Speaker 1: A trip through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crown
Speaker 1: jewel of America's wildlife preserves, reveals a stunning, prime evil
Speaker 1: world under constant threat of becoming a national sacrifice. I'm
Speaker 1: Dan Flores, and this is the American West, where the
Speaker 1: prime evil West abides. What wakes me is a sound
Speaker 1: I've never heard, or to be truer to the actual experience.
Speaker 1: Two sounds to which my memory banks cannot assign. Cause
Speaker 1: one is a soft, gentle sort of chuffing, coming awake
Speaker 1: to the slanting light out the tent door. I register
Speaker 1: this one first, an auditory accompaniment to the angled light,
Speaker 1: which lands in my foggy consciousness as a kind of
Speaker 1: language I cannot translate. The other sound is almost as delicate,
Speaker 1: but more percussive. It appears to reach from the faraway
Speaker 1: to the nearby, a tinkling with a thousand source points.
Speaker 1: It's June the twenty second, the day after summer Solstice,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and with my wife Sarah, and eight of
Speaker 1: our friends, we're waking in what could well be primeval America.
Speaker 1: We're in Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, at nearly seventy
Speaker 1: degrees in north latitude, and on summer solstice that far
Speaker 1: up the curve of planet Earth, we're experiencing a new
Speaker 1: cosmic reality. There's a powerful sense of being slightly off
Speaker 1: the apex of a gigantic sphere, a sphere that's spinning
Speaker 1: underneath a light source that never switches off. No matter
Speaker 1: how late you go to bed or how early you
Speaker 1: wake up, the light source is there, throwing the same
Speaker 1: fingers of dawn, sunlight and shadowing throughout the day and night.
Speaker 2: To be geographically specific.
Speaker 1: From our put in high up in the Brooks Range,
Speaker 1: we've now spent nine days descending.
Speaker 2: The Hula Hula River.
Speaker 1: The Hula Hula is named by or four and Awaiian
Speaker 1: islander who is either on a whaling ship or a
Speaker 1: ship pursuing wealth and firs here two centuries ago. Nine
Speaker 1: days from this smallish stream's headwaters, we're now out of
Speaker 1: the mountains and in the vast coastal plain of America's
Speaker 1: Wildlife Crown Jewel, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And we've
Speaker 1: been living with these oblique life light angles the whole trip.
Speaker 1: But this far away, nearby tinkling sound and its chuff
Speaker 1: chuff accompaniment are new Both those sounds, it turns out,
Speaker 1: are emanating from thousands upon thousands of Cariboo who have
Speaker 1: been migrating out of mountains filled with dinning wolves to
Speaker 1: gather in the relative safety of the Arctic plane, where
Speaker 1: they're coming to drop their calves. Heard after herd is
Speaker 1: passing by within one hundred feet of our camp this morning,
Speaker 1: conversing in a murmur that audibly rises above the flow
Speaker 1: of the nearby Hula Hula. That's the chuffing I'm hearing,
Speaker 1: its quiet Cariboo road trip conversation, pulling the tent fabric
Speaker 1: aside to hear better. My first guess is that the
Speaker 1: tinkling is the clicking of Cariboo hoofs passing through the
Speaker 1: stiff eight inch high willows blanketing the riverside tundra. But
Speaker 1: the more acutely I listen, well, what it actually sounds
Speaker 1: like is an almost deliberate popping in their leg joints
Speaker 1: as they walk past.
Speaker 2: The truth is we've.
Speaker 1: Been paddling down river among Caribou herds for days now,
Speaker 1: but not in these numbers.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Everywhere we look, they're the only upright things in an
Speaker 1: otherwise horizontal world. Tan and white bodies rocking along in
Speaker 1: a kind of slow motion parade. They seem aim towards
Speaker 1: an indistinct assortment of white blocks miles out that we've
Speaker 1: been seeing for the past couple of days. And I'm
Speaker 1: now starting to suspect our icebergs in the Arctic ocean,
Speaker 1: elevated by mirage above the flatness of the plane. But
Speaker 1: the caribou pulled me away from that thought. On the
Speaker 1: opposite river bank, only yards away, herd males with antlers
Speaker 1: and faces black at squid ink.
Speaker 2: Clack over the rocks.
Speaker 1: There are pregnant cows, also with antlers and posses of adolescence.
Speaker 1: We've already seen wolves, most of them black, along with
Speaker 1: grizzly bears and doll sheep. But the real wildlife miracle
Speaker 1: here is in the vast numbers of cariboo. I noticed
Speaker 1: that some herds with brand new calves, the little guys
Speaker 1: jetting and poegoing across the tundra, have finally abandoned their
Speaker 1: relentless march northward from the mountains. They've arrived ten days
Speaker 1: earlier in Arctic Village on the other side of the
Speaker 1: Brooks Range, gwitchin tribal Elder Sarah James had told us
Speaker 1: that the Porcupine Cariboo herd is three hundred thousand strong
Speaker 1: these days. Seventy five year old Sarah, with her long,
Speaker 1: silver streaked hair, was funny and eloquent and committed. She
Speaker 1: travels the world fighting to keep oil drilling out of
Speaker 1: the refuge, a looming threat in twenty nineteen and an
Speaker 1: even more frightening possibility in twenty twenty six. Sarah's got
Speaker 1: the bona fides for that kind of activism. That tribal
Speaker 1: name means people of the Cariboo. Sarah and her people
Speaker 1: are the modern American equivalent of the Bison Indians of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and earlier. The Cariboo are in our
Speaker 1: hearts and we are in theirs, she told us. Now
Speaker 1: standing by my tent, surrounded by thousands of Cariboo moving
Speaker 1: slowly through a vast grassy landscape, in a scene reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century Great Plains or maybe East Africa,
Speaker 1: I'm as gobsmack as I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 1: For the first time, I'm experiencing a version of original America.
