Alaska: Oil's Ground Zero

摘要

If you want somebody to fly you over the towering peaks of the Brooks Range and drop you onto the spongy tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Dirk Nickisch is your man. Dirk is a former rodeo rider and crop-duster, a wiry fellow with sharp eyes and prickly whiskers whom some in his home state of North Dakota have likened to a coyote. He meets clients at a gravel airstrip in a Gwichin Indian village just south of the range. Dressed in oily pants and a baseball cap, he kicks the tires on his 1952 single-prop de Havilland Beaver, shoulders the rear rudder back and forth to be sure it's still in working order and tells you, if you ask him, that he reckons his Pratt & Whitney engine has been overhauled "a few times." He doesn't have much time for people who stand around asking questions without making themselves useful, however. So he rolls four plastic barrels of fuel under the plane and puts you to work with a hose and a squeaky hand pump.