Ralph Wien Memorial Airport

Airport of Kotzebue, a village on the Chukchi Sea in northwest Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. It is where The Comfort Crisis (Michael Easter) opens, on the tarmac before a 33-day Arctic trek.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
The Comfort Crisis	Michael Easter	setting	Opening scene: waiting on the Kotzebue tarmac to fly into the Arctic for a 33-day hunt.

The Comfort Crisis — Michael Easter (2021)

Source: The Comfort Crisis · Original · Readwise highlight

I’M STANDING ON a windy tarmac in Kotzebue, Alaska, a 3,000-person village 20 miles above the Arctic Circle on the Chukchi Sea.

• Role: setting
• In the book: The book’s opening scene: Easter, filmmaker Donnie Vincent, cinematographer William Altman and pilot Brian wait on the windy tarmac to fly bush planes into the Alaskan Arctic for a 33-day caribou hunt. Easter learns that Brian’s colleague Mike recently crashed after misreading the weather.
• Why it matters: Kotzebue is the jumping-off point from the comfortable world into the backcountry, the contrast the whole book is built on; the airport stands for the last edge of modern comfort.
• Real vs. fictional: The text says only ‘a windy tarmac in Kotzebue’; Ralph Wien Memorial Airport is Kotzebue’s airport.