Mr. Waterman is a former national park ranger and the author of National Geographic’s Atlas of National Parks.
The flooded Noatak River is located in the remote gate of the Arctic National Park in northwest Alaska, pushing our raft downstream and blowing in the wind.The reindeer trail is covered with cobwebs on the hillside, and cumulus clouds gather above the valley like ripe fruit. The valley is so wide that you may feel confused if you don’t have binoculars and frequent map consultation.
In order to avoid hitting the river bank, I had to stare at the turbulent river with sharp eyes and prop up the oar with both hands.As extreme rains lifted the river away from the banks (and delayed our seaplane flight from Bettles, Alaska for three days), every potential campsite was washed away by silt and soaked.
36 years have passed since I last served as a guide on the Noatak River.This year, I did not enjoy floating memories in the wildest country imaginable, but was shocked by how climate change has fundamentally changed what I once knew.
I have been attracted to the wilderness all my life for spiritual renewal, so I chose Noatak as the ultimate wilderness tour to share with my 15-year-old son Alistair and another family.I am also trying to escape the record high temperatures and forest fire smoke in Colorado. I think this will be a cool episode in the Far North.
To my surprise, the temperature was close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days.These bugs are surprisingly thick.We came here in August, hoping that the frost that usually starts that month will kill the infamous mosquito cloud.But climate change has prolonged the summer and delayed the cold, so we need head nets and insect repellents.
Alistair and I repeatedly swim in the river to cool down. This is an activity I have never considered during dozens of trips to the cold north.But in the past six years, Alaska has had the warmest weather on record.
Since my first trip along these sources in 1982, the temperature of the Arctic has risen by several degrees Fahrenheit.At that time, we dressed for the winter in the first week of August.However, soon after, scientists began to warn that the Arctic was warming at twice the global average.In the decades since, this part of Alaska has been hit by unusual heat waves and wildfires.
When the storm hit on August 5, the temperature dropped to more than 50 degrees, and when we drifted out of the Arctic Gate and entered the Noatak National Reserve, the rain dropped again.The legal wilderness shared between the two parks stretches over 13 million acres, making it the largest unrestricted landscape in the country, sheltering the largest unaltered river system.But given the unusual cascading response of climate change, the protected status of the region does not seem to have any comfort.
One of them is the thawing of permafrost, which covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere.I explained to Alistair that global warming has taken the permafrost out of the well-known freezer.Millions of years of crustal movement, glacier scraping, and soil deposition have stirred and pushed ancient plant communities into the ground, quickly freezing them into permafrost before everything decayed.Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the permafrost has contained more carbon than humans released.
Now, it’s as if frozen spinach is placed on the kitchen counter.Permafrost has begun to decompose and emit carbon and methane into the atmosphere-adding to the greenhouse gases produced by humans that have caused global warming.
During the tundra hikes in the 1980s, my feet remained mostly dry; this time, we repeatedly soaked our boots and walked through the tundra soaked with tears of permafrost.The mountain above has no snow.The snow at the gate of the North Pole almost disappeared throughout the year.According to a study, of the 34 square miles of white snow that was seen in 1985, only 4 square miles remained by 2017.
On Noatak, as the stones fell and the sand poured into the river, we had to drive our rafts around the thawed bank.Our drinking water filters are repeatedly clogged with shed sediment.
A recent study of smaller rivers and streams in the area found that melting permafrost is cooling the waters, which biologists say may damage salmon reproduction.This has caused long-term concerns for remote downstream communities that rely on salmon for their livelihoods.
When flying in, we also saw a puddle called thermokarst rushing into the verdant tundra.They are caused by the melting of surface ice on the melting permafrost.Lakes also flooded from the basin, because the surrounding tundra walls melted like butter.
As the climate became more suitable for them, woody shrubs also moved northward in tundra and low grass areas.The bushes in turn transfer more solar heat through the snow and ground to the permafrost.In 1982, I found a nest occupied by a wolf family on the high bank of Noatak, surrounded by knee-high dwarf birch trees and grass.Today, most of the river banks are covered with head-high willow trees.
Because plants provide most of the energy supply and habitat for wild animals, this “Arctic greening” is changing the entire ecosystem.Attracted by these woody shrubs, moose, beavers and snowshoe hares are now moving north and causing further changes.Shrubs also reduce lichen cover, which is an essential food for the more than 250,000 reindeer that traverse the area, some of which travel 2,700 miles to and from the calving area.
Although we have seen all the changes, we are still intoxicated in such remote and untraveled wilderness that during the 90-mile, six-day trip from Lake Pingo to Lake Kavaculak, we only saw Another person.We caught trout in the river, and then drank it for dinner while avoiding the scorching sun under the supported raft.We gobbled up wild blueberries.After spending an hour in the worm-driving wind on the hillside, we watched a grizzly bear and its cubs, unaware of our existence, frolicking in the tundra.
All of this is because the reindeer herder their cubs from the summer calving yard like they have been for thousands of years.We didn’t see many people, but we knew they were there, somewhere, jogging in groups, a few inches apart, but never pushing each other, their hamstrings are veritable castanets click The sound, their hooves clicked on the stone.These tawny creatures drift along their ancient paths, like smoke, passing through one of our last great wastelands.
These parks are important treasures of our democracy and are regarded as monuments to future generations by Congress and previous presidents.Now they show the future of climate change, which has hit the Arctic in a way that has never been seen before in the temperate world.
One night unable to fall asleep, I slipped away from my son who was dozing off, and out of our tent, into the surreal soft light of midnight sunset, the rainbow curved like a god-given bridge over the river.In such an era, I can only think of my two sons, and how they and all of our descendants will face the uncertainty of the earth’s overheating.
Jon Waterman is a former national park ranger and author of the National Park Atlas of National Geographic.
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Post time: Jan-05-2022
