Field Sketching in Alaska – The New York Times

With rain hitting the roof, the temperature outside hovering in the low 50s and a cast iron stove keeping things warm inside the cabin that, on this July weekend, is serving as an art studio and classroom, I feel a nap coming on. Summer days in Alaska. They are not always the bluebird skies promised in travel ads.

But there’s no time for napping on this trip to McCarthy, a bustling summer community of artists, writers, seasonal workers and visitors that sits 60 miles down a gravel road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve.

A practice that’s equal parts art and science, field sketching is used by researchers and artists to record their observations of nature, from waterways to winged creatures, mosses to mountaintops. Field sketching pairs illustrations with notes about weather, location, animal behavior and even the journal keeper’s mood that day, offering more context than a stand-alone photo. It’s also a powerful tool for travel, one that forces you to slow down, to take things in, to simply look.

I’m excited about the class but there’s just one problem: I can’t draw.

Ms. Link, who lives in McCarthy year-round, discovered field sketching in art school. “It’s like you’re more present and because you’re kind of quiet, you can hear people’s conversations and engage with place in a different way,” she said.

The town of McCarthy got its start as a turnaround station for the railroad and became the bawdy neighbor — with liquor, gambling and prostitution — to the more serious mine and mill town of Kennecott, five miles up the road, near where copper was discovered in 1900.

McCarthy’s population has been slowly growing over the last decade. In 2010 the town had just 28 residents. In 2020 that number rose to 107, now with about 300 in summer, still a far cry from the 1,000 or so people who lived between McCarthy and Kennecott in the early 1900s when the mill and mines were running at full tilt.

Now McCarthy is forever in a state of being built up and falling apart. Stacks of fresh lumber sit steps away from wooden buildings being overtaken by nature, sedges and wildflowers poking out between splintered planks. There’s a new side staircase being added to the general store, where you can buy scoops of made-in-Alaska ice cream or some duct tape to fix many of the challenges Alaska throws at travelers.

The town is also an unofficial museum of dead trucks. Some have moss growing on their fenders.

But it’s McCarthy’s dogs, off…