Jon Waterman Documents Arctic Climate Crisis in 'Into the Thaw'
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From KQED in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. John Waterman first journeyed to the Arctic in 1983, intent on learning all he could about the strange land with grizzlies and caribou and sea fossil-filled mountains.

Waterman has returned more than 20 times since then, and in a new book documents the radical environmental changes he's witnessed. We talked to him about how the climate crisis is transforming the world above the Arctic Circle. His book is called Into the Thaw. Join us. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. For John Waterman, the Arctic, with its immense landscape and sky, captured his soul the first time he ventured there in 1983.

The Arctic now, he says, warms nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, bringing with it transformation and consequences. Waterman's new book, Into the Thaw, documents his journey back to the same place he first visited, among other places along a 500-mile trek, giving us a clear sense of what those transformations look and feel like. And he joins me now. John, welcome to Forum.

Thanks for having me, Mina. Really glad to have you. That first trip you took in 1983, where did you go? Well, I was sent on a Park Service Exchange Patrol to Gates of the Arctic National Park to a river called the Noatak in a newly made park. In fact, Gates of the Arctic National Park had only been in existence for a few years. And I joined one other backcountry ranger and spent a week on this river.

A week on this river. And it's in the high Arctic, right? Meaning that it's above the Arctic Circle? Well, it's just a little bit above the Arctic Circle. Classically, many people think of the high Arctic as the Canadian archipelago of islands. So it is...

perhaps less than 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. It really took hold of you, you write. What do you remember most about that 1983 trip? Well, you used the word transformation in describing this change in the climate in the North. What initially occurred was my own transformation. I was astonished by the wildlife that

We were surrounded by caribou running across the tundra, swimming the river and running in front of our tent. At one point, a caribou was chased by a wolf. They ran by the door of our tent so close we could smell their fur. We watched a grizzly bear consume a caribou. We discovered a wolf den with five pups there.

The experience, in short, changed my life. I was never the same after that and was drawn to the Arctic again and again in a transformation, I realize, in retrospect, a transformation. I was looking for something. Hmm.

Yes, you went back to the Arctic many times after that trip. But actually, am I right, not back to the Noatak until more than 30 years later with your son in 2021? Yes. More precisely, I went back to the Noatak for the next couple of years as a guide and got to know the place quite intimately.

but then felt the need to explore other places in the Arctic because I was so taken. The hook had been set and went on many journeys, in particular a transformative solo journey alone across the roof of the continent for months on end, and did not return for more than 30 years to that place that first caught my attention and changed my life.

And it was then, in 2021, that I saw this transformation now in the landscape. Yes, yes. And you say that...

It shocked you, and there were things that you could do that you never would have thought possible. For example, you and your son actually swam in the river, right? Yes, something I would never have dreamed of doing several decades previously because we were dressed in winter clothing. And there were occasional warm days, but nothing...

like we saw in 2021, where we had to turn the raft up on its side to get some shade from the sun. And the river had flooded in a way that I'd never seen the river or heard the river flood before. It rained for three days continuously and washed silt and mud over potential campsites and

The valley was strangely brushed over. I had to kind of close my eyes, if you will, and reopen them again to try to orient myself to this place that I thought I knew. Yeah. You went in August, which is when you said the frosts usually begin and you were dressed for winter, but that when you were there, the temperatures approached 90 degrees? Yeah.

Yeah, of course I had no short pants and it was so warm I was strolling around in my underwear. But also, this was the same time I had first been there, 36, 37 years before, in winter garb. There were mosquitoes in 2021 and there were none in the last week of August, decades previously.

So, again, a vastly changed place. Yeah. I want to invite our listeners to join the conversation. Listeners, have you ever returned to a place you once visited to find it transformed by climate change or other things, just radically altered? And what was that like for you? Tell us at 866-733-6786.

