Verlon Herndon showed up at the put-in on the Salmon River wearing a hat with earflaps, a growth of dark stubble, and a faded vest with his name and phone number Magic Markered on the back. A haze of sleep deprivation clung to him like a scratchy cowl, although he was trying hard to shake it off with pulls from an oversized travel mug. It was as clear as the Idaho sky that the new was off Verlon, and off his driftboat, too.

We crested Atigun Pass on the Dalton Highway as the Arctic sun slid seemingly sideways across the cloudless northern sky. Before us stretched the true Arctic, that desolate swath of wind-weary, wilderness muskeg fit for no reasonable human, yet home to mankind for thousands of years.

Here, where trees don’t grow and nude, rocky peaks rise abruptly from the swampy bottoms, caribou and muskoxen wander the willows. Arctic foxes dive into leafy caverns created by ground-hugging vegetation, rangey moose boldly navigate exposed river bottoms and … a pipeline runs through it.