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30-Second Reads

Blending art and natural history: The Alaska Literary Field Guide

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Alaskans and their visitors can enjoy a new travel companion this summer. The Alaska Literary Field Guide, published in March by Mountaineers Books, brings a unique and artistic approach to describing over 90 species of wildlife, plants, and other features of Alaska. The book is written and compiled by Nancy Lord, Marybeth Holleman, and Shaelene Moler. “It’s not a traditional field guide,” says Lord. Instead, she describes it as a collaboration among writers, artists, and experts on Alaska’s natural world. The 330-page book features digestible descriptions of a sampling of the things we love about Alaska, including bears, glaciers, birds, plants, and the aurora borealis, to name just a few. Grouped by ecosystem, each description blends writing and illustrations. They bind together Indigenous cultural knowledge, Western science, and more. The diverse approach promises readers a new take on our favorite sights. “It was fun working with the writers, poets, and…

Culture

The Dogs Come First

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When the Iditarod teams bound out of Willow this month, their odyssey across the Alaskan wilderness will be more than a race. Rising and falling across a frozen landscape – stitching together far-flung rural communities as they go – they will help preserve an arctic sled dog culture that stretches back thousands of years.

Shop Alaska!

Shop Alaska: Hammers Family Birch

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April 2024 April is birch syrup season in the boreal forest of Alaska’s interior. It’s a busy time for the Alaska-owned Kahiltna Birchworks, one of the world’s largest birch syrup makers. Company founders Michael and Dulce East started the business over 30 years ago from their remote homestead near Talkeetna, and in 2023 they sold it to Hammers Family Birch in Wasilla. “We have a great relationship with the Easts,” says Ted Hammers, the CEO and co-founder of Hammers Family Birch. “They helped with our 2024 harvest and trained us about the business.” While pure birch syrup is their signature product sold around the world, they also produce birch-based condiments and candies and supply to both local and national breweries, including Denali Brewing Company for its seasonal OneTree Birch Beer. Hammers also now owns Alaska Wild Harvest. Another creation of the Easts, the company buys wild Alaskan berries from independent…

30-Second Reads

Oomingmak: Home-spun gifts from Alaska

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Since 1969, the Oomingmak cooperative has been keeping Alaskans warm with qiviut hats, scarves, and other accessories that are handknit in remote Arctic villages. Qiviut is the famously soft underwool that muskox shed in spring. “It has a great insulating quality,” says Marie Texter, executive director of the cooperative. Speaking from co-op headquarters in Anchorage, she says qiviut is eight times warmer than sheep’s wool and doesn’t itch or shrink. Texter says the co-op was established to provide economic opportunity in remote villages with few cash-paying jobs. But with no quotas or deadlines required of knitters, the arrangement also affords the flexibility villagers need to keep up with subsistence and other needs. “So when the fish come in, people can still be at fish camp,” she says. “Or they can devote time to picking berries in summer.” In between, Texter tells Alaska magazine, they can knit at their own…

30-Second Reads

Give the gift of healthy skin, from glaciers 

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by Tim Lydon It’s been over twenty years, but Lauren Padawer still remembers the moment she fell in love with Copper River mud. While visiting Alaska for a rafting trip, her group stopped for lunch and a midday dip in the river’s cold-water eddies. She was mesmerized when her bare feet sank into the river’s soothing mud, which consists of fine silt that glaciers grind from the surrounding mountains. “I left that trip wanting to know where that mud came from,” Padawer tells Alaska magazine. Soon after, she moved to Alaska and within a few years launched her first soaps derived from Copper River silt. Today, Padawer’s Alaska Glacial Essentials Skincare, based in Cordova, offers an array of cleansers, moisturizers, creams, toners, and more. They’re sold by over 40 retailers in Alaska and online to customers across the U.S. and beyond. Her original signature product is a mud mask called the Glacial Facial, which uses silt to exfoliate and purify skin. Some products are also “supercharged” with wild Alaskan botanicals. But her main stay remains Copper River silt, which she harvests by hand under a permit from the Chugach National Forest. Clad in rain gear and XTRATUFs, she shovels the mud into five-gallon buckets from the river’s delta near…

Wildlife & Nature

Wait, are cougars in Alaska?

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North America’s biggest cat is a rare sight here, but that might change  Austin Prine knows he saw a cougar run across the Elliott Highway about thirty miles north of Fairbanks last December. Prine, a long-haul trucker who was returning south from Prudhoe Bay, says the cat bounded across the snow-packed road and vanished over a guardrail. He estimates the animal was three years old and weighed about 110 pounds. But it was the three-foot tail that told him it was a cougar. Also known as pumas or mountain lions, cougars are not known to inhabit Alaska. An avid hunter, Prine knows this. But having lived around cougars in eastern Washington, he also knows how to distinguish them from lynx, wolves, or other large mammals. And he believes that cougar reports are increasing in Alaska’s interior, including along the Elliott. When he posted his experience on social media, hundreds of people commented, with…

Travel

Adrenaline & Personal Growth: The School You Always Wanted

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Outdoor Adventure & Academic Excellence in the PNW Sponsored by Annie Wright Schools For many, the Pacific Northwest is synonymous with adventure. Its rugged coastlines, snow-capped peaks, and dense forests have long called to those with a spirit of exploration. For students at Annie Wright Schools in Tacoma, Washington, this landscape isn’t just a backdrop — it’s an essential part of their education. Through the Great Outdoor Adventure Team (GOAT) program, students in Grades 9-12 experience a unique blend of academic rigor and outdoor adventure. A Classroom Without Walls At Annie Wright, students aren’t confined to the walls of a classroom. The GOAT program integrates the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma with hands-on learning experiences in some of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic settings. From kayaking alongside porpoises in Commencement Bay to summiting the glaciers of Mt. Baker, the program offers a diverse range of outdoor challenges designed to build…

Authentic Alaska

Alaska’s Cowboy of the Skies

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Above: Paul Claus At 24 hours old, Paul Claus took his first flight in a Piper Super Cub. Sixty-five years later, he can still be found soaring across Alaska’s skies, as captivated by wilderness as when he was a child. Whether dropping off mountaineering expeditions or taking guests from his family’s lodge to ski on untouched slopes, Claus sees his airplanes as tools to access Alaska’s wild places. In a state where about one person out of every hundred is a pilot, Claus has become a legend, a man dedicated to exploring and sharing his remote corner of Alaska. Claus specializes in true bush flying—no landing strips, no guidebooks, and preferably no one there before him. His daily adventures are classed as experiences of a lifetime in most people’s books, but he believes that he’s just an ordinary guy with the good fortune to do what he loves. And what…

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