"Earth, 18,000 years before the present" "it's a world locked in cold at the height of the last great ice Age." "Across tens of thousands of years unmelting snows have compacted into massive glaciers." "Buried under ice sheets averaging a mile thick are lands where hundreds of millions live today." "As Earth's water is increasing locked up in ice sea levels plummet more than a hundred meters." "Exposed sea floor nearly joins Australia to Southeast Asia" "Japan becomes part of mainland Asia." "Across North America, ice fields and glaciers envelop all of Canada and northernmost United States." "As the ice Age spreads, Alaska emerges as a crossroads." "Off it's Bering sea coastline the retreating ocean exposes a great land bridge a thousand miles wide connecting Asia to America." "Across this corridor, a river of living creatures would flow." "It was the genesis of a great wave of life that would inhabit the Americas, and this was it's Eden." "Crossing into ancient Alaska migrating herds find new forage and sheltering valleys but they're followed from Asia by fierce carnivore... saber-toothed cats, giant bears and the greatest of all predators." "They arrive in small bands from Siberia pressing east in pursuit of game unaware they're discovering a continent." "The hunters are sustained by bison, moose, woolly mammoth and the wild reindeer called caribou." "Where frozen tundra limits vegetation, meat is life." "Most of the year, it is kill or starve." "The hunters prosper here across millennia but as the receding ice Age opens the wall of glaciers to the south most move on with the herds into the virgin continents beyond." "Their descendants will become Apache and Sioux, Aztec and Maya Inca and Amazonian." "yet some remain in Alaska." "For them, this is a world of mysterious forces and spirits." "To science, the Aurora Borealis is created by streams of charged particles from the sun colliding with the atmosphere." "To some Native Americans, the Northern Lights were children not yet born at play in the heavens." "Here at the far edges of existence the wildness of the ancient earth never vanished." "Even today, the solitude of the past is broken only occasionally by the sound of the present." "In Alaska, the last great ice Age survives." "Vast regions appear as lifeless as a frozen planet." "Sheer walls a mile deep loom as monuments to the power of the glaciers which carved them." "Most of its rugged terrain can be crossed only with wings." "Massive snowfalls compress glacial ice so dense in some places only a single color of the spectrum is reflected... an ethereal blue... chilling and strangely beautiful." "Where the frozen rivers end icebergs are born in a spectacle so mighty native tribes call it "While Thunder"" "Some blocks are the size of 30-story buildings." "It would seem a place too hostile for living things but each year, after a winter that can last nine months" "Alaska erupts with life." "Hundreds of thousands of birds stream here from as far away as Antarctica to breed in Alaska's protected cliffs and coves and to feed on it's rich seas." "For one brief season of abundance life flourishes." "lce-falls turn to waterfalls." "Grasses emerge, fueled by up to 24 hours of sunlight a day." "Animals hurry to store up nutrients before winter returns." "Without the plenty of the warm season life couldn't survive the long months of bitter cold." "Famished from half a year of hibernation even the lordly brown bear is content to graze in spring sharing the meadows with caribou too fleet to be caught." "As bellies fill, play begins." "There is other business conducted in the fields of fresh grass... the age-old rite of spring." "They will remain a couple for only a day or two sharing a rough affection." "Bear hugs will lead to the conception of new life to be born in the hibernation den in the dead of winter." "A world of extremes" "Alaska is swept by enormous tidal fluctuations." "Low tide can drain an entire bay like a bathtub." "Taking advantage of the low tides brown bears roam the exposed tidal flats." "to dig for clams." "Any protein is welcome in the effort to replenish a body that can weigh 1,400 pounds." "Perhaps noticing the success of mother and cub, an imitator arrives." "But clamming is not as easy as it looks." "For a red fox, survival is, in part, knowing when to give up and just move on." "As summer's warmth deepens" "Alaska's three million lakes turn to gathering places." "Beavers prepare for the ravages of cold weather ahead by repairing their lodges." "Moose feast on tender aquatic plants hidden on lake bottoms." "Wolf pups