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Wind-scarred bunkers, thawing tundra and seabirds remap October Revolution Island
Measured not by cities or roads but by ice caps and drifting pack, October Revolution Island belongs to a scale of geography that unsettles ordinary ideas of land. It lies in the Russian High Arctic, the largest island of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, between the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea, far north of Siberia.…
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Tussock revival forces a rethink of Saunders Island management
Wind is the first real architect here. It combs the long grass into pale seams, presses low over dark hills, and reaches the shore in a confusion of surf, kelp, and cold light. In the northwestern Falkland Islands, off the coast of West Falkland, Saunders Island feels both inhabited and withheld: a place with sheep…
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San Felix Island mediates geopolitical claims, wildlife and remote livelihoods
Far out in the southeastern Pacific More than any story told about it, distance defines San Felix Island. It lies far off the coast of Chile, in the Desventuradas Islands, a small and exposed outpost of volcanic land in an immense field of ocean. The nearest continental shore is not near in any ordinary sense.…
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Beacon ruins and migrating seals make Rudolf Island a paradox
Beyond the last practical map Few places on Earth seem arranged so completely for absence. Rudolf Island lies at the extreme northern end of Franz Josef Land, deep in the Russian High Arctic, with Cape Fligely on its shore marking one of the northernmost pieces of land in the Eastern Hemisphere. The island is small…
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Between wreckage and tundra, Lady Franklin Island keeps slow secrets
Named for grief, set in ice Few places carry so much nineteenth-century emotion into such a hard northern setting. Lady Franklin Island lies off the southeast coast of Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada, facing the cold waters of Davis Strait and the mouths of Cumberland Sound. It is a small, steep-sided island of dark Arctic…
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Driven by a duck’s return, Laysan Island finds balance
Far out in the Northwestern Hawaiian chain, beyond the busy imagination most people attach to Hawaiʻi, a low ring of coral and sand holds a shallow lake in its center and lets the Pacific work at its edges without interruption. Laysan Island lies roughly 1,500 kilometers northwest of Honolulu, inside the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument,…
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Currents, canoes and driftwood stitch Pikelot into memory
A dot that has altered fate In the western Pacific, between the better-known names of Micronesia, there is a scrap of coral so small that many maps barely dignify it with a mark. Pikelot lies in the Caroline Islands, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, and belongs to the state of Yap. It is…
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An Antarctic crossroads of exploration and wildlife, Petermann Island endures
Not every Antarctic island announces itself with scale. Some emerge instead as a compact disturbance in a world of ice and water: a low, dark mass off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, edged by snow, ringed by drifting brash, and made suddenly conspicuous by life. Petermann Island lies in the Wilhelm Archipelago, just…
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Cartographers and seabirds collide on Joinville Island
Few places look so decisively removed from ordinary human scale. Off the northeastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, beyond the cluttered ice and broken water of the Antarctic Sound, Joinville Island lies in a zone where maps stop feeling abstract and start reading like weather reports. It is the largest island of the Joinville Island…
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Outmatched by thawing ice, Adelaide Island reshapes Antarctic science
Few islands look less like a refuge. Off the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, beyond the more frequently named stations and straits of the northern peninsula, Adelaide Island lies long and mountainous under persistent weather, separated from the mainland by Marguerite Bay and the narrow run of The Gullet. On a map it appears…
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A poisoned history yields unexpected hope on Hawadax Island
A place renamed after a reckoning Long before its newer name began to appear in conservation reports and maps, this Aleutian island was known for damage that could be counted in feathers, eggs, and silence. It lies in the western reaches of Alaska’s Aleutian chain, part of the Near Islands group, where low tundra and…
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Named for a day, Caroline Island watches calendars and tides
Longitude does some of the storytelling here. Near 150 degrees west, far south of Hawaiʻi and still farther from any continental shore, Caroline Island lies in the southern Line Islands of Kiribati, a broken ring of coral enclosing lagoons of startling clarity. The atoll is low, narrow, and almost level with the sea, its highest…
