Jim and Holly Akenson Interview, Part Two Item Info
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Jim Akenson:The. Are you running that? I feel the biggest change that we saw was the massive wildfire of the year 2000 and it just changed everything. Basically, it changed the infrastructure of the facility. It changed how wildlife interacted in that environment. It changed our role as managers and scientists at that field station, because so much of what we did was either directly, it was everything was directly oriented to the fire, either the effect on our water system and our fences or the interest in research which came about.
And there was a lot of interest in research from a forestry perspective, from the tree or that the tree ecology, so to speak, vegetative ecology, rangeland ecology and Jim Peek did a lot of work in, in that arena, both with pre and post fire data to look at for comparison and the stream itself. You know it lost a lot of its riparian cover and and that whole dynamic changed flows changed with runoff.
The stability of the airstrip had to be dealt with. There was so many things that that fire affected and it really from our personal or carnivore research perspective I felt took us out of a forefront situation and directly comparable to what was going on in the Yellowstone system with the work we were doing, to not having the time anymore, to really look at how wolves, for instance, were affecting the mountain lion, the cougar situation.
Jack Kredell:Can you talk about how the fire affected you both personally?
Jim Akenson:Yeah, it it was high drama for us, and we'd been through fire before Taylor Ranch in 1988, the same time Yellowstone was going through its big fire episode. We had a 100,000 acre fire that was primarily to the north of Big Creek, but was a threat to Taylor Ranch. And we spent, a few weeks. I won't say under siege, but under the protection of the Forest Service.
With that fire positioned just to the north of us. And remember what that complex was called at that time. But it was a major fire, Golden Creek fire. But it was nothing like what we experienced with the Diamond Point fire and the big fire of 2000, which involved multiple fires merging together, us having to evacuate the field station and going to our nearest neighbor 21 miles away, and then having the opportunity or the misfortune to experience a real firestorm.
Once we were at the flying B on the middle fork of the Salmon. It was high drama. It was scary. It was, in a way, life changing to go through that sort of an experience and something that people who are living in remote situations today are typically not given the opportunity to experience.
Holly Akenson:I think for me, the the fire was the first time I really felt like, you know, this is what wilderness is about. We have no control over this environment or what's going to happen to us. We don't have the option to just fly out or be rescued in a helicopter. so that was quite a different feeling. We had always been comfortable in the wilderness and not afraid of what might happen or, you know what, that we might be in danger in the backcountry.
But that was truly a sense of knowing that we had no power over nature, and nature was going to do whatever happened. And we were we were going to be the victims of it. Whether it turned out well or not well. So that was certainly a big enlightening perspective for me.
Jim Akenson:And it was a level of stimulation that I don't think I've ever felt before, particularly when we were at the Flying B and we had a dozen or so people that were all in the same situation. And we knew that our survival was dependent upon our emergency plan, implementing that plan and our instincts and how we responded at that moment to what was going on.
And it seems like the Bear Report post massive fire evaluation that Forest Service did indicated that, well, we experience very few career firefighters go through, which is being in the middle of a firestorm.
Jack Kredell:And it's that like can you talk about that?
Jim Akenson:Yeah, it was scary, basically. And it was a new experience. So you just didn't know what was going to happen next. You were reacting at the moment and Holly and I were in separate situations. She was out in a great big alfalfa field with a large herd of horses and mules and some women that were less physically capable to react to that situation.
And I was ultimately trapped in a shop with two guys that were had a similar responsibility to that was our fallback point, was to go to that shop, you know, that we didn't really realize that it would be to protect ourselves from a horrific wind because there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 mile an hour wind that was accompanied with the firefront as it overwhelmed the Flying V facility.
And no, it was just totally high drama and putting out spot fires. And and then as we all regrouped after the big firefront had played run its course, it was one of firefighting and structural firefighting. So it was intense drama and a great big extension bridge that spanned the middle fork of the salmon. It pulled out of its its foundation that was built in 1950.
So it had gone 100 years without or 50 years without experiencing that type of wind before. So again, it was just simply high drama, adrenaline rush.
Holly Akenson:Then immediately following the fire, the adrenaline rush disappeared and was quite a depressing sense. It was a lot of fighting among the Flying B employees and just the sense of depression where we were looking at the devastation of burned areas that previously we never would have imagined could have burned, you know, lush, riparian areas. And we were finding dead and dying wildlife.
