It is 80 miles or so by boat down the intensely braided and ever-changing Yukon River to the village of Fort Yukon, Alaska (at the confluence of the Yukon and the Porcupine), where Hal meets Walter Peter, a Gwich’in hunter, trapper and fisherman – provider for his family and elders and others, taking meat and fish and whatever else the earth will give, eight miles above the Arctic Circle. Their conversation ranges from Native concerns over fish and wildlife management to climate change and opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – the birthing ground for the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in have depended for thousands of years – to oil exploration and drilling. Yet they never lose sight of some of the most important elements of life here: family, the health of people who live close to the earth, the first bite of the first fat king salmon or whitefronted goose of the season, or the utter deliciousness of moose kidneys bathed in melted caul fat.

 

You can read more about the Gwich'in in Hal's article for Field & Stream.

 

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