Small streams and ice-filled lakes added brilliant contrast to the treeless landscape. The surrounding ground was covered with varieties of lichens, sedges, and mosses, giving the whole region a meadowlike appearance. Shifting my eyes slightly, I took in the curving shore line of the North Alaskan coast, and next to it a stretch of open water, followed by the white outline of the pack ice beyond. Just ahead lay a three and one-half mile long thin strip of land which the British explorer Franklin had named Flaxman Island for John Flaxman, an English sculptor and artist. Beside me, a grey-haired man with bronzed features raised his hand and pointed toward the same spit of land jutting out into the sea.
Nobody lives there now.
Near a small shoal at the center of the island, stood an abandoned house, hedged by a thick growth of tundra grass. Weathered walls still supported the entryway and small food cache above although the sod roof had long since disappeared. A short distance beyond sat a smaller structure , part of a building the geographer Leffingwell used as a campsite during his explorations for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in the early 1900s. And immediately beyond Qikiqtaq Island, on a small curved point of land, were visible several wooden grave markers bounded by a weather-worn picket fence. He had spent many years in this part of North Alaska before returning to Barrow village, his original home.