And so that was really hard to deal with. And we had this sense of melancholy for quite a while after that. It just felt like all this beautiful area that we lived in was now blackened and not so nice. And I, I vividly remember thinking, Well, I know as a scientist that fire is good. And I kept telling myself, Remember, fire is good, but it's kind of not in my backyard sense.
Yeah, fire over there is good. But right where we lived, it was for a while. It was very hard to see the beauty in the area and we had to actively seek out beautiful things. A new flower or the color of the new shrubs coming up in the riparian in the fall. It was it was difficult and and then even like we would fly out from the wilderness and come to places like this Willow Valley and see all these green trees.
And it just seemed incredible that there were slopes of green trees. So our whole perspective was altered by our environment, living every day in an area that had burned trees and burned forests. That green forest actually seemed quite unusual to us. So was very interesting to see that our perspective could change so much.
Jim Akenson:And I think it brought about this element of scale and, you know, controlled fire, small scale burns, 15 to 20000 acres, which is still quite a bit compared to 250,000 acres. That's just devastating. And I understand historically that there was a lot of stand replacement for massive wildfire in the Salmon River mountains. But feeling it, seeing it directly, you realized, wow, that is a major event.
It's not something that seems in the proper scale of wise management, that it was basically too much and it did change my view of of wildfire. Definitely.
Holly Akenson:It changed my view, too. And I think in a way, we knew from our personal experience this was not normal. And at the time, you know, we talked to the Forest Service and I actually asked our forest supervisor if there was an opportunity to go to Washington, DC and talk to politicians about fire, that this was not a normal situation.
Jim Akenson:And this is in the year 2000.
Holly Akenson:This is before everybody started realizing, you know what, climate change has changed things and that wasn't normal. But at the time, the Forest Service was still promoting this view. That fire is always good and fire and wilderness should always be allowed to do what it does. And it would drive us crazy to see any new fires in our area and the Forest Service would public say, We're going to let this burn because it's beneficial to the environment.
And 75% of our Ranger districts had been burned in the last 20 years, and there was no way that additional fire was beneficial to the environment. But that was just the language of the day. And so it's interesting now for us to see, it's well accepted now that these fires are not normal and they're not all beneficial and improving things.
They're they're different because of climate change.
Jack Kredell:Do you think that fire suppression played a role in its extent and severity.
Jim Akenson:You know, I think that it it probably did. I think there was some disease occurrence in trees. There was another factor that I just really think the whether it's climate change or climatological cycle or shift that that dry dryness factor was the biggest variable. Yeah. I mean, we came, you know, again, the old Idaho years in 1985 was the last year that I we were involved in supporting the lookout going up to Rush Point Lookout.
And at that time that that was still manned and there was forest fire observation activities that were pretty intensive in that time period. It was transitioning from lookouts being manned in the mid eighties to aerial surveillance, but it was still done with the intent of if there's a fire out there, we probably need to jump on it and put it out.
So there's this whole mantra, this whole there's the physical change that's occurring related to climate, and then there's the sociological aspect that well, no, like Holly mentioned, fire is good, doesn't matter the scale. And so we came out of this thinking, well, you know, controlled burns are really a good thing because they can help temper that out of control scale aspect.
It was quite a learning experience for us, really, and I do think that we were in a unique situation to to feel it, absorb it, and then convey what we'd witnessed. And, but we never really had that opportunity outside of writing some published articles. And also what we put as a fire story in our book, maybe smaller scale, but I'd kind of forgotten about you contacting the forest supervisor about that.
And that that was kind of the mindset that we had at that time was like, my gosh, we've experienced something that maybe is a view into the future, looking into a crystal ball of what's going to happen around the West in that year, 2000 and shortly thereafter.
Jack Kredell:So it sounds like you've adapted, though.
Jim Akenson:We did adapt and we we had a scientific responsibility, we felt, to, okay, we've been through this. We true, we have our personal views on this. But now it's really important is to monitor change. And we kind of buckled down into that role, I think. And it was great to see all the other interests that that came about from that stream ecology, forest health and replacement.
