But the mountains are still there.

The valley is still there.

The river is still there, feeding into the Tanana that feeds into the Yukon that finds its way to the Bering Sea.

The Athabascan communities that have traditional territory throughout this landscape are still there — navigating the specific challenges of life in the subarctic in the twenty-first century, maintaining connections to the land and the river and the fish runs that have sustained human life in this region for as long as anyone can document.

The infant buried in the hearth at Upward Sun River was part of a community that used this landscape in ways that were probably not entirely unlike the ways that Athabascan communities have used it in more recent times — following the salmon runs, hunting the mammals of the forest and the open country, moving through a familiar landscape with knowledge built up over generations of careful attention.