Speaker 1: The continent Humaniyed first marveled over more than twenty thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. This must be what it was like to
Speaker 1: experience bison herds to the horizon, her passenger pigeons streaming overhead,
Speaker 1: and day long flights that blocked out the sun. Now
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way through the twenty first century,
Speaker 1: what's required for a primal experience of the natural planet
Speaker 1: is being in one of Africa's grand game parks, and
Speaker 1: parts of the Amazon are in some wildly remote piece
Speaker 1: of North America, like this Arctic plane up at the
Speaker 1: roof of the world in the United States of our
Speaker 1: present century. This wild coastal plane in sight of Arctic
Speaker 1: waters is one of the last continental places to preserve
Speaker 1: a tantalizing echo of wild America as it waded across
Speaker 1: the millennia for its destiny to play out. Here are
Speaker 1: my first ten experiences of this place, as kept in
Speaker 1: my daily Journal. June fifteenth, twenty nineteen, Arctic Village, Alaska.
Speaker 1: Sarah James, who travels the world advocating for the Arctic
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge and the Native of Life, rides up on
Speaker 1: her Honda four wheeler to meet us on the airport
Speaker 1: tarmac where our group is just deplaned. There are ten
Speaker 1: of us lower forty eight ers. Our two guides who
Speaker 1: do this float trip repeatedly when brooks range snowmelt raises
Speaker 1: waters in the river's high enough to do it, are
Speaker 1: from Arizona and Colorado, with one exception. The remaining eight
Speaker 1: of us are from Santa Fe, New Mexico, most of
Speaker 1: us longtime friends, several of us writers. Sarah, who is
Speaker 1: addressing us from the seat of her Honda, looks to
Speaker 1: be fifteen years younger than her actual age, and she
Speaker 1: is naturally easy going and personable. As she starts to talk,
Speaker 1: I noticed with some curiosity that of her fellow villagers.
Speaker 1: I can see everyone is also moving about the airstrip
Speaker 1: and the village streets on four wheelers. As we blink
Speaker 1: in the bright high latitude sunlight and swat at the
Speaker 1: occasional mosquito. Sarah is telling us about her people's situation.
Speaker 1: I jot down a few notes. Minus seventy degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: used to be our normal winters here, she's telling us,
Speaker 1: but this last winter minus forty was the coldest.
Speaker 2: It got, although the snow was really deep.
Speaker 1: Their village, whose name in their language translates to village
Speaker 1: with high banks, was founded on this spot because of
Speaker 1: the nearby tree line and the Caribou migrations.
Speaker 2: She says.
Speaker 1: They follow the caribou migrations from towers they've built around
Speaker 1: their country, which stretches from the highest place in the
Speaker 1: Brooks Range to as far as we can see. She adds,
Speaker 1: the caribou migrations are changing, but they still come to
Speaker 1: this valley and to old crow flats, places with lots
Speaker 1: of lakes and food sources. We call our herd the
Speaker 1: Porcupine Cariboo, and we've always hunted them. We cease to
Speaker 1: hunt in June when the new embryos form in them,
Speaker 1: and wait until the training of the calves is finished
Speaker 1: before we resume, she tells us. At one point the
Speaker 1: Porcupine herd dropped to as low as one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand, but now it's almost back to its normal
Speaker 1: size of three hundred thousand. There are plenty of predators
Speaker 1: other than us, she says, a great many wolves, and
Speaker 1: also plenty of grizzlies, and there are lynks and wolverines too,
Speaker 1: everything living to some extent on the Cariboo presence. While
Speaker 1: Native people have hunted the refuge long before its official designation,
Speaker 1: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are Anwar dates to nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: when the Eisenhower administration set aside eight point nine million
Speaker 1: acres of the Brooks Range and the Coastal Plain as
Speaker 1: the Arctic National Wildlife Range. When the epic Alaska Lands
Speaker 1: Bill passed in nineteen eighty, the Carter administration upgraded the
Speaker 1: range to a full refuge, expanded to a whopping nineteen
Speaker 1: point six million acres, four times the size of Yellowstone
Speaker 1: National Park. It overnight became the crown jeweled wildlife preserve
Speaker 1: of the entire seventy five year old system, a true
Speaker 1: Yellowstone of America's wildlife refuges. Ecologist Olos Murray and his
Speaker 1: wife Marty were famous early advocates for anwar's creation and
Speaker 1: for wilderness designation of nearly forty percent of it, But
Speaker 1: the Alaska Lands Bill left the one and a half
Speaker 1: million acre coastal Plane, the so called ten oh two,
Speaker 1: open to potential oil and gas exploration. That opening, and
Speaker 1: the threat its posed to wildlife, to the caribou, and
Speaker 1: to the Gwitchin way of life, is what motivated Sarah's activism.
Speaker 1: I think of my elf as an educator protecting my
Speaker 1: way of life, not as an activist, she insists, to us, recycle, reuse,
Speaker 1: and refuse is my motto. I first went to the
Speaker 1: Plains Indian people because of their history with Buffalo, to
Speaker 1: get resolutions to support us in stopping oil and gas
Speaker 1: in anwar.
Speaker 2: She tells us.
Speaker 1: The National Congress of American Indians has supported the protection
Speaker 1: of anwar with a standing resolution, but other Native people
Speaker 1: surrounding the refuge, the coy yukon the Crees and the
Speaker 1: people of Cactovic Village in the Beaufort Sea have supported
Speaker 1: drilling and development. Coastal Plain people are in tougher conditions,
Speaker 1: she says. Still, we all breathe the same air. We
Speaker 1: need to help one another. The Republican Congress and Trump
Speaker 1: administration is really hard, but if we keep working on
Speaker 1: our goal for seven generations, we'll finally win and educate
Speaker 1: the world in a good way and they'll get it.
Speaker 1: June sixteenth, twenty nineteen, It's a stunning morning at our
Speaker 1: first camp on the Hulahula. We arrived here by Bush
Speaker 1: Plain around noon yesterday after what well may be the
Speaker 1: grandest Plain ride of my life from Arctic Village north
Speaker 1: through the Serrated peaks and defiles of the Brooks Range,
Speaker 1: flying through valleys with knife edged peaks looming far above
Speaker 1: us on a perfect blue sky day. No wonder olass
Speaker 1: and Marty Murray, Sigurd Olson and William O. Douglas were
Speaker 1: so bewitched by this country. As for me, it's entirely
Speaker 1: revising my conception of wild America. The view of our river,
Speaker 1: the hula hula from the air, a silver thread dissecting
Speaker 1: an immense mountain valley carpeted in tundra, was as alluring
Speaker 1: a scene as I've ever witness Yes, looking down on it,
Speaker 1: the thought repeatedly formed in my mind, Holy shit, we
Speaker 1: get to travel down that through this.
Speaker 2: A cold wind.
Speaker 1: Blowing from the north off Arctic Sea ice last night
Speaker 1: belied the bright, welcoming sunshine of our arrival in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: But today is both sunny and quiet. Basically, it's a
Speaker 1: perfect day for a river trip into the wild unknown.
Speaker 1: This is our first day of travel on the river,
Speaker 1: so we got the bear talk from our guides last night,
Speaker 1: with accounts of blonde grizzlies that know nothing of humans,
Speaker 1: and especially of polar bears that see you and come
Speaker 1: knocking on the door. Polar bears mean business, and these
Speaker 1: days they come inland. We're just a couple of days
Speaker 1: away from where other anwar travelers have had exciting experiences
Speaker 1: with polar bears. From this put in camp, near the
Speaker 1: Bush Plain landing Strip, which is little more than a
Speaker 1: level couple of one hundred yards of river cobbles clear
Speaker 1: of willows, we've so far seen a red fox trotting
Speaker 1: along the opposite cutbank from us, and eight nine doll
Speaker 1: sheep on the green tundra slopes of the surrounding mountains
Speaker 1: from our guides Arizona and christa saddler with whom I've
Speaker 1: rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and Kevin
Speaker 1: Thursty McDermott, a burly and likable fifty something West Slope Colorado.
Speaker 1: We're hearing accounts of Caribou herds, herds in the thousands,
Speaker 1: the many thousands downriver. Later, on June sixteenth, in Evening Camp,
Speaker 1: the river float commenced today not just with doll sheep,
Speaker 1: but also a wolfback on the slopes above camp. As
Speaker 1: we were preparing to set off, the sheep had been
Speaker 1: in bunches of ten to fifteen. One of the flocks
Speaker 1: was above us as we launched our rafts. Another was
Speaker 1: near us at noon. A group of backpackers who were
Speaker 1: also dropped off yesterday and camp nearby, though, came to
Speaker 1: our tents before we shoved off this morning with a
Speaker 1: one word announcement wolf.
Speaker 2: It pulled up everyone in camp.
Speaker 1: I got about ten seconds of glass time of a
Speaker 1: black wolf maybe half a mile away through my binoculars,
Speaker 1: then nothing, but following a lapse of twenty minutes, again
Speaker 1: came the cry wolf, and this time we picked up four.
Speaker 1: This pack included a black wolf that traveled second in
Speaker 1: line behind a lead brown animal. A silver gray wolf,
Speaker 1: hard to pick out against the gray talus slopes, moved
Speaker 1: in and out of the line, occupying various positions, but
Speaker 1: sometimes going its own way. Another brown wolf trotted at
Speaker 1: the rear, usually some distance behind. The group, appeared to
Speaker 1: be moving stalking, would not accurately express their actions, closer
Speaker 1: and closer to a grazing flock of white doll sheep,
Speaker 1: always one hundred yards or so below them, prompting the
Speaker 1: sheep to move up mountain, always maintaining the same distance.
Speaker 2: From the wolves.
Speaker 1: This pack howled several times a faint peeling of canine expressiveness.
Speaker 1: While it was not my situation, having lived in Montana
Speaker 1: during and after wolf recovery there, several of our group
Speaker 1: had never in their lives seen wolves nor heard real
Speaker 1: wolves howl in the wild. Sadly, that's the case for
Speaker 1: most modern Americans on a continent where wolves were once
Speaker 1: the commonest of Keystone predators present here for more than
Speaker 1: five million years. That's how anomalous the last one hundred
Speaker 1: years of wolf absence has been. This is a paddle
Speaker 1: trip down the Hula Hula. We're traveling the country in
Speaker 1: two rafts, a guide manning the rudders of each, with
Speaker 1: four of us providing the paddle power for each raft.
Speaker 1: The river's shallow, rarely deeper than three feet, and fast
Speaker 1: with snowmelt, with numerous braided channels. Looking down at the
Speaker 1: cobbles in its bed as we slip through its waters,
Speaker 1: the sight is of a shimmering transparency. But seen from
Speaker 1: the banks, the Hula Hulas waters take on a mesmerizing
Speaker 1: green turquoise hue from water's edge to the crests of
Speaker 1: the Brooks Range peaks surrounding us. We're above timberline. The
Speaker 1: country that rolls up the slopes is pure tundra. This evening,
Speaker 1: we're in a fine camp among low willows along the
Speaker 1: west bank. Cariboo tracks in the mud are in some
Speaker 1: profusion only feet from Sarah's in my tent. But we've
Speaker 1: not actually seen a Cariboo, at least not yet. I
Speaker 1: should add that evening is pretty much an artificial construction.
Speaker 1: Here above the Arctic Circle a week from summer solstice.
Speaker 1: The sun circumnavigates our sky at a kind of inclined angle,
Speaker 1: highest at noon when the sun is due south, lowest
Speaker 1: at midnight when it's due north.
Speaker 2: But it never sets.
Speaker 1: So this is a trip that's actually taking place over
Speaker 1: a nearly three hundred hour long single day. At least
Speaker 1: we can tell whether it's morning or afternoon by which
Speaker 1: side of this mountain valley the sun is. In mornings,
Speaker 1: it skims the peaks on the east side of the valley. Afternoons,
Speaker 1: it dodges in and out of the mountains that confine
Speaker 1: the Hula Hula to our west. June seventeenth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: we're about to leave this Cariboo camp, which we've named
Speaker 1: such because as we slept, Cariboo herds began to migrate
Speaker 1: past us. It didn't take long to get among the Cariboo,
Speaker 1: and just now a single black wolf is on the
Speaker 1: slope above the path the herds have been taken. There
Speaker 1: was considerable rain in the night, and this morning clouds
Speaker 1: top all the mountains around us. The days so far
Speaker 1: I've been in the seventies, but without the sun it's
Speaker 1: cold enough to put on our healey hansome wetsuits today
Speaker 1: over four or five layers of smart wool, and our
Speaker 1: everyday footwear mid calf rubber boots. Thirsty tells us this
Speaker 1: morning that the wolves den in these mountains, which is
Speaker 1: why the Caribou migrate out to the coastal plain to
Speaker 1: drop their calves. Wolf dens are commonly on high overlooks,
Speaker 1: so the wolves can spot cariboo below. He says he's
Speaker 1: seen a pack stampede of herd over a cutbank in
Speaker 1: a move very similar to a bison jump. He also
Speaker 1: told us that in summer, musk ox descend to the
Speaker 1: edges of the rivers to sleep and cool off in
Speaker 1: the shade of the big chunks of permafrost. We see
Speaker 1: everywhere slewing off the cutbanks in the summer warmth. Today
Speaker 1: is a cold, gray day with a north wind blowing
Speaker 1: steadily up the river and in our faces. This feels
Speaker 1: like Alaska in the Brooks Range up near the Continental Divide.
Speaker 1: Nothing for it but to paddle and look forward to
Speaker 1: camp and warm sleeping bags. June eighteenth, It's after seven
Speaker 1: pm of an absolutely gorgeous day in the foothills of
Speaker 1: the Brooks Range, and we're just down from seven hours
Speaker 1: of hiking up to a ridgeline high above the green
Speaker 1: Valley of the Hula Hula. Since we've been making good time,
Speaker 1: this was a layover day and we got to watch
Speaker 1: caribou herds heading north through the valley during much of
Speaker 1: the morning. We made this camp late yesterday after many
Speaker 1: miles descending the river, and are now in sight of
Speaker 1: the final canyon and the only cataract rapids on the Hulahula,
Speaker 1: which we'll run tomorrow. A successful run through those rapids
Speaker 1: will take us out of the mountains and onto the
Speaker 1: coastal plain. Yesterday was a big descent of many hours
Speaker 1: of paddling under overcast skies and a cold wind erin
Speaker 1: our only California, and at twenty five, the youngest member
Speaker 1: of our party got tossed from our raft in a
Speaker 1: boulder garden rapid late in the day. It required nearly
Speaker 1: two hours after that mishap to find a suitable camp
Speaker 1: for the evening, but Erin was an absolute trooper about
Speaker 1: staying wet for so long.
Speaker 2: Yesterday was also.
Speaker 1: A two wolf day, both wolves black and solitary.
Speaker 2: The second a strapping big.
Speaker 1: Animal that ran effortlessly across the hummocky tundra before spotting
Speaker 1: us and squaring up three to four times to look
Speaker 1: directly at us from only a couple of one hundred
Speaker 1: yards away. We've not seen a bear yet, but watching
Speaker 1: caribou herds crossed his open country produces an emotion that's
Speaker 1: difficult to put into words. Timeless keeps coming to mind,
Speaker 1: but you shudder a little bit at that one. As
Speaker 1: gray and cold as yesterday was, today has been a sunny, blank,
Speaker 1: blue sky delight.
Speaker 2: The clouds still wrapped.
Speaker 1: The peaks as we rose and had coffee, but by
Speaker 1: the time breakfast was done, the mist had lifted and
Speaker 1: Arctic sunlight flooded the mountains. June twentieth, It's ten in
Speaker 1: the evening in the Arctic wilderness, and Sarah and I
Speaker 1: are celebrating our fifth anniversary with tequila and uncontrolled substances,
Speaker 1: and now Earl Gray tea too hot to drink.
Speaker 2: Almost the past.
Speaker 1: Two days have unspooled in a country of such unblemish
Speaker 1: natural qualities that I'm realizing I've lived a kind of
Speaker 1: emasculated existence for much.
Speaker 2: Of my life.
Speaker 1: Primeval America is what this is. We've so far seen
Speaker 1: one native hunting camp, three or four bush planes arking overhead,
Speaker 1: and the occasional jet flying from JFK to Tokyo. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: we're traveling through the world of our hominin origins, or
Speaker 1: at least one hell of an approximation of it. Today's
Speaker 1: our third straight day of gorgeous sunshine, which means we
Speaker 1: ran the canyon and its rapids in.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, bright light. Yesterday, the rapids.
Speaker 1: Including the Hula Hoop rapid, we slipped through in good
Speaker 1: morning high water. Other than sticking our raft on a boulder,
Speaker 1: we had no incidents and took a long lunch on
Speaker 1: a sunny, flowery hilltop where the Brooks Range opened suddenly
Speaker 1: into low green foothills speckled with.
Speaker 2: Caribou antler sheds. That setting.
Speaker 1: Once we were underway after lunch was the scene of
Speaker 1: our most exciting wildlife experience yet. I was in the
Speaker 1: front of our lead raft so got the first glimpse
Speaker 1: of a bulky, furred form rolling along up the right
Speaker 1: bank of the river. It was a familiar hump shape
Speaker 1: a grizzly, which, with a couple of bounds, was out
Speaker 1: of sight. As we paddled a riverband towards where he
Speaker 1: had disappeared. The sound of our voices must have bounced
Speaker 1: off the low cutbank.
Speaker 2: Where the bear had headed.
Speaker 1: The result was that our raft was in the direct
Speaker 1: line of fire. When the grizzly came galloping through the
Speaker 1: willows to water's edge, straight for us. It looked for
Speaker 1: all the world like a charge, except I could tell
Speaker 1: the bear had not really seen us. Just as bear
Speaker 1: paus hit the river's edge, Thirsty muttered something about not
Speaker 1: wanting to share a river with a bear and loosed
Speaker 1: a piercing whistle. The small black eyes in the grizzly's
Speaker 1: lovely symmetrical face suddenly lost us. There was a split
Speaker 1: second what the fuck on his face? Then a studied,
Speaker 1: almost slow turned to his right like a nonchalant damn it,
Speaker 1: I think I may have left the burner on back home.
Speaker 2: Then, like a corner horse.
Speaker 1: Under quirt, he was boundering through the willows at escape velocity,
Speaker 1: directly away from us. It was a supreme sensory moment.
Speaker 1: We had been privileged to see a gorgeous grizzly bear
Speaker 1: at a distance of maybe thirty five feet. We camped
Speaker 1: yesterday and still are today, at a spot below k
Speaker 1: Gat Hill, which we climbed today through increasingly larger caribou herds,
Speaker 1: all steadily pulled northward, as if by some throbbing magnet.
Speaker 1: From here you could see the next river valley to
Speaker 1: the west, the valley of the Saddle Roach at mountains,
Speaker 1: and behind us the Hula Hulas at it through its
Speaker 1: canyon out of the Brooks Range. This afternoon, another grizzly
Speaker 1: graves past our camp, barely one hundred yards away. Wolf
Speaker 1: tracks are on the beach behind me. As I scribble
Speaker 1: this June twenty, first summer solstice in the High Arctic,
Speaker 1: we're now in sight of the Arctic Ocean from a
Speaker 1: camp where the Hula Hulas banks have begun to ice up,
Speaker 1: far out on the coastal plain of anwar far into
Speaker 1: the famous ten to two the part of the refuge
Speaker 1: that's long been a target of drill baby drill politicians
Speaker 1: and to be fair of some of the local natives
Speaker 1: and Alaskans who see money as an ultimate value. Looking
Speaker 1: across this vast tundra, a plane that's bursting with the
Speaker 1: life of primeval America. The middle picture of drill baby
Speaker 1: drill Here is a kin to a man the Lamar
Speaker 1: Valley of Yellowstone Park, festooned with oil derricks, tank batteries,
Speaker 1: pumping units, and litter line two tracks. Try to hold
Speaker 1: that image in your mind. See if it doesn't fly
Speaker 1: to escape screaming. We made big miles last foothills to
Speaker 1: pass the ice. Today we're way ahead of schedule thanks
Speaker 1: to great weather that's warm enough to keep snowmelt surging
Speaker 1: in the river and glory b Despite temperatures in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the Mosquito Hatch has not yet developed.
Speaker 1: Two big moments today. The first was pulling over for
Speaker 1: lunch and mounting the cutbank to find the biggest single
Speaker 1: caribou herd yet on the opposite bank, something around six
Speaker 1: hundred of them. We are also in Muskoks and Polar
Speaker 1: Bear country now, although we've seen neither. There's something very
Speaker 1: powerful though about watching big herds of ungulates in open country.
Speaker 1: If our genes preserve memories, this has to be a
Speaker 1: visual trigger to that this is the kind of world
Speaker 1: we human beings evolved in and where we blinked into
Speaker 1: consciousness then live surrounded by big animals and big herds
Speaker 1: for forty thousand generations of our existence. No wonder it's
Speaker 1: so moving on such a grandly sensuous level. The other
Speaker 1: wild piece of the day was rafting through the ice
Speaker 1: a section of the river where ice as thick as
Speaker 1: ten feet makes up at least one bank for a
Speaker 1: mile or more. We stopped and goofed around on blue,
Speaker 1: dripping ice packs for half an hour in sunny, t
Speaker 1: shirt temperatures. June twenty second, only three days of river
Speaker 1: and ocean traveler left to take us to the island
Speaker 1: airstrip that will be our takeout, and much of that
Speaker 1: will involve portaging to an adjacent river to get a
Speaker 1: straight shot at the island that will then wade to
Speaker 1: a mile or so out across the Beaufort Sea. Weather
Speaker 1: continues near perfect sixty one degrees on the high tundra
Speaker 1: just now several of us stayed up till midnight last
Speaker 1: night to watch the sun circle the horizon and to
Speaker 1: dance its progress on summer solstice. Caribou herds are now
Speaker 1: in sight constantly, with a vast herd migrating past camp
Speaker 1: this morning, an entirely Africa kind of scene. The Brooks Range,
Speaker 1: where we started this journey, is still in view, although.
Speaker 2: A little smoke shrouded. For the past three days.
Speaker 1: We've now been eight days without seeing any humans except ourselves.
Speaker 1: June twenty third, within sight of the ocean. This morning,
Speaker 1: we finally made it to the Cariboo's final destination, their
Speaker 1: calving grounds, and now there are little ones scampering wildly
Speaker 1: and joyously across the tundra and nearby snowbanks. Cariboo herds
Speaker 1: presently occupy in ninety degrees of our views south of
Speaker 1: the river.
Speaker 2: June twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: This afternoon, we're in a camp amongst sand dunes a
Speaker 1: mile from the ocean, having left the Hula Hula after
Speaker 1: portaging our rafts and gear across about a quarter mile
Speaker 1: of tundra to this camp. It was a day of
Speaker 1: paddling a last stretch of a widely braided cobble filled
Speaker 1: Hulahula with cariboo perpetually in sight. On a midnight hike
Speaker 1: last night, some of us saw what we estimated was
Speaker 1: ten thousand cariboo from one overlook. Now we'll do two
Speaker 1: nights here while we portage all our gear and rafts
Speaker 1: over to the Oak Pillock River just east of us
Speaker 1: for a straight shot at the island and its bush
Speaker 1: plane landing strip. We saw our third grizzly yesterday evening.
Speaker 1: A bear that was probably three quarters of a mile
Speaker 1: away but in the open plain was clearly visible to
Speaker 1: the naked eye as a dark lump nosing through the tundra.
Speaker 1: Through our glasses, this bear was a glossy blond behemoth,
Speaker 1: turning sideways in the low sun. Its fur rolled and
Speaker 1: glistened with shades of chestnut and a silvery yellow. It
Speaker 1: was hard to stop watching with a weather front hitting.
Speaker 1: It's now down to forty five degrees inside the tent,
Speaker 1: which is rattling in the wind like laundry on a clothesline.
Speaker 1: June twenty fifth, twenty nineteen. Tonight, our final camp is
Speaker 1: situated on the shore of the Beaufort Sea. Walls and
Speaker 1: chunks of white ice inhabited by harbor seals or in view.
Speaker 1: It's a thing you never.
Speaker 2: Think you'll see.
Speaker 1: The day was another form of adventurous ordeal. We'd been
Speaker 1: captured in the tents for twenty four hours while a
Speaker 1: frieze held up water from flowing down the oak pillock.
Speaker 1: Its final two miles became a wide mud maze that
Speaker 1: required portaging our raft while a barefoot Christa dragged the
Speaker 1: other raft through the mud with a ropeline. It was
Speaker 1: a cold, hard working day. But tomorrow we exit the
Speaker 1: river and wade across to the island, a long strip
Speaker 1: of sand and ice out in front of us. We
Speaker 1: saw no caribou today, but there were long tailed jaggers
Speaker 1: and huge and noisy trumpeter swans constantly overhead. This was
Speaker 1: the final camp of our twelve day passage through the
Speaker 1: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and on this our last night,
Speaker 1: our guide, Thirsty, stood and made an unexpected, impassioned speech.
Speaker 1: Thirsty's granddad was a hard rock miner in Colorado. He's
Speaker 1: married to Darla, his high school sweetheart. His education ended
Speaker 1: with high school, but simply and directly he begged us
Speaker 1: to do whatever was in our powers to save this
Speaker 1: place from despoilation. Long before we arrived on the scene,
Speaker 1: the ages had been at work on it. He said,
Speaker 1: nothing we could do here would improve it a present
Speaker 1: day coda. In October twenty twenty five, as part of
Speaker 1: his American Energy Dominance agenda, President Trump proclaimed that he
Speaker 1: would reinstate seven oil leases owned by the state of
Speaker 1: Alaska in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and was now
Speaker 1: taking bids for future drilling contracts in the refugees coastal plane.
Speaker 1: Because of fear of public backlash, oil companies have so
Speaker 1: far been uneasy about bidding on leases in Antwar, but
Speaker 1: Trump's Secretary of Interior, Doug Bergham, has proclaimed that with
Speaker 1: this announcement, Alaska is open for business. Petroleum geologists estimated
Speaker 1: that total reserves beneath an War might satisfy America's thirst
Speaker 1: for oil for perhaps one and a half to two years.
Speaker 3: Sedan in this script, you're tracking this float trip through
Speaker 3: since the North Slope Anwar, And it brought to my
Speaker 3: question that I wanted.
Speaker 2: To ask you sort of about your scholarship.
Speaker 3: More generally. You made your you really made your name
Speaker 3: with the Buffalo Article and the Journal of American History,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking about it, that's probably one of
Speaker 3: the few pieces I've read from you where you don't
Speaker 3: have you don't mix your historical analysis with some story
Speaker 3: from your own life about being on the landscape yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and clearly it's it's that shapes your thinking as a historian.
Speaker 3: So I wonder if you can talk for a little
Speaker 3: bit about the relationship between your research and writing and
Speaker 3: your adventures for lack of a better term, across the West.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I've done a good bit
Speaker 1: of writing where I appear, usually fairly briefly, but at
Speaker 1: least some as a character in some of these stories,
Speaker 1: probably harkens back to the fact that I got my
Speaker 1: start as a magazine writer, and I did that. I
Speaker 1: wrote for magazines for six or seven years before I
Speaker 1: ever got a PhD, and ended up getting professorships and
Speaker 1: began writing for academic journals like the Journal of American
Speaker 1: History or writing books for university presses. And so, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think probably has made
Speaker 1: a podcast like this and scripts like this possible is
Speaker 1: the fact that when I retired from the University of
Speaker 1: Montana ten years ago, I kind of reverted back to
Speaker 1: that sort of writing, and the books I've written since
Speaker 1: American Serengeti, Coyotie America, Wild New World, things like that
Speaker 1: that have all been sort of, uh, moving more back
Speaker 1: to the sort of writing that I did before I
Speaker 1: became an academic. I mean, I think with something like
Speaker 1: that Buffalo piece in the Journal of American History, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, historians don't do that kind of writing very much.
Speaker 1: They tend to do more the social science kind of
Speaker 1: the author stands back as a disinterested observer.
Speaker 3: Yeah you're not a you don't really take a clinical
Speaker 3: approach to your subject.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's that kind of So.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think probably what I've done is for
Speaker 1: a venue like that and for the sort of audience
Speaker 1: that I knew that the Journal of American History had,
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote a piece that I was not
Speaker 1: involved in at all other than as a sort of
Speaker 1: standback and let the let the evidence show what.
Speaker 2: This story was.
Speaker 1: But I think it's probably for a different kind of audience,
Speaker 1: For a more general audience. It's maybe useful to do
Speaker 1: this kind of writing where the author at least appears
Speaker 1: some because it provides kind of eyes and feet for
Speaker 1: the reader to be able to see the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: I try not to do this too much, but I
Speaker 1: generally try to get at least a story or two
Speaker 1: into any given piece where I'm actually trying to translate
Speaker 1: the points I want to make into being on the
Speaker 1: ground and seeing this play out in the world.
Speaker 3: But it's clear that that sort of deep experiential process
Speaker 3: shapes how you think about these places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, I mean, And so that still goes
Speaker 1: into whether I tell a story of my own presence
Speaker 1: walking through bad lands or are floating down the Hula
Speaker 1: Hula River through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, whether I
Speaker 1: tell that story through my own eyes or not, there's
Speaker 1: no question. Because I'm sort of one of these people
Speaker 1: who has always like to be out on the ground
Speaker 1: and out in the world, not just in a library.
Speaker 1: Those experiences very definitely have played a role. And what
Speaker 1: I've written, one of the key.
Speaker 3: Threads throughout this piece is sort of this looming threat
Speaker 3: of energy extraction on the North Slope. And I think
Speaker 3: one of the things that you point out several times
Speaker 3: is that it's not simply a story of outside interests
Speaker 3: coming in and extracting oil and gas. But there are people,
Speaker 3: there's disagreement among Native people, and you highlight that a
Speaker 3: couple times that it's not just Native people are the
Speaker 3: guardians of this place, and outside interests are trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, take advantage essentially.
Speaker 2: Of their resources.
Speaker 3: But there's disagreements between different communities over how this landscape
Speaker 3: should be managed, which I think highlights a thread we
Speaker 3: see again and again in Western history that Native people
Speaker 3: aren't some monolithic block And that's true, you know, as
Speaker 3: true as it was two hundred and three hundred years
Speaker 3: ago as it is today when we're talking about anwar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's just the reality of the world we
Speaker 1: live in.
Speaker 2: I mean, some.
Speaker 1: People have a take on how the world should be used,
Speaker 1: where the idea is we need to exploit it and
Speaker 1: help our own communities raise their standard of living, participate
Speaker 1: more in the sort of global economic world. And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of native peopleround and War who expressed that
Speaker 1: particular sentiment. I mean, as I described in the account
Speaker 1: of this, when we arrived at Arctic Village, which was
Speaker 1: the spot where we were taking our bush planes into
Speaker 1: the headwaters of the Hula Hula and the Brooks Range,
Speaker 1: one of the people who we had already decided we
Speaker 1: wanted to hear from was Sarah James, this woman who
Speaker 1: is a spokesperson for the Gwitchen people, the people of
Speaker 1: the Caribou, who have for thousands of years hunted caribou
Speaker 1: and sort of feel about themselves and I think I
Speaker 1: feel about them this way too. They're the modern analogs
Speaker 1: of the Buffalo people of the nineteenth century, and so
Speaker 1: we wanted to hear what she had to say, and
Speaker 1: she met us on the tarmac when we flew into
Speaker 1: Arctic Village and talked to us for about half an
Speaker 1: hour or so about the concerns that she had. But
Speaker 1: she was also quick to point out that this was
Speaker 1: not the universal position on the part of Native people
Speaker 1: in this part of the world, and it's not and
Speaker 1: so that's something I think, as you pointed out, Randall,
Speaker 1: and you're exactly right about this, this is true in
Speaker 1: the past as well, And you can't think of Native
Speaker 1: people as just sort of everyone uniformly has this particular
Speaker 1: kind of idea about about how things should play out.
Speaker 1: So Arctic, the National Arctic, I mean, the an war
Speaker 1: is kind of a perfect modern day example of something
Speaker 1: that's been going on in the West for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You point out several times that this is sort of primordial.
Speaker 3: It's a primordial landscape, and it feels like sort of
Speaker 3: the most ancient landscape that you've been on in North America.
Speaker 3: And it occurs to me that this is the first
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of those places where if I'm lucky,
Speaker 3: I'll get to see that place as an American, But
Speaker 3: this is the first America that anyone saw, really. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I wonder if you can talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about how Alaska fits into the environmental story, the environmental
Speaker 3: history of the United States. We sort of see it
Speaker 3: at the beginning of our narrative of the West when
Speaker 3: we talk about peopling this continent, and then it sort
Speaker 3: of seems like it bubbles up again with Russian colonization instraction,
Speaker 3: and then we kind of lose it until Jimmy Carter
Speaker 3: and the Lands Bill, Right, So, can you tell me
Speaker 3: a little bit about how you think of Alaska as
Speaker 3: part of the Western story.
Speaker 1: Well, there's no question that Alaska is central to the
Speaker 1: Western story, because, as you point out, this is the
Speaker 1: first part of the world in North America that humans
Speaker 1: got to so it's the first place on the continent
Speaker 1: that human eyes are going to see. And because of
Speaker 1: its location as far north as it is, it's ended
Speaker 1: up kind of doing a disappearing act from time to time.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the reasons I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell this particular story is I wanted to remind people
Speaker 1: interested in the West that Alaska still probably preserves more
Speaker 1: of the Frontier Old West character than any other part
Speaker 1: of America. I mean, Montana makes a good stab at it,
Speaker 1: Wyoming makes a stab at it. There's some other parts
Speaker 1: of the Lower forty eight, to be sure, that begin
Speaker 1: to look something like what you imagine the Frontier did.
Speaker 1: But Alaska, there's no question, I mean, the last Frontier is.
Speaker 1: It's Alaska, and it's the place that I think in
Speaker 1: the mind of Alaskans, they believe this, and they think
Speaker 1: of the place that way. But with something like the
Speaker 1: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I mean, you really do have
Speaker 1: an opportunity, if you. I mean, and to be sure,
Speaker 1: this is a rare thing to get to do. Not
Speaker 1: many Americans are going to get to go to the
Speaker 1: to ann War and see this kind of world. I mean,
Speaker 1: we floated for twelve days down the Hula Hula River.
Speaker 1: We never saw another party. We saw one native hunting
Speaker 1: camp just as we emerged out of the Brooks Range,
Speaker 1: but other than a group of backpackers who flew in
Speaker 1: the same time we did and headed off in a
Speaker 1: different direction, we never saw anybody else. And that was
Speaker 1: the first day we were there. So it's a thing
Speaker 1: that is not an easy venture to have. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, when you do it, you can't help
Speaker 1: but come away with this kind of feeling that you've
Speaker 1: been privileged to see something of original America, that this
Speaker 1: is what the continent looked like, and that I think
Speaker 1: when you see it, instills in you a kind of
Speaker 1: a horror that something like what happened to the Southern
Speaker 1: high Plains might happen to this particular part of the West.
Speaker 1: I mean, and war is four times the size of
Speaker 1: Yellowstone National Park. It's almost twenty million acres. It is
Speaker 1: a gigantic landscape, and you just don't have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to be in places like that in the modern age
Speaker 1: very often. I mean, it was the wildest place I've
Speaker 1: ever been, and it's probably an experience in my life
Speaker 1: that is right up there in the top one or
Speaker 1: two or three of the things that I've ever gotten
Speaker 1: to do was to see that particular, that particular part
Speaker 1: of America.
Speaker 3: In this piece, you you mentioned the Mauris and their
Speaker 3: work in Alaska, and I feel like the Mauris are
Speaker 3: sort of overlooked as a first family of American conservation.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you can.
Speaker 3: Give the audience a little bit more context around, you know,
Speaker 3: oh else and Adolph and trying to remember the his
Speaker 3: wife's name, Marty Maria Arti Mury, Arti Mury.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh. So, Olas and Adolph were were the brothers both
Speaker 1: trained as as biologists. Uh. And I mean I've talked
Speaker 1: about them, uh in some of the recent episodes, particularly
Speaker 1: the the one on wolves, a couple of episodes back
Speaker 1: where these two guys in the nineteen thirties were, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of them was working for the Park Service, Adolph
Speaker 1: and Olas Murray was working for the Bureau of Biological
Speaker 1: Survey and they both got sent to do the first
Speaker 1: scientific studies anyone had done about coyotes and then in
Speaker 1: Adolph's case, about wolves. And so Adolph is the first
Speaker 1: of the two brothers to get the visit Alaska. He
Speaker 1: goes to Mount McKinley National Park in nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: and spends about three years there studying wolves, and of
Speaker 1: course writes that great book, The Wolves of Mount McKinley.
Speaker 1: And so these two guys, I mean, they really were,
Speaker 1: along with Aldo Leopold, I think, the premier ecologist and
Speaker 1: conservation minded ecologists of the middle of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Both of them ended up leaving the services that they
Speaker 1: worked for and primarily worked for the Wilderness Society for
Speaker 1: most of their lives, and Olas and Marty of course
Speaker 1: became figures who were I mean, they're all over the West.
Speaker 1: They're in Jackson Hole, They're in Yellowstone. They obviously play
Speaker 1: a huge role in getting this particular place set aside,
Speaker 1: the Archte National Wildlife Refuge, which is designated by the
Speaker 1: Eisenhower administration, And they also played a role in getting
Speaker 1: much of it about forty percent of it designated as wilderness.
Speaker 1: I mean, Olos Murray is the primary mover behind the
Speaker 1: Charles Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana on.
Speaker 2: The Missouri River.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these are people, and I keep looking for
Speaker 1: somebody to write a major sort of book, kind of
Speaker 1: like Doug Brinkley did about Teddy Roosevelt a few years ago,
Speaker 1: Wilderness Warrior. Someone needs to do a book out the
Speaker 1: Murys and the role they've played in the American West.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I feel the same way. I feel like whenever
Speaker 3: I read about wildlife and wild places in the twentieth century,
Speaker 3: their names are going to mix in somehow. And the
Speaker 3: Craighead brothers as well, these sort of undersung heroes of
Speaker 3: twentieth century conservation that that are behind the scenes oftentimes,
Speaker 3: that don't maybe get their time in the in the spotlight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they should.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, Dan appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ran, Thank you.