‘Everywhere Lighting Strikes, It Strikes for the First Time’

A photo-essay and prose poem of life and weather north of the Arctic Circle, and on the Yukon River.

Sep 18, 2023

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A recent trip through National Wildlife Refuges, campgrounds, airstrips and villages north of the Arctic Circle, and later on the Yukon River, coincided with air quality warnings -- the result of wildfires in Alberta -- and Alaska's own wildfires, the first domestic burns of the summer. During the week that followed, additional instances of unpredictable weather and temperatures recurred; their effects on ecosystems, wildlife, and people struck vivid, emotional chords. With my camera and notebook I did my best to reconcile, in scenes and words, the connectivity of these forces felt so powerfully and relentlessly in Galbraith Lake, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Coastal Plain, the Beaufort Sea, the village of Beaver and the Yukon River.

A black and white image of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's bunkhouse at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The rectangular bunkhouse, with its wooden front facade and plastic porch windows, sits at the end of an airstrip near the Galbraith Lake campground. In the background, the Brooks Range stands. — Galbraith Lake, AK

At first we only flickered – forkfuls held, laugh lines straightened, the conversation's pause an almost natural ebb in temporaneous turn – when that first noise snuck upon us, a muffled tenor caught in the throat of some distant century: thunder.

A black and white photo of two bush planes sit side by side on a gravely airstrip near Galbraith Lake campground, just outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A chord runs along the ground in the foreground, out of shot to the left, where an SUV is parked in front of a rectangular wooden bunkhouse. In the background, the Brooks Range stands. — Galbraith Lake, AK

The mountains, held on the wings of machines, scraped the haranguing skies distant as basslines symphonized.

A black and white photo of a tent pitched between two rectangular buildings (U.S. Fish and Wildlife bunkhouses), both just barely in the shot. In the background, the Brooks Range is hazy as moving rainclouds make their visibility hazy. — Galbraith Lake, AK

Darkness, the summary of size itself, oozed and surmised through a tight-lipped embouchure beyond the grasses and the ground squirrels.

A black and white photo of storm clouds rolling over the Brooks Range, their peaks in the background being engulfed by haze and rain. In the foreground, the corner of a wooden bunkhouse extends into frame from the left. Tundra grass and gravel extend to the base of the mountains. — Galbraith Lake, AK

And it became entirely true, entirely too large to see without spinning, turning first to the south and then to the fireweed-lined east, the ridges encompassing the west, accumulating amongst many varied gazes, each a colloquium of eons, it dawned upon us and beside us; the darkness, and the north.

A black and white close-up of the USFWS bunkhouse's transparent porch roof. The square, clear panels are held by criss-crossed wooden beams which. Raindrops are visible through the roof, sliding down their slanted panes. — Galbraith Lake, AK

When the drops did come, they fell with the weight of the future.

A black and white photo, taken through a transparent window pane from a USFWS bunkhouse porch. In the foreground, seen through the clear panels, a black SUV sits on a gravel airstrip. In the background, dark storm clouds hover. — Galbraith Lake, AK

A moment we might never forget, we wrapped ourselves in the Brooks Range, looking up and beyond this weathered gravel airstrip, at this new thing piercing sky.

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Galbraith Lake, AK

Never do thunderstorms move so far, their velocities a foreign language, here, hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, where each place that lightning strikes, it strikes for the first time.

A black and white photo of a section of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline in the foreground -- underneath it, permafrost tundra stretches across vast hills. In the background, peaks of the Brooks Range, within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, extend into a white sky.

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As if we had fallen off a massive tightrope – and recovering as best we could, the permafrost soft, the refuge lands, we hoped, unmarred, when the storms at last receded.

An aerial photo of green polygons, indicating the presence of permafrost, taken above the Coastal Plain near the Arctic Ocean.

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Thousands of caribou gather near the shores of the Beaufort Sea, their brown bodies popping against green grasses and blue water lapping against sandy shores.

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An aerial photo of a vivid blue river bending and twisting across a lush, green landscape near the Coastal Plain.

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An aerial photo of an ice sheet, blue and white, extending right to left over black rock. A tiny black spot, resting atop the ice, represents a bear. — Alaska Coastal Plain

And when we flew to see what scars the lightning had left – leaving be, this time, the tessellating shapes and meandering blues, the miraculous herds and the precarious sheets, allowing their stories to persist so colorfully...

A black and white photo, taken from a bush plane -- the plane's wing extends across the top left of the photo. A braided river extends from the foreground into the background, splitting the tall peaks of Brooks Range mountains. — Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

...We saw the pages turning also, the old growth forests phasing, their once-still and multitudinous trunks disappearing into floating, choking, fire-hot libraries proliferating through layers of sky.

A black and white photo, taken from a boat on the Yukon River, of the river's receding shoreline. The thick tree-line is interspersed with downed and slanted trees, fell or falling due to erosion.

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Perhaps such stories landed here, in Beaver, on the Yukon’s eroding shores along which we slowly traveled; Chief Rhonda Pitka’s eyes wide in disbelief when we told her of the lightning, that moving pen inscribing new chapters upon the land up north.

A black and white photo of the nose of a motor boat, taken from within the boat, as it rumbles through the Yukon River. Beyond the boat, and everywhere around it, is water. — Yukon River

And the river, we measured and double-measured, was 70 degrees beneath us.

A color photo of Chief Rhonda Pitka's grandmother's fish camp, which has been abandoned for four years due to a lack of salmon on the Yukon River. Buildings are weather-beaten, some laying across the grass while small belongings are strewn on the ground. Boards and metal sheets lay askew beneath the deep green trees.

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On land, an emptiness felt so fully – it has been four years, said Pitka, the First Chief of Beaver Village Council, since she had fired up her family’s smokehouses, normally brimming with Chinook filets this time of year.

A color photo of Chief Rhonda Pitka's smokehouse, which has been empty for four years due to a Chinook salmon shortage on the Yukon River, which flows just a few feet away. A slanted metal sheet roof extends over a wooden house frame as tall grass grows around it.

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Instead, as we arrived at her own fish camp for the night, Chief Pitka's cooler brimmed a wrong shade of pink – her stow filled not with salmon, but Pop-Tarts.