POKER FLAT RESEARCH RANGE — Under a bluebird sky and perched above a resilient winter snowpack, two sounding rockets point upward, ready to blast through the thickness of our atmosphere to gain a better look at the sun. Inside a building on this sprawling complex within the Chatanika River valley north of Fairbanks are two […]
It’s a safe bet that Aren Gunderson’s Toyota Tundra is the only one in Fairbanks that has had its bed filled with a Siberian tiger. Gunderson, who manages the mammal collection at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, recently accepted a dead, frozen, 500-pound former resident of the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage outside […]
On these nights, a male boreal owl has been singing from a wooden owl box near our home. The late biologist Dave Klein attached the nest box to a black spruce tree north of the University of Alaska Fairbanks ski trails many years ago. In search of a mate, the owl sings his haunting little […]
The first days were the hardest days, Noelle Helder said. Imagine being as seasick as you will ever be while surfing waves that look like mountains. You can’t sleep during nights that make you wonder when your boat will crumple like an aluminum can. The nearest help is on a continent you can’t see, and […]