As the bush plane flew low over the marshes and swamps adjoining the Kobuk river, I was left to wonder when this terrain would take on a desert appearance to support sand dunes. It never did - the marshes, interspersed with boreal spruce forests that was cut by meandering waters of the wide Kobuk river, continued endlessly until suddenly it just became sand. 4x4 and snowmobile tracks in the marsh suddenly disappeared. After that, it was just miles of endless sand.
That abrupt transition between forests and waterbodies and sand-dunes were features I experienced at multiple places in the park, and that juxtaposition was just shocking how many ever times I looked at it. And the transition zone was a timeless battle between the advancing forests and the advancing dunes, and who lost or won was just decided by precipitation and prevailing winds. The one constant was the mosquitoes, they were relentless in these transition zones.
One spot on the transition zone features these beautiful lime-green reindeer lichen that carpeted the forest floor. In the late evening (11pm) light, they had a light fluorescent glow unlike anything else I had seen.
Kobuk Valley National Park
AK USA
