Just back from the experience of a lifetime, visiting the #ArcticVillage before paddling 40 miles up the Aichilik River from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through the #ArcticNationalWildlifeRefuge with my Sierra Club family. Thank you Chris Hill & Dan Ritzman!! Also, love and appreciation to Kyle Ash for holding it down with two kids, two cats, and a puppy to make this opportunity possible for me.
I'm not often moved to write poetry (nor am I much of a poet), but alas, this experience was pretty moving so I wrote a thing...
The Arctic
From above, painted strokes of summer sun skate across rivers and water-logged lands. Vestiges of winter, like white caribou antlers, reach for the sun, snowy veins, pulsing life into the Brooks Range.
Winter’s thaw feeds the Aichilik, as it forks its way to the Arctic Ocean. Over time, mountains molt, shedding a rainbow of loose stones, fossilized corals that fill the river. Gravel bars fan their way to the coastal plain, only the lightest boats can pass.
Sea of caribou line the horizon, shimmering silhouettes under a summer Arctic sun, never to set, never to fully rise, as she circles the sky, always at an angle. We’re not the only ones watching. Grizzly bear in the distance, emerges, dips and reemerges from a gully, as caribou graze, unbothered. With each step, brown fur glistens and waves, bear retreats without lunch, from hind legs she spots us, unsure she runs towards the river, downwind she smells us and runs in the opposite direction, she is gone.
Unharmed, the herd crosses the Aichilik, swimming between gravel bars, before reaching soft tundra. A baby tries, hesitates, tries again. She will not make it with the herd, mama finds another way, we hope.
Thick sheets of blue and white ice line the river bank, warm springs that bubbled from below, before freezing in layers, while the sun hibernated. Like thunder, summer sends the ice crashing into the river, replenishing the water, supporting our passage to the sea.
Along the banks, shorebirds nest in the gravel, sitting guard over their eggs. Ptarmigans, gulls, terns, sandhill cranes, loons, swans, Lapland longspurs, and more summer in the Refuge, a cacophony of calls standing out over the steady backdrop of the river’s flow as we sit quietly, listen.
We approach the delta, and gravel gives way to mud. Our boat can go no further. Almost there, we walk through water logged tundra, through mud that tugs at our heels, holds us back, slows us down. Each step a feat, our footprints add to those who came before, caribou, bear, sandhill cranes and more, their tracks dot the delta, guiding our path to the sea.
On top of the world, under the midnight sun, never alone. Teeming with life, the Arctic Refuge is home, leave it alone.
