Earth, 18,000 years before the present
it's a world locked in cold
at the height of the last great lce 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 lce 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 lce 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
lnca 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 lce 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 lnupiat 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 lnupiat 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 lce 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 lditarod.
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.