KEEP IT WILD
Stomachs churned as our tiny plane jerked up, then left, right and back down. I glanced up and saw Nathaniel vomiting into a Ziploc bag. We passed a mere 100 feet over a jagged ridge and were once again thrown around like rag dolls. Beneath us, mountain ranges were sliced open by the blue and white waters of a wide braided river. We had been flying for an hour and hadn’t seen a road, trail or any sign of human touch.
A series of 20,000-year-old caribou trails emerged on a mountainside. The Gwich’in people, who have lived on this land with the caribou for the entirety of their cultural memory, say that the caribou trails in the mountains of the refuge are like the lines in an elder’s face.
Our team headed into Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home of wolverines, grizzlies, snowy owls and a herd of 200,000 caribou. This was the first in a series of expeditions organized by the International League of Conservation Photographers to
