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Donohue. “But who wants to see oil drilling in this pristine environment?”
We were 110 miles west of the Canadian border. I recalled reading
somewhere that there are an estimated one billion barrels of oil along the
coastal plain of the ANWR. That 95 percent of northern Alaska is open to
oil drilling. The ANWR is arguably the last of the last frontier.
If you can’t reach the ANWR on foot, then paddling is the way to
go. It’s swifter and less taxing. What lied around the next bend in the
runnel always mounted in anticipation. On one extremely clear day,
that mystery was quelled by the faint sounds of a drum carrying across
the coastal plain by a northwest wind. After scrambling up a bluff and
peering through my binoculars, I could see three towering oil drills 20
miles to the west at Point Thomson. For ten days, we hadn’t seen a soul,
no signs of man’s imprint, and then on the coastal plain, the region’s
greatest threat loomed not far to the west.
Fortunately, my attention was easily diverted by an Arctic ground
squirrel darting between my tripod and its den. Tundra swans, a sandhill
crane, and a red phalarope waded and waddled across the tundra and
cobalt blue ponds. An Arctic fox scurried along the banks of the Staines
River. We also came across a 1930s cemetery, a Russian family buried
on a mound. Animals had dug up one of the graves, and a femur
protruded out of the frigid earth.
Also located on the coastal plain just east of the mouth of the
Staines River is Bird Camp. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps
a biologist on the coastal plain for two months to monitor the bird
nesting season from late May through late July each year. The camp
is surrounded by electrical fencing to keep the bears at bay. We also
learned what had been feeding on that caribou carcass three miles up
the river.
“You just missed a polar bear by four days,” said Scott, the scruffy-
bearded biologist. “It wandered upriver smelling that carcass from the
coast.”
The next day, I walked for about 20 miles, hoping to spot a polar
bear. Once across the uneven tundra, I escaped out to a long, narrow
barrier island, a graveyard of bleached driftwood, skeletons, and animal
tracks. The sandy isle was a good food source for scavenging animals.
Then I found polar bear tracks.
As I followed those detailed prints, ice floes gradually floated on the
Arctic Ocean, some cracking and collapsing. The ocean was a bright
aqua blue. Bands of migratory birds whizzed by as I continued following
the tracks for over a mile before they vanished across the tundra. A
manic caribou trotted in front of me, snorting as it crossed in front of my
camera. I turned to my right, where dark clouds and fog loomed across
from the coastal plain out to the Brooks Range. My tent, several miles
away, was soon to be my sanctuary for an 18-hour deluge. That lone
caribou was soon a dot on the horizon, it too seeking cover somewhere
on Alaska’s open space.
For rafting trips into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, contact
Expeditions Alaska at (770) 952-4549; www.expeditionsalaska.com.
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