Lincoln Chafee: “I accepted an offer last August to go to ANWR, to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Since I have been here for 3…”

“I accepted an offer last August to go to ANWR, to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Since I have been here for 3 years, I have heard a lot of debate about it, and I assumed I heard a lot of exaggeration also. I wanted to go myself and so I accepted the invitation. I took a bush plane from Fairbanks over the Brooks Range, as you see here. The Brooks Range is very desolate, almost devoid of any sign of life, any sign of vegetation. It is quite a trip over the Brooks Range. As we cleared that mountainous terrain, stretching out before the Arctic Ocean, the Beaufort Sea, was the most gorgeous grasslands, the last thing I expected to see that far north. We banked around with our bush plane and you can see here where we landed. As we banked in for a landing, scurrying through the brush was a big, brown, cinnamon-colored beast, a grizzly bear. We got out of our plane and immediately were covered with tremendous amounts of mosquitoes. It was quite an experience. We pulled the nets on our hats over our heads and set up our tents, which we can see here. We had some chow and then that night it snowed. We came on the Brooks Range earlier, and they had no snow on them, but the snow came that night. Thankfully, we never saw another mosquito, so we had the great experience of having mosquitoes but then had 2 days--3 days in order to hike around the area.”