FAIRBANKS — I left my home here to begin a hike along the Trans-Alaska pipeline in late April. Returning in June, I am stunned by the green of it all. It’s like winter to summer in one day. I’ve been in Alaska’s second-largest city for a few days now, resupplying for the trip north as […]
The NOAA Twin Otter plane we will be flying in for the 2017 Steller sea lion aerial survey. Photo credit: NOAA Fisheries June 21, 2017 — It is impossible to know exactly how many Steller sea lions are in the ocean. Luckily, the sea lions converge every summer on shore to give birth, mate, […]
It’s one of the most contentious debates in anthropology today: Where did America’s first peoples come from — and when? The general scientific consensus is that a single wave of people crossed a long-vanished land bridge from Siberia into Alaska around 13,000 years ago. But some Native Americans are irked by the theory, which they […]
GOLD RUN CREEK — This clear waterway running through boreal swampland marks the farthest Cora and I will be from a highway during our summer hike along the route of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. If we chose to bust overland southwest toward Banner Creek, we would have to cover at least nine boggy miles before we […]