YOU ROCK 4EVER XOXO—Alaska News Brief February 2026
The retail sector makes a big deal of Valentine’s Day. There’s money to be made, of course, and money is as good as love for some people. But there’s a story behind the day that gets lost in all that.
Background image of the Brooks Range, photo courtesy of USFWS.
I’m no expert on Saint Valentine, mind you, but this third-century Roman saint celebrated on Feb. 14 is known for restoring a child’s vision and being imprisoned for marrying Christian couples. It’s said that he may have married couples so the husbands could avoid war and there’s thought that the stories about this saint involve two different men with the same name. It’s kind of like the whisper game, where the facts of what happened and the legend diverged long ago.
But it’s hard to not see the resonance of one of the stories told about Valentine—that before he was executed (brutally, no less), he left a note with a child whose eyesight he restored: “Your Valentine.”
What does seem to be clear is that St. Valentine is the patron saint “of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people,” according to Catholic Online, which notably has a “shop now” page.
Vicki dives in the Galapagos! Photo by a fellow diver.
I’m not young anymore, but I do adore bees, happy marriages, love, and travel, so I figure he can be my Valentine, too. In fact, I’ve got a big list of Valentines to hand out.
To hammerhead sharks and jellyfish and sea lions nabbing fish in front of me, and to the abundant niches where marine life dashes and hides—YOU ROCK!
To all the people who keep places like the Galapagos islands and all the life that thrives there protected—4EVER!
To oxygen tanks and maps and guides and travel friends who made it possible for me to sink into the surreal and fantastic underwater realm that nourishes me—XOXO!
And to all the friends and colleagues and supporters who took care of things and kept doing Trustees’ work while I vanished for a spell—TRUE LOVE!
Galapagos sea lions line the dock steps. Photo by Vicki Clark.
Now that I’m back, I can’t push aside the barrage of chaos happening in the work Trustees does or what’s happening in communities across the country; I can’t ignore the headlines and violence. But when looking at all that, I also see people standing up for love.
Love for their neighbors. Love for their communities. Love for their constitutional rights to speak up, document, demand accountability. That love gives me hope—the love people have for places and other living beings. The love that calls them do hard things in hard times. This love has been everywhere forever, I know, but it’s often unseen and not appreciated.
Seeing and appreciating that love can’t happen in a meaningful way when doomscrolling or only seeing the siloed news online spaces give us. We need be around each other. We need to make plans together, gather in person, talk to people we disagree with or don’t know. We can keep seeing awkwardness as an obstacle, or we can recognize it as possibility.
I take this to heart in my own life. I like being alone and also, I belong in community. We all do. At Trustees, too, we want to keep reaching out, making connections, nourishing relationships.
Galapagos tortoises, photo by Bert Ray.
The first week of March, we’ll be doing just that in Seattle, where several of our board members now live. Early in our visit, we will talk with students at the University of Washington about what working to promote and protect healthy environments requires and looks like—how the varied paths and forms of work thread together—as well as about the current context for environmental law work.
We’re also throwing a house party on March 7. If you live in Seattle or will be visiting that weekend, we invite you to come! And if you know people from the area, please invite them too. Some of our longtime supporters will be there, including board members making a fundraising ask—because every little bit helps—but we want to meet new folks too and share space and stories and food, learn about and from each other.
A manta ray glides by. Photo by fellow diver.
I won’t lie. Sometimes I want to go back to the ocean depths rather than run through the depth of challenges ahead of us, but sharing space with others nourishes me too.
It makes sense in a way that we celebrate the patron saint of love in winter, where so much life huddles up and waits for warmth and light. Where I live, anyway, mid-February means hard snowpack, ice, and a long way to go before green up.
Still, I can sense the light returning. I can see the promise of spring hovering in the spaces between bare branches. Love is many, many things, and sometimes it’s the power to imagine the abundance of life to come and come again.
PS. Thanks to supporters like you, we can continue fighting to protect Alaska’s land, water, air, wildlife and people.
Sun rays through clouds light up the coastal plain. Credit: Lisa Hupp/USFWS.
Arctic news—threats loom over the Arctic Refuge and Southern Brooks Range
A sow and her cub move in for a cuddle. Photo by Ragen, Davey, Defenders of Wildlife.
On beings and biomes—the translucent bear
Rich Seifert hugs a western red cedar tree in a Canadian National Park, 2009. Photo by Rich Seifert.