"The town is so full of anger," says Bernice Kaigelak, who teaches traditional Inupiat language and skills at the village school. "We're trying to find a balance between subsistence and the Western way of living. There are some areas we don't want them to trash, other areas we'd like them to use. I've come to the point that regardless of what we say or do, they're going to come anyway. If you work with them, you have some control."

Chester Hopson, a young hunter from the village, showed where the two worlds collide. With September temperatures hovering around freezing and winds whipping across the flat tundra, Hopson launched his 20-foot (six-meter) aluminum skiff into the wide pale-green river frothing with whitecaps. Chester's cousin Anthony Hopson worked at Alpine and wanted to pick up his paycheck, so he, brother Andrew, and their friend Joe Frank Sovalik, all in their late teens and early twenties, came along for the ride.

Soon the skiff was screaming down the bumpy river as Hopson, cheeks beet red from the wind, deftly steered through the shoals. After a few miles, a gray rectangle of gravel rose on the right bank six feet or so above the tundra. Shipping containers were stacked on the pad, ready for drilling season in the coming winter.

A drill was boring away downstream at the next pad, rising like a rust red lighthouse amid a tawny sea. Anthony's paycheck awaited in the office, so Chester nosed the boat onto a mudflat dotted with the odd grizzly and caribou track, and the young men hiked the remaining half mile (one kilometer) across the spongy tundra. Behind them the vast coastal plain stretched without relief to the horizon. The scene was oddly beautiful, almost eerie, instilling an unsettling, yet exhilarating, feeling of endless emptiness. A solitary loon bobbing in the shallows was the sole reminder of this seasonal illusion. During the summer breeding season the Colville Delta teems with wild things, including rare yellow-billed loons and spectacled eiders, which are among the species threatened by oil development.

Walking up to the big drill pad, with its blazing lights, bustling trucks, and diesel hum of activity, on the other hand, was like coming out of the desert into Vegas—so incongruous, so starkly out of place that "satellite" seemed an apt description. The young men headed for the residence complex, kicked off their boots in the mudroom, and parked themselves at a table in the cafeteria while Anthony went for his check. Food is free on the rigs, so the men helped themselves to chips, sodas, and chicken-fried steaks. In winter they bring their mothers here every week for free prime rib or to play bingo. Despite the relative proximity of high-paying jobs, few Inupiat work in the oil fields. Many complain of the two-week shift work, of low-end jobs, or of discrimination. Anthony worked as an assistant fire-watcher—which he says is one of the most boring jobs on the planet. "You just sit and watch somebody weld and make sure nothing catches on fire." Chester worked on the rigs for about six weeks, and hated it. Now he builds ice roads in winter for Nuiqsut's native Kuukpik Corporation. A driller dropped by the table to tell the guys about a roustabout job on another rig, but there were no takers.