finally 2010 to 2014, I have cross country skied there during the winters of my now former state. My adventures over these years took me at different times to the scenic Methow Valley, in Okanogan County, just south of the Canadian border and west of the Cascade Mountains.
Once an area that had homesteads and ranches on former Native American lands, it is now dotted with second and third homes of the upper middle class, the wealthy, and also the extremely wealthy—many from the Seattle area.
Since my first visit in late 1987 to this past weekend, I have seen it transform into a year-round recreation area that promotes winter sports and cross-country skiing. The residents who live and have lived there famously developed a wonderful trail community during these decades. That is seen in the group called the Methow Valley Trail Association (MTVA), which is a non-profit organization that maintains the incredible network of classic and single-track trails, snowshoe trails, and now fat-tire bike trails.
According to the MTVA’s website, the volunteer-led group maintains “over 200 kilometers (that’s 120 miles) of cross-country ski trails in the winter months,” and that network “is recognized as one of the finest trail systems in North America for Nordic skiing, mountain biking, trail running and hiking.”
I would argue that the Methow Valley is, without question, one of the finest cross-country ski areas in North America thanks to its geography, plentiful and mostly predictable snowfall, and the good work of these volunteers and donors who support this form of recreation. The area, like so much of the United States, also has racial divisions that can be seen in where most of the county’s non-white residents call home.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau, Okanogan County had a population of 42,104 as of 2020. The sparsely populated and beautiful mountainous county includes the towns in the Methow Valley like Winthrop and Twisp and neighboring cities like Omak. The Census Bureau reported that the county is 64 percent white (non-Hispanic or non-Latino), followed next by Hispanic or Latino at 21 percent, and American Indian or Native Americans at 13 percent. The diversity from the two next largest groups can be found in communities closer to the Colville Reservation like Omak and towns like Pateros and Brewster, where agricultural work is plentiful and Latinos have long-settled because of farmwork-related employment opportunities like other communities in central Washington.
However, that diversity is not visible in the Methow Valley. During my recent three-day visit, I saw some visitors who I would identify as having Asian ancestry, but no one on any trail who was African American. Most of the skiers I saw on the gloriously groomed trails were white like me. It is a fact that one cannot ignore when enjoying the beauty of this great sport. This fact has not changed in the last 12 years since I began skiing there after returning to the Lower 48 from Alaska (as Alaskans refer to the lower states).
The Future in Washington’s wealthy, winter Shangri-La
As the ski community grew in the Methow Valley in the last two decades, so did the country’s income inequality gap. That gap has accelerated the concentration of wealth in the hands of an ever smaller number of richer Americans since the Great Recession, and more recently the pandemic.
That wealth concentration can be seen in patterns of land use in the Methow that are visible to any visitor who travels there. Those who can afford to purchase retirement homes and summer and winter second and third homes—mostly white and wealthy affluent out of towners—have chosen to settle in this area, with its spectacular vistas and abundant forms of recreation that cater almost entirely to white Americans.
Winthrop resident Solveig Torvik described this in her column from Aug. 4, 2021. “The Methow many of us so smugly assume is a model of a caring community with widespread civic engagement … reads instead much like a cautionary tale of a failed society,” she wrote. Torvik pointed to a study of the valley by a Washington State University sociology professor, Jennifer Sherman, who described the obvious divisions: “The Methow Valley is a deeply divided community where wealthy urbanites ‘blind’ to their privilege ‘hoard’ their social capital while impoverished, excluded, resentful rural old-timers struggle to survive.”
The valleys surrounding Winthrop are now dotted with high-priced, new homes that cater to wealthy residents, who are not afraid to flaunt their wealth, and the affluent who are choosing to live in what the local media The Methow Valley News calls a new Zoom town during the so-called “COVID land rush.”
According to an Oct. 7, 2020 story in the local newspaper called The Methow Valley News, a virtual “COVID land rush” is underway, fueled also by the pandemic: “One thing it means is a dramatic increase in median home prices in the Methow Valley. The median home price in September this year was $440,000, compared to $329,000 in September last year and $312,000 in 2018, based on statistics [broker Anne] Eckmann compiled from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. In mid-September, there were 34 homes available for sale in the Methow Valley — 10 of them priced under $350,000 and eight priced over $1 million, Eckmann said.”