Find us on our social channels, Blue Sky Facebook, Instagram, Hex Threads at KQED Forum. You can email forum at kqed.org. So, John, one of the really vivid descriptions that you make are,

The massive thawing of the permafrost. First, can you tell us what is permafrost? Well, everyone, of course, is aware of the sea ice, and most of the world has heard about the diminishment of the sea ice. But the other radical change in the North is

is that the land itself is thawing radically because it's underlain in all of the Arctic by continuous permafrost. And this continuous permafrost is under lakes. It's even under the Bering Sea. And as the sea ice diminishes and the earth continues warming, this frozen ground, some of it is solid ice, but most of it's frozen soil. And it's locked up with ice

old dinosaur animal parts and mammoths, but mostly plant matter as deep as half mile deep into the ground. And as this ground continues thawing very abruptly in many cases across the far north,

microbes begin to eat the plant matter and the ancient life there, hundreds of thousands of years old. They've measured the permafrost as old as 660,000 years old in Arctic Canada. And as the microbes eat this ancient plant matter,

live material, carbon dioxide is released, as well as methane gases, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas. So to our eye, what we see, if you have the opportunity, if your listeners have the opportunity to go north, you see what appear to be landslides on hillsides and on mountains in the

resemble sinkholes where the permafrost melts and like frozen spinach left out on the counter, the ground is collapsing wholesale throughout the Arctic. And then there are metals leaching from this permafrost, right? What effect is that having on the water? Well, in places where we didn't have any running streams, we

We would take meltwater from puddles where the permafrost was thawing and holding it up in a transparent bag, you could see the water had an orangish tinge to it. And these are minerals being released from the permafrost. And in places, particularly in northwest Alaska, streams and rivers even are turning fluorescent orange from the release of

of these minerals from the permafrost, something that's never been seen before in human recorded history, imperiling, of course, as you can imagine, the aquatic life, let alone the drinking water for villages. Yeah. Can I ask you what it felt like to see those kinds of changes? Well, to be honest, I was fascinated. At first I was shocked, but when I returned home,

in 2022 to document these things and to talk to villagers and learn from the villagers. I was fascinated. The earth is undergoing this radical change.

At times, it's scary. These melting thermokarsts or landslides would turn the river murky gray and brown downstream as the thermokarsts were freighting tons of silt and muddy water, frozen ground, thawing ground into the river. So it was a combination of shock and fascination.

to behold these changes in the earth, changes that we as humans have caused. Yeah. I should mention the subtitle of your book, Into the Thaw, is Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis.

And I was thinking about that and thinking about people who have talked about how important it is to recognize still how incredibly fascinating and wondrous our Earth is and how much there is to protect still. So I guess not to fall into despair by these changes, John. Is that also something you're trying to communicate? Yes, very much so. Thank you for mentioning that. The subtitle of my book is Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis Rather Than Climate Change.

And in my mind, it's a crisis largely culturally because of the people. Some 50,000 people live in Arctic Alaska. They're in the crisis for these people who have to relocate and readapt to this rapidly changing Earth. But the Earth has changed dramatically.

and undergone climate change over the eons, quite naturally through volcanic eruptions and many ice ages. The difference this time is that it's occurring at nearly meteoric speed just in the last 150 years.

So to bear witness to this is something else. But the earth shall endure. It's more the cultures of the north that are imperiled. Many of the animals will readapt. Some won't. Yeah. Well, I want to dig into that right after this break. Listeners, we're talking with John Waterman about his book, Into the Thaw. John is a mountaineer, a writer, a

And we'll have more with him and you after the break. I'm Mina Kim. Hey, have you heard of On Air Fest? It's a premier festival for sound and storytelling taking place in Brooklyn from February 19th through 21st. I'm Morgan Sung, host of KQED's new tech and culture show, Close All Taps. And I'll be there at the fest to give a sneak preview of the show, along with an

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking this hour with writer and mountaineer John Waterman about how climate change has radically altered the place he once knew. He's the author of Into the Thaw, Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis. He's also a former Denali National Park ranger and the author of many other books, including National Geographic's Atlas of the National Parks and In the Shadow of Denali. What do you want to ask John Waterman about his Arctic expeditions,

what he's seen. Have you ever traveled near the high Arctic? What struck you about the land or environment there? Have you ever returned to a place you once visited to find it radically altered? Email forum at kqed.org. Find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And let me go to caller Lonnie in Hayward. Hi, Lonnie. You're on.

Hi. Hi. Thank you for having me on. I love the show. I was born and raised in Hawaii in the mid-50s. I have four brothers. I hadn't been home for about 12 years when I went home, and I went back to our home in Ewa Beach, which is now completely built up. And...

