I just added a new article to the site, The Gold Rush, http://www.thepurplemuse.com/id57.html.  The article includes my commentary on the gold rush stampedes to Alaska and the Yukon during the late 1800s and early 1900s based on my recent trip to Alaska and the Yukon. It also includes material from two books that I read on the subject, Pierre Berton's Klondike - The Last Great Gold Rush 1896-1899 and Lael Morgan's Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush.

This is an absolutely incredible story that I didn't fully appreciate until I walked some of the same ground as the early pioneers and read the history of the times from two very different perspectives.

TPM

During the past six weeks or so, including my recent trip to Alaska and the Yukon, I read The Master Game by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval.  I slogged through 570 pages of material and as I approached the end I expected the authors to wrap up the book with some conclusions that would tie together over 2000 years of history.  Unfortunately, the authors elected to not make any definitive statements of the type I was expecting.  So I will attempt to summarize what I think the authors were trying to imply.

As I was reading the book I kept asking myself the question, "What is this book really about?"  The authors discuss in a fair amount of detail the religion of ancient Egypt, the early Christian Church, the battles between the Cathars and the Roman Catholic Church, a variety of Christian religious sects that existed in the Dark and Middle Ages, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Knights Templar, Freemasonry and Judaism as they attempt to connect the philosophical and religious dots through over two millennia.  The authors explain in detail the religious battles that occurred in Occitania, an area that is now southern France.  I don't ever remember seeing or hearing the word Occitania before I read The Master Game.  I don't think there is any doubt that during much of the past 2000 years the Roman Catholic Church has acted as an agent of evil.

The authors go to great lengths to demonstrate that Paris and Washington were designed by Freemasons and were designed to reflect the religious symbols found in Egypt.  Much of the book is spent explaining the connections of a variety of Freemason organizations to leaders of major western nations, including the United States, during the past 200 years. The book begins to get really interesting when the story turns to the establishment of Israel in 1948.

I was very surprised to find out that President Truman recognized the State of Israel within a few hours of the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel by its National Council.  I was even more surprised that President Truman's decision was in direct opposition to his Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, the legendary World War II five star general, and many of his key advisers.  The authors imply that the bond between the Zionist founders of Israel and US Freemasons, including President Truman, provided Truman the motivation he needed to support the establishment of Israel. 

The authors make the point that some current day Muslims believe that a Masonic-Zionist conspiracy exists that has as a fundamental objective the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in its historical location.

In this short blog I can't do the book justice in terms of the details that are provided in support of the points the authors are trying to make.  But they leave some very interesting points for the reader to think about.  Here are some examples:

On US currency the term "In God We Trust" is used.  What "God" is intended to be trusted?

What knowledge and historical facts were lost because of the destruction of documents by various groups of people over time?

Is the Jewish religion in many ways related to the Egypt religion that predates the arrival of Islam in Egypt?

Is the current US presence in the Middle East simply a modern version of the Crusades?  What was the real intent behind the decisions of the Bush Administration?

A tremendous amount of information is provided to the reader on these topics in The Master Game.  What is not totally clear is which dots connect and which ones don't.  Each of us that reads the book can make our own assessment.

TPM

My wife and I got home last night from our Alaska/Yukon cruise tour.  We traveled by train from Denali to Anchorage, where we spent the night before boarding the train for the final run to meet our ship in Seward.  I had visited Anchorage on business over twenty years ago and it didn't appear to me to be much different today than it was at that time.  We didn't have time to do much exploring other than to walk around the downtown area a bit.

Our train ride from Denali to Anchorage wasn't very interesting in comparison to the wonderful vistas we had seen in the previous few days.  However, the train ride from Anchorage to Seward was great. We were enthralled with the vistas we saw along the way. Our train passed through Wasilla, which is the home of Sarah Palin.

There are an unbelievable number of lakes, rivers, creeks, glaciers and other bodies of water and ice in Alaska. It seemed that everywhere we turned we were looking at some form of water resource.

During our cruise we scenic cruised Glacier Bay National Park and visited Haines, Juneau and Ketchikan, Alaska.  Glacier Bay is an amazing place with many large glaciers.  The glaciers in Alaska have been receding for decades and many of the glaciers are a mere fraction of the size they were when they were discovered over 200 years ago.  What is clear that receding glaciers are not a new phenomenon.  Due to the documentation of early explorers we can measure how far the glaciers have receded in the past.

During our visit to Haines we went to Skagway to visit when of the key gateways to the Klondike gold rush. It is hard to believe the hardship the stampeders endured in order to have a chance to participate in the wealth creation of the gold rush. I bought two books about the gold rush on the trip and will be reviewing them later this year with more comments on the gold rush era.

