What The Landscape Remembers

The Upward Sun River site is a specific place in the Tanana Valley of interior Alaska.

The valley is wide and flat, bounded by mountain ranges that are visible on clear days from distances that make the mountains seem close even when they are not.

The river — a tributary of the Tanana — runs through the valley, cutting through the glacial sediments that have accumulated since the Ice Age.

The vegetation is the characteristic subarctic mix of black spruce, white spruce, birch, and willow, with wetlands in the lowlands and more open tundra on the higher ground.