The Ends of the Earth - Alaska's Wild Peninsula

when we think of Alaska we are all on a journey together an Odyssean voyage of outward adventure and inner reflection reaching toward the world's edge to that shadowy sea where the Sun is hidden and the clouds are born we're the Earth's subterranean heart beats [Music] we're living creatures flow like clouds from age to age [Music] we're the lancets the terms and humankind conforms [Music] and so to the Alaska Peninsula we come seeking the limits of the known world at the ends of the earth [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a narrow frontier between warm and cold latitudes extends 500 miles from the Alaskan mainland separating the tempestuous Bering Sea from the Pacific [Music] a cloud cloaked landscape the Alaska Peninsula is accessible only by air or water the mostly treeless Peninsula indoors a maritime climate described as notoriously miserable long winters cool summers frequent storms and sudden bursts of wind called willow walls so fierce bush pilots say they can rip the numbers off a plane [Music] on the Bering Sea the Bristol Bay lowlands are nesting grounds for myriad endurance patience [Music] the Arctic Tern is the longest range migrant in the world the sun-loving turn sees daylight more than any other animal experiencing two summers per year one in Alaska the other in Antarctica and thousand miles distant [Music] [Music] the Aleutian range part of the Ring of Fire comprises the spine of the peninsula with 20 active volcanoes rising above the glacier carved fjords of the Pacific coast [Music] [Music] near the base of the Alaska Peninsula a national park stretches from the Bristol Bay lowlands across to the Shelikof Strait lightly visited and little known outside Alaska cut my is larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined this is the volcanic heartland of the Aleutian rain [Music] in June 1912 a cataclysmic explosion sent a cloud of ash 20 miles into the sky darkness fell on the Alaska Peninsula for three days bears were blinded by falling ash and starve to death plants and small animals were smothered birds coated by ash fell to the ground and died the salmon run was wiped out for five years even the region's prolific mosquitoes were exterminated within a few days acid rain disintegrated clothes hanging out to dry in Vancouver soon after the ash cloud passed over Virginia ten days later the veil of dust reached the skies over the Mediterranean such a massive eruption naturally attracted the attention of scientists [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a century later the ash-covered Valley floor has cooled and the 10,000 smokes have vanished but the magma chamber still lies unquiet Li beneath the cluster of Katmai volcanoes [Music] you [Music] the face of our solid earth seemingly is so stable so alert and so finished is still in flux still evolving Plato wrote that the lost island of Atlantis disappeared in a great Cataclysm a volcanic caldera that sank into the sea causing the collapse of a civilization what will our place be what will be the fate of our civilization in this transforming world where the earth beneath our feet can tremble and erupt [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] encore incas naka the sockeye salmon is a creature ruled by instinct rather than memory and it's instinct is to kill itself sockeye salmon are anadromous hatching in freshwater but spending most of their lives in the salty sea most eggs never hatch heat and drought kill them predators eat them sedimentation cloaks them the current pulls some eggs away of the 10% that hatch only 10% of those fish ever make it to the sea birds feed on them as do other fish some even starve after three or four years in the ocean preyed upon by seals sea lions orcas and salmon sharks only ten percent survive to return to the streams whence they came these fish display an astonishing homing instinct using magnetic navigation to return from the sea in the world's largest sockeye salmon run to Bristol Bay where predators are wait [Music] once in the river the salmon that escaped the gauntlet use old factory navigation to find the very stream even the very gravel bar where they hatched during this intense drive to spawn they begin fasting for energy they turn inward and start to consume their own flesh even their scales are absorbed into the skin against all odds some sockeye survived only to obey the evolutionary imperative to return to their natal streams to spawn and die bringing nutrients from the open ocean to the Alaskan landscape even the trees near the river contained traces of salmon DNA [Music] we too came from the water it was there the cells formed the calcium habit and they kept it after we came ashore as the salmon returned from the sea so too are we sailing when we evolved we brought the sea on shore with us in ourselves in our blood the very miniature of the all-embracing ocean in many a fin and mammalian foot we can see our natural history passing by some part of ourselves that lies unrealized in the momentary shape in spring the Bears leave their deep snow dens in the high country in search of food to replace the loss of one-third of their body weight more than 2,000 brown bears live in Katmai National Park an estimated 10,000 populate the peninsula making them more numerous than people these are coastal brown bears the largest predatory land mammal that yet roams the earth brown bears are larger than interior Grizzlies the same species because of the abundance of food sources near the coast the big bears use threat displays and signals to avoid fights and establish dominance like a peculiar vocalizing known as jaw popping and an exaggerated swagger called cowboy walking though much of their diet is vegetarian the great concentration of giant bears on the peninsula is due to one food source the Bears are so focused on the abundance of salmon that they tolerate close proximity even hours the falls in the river are a barrier forcing the salmon to pause in their migration but that does not mean catching them as easy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this unusual concentration of brown bears allows observers to witness the full range of their behavior [Applause] no hard realities can intrude dominant males will sometimes prey on comes that terrible despite the attentive care of South only one out of three cubs will survive their first year [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the Pacific side of the peninsula is a zone of geological violence where tectonic plates drive mountains up and glaciers grind down to the coast [Music] the horned puffin flies better than it walks and swims more gracefully than it flies they spend most of their lives on the open ocean coming into land only to mates and nest [Music] on these shores there are echoes of past and future of the flow of time diminishing yet encompassing all that has gone before