I was 11 years old when Bligh Reef ripped open the Exxon Valdez’s steel bel­ly, bleed­ing over 40,000 tons of crude into the pris­tine waters of Prince William Sound. My fam­i­ly had trad­ed Alaskan res­i­den­cy for our migrant lifestyle by then, set­ting up a win­ter life in Wash­ing­ton State and return­ing to South­east every sum­mer for the salmon sea­son. I remem­ber star­ing at the images on TV —  seabirds ground­ed by sludge-drenched wings, dead otters like black­ened drift­wood — and wear­ing a T‑shirt that expressed despair through furi­ous satire: car­i­ca­tures of a par­ty boat perched “on the rocks,” new­ly chris­tened the Exxon Fuxxup.

Twen­ty-three years lat­er, I’m sit­ting aboard a boat in South­east Alas­ka, my body re-cal­i­brat­ing to the con­tin­u­al motion of a life cush­ioned by the sea. The view is stun­ning. Liv­ing in the midst of the world’s largest remain­ing tem­per­ate rain­for­est, sur­round­ed by moun­tains, glac­i­ers, and a parade of wildlife, it’s some­times hard to remem­ber that this splen­dor isn’t guar­an­teed. That how­ev­er firm­ly root­ed nature appears to be, we can’t take her for grant­ed or become indif­fer­ent to our respon­si­bil­i­ties as good stewards.

Poet Vivian Faith Prescott is a fifth gen­er­a­tion Alaskan who knows all too well the cost of indif­fer­ence — envi­ron­men­tal, cul­tur­al. She knows that when hor­ror is so vast, grief so unspeak­able, art pro­vides a life raft. Her post,  “Fetched Up Hard Aground: Remem­ber­ing the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” pulls read­ers into that life raft. If you’re not famil­iar with her work, please take a moment to vis­it Vivian at Plan­et Alas­ka.

Named and gen­dered, boats take on iden­ti­ties inde­pen­dent of the cap­tains who come and go. They’re sized up and judged, bestowed with rep­u­ta­tions that can’t be absolved with a change in own­er­ship or a new name. So what  was the fate of the ship for­ev­er shack­led to one of the most dev­as­tat­ing human-caused envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters? The Mud­flats blog answered that ques­tion ear­li­er this week:  “The Exxon Valdez Gets Its Death Sentence.”

In our sound-bite soci­ety, with social medi­a’s bar­rage of moment-by-moment news updates, we’re good at year-of trib­utes. Suc­cinct sum­maries of what hap­pened back when and where they are now. This post is a per­fect exam­ple — I wrote in that exact for­mu­la, with­out a sec­ond thought. And now I won­der… We remem­ber, but what have we learned?

Pho­to Cour­tesy of John Lyle, ARLIS Reference.

Update: Imme­di­ate­ly after post­ing this, I learned that Mud­flats had re-post­ed her 2010 sto­ry, “Walk­ing With the Ghost of Exxon.” A pow­er­ful account of what she found lin­ger­ing in Prince William Sound 21 years after the spill — long after we’d been assured that every­thing was cleaned up —  this is on Hooked’s “Required Read­ing” list. Please do read and share.