gorge on mother's milk to reach near-adult size before winter arrives." "But the serenity of summer can be shattered by the approach of an intruder." "The black bear has a fearsome reputation but it's the most playful of bear species and with the coast clear and the water cool even a bear may succumb to the impulse merely to have fun." "Life along the coast, too, is eased by the warm season." "After a winter battered by North Pacific storms sea lion colonies haul out to sun themselves like vacationers enjoying a day at the beach." "A game of King of the Mountain ensues." "In the world of sea lions, size matters... but patience succeeds." "Ungainly on shore, the sea lion moves in the sea with the ease of a circus performer... both acrobat and clown." "Like its meadows, Alaska's seas bloom with fertility under the lengthening daylight." "So rich are the waters humpback whales swim nearly 4,000 miles from Hawaii to revel in Alaska's season of abundance." "Humpbacks fast for eight months in the relatively sparse waters of the tropics where they breed and give birth." "For survival, they depend almost entirely upon the krill and small fish that concentrate here in summer." "To capture the immense quantities of food they need some humpbacks have devised an extraordinary technique of cooperative feeding." "Diving in unison they surround a school of herring while one or more sings a ritual feeding song." "Simultaneously, a whale blows a circular net of bubbles around the fish." "Then, as the trap is completed the entire group rockets upward through the bubble bath." "Each species finds a way to survive." "Humpbacks have learned to invent and, more importantly, to cooperate." "In summer, a miracle arrives from the sea in wave after wave salmon return from the open ocean and embark on a final migration inland to spawn in the same streams of their birth." "Silver bodies transfiguring for the act of spawning... a phenomenal sense of smell guiding them... they sweep into Alaska by the millions in a vast flood of life." "They face a marathon journey upstream sometimes hundreds of miles long" "yet they persist even in the face of impossible obstacles." "For brown bears, the arrival of salmon is the most important feeding event of the year." "It's the last opportunity to add the bulk they need for the months of winter hibernation ahead." "Dominant bears claim the best fishing spots." "Such confrontations are rarely bloody." "Size is power." "The subordinate merely finds another spot." "Bears are not born with fishing skills." "Each develops a highly specialized style of fishing." "There's the scanner and the apprentice scanner." "The pouncer." "The submariner." "Easily distracted." "The snatcher." "For the submariner the key is not to be graceful but persistent." "Most bear fish singly and selfishly." "Only a mother shares her catch." "For some, greed prompts its own style of fishing... the mugger." "The salmon banquet is brief." "Nothing is wasted." "Many feed, but with hibernation time approaching none more urgently than bear." "To store up fat, bears may fish 20 hours a day." "Large males can put on 300 pounds." "Success in the world of the brown bear is a simple matter of reaching one's sleeping weight." "Some reach it a little too soon." "For salmon that make it past the gauntlet of predators time is running out." "Powerful instincts have brought them back to lay and fertilize the eggs of the next generation." "Only one of a hundred born here have survived to perform this final act and in giving life, all will die." "Their eggs will develop beneath the ice of winter in water enriched by their parents' decaying bodies turning loss to renewal, ending to beginning." "After as few as six weeks of warmth the air grows chilly." "Summer visitors head south to escape the fierce cold ahead." "The first snowfall can arrive in August." "Now Alaska's animals must employ every instinct and adaptation for winter survival." "As many as 4,000 eagles gather along the Chilkat River in the southeast the largest known congregation of bald eagles in the world." "Though most Alaskan rivers freeze geothermal heat keeps the Chilkat open enabling the eagles to feed on the river's unusually late salmon run." "Somehow, bald eagles know to return late each fall to the one place that will help ensure their survival." "One Alaskan animal actually yearns for the onset of winter." "Where most creatures would perish from exposure polar bears thrive." "Their body heat is preserved by thick fat and an insulating fur of translucent, hollow hairs." "The summer breakup of offshore