For years, Judith B. Aftergut searched for her path. It was Glacier Bay and the stories of many who have lived there that helped her find it.<\/p>\n
Now, 40 years after she arrived in Gustavus for the first time, she\u2019s published her first book: \u201cEverything They Wanted: Muz and Joe, Reid Inlet, and Glacier Bay.\u201d The book intersperses place-based art and photographs from Gustavus artists and friends with short, thoughtful chapters on Aftergut\u2019s own story, her research on homesteaders Muz and Joe Ibach, and the history of Glacier Bay as a landscape. Among other things, it\u2019s a story of how Aftergut found her own voice and discovered for herself how to be a woman in the world \u2014 she stopped writing at age 13, she wrote, \u201cthinking I had no permission to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up thinking I couldn\u2019t speak in my own community,\u201d Aftergut said in an interview. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I had a perspective of my own. Going to Glacier Bay, that\u2019s where I started to wake up\u2026. So in a way, this book was both gratitude for all of that, and this whole series is an attempt to give something back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aftergut first arrived in Gustavus in 1974, at the age of 30. Though she\u2019s never lived there year-round \u2014 her longest residency there features a rather funny (and uncomfortable-sounding) story about scabies \u2014 she returned regularly over the summer, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when people are confronted with that place \u2014 or any place that\u2019s amazing to them \u2014 you want to do something, even though it\u2019s inadequate,\u201d Aftergut said. \u201cA writer wants to write; a photographer wants to take photographs; a geologist wants to study the rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything They Wanted\u201d weaves together interviews with homesteaders, fishermen, park employees, and others with Aftergut\u2019s own experiences.<\/p>\n
The Ibachs, a homesteading couple who died before she arrived there, took on a particular significance to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked to the thread of their lives as a way to nourish my soul and to ground it in reality,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
The book explores the idea of having everything one wants. The title comes from something Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve maintenance supervisor Ken Youmans told her \u2014 that Joe Ibach \u201chad everything he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI found this hard to believe,\u201d Aftergut wrote. \u201cI had never heard a statement like that from or about anyone in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WRITING<\/strong><\/p>\n The act of writing the book was a path and a discovery in itself, Aftergut said. After she began researching, she felt a sense of responsibility to those she\u2019d interviewed \u2014 fishermen, researchers, everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cDoing an interview meant that I was promising they\u2019d be in a book\u2026 publishing after all this time was to honor that promise.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the course of those decades, the book developed in sometimes surprising ways.<\/p>\n Once, she was in line to buy cheese in Washington and happened to hear that someone who worked at the store had worked with the Ibachs. That man\u2019s brother turned out to have been very close to them.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of thing that shows me that I\u2019m on the right path even if I don\u2019t know that I am,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is a lifelong learning process to me, to allow things to arise in their own timing, and to allow myself to be open enough and patient enough and awake enough to notice. Glacier Bay is all about that. It doesn\u2019t work by, live by, clock time. It\u2019s a different kind of time. You follow what the weather and the tide is doing \u2014 it\u2019s not a matter of having an appointment. And that is such a wonderful way to live.\u201d<\/p>\n Aftergut, who first arrived in Gustavus at age 30, is now 73.<\/p>\n Over the decades she researched and wrote, \u201cit became one humongous manuscript,\u201d she said. It was in recent years that she began to break it up into its current form.<\/p>\n \u201cThis book was written in short pieces, and the next ones will be too,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople are free to read the whole thing in whatever order they want.\u201d<\/p>\n She plans a total of five books, each around 100 pages. The working title of the next book, which she said will likely be out in a year, is \u201cSee it for Yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n A portion of the proceeds go to the Inian Islands Institute, started by Zach Brown of Gustavus. For more about the institute, see http:\/\/www.capitalcityweekly.com\/stories\/010814\/new_1188772219.shtml and http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/outdoors\/2014-09-26\/trip-north.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything They Wanted\u201d is available at Fireweed Gallery, Coffee and Tea House in Gustavus, Hearthside Books in Juneau, and on Aftergut\u2019s website, www.judithaftergut.com, as well as Alpha XR.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n CONTRIBUTORS<\/strong><\/p>\n Gustavus\u2019 artistic and scientific community \u2014 and historical archives \u2014 contributed lots to the book. It features watercolors by Carole Baker and photography from Fritz Koschmann, Robert E. Howe (courtesy of Fred Howe), Dave Bohn, Gustavus Historical Archives and Antiquities, the U.S. Geological Survey, Bruce Black and Lynn Kinsman (courtesy of Dave Bohn), Jim Mackovjak, Sean Neilson, the explorer Bradford Washburn, and Aftergut\u2019s good friend Kate Boesser.<\/p>\n Writer, photographer and friend Dave Bohn was a big inspiration; he owns Goose Cove Press, out of Berkeley, which printed the book. He\u2019s also the author of \u201cGlacier Bay: The Land and the Silence,\u201d which Aftergut began reading soon after her arrival, and a quote from which serves as the epigraph for the book. It was he that first encouraged her to write.<\/p>\n The Gustavus writers group was also instrumental, Aftergut said, mentioning Abigail Calkin, Fran Kelso, and Kate Boesser; Gustavus writer Kim Heacox isn\u2019t in the group but was also helpful, she said. When she\u2019s not in Gustavus, she calls into the group\u2019s weekly meetings by phone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years, Judith B. Aftergut searched for her path. It was Glacier Bay and the stories of many who have lived there that helped her find it. Now, 40 years after she arrived in Gustavus for the first time, she\u2019s published her first book: \u201cEverything They Wanted: Muz and Joe, Reid Inlet, and Glacier Bay.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":29028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29027"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}