The low autumn light turned the tundra gold as James Schaeffer, 7, and his cousin Charles Gallahorn, 10, raced down a dirt path by the cemetery on the edge of town. Permafrost thaw had buckled the ground, tilting wooden cross grave markers sideways. The boys took turns smashing slabs of ice that had formed in puddles across the warped road.
Their great-grandfather, Roswell Schaeffer, 78, trailed behind. What was a playground to the kids was, for Schaeffer – an Inupiaq elder and prolific hunter – a reminder of what warming temperatures had undone: the stable ice he once hunted seals on, the permafrost cellars that kept food frozen all summer, the salmon runs and caribou migrations that once defined the seasons.
