THE FINAL FRONTIER

THE SEVERE, SERRATED NORTH SLOPE OF ALASKA LIES 250 MILES INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, FAR BEYOND THE TREELINE AND UNDER 1,400 MILES FROM THE NORTH POLE. RESILIENT IÑUPIAT COMMUNITIES AREN’T THE ONLY REASON TO VENTURE TO THIS ICY COASTLINE—THE ‘ROOFTOP OF AMERICA’ IS THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH TO SEE POLAR BEARS IN THE WILD

- JAMIE LAFFERTY

The poetic collective noun for polar bears is ‘aurora’, but around the community of Kaktovik they may be more accurately described as an ‘inevitability’. An inevitability of polar bears. Elsewhere in the Arctic, spotting the planet’s largest land predator can be a bit of a lottery, requiring binoculars and considerable luck. Here, on Barter Island, off the north coast of Alaska, neither are required.

I’m heading out into a cold Arctic afternoon with Riley Barnes, a New Yorker ordinarily employed as a stuntman on features as varied as Avengers: Endgame and The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. While between projects, the 27-year-old heard about “wild work” skippering boats and searching for polar bears for Kaktovik Arctic Tours, so he decided to swap one uncommon job for another. This meant relocating to the frigid Alaskan coast known as the North Slope.

We’re not even 10 minutes out of Kaktovik’s rudimentary harbour before we’ve seen a cautious mother with two young cubs, the larger one at the front, a younger, smaller sibling scurrying behind like it’s forgotten its schoolbag. The adult sits down on the brownish sand, immediately sullying her pristine white coat, then, in a moment of uncanny tenderness, lets the youngsters in to suckle.

An hour later, the gentle perfection of this scene is forgotten when we see two males in the water, grappling with each other with the fury of drunk berserkers. “They’re just playing,” says Riley, and I believe him, but if this roughhousing happened to almost any other species, there’d be nothing left afterwards but fleshy spaghetti.