By Steve Ulvi, Journal contributor

Despite, or perhaps because of, my ordinary middle-class upbringing in the extraordinary Mediterranean bioregion of northern California, where my angst grew along with the mayhem of traffic, explosive rural sprawl and gentrification, I have long realized how very fortunate I am.

Aside from dysfunctional family stresses in my formative years, I summer camped in national forests, fished, enjoyed naturalist walks in Yosemite Valley, hatched butterflies in my bedroom and tended outdoor bird aviaries; the natural world became the beating heart of my aspirations.

I was unaware that my worldview, as a conflicted young man approaching adulthood, was gelling in a crucible of political upheaval, budding social activism and a disheartening paving of paradise. Buffering meant eastern spiritual practices and hitch-hiking to distant western states to backpack in protected areas.

Inconceivable now, there were just over 3.5 billion people on Earth, about 200 million Americans. There remained many roadless areas on topo maps besides parks and federal Wilderness Areas. Keen for immediate rural surroundings, snow outings and woodcraft, my internal compass pointed northward.

The first northward leap was to the lush forests, flowing waters, summer heat and mauzy winters of western Oregon for several fragmented University years punctuated by local ranch work in summers. Rustic shelter was a comfort, financially and mentally. The voices of iconic conservationists and historians of the West relating stories of the immense costs of Manifest Destiny echoed in and around me.

The opaque public accounts of key Western lands policies, environmental failures and the murky history of the unrelenting destruction of indigenous tribes were laid bare by truths emerging in research, popular literature and my eclectic coursework.

I had applied for summer national park positions, to no avail. At the frontier of my imagination lay a vast subarctic landscape and fabled Yukon River, where significant depopulation and economic decline by WWII left ghostly remains of the momentous Klondike Gold Rush era. The Big North Woods.

1974 – half a century ago – we stuffed my 1951 farm truck, drove the dusty Al-Can at 45 mph, camping out, unsure of a specific destination. We reoriented toward the upper Yukon River, talked to local natives, lined canoes a few miles above their Han Athabaskan Village; cabin building, cautious hunting, gill-netting fish, shedding delusions, cash poor and annually reimagining the future with my gritty partner, Lynette.

Mushing to a compact dirt-floored cabin in a new trapping area, receiving airdropped supplies, Lynette and I (toddler daughter at our feet) strained to hear news or talk shows during auroral evenings. One such frigid day in December of 1978, President Jimmy Carter set aside an unprecedented array of superlative Alaska lands, as monuments, with a vast National Preserve straddling the Yukon River just below Eagle to be overseen by the hidebound National Park Service.

These were highly controversial Congressional brushstrokes finishing the Great Partitioning of Old Alaska; from Alaska statehood in 1959, federal legislation finally resolved statewide Alaska Native land claims (1971) and then finalized huge national conservation units (1980) while the monumental 800-mile Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline started pumping north slope oil to Valdez in 1977.

Unsurprisingly, Eagle (population 135) became one of several reactionary “gateway” towns near new federal units, where eyebrow-raising draft management plans and policies, state lawsuits, contested jurisdictions and social animus altered dreams.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire!