The comb was found in a trash pile, what the archeologists call a midden, not far above the sea and just outside the remains of a longhouse. From the sit of the house and the site of the midden we know it was an easy toss: you could practically step outside and hurl food scraps, […]
Neil
Caribou collar compilation provided by the National Park Service. Last week I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, for work. Though the melt had begun, plenty of snow still blanketed the ground and thick rafts of ice clotted the rivers. It had been a big winter in the area, the coldest on record, with 31 days at […]
I. One autumn evening several years ago I was driving—I should admit it, I was flying—north on New York state’s Taconic Parkway when I spotted a white tailed deer at the side of the road. It isn’t unusual to see them along the Taconic, especially in the fall, when the rut makes them a little […]
In late August 2018 I traveled to the northernmost island in Canada to observe white wolves. These were an extremely unusual group of animals, and they had the distinction of being unafraid of humans. This alone was something, but beyond their fearlessness lay a subtler behavior that is perhaps best described as tolerance. Another way […]
At the height of the last Cold War the U.S. military burrowed into a glacier in northernmost Greenland and installed a nuclear reactor. The reactor was small—“experimental,” the army called it—and designed to power a base that had also been built under the ice. The base was called Camp Century, and it could house up […]
Autumn always makes the woods feel emptyThough I know strictly speakingThis isn’t true Bears prowl orchardsChuff through oak grovesStuff themselves before a slumberThat grows shorter every yearDeer, too, are bolder now and dumberHaunting the edges of highwaysRunning to or from the rutEven many insects remainHidden in soil or bark Unnamed under leavesOr within the spongy […]
Caribou of Alaska’s Western Arctic Herd travel the shore of the Kobuk River. Author video.— Most of the time, caribou are conservative. They tend not to try new things unless they really have to. They don’t like to wander far from their preferred migration routes, except in preiods of unusual weather, or extreme duress. While […]
My tooth aches. I feel it with each plodding step over the stone-stubbled tundra. It’s not so much painful as just there: a sensation of pressure in a left lower molar followed by a jolt of worry for what it might mean. I have not seen a dentist in years. Teeth are on my mind […]