I went to the beach. We grew up a block from the beach, and my beach is gone. It is completely gone. There's nothing but water up against concrete breakwater. And I have two of my brothers. I have four brothers. Two of them have not been back in decades, and they cannot go back because they can't tolerate emotionally what they're going to see. It took me three visits.

in order to psychologically accept what had happened to Oahu, my island, and the state itself. And I chalked that up to greed. The Sierra Club in the 50s got billboards banned. And so when you go to Hawaii, you will not see billboards. So it is entirely possible to halt the greed and save the earth. And Hawaii is a perfect example. Thank you, and I'll take my...

responses I'll be hearing. Yeah, Lonnie, thanks so much for sharing that. Really appreciate it. John, any thoughts on what Lonnie is sharing there? Well, she brings up an important point because it's the people in many, many cases around the world in the low-lying areas of the earth, indigenous communities mostly, that have done the least to create this problem in terms of their lifestyles and greenhouse gas emissions.

that will suffer the most for these changes as low-lying islands begin to flood. This includes, of course, the people in the Arctic who already have been

will be forced to relocate because of flooding rivers and diminishing sea ice that allows the ocean to flood their villages. Yeah. So you return to really document the changes a year after your trip with your son, and you go with...

a photographer, an expedition kayaker, Chris Korbulik. It's a very ambitious journey that you plan. Can you talk about your general trip plan and what you were hoping to do and learn from it? Yeah, we crossed the Brooks Range, each carrying a nine-pound pack raft,

and then traveled approximately 500 miles, the length of the Noatak River, something I had always dreamed of doing, actually, but in this occasion to thoroughly document with our cameras and video cameras included documents

And interview Inupiat people in villages, as well as meeting up with scientists to more carefully understand what was going on and ultimately to share what was going on in my book. Yeah. And you, I think, only after three days see a wildfire, right? Yeah.

We flew in flying over the flames of a wildfire beneath our float plane to access the beginning of our journey. And for the next week, we're alternately in wildfire haze from smoke caused by wildfires burning throughout the state. More than 3 million acres burned in the summer of 2022. And some of those fires reached into the Arctic. And

Fires in the Arctic are rare indeed, but in recent decades have become increasingly common. Increasingly common, why? Well, because there are now warm air masses that cause these thunder and lightning storms, and the lightning, of course, ignites the fires. And in a warming climate that we're seeing now in the Arctic, the brush is drying out. Also, the

The Arctic is another fascinating phenomenon is that brush is moving north, tree line is moving north. So there's a great deal more brush, as I mentioned earlier in the Noatak River, for these fires to burn in. And in many places in the far north, the fires can burn underground, burn in the peat through the winter, even after the fires appear to be extinguished and then reignite again.

as the land warms again in the spring and summer. So you said this word earlier, thermokarsts? What are those? That's the scientific name for these areas that picture them as scars upon the earth where the permafrost melts and the ground collapses.

causing landslides in the steeper areas and things approaching sinkholes on the flat ground. Huh. They sound massive. In many places, they are. And they're becoming increasingly common across the circumpolar Arctic, around the world, and

silting the streams, and thawing quite abruptly. So in addition to those kinds of changes, can you talk about the wildlife? You say that the wildlife will probably endure, some will don't. What about the caribou? What's the situation there?

because you were describing going there in 1983 and seeing so many of them running past your tent. Yeah, well, you're on the bullseye there with that question because the caribou are a keystone species of the Arctic and so many other animals depend upon the caribou. And throughout time, the caribou have, the populations have risen and fallen cyclically over,

So one can expect caribou populations to plummet and then increase. But the thing is, this time, caribou populations almost universally across the Arctic are all declining. The Western Arctic herd, which is the biggest herd in Asia,

The U.S. used to number several decades ago a half million, and the latest census puts that herd at two-thirds less, at 152,000. So the caribou are diminishing, and there are many other animals that depend upon the caribou, the wolves and the bears, for example.

