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By Root 3184 0

the Koyukuk River had a distinctive purity. Every gorgeous vista in the Brooks Range seemed like a mirage. To bring the industrial order into such an ethereal Alaskan landscape would be a ruinous mistake. All of his forestry studies reached their apex here. Marshall wrote that the Arctic Circle was an experience that brought the “joy of physical exploration” into “mental continents.” Just striking out across the flat tundra north of Wiseman in snowshoes, even in bitter subzero weather, exhilarated him. Every time he survived an avalanche or a washout, or was almost blown over by a cloud of snow, it made him understand how hardy the First Nation tribes were.

Marshall had found nirvana in the seeming nothingness around Wiseman. His sense of place, his affection for a specific locality, was focused on this serene Arctic region, where every quiet slope seemed to sing a hymn. Having adapted to the long Arctic winters, he felt privileged. The complete absence of machines gave Arctic life integrity. In a state of exaltation, Marshall declared Wiseman his enchanting community “200 miles beyond the edge of the 20th century.” How tame the Adirondacks were by comparison! Many townsfolk in the Arctic Divide were poor but simply didn’t know it. To Marshall the local elders had a dignity hard to find along the eastern seaboard. New Yorkers were self-centered by comparison. Broadening his source of names beyond Wiseman, Marshall started attaching Inuit terms to numerous sites he encountered in the Brooks Range: Yenituk (“white face”) Creek, Pinnyanatuk (“absolute perfection of beauty”), and Karillyukpuk (“very rugged”).28 It was a world that was drawn in vibrant, sharp colors—a humbling world where the low tundra fauna burst with fresh growth, undeterred by durable permafrost. When he was back in New York, Marshall could close his eyes and imagine Wiseman set against a wide background of snow and smiles. The memory of his designations in the Gates of the Arctic filled him with joy.

Using the village of Wiseman as a sociological laboratory, Marshall put forward a theory that being surrounded by raw wilderness led to a marvelous “amount of freedom, tolerance, beauty, and contentment such as few human beings are ever fortunate enough to achieve.” Where others saw desolation, Marshall saw Eden. Like many anthropological studies of the early 1930s, Arctic Village was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory that it was unhealthy for humans to bottle up primal urges.29 Every chapter presented the amazing frankness of the people of the upper Koyukuk. The farther north one went in Alaska, nature became greater and greater and man became less and less. The virgin Arctic wilderness, Marshall now argued, offered the opportunity for a sojourner “craving for adventure” to break into “unpenetrated ground, venturing beyond the boundary of normal aptitude, exerting oneself to the limit of capacity.” His intimate sociological portrait of life in Wiseman—a hamlet on the edge of nowhere—was a pioneering work. As Roderick Frazier Nash pointed out in Wilderness and the American Mind, the words “nameless” and “trackless” and “unknown” were continually used to describe Alaskan landmasses north of the Arctic Divide.30 Marshall, embracing each word, wasn’t a member of America’s wilderness cult. He personified it.

The fact that Marshall was writing Arctic Village didn’t mean he had forgotten about upstate New York. On July 15, 1932, Marshall (along with his brother George) broke a world record, climbing fourteen Adirondack peaks in less than twenty hours. To Marshall, each peak was unique, with a personality of its own, sharp and green against the sky. There was something about Marshall’s exhausting feat, however, that hinted at mania. In The Adirondack Park: A Political History, Frank Graham Jr. wrote that he found “something a little disturbing in all this bustling from one mountain peak to another. . . . Pull up a pumpkin and sit down for awhile, one wants to say to Marshall.”31

Much as the novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote candidly about the citizens of Asheville,