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If you haven't explored Simon Stålenhag's art, you should. There is something poignant about it that, for me, has become a soothing touchstone during this pandemic. Part of it is the color schemes and landscapes he favors are distinctly northern latitude, so some paintings give me an instant hit of longing for Alaska. Part of it is the balance of hope and hopelessness, of humanity lost and found in the shadows of monstrous unknowables. There is a particular feeling one gets in the winter in Alaska, when Nature itself becomes a living character in one's life. You cannot live your everyday existence without negotiating with it for survival. Sometimes it is kind and shows you amazing, unexpected pure beauty. Sometimes it brushes by and reminds you how swift and unmerciful it can be. With the trappings of civilization pared back, it easy to see that humanity is just a warm cobweb stretched across a cold piece of rock that has existed before us, and will exist after us. It's not a comfortable feeling, but it does make it easier to feel kinship with any/every stranger you encounter. I've been pulled out of snowy ditches a few times by nice people in large trucks who just stop and help like it's nothing. It is understood that if you see someone struggling, you check on them. You pass it on.
Alaskans don't like Christopher McCandless, the guy from Into the Wild. L48ers romanticize his story about escaping civilization to live on his terms, and I guess from a L48 perspective it sounds like a grand noble adventure - finding the courage to leave the known behind, striking out into new territory alone. But you have to understand, in Alaska, civilization is more valuable and important than ever. He was offered useful help and he refused it, and that's a sin. He failed to recognize the network of mutual kindness that is so important between people when they share space with Nature. Fail to respect Nature the proper way and you get what happened to McCandless. So Alaskans get all mouth-frothy when his name comes up, because he did it wrong, he misunderstood the lesson, and he also encourages other L48ers to make the exact same mistake. That's why they went to all the trouble of moving his bus to the museum in Fairbanks. That's Alaska's way of saying, "Fine, you dumb tourist fucks." Alaskans don't give two shits about that bus. They aren't preserving it as an important object. They're disarming a rat trap that people can't stop sticking their fingers in.
Most Alaskans have a bit or more of the same spirit that inspired McCandless. We just paid attention, accepted help and lived. Those of us who are transplants have even more respect for people Alaskan-born, and the most respect for those who live in tiny villages off the road system. For the L48 to make a guy who couldn't survive into a hero is peak L48 culture. Let's ignore all the Alaskans, especially Natives, who survive winter after hard winter and focus on the tourist who didn't listen and died before real winter actually hit.
I keep thinking about a passage in Watership Down (by Richard Adams). The band of rabbits fleeing their destroyed warren encounter a strange new warren and are invited to stay. The stranger rabbits have excellent food, good health and they have explored new art forms like poetry, singing and art. Their warren is defended against predators and also provided for by Man. It seems like heaven, until the visitors realize that Man also sets wire traps in the hedge and the stranger rabbits have accepted that they risk death each time they go to eat the food the Man leaves for them. They have developed a twisted culture around acceptance of their own death. The visitors are horrified when one of their own is caught by a wire trap, they figure out the real story and they immediately flee the warren.
Some of the response to climate change and the pandemic seems similar to the death cult warren. Herd immunity. Yes, we'll just expose ourselves and roll the dice. Some of us will die but most of us won't. Or, if God says it's time to go, so be it. The thousands of deaths that are racking up each day, with no real national mourning. No acknowledgement that our hard won science and advanced knowledge was put aside with a shrug.
I think many of us feel the same horror that Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver and the others felt when they figured out the warren's secret.
I guess what I'm trying to get at, in a meandering way, is that a culture of death is growing in our modern culture like a slow cancer. I think it is a giant red flag that we must course correct. If the pandemic is a trial run for how we'll handle climate change, it is wise and sane to be absolutely horrified.
Maybe what L48ers admire in McCandless is an acknowledgement and rejection of that soul rot. He took an extreme leap of faith to escape the pyre, and that is the part that strikes the chord.
Anyway, I think Simon Stålenhag knows about Nature as a companion, and the precious value in small human connections. In many of his paintings his people and figures seem utterly alone, isolated, abandoned, sometimes on the edge of great danger. But Nature is always there, always listening, always speaking. Personally I find a lot of comfort in his art, because it shows survival.