NUIQSUT — Snow whips through the streets, stinging the skin and piling up in dunes. It is springtime in Nuiqsut, blinding white, 1 degree Fahrenheit with a 30 mile-per-hour wind. A few dozen kids are not feeling the bite, as they play in the gym of the Nuiqsut School (home of the Trappers). They are […]
KANUTI HOT SPRINGS — After a few hours of skiing through deep snow, Forest Wagner and I smelled a tuna sandwich. We knew we were closing in on warm pools of water. From the frozen Kanuti River, we moved along an open stream up toward Kanuti Hot Springs, one of more than 100 hot springs […]
In Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us, the author ponders “a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.” People who study Alaska’s wildlife donated some thought to the subject. Alaska’s lack of people has benefited many species, including caribou, which still outnumber Alaskans, and salmon, which torpedo up our rivers with a staggering, […]
Spring is the time of year when birds are singing throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Far to the north, beneath the ice, another lesser-known concert season in the natural world is just coming to an end. A University of Washington study has published the largest set of recordings for bowhead whales, to discover that these marine […]