But then there are other instances as the caribou populations plummet, the beavers are all but galloping into the Arctic, a species that never has been historically recorded as being in the Arctic. In northwestern Alaska, alone in the area that I passed through, they have documented over 11,000 new beaver dams just in this small area of Arctic northwest Alaska since 1980.

And beavers are ecosystem engineers. We know them as an important part of the ecosystem here in our southern biosphere. But in the Arctic, all these new thousands of beaver ponds are essentially the water brings heat to the surrounding ground and continues to thaw the permafrost even more abruptly. So they too are radically changing the landscape. Yes. Yes.

Red foxes are now moving north and beginning to dominate and take over the smaller, meeker arctic fox species. There are many more moose that are drawn north. And of course the beavers and the moose are drawn north because of the brushing or greening of the Arctic because they eat the willows. The beavers eat the willows and use the stouter branches as dam material.

And so it is a very radical change. And when you speak to the villagers, they have observed these things over the decades. They're acutely aware of them, things that visitors might not be so aware of. Really quick, what about the musk ox? I mean, they're such a learned creature. So I'm wondering, how are they doing?

Well, scientists are concerned about the musk ox because, like the caribou and like the dahl's sheep, they depend upon graze that's underneath the snow. So they kick down with their forelegs to get to the sedges and essential graze underneath the snow.

But increasingly now in the Arctic, we have these rain events, these uncanny warm rain events and the rain falls in places where they don't experience rain in the wintertime. And the rain in turn freezes when it turns cold again and it causes an ice layer so that

The musk ox and the doll sheep and the caribou can't reach their vital graves. The caribou depend upon lichens, for instance. And this, for instance, a couple of decades caused a die-off of 20,000, over 20,000 musk ox on a tiny banks island in the Canadian archipelago alone. And then there are these strange, they call them ice tsunami events,

where surges in the tide have welled up over the land and trapped and killed off dozens of musk ox as well. Mm-hmm.

We're talking about the Arctic and how climate change is radically transforming it. John Waterman is a mountaineer and author of Into the Thaw, Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis. And he's here to take your questions about his expeditions, the things he's seen and heard. And if you've traveled there as well and want to share your experiences, please feel free to.

Or if you've returned to a place and found it transformed, what has been your reaction? What is your experience? Email forum at kqed.org. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky at KQED Forum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And Susan writes, what was your guest's experience with Indigenous peoples? What did they express to him? How does he want to use Indigenous

his experience to take action. So yes, you have mentioned the Inupiat, and I did want to ask you about, just to go into more detail about how climate change is affecting the people there. You've talked about how people will likely have to move, to relocate, and so on. But tell us more about this population. Well, they are probably the toughest people on Earth. They have lived in the Arctic, of course, for centuries, for thousands of years even, their ancestors.

So they have readapted to periods of food scarcity, the cyclic changes and the lack of caribou, and periods of starvation.

Arguably, their ancestors crossed the Bering land bridge nearly 12,000 years ago. So they've seen these also radical changes in climate. But this time, as I mentioned earlier, it's happening with such meteoric speed, you know, just in the last 150 years.

So, coastal people will have to move inland when their lives and their ancestors' lives have revolved around the sea. They'll have to move into the hills away from the ocean. There are over three dozen villages in Alaska alone that are imperiled and many of them in imminent danger from flooding ocean and rivers.

But they are the most, the Inuits and the Inupiat have hosted me again and again, and they are the most generous and noble people imaginable. We owe a great debt to these people. We owe a great debt to these people. Why?

They've given us the igloo and the dog sled and these amazing dogs, the Eskimo Husky. It's the oldest breed on the continent. They invented the harpoon and snow goggles and crampons and snowsaws. Everything we know and love about winter probably came from these people and their ancestors.

And I don't think it's correct to think about them as being assimilated. They are sophisticated and they have one foot in our world as they listen to the news and watch satellite TV, but they have another foot firmly in their ancient and beautiful world of surrounded by the animals and the land and the sea that they love.

You talked earlier about how the people who contributed the least to climate change are experiencing its effects earliest and most. You talked to a villager about what could be done. What did that villager say and why did that strike you so much? He said very humbly and gently, maybe the people down south could reduce their emissions. So there wasn't a sense of that.

anger or injustice that I think maybe you feel about what they're facing? I've never seen anger or cynicism in the people. Again, they're so resilient and willing to adapt, even carrying a sense of humor about it all, because this is what they know they have to do. They're the toughest people on earth. Hmm.

