For the past five days, I’ve been in the high Arctic, about a hundred miles south of the point where the furthest north rocky shore in Alaska gently touches the Beaufort Sea. I haven’t been up here for years and coming back, I find the place both remarkably the same and noticeably different.
The North Slope of Alaska is just that -- a huge plateau that begins at the Brooks Range and flows north for a hundred and fifty miles to a shallow icy sea. There’s a strip of land about 40 miles wide right along the ocean that it is really flat. Flat like Wisconsin without farms. But once you’ve drive an hour south, tundra covered hills roll out to the east and eventually these hills evolve into the stark rocks grey Brooks Range. There are trees here, a biologist showed me once, but they are short trees – two or three inches tall after hundreds of years, and at this time of year the groundcover of lichen, tiny trees and blueberry plants is like a rippling multi-color chenille blanket that stretches for miles over huge sloping swirls of land. The grandest superlatives can not define how huge the landscape seems when it is uncluttered with human artifacts. There is one narrow, gravel, winding, difficult road. There are no grain fields, cattle, power poles, gardens, clotheslines, children, or barking dogs. There is just a grand mostly-empty landscape, and clouds that hang so low the sense of perspective is pronounced as we drive into a receeding wedge of ground and sky. The land feels eternal. It is easy to look out into the misty distance and imagine herds of dinosaurs have just passed and are feeding just out of sight.
The big difference I notice after being gone is that there are more people here now. Back in the ‘old days,’ the road was reserved for long haul and other work trucks, and the only people I saw were like me, here for a week or two at a time to work. We weren't the first people here, of course, but we lived and work in concentrated small areas, restricted to them by rigid rules. Now there are brave and adventurous motorcycle riders with backpacks, hunters in campers and tourists staring at us from big white Princess busses. The other noticeable difference is that I see a lot less wildlife. I do see two loons, a few brown geese, gulls, a young brown eagle and a jaeger. Two ground squirrels run across the road, and we see a lone muskox on the bank of the Sagavirnoktok River. One friend tells me he saw a black wolf by Slope Mountain yesterday; another that there was a caribou last week.
I suppose this count is remarkable in comparison with most of the world. But I remember the days before the casual travellers came. Twenty years ago, there were huge white owls, wolves, falcons, foxes, grizzly bears, moose and hundreds of caribou right by the road. The herds of caribou are actually increasing in size, the biologists say, but it seems they’ve moved back from even this trickle of human contact. I’m told you can still see them in the distance sometimes, on the back side of a hill, grazing or moving in a fluid wave. Twenty years ago, they didn’t fear us because we were just trucks that drove by without stopping. Since then, generations of caribou have learned to stay out of sight of this ribbon of dust.
It’s a normal evolution I guess. The first wave of people are explorers, and they see the wonders of a new place. And they tell their friends, who follow in their tracks to the Last Frontier, the End of the World, the Edge of Nowhere. I understand these names, but I also realize that by the time it’s called that, a location is no longer what’s inferred. This is an edge beyond the reach of human comfort, but it is Somewhere – the edge of somewhere, to be sure, but somewhere nontheless. Nowhere ends when the casual traveller arrives. Nowhere ends when the abundance of other wildlife recedes.
Our windshield is tracked with gold streaks of mud. I’m watching the miles of green, gold lichen and red sail by. So beautiful, it seems wrong to call this “less.” My thoughts are not intended to blame, or to express shame, or support any political position. I accept human nature. It is what it is. I just feel a slight pinch of poignancy, looking out over the amazing curve of a faraway hill. I think of the dinosaurs, the caribou, and all creatures that have passed in this eternal migration. The surge of humans is coming into view; we’ll pass, and when our moment is over, some other being will emerge on the horizon, starry eyed to see such wonders.
The North Slope of Alaska is just that -- a huge plateau that begins at the Brooks Range and flows north for a hundred and fifty miles to a shallow icy sea. There’s a strip of land about 40 miles wide right along the ocean that it is really flat. Flat like Wisconsin without farms. But once you’ve drive an hour south, tundra covered hills roll out to the east and eventually these hills evolve into the stark rocks grey Brooks Range. There are trees here, a biologist showed me once, but they are short trees – two or three inches tall after hundreds of years, and at this time of year the groundcover of lichen, tiny trees and blueberry plants is like a rippling multi-color chenille blanket that stretches for miles over huge sloping swirls of land. The grandest superlatives can not define how huge the landscape seems when it is uncluttered with human artifacts. There is one narrow, gravel, winding, difficult road. There are no grain fields, cattle, power poles, gardens, clotheslines, children, or barking dogs. There is just a grand mostly-empty landscape, and clouds that hang so low the sense of perspective is pronounced as we drive into a receeding wedge of ground and sky. The land feels eternal. It is easy to look out into the misty distance and imagine herds of dinosaurs have just passed and are feeding just out of sight.
The big difference I notice after being gone is that there are more people here now. Back in the ‘old days,’ the road was reserved for long haul and other work trucks, and the only people I saw were like me, here for a week or two at a time to work. We weren't the first people here, of course, but we lived and work in concentrated small areas, restricted to them by rigid rules. Now there are brave and adventurous motorcycle riders with backpacks, hunters in campers and tourists staring at us from big white Princess busses. The other noticeable difference is that I see a lot less wildlife. I do see two loons, a few brown geese, gulls, a young brown eagle and a jaeger. Two ground squirrels run across the road, and we see a lone muskox on the bank of the Sagavirnoktok River. One friend tells me he saw a black wolf by Slope Mountain yesterday; another that there was a caribou last week.
I suppose this count is remarkable in comparison with most of the world. But I remember the days before the casual travellers came. Twenty years ago, there were huge white owls, wolves, falcons, foxes, grizzly bears, moose and hundreds of caribou right by the road. The herds of caribou are actually increasing in size, the biologists say, but it seems they’ve moved back from even this trickle of human contact. I’m told you can still see them in the distance sometimes, on the back side of a hill, grazing or moving in a fluid wave. Twenty years ago, they didn’t fear us because we were just trucks that drove by without stopping. Since then, generations of caribou have learned to stay out of sight of this ribbon of dust.
It’s a normal evolution I guess. The first wave of people are explorers, and they see the wonders of a new place. And they tell their friends, who follow in their tracks to the Last Frontier, the End of the World, the Edge of Nowhere. I understand these names, but I also realize that by the time it’s called that, a location is no longer what’s inferred. This is an edge beyond the reach of human comfort, but it is Somewhere – the edge of somewhere, to be sure, but somewhere nontheless. Nowhere ends when the casual traveller arrives. Nowhere ends when the abundance of other wildlife recedes.
Our windshield is tracked with gold streaks of mud. I’m watching the miles of green, gold lichen and red sail by. So beautiful, it seems wrong to call this “less.” My thoughts are not intended to blame, or to express shame, or support any political position. I accept human nature. It is what it is. I just feel a slight pinch of poignancy, looking out over the amazing curve of a faraway hill. I think of the dinosaurs, the caribou, and all creatures that have passed in this eternal migration. The surge of humans is coming into view; we’ll pass, and when our moment is over, some other being will emerge on the horizon, starry eyed to see such wonders.
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