By Steve Ulvi, Journal contributor

Spring, 1979. Our picturesque, wooded town of Eagle, Alaska, perched on the Yukon River, was jangled and vocal about the “illegal land grab” by President Carter. The mythic Last Frontier, torn apart.

Protest signs about Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve propagated everywhere. Grousing roadhouse coffee sippers, frosty street talk and rumor-mongering at the tiny post office beat the dead horse of speculation to a pulp. As a young conservationist, wallet-empty, a family, I was conflicted.

Winter retreated. The Taylor Highway opened, the Yukon ice raged out, mud dried, leaves emerged, the enriching activities of glorious summer muffled human consternation.

I had worked five summers on a colorful local crew, digging out and stabilizing slumping buildings at historic Fort Egbert in Eagle. Near enough to boat 12 miles to town for necessary wage work was fortuitous.

My gritty wife held our summer homestead life together at “Windy Corner”– sled dogs, large garden, no means of contact, canning salmon, two hardy kids – so I could work. One summer night that I was home, smoldering coals flamed up the outer door, a .22 rifle cooked off. Lynette gathered up the sleeping kids. I frantically bucketed from a water barrel, just by chance full, splashing it out just before the dry moss roof caught. Disaster miraculously averted.

Early winter trapping in distant valleys went well. In spring of 1980, I dodged the Grim Reaper. At home, fevered, grey, deathly ill; my brother happened to visit and carted me off. Night flight. My blown appendix and peritonitis were scooped out at Fairbanks Memorial. I would have died if we lived further from town.

Summer, always cash-strapped, we mulled the serious social costs of preserving employment. I engaged with Bill Brown, historian, and “keyman” for the new preserve. Straight talk, sipping whiskey; wide-ranging concerns aired. My deep preservation interests were rekindled.

Unprecedented legislation. These huge wild areas would be profoundly different than existing Lower-48 parks that had evicted first peoples to favor “pleasuring grounds.”

A leaked draft of the Preserve Master Plan, the “funny book,” alarmed us all; ludicrous tourist development! Inscrutable policies regulated cabin use, private inholding access, gold panning, commercial enterprises, timber use, etc.

Spring of 1981, I signed on as a uniformed river ranger, a staff of five at Eagle. We began “managing” the new preserve. Local disdain, being banished from businesses and ugly threats roiled like the big river. From the frypan into the fire.

We often guided and kept safe the many specialists and teams surveying natural and cultural resources. My knowledge and skills grew in proportion to the dynamic issues of traditional consumptive activities, low-key visitation and resource protection.

Lynette and the kids yearned for better opportunities in Fairbanks; off and on, summers back around Eagle with me. The NPS supported finishing my degree and gaining permanent status. I was later hired for a ground-breaking subsistence coordinator position at Gates of the Arctic Park and Preserve. Fairbanks headquarters. Family happily together. Huge arctic wilderness; the spirits of nomadic Nunamiut Eskimos and early conservationist, Bob Marshall, in the fabled Brooks Range.

The unique Alaska Federal Subsistence program was an uneasy convergence of evolving regulations and policies, agency image and traditions, cultural adaptations, traditional uses and conflicting Alaska state laws played out in spectacular, wild, ecologically intact landscapes. A dream for a very lucky, evolving, nature-centric humanist.