Lakes of the Great Land. Alaska has over 3 million lakes, and some beautiful ones are only a stone’s throw from Anchorage. Eklutna Lake sits 12 winding road miles away from the Glenn Highway.

So Big Lake, Nancy Lake, the Matanuska (River), the Little Susitna River, sort of trying to get a pretty broad set of samples. WE: And what did you find? DC: They all had microplastics.

I’d been waiting for months when I finally got the call from Alaska last March: Wild ice was on. A roughly two-week high-pressure window of cold and clear weather had frozen Portage Lake, the ...