ANWR

For two hours we've seen nothing. No roads, no powerlines, no settlements of any kind. The only sign of humanity is the shadow of our little bushplane, moving silently over nameless ridges and canyons, following braided rivers through valleys still packed with ice in the middle of summer. The landscape is elemental, stripped down to the basics. Treeless, austere, pristine. It feels like the morning of the earth, what it was like before we were even a species. And I can't get enough.