ice has marooned them on land where they can't hunt their favorite prey the ringed seal." "For now, they survive only on stored fat and buried seaweed and wait patiently for the sea to freeze over so the hunt can resume." "Some males while away the time in friendly play-fighting." "For a female and her youngster the long wait is a time of both motherly affection and danger for the cubs." "Despite the fierce protection of mothers fewer than half survive their first year." "Accidents and starvation are persistent threats but she must also avoid her own kind." "Male polar bears will eat unprotected cubs." "Few mothers in all of nature are as devoted as a polar bear." "Cubs learn early to obey her commands." "Finally, the sea freezes over." "The season of waiting and fasting ends." "With their extraordinary sense of smell they can detect a seal 20 miles away." "The feast of winter is about to begin." "Elsewhere in Alaska a time of darkness and scarcity arrives." "Caribou migrating to wintering grounds scrape beneath the snow day or night for moss and sedge grass." "Searching for food they're vulnerable to hungry predators." "For a family of wolves prey are easier to track in snow." "With jaws powerful enough to crush the caribou's largest bones they will leave little behind." "For a species that must cooperate to survive, rivalries are brief the leader's dominance nearly absolute." "As the full fury of winter envelops Alaska temperatures can reach 50 below zero or lower." "Elk have learn to change their diet in winter to feed on only the highest protein forage available." "yet it is a harsh time for yearlings." "Half will not make it." "Bison, protected by shaggy hair over head and shoulders also grow a special winter fur to cover their hindquarters." "The musk ox is outfitted with broad hooves to walk on snow and a winter undercoat of cashmere-like wool softer than a lamb's and impervious to the cold." "Alaska's last horned survivor of the Pleistocene Age it embodies the resiliency and adaptability of life in it's battle with the elements." "Humans, too, have adapted to the land of winter." "Called "Eskimos" by outsiders descended from peoples who crossed the ice age land bridge the Inupiat learned to use every resource in their frozen desert." "For food, they turned to the sea." "Still today, they watch for arriving bowhead whales." "If the Inupiat have been respectful they believe a whale will give itself to them as a gift." "The hunt, sanctioned by international law is a sacred ritual to the lnupiats." "Hauling in it's body they thank the whale for the gift of life-sustaining nourishment to combat the piercing cold." "For other humans, the cold has posed a mortal threat recorded dramatically in images of another age." "In 1897, one of history's largest gold strikes drew a quarter-million "stampeders"" "through the snowbound passes of Alaska towards the gold fields of the Klondike." "Anticipating easy wealth they trudged headlong into an ice Age." "Half the prospectors would never even reach the gold fields." "Arriving ships were marooned eight months by ice." "Many attempted to make the journey with pack horses." "The animals died by the thousands." "Hundreds of men died from exposure or were buried alive in avalanches." "Of the quarter million who came, perhaps 400 struck it rich." "yet some who failed to find easy wealth were inspired by the challenges of this new land." "Like waves of others across the ages they adapted to Alaska and stayed on." "Five, four, three, two, one... go." "Before a crowed that includes descendants of those "stampeders"" "dog sled teams set out from Anchorage each year to commemorate the Gold Rush in a thousand-mile race known worldwide as the Iditarod." "In the defiant spirit of Alaska winter's harsh challenges are turned to rugged sport." "Each year, as the warm season approaches the vast spectacle of life's resiliency unfolds again in Alaska." "The days lengthen, grasses reemerge and along stream bottoms the promise of the future is renewed." "Mere glimmers of life now salmon hatchlings will soon depart to return years hence and nourish Alaska as a miracle of summer that sustains life in winter." "It's a land of countless streams and mountain peaks still unnamed a place shaped by ice and solitude." "In Alaska, we are witnesses to the triumph of life itself." "Here, we can rediscover a vitality vanishing from our lives and reawaken the spirit of the wild remembered not in our minds, but in the blood and the heart." "Whether or not we will ever reach Alaska we all want to know that such a place still exists."