The Essence of Alaska Lies Somewhere Between bague solitaire bulgari prix Myth and Reality
On the edge bracelet argent guess femme of Point Hope I climb a jumbled pile of sea ice. bague swarovski bleu femme The giant cubes are tilted and heaped, forced up by a storm sometime before I arrived, and later drifted over with snow. coque huawei It early March, a few degrees above zero, and to the southwest the afternoon sun shines faint warmth. bague solitaire black friday From the north a stiff breeze has bite. coque samsung I watch carefully where I put my feet; I could fall in, wrench a knee, jam my crotch, or pinch a boot down in a fissure. Small tracks show that a fox has climbed up here. The tracks are set, firm but fairly fresh, probably from last night. I come to older, bigger tracks and occasional brown splats. bague argent They tell me a human has been here too who wore Sorel boots bracelet argent gravure femme and chewed tobacco.
At the top, I marvel at the unseasonably warm day. I expected minus 20 and a howling ground blizzard. Now in perfect visibility I stare out across the groupon bague swarovski solitaire stunning flatness of land and sea. At the horizon, the sky and earth meet in shimmering shades of silver, gray, bague swarovski nouvelle collection white, and blue. coque samsung coque samsung The ocean is still but shows a struggle in process Chukchi Sea is trying to freeze and very much not succeeding. coque huawei It late winter. Point Hope is 125 miles above the Arctic Circle, near the top western corner of Alaska. I should be looking at white pack ice. coque huawei Instead I looking at the thinnest of pressure ridges, skims of floating slush, and dark open water.
The Bering Strait and this coastline are where the ancestors of the first Native Americans arrived from Siberia, some traveling onward and some settling down, and where initial contact later took place between the Inupiat and Outsiders. Russian explorers and bague swarovski femme diamant then American whalers sailed through, carrying home a mixture of truth and distortions about a land of ice and snow, of dog teams, and Eskimos dressed in bague swarovski porté furs surviving an environment harsh beyond comprehension. The Alaska of myth was born bague swarovski vittore right here. This flat gravel point is the imperceptible beginning, or the far end on perspective Alaska, a land as tall, wide, and wild as legend.
Distances in this state are so large they lose proportion, and nowadays the distance between past and present, myth and reality, might be the greatest of them all. Sadly, I a perfect example. coque samsung I from this land, born in a sod igloo 200 miles east and a little south, raised wearing skins, mushing a dog team, and eating food from the land (Eskimo ice cream), seal blubber, boiled grizzly bear, beaver, salmon, muskrat, moose, and anything else that moved. bague argent And now Now I still gather from the land, but I also hold an iPhone in my boite bague swarovski hand more often than ax, knife, and rifle combined. Nearly everybody here does. Even now, I snap a photo and breathe on my fingertips long enough to reread an email. It from an editor, asking for, of all things. coque iphone The Meaning of Alaska. How ironic. I been trying to fathom that my entire life.
I picture the other end of our state, and what it might be like for a newcomer arriving for the first time by ship from the south. Southeast Alaska is as different from here as day from night (Night will cease in Point Hope soon.) There the land has almost too much elevation; your neck hurts from staring up at mountains too steep and disorienting not to stare up. coque samsung They tower straight out of the sea, draped with trees, frosted with crystalline blue and white glaciers much rock and ice it blocks out half the sky. Alongside your boat, gulls and other seabirds cry and float over the swells, whales bague solitaire petit diamant blow mist into damp gray evenings, and seals, sea lions, and sea otters dot the surface of the water. Alaska is astounding. It is real everything you dreamed it to be.
For hundreds of miles your ship passes the seemingly endless green timbered islands and fjords that line the Inside Passage, bague solitaire tunisie prix a protected route up from Washington and British Columbia. The men and women of the gold rush came through here, too, on bague swarovski serpent their way to the Klondike and Nome and other strikes in 1898, and at first glance this land may seem to have hardly changed in the intervening years. Likely you have never imagined so much green, so many billions of big tall trees carpeting an uneven world. coque huawei How can there be this much wilderness you wonder. coque samsung coque samsung How can this place even be possible in the 21st century
When you do walk across the wooden dock of Ketchikan, Alaska miles in the straightest line you could ever draw from this heap of ice where I stand (not that anyone could walk straight through that much wilderness, crossing some of the largest rivers, mountains, and ice fields on Earth) tourist shops and jewelry stores await you. coque samsung A salesman from South Asia or somewhere equally far away welcomes you in out of the drizzle. coque huawei He or she begins pressuring you to buy a diamond bracelet A wire rack beside you is plugged with postcards of THE bracelet argent avec pendentif coeur LAST FRONTIER. bague femme Every photo is painfully sharpened, and oversaturated with color. Memories of yesterday afternoon, of humpback whales breaching in the dim distance, and bald eagles soaring overhead ones you photographed on your iPad in your mind.