Holly Akenson:Yeah, I think that I don't know if anything's going on now with any research on that, but the the Douglas fir forest that was there before might not ever come back and look the same. And so again, there's that dynamic relationship of the ecological conditions that you can't necessarily predict that something will be altered and then come back to the same as it had been before.
That's often the case. But when you have a changing climate, I know Katie Cavanough was doing some research early on after the fire, and for the first two years after the fire, we had drought summers and the little Doug fir seedlings that from the trees that actually put out cones as they were dying. The little seedlings came up in the spring, but they didn't have enough moisture to survive through the summer.
So we were not seeing reproduction and we lost a lot of that potential for reproduction on some of the trees because the summer conditions didn't allow for that quick rebound and the forest.
Jim Akenson:Yeah. And there's I don't know there's again this unusual blend of technological capability and old ways of viewing nature. And you know, like I think about the lidar flights that occurred and, you know, latest imagery capability that was being applied to the burnt swath of Big Creek. And yet, on the other hand, there was our basic functioning happening with the loss of our water system.
And yeah, all of a sudden we had this huge availability of firewood, but everything was black and it just it wasn't as nice to deal with. Yes. Finding a dead tree here, there. And and adding that to our larder of firewood needs for the winter. So it it was a strange contrast and the dynamics of change, the contrast of time is something I think that's really interwoven into that site, that place.
Holly Akenson:It's also a new source of danger.
Jim Akenson:Yeah.
Holly Akenson:Living at Taylor Ranch. You mentioned the The Bear group. The Forest Service analysis post-fire about conditions and they reported that the drainage that flows in above Taylor Ranch was severely burned and that there was a high likelihood in the next ten years post-fire that there would be a massive debris flow and of high likelihood, I think they said a 50% likelihood of risk to.
Jim Akenson:Human life.
Holly Akenson:Human lives. So that was a little intimidating to hear that from the Forest Service. And at one point we were going to have some faculty come in and talk about Post-Fire research. They decided it was too dangerous for them to come in. So it was just Jim and I that stayed there in the dangerous situation because there was a thunderstorm and it was a possibility that there could have been a debris flow flash floods.
But we actually had a safety plan for the possibility that we would have a debris flow that could separate the two sides of Taylor Ranch. And we had emergency gear placed up on the hillsides on both sides. It had blankets and food and.
Jim Akenson:Communications.
Holly Akenson:Flashlights and two-way radios in case we had to suddenly evacuate and run up the hill just to avoid being wiped out from a big flood event. So every time we had a thunderstorm, we were always checking the stream and seeing what the situation with the water was. There more water than usual? Was there less water than usual because either one of those two could be a problem?
If there was damming up above, we might not see any water in the stream, which would be probably more risky than seeing too much water. So there was a time period that we were kind of on high alert and we had to let our students know that we would. We had these protocols in case we needed to evacuate people.
Jim Akenson:But it also stimulated research interests that put us I think, into the at least in our three decade association with Taylor Ranch, the peak of activity Post-Fire, which occurred from maybe 2002 or three up until 2007 or eight, roughly, where there was this intense interest in that place was at absolute capacity. The field station was our researchers from Idaho State Federal government, Idaho, Fish and Game, University of Idaho.
There was just a lot going on and a lot of student involvement as well because of that. So, you know, there was a a good component that came from that big event. But putting it all in perspective, it kind of boils down to what we were bringing up earlier, that wilderness is dynamic in that whole episode, That whole time period, I think, captured that dynamic aspect.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, it sounds like wilderness sometimes changes or is dynamic in ways that are unanticipated or perhaps perhaps for us or kind of exceeded our expectations. Yeah. What changes could happen?
Jim Akenson:Yeah. Yeah. You know, people could say, well, what if grizzlies were restored back in that system? How would that change everything? And and I think the tendency is to think, well it would be more dangerous to camp here. There to me that is so small scale compared to what a massive wildfire will bring about change wise.
And it's just it's just a little dot a speck of sand compared to that scale of wildfire. So.
Holly Akenson:Well, in our own research, it was interesting to see, like Jim said, we were in the middle of our research project when the fire hit. And one of the things that we found -- and again, it was more subjective than having a research plan and a data set, but we were studying cougars and wolves, and we found that the wolves benefited from wildfire and the cougars were adversely affected.
And we attributed that to the different the different.
Jim Akenson:Life styles.
