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 […]