This is not that different than other winter resort areas in the country in Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont. What’s different now is how visibly those new, rich residents have settled in the last 15 years in the Methow Valley, particularly around the town of Winthrop. I have seen that change since I first Nordic skied here in 2010 when I moved back to Seattle, and then visited a friend who lives near Winthrop. It had been eight years since I was last there in February 2014.
Battles over future comprehensive planning in the county and water rights remain active, with many newcomers seeking access to the limited water resources and groups seeking to manage and plan for future growth. Growing threats from climate change and wildfire also have further exacerbated debates over growth tied to the desires of the wealthy to live in the fire-prone wildland urban interface, in places like the Methow Valley. The battles will likely continue there, similar to conflicts in communities in the West that have confronted the old maxim that “water flowing uphill to money.”
I do not know when I will travel to the Methow Valley again. It is a 400-mile journey by car from my home in Portland.
I took this trip to take a needed break from my work on Oregon’s pandemic response. I needed a recharge, and Nordic skiing is one way I can do that. It worked, too.
I enjoyed my stay with a longtime friend who moved there years earlier, who shared with me the struggles she is seeing as a resident over development there. In the end, I am left with almost magical memories of groomed trails, snow-covered mountain peaks, and the ongoing awareness that this sport that I once did daily on a community trail in urban Anchorage is still not widely shared by many.
(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
Oregon, geographically and geologically, is an assemblage of parts that don’t truly make for a whole. Like its northern neighbor, Washington state, it is divided by ecosystems that also provide a rough border of the political divisions that have never seemed deeper, particularly following the dangerous four years of twice impeached former President Donald Trump.
West of the Cascade Mountain ranges are the state’s most densely populated areas, and they are more to the left in the northwest corner of the state. The lands east of the Cascades are sparsely filled. They include the northern farming counties of Gilliam, Morrow, Sherman, Wasco, Union, and Umatilla.
On this trip I passed through Gilliam County, which features stunningly scenic rolling hills and an endless supply of wind that led to the siting of extensive wind farms. Outside of the federally recognized tribal holdings and communities, the areas is overwhelmingly white, but is now seeing an influx of some Latino residents, who do much of the agricultural work in this part of the state. Politically, this is as red as red gets anywhere in the United States.
I drove south from the Columbia River Gorge on Highway 206 through Condon, then took a right going south on Highway 19 through the abandoned intersection community of Mayfield to Fossil. Here is where landscape turned from rolling hills to deep canyons, revealing millions of years of geological history. Farms that draw from the John Day River line the roads that wind through a “scenic byway.” Some of these stunning geological formations are partially protected in a federal land management area called the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The area has some of the richest collections of fossils spanning a 40 million year period, showing the evolution of species, plants, and ecosystems that existed long before homo erectus walked out of the plains of Africa to populate the planet.
After a brief stop at the monument’s fabulous visitor’s center, I took a right and headed west on Highway 26 that took me through more stunning canyons, multimillion dollar ranch holdings of land barons, and to the turnoff for the Painted Hills Overlook, which are some of the most photographed hills in the annals of photography. I first came here in 2003 and had forgotten how stunning the scenery was.
After taking a great walk and taking my obligatory tourist photos, I jumped back on Highway 26 (the Ochoco Highway), which climbed through the scenic Ochoco National Forest, where sites of recent forest fires were visible. Along the way I observed how severe the drought conditions were, with the Ochoco Reservoir down at least 20 feet. I passed through Prineville, which once identified itself as a town tied its ranching and agricultural past, celebrated in its public art. In reality, it has become a bedroom community for nearby and fast-growing Bend, about 25 miles to the southwest. The community is now home to larger data servers that tap into cut-rate cheap federal power provided by the nearby Bonneville Power Administration dams on the Columbia River.