of the seas eternal rhythms of running tides the rush of surf the pressing rivers of the currents shaping changing dominating of the stream of life flowing as inexorably as any ocean current from distant past to unknown future [Music] [Music] farther down the peninsula a giant caldera emerges from the horizon an ancient strata volcano that exploded 3,500 years ago and then collapsed upon itself [Music] it is so remote that more people climb Everest in a year than visit Antioch Jack [Music] in 1931 a volcano inside the volcano erupted attracting the attention of the glacier priests the Jesuit geologist named Bernard Hubbard Hubbard described what he saw in apocalyptic terms a valley of death in which not a blade of grass or a flower or a bunch of moss broke through the thick covering of deposited ash the caldera itself was the prelude to hell black walls black floor black water deep black pit and the world's largest volcano at that the first sight of Antioch chat takes your breath away it is too big to comprehend in a few moments like a moth sending its wings in the world's largest candle our tiny plane is lost in this new world inside interrupted volcano imagine coming upon a scene of destruction where bombs thrown out by the eruption made this vast plain inside the freighter look like a war-torn battlefield where high projections had landed and exploded but after all any Akshat crater is the biggest cannon in the world it snows and it blows in Aniak Shack whatever his latest is on top this time it's tons of ashes working on these ashes was like trying to walk on a pile of sliding weed we were tiny Pinkney's exploring a world unreal mineral spring bubbled from the crater floor the active parts of the crater were most impressive lava oozing out of the floor and world sent gas and steam into the air to get near was playing with fire but we were off to explore anything on iakh Shack had to offer if Virgil homer and dandy had seen anything like this they really would have had something to write about we began the day it was our custom with the sacrifice of the nasty north authentic sanctuary of the wilderness for the candles on the high of ever stately columns of ascending smoke the first time we saw this beautiful we determined to defend to his fiery bottom Joan in interrupting chaos precious scientific data should be obtained and we borrowed it as we said on the brief our current weeks are at zero our team employs new staffers feeding and tackling below with the fires of hell rumbling underneath a ream of erupting violence and circling a big stove later father in the feathers at any moment now and he acts that might blow up in another of a terrific eruption and blow us to Eternity that's Robert we want to know how hard it is we put profited from the end of our I think they melted over 2,000 degrees the highest temperature ever recorded in the bottom of an Alaskan volcano our real scientific fixer but they continued our work in spite of it in those few short hours we live in terms of the book years in an earth detail the uncertainty of it all gets on on earth [Music] [Applause] [Music] this local team bursting out with terrific violence fiddleford operation but we couldn't help having a feeling of exultation the innermost secrets of any access the world's largest volcanic crater for our [Music] [Music] on the desolate caldera floor ad genesis unfolds lichens algae fungi and mosses knit together to form a crypto biotic crust a thin layer of life building soil and holding moisture for subsequent plants to succeed [Music] [Applause] [Music] the walls of Aniak track even influence the weather transforming the miserable to the marvelous [Music] clouds moving in from Bristol Bay are captured and spill over the rim of the caldera creating a phenomenon called cloud Niagara's [Music] the antioch Chuck River exits the caldera through a breach in the walls called the gates a crater lake once burst through and drained the equivalent of the entire Mississippi River in only six hours today's River has a steep gradient in its short run to the Pacific dropping a thousand feet in only 15 miles for adventurous paddlers it's fast cold and dangerously remote [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the fall when the salmon runs end bears gather to forage for salmon carcasses less nutritious but still a food source [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the coast the bears return to their more solitary existence [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] humankind has been a part of this landscape for more than nine thousand years [Music] where the anthroposophy r is concerned nature is not as natural as it looks even this distant land has felt the touch of industrial society [Music] lingering oil from the Exxon Valdez can still be found in the beaches of the Katmai coast more than 450 miles away from the 1989 spill [Music] dissolve fallout from burned fossil fuels is preserved in glaciers which are flushing into the ocean in a colossal meltdown [Music] climate change is accelerating Alaska and the Arctic are warming far faster than the rest of the world [Music] [Music] [Music] the cameras I can be guileless into imagining that any human impacts would be insignificant on so massive a landscape and on such magnificent wildlife [Music] but what effect will the dramatic climate transformations have on the salmon run on the Bears on us [Music] the limits of the known world are veiled but we are not at the ends of the earth nature is still busy with experiments we see but dimly when we contemplate the wilderness of Katmai than the Alaska Peninsula there is a wilderness for each of us should we decide to seek it the journey through it is filled with complexity ambiguity and delight [Applause] the magic that gleams an instant between us and the wild things is both the recognition of diversity and the need for connection across the illusions of fool it is nature's cry too far wandering insatiable humankind do not forget your brethren nor the green woods and grasslands whence you spray [Music] the hope of life is that new things come new sensors try the unfamiliar air we're only one of many appearances of life we are not its perfect image for it has no image except life itself [Music] and life is exuberant and emergent in the stream of time [Music] you

Channel: John Grabowska

Views: 400,318

Keywords: Alaska, Katmai, National Park, Bears, Brown bears, Brooks Falls, Salmon, Aniakchak, Volcanoes, Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Bristol Bay, Sockeye, N. Scott Momaday, Wildlife, Moose, Ocean, Climate Change, Mountains, Glaciers, Ring of Fire, Sea Otter, Evolution, Nature, Natural History, Environment, Grizzly bears, Wild and Scenic, Tundra, Forest, Hallo Bay, Brooks River, Fjords, Wolf, Wolves, Wilderness, Birds, Grizzlies, Novarupta

Id: 5TWP04s3uyc

Length: 56min 37sec (3397 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2018