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Gateway to a new world

Pristine wilderness, majestic glaciers, beautiful rainbows... Alaska is all this and more

MELTING GLACIER Will Alaska soon become the lost frontier?

The upper Palaeolithic (40,000 to 10,000 years before present) world in the Northern Hemisphere had an environment totally different from what we see today. The earth was gripped by the last Ice Age, with glaciers covering Europe, as far down as Berlin, and North America, as far south as Chicago. The climate was thus much colder than today's.

The flora and fauna that existed adapted to such extreme conditions. Because only fossils of homosapiens have been found in North and South America, migrations of humans to the New World must have taken place sometime after the emergence of our species. On the basis of similarities in biological traits, anthropologists now generally agree that the Native Americans originally came from Asia.

The assumption is that these earliest settlers came to North America from Siberia by walking across a land bridge called Beringia that is now under water — the Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska.

Later, as glaciers began to melt, the sea level rose and covered the natural Bering Bridge.

This occurred sometime between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago, thus precluding further migrations along this route.

Waves of migration

Comparative linguistic analysis has shown that there were three waves of migration into the New World. This is based on the existence of three distinct language groups in the Americas. Each of these has a close relationship to an Asian language family rather than to other New World language family groups.

The first wave saw people who spoke what later evolved into the widespread Amerind family of languages; the speaker of these related languages came to occupy most of the Americas. In the next wave came the ancestors of the people who speak languages of the Dena'ina family.

This includes the Navaho, Apache and various Athabaskan languages of North West Canada and Alaska. Then finally, perhaps 4,000 years ago came the ancestors of the Inuit and the Aleut.

After this, time seemingly stood still for millennia for the indigenous populations, which developed their distinctive cultures. And in Alaska, this continued until 1867 when the USA purchased 600,000 square miles of Alaskan territory from Russia for $ 7.2 million.

It didn't take long for the natural treasures of Alaska to attract the first non-native settlers.

By 1910, 40,000 such persons had arrived, mostly in search of gold. But the main wave of immigrants into Alaska came in the wake of World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbour, when huge military facilities were established. These bases continued to play a significant role during the Cold War years. Now, many have been converted into parks and botanical gardens.

Paradoxically, Alaska has the largest extent of wilderness anywhere, with a population of only six lakh, concentrated in a few cities, but is also feeling the effects of global warming the most.

The Chugach National Forest, that skirts the main city Anchorage, has stunning landscapes and stretches over five million acres. The Denali National Park is even larger and houses the highest North American peak — Mt. McKinley.

Not surprisingly, the largest National Park in the U.S. — Wrangell-St. Elias — is situated in south central Alaska.

The 363 km highway from Anchorage, south to Homer in the Kenai Peninsula has been rated as one of the most scenic drives in the U.S. And not without reason as we learned: magnificent white or black spruce forests, streams on steep hillsides that appear to be flowing but are actually frozen, crystal clear lakes with swans and other birds, awesome glaciers everywhere, white-capped peaks and moose.

Even the Beluga point did not let us down, with an opalescent white Beluga whale briefly surfacing over the water for us.

From Seward, a catamaran trip to the Kenai Fjords National Park is a must. The landscape is stunning and sighting of mammals like the Steller sea lion, sea otter, harbour seal, porpoise and black bear made our trip memorable. Though it was not the bird season, avifauna like cormorants, muree, gulls and the bald eagle were observed. The climax was a visit to the Holgate glacier that itself is part of the immense Harding ice field. As the boat switches off, visitors are able to witness the spectacle of the glacier calving into the sea. The crackling sound rivals the most ear-splitting thunderbolt.

One sight that remains etched in memory is that of the blue-coloured glacial ice, formed due to the crushing weight of layer upon ancient layer of dense snow.

You, however, also become aware that this pristine wilderness is also the most susceptible to the effects of global climate change. The increase in the average temperature over the past century is five times more in Alaska than the global average. Whether this is due to human activities or not is debatable, since most of Alaska is sparsely populated. A visit to Portage shows how this glacier has receded within the last 25 years and melted to form a huge lake.

No trip to the Kenai Peninsula is complete without a visit to Homer. The view along the highway is exhilarating, with the mighty Kenai river flowing alongside for a distance.

Staying as we did, right on the Homer spit, a thin finger-like strip that stretches for around 7 km, had its own attractions. Sea otters could be seen frolicking from one's room! The still active, snow capped volcanoes of Mount Augustine and Mount Iliamna provided the ideal backdrop.

A boat trip across the renowned Kachemak Bay, said to have one of the richest marine environments in the world, was undertaken the next morning. Besides numerous mussels and clams, it was great sighting a beautiful sea star (commonly termed as a `star fish'). We disembarked on a remote island in China Poot and were taken through what is a rarity in these parts, a rain forest!

Another fascinating aspect for us was the rainbow that materialised almost magically on every trip out of Anchorage. As we bade farewell to the Kenai Peninsula, a double rainbow emerged before our eyes. I remembered my Toda friends back home who call a rainbow a single-horned bow. Would they believe I had witnessed a double-horned bow (as bows that fire arrows should be) at the other end of the world? As indigenous cultures are at the crossroads the world over (it is not uncommon for them to come over to you and ask for money in the heart of Anchorage city), let us pray that this last frontier does not provide the last stand for native people and their cultures in the Northern Hemisphere.

TARUN CHHABRA

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