In this chat, we learn what brought Michael to Alaska, why Nome is a special place (even by Alaskan standards), and how we can learn from a grizzly bear mother protecting her cubs.
Michael was trained as an anthropologist with a degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he worked for twenty-five years as a wilderness guide and outdoor instructor in Alaska and on the Colorado Plateau.
In No Place Like Nome, Michael Engelhard surveys the seam that links two neighboring continents through the lens of one pivotal city. The region's legacy of millennia shines on pages enriched by this writer's recollections-from mammoths to Cold War monuments, from a spa turned orphanage to cyclist miners and shaman hoards. Meet the explorers and adventurers, reindeer herders and hustlers, the dancers, drummers, dreamers, warriors, walrus-tusk carvers, and whalers, clergy, foragers, and photographers who shaped a place of conflicting visions as thoroughly as it shaped them.