Bjorn Dihle

Photo by Ben Hamilton

My first time up the Taku was a goat hunt when I was 18, with my brother and a buddy. The mountain was super brushy and it was a long hike, but once you got up there, it was unreal looking around at all the different drainages, and how wild and pristine it was. There were the most rugged, beautiful mountains in every direction, and glaciers to the north.
After we shot the goat, we walked up on it when it was in the process of dying, and I just remember looking around and thinking ‘Man, what a beautiful place to die.’”
More than a decade after that was when I started realizing not all was well in paradise. I remember hearing that there was this whole kind of new gold stampede, but without the charm, of these huge mines about to be put in all these places — some of the wildest, most intact watersheds in the Pacific Northwest. It’s disheartening, when you think about the future of a place. It’s one thing if it’s small mines, or crusty sourdoughs. It’s another if it’s these huge industrial complexes that are owned by foreign interests and built to destroy and pollute an area.”

—Bjorn Dihle, wildlife film guide, lifelong Alaskan, and author of “A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears in Alaska”