Holly Akenson:Life, survival strategies of the two species that wolves lived in packs in had very, very large territories and the Cougars were, had individual territories. So when most of the big creek drainage burned, the wolves could take that large pack and move to another drainage that hadn't been burned. But the individual cougars didn't have an option to leave their own territory to go to another one.
And so we had cougars that were starving and.
Jim Akenson:Killing each other.
Holly Akenson:Killing each other and high stress environment. And the wolves seemed to do just fine. The elk from the Big Creek winter range went to the Chamberlain Basin, and that's where the wolves spent the winter. So they actually had twice as many elk concentrated in a non burned area and the cougars had very little to eat. We actually even documented them killing moose that were starving to death because the moose also did not move.
They stayed where they had been for previous years and there was no food because the riparian was burned. So we found some fascinating relationships, but in the big picture it it adversely affected our research ability because we had commitments at the field station. But, but what we learned from fire was fascinating, and we would have never been able to know that if we hadn't had the fire occur in the middle of our research.
Jim Akenson:It kind of blew up the scale of what the questions we were trying to answer in regards to are wolves influencing cougar stability and in how they went about their lives. Because my colleagues said the wolves went a long ways away and rather than interacting with the cougars that were in our study area per se, were probably interacting with a whole different population, we just couldn't get on top of it logistically.
And then you combine that, I think if we wouldn't have had the responsibilities at the field station, we might have been able to adapt to that scale, but it still would have been a huge challenge in the way movements that occurred. Let's grab a bite to eat.
Jack Kredell:That's pretty good.
Jim Akenson:Yeah. So one thing that we didn't talk about that I think is important to address with Taylor is the I don't know how to describe the legacy of learning the student aspect. And I would say now looking back on our accomplishments at Taylor, I would have to say influencing young people and stimulating young people to pursue careers in some aspect.
The natural resource management, I would say that was our hallmark and the relationships that we built with our students. We've got many great lifelong friendships that came from that and it was very rewarding to see that. I mean, it was cool to bring the place around for functioning and a living history manner with the mule team and all that stuff.
But when it's said and done, the real important take home was the the opportunity for students to develop their own knowledge base and have their own experiences and then share those experiences with others. Was important.
Holly Akenson:I would agree with that. I think that for me was also a primary sense of satisfaction and that, you know, we could challenge students but also help them figure out a success. And we just saw so much growth in that age class is the age that they're going to be really growing and learning anyway. But I think that wilderness environment in having self-sufficiency and really we just saw so much change within a summer with students in their confidence, their self-confidence and feeling like, yeah, I can do this.
And we just love seeing those changes in the students really growing and and blossoming after their summer at Taylor. And and for us not having children, they were like our kids. So we've been to a lot of weddings and we keep track of babies being born and it's just been really special for us to, to see the careers of the students that we were involved with.
Jim Akenson:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:So that ties into one of my last questions, which is what kind of future you want to see for Taylor?
Jim Akenson:Well, I think that multifaceted learning opportunity is huge. That involves a high involvement with students. Students are the key, both undergraduate and graduate. Obviously, there needs to be faculty engagement there who whoever's on site hopefully can stay long enough to absorb a lot of those elements that we've talked about with the the local history, the natural history, and why the and understanding why the place is so special.
So it's this mixed bag that at the base foundation level is student learning opportunities and at various levels.
Holly Akenson:And one of the things that some of our students told us was that they they learned so much in their summer as student interns, as undergrads, they would say more than what they learned in class. But I think what they meant was the pieces came together in the field that when you're actually working science, the all the pieces you learn as book learning makes sense.
And so I think that's an important role for providing students that opportunity to connect academic learning with the reality of how that fits in to natural resources and in nature. And I know one of Jim's big pushes also is that it also should be an adventure for students. You know that when you go to the wilderness, it shouldn't be lots of rules and you can't do this and you can't do that.
It's a time of exploration for students and a time to learn what you can and can't do. And so I think it's important to give students as much leeway as they can handle. And if they need guidance to help them succeed, then then provide that. But it's a fine balance to maximize them gaining personally what they need to gain in that kind of environment.
