Wolverine on the Utokok
Josh Ferris | May 15, 2010
Lying in northwestern Alaska, the Utukok River twists 200 miles through sharply folded green hills with rocky ridges that stretched east and west in long rows – Archimedes Ridge, Meat Mountain, Eskimo Hill. Once you’re on a ridge the hiking is easy.
One night I turned from Richard and Sharon, saying I would take another route [...]
Angels in the Mist
Jeff Fair | May 6, 2010
Angels in the Mist, by Jeff Fair. From Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
“The Wild Geese,” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need [...]
The Killik
RKahn | May 1, 2010
July 26
It is hot and sunny. There is the relentless sound of the river flowing green and white as it moves north. The sunrise was pink and grey with the river shinning white and blue. The sky was filled with soft pink clouds and the mountains glowed pink in the east. Hidden within the pink [...]
Utukok River
RKahn | April 9, 2010
What are the elements off a perfect day? Here, in this place, this day played out in a perfect way…I woke up to hot sunlight streaming through he tent…The heat was a heavy weight pressing me down, the effort to move, to leave the tent required all the energy I could muster. I stepped out [...]
Colville III- Alaskan Arctic River
RKahn | March 5, 2010
The gravel bar is a jumble of jagged clay rock; there are fossils everywhere, worms and seashells, fragments of petrified wood, fern leaves, an ancient world frozen in stone. I imagine myself walking in an ancient arctic rain forest. We climb up the cliff above our tents following game trails and eating blueberries. There are [...]
“Wilderness Music” an excerpt from Bill Sherwonit’s new book
Bill Sherwonit | February 18, 2010
Wilderness Music, excerpted from
Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
©2010 by Bill Sherwonit
At age 50, nature writer and wilderness advocate Bill Sherwonit went on the longest backpack of his life: fifty miles in two weeks, across mostly untrailed wilderness in America’s remotest and arguably wildest parkland, Gates of the Arctic National Park and [...]
The Pik Dunes
RKahn | February 15, 2010
Rain all night…the clouds are down on the lake…It is a cold grey morning…Patches of blue sky breaking through until the days changes in character…Bright sun, light wind, blue sky…the grasses glowing yellow…Pools of water gathered in the folds of the dunes…the hum of the land is loud in my ears…There are no caribou to [...]
Colville I – Alaskan Arctic River
RKahn | February 4, 2010
by Richard Kahn
There are no geese on the Colville…But, there are loons, and rough legged hawks, and peregrine falcons. We sat beneath a cliff as the peregrine screeched at us from above. A second falcon joined the first and together they screamed at us, warning us away from their nest. As the second falcon landed [...]
Do you have a story or photo from the Ultima Thule?
Shannon and Peter | October 2, 2009
The Ultima Thule, Adventures in America’s Northernmost Lands, is a website and anthology dedicated to education about and preservation of Alaska’s public lands in the Arctic. Featuring a blog of two trips to the Arctic this summer, one in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and one to the Western Arctic, the Ultima Thule is expanding [...]
Leaving the land of light
Shannon Huffman Polson | August 17, 2009
After the haze from faraway forest fires had cleared, we would often sit speechless watching the low light from the midnight Arctic sun paint the gentle hills and mountains around us. The light is perhaps one of the biggest gifts of the Arctic, one of the spectacles of this part of the world less noted [...]