Alaska
-
Otters, whales and Glacier Bay: Vermonters in Alaska, Part 2
“Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, where we will spend our last two nights together, isn’t exactly small.”
-
Of bears and char: Vermonters in Southeast Alaska, Part 1
It’s our first morning together in Juneau: six Vermonters, five of whom are from Addison County, and most are visiting Alaska for the first time. And we’re experiencing…
-
Matthew Dickerson: Natural beauty abounds in Glacier Bay National Park
The boat hadn’t even left the dock for our 7 a.m., eight-hour tour of Glacier Bay in Alaska when we began to spot the sea otters. Not just…
-
Matthew Dickerson: Adventures in Alaska’s Gruening Park
It’s 5 a.m. on Aug. 2 — my second morning at Eaglerock Cabin in Alaska’s Ernest Gruening State Historic Park.
-
Matthew Dickerson: Eruption created awe
Vermonters may have woken up on June 6, 1912, thinking it was a normal day.
-
Matthew Dickerson: Finding fresh air while cabin camping on Eklutna Lake
The rain was falling again. Alaska’s 2023 summer was beginning to feel a lot like Vermont’s.
-
Matthew Dickerson: Salt chucks & silver salmon: Alaska, part 2
So what exactly is a salt chuck? That was one of the questions I had when I arrived at Ernest Gruening State Historic Park.
-
Matthew Dickerson: Of rain and glaciers: An Alaskan residency, part 1
The history of the place was inspiring, and I soaked in as much as I could. But it was the surrounding scenery and landscape that moved me the…
-
Matthew Dickerson: Sockeye tipping: Abundance, resilience and diversity, Part 2
A lone sockeye salmon sits in the stream in front of me under a low canopy of alder. The stream is wide, gravelly and shallow: only two to…
-
Matthew Dickerson: Sockeye in the Wood River system: Abundance, resilience, diversity; Part 1
For five days and nights I resided in a shoreline cabin partway up the Wood River system in Alaska’s Wood-Tikchik State Park. Officially, I was serving as artist-in-residence…
-
Matthew Dickerson: On Alaska, fishing and wilderness fires
On July 4, as many of us watched fireworks, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center gave a list of 424 wildfires being tracked in Alaska — all “active, smoldering,…
-
Matthew Dickerson: Autumn in Alaska and the colors of Dolly Varden char
When I visited Alaska in 2003 with my father for a six-day wilderness float trip, bookended on both sides by day-and-a-half-long visits to a wilderness fishing lodge, I…
-
Matt Dickerson: Alaska, Advent and thoughts about waiting
My wife Deborah and I had dinner this week with our friends Rich and Jan Warren. We met at the Bobcat Café and Brewery in Bristol, one of…
-
Matt Dickerson: Bears, trout and Vermonters in Alaska
My son Mark and his wife, Ellie, both Middlebury residents and Middlebury College alumni, walked alongside me up the gravelly river shoreline in Katmai National Park and Preserve…