Nuiqsut, Alaska 70° 12' 59" N and 151° 0' 21" W

The blades of the fiberglass paddles rise and fall to a rhythm as balanced as a pendulum’s. In the deafening Arctic quiet, they splash into the murky water with crisp chops, the sound muffled only by the wind. Under cloudy skies, the river is a long, wide pane of gray, broken periodically by sandbars speckled with chalk-white caribou skulls. Steep banks rise on either side of the water; the grasses of the tundra, appear- ing in tufts on their crowns. The cabins of a fish camp, where a family of Inupiat Eskimos likely spent the receding summer catching their supply of char, burbot, and Dolly Varden trout, seem empty. Near one of the small, shingled buildings, what appears to be a small grizzly bear reveals itself as a musk ox when it raises its head to the sound of the boats, turns, and gallops out of sight.

Cleaving through the river, the small, rugged, inflatable crafts—weigh- ing five pounds and collapsible to the size of a sleeping bag—add bright yellow and red to the otherwise stark aesthetic. Chelsea Ward-Waller, Brett Woelber, and his brother Paxson are less than two miles away from the Arctic Ocean.

CONTINUE READING the pdf of the article, which ran in the Fall 2013 issue of Middlebury Magazine.