The Ultima Thule

Journeys in America’s Northernmost Lands: a web anthology of the Alaskan Arctic

The Killik

May 1st, 2010

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 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 [...]

Another surprise in the Western Arctic

Shannon Huffman Polson | August 10, 2009

(Post #2 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)
Wolf howls woke us our second morning, which continued to astonish us as though they were the first we had heard. Before heading downriver in the Klepper, Peter and I wanted to explore more of the beautiful valley in which we [...]

Day one in the Western Arctic, Nigu River

Shannon Huffman Polson | August 9, 2009

(Post #1 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)
It was, perhaps, a good thing that our first Arctic trip of the summer taught us that plans are only something from which one deviates. We would return to that lesson on this trip.

Smoke from distant forest fires swallowed the drone [...]