Facebook recently announced it was building two more buildings here on top of nine existing structures, with operations the size of 80 football fields. The new investments will cost $2 billion. Apple also operates large data farms here as well. These investments make the bucking bronco and cowboy sculpture feel as old an a Roman antiquity sculpture.
Rudy Owens at Paulina Lake, smiling because it snowed the night before in early June 2021.
I ended my drive in Newberry Crater, another national monument about 45 minutes southeast of Bend. This is one of my favorite places in Oregon. It similar geologically to the much more famous Crater Lake National Park, but more developed for campers and fishermen. The day I arrived it was nearly 32 F, and it snowed during the night. I had almost an entire campground to myself. I woke up with white stuff on my tent, and it was still the second week of June. I loved that, actually! From my campground, I did a long overdue nearly 8 mile run around Paulina Lake, which is one of the finest running loops I have done anywhere. That was worth the trip alone.
(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
During my last visit to St. Louis, I indulged myself. I decided to stay in a historic mansion that is now a a bed and breakfast called the Lehmann House, just off of Lafayette Park, in the historic Lafayette Square neighborhood of St. Louis. This beautiful section of urban space is unrivaled in any U.S. city. It was one of the earliest planned communities in the once mighty industrial city, and it catered to the very wealthy when it was developed in the 1800s. It was built around the oldest municipal park west of the Mississippi River, Lafayette Park.
I have shared photo essays on my blog before about the area’s exquisitely built brick homes and architectural styles. I did not have much time to enjoy the area as I had hoped, but I squeezed in two morning walks that were about as perfect as I can remember, ever. The light had that brilliant Midwest-morning Kodacolor glow, and the air smelled fresh from a recent rain. I wandered around the “hood” and snapped these shots, allowing my senses to guide me. If you visit St. Louis, you have to put this place on your list. You will then wonder what we have done so wrong in urban design since we built communities with craftsmanship and care not that long ago.
Today, April 6, 2019, marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide. During the 100 days that followed its start, the ruling ethnic Hutu government organized the mass murder of more than 800,000 mostly ethnic minority ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the tiny central Africa nation. The world stood by and largely did nothing.
The war and genocide ended only when a rebel Tutsi army called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (aka Rwandan Patriotic Army) defeated the government in a fight to the death that ended the mass murdering. Millions of Rwandan refugees then fled the country, leading to destabilization and civil war in neighboring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and the collapse of its dictatorship. Years of bloody war in eastern DRC and beyond followed and continue to this day.
I went to Rwanda three years after the genocide and then left after about three weeks. I succumbed to malaria and realized I could not accomplish my larger goal to report on the ongoing genocide trials. Violent reprisal attacks by Hutu extremists were taking place and the body count was rising. I decided to leave.
After I left, I did two more projects documenting genocide: in Europe, focusing on Nazi crimes, and in Turkey, focusing on Ottoman Empire crimes. After I completed my documentary project on the Armenian genocide, I was interviewed by a descendant of Armenians who fled the Ottoman Empire and survived the Armenian genocide in modern-day Lebanon. My Lebanese-Armenian friend, who did a story about my travels in Turkey to former Armenian communities, asked me why I did my project. This was my reply. I reflected on what I had learned between the time I was in Kigali, Rwanda, and the time I visited former Armenian communities that no longer exist in the fall of 2001:
My primary objective has been to use my camera as a tool to infiltrate the realm of evil. What ways do people express evil, this thing that seems to define the human condition? How do people express it? Why do they do it, and why do other people allow evil to triumph? What do they accomplish, ultimately, through evil?
That’s the nut I’m trying to crack by examining the genocides of the 20th century. If nothing else, this knowledge helps me live my life better. It’s now much easier for me to understand human history and human behavior because the very worst form of human activity, genocide, strips reality to its essentials. In other words, all that is not essential is not really relevant. Some concentration and death camp survivors see the world in these terms. For example, Robert Jay Lifton wrote about the Nazi doctors, and he interviewed an Auschwitz survivor, a dentist forced to pull gold from the teeth of dead prisoners. Lifton described his meeting with the dentist this way: “He looked about the comfortable room in his house with its beautiful view of Haifa, sighed deeply, and said, ‘This world is not this world.’ What I think he meant was that, after Auschwitz, the ordinary rhythms and appearances of life, however innocuous and pleasant, were from the truth of human existence. Underneath those rhythms and appearances lay darkness and menace.”
