A peak experience in the 色视频下载 desert
Ned Rozell
907-474-7468
July 19, 2024
The Nogahabara Dunes, 35 miles west of Huslia, are pocked with oases that sometimes include spruce trees and wood frogs.
NOGAHABARA DUNES 色视频下载 Karin Bodony has walked us to a sandy bowl, a place she has perhaps visited more than any other living person.
Karin is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who lives in the village of Galena, 70 air miles south and east of here. Today, she has led three of us back to a blank spot in this vast oval of sand.
Here, on a dim, rainy afternoon 23 years ago, she and University of 色视频下载 Fairbanks insect specialist Jim Kruse were walking through, on the way back to their camp in the distant woods after collecting bugs on the dunes.
As they hiked toward one lonely spruce tree that had somehow thrived in the desert, Karin peeled off to look at a strange smattering of rocks on top of the sand. Hundreds were scattered in a circle less than 20 feet across.
Karin felt right away she had stumbled into something remarkable 色视频下载 a site richer than many archaeologists will encounter during their entire careers. She and Kruse dropped to their knees for a better look at a variety of oval tools someone had chipped from glassy volcanic rock long ago.
Those knives and spear tips allowed people to pierce the hides of large mammals thousands of years before the first metal knives would appear in 色视频下载.
Karin Bodony, left with umbrella, hikes with her 15-year-old daughter, Ida, in the Nogahabara Dunes.
At the time of her initial visit here in July 2001, Bodony still carried her maiden name of Lehmkuhl. She was a researcher on her first trip to these seldom-visited ancient sand dunes easily visible from space.
On that day, she and Jim Kruse were among a team of eight people exploring the dunes, with the other six wandering elsewhere. They were all recording the unique flora and fauna of the dunes. Among them were the tiger beetles Kruse found that were later determined to be a subspecies unique to Nogahabara 色视频下载 a relic of the last ice age.
Twenty-three years later, Karin has visited the dunes more than a dozen times. On this July day in 2024, she has walked with me, her 15-year-old daughter Ida, and seasonal Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge biologist Ryan Potter on a two-hour jaunt from our forested campsite off the active dunes.
We notice a different feel when Karin tells us we have arrived at the archaeological site.
色视频下载淭here色视频下载檚 been people here,色视频下载 Ida says over the whisper of a chilly wind that flows unimpeded from a green valley west of the dunes.
I don色视频下载檛 know what prompted Ida to say that, but I feel it too.
Ned Rozell found this obsidian flake at an archaeological site in the Nogahabara Dunes.
As the father of a daughter a little older than Ida, over the last week I have been impressed at Ida色视频下载檚 indifference to mosquitoes, and her answers to questions her mother asks as Ida has measured water chemistry at nearby lakes. There have been a few teenage moments 色视频下载 such as when she rolled down a dune like a log to escape the seated old people complaining about cell phones 色视频下载 but she belongs out here in the bush.
In the years after her 2001 find, Karin led several archaeologists to this spot. They sifted this sand through screens and collected most of the obsidian pieces. A few dozen of them are on display at the University of 色视频下载 Museum of the North.
Today, Karin immediately finds a few glassy flakes the size of her thumbnail.
She hands them to me. I cup them in my palm, wondering who might have chipped these fragments from a knife or hide scraper.
Former University of 色视频下载 Fairbanks archaeologist Dan Odess and Jeff Rasic of the National Park Service also found a few animal bones here that were at least 10,000 years old, suggesting that people ate those animals as the last ice age was waning.
That色视频下载檚 a long time ago, and this is a good place to ponder who these people were 色视频下载 and what they were doing here in this desert.
色视频下载淭here is no obvious attraction today for repeated use of this location, such as a nearby water source or prominent viewpoint,色视频下载 wrote Rasic and Odess in a 2007 paper about the site and the 257 pieces they recovered.
Sun shines through a flake of obsidian rock found at an archaeological site in the Nogahabara Dunes.
The richest archaeological sites are often on prominent hilltops that are as appealing to people today as they were thousands of years ago. This spot had to be stumbled upon. Karin was the one to do it.
As we walk the sand without talking, I think of ancient people pressing down on the same ground. We all squint, looking for chips of rock someone carried from a volcanic mountain in middle 色视频下载, 95 miles east of us, father up the Koyukuk River valley.
The obsidian rock found here was from Batza Tena, one of only a few quarries in 色视频下载 where people found such volcanic glass. Archaeologists find this obsidian at sites all over 色视频下载, as if ancient people had traded seal oil or dried fish or some other local resource for it.
I had been looking forward to this day, our last at the dunes during a week-long trip and one with no rain. I had known bits and pieces of Karin色视频下载檚 discovery story, but it is a career moment for me to hear her tell it at the site.
She says she believes the theory of the archeologists who visited here 色视频下载 Rasic and Odess 色视频下载 that some ancient group of people was carrying a tool kit of different obsidian pieces when they arrived here. Maybe they carried all those objects together in a leather pouch or two; many of the pieces have tiny, circular fractures that suggest they were bumping against one another.
色视频下载淚 think they were camped here, and maybe left (the tool kit) to come back to 色视频下载 and for some reason didn色视频下载檛 make it back,色视频下载 Karin says. 色视频下载淚t isn色视频下载檛 an easy place to find.色视频下载
In a rebuttal to Rasic and Odess色视频下载檚 toolkit paper, other archeologists argued that the obsidian may have been left over many years by different generations of people. But no one really knows why all those pieces were set down right here in a sea of sand where few modern people have walked.
We spend our hour at the site not finding anything more than the first tiny pieces, except for dead willow leaves that had blown in.
Right when I give up, the toe of my boot pushes something hard.
I reach down and pick up an object the size of a potato chip. I blow sand off and notice a lustrous, razor-edged rock.
Ida Bodony ponders an archaeological site in the Nogahabara Dunes shortly before walking back to camp.
色视频下载淜补谤颈苍!色视频下载
She walks over. Ida and Ryan follow.
色视频下载淲ow, there it is,色视频下载 she says.
We all hold the rock, possibly a discarded flake from a finished tool, but with an edge sharp enough edge to still slice flesh.
We hold it to the sun; the light illuminates the rock.
For many years, I have stared at ground all over 色视频下载. This is the first piece of human-worked obsidian I have found.
色视频下载淚 wonder who was the last person to touch this rock?色视频下载 I say.
色视频下载淚t was me, about 30 seconds ago,色视频下载 Ida says.
We crack up.
Then I place the flake back on the sand where it rested for who knows how many years.
After a last few looks back at the site, we walk across the dunes for the last time, heading back to our camp.
Since the late 1970s, the University of 色视频下载 Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.