But I think it's such a unique environment. The University of Idaho has a real gem in a place to help develop students in a way that can't be done anywhere else.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, and you know, the future of Taylor it's dependent upon now funding is a big part of that. It's you know, we've had visits with UI leadership and the current Dean Dennis Becker, was very motivated to help secure that, which is great. It's hard to get over the hump and really get that established to where there's a block of money donation that produces enough interest through an endowment to be able to fund basic functioning, plus provide unique research and education opportunities.
And I think that that it's going to happen. It's just you don't know exactly when and it's got to take all the stars to get aligned properly. And it could be we're at that point in time. But it's it's really good to see a core folks that are willing to keep that that place at the forefront, keep it alive as something that's going to extend into the future.
And I think that as long as there's that nucleus, we're in good shape looking ahead. And when we were involved and some others, Janet Pope and Ed Krumpe and Jim Peek and a variety of other folks who have connections to Taylor Ranch envision this Friends of Taylor, which was this core of people that would be capable of some financial help, but primarily would share a vision which would ultimately lead to this endowment.
And I just think that is one of these times everything's going to come together and then that place will be self-supporting and could really develop to its full potential.
Holly Akenson:So think about, I can say on the research side, it seems that it takes a couple core faculty who really have a commitment to do something in that kind of environment. And it's not an easy research environment because it's not accessible by vehicles, but it seems to me like it's time to do another kind of a group meeting with potential researchers who would like to talk about, you know, what are the best purposes and the best ideas for research at Taylor.
You know, things have changed. We've got fire, we've got global climate change is now thought in a very different way than the last time there was a group of faculty that got together and said, Well, where do we see the best focus for Taylor? And it may be an individual person with their own personal interests, or it may be a core group that says, you know, this would be an ideal focus for research, but to get at least two or three researchers, whether from U of I or ISU or.
Jim Akenson:Wherever.
Holly Akenson:National, you know, Forest Service, USGS, to start putting together a program. It seems like once something gets started, it grows. But right now things have kind of died out and there's not a core research program going on and it needs to be started back up. There's still some research going on in the area, but I don't know how much integration among faculty or of looking at some of the past data that might be available to expand on.
But I think the research is another critical component. It's not just for education. The wilderness is a a great place to do research and there's already some good solid data sets and and publications that have come out that either could be built on or expanded in different directions. So I'm hoping to see a research program as well. And just like an endowment for education to seek out some some base funding, I mean, even if it's just to maintain monitoring because there is some monitoring still going on and monitoring is important and that's usually the last thing to get funded.
But those long term data sets or what field stations are known for and there's some of that at Taylor, there could be more.
Jim Akenson:You know, and there's a good core of fact. Lee still active Colden Baxter for my issue was wonderful for us to work with and many still there and it'd be nice to expand his engagement. Brian Kennedy another faculty from U of I was quite involved shortly after the fire and it would be nice to get him re stimulated and whatever that takes.
If it's another big NSF grant or whatever. There needs to be a push to to do that because those guys, they already have a feel for the place and, and they would be very beneficial in bringing in the next cohort of folks that would follow in their footsteps. Maybe it's in a different field, different discipline.
Holly Akenson:And they're both very collaborative.
Jim Akenson:They're both very collaborative.
Holly Akenson:So it could be some people who are not very directly connected that could collaborate and really create some unique results.
Jim Akenson:And I guess personally I would like to see a continuation slash completion of the archeology work that was done by Dr. Frank Leon Hardy, and he had graduate students in there that completed their thesis requirements. But there's a lot more that a lot of loose ends that didn't get tied together. And I think that that's an awesome learning experience for students to this field archeology type camps.
And to me that was a surprising high point scientifically in our Taylor Branch experience was that work looking at how the Sheepeater Indians live their lifestyle in that piece of country?
Jack Kredell:As managers, you witness just a constant stream of comings and goings. Now different people, scientists, I'm curious to know what you think stays with people. So maybe. Taylor You know what you what do people take out with them.
Holly Akenson:As far as the researchers.
Jack Kredell:Know something something like deeper like, yeah, they spend a little bit of time at Taylor I'm. I'm. I'm wondering what you think people. What what sort of experiences or relationships or whatever it is that people bring out of Taylor with them into their everyday lives.
Holly Akenson:I think just like how we felt, I think a lot of people, even if they're just there for a short time, get this sense of immersion, direct connection with nature. and you know, we just hear so often how much people enjoyed being at Taylor or in the wilderness there. And I think it's, it's that absence of the everyday things that keep us all busy.