We went whale watching in Juneau on a rainy day and also visited Mendenhall Glacier, which was an amazing sight.

Ketchikan's history is more oriented to the fishing industry than the gold rush era, but it has its own very colorful history.  We saw huge numbers of salmon returning to spawn in the local creeks.  Ketchikan averages about 150 inches of rain per year but on the day of our visit it was a beautiful sunny summer day.

The entire Inside Passage along the coastline of Alaska and British Columbia is absolutely beautiful when the fog lifts, the rain stops and the sun is out.  It appears to be a very peaceful place at the end of world, far far away the issues that dominate the lives for many of us.  It is not surprising that a segment of our population has migrated to the area on a full time or part time basis so they can enjoy the frontier environment that continues to exist in the region.

TPM

A few days ago our bus drove us from Dawson City, Yukon to Fairbanks, Alaska.  We traveled on the Top of the World highway for a good part of the trip.  The highway is a dirt and gravel road that is only open in the summer.  We crossed the border at Poker Creek, a border crossing where the agents work two weeks on two weeks off and live at the crossing station while on duty.  We saw a lot of mountains and valleys and almost no sign of people. It gives rural a whole new definition.  We intersected with the Alaska Highway and took it the rest of the way to Fairbanks.

Fairbanks is a city of about 90,000 including the suburbs.  It was originally established to facilitate trade with gold miners in the region.  Since the start of gold mining about 1902 the city has expanded based on the development of the major US government presence in Alaska, support for the North Slope oil industry and mining.  Fairbanks also has a fair amount of tourists visiting each year.  I gets really cold in the winter reaching minus 40 to 60 F routinely.  They don't get a lot of snow.  The problem is that when it does snow the snowfall doesn't melt until spring.

I had the opportunity to pan for gold from low grade tailings from a real gold mine.  The gold from my bag of dirt was worth about $10.  I also watched a demonstration of how the early gold miners worked their claims.  It gave me a better understanding of how they worked.  I also had the opportunity to explore the inside of 1930s era gold dredge.  It is one mean machine that tore up the land for decades as a mining company searched for minute amounts of gold in the land.  One can debate if it is worthwhile for land and water resources to be destroyed searching for gold.  But as long as gold is perceived as the only real money people will go anywhere and do anything they can to acquire it at a profit.  If there is no profit gold mining stops.

I never thought I would have the opportunity to walk under the Trans Alaska Pipeline that carries crude oil from Prudhoe Bay in the Arctic to the port of Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska.  We had a chance to see sections of the pipeline several times on our trip.  In Fairbanks I actually walked under the operational pipeline and stood adjacent to it.  It is running well under capacity as the oil resources on the North Slope are depleted.  It appears the people in Alaska are ready to expand production to other areas that can connect into the pipeline.  The time has come for our politicians to give them the opportunity to make the decision.  Alaskans live here and deal with the extreme climate.  They should be the ones to make the choice.  I have learned that some of the arguments we hear in the lower 48 against further drilling are bogus.  The people in Alaska know the whole story.  They should be making the decision, not a bunch of DC politicians and lobbyists.

Two days ago we took the train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park, the home of Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain peak in North America.  We have been exploring this vast wilderness area since we arrived.  We flew in a small plane from a local airport to a glacier in the mountain range that includes Mt. McKinley.  Standing in melting glacier ice on July 31 surrounded by massive mountain peaks is something I have never experienced.  We flew within 1.5 miles of McKinley at about 12,000 feet during our flight.  We had the opportunity to see many of the glaciers surrounded by the massive mountain range and the rivers that are fed by glacier water and mountain silt.  I have never seen anything like it with my own eyes.   It is truly amazing.

We also have explored the park by bus.  We have seen a grizzly bear running through the forest and grasslands chasing a female moose and her calf.  We don't know what the outcome was!  We have seen about a half dozen grizzlies in total, the rest were feeding on berries and grasses as they put on weight for the winter.  We have seen several moose up close, some caribou and  we could barely see the Dall sheep high up in the mountains.  All of these animals are simply living their lives in their natural habitat.  There are no fences.  No person feeds the animals.  Natures life cycle is at work every day with no interference from people.

We also got a chance to see Mt. McKinley from the ground, about 5,000 feet above sea level, at a distance of about 30 miles on a clear day.  It is truly massive.  After hearing the story about how Mt. McKinley got its name I have to agree with the Alaskans that the name of the mountain should be Denali, its original Native American name.  It is time for the US Federal Government to formally change the name to Denali.

As we continue on our travels I will update the blog with some additional thoughts on what we see and learn about Alaska.

TPM