Once upon a time, I wrote a feature article for a major national design/lifestyle magazine called ReadyMade. It was fun. This is it.

Also, here’s a funny story to go with it. Before I took the plane to Shishmaref, I had to fly to a slightly larger town called Kotzebue. It was the kind of place where the airport was basically a small room. And when I got off the plane, there were eight people there. Me, 3 AP reporters, and the Goo Goo Dolls. That’s right. Goo Goo Dolls. In Alaska. I walked up to the lead singer guy with the silly hair and asked, “What are you doing here?” “Shooting a video,” he said, and walked away. Crazy. Anyway, here’s a little piece of the article:

The New Cold War

How can a tiny island in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea beat back global warming? Build an ice bridge over enemy waters.
by Tommy Wallach

Seen from the air, mid-July Alaska is a paradise. No frozen tundra, no Titanic-class icebergs. No igloos, or polar bears stalking their prey. The lakes are thawed and inviting; skating quickly becomes swimming. The plant life is lush, the temperature mild, the sky clear and bright.

The cover of the issue I appear in. See the headline? Sweet!

As our nine-seater Cessna bounces above the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, I get my first glimpse of Shishmaref. A hundred buildings huddle together in the middle of a 3-square-mile island where 600 people, most of them Inuit, live. White tents storing reindeer meat skirt the grassy perimeter above the shore; to the south runs a thin wisp of airstrip. With its placid, deep blue water and dirt roads, Shishmaref is the land time forgot-an Edenic bastion of what the Lower 48 sacrificed in the name of Progress. Not visible until we touch down is the unfortunate reality: Shishmaref is falling into the sea.

Just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, this is a place where winter wind chills push temperatures 60 degrees below zero. Where miles of ocean freeze so solid you can drive across them. In recent years, though, locals have watched the island’s barrier of protective ice melt earlier and increasingly violent storms pulverize a coastline left vulnerable by the thaw. Efforts to stay the progress of the rising tide seem almost comic in retrospect: Sandbags and retaining walls crumble along with the island’s eroding beachhead. The people of Shishmaref are fighting a losing battle with the sea.

Read on…