This week we’re hearing from Jody Dillon in Anchorage. Dillon is an environmental scientist who was born in Juneau.
DILLON: I’ve been fortunate to be almost throughout the various regions of the state. We do a lot of work in the North Slope, wintertime, summertime for the oil industry, but also for some of the remote Native communities up there. So we kinda get to touch every part of Alaska. So it’s a pretty cool job other than the office part, which still isn’t bad when you got a good work environment.
A lot of the work I do is just monitoring former contaminated sites and whatnot, and the sage that those are on is different throughout Alaska. I was doing some work on the North Slope out in ANWR and the porcupine caribou herd that’s out there in the ANWR area was migrating though and it literally stopped work for an hour. This 10,000-head of caribou had to roll through while we stood there in awe.
I love the people here. Everybody seems to be fairly unified in the pioneer spirit. Doing the subsistence living thing is awesome. Interesting environments throughout Alaska, ’cause it’s so big, and the way that people adapt and get by. You go to Barrow in the wintertime and you wonder why people live there. Then you see the smiles on their faces cruising around on snowmachines and that’s pretty cool.
Raising two boys, and my wife and I have the mentality, we want them to have the adventures we had. Those are unique.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