I left the memories of my genocide documentary projects behind me, though I still have essays on display on my website. I normally don’t think about these photos, but on anniversaries like today’s, I must reflect and, I hope, remember.
Norwegian musher and two-time Iditarod champion Robert Sørlie speaks with fellow mushers.
Norwegian musher and two-time Iditarod champion Robert Sørlie at the ceremonial start
Native musher Mike Williams, Sr., gets ready. He celebrated sobriety with his passion for the sport, later told in a memoir published about his life experiences.
Knapps Crossing had one of the best Iditarod parties I knew of during my years in Anchorage.
(Click on each image to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
There is nothing more true to the spirit of Alaska than the “last great race on Earth.” That race is none other than the Iditarod.
This world-famous and celebrated dogsled race, from the interior Alaskan community of Willow to the coastal community of Nome, covers more than 900 miles of Alaska’s backcountry in the freezing winter. Mushers, leading teams from 12 to 16 dogs, compete for mostly glory and cash prizes for the lucky top finishers. That glory is often international media coverage. Japanese and German media frequently make the visit, to name a few.
The race is followed live by dog lovers the world over. Those with deep pockets and plenty of free time fly to Alaska in winter to catch a glimpse of the annual ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage the first Saturday of March, followed by the official start on a frozen lake in Willow. A few of the rich visitors will pay a handsome fee to ride in a dogsled on the ceremonial 11-mile run that starts the race in Anchorage.
Race Origins and this Year’s Contest
The race’s origins are tied to the famous public health emergency in 1925. A diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska, required that emergency medical supplies be delivered, and dogsledders made the journey. A statue in downtown Anchorage commemorates that famous event, honoring the lead sled dog, Balto.
Today’s modern Iditarod roughly celebrates that legacy and mostly follows the same difficult route, over mountain ranges, frozen berms, and through Native villages. Joe Redington Sr., an Alaskan musher whose family legacy remains well-known in the Great Land, worked with Dorothy Page to launch the modern race in 1967.
That first race had 57 mushers. This year there will only be 53, down from more than 80 when I saw the race start in person in between 2005 and 2010. The race has come on hard times in recent years due to dog deaths, drug tests, and feuds. Sponsorships likely have dried up to support a profession/passion that is like none other in the world. No musher can afford this sport without sponsors and/or corporate backers. Each musher is an entrepreneur, as well a master of a team of world-class athlete dogs.
The 47th annual running of the race begins at the ceremonial start on March 2, several blocks from where I used to work for six years. I could walk here from my house.
How I Enjoyed the Ceremonial Start Day
While living in Anchorage, I would always catch the race at two places. I would arrive early at downtown, before the dawn broke, to watch the racers and their support crew unload their sleds and dogs early in usually freezing cold conditions in downtown Anchorage. The night before crews of municipal workers would work til the early morning hours hauling in snow from streets normally plowed clear. At this staging area, dogs were kings and queens and mushers were royalty. Everyone, like me, was taking pictures.
I then would head to midtown Anchorage, where a family I knew hosted an annual Knapp’s Crossing Iditarod Party, just outside of the University of Anchorage. The dog teams would run by, the Knapps serenaded them with trumpet songs, and everyone cheered.
The pictures here date from 2007, the year cancer survivor and famous musher Lance Mackey won the race after competing and winning in the earlier Yukon Quest dog race between Fairbanks and Dawson City.
[Ed. note: I updated this post on March 3, 2019, to correct the number of mushers who competed between 1005 and 2010. The correct and revised number, “more than 80,” is listed above.]
(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
The totem artworks of the first peoples of Southeast Alaska, coastal British Columbia, and western Washington are among the most powerful art forms in the world.
These beautiful creations can be found in the historic communities of the first peoples of these regions, including modern-day Ketchikan, Alaska. The Tlingit and Haida Tribes call this area home, and their cultural, economic, social, and totem art traditions are alive and well, amazing visitors from around the world.
