Happy Birthday Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Dan Ritzman | December 7, 2010
Reprinted with permission from author Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild Guide and Northwest Director for the Sierra Club. Initially published December 7, 2009, www.arcticwild.com. The Arctic Refuge turns 49 today, and it is time to think about the many dedicated people who have protected the refuge for the past 50 years. Back in the 1950s two stellar [...]
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 [...]
The Final Stretch: Our Last Days in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
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 [...]
The Leffingwell Fork
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 [...]
The Aichilik River
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 [...]
Crossing an Arctic mountain range
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 [...]
Video of Porcupine Caribou Migration on the Jago River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
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!
Caribou and Arctic Time
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 [...]
To the Arctic
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 [...]
Voice Blog #3 from the Aichilik in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
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)