With one hand on the glass counter, you glance at the door, out at a steady stream of brightly clad tourists passing. And finally, you feel the first faint twinge of our modern Alaskan dichotomy: 30,000 brown bears share this state with us still, but Jack London left a long, long time ago. And if he were still here addition to heating his house with stove oil and hoarding Alaska Airlines frequent flier miles, receiving the State of Alaska monthly Senior Benefits checks, the annual Permanent Fund Dividend, and untold other state and federal subsidies old, gray, bearded, alcoholic, and with bad teeth, would probably be wearing a grubby Patagonia jacket and staring down into his Samsung Galaxy.
Of course, there are ways to reach this far place other than by cruise ship. coque samsung Flying north by jet, the journey is almost too fast to absorb much longer than a good movie your seat is so bague solitaire diamant rouge soft and padded. coque huawei goed hoesje No wind is freezing your face or even blowing back your hair. You can sleep the whole way, or maybe you playing with your phone and just happen to look down a clear day, on the right side of the plane Juneau or Glacier Bay, Cordova, or even on approach to Anchorage. What you see bague swarovski soldes catches your breath. It is unearthly. Your eyes blink. Your mind has to reset. coque samsung coque iphone The ice and mountains down there another planet! Didn the news say all valeur bague swarovski the glaciers were receding But it all so unbelievably vast. coque huawei You check your watch, and order another vodka and tonic to help comprehend the sheer wildness below your pressurized perch.
After the second prompt, when the kids start to fidget and talk, I show them photos bracelet argent musee du louvre on a large screen: of animals, dog teams, and my life growing up in a sod igloo. There not one dog team in this village anymore. coque huawei coque iphone The kids ask questions. They can quite believe a white man grew up in such a way. Boys tell me of hunting seals and caribou. Every student except one has a smartphone. kawaii licorne A boy named Dmitri flips through his, shows me a photo of a grizzly bague solitaire a vendre bear lying dead. Another boy brags, shoot it with bracelet argent chaine femme .22. When he was 12.
People shoot animals here. coque iphone This is a hunting culture. coque samsung bijoux pas cher And down in the what do they shoot We mostly know from TV shows. coque huawei Each other Deer Guys
Between classes I have a break and accompany the art teacher, a young woman from Colorado named Carrie Imel, to the million dollar gym where her theater class is meeting. bijoux pas cher I know nothing about theater and wish to learn. bijoux bracelets In the gym, chaos threatens as the boys shoot baskets, until Imel herds them together for a warmup game I never heard of called Zip, Zap, Zop. We stand in a circle. A person points suddenly at someone, anyone, and shouts That revendre bracelet argent person points at a random person and shouts The next, And so forth. It fast, and gets faster, with all eyes darting. coque samsung I dyslexic, and bague solitaire goutte haven had enough coffee for this. Quickly I boggled, and out. bijoux personnalise I lean against a wall reflecting on this Far North, white teaching Native experience. coque samsung It feels surreal and nonsensical, as if all of us are moving nowhere, at warp speed; like we humans are playing Zip, Zap, Zop while our planet plunges toward darkness.
I step outside to clear my head. The snow is bright, the sun warm, and the day reminiscent of May, not March. Dogs bark and snowmobiles growl past. It beautiful out, and silently I joke to myself: How did we survive before climate change This weather, though, everyone knows is wrong. The Arctic is melting. Everything is changing too fast. coque huawei This spit is eroding due to lengthening ice free seasons and storm surges, and this town could be washed away in the coming few decades. coque iphone A nearby village down the coast, Kivalina, is already succumbing to the sea. The government has poured millions into seawalls, only to have the next storms take them away.
Alaska official motto, to the Future, is as true as it ever been, here, and across this state. coque samsung bijoux pas cher In the past few decades, glaciers have been melting at a dramatically accelerated rate, with the state losing bague swarovski phantasya more than 20 cubic miles of glacial ice each year. Thawing permafrost is releasing millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.