You visited also a commercial fisherman, Seth Kantner. What did he tell you? Oh, he told me many things. He, for instance, repeatedly said, we are not rain people. And as the rain comes in the wintertime and it warms up, not only can the animals not reach the food underneath the frozen ice,

But the ice is no longer safe to travel on, and it's changed their ability to, for instance, get the fish or travel safely. And Seth, when I met him in 2022 in the village, the town of Kotzebue,

said that he was concerned about the caribou and he's concerned about the salmon. He's a commercial fisherman. He fishes there in the Arctic waters off the town of Kotzebue. And his income, he depends upon the salmon. He makes as much as $40,000 a year as a fisherman. It's a very hazardous profession and he knows the land and the sea like the back of his hand.

And Seth wrote me in August after the fishing season had ended. He caught perhaps a dozen salmon this year. The salmon didn't return. And his total income from salmon fishing this last year was $37. So when the salmon stop returning and the caribou populations are plummeting,

you can imagine the concern for the people of the North. Listener Kyla writes, the most dramatic change I've seen in my life is when I go back home to Mendocino County, where I'm from.

The forests are so thick and overgrown from decades of fire suppression. As a kid, I could walk pretty freely off trail around the forest floor, but now you can barely move as it is full of bushes, small trees, and fallen dead trees. It doesn't feel healthy.

We're talking with John Waterman, former Denali National Park ranger, author of many books, including National Geographic's Atlas of the National Parks and In the Shadow of Denali. His new book is Into the Thaw, Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis. Waterman has traveled many times to the Arctic and in 2022 did a 500 mile journey there.

along the length of the Noatak River, and his book documents how climate change has radically altered this place that he once knew. We'll have more with him and with you after the break. I'm Mina Kim.

You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking with mountaineer and author John Waterman and with you listeners at the email address forum at kqed.org, phone number 866-733-6786. You can find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and other social channels at KQED Forum. We're taking your questions and comments as you listen to John Waterman talk about his Arctic expeditions and the things that he's witnessed, especially the changes in that area. Have you ever traveled there or?

And Scott writes,

Decades later of promises and greenwashing, I've come to realize that most people will not see the dry well. So their sense of urgency will not be triggered until it's really too late. John, you describe the problems that you've witnessed. The climate crisis is something so monumental and so consequential. So how do you think about the best ways to address that?

Well, before I answer that question, I have to say that I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring when I was 16 years old. And she documented the crisis of DDT and pesticides that were killing, for instance, the ball eagles and other birds of prey. But by identifying the problem, Carson alerted the world to the fact that we had to stop using DDT. And we did.

And it was a crisis averted. So here we are, as your listeners so astutely pointed out, more than four decades later, after Carson's amazing book. How do we avert this crisis?

I think it's the biggest question that we faced today. And I think that, for starters, that we have to be educated, that we have to keep up with the science and listen carefully. But moreover, I think it's important amid what some people term climate grief for us to get out there, if not to the far north to go to our local park and to hear the birds sing and

and to be surrounded by nature whenever we can to realize its value. But at the same time, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have to recognize our lives as fossil fuel consumers. We have to remember that the people who have done the least to create this problem, the noble people of the Arctic, will suffer the most. And of course, in addition to being educated, we have to vote, perhaps vote more wisely,

And we have to raise our voices. There's no question about it. So our new president has big plans for the Arctic. One of his executive actions has called for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a road through a portion of the wildlife refuge. What's been your reaction to that?

