Nome, Alaska, on the edge of the Bering Sea, is like many villages of the Arctic. The ground on which the community sits is frozen tundra. Burying the dead is a real challenge. Sanitation landfills are unheard of. Garbage trucks do not haul off the kind of refuse we leave curbside in the “lower 48.” Instead, a typical front yard displays broken washing machines, junked cars, old toilets, scrap wood, and piles of non-degradable refuse.

Tourists who visit Nome in the summer are amazed at the debris and shake their heads. How could anyone live like that? they wonder. What those visitors do not realize is that for nine months of the year Nome sits under a blanket of snow that covers the garbage. During those months, the town is a quaint winter wonderland of pure white landscapes. (1)  Your im…