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 [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: Alaska, Arctic, Arctic fox, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic Terns, Beaufort Sea, Black Brant, Brooks Range, Cackling Goose, Canning River, caribou, Common Eiders, cygnets, geese, glaucous gulls, grizzly, Harlequin ducks, Inupiat, King Eiders, Lapland Longspurs, Long-tailed Duck, loons, Lowell Sumner, muskox, Northern Shovelers, Pacific Loon, Pacific Loons, peregrine falcon, Pintails, Polar Bears, Purple Saxifrage, Red-throated Loons, Robinson Jeffers, Sadlerochits, short-eared owls, Spectacled Eiders, tundra swans, Wolves
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 24, 2009
To make it to the airstrip, we had to reford the Aichilik- though this time below the confluence with the Leffingwell Fork with higher water. We planned to make it to the landing strip a day early. My digestive track was upset- to say the least- so we determined if we arrived a day early [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: 1002, adventure, Aichilik, Alaska, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, backpacking, Brooks Range, conservation, preservation, ptarmigan, sandpiper, tundra, wilderness, Wolves
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 24, 2009
The first order of business the next morning- morning relating only to the time we had breakfast and started moving, not hours on the clock- was to ford the Aichilik. From there we would ascend the saddle crossing over the range to the Leffingwell Fork.
Though we had been hiking on the Aichilik for the past [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: adventure, Alaska, Arctic, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, backpacking, conservation, ground squirrel, Harlequin ducks, Leffenwell Fork, preservation, sandpiper, wilderness
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 23, 2009
Rain and sleet pounding on our tent woke us close to noon. It fell for two hours. The lightweight Tarptent held up great; we stayed nestled in our sleeping bag and read and journaled.
After a breakfast of oatmeal, walnuts and raisins, we filtered more water, and headed down the drainage. The steep slopes into the [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: adventure, Aichilik River, Alaska, Arctic fox, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, backpacking, caribou, elegant paintbrush, Porcupine caribou, Romanzov Mountains, Wolves
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 23, 2009
In the middle of a deep sleep I woke suddenly to a grunting and snorting. We chose our Tarptent in part for weight and in part because we can see out through the mesh around the bottom. Peter was in between me and the grunting- I shook his shoulder. He was sound asleep. “Peter!” I [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: adventure, Alaska, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arnica, backpacking, caribou, Moss Campion, Porcupine, White Mountain Aven, wilderness
Shannon and Peter | July 22, 2009
Some raw footage until we have time to put it together with other sound recordings- hope you will enjoy as much as we did!
Category: Video entry |
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Tags: 1002, Alaska, Arctic, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, conservation, Jago River, Porcupine Caribou Herd, Porcupine caribou migration, preservation, Wildlife
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 21, 2009
My husband Peter, our friend Mark and I sat on the tundra, an odd assortment of three colorfully clad humans, dwarfed by the immensity of the world we had just entered. Not only dwarfed- the scale of the Arctic defies attempts to describe it. It utterly subsumes you. We sat on one side of the [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, caribou, caribou migration, Jago River, Porcupine caribou, Porcupine Caribou Herd
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 20, 2009
Someone once said that “a plan is something you deviate from.” And we all know things rarely work out as planned- especially in the wilderness. This Arctic trip was no exception. Our planned route was to land on the Aichilik at the coastal plains and hike south, upriver, to the continental divide, cross it and [...]
Category: Blog entry |
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Tags: adventure, Aichilik River, Alaska, Arctic, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Athapaskan, backpacking, bush planes, Fort Yukon, Jago River, Muries, Sheenjek River, Yukon Air
Shannon Huffman Polson | July 14, 2009
Click here to listen to the final voice blog from the Aichilik River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (posting delayed due to technical difficulties)
Category: Voice Blog |
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Tags: Aichilik, Arctic, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, aufeis, ptarmigan, Wolves
Peter Polson | July 11, 2009
Click here to listen to the voice blog via satellite phone (online posting delayed due to technical difficulties)
Category: Voice Blog |
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Tags: Aichilik River, Alaska, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, caribou migration, Leffenwell Fork, Wolves