I visited Ketchikan several times during my six-year stay in Alaska from 2004 through 2010, when I worked for the Consulate of Canada, Anchorage.
I had forgotten I had these images until I accidentally found them in an old digital archive. I wanted to bring them out of the shadows and into the light.
These images date from 2007, so the totems since that time have been weathered by the relentless rain and moisture of that beautiful, soggy corner of North America.
If you visit, Ketchikan, by ferry or on the Alaska Marine Highway, you can find the totems at the Clans Totem Circle, at the Totem Heritage Center for historic poles safeguarded in climate-controlled protection, and at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center.
To understand the meaning of this intricate artwork, the myths, and the natural world that inspired these magnificent creations, you should first understand the stories of those who created them. Try exploring the stories about Alaska’s Tlingit and Haida peoples.
The official site of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska provides a great resource on the priorities and heritage of the first people’s of Southeast Alaska. I hope you get a chance to visit Ketchikan and the other communities where these cultural traditions continue to thrive.
(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
I took these images of the statue of Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, and the Old Courthouse in St. Louis in April 2018. Slaves were auctioned from the courthouse steps in estate settlements prior to the U.S. Civil War. Today the courthouse is a National Park site because of its historic significance.
The courthouse also was the location of one of the nation’s most important legal cases. The Scotts brought their suit for freedom in this building in 1847, testing whether they would remain property of slaveholders or be freed. The Scotts’ quest for freedom ultimately helped to speed the divided country into Civil War, starting in 1861.
These images are fitting now because of another recent dangerous test of the United States’ democratic principles, this time by President Donald Trump. During an interview on Oct. 30, 2018, with the news site Axios, Trump claimed he could do away with birthright citizenship by executive order—in other words by dictatorial fiat. Such a move with sweep away the protections of the 14th Amendment of the United States and deny citizenship to children born of immigrants in the United States.
The 14th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” This included former slaves recently freed. It addressed the injustices highlighted in the famous Dred Scott case a decade earlier. It also barred states from denying citizen “life, liberty or property, without due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Not only was Trump saying he could ignore the constitutional separation of powers, his gesture sought to erase a constitutional measure passed after the nation’s bloodiest war in response to the denial of citizenship and core human rights to African-Americans. Trump’s latest statement was another in a series of dangerous moves to unravel basic democratic institutions in the United States.
The Old Courthouse in St. Louis is now a popular tourist destination in downtown St. Louis, where visitors can learn about the underlying national divisions and the institution of slavery that led to the nation’s bloodiest war from 1861 to 1865.
Who Were the Scotts?
Born a slave, Scott was brought to Illinois and Minnesota, where slavery were illegal, and later to Missouri by a slaveholding surgeon. The Scotts’ first owner died and the couple were then, like property, deeded to his heirs. In 1846, Scott and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom.
In a trial held in the Old Courthouse in 1847, Scott and Harriet Scott lost their case on a technicality. During a second trial in the same building, they won their freedom in 1850, but it was also appealed by their purported owners and heirs.
In 1852, The Missouri Supreme Court overturned the 1850 decision and defended slavery itself, saying that it places “that unhappy race within the pale of civilized nations.”
The Scotts sued again in 1854 in federal court. The court upheld their right to sue, but the jury found that the Scott family members still were slaves. The Scotts’ lawyer next appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 1857, the nation’s highest court ruled that Dred Scott’s suit for freedom should be dismissed because African-Americans were not considered citizens. What’s more, Congress could not intervene to pass laws limiting slavery because the Constitution ensured the right of property.
The case was one of many triggering factors that erupted in the ensuing four years, culminating in the start of the Civil War after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the Untied States.
It is not without irony that Trump’s latest pronouncement revisited the very measure that sought to end the root injustices and moral failures of the most divisive chapter in U.S. history. My own view is that Trump intentionally seeks to sow deeper divisions and establish precedents for authoritarian power under his presidency. Disturbingly, he is doing this in the light of day and not in the shadow of war, as past presidents have done in the name of national security.
What Beautiful Light 