You know, we see people come to Taylor Ranch and often takes a couple of days before they kind of slow down and you can see the new people or just, you know, what time is it? what's my schedule? I need to do this or I need to do that. And that becomes a slow nurse where you can think deeper, think longer, create connecting relationships with people and with nature without the everyday hassles.
Jim Akenson:so refreshing, reinvigorating type of an experience. I personally have often thought something that is not realized at Taylor is the potential for a writer in residence or writers in residence because it's the type of environment that really stimulates creativity. And you know, we obviously wrote a book after we left, but I can remember thinking so many times having our daily diary in front of me and thinking about a topic or a story that I could be much more creative if I were doing the same at the site, on site, listening to Big Creek, just hearing all the sights and sounds and smells of that drainage, it just it it's invigorating.
Holly Akenson:And I think that goes the same for research, you know. You know, with that opportunity to slow down and think about things. I think the creative thought process for science is there as well. Now that, you know, sitting in an office in Moscow is not quite the same. I mean, you can look at data and maybe get more insights, but being out in the natural environment really allows for that creative thought, whether it's science or art.
Jim Akenson:This is kind of off tangent a little bit. But I know one thing I thought of a few times, particularly our last few visits to Moscow, is how similar that must our experience was to Dave Lewis. When Dave Lewis went to Boise and he looked at those buildings, he hadn't been there in 30 some years, ever since he was based at Fort Boise as a Army scout.
And in thinking, my gosh, how do all these people make a living? Why are all these people at this one place? It's just seems odd. Then fast forward to us going to Moscow and just seeing everybody hustling around and looking at their computer screens and even then and in nine and early 2010, cell phones are starting to come around.
And it was like, man, you guys have just lost touch with reality. And it just seemed like such a an odd concept that, wow, what's happening to mankind? And it's kind of repeated itself over time and, you know, for Lewis, it was saying whatever the name of that hotel was there in Boise that he'd visited in 1881 or something like that, and then saw it again in the late 1920s.
And my gosh, it's the same place. But look what's happened around it. There's a city around it now. And so I don't know, I guess that's to some degree a little bit of an unhealthy thought that maybe it's a wake up that we as people, through having those refreshing experiences at sites like Taylor Ranch, can perhaps look at our global our world situation a little bit differently, not get so wound up and bent out of shape over situation that we either can't control or we should take a different perspective in how we address those problems.
And and I'm thinking mostly environmental type issues there.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, students are especially students of science are so immersed in data now. Yeah. There's a lot less familiarity with the sources of data. Right. And how to render data from the world.
Jim Akenson:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:I feel like Taylor is a great place where you can be immersed in the sources.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, that's true. It's fundamental. Yeah, it's very.
Holly Akenson:Kind of the big picture because data is usually about a small thing and you can say a lot about that small thing that you study. But if you don't understand how it fits in the big picture, you might misinterpret the data that you have.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, but I don't know. There's still hope. And you know, you work with these students and you you get to know them and you really see that people don't change from one generation to the next. They're affected by other influences that are somewhat external. And Taylor provides an influence that I think is very wholesome for the future and environmental awareness, scientific understanding, historical perspective is also very important and it's just I don't know, there's there's a lot of hope.
And in that place is one of those nodes of hope.
Jack Kredell:So. Right. what about any I'm thinking now about using some of those cans in geography stuff. Yeah. A very memorable animal encounters.
Jim Akenson:boy. Yeah.
Holly Akenson:Too many.
Jim Akenson:There's a lot. There's a lot. And some of them had happy endings and we're. my gosh, wasn't that amazing? And others were close calls thinking about having a park string and encountering a moose on the trail and the horse backing back through the pack string and causing a big mess. Yeah, I mean, there's just a number of things.
Holly Akenson:We have many of them tied with our research. In the summer, we were taking students to wolf dens, so almost every Woolston encounter was pretty interesting.
Jim Akenson:Yeah.
Holly Akenson:And camping around wolves or researching wolves and cougars as well.
Jim Akenson:We'll have to spend another part of a day coming up with points on maps because it's something that that's a cool idea. Cameron Creek has a lot of stories and nodes with it, and the pictographs down by Soldier Bar is another one that's stimulated a lot of thoughts, dialog and created experiences.
