Updated: 31 minutes agoThe Nogahabara Dunes spill into a lake 35 miles west of the village of Huslia as seen from the back seat of a Super Cub piloted by Brad Scotton of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based in Galena.
Back at our camp within the forested former sand dunes a few miles away, it’s buggy as heck. There, the silence is sometimes pierced with alarm calls of mother birds and the squeaks of their chicks. That songbird nursery is part of the Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge, a place larger than the Anchorage Bowl that is pocked by more than 15,000 lakes. The refuge also features one large disc of sand easily visible from space.
“In other places, we’re trying to restore ecosystems to what they were,” refuge biologist and pilot Brad Scotton said over the intercom. “Here we’re just trying not to screw things up.” But the Alaska similarities end there. These sand dunes — a mass of wind-blown granules ground up by glaciers thousands of years ago, migrating a few feet southward each year — are at the same time lonely and full of surprises.