NATGEOTRAVEL.COM
WHY IT MATTERS
THE ARCTIC
Where
the World
Connects
How to help protect a
fragile place and the
people who call it home
By Jenna Schnuer
C
heryl Rosa will never forget the light and
the cold that greeted her on her first trip to
Arctic Alaska. “It was extremely windy and
extremely flat and extremely white,” she says of land-
ing in Utqiaġvik (then called Barrow), which sits at the
edge of the Beaufort Sea. Now the deputy director of
the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, Rosa first vis-
ited the region in 2000 to do fieldwork for her thesis.
The landscape grabbed the Massachusetts native
whole. “Travel to the Arctic leaves an indelible
impression on the visitor. Its sheer immensity and
the fragility of its environment are two things that
really blow people away,” Rosa says.
The Arctic is ground zero for climate change,
and what happens in the Arctic has an astonishing
trickle-down (or perhaps flood-down) effect on the
rest of the planet. The region’s surface air tempera-
tures have warmed at two times the rate of the rest of
the globe; sea ice is disappearing rapidly; permafrostis melting; and the number of caribou that graze the
land have declined by almost half, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
Arctic Program.
Scientists have made it clear that humans are driv-
ing climate change—but if we act quickly and globally,
we might be able to reverse some of the damage.
The Arctic is not just an idea we read about in
the newspaper. It’s land. It’s sea. It has been home
to humans for thousands of years. And for those who
can make the trip, there’s no better way to connect
with the region than to meet some of its people, stand
on the vast tundra, or look out on the Arctic Ocean.
I started visiting Alaska from my then home, New
York City, 18 years ago. The trips grew longer and
longer, and I finally moved to Anchorage in 2013.
The Arctic began to feel less remote, less an idea
than a real place. I’d meet Arctic scientists while out at
breweries, and at my local yarn store I’d make friendsIn Utqiaġvik, Alaska,
during the spring whaling
festival of Nalukataq,
successful whalers are
flung skyward in the
traditional trust-building
blanket toss.