Jack Kredell:So we're have a resident talk for a little bit.
Jim Akenson:We did.
Holly Akenson:Yeah. That was Gary Koehler. Come here.
Jim Akenson:Come here. The Bobcat. He was a character out. You didn't want to leave any thawing meat out on the counter or you're going to end up in a battle to get recover your elk roast.
Holly Akenson:Which we did. Yeah. Occasions, I think.
Jim Akenson:Had to involve the dog once, too. Yeah. pack rats and numerous pack rats, especially after the fire.
Holly Akenson:Bear's breeding in the garden that we can hear in the middle of the night. And yeah, like some old man being beaten or something that you sort of want to lock the door and go, I don't know what's going on out there, but lock the doors.
Jim Akenson:You and Packers coming up to the house the middle of the night after having a big packed string wreck in the gorge and losing loads and having a few animals drowned and harrowing experience. And it's just there's a ton of things and a lot of them are in the book that we wrote, but a lot of them are another book and or documentation like what you're doing.
Jack With the points on the map, I think that's a really cool idea. Click on that and get multiple stories over time. Well, some hours, but other people have got great stories too. And if you could just coalesce that around a site, low bar base and cabin crew, soldier bar.
Holly Akenson:that's thinking another site that would be good related to wildlife is across from Taylor Rancher the benches on the benches. And in no late November the bighorn sheep rut primarily right there and so you can hear them butting heads from the cabins and there might be 60 or 80 bighorn sheep up on this one bench up there.
You can go up and hang out with them.
Jack Kredell:That sounds like the best, but.
Holly Akenson:It sounds like chopping.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, Yeah, it is.
Holly Akenson:It sounds like a big funk. Yeah. So when you hear it.
Jim Akenson:Yeah.
Holly Akenson:It's like, somebody's chopping firewood.
Jim Akenson:There's a reverberation thing about it that it takes horn again. So they're great. But one of the big observations I thought was cool was when we saw Mike Schlegel was with as a Idaho fish and game biologist, we watched through a spotting scope, this fairly large mountain lion moving in on a group of sheep, and they just bunched together like musk ox.
And then one of the young rams went out towards the cat with this blob of big horns behind it and the cat turned and took off. It was confused by that. But, you know, those are things that are not well documented, that being there all the time and looking at this one hillside, like all these mansions all the time, you see just a variety of different things.
And recognizing rattlesnakes are a big part of that system. They're they're there. You see them all the time. You know, they're can be startling at times, but they're also pretty fascinating in the fact that the rattlesnake research that was done there determined that these snakes are going from down load up to 7000 feet elevation and they're traveling pretty good distances in the course of their activity time of the year.
And then all going back to a common den site and knowing that that was going on was pretty fascinating. But that's one animal that I don't care to do radio telemetry on after having done some of it, because it's an unpretty sized thing with a Yagi antenna and moving in and.
Holly Akenson:You know your close but yeah, know which way to step. Yeah.
Jim Akenson:Yeah. If you're lucky you hear them rattle that. Yeah. Some great experiences.
Holly Akenson:A lot of interesting encounters when we were trapping wolves And so those were always.
Jim Akenson:For radio.
Holly Akenson:We had telemetry on our traps. So in the middle of the night, if we were trapping near Taylor Edge, we would know the trap was disturbed. And so sometimes just one of us would go out to check the trap. It was a little unnerving at night to go out and wonder, is there going to be a wolf in this trap or is the whole pack around?
We really didn't know for sure.
Jim Akenson:Or is it a non-target like an elk that's got the trap on its foot or. Yeah. Or a bobcat. Yeah. That had to be done carefully, for sure. I think that there's a whole nother aspect of living there that is important to document, and that's the role of aviation in that backcountry, in that wilderness and that field station, because it really made the logistics possible and doable and aircraft use and wilderness is a point of controversy.
But in that particular case, it was so blended into that backcountry culture. It was it was critical for the capability to use that area to educate and research in that area. It was a very big part. And I grew up my father was a pilot before World War Two. He served in a B-17 group in World War Two and he was really into aviation and he always really wanted to see me become a pilot and get into flying.
And I might have done that, except where it seemed like whenever I was getting close, there would be somebody who we knew, who was highly experienced, who had a mishap. Not that it happened frequently. It didn't, but it just happened enough to make me realize you want to be operating in there as a pro, not as a beginner.
