Hi everyone,

For those of you who don't know, I returned yesterday
from a month alone in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge in far northeastern Alaska. I'm really beat. I
lost 25 lbs and basically feel like I have been beaten
up. It was a really tough trip.

I want to share a little bit about the place with you
while it is still fresh in my mind; things that I feel
are very important. I want to grab you by the lapels
and tell you a few things that are true, because I
have seen them.

ANWR is probably the biggest chunk of absolute
wilderness left in this country. I've also been in
part of Gates of the Arctic National Park, and Noatak
National Preserve, two other large protected areas in
the Brooks Range. ANWR is huge compared to those
places; it's a place where you could walk your whole
life and never see it all. Contrary to what you may
have heard about the place in the media, it is not a
vast wasteland. It is like heaven on earth, and hasn't
been touched by man. There is not a single building,
not a single trail, in an area that I've heard is
about comparable to South Carolina. It's 19 million
acres and there ain't no visitor center.

Very few people go there. It is difficult and
committing to get there. Since I have been there, and
with the current political situation about ANWR's
coastal plain, I emphatically want to tell you what it
is like.  And feel free to tell your friends.

First, I paddled the Canning River, on the west side
of the Refuge. I started up high in the glaciated
Brooks Range and hiked for a few days. Craggy
mountains and a two day snowstorm on the fourth of
July. It looks wilder than the wildest part of
Colorado without the trees. That part of the refuge is
far north of treeline. As I floated down I saw
gyrfalcons, peregrines and golden eagles. I saw musk
ox and had a long, close encounter with a grizzly
bear. Everywhere were tracks of caribou, muskox,
grizzly, wolf and wolverine.

I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and
absolutely flat tundra covered with lupines and arctic
poppies. A close examination of the tundra reveals
hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens. Everywhere were
old caribou antlers and skulls poking up through the
tundra. Wolf killed caribou skeletons also dot the
tundra, often skulls with huge antlers attached.

I saw more muskox, and managed to walk pretty close to
some of them, before they got a little agitated.  As I
floated out of the mountains to the coastal plain I
began to see caribou in earnest. More than you could
ever count. It was like being in a herd in Africa.
This is also where I came out of the wilderness part
of the refuge and the river became the boundary
between state land on the left (where oil exploration
goes on) and ANWR on the right bank. On the state land
I began to see many abandoned fuel drums and huge
tracks on the tundra where cat trains shoot seismic in
the winter. The tracks don't go away any time soon. I
saw abandoned drums on the tundra constantly after a
while over on the state land.

As I crossed the coastal plain I saw many smaller
caribou herds and began to see lots of birds; geese,
ducks, tundra swans, and many strange types of birds
that I have no idea what they were, probably migrating
up from Hawaii or Chile to nest.

All this time, I saw more and more garbage on the left
bank. Most of the animals were on the right bank. In
this day and age, I would think that BP-Amoco, Exxon,
and Phillips would go clean all that crap up. I made
my way to the delta of the river where it empties into
the Beaufort Sea, and in a 2:00am lull in the wind
paddled a roundabout 10 miles across the four mile
lagoon to an island that is about 6 miles long. There
were many small icebergs about thirty feet across. I
saw old sod huts that the Eskimos used to live in on
the island, and found that the entire north side of
the island was still fast against the sea ice which
continues to somewhere in Russia, I guess. I walked
out on it for a ways, and it is really rough. One day
I watched ringed seals (polar bears staple food)
sunning on the ice through binoculars. I saw a huge
set of polar bear tracks around the lagoon side of the
island, but they were pretty old.

The island was just a few miles outside of the ANWR
boundary, and Exxon had drilled a dry hole on it in
the past two years. It was one of the filthiest
locations I have ever seen in my 15 years working in
the oil industry. I was really surprised, because
Exxon drill sites in the lower 48 are usually the
cleanest of them all. I was not impressed with what I
saw of the oil industry in Alaska.

Then my bush plane landed on a sandpit and took me to
the headwaters of the Jago river, which is supposed to
be one of the most beautiful places on earth. I spent
ten days in this valley, hiking up to the glaciated
peaks at it's headwaters. Part of the Porcupine
caribou herd had gone south up the valley a couple of
days before my arrival and there were millions of
tracks, all heading south. Interspersed were the
occasional wolf or grizzly track. I saw a few stray
cow caribou, but the show had already moved south for
the winter.

On the Jago, I was trapped for two days waiting for a
rain swollen river to come down so I could wade
across. I fell in the same river on the way up, and
wet gear up there is serious trouble because of the
cold. The only way to describe this valley is to take
the prettiest valley in Montana or Idaho and double
it. It just took your breath away. It was so different
that it may as well have been the moon. One night
while I slept a grizzly walked by my tent. There was a
set of fresh tracks there that weren't there the night
before. He paid me no mind.

Anyway, I was picked up on a gravel bar on the lower
river and flown out to Kaktovik, on the coast. I heard
there were nine white people in Kaktovik, but the
Inupiat eskimos who live there were very nice people.
You'd see someone cleaning a freshly killed bearded
seal in the front yard of their house. A local hunter
(they basically all hunt and whale) heard I'd been on
the Canning and sought me out for skinny on where the
caribou still were. From there, I made all of the
flights home.

Before I went to see ANWR for myself I already had
some conceptions. After last year in Alaska I thought
that modern oil exploration could be done responsibly.
Certainly most Alaskans were for it. They got $1600
each last year from the north slope oil money.

After seeing ANWR....seeing that coastal plain myself,
I realized that there are a lot of lies being told
about this place. It is not a vast wasteland. It is
achingly beautiful, and if you value wild places, the
refuge could be considered a sanctuary or a cathedral.
To me, it was an intense experience far beyond what I
expected. I have been going to, wild places most of my
life, but I have never been to a place like this. Not
even close in the lower 48.

There are a few places that are just not appropriate
for large scale oil exploration. This place is far
more fantastic than Yellowstone or Grand Teton, but it
is far away and few care.

If we put a bunch of drill pads on that coastal plain
we will be making a terrible mistake. Our country will
never again be energy independent anyway. Those
numbers don't lie. Drilling in ANWR will only help
about 4 major oil companies and the state of Alaska
(which is completely addicted to the oil tit). The
numbers don't lie. It will only make a few percent
difference to the nation.

The first morning back, I read in the paper that the
House approved drilling in ANWR. I felt like crying.
That coastal plain is very narrow, and the most
environmentally sensitive exploration would put a
giant blot,on it.

Most of you will never meet anyone else in your life
who has actually been to ANWR. Fewer still who have
crossed the coastal plain. I emphatically urge you to
listen to what I am saying and take it into account as
you form your own opinions. The vote to open ANWR
still has to make it through the senate, and those of
you in Oklahoma are wasting paper by writing to our
senators; to those of you in other states, maybe you
can help.

And remember. I AM in the oil industry. I'm all for
drilling in many, many places. Not here. The price is
way too high. I can't emphasize enough how special
this place is. I don't believe the promise that they
will only disturb 2000 acres. When they get
through,shooting seismic in that place it will look
like a chessboard from the air. It's kind of like a
football field. 22 players standing on their feet
probably occupy far less than 100 square feet of that
football field.

But they sure do make an impression. The coastal plain
is the living part of the refuge. The rest is very
mountainous and almost sterile by comparison.

To go stomping on the coastal plain with a series of
industrial sights is just too much. I don't want to
have to say that I saw ANWR way back BEFORE it got all
messed up.

Thanks for listening (for those of you who made it
through this).

Mark Herndon