I think that I'm, like many people, I'm horrified. My reaction is that I wish I could take our new president to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I wish I could spend a week with him in some of these wondrous places to show him what's at stake. You're the author of the book, Shadow of Denali. He signed another

executive action to rename the highest peak in North America Mount McKinley, changing it from Denali, an Alaska native name. What does the name Denali, what does Denali mean to you? And I do just want to ask you how you feel about that as well. Well, you can imagine how I feel. I have written four books about that mountain. They all have the name Denali in them rather than McKinley. Even

Some of those books I wrote while the name was still, the federal government had still not changed the name until 2015. But Alaskans, all Alaskans, most Alaskans, I should say, have always known the mountain as Denali. In addition to the native people of the North,

It's the Alaska State Board of Geographic Names long time ago renamed, gave the original name back to the mountain. And climbers and everyone in Alaska, you never hear the word McKinley. It's been...

more than 30 years since I've heard people use the word McKinley. So the name will not change for the people in Alaska. Will not change for the people in Alaska. Actually, I think I read about a very recent poll saying that Alaskans oppose that name change two to one. And

I guess it's also worth noting that executive actions need also to be implemented and require a lot of different levels of participation from lots of other people to make them happen, including the drilling and the road. And so for those who are opposed to that, you know.

Well, speaking of the road, there is a road proposed as well as the potential drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which I'm opposed to. There is a road proposed to a proposed mine called the Ambler Mine, which would cut through the southern boundaries of Gates of the Arctic National Park and preserve, which would cause great damages not only to the many watersheds there, but

but to the Western caribou herd migration. And so these are things that, these decisions can be made theoretically in Washington, but without visiting the land, the people that pretend to make these decisions can't understand the ramifications of these types of exploitations.

So when we talked earlier about the importance of the wonder in your subtitle, can you talk to me about, we talked about the changes you witnessed on this most recent trip in 2021 and 2022, but can you tell me what you found awe in when you were there, even amid all these changes? Well, awe is a good word because it's,

uh, connotates both a sense of wonder and a sense of fear. And of course, when you're chased by grizzlies or polar bears, as I have repeatedly been in the Arctic, of course, it's a primeval experience. But then on the other hand, to be in a place where there are

are no people for hundreds of miles around, surrounded by animals, in many instances, animals that have never seen humans before, can change your life. In 1983, I stumbled upon a wolf den with five pups. And the mother, big, blonde, beautiful, statuesque wolf, immediately ran off as soon as I came creeping up to the wolf den and

But the pups all were sleeping. One was gnawing on a bone. And they slowly got up and looked at me and cocked their heads. And one by one left only because their mother had swam the river and was howling to them. But the whole experience, that kind of experience, whether with caribou or wolves or bears, it

can change your life and give you a sense of awe that's everlasting. And a sense of appreciation and the feeling that you need to speak out for this place to defend the otherwise defenseless far north. Yeah, you wrote about watching a grizzly and its cubs fly.

you know, cavort and splash in the tundra and caribou shepherd. They're young as well in 2021, 2022. And the wonder and beauty that there is to be had. So given the rate of the changes that you witnessed, the lack of political will that we just discussed to stop some of the things that could further accelerate changes, not for the better, where do you think the focus should be in the art? Should it be on adaptation?

Yeah, we have no choice but to adapt now. And we can't, this, we're not going to stop this warming anytime soon. So we have to adapt. We have to survive. We have to help the people of the North adapt. And what does adaptation look like to you? I don't know. It's so hard to peer into the future. But for the Inupiat people, for instance, the people of far North Alaska, they're

they will have to leave their villages. And under the Biden administration, already through the budget bill, they appropriated $40 million for two villages to relocate. But many millions more dollars are needed for several dozen villages that are imperiled by flooding rivers and by the diminishment of the sea ice.

So adaptation is going to mean help at a federal level, monetary assistance, financial assistance. Well, Keith writes, the place that has changed the most in my lifetime is Yosemite National Park. First time I was there was in the early 70s, and now it's just overrun and overmanaged.

and it's not a wild experience. You must go deep into the backcountry in order to find that. I like your guest's idea of taking Donald Trump to the Arctic. It's very similar to John Muir taking Teddy Roosevelt to Yosemite. I hope it can happen, but I doubt it. I mean, you do talk about how our national park system is one of the greatest achievements of democracy.

Well, Teddy Roosevelt was a very different man than our current president. But I think I would like to issue the challenge to our current president to step into Teddy Roosevelt's shoes and to go to the North, to go to these more imperiled, wild places in the lower 48 as well, to see what's going on there. Hmm.

And let me remind listeners, we're talking with John Waterman about his new book, Into the Thaw, Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis. And you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. So John, this trip was incredibly mentally and physically challenging. Would you describe some of the most difficult moments of it for you, especially physically?

