Extreme Vistas
Understanding the Wildlife, Wilderness, and Wild Places of Alaska and Arizona
We took a drive through the Santa Ritas, following a sinewy mountain road — all dirt and rock — that takes its time meandering between open range, mining claims, a university land grant, and the Coronado National Forest.1 The road tracks along the foothills before cutting across the range and dropping a person down onto AZ 83. The road cuts across grassland and forest before returning to more grassland — and Sonoita wine country. I’ll drink to that.
In spite of a year-round dirt road, the area is very much wilderness; and you are never alone in the wilderness. You can set off from either side of the road and find an old mining claim as easily as a mountain lion or black bear. It's a lot like Alaska in that regard — except for the mountain lion.
This mild screed, like so much else, is a blend of both the outer world and the inner; from what I’m thinking and from what I’m observing around me. While that is the case for anyone (at least I hope so) it is even more the case now that I’ve returned from a recent visit to Alaska. Like the colors in the rainbow, we don’t often know what the color blue actually looks like until we see it in contrast with something else — blue is always the bluest when set against orange.2
Alaska, if given a color of its own, would be dark green. Or, since it is a land of extremes, the brightest white. Arizona, for its part, is sandstone or perhaps the blinding yellow of the sun. The ideas of both Alaska and Arizona are more etched into peoples minds than real places themselves, which means the color someone associates with a place can be telling of what they actually think about a place.
For me, the dark green of The Last Frontier is one painted across its numerous mountain ranges and hills, its low-lying river valleys, along its fjordic coasts, and as far to the north as the state’s climate can carry it. Even in the farther reaches of the state — cut through by the Dalton Highway all the way to the Arctic Ocean — the dark green of forests is merely replaced by a lighter shade of green and much closer to the ground: literally hundreds of lichen varieties act as nature’s own squishy carpet and, for caribou, as the Earth’s finest buffet. And let us not forget the tussocks, the small mounds that cover huge areas of Arctic tundra, that are as curious to us as they are prone to sprain your ankle.
Alaska, as one would be right to say, is a world almost unto itself. And this world’s color, its default hue, can be experienced only a short drive north from Fairbanks — right off the road system, and, technically, at its end. On Murphy Dome, a tall hill situated above Fairbanks, one can walk a little ways and stare out northward and, because of the dome’s height, down into other rolling river valleys and hills. One can gain a perfect 180 degree view of the north country and see nothing human-made; no roads, no electric poles, no houses. There are no railroads, no airfields, no livestock, no farmlands — nothing. It is to see Alaska as it was before 1741 and its European discovery by Vitus Bering. Atop the dome, it should be added, one also sees very little wildlife.
All of this emphasis on flora has said nothing of the fauna.
Alaska, for all of its wildness, is more barren than lush. It is verdant, in its turn, but is more empty than full. While it is fun to emphasize the state’s exoticness with tales of vast, traveling herds of caribou; huge, antlered moose feeding on summer gardens; and flocks of migrating birds flying north; these moments (and they do happen) are more the exception than the rule.3 You can see wolves and bears, even more exotic to most urbanites, but these are rarely within city limits.
Now your best bet requires a bit of luck and deep drive into a national park — Denali being a good place to spot both. Yet, even then a visitor is never guaranteed a spotting of either. As ironic as it sounds, I saw more bears along one short stretch of the Alaska-Canada Highway in British Columbia than I ever saw in Alaska. Alaska is a vast, forested land but one that feels largely empty.
This feeling of emptiness, of a barren wilderness, is borne out by the facts. In 2002, the Nature Conservancy released a study detailing the biodiversity of every state in the Union. Alaska ranked #50 (out of #51 — the study gave the District of Columbia its own place on the list) for biological diversity and featured, a still breathtaking, 1,835 unique species of plants and animals.4
In comparison to Alaska, Arizona stands firmly on the podium in the biodiversity olympics. Coming in at #3, Arizona can boast — and I do mean boast — 4,759 unique species. That number is more than two-and-a-half times that of Alaska. This diversity is mostly plant-life, with more than 3,500 species; however, it also includes 138 species of mammal, 435 for the birds, and 102 for reptiles. Alaska, for as long as I could remember, always seemed to include a huge number of birds; in spring and summer there felt to always be a vast host squawking, cawing, tweeting, and honking. However, Alaska ranked only #46, whereas Arizona (again) ranked #3.5
The sandstone hue of the Grand Canyon State is one spotted from above and from below, from the shores of the Colorado River in the west to the 200,000 square-mile Chihuahuan Desert in the east. Arizona is an odd state, both in terms of biomes and topography.
While Alaska has always felt void of wildlife, Arizona has always felt the opposite. While walking nearby parks we’ve seen herds of javelina and watched pairs of coyotes hunt; we’ve seen bobcats, both solitary and in a pair; herds of deer, complete with stags, does, and fawns; I’ve even found the small, light prints of a coatimundi — to say nothing of actual coatimundis. We’ve found bee hives, countless butterflies, hummingbirds, and raptors. My wife has seen a mountain lion.
