Fields of Fireweed: An Exploration of Alaska

Don’t let the title of this blog fool you! I’m going to discuss many more of Alaska’s species than these, but these are some of the most beautiful creatures! As I’ve touched on in previous blogs, the nature in Alaska is breathtaking, and some of the most breathtaking things to see are the creatures. There’s many days when I’m on the water and I see a plethora of creatures. Moose, bears on the beaches, bald eagles, puffins and hundreds of other birds. I see sea jellies (known as jellyfish to the Lower 48, but they aren’t fish at all), mollusks, and hundreds of fish. There’s porpoise, different species of whales such as humpbacks, minkys, and belugas. Orcas also swim around here too. Many people don’t realize that Orcas are actually dolphins! Their nickname ‘Killer Whale’ certainly doesn’t help! Rafts of sea otters float by very often, which is one of the cutest things I believe someone can experience! I believe the creatures in Southcentral Alaska, such as the Kenai Peninsula, are t

Eskimo is a commonly used word to describe ethnic peoples located in Alaska, Greenland, and other Arctic places. What many people don’t realize, is that the word is a slur. The word is considered derogatory to indigenous people because it was used by white people and racist, non-native colonizers, in aggressive, abusive ways. Native Alaskans emphasize the importance for proper communication and terminology regarding their ethnicity. In Alaska, the indigenous peoples fall into five main categories, but there are more. Aleuts are the indegenous peoples of the aleutian islands, Iñupiats occupy the northern, arctic Alaska. The Yuit peoples are indigenous to southern Alaska. Athabaskans occupy the interior of Alaska, Tlingit and Haida occupy the southeast coastal shore, and the Yup’ik/Cup’ik occupy the southwest of Alaska. An indigenous Alaskan from each of these much prefers being called by their actual name, rather than Esk***. If you meet a native Alaskan, instead of calling them an

Imagine you lived in a place where the sun doesn’t set for two and a half months, what would you do with all the daylight? Would you spend time soaking in the sun? Go fishing? Now imagine living in a place where the sun doesn’t rise for two and a half months. Would you go insane from the darkness? What could you do outdoors with no daylight? Did you know that the further North and South one gets, the more drastic their summer and winter daylight hours are? If you lived on the equator, you would see almost exactly 12 hours of daylight everyday, year round.  Utqiagvik is the most northern town in Alaska, and even in all of North America. Utqiagvik isn’t the northernmost town in the world, that title is reserved for Svalbard’s Longyearbyen. However, Utquiagvik is only 1300 miles away from the North Pole. If there was a road, you could drive to the North Pole in under a day. Utqiagvik faces this climate every year. In the summer, the sun is above the horizon for two and a half m