{"id":11015,"date":"2020-10-07T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T20:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11015"},"modified":"2020-10-25T13:46:13","modified_gmt":"2020-10-25T20:46:13","slug":"island-of-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/10\/07\/island-of-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Island of Nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from Hakai Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Island That Humans Can\u2019t Conquer<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

A faraway island in Alaska has had its share of visitors, but none can remain for long on its shores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text by\u00a0\u00a0Sarah Gilman<\/a> \/ Photos by\u00a0\u00a0Nathaniel Wilder<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska. Marooned in the Bering Sea halfway to Siberia, it is well over 300 kilometers and a 24-hour ship ride from the nearest human settlements. It looks fittingly forbidding, the way it emerges from its drape of fog like the dark spread of a wing. Curved, treeless mountains crowd its sliver of land, plunging in sudden cliffs where they meet the surf. To St. Matthew\u2019s north lies the smaller, more precipitous island of Hall. A castle of stone called Pinnacle stands guard off St. Matthew\u2019s southern flank. To set foot on this scatter of land surrounded by endless ocean is to feel yourself swallowed by the nowhere at the center of a drowned compass rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My head swims a little as I peer into a shallow pit on St. Matthew\u2019s northwestern tip. It\u2019s late July in 2019, and the air buzzes with the chitters of the island\u2019s endemic singing voles. Wildflowers and cotton grass constellate the tundra that has grown over the depression at my feet, but around 400 years ago, it was a house, dug partway into the earth to keep out the elements. It\u2019s the oldest human sign on the island, the only prehistoric house ever found here. A lichen-crusted whale jawbone points downhill toward the sea, the rose\u2019s due-north needle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared with more sheltered bays and beaches on the island\u2019s eastern side, it would have been a relatively harsh place to settle. Storms regularly slam this coast with the full force of the open ocean. As many as 300 polar bears used to summer here, before Russians and Americans hunted them out in the late 1800s. Evidence suggests that the pit house\u2019s occupants likely didn\u2019t use it for more than a season, according to Dennis Griffin, an archaeologist who\u2019s worked on the archipelago since 2002. Excavations of the site have turned up enough to suggest that people of the Thule culture\u2014precursors to the Inuit and Yup\u2019ik who now inhabit Alaska\u2019s northwestern coasts\u2014built it. But Griffin has found no sign of a hearth, and only a thin layer of artifacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at Hakai<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Hakai Magazine The Island That Humans Can\u2019t Conquer A faraway island in Alaska has had its share of visitors, but none can remain for long on its shores. Text by\u00a0\u00a0Sarah Gilman \/ Photos by\u00a0\u00a0Nathaniel Wilder St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska. Marooned in the Bering Sea halfway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}