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• Focus On Local Life: Quilting Denali

Thirty-some members of the local Denali Quilters have stitched together science and art in a colossal quilt (nearly 12 feet x 12 feet) designed to help viewers learn more about Denali’s landcover types. The quilters wanted to show two scales of Denali’s landscapes not seen by a typical visitor traveling the Park Road. The central quilt is an image of the park’s 6 million acres as viewed from a satellite, where each pixel (13,600 of them) of colored fabric represents one of the 23 landcover types described for the park (e.g., woodland spruce, alder, snow and ice). The border comprises twenty-two blocks—the artistic interpretation of the landcover types very close up. Lucy Tyrrell, a resource management specialist at Denali National Park and Preserve, who spearheaded the quilt project, explains more about the border blocks, “The arrangement of the blocks reflects the geography and elevation of the landcover types—lowland boreal types are at the bottom, sub-alpine shrub and tundra types along the sides, and high elevation alpine types at the top. Even the machine quilting adds information. It outlines the park’s boundary (black thread), highlights major river drainages (blue) and topographic lines (brown--contour interval of 2500’), and creates tracks of caribou and wolf—two animals not portrayed in the border blocks”.

To explore how the quilt blocks are different than the usual landscape view, travel the Park Road between Headquarters at Mile 3 and the Savage River. As the road climbs and leaves the woodland spruce behind, scan to the north for the view that matches the fall scene photo included below.The foreground shrubby mixture includes low shrub birch (orange-coppery color), willow (yellow), and blueberry (red). The quilt block (below, far left) showing the same landcover type (technically called “Low Shrub Birch – Ericaceous - Willow”) zeroes in on the rounded leaves of the shrub birch and the background medley of fall colors, and gives a hint that moose frequent this cover type. Get out of the vehicle at a safe stopping point and take a closer look—do you see shrub birch? Do you spy a moose munching on willows?

Denali Quilters are currently exploring options for where the quilt will be displayed on a long-term basis. They are holding a small quilt auction this summer on July 14th at the McKinley Village.

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