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Nieman Notesrefuge. On the fly, he arranged forpassing bush pilot Dirk Nickisch toride us in from there.Winging over the spectacular BrooksRange in his 1952 DeHavilland Beaver,Nickisch popped a question. “Hey, youguys want to do a raft trip?” It turnedout he was retrieving a group of vacationingoil company geologists whohappened to have an inflatable raftbelonging to Walt Audi.And so we bounced to a stop on aCanning River gravel bar, to be servedchicken pesto tortellini, red wine, freshchocolate cheesecake, single-maltScotch, cigars and the remains of fourkegs of beer. After the nine Arctic bonvivants flew out, we saw not a footprint,not a shred of plastic, and not acigarette butt during five magical daysfloating 40 miles toward the ArcticOcean.The first grizzly showed up convenientlyat breakfast, enabling Nick tofile an add to his column by satellitephone. The second grizzly, a toweringtawny animal, seemed to find nearbymusk oxen more appetizing than journalists.The refuge was so pristine that somecaribou actually approached us. “Theyseemed to be trying to determinewhether we were pitifully deformedcaribou,” Nick wrote.The vast tundra blazed with autumncolor like a treeless New England inplaces, complete with succulent blueberries.Hummocks of vegetation andwater trapped above permafrost madehiking difficult. On my birthday, we litcandles amid a stiff 40-degree breeze.Nick floated an opinion as webobbed along: The refuge could beopened to oil exploration and drillingas part of a grand bargain on the environmentthat would also address globalwarming. The government wouldbreak the environmental policy deadlockby increasing vehicle mileage standards,controlling carbon emissions,and subsidizing alternative energy.I thought it would make a fine column.I also thought it was a lousy idea.Why should caribou suffer the sins ofHummer drivers? But as I say, I don’twrite opinion.Walt flew us out as promised toKaktovik, an island village closer toGreenland than to Oregon and closerto Finland than to New York. Nevermind that Walt’s Cessna crashed thenext day as he kindly tried to removesome wayward rafters from a mudflat.“Survived another one,” he said with ashrug.In Kaktovik we watched hungry polarbears circle as Inupiats hauled ashorea 43-foot bowhead whale amid snowflurries and celebration. Whale meat,we found, goes down far betterdrenched in ketchup.Nick got five great columns out ofthe trip before departing New York forAfrica. Naka produced stunning, narratedslide shows of our adventures.All in all, Nick went easier on the caribouin print than I thought he might.He called the administration’s attemptedassault on primordial wildernessshameful.What would Huck Finn have said?There’s nothing like a river trip, a shotof whiskey, and a chunk of blubber toopen a person’s eyes. ■Richard Read, a 1997 Nieman Fellow,covers international affairs atThe Oregonian. To read Nicholas D.Kristof’s columns and to see NakaNathaniel’s audio slide shows, visit:http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.htmlRichRead@aol.comA musk ox eyes rafters from a gravel bar in the Canning River. The rugged animals,wiped out in Alaska by hunters during the 1800’s, were reintroduced from Greenlandbeginning in the 1930’s. Photo by Naka Nathaniel.104 Nieman Reports / Winter 2003