Alaska's National Parks

This week we watched videos based on Alaska and the national parks there. While watching these videos, I saw many photos of the wildlife that lives in Alaska and in the National Parks. While I know that this is a very common thing to see in these Ken Burns videos, it stuck out to me on this set for some reason. Logically, there is no real reason there shouldn't be wildlife in Alaska; however, my head wasn't registering the idea that there would be a great deal of wildlife to preserve. In one of the videos, someone even stated that "while our children may not see a buffalo herd, they might live to see a caribou herd." This stood out to me because it isn't always something you would think of, but it is most definitely important to the preservation efforts in Alaska. 

Something I learned in this week's content was how influential one person can be to the creation of a national park, even if it is by small and simple actions. In this example, it was John Cook. I really appreciated the story of how he and his supporters went to live in Alaska and peacefully convince people to rethink the hostility towards the Alaskan national parks. Cook and others went and lived in the towns they were trying to convince and just tried to be good people and speak their opinion. I think there is a lot to be learned from this, and not just in the context of parks. Most people don't realize that it is SO important to just be a kind and helpful hand. Even if you don't agree with someone, you should not ostracise them. In fact, you may just end up convincing them of your point of view from them seeing your kindness. As it said in the video, "It is hard to be mad at a kind neighbor."

A connection I made to a pillars course for this week was a little bit of a different one; it relates to my first paragraph. I connected the unexpected animals to the CAP 300 course I took last semester. While I know this isn't exactly the normal pillars course, I wanted to mention the thing I decided to do for my final project. For my final project in CAP 300, I chose to go to the humane shelter and photograph the cats for them. At first, I was going to do the dogs, but then the shelter mentioned that the cats there don't really get though of or get much love. I know this to be true because I had certainly not considered using them for my project either. Anyways, I ended up photographing the cats at the shelter and raising more awareness for them through the flyers I created. As I said before, this relates to the Alaska National Parks because I feel as if many people don't think of the wildlife many times when they think of the parks in Alaska since it is so cold.