Within our own community — situated between apartments, a subdivision, and two major roads; to say nothing of the nearby Safeway or Interstate — I’ve seen and heard coyotes, rescued a lizard out of our townhouse, killed several black widows, and watched a praying mantis on the hunt. Oh, and of course, we’ve shooed snakes away from our door.
However, none of this is to paint Alaska as some Martian landscape; and Arizona is no zoo. If any place has areas that are most like Mars it would be Arizona. Both states are unique places, home to beauty both stark and verdant. Alaska has huge glaciers and massive peaks; Arizona must content itself with tall hills and old ranges — and it has no glaciers. Both are full of rivers, although Alaska’s are more numerous and more flowing. Birds flap and insects buzz in both, the latter much to the distress of the citizens of either. The forests in Alaska are more widespread, but they are just as tall in Arizona. A wide, dry desert is not too different in spirit from a wide, cold tundra. Each state has plenty of fishing and hunting opportunities for the subsistence lifestyle and for the sportsman. While the clouds, in my view, are prettier in Arizona, the same sun shines brightly on both — if a bit warmer and hotter in the Southwest.
Both states are unique places, home to beauty both stark and verdant.
But all of this is to highlight how wrong we can be about a place neither visited nor lived in. The telling is in the lived experience and, in both, there are experiences to be found and had. Both Alaska and Arizona are lands of extremes — one place will experience -62° and the other +110° — and both can kill you if you let them.
Epilogue via Tangent
Now for a short, manic screed about wild nature and domesticated humanity! A fiesty epilogue to a data-driven post.
*taps podium*
Ahem.
The greatest divorce in world history is between humanity and everything else! And I mean “everything else” quite literally! Humanity, to an almost paralyzing degree, has cut itself off (or tried to cut itself off) from the natural world — to such an extent that if we humans could find a way to live without breathing we would!
But nature is us, and we are it! There is no true separation of the two. Despite the promises of transhumanism, humans will always be in and of nature. Even if humans escaped physical death, swapping a fleshy body for a machine consciousness, they would still be nature — and therein lies a massive irony. For what is a machine but rocks and metal shot through with electricity!
We push nature away, until it smacks us upside the head. Or bites us. Or stings us. It is easy to remember to clean the kitchen when ants are a problem, or that leaving a door cracked can let in a lizard, a kangaroo rat, or snake.
Many urban places — major cities like New York City or Delhi — are much more aware of their city’s native, wild population than even some rural parts of the American West. In New York it is common to see rats, pigeons, and roaches both on the street, near the subway, or in your apartment. Delhi does battle with an estimated population of 25,000 monkeys; this is meant literally as Delhi’s monkeys are more menace than magic and even killed the city’s deputy mayor in 2007. Such animal violence is to say nothing about the city’s problems with cobras, foxes, or jackals.
Alaska? Arizona? It makes no difference beyond that of personal taste and temperament. I know people who would sooner die than leave Alaska; others who would move if pressed; and yet others who see it as an exotic place, fun for a visit and nothing more. Arizona, at least among my own friend group, sounds like a fine and pleasant (and sweltering and diabolical) misery.
Many will hunker down during a sub-zero and dark winter, others will battle snakes and scorpions in the desert. Some will take aim at the moose, others the javelina — both go well with veggies. This is the normal fate of humans, to be living in close quarters — and in close combat — with the rest of the natural world whether we like it or not.6
Families always squabble; and we are a part of nature, not apart from it.
This almost sounds like Alaska, doesn’t it?
Blue and orange help eachother pop! because they are complimentary colors.
I have personally witnessed all of the above, although the more frequent mammalian encounters always tended to feature moose. Major non-mammalian encounters routinely starred flocks of Canadian Geese or Sandhill Cranes. Living next to a wildlife refuge is a guaranteed stat boost.
Data used included all native U.S. species of vascular plants, all native vertebrate animal species (excluding marine fishes), and selected native species in certain invertebrate groups — like freshwater mussels, freshwater snails, crayfishes, large branchiopods, butterflies, skippers, underwing moths, tiger beetles, dragonflies, and damselflies. And Alaska, for what it's worth, has plenty of dragonflies during the summer months.
Alaska does beat Arizona in the freshwater fish category, though it is a much closer fight then one would expect. Alaska sits at #46 and Arizona at #49. I expect such a low ranking from a desert, but not so much from a state vaunted for its fishing like Alaska. As a sidenote, this study is (apparently) the most recent study of its kind that has been commissioned — even articles from as recent as 2022 still cite it. This essay follows that trend.
India is considered the #8 most biodiverse country in the world; the US is ranked #10. The most biodiverse country in the world is Brazil.
Enjoyed as usual.