ALLISON LAKE, ABOVE VALDEZ — Three men dressed in full raingear crept like ants across a bumpy green landscape on Aug. 25, 2023. Using a metal pole that was part of a boat frame, together they lugged a four-stroke outboard motor that seemed to float above the wet greenery. The three men were scientists who […]
Waking to the smell of a wet ashtray (which, as a Child of the Seventies, I can still remember), I knew the wind had shifted. Wildfire smoke hung in the neighborhood. This is not a reason for alarm: The nostalgic scent of vaporized spruce and willow trees is a normal summer sensation here in middle […]
Numbers of adult peregrine falcons on the upper Yukon River in Alaska have decreased by more than a third in the last three years, according to a scientist who has counted them there for half a century. Skip Ambrose is a biologist who has observed Yukon River peregrine falcons since 1973, missing only three years […]
Our beloved Alaska blueberry seems to have a bad reputation in parts of Europe and Scandinavia. There, people have called it the “mad berry,” “intoxicating berry” and “vomit berry.” Zuzana Vaneková, a pharmacology researcher at the University of Vienna in Austria, recently visited Alaska to gather blueberries in order to help solve a mystery regarding […]