Sublime

Hawai‘i, well-known for its mixing of Native, Asian, and European strains, seemed particularly threatening. “We do not want those people to help govern the country,” a Massachusetts newspaper put it baldly. “When future issues arise in the United States Senate, we do not want a situation where vital decisions may depend upon two half-breed senators

After almost two months in the constant company of the sea, we will head inland, traveling north into Canada’s Yukon. If our mountain crossing goes well, we’ll be in Whitehorse in less than two weeks.

Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands stretched out toward Japan, reducing the Pacific Ocean “to the width of a ferry boat channel,” as one journalist put it. When Alaska had been annexed, in 1867, this had been a promising feature: the islands were stepping-stones to Asia. Now, however, it seemed more likely that the foot traffic would go in the other

To accept Hawaiian and Alaskan statehood, mainland politicians would have to reconcile themselves to the prospect of states not firmly under white control.

aurora borealis, six wolves on the Carcajou River, and a Dall sheep

O-Six’s great-grandmother had been one of the first wolves reintroduced to the park, captured on the plains of western Canada, eight hundred miles to the north, and ferried south by plane and truck in the winter of 1995. By that time, Yellowstone had been essentially devoid of wolves for almost seven decades. Once found in virtually every habitat b