Our Labor Day canoe trip went a day long, and almost a boat short. With our daughter traveling with teammates for a high-school cross-country meet, my wife Kristen and I had a long weekend together. We chose to paddle our canoe down the Wild and Scenic River portion of the Delta River, which neither of […]
Last week, I wrote about some of the breaks the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has enjoyed during its 75-year existence. Another key for this place where a few dozen researchers study things “from the center of the Earth to the center of the sun” is that its directors have followed the advice of […]
We just had a party up here, to celebrate the Geophysical Institute’s 75th year of existence. Seventy-five years also happens to be the average life expectancy for a human these days. A workplace for volcanologists, glaciologists, seismologists, aurora-ologists and other types of scientists, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has endured since […]
Years ago, I worked for a hunting guide on a river in the middle of Alaska. One of my duties was to drive a motorized canoe full of moose meat upstream to a gravel bar where he could fly it out. When I returned home from that trip, something funny happened: the noises from my […]
How one of the two large basins underlying the Arctic Ocean formed during the Mesozoic Era remains a mystery to scientists. It’s one that geophysics professor Bernard Coakley of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is hoping to unravel as he leads an international research project that set sail this week aboard the UAF […]
YAKUTAT — “There they are,” Ben Gaglioti said, after a short hike off a gravel road leading away from this small fishing town. Gaglioti walked in rubber boots on a green, squishy carpet of muskeg — a wild garden of water-loving plants growing on acidic soil that has for centuries prevented the encroachment of giant […]
What if the country’s largest earthquake in the last half century happened as you were getting ready for bed in the only cabin on a tiny island in the North Pacific? What if the epicenter was just 50 miles away? A magnitude 8.2 earthquake happened at 10:15 p.m. Alaska time on July 28, 2021. The people […]
Neal Brown has died. The former leader of Poker Flat Research Range and the smiling, suspender-wearing man remembered by many Alaska kids was 82 years old. Born in Idaho, Brown grew up on a farm in Pullman, Washington. He made his way to Alaska in 1963. Here, in 1971, he became the first director of […]
A HILLSIDE ABOVE LA PEROUSE GLACIER — Ben Gaglioti slices a foot-long blade through the trunk of a tree that died long before he was born. As he cuts the solid wood, yellow chips fly. A clean, familiar scent wafts through the air. I think of a cedar drawer in my boyhood home where my […]