A Short Skagway Summer

Seven short weeks at Klondike National Park and I’ve counted hundreds of coastal birds, melted my brain with hours of MATLAB code, and trudged across precariously angled snowpack to summit a mountain…and yet I feel just as wide-eyed today as the first moment I touched down in southeast Alaska. Last weekend I took a short ferry ride to Haines, a small fishing community just 45-minutes southwest of Skagway, and drank in the expansive landscape that cannot be found between the imposing mountains that shelter Skagway. Today, I was reminded by supervisor that while Skagway may not be as geographically open as Haines, this area is the only spot in southeast Alaska where coastal temperature rainforest directly abuts interior boreal forest, producing uniquely biodiverse environments. It would take several lifetimes to intimately know such varied environments—I’m incredibly grateful to be working in a place with so much concentrated life. My favorite part of this internship, beyond the periodic field days that relieve me from the monotony of office work, has been interacting with bird survey volunteers who have patiently imparted a wealth of ornithological knowledge and have taught me to see the world through the eyes of a birder. There is so much life to see and music to hear when you sit still and look up!