Alaska’s landscape has an unusual feature that allows us to enjoy cheap bananas in the Interior and other things that make life possible in the subarctic. The Nenana River, born on the south side of the Alaska Range, makes a u-turn and flows north through the mountains. With it comes a wide, low corridor that […]
Slicing through the top quarter of the Alaska map, the Arctic Circle marks the boundary of perpetual light. North of the line, the sun won’t set on summer solstice. But somehow the breezy, treeless tundra of Barrow has a more arctic feel than Fort Yukon, also poleward of the line but home to dense spruce […]
TESHEKPUK LAKE — Suspended in glass on the oil stove, the coffee leans south, as if the giant lake has a gravitational pull. Though Ben Jones has leveled this cabin before, he sees a useful function in the current slope, caused by thawed permafrost. Any snow blown in during the long winter will drain through […]
As I skied on a frozen river, a hairy creature trotted toward me. When the wolverine spotted me, it popped up in the air like an antelope, landed like a cat, and bounced away into the high country of the Wrangell Mountains.