So I was always hesitant to get a pilot's license, but I still really valued aviation. I think I became pretty aware and competent of aviation capabilities, different aircraft, different conditions. And I, I value that association. That's something that I, I view, I guess with good favor. Looking back on it as all those aviation related experiences and some of them were a little bit harrowing.
We certainly had some of.
Jack Kredell:Those.
Jim Akenson:With no visibility in getting near dark and pretty much relying on that pilot sitting next to you and their judgment, because this is before GPS technology, it's pretty much them having confidence in their altitude, their compass and their capability to fly straight and keep level when you didn't have any visibility. But they did it. And here we are today.
So I guess that's the testimony to it, that many good pilots Arnold Aviation, McCall Air Taxi and folks from Pullman and Moscow were good as well that those ones that we flew with week in and week out Arnold aviation Dorrison's's from McCall air taxi I'd put them on the best any pilots on the planet but safety's always important with that.
And that's something that Maurice Hornocker reminded us of a few times. I can remember.
Jack Kredell:You have a close call.
Jim Akenson:Well, we had when we did the grand opening of the Dive League cabin in four, we had some precarious flying, people coming from Moscow and the weather just wasn't that cooperative. And then we, you know, those situations. Do you go ahead and try and fly people out now or do you just stay another day and wait out this storm and his inclination and advice was always great.
And by chance, I think that we did tend to postpone some flying at that time. And another well-known pilot from the Stanley area did crash that particular day. So it's always best that you're on the side of caution no matter what your experience level.
Holly Akenson:And if the pilot's not comfortable, you just going to do whatever they want. Yeah. No matter what you thought you had scheduled. Yeah. So it was interesting that we often did have days like we might be waiting in Cascade to fly back in 2 to 4.
Jim Akenson:Or five.
Holly Akenson:Days. As difficult as that is, it just hang out and do nothing day after day. You know, that's just part of the backcountry living is you go with the weather allows you to fly and when it doesn't, then you're not going anywhere.
Jim Akenson:Well, you do develop a very close bond with those aviators, be they the pilots or the folks working for the aviation service. I mean, extremely dependent on it. And now I think that's something that's easily taken for granted, that it's incredibly unique and valuable skill, the capability to go safely in and out of those mountains day in and day out.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, I'd love to interview some of those pilots.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, Ray Arnold's a good one, Mike Doris is a good one to her. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Both.
Jim Akenson:Yeah, both. And Walt Smith is flying for Arnold now. He's an outstanding pilot. We used to consider him the young pilot, but he's probably now halfway through his career, and he's extremely good.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, I think that covers it.
Jim Akenson:Good.
Jack Kredell:But there's. There's something else.
Jim Akenson:Well, we do. We need to talk about those points and some. I think you're onto something that's pretty cool that and I think it's highly valuable. And then for some reason I'm just thinking on those terms and I think if we got some maps out with a little bit of time, we could give you some good stuff and reference you to other people that would have some good stories.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, yeah. Thank you guys.
- Title:
- Jim and Holly Akenson Interview, Part Two
- Creator:
- Jack Kredell
- Date Created:
- June 09, 2022
- Description:
- Jack Kredell interviewing Jim and Holly Akenson, researchers who first went to the Taylor Wilderness Research Station in 1982. In part one, they discuss talk what attracted them to the research station in 1982, the transitional period between the Idaho Primitive Area to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, living at the Taylor Ranch. In part two they discuss the impact of the '00 wildfire on the research station, how that fire season changed their views.
- Subjects:
- wildfires ecology wildlife
- Location:
- Enterprise, Oregon
- Latitude:
- 45.4263
- Longitude:
- -117.2788
- Source:
- Voices of Taylor - Jack Kredell Interview Project funded by the U of I Library and the College of Natural Resources
- Type:
- Image;MovingImage
- Format:
- video/mp4
- Preferred Citation:
- "Jim and Holly Akenson Interview, Part Two", Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive, University of Idaho Library Digital Initiatives
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/taylor-archive/items/akenson_2.html
- Rights:
- In Copyright. Educational Use only. Educational use includes non-commercial use of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. Digital reproduction permissions assigned by University of Idaho Library. For more information, please contact University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu.