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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,…
