After a few minutes conversing with Inupiat elder Kenneth Toovak, I wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to his stories about Eskimo life. Sometimes it's hard to grasp just how fast the world can change in a single human lifetime, and talking to him about his boyhood spent hunting caribou and dogsledding across the frozen tundra really brought that home. Toovak, a born storyteller, had just finished reeling off a list of problems he had personally witnessed as a result of climate change during his seven-plus decades on the planet. Whaling captains especially, he told me, could no longer trust their knowledge of ice conditions because freeze-up was happening later and melt-off earlier. Then he acknowledged that the changes weren't all bad. "Way back in years," he told me, the winters would regularly hit minus 40°F (minus 40°C), and consistently stayed at minus 30°F (minus 34°C). But winters are milder these days, which was just fine with him. "When it gets up to 25 below (minus 32°C), heck, that's nice," he said, grinning. It was hard to argue.
|
The 115-foot (35-meter) oceanographic research vessel Weatherbird II is famous, or infamous, for two things: Its role in conducting the world's longest continuous deep-ocean science monitoring program, and its propensity to make even veteran mariners seasick. When I cast off from the Bermuda Biological Station for Research on an autumn day, I joined the ship's crew on the program's thousandth cruise to a location in the Bermuda Triangle. The first afternoon I was feeling pretty seaworthy, although Weatherbird II pitched erratically in the six-foot (two-meter) swells. The crew eyed me with amusement as I headed to the galley for lunch, and I sensed them all watching when I started to eat. Before I could get the fork to my mouth, I handed my plate to the cook and said, "I can't do this." I spent the afternoon in a most undignified way.
|
While camping in a research hut high in Glacier National Park, I had been told to be careful going to the bathroom in the middle of the night since the mountain goats could be fairly aggressive. Sure enough at 2 a.m. I stumbled out of my sleeping bag and wandered a respectful distance from our camp. As I began to take care of business, I was startled by a noise and turned to see a gigantic set of curved horns attached to an equally large moon-white goat. I made the mistake of stomping my foot to try to scare it away, but the goat merely lowered his head and began to approach menacingly. I backed away slowly and decided to wait until morning to try again.
|
