Grounded By Fog
When limited visibility leads to remarkable insight
“Good luck getting off the island,” they said, as we stepped from the Zodiac.
They stood at the top of the boat ramp, three teenage boys slouched deep into their sweatshirts amid the rain-greased rocks, their faces shadowy in their hoods. Behind them, the tiny Unangan village of St. George, Alaska, leaned into the emerald green slope, crowned with the matching emerald green roof of a Russian Orthodox church. Nathaniel and I looked back at the ship we had just left. It was the kind of day where low clouds press you into the earth like a heavy thing balanced on your head. But the fur seals rolling amid the kelp offshore St. George Island were glossy and light with play.
It was August 2019, and we were on the last leg of a two-week reporting trip, shadowing a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research expedition to the Bering Sea island of St. Matthew. We had debarked on St. George on the way
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