Well, I learned a long time ago that in my journeys in the Arctic that to really get to a level of understanding, it may sound masochistic to some listeners, but there is a bit of suffering required. The clouds of mosquitoes can feel intolerable at times. The fear of being stalked by a grizzly

and keep you awake all night. But one has to pass through that gauntlet in order to see the beauty and the wonders on the other side. I happened to make the mistake of inviting an incredibly talented photographer and filmmaker and kayaker on my trip. The mistake because he was 30 years younger than me. So in addition to the usual gauntlet of the

of at times the cold Arctic and the mosquitoes and the bears, I was also pressured to keep up to my young companion. But I think that to get to the other side, to really appreciate the wonders of the Arctic, it's necessary to go through this experience of immersion. You have to plunge deep into this place to really understand it.

And once you face these fears and come out on the other side, I think that there's a lot of lessons to be learned. Yeah, it sounds like you had a really rough episode with a can of bear spray. I'm not sure if a shotgun or a can of bear spray is more dangerous. What happened?

Well, we climbed over the Brooks Range to get to the very headwaters of the No Attack River. And we had a fair amount of bushwhacking to do in this newly brushed over Arctic. And I had a can of bear spray and a holster on my waist, and it got knocked out of the holster. So I changed the holster's position and put it on my chest. And at one time...

We were bushwhacking down a very steep mountainside to get over the crest of the Brooks Range. And I swung down on an alder branch into the bushes and another branch depressed, knocked out the pepper spray trigger and at the same time depressed the trigger. So I pepper sprayed myself. Yeah.

and was immersed in this giant orange cloud holding my breath and closing my eyes. And I couldn't get the pepper off of myself. And for the next 10 days, I was sweating because of the pepper spray. Yeah, it is just going all over you. But I was so struck by the thought that you had was, wow, this would be really terrible for a grizzly. Yeah.

Yeah, the grizzlies have this uncanny sense of smell. They have this epithelium in their nose that allows them a sense of smell that's a thousand times that of a human. So when you pepper spray a grizzly bear, it's essentially disabling the grizzly bear.

So I could only imagine how a grizzly bear would feel given the torment that I went through for the next 10 days. Well, I just think about the fact that you are in that much pain and sweating and you're thinking about the effect that it would have on a grizzly more so than the effect that it's having on you. It just sort of, I think, speaks to kind of the mindset, um,

that maybe you take with you when you go there? And you sort of touched on this, but in terms of what you would recommend for people who want to approach a trip to the Arctic or the high Arctic like that? I think that one has to reach an understanding and a level of empathy with all the living creatures around you when you're in a place like the Arctic.

not only imagining how a pepper-sprayed bear would feel, but how these animals are having to readapt to this changing world.

Yeah, Greg writes, we have to have to cool the earth. The global temperature is already above the point where these processes are set in motion, getting rid of fossil fuels, though of course we have to do that, and we are doing it, but that will not lower the temperature. It just limits the temperature that we top out at. Cooling is the only way to save all this, the only way. What do you think about that, cooling, there's technology to try to cool the earth? Well, I think there are many geoengineering schemes out there, some of them outlandish schemes,

and others potentially bear further examination. We have to do something, but we have to be sure that we're not opening Pandora's box as well. So do you think about how many more trips you've got left ever? Not to be, you know, but just thinking about

The fact that it is incredibly challenging and it requires a lot of mental strength as well, you know, acceptance of some level of suffering and so on. Has that thought crossed your mind? Yes. I have an 18-year-old and any time now he's likely to ask me to bring him back. So I worry about that. But one can go as long as you can walk. I don't see any reason why I can't return and why I wouldn't return. Yeah.

Well, thank you for sharing what it's been like to return and to take this 500-mile journey across the Arctic, John. It really did, for me, maybe more so than so many other things that I read, made me feel what the change that we hear so often is happening in that area actually looks and feels like. You're welcome. And I think that as a final thought, listeners should know that what happens in the Arctic also affects the rest of the world. Yeah.

The book is Into the Thaw, Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis. My thanks to listeners for sharing their thoughts and experiences, and also to Suzy Britton for producing today's segment. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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