Hi, I'm Kari Lanigan from Fairbanks Alaska. [Contact]

These photos were taken in September 2006 in the Brooks Range, above the Arctic Circle near Chandalar Lake, where my husband's family operates a small, rustic lodge and a couple of lakeside cabins known as Lanigan's Retreat, which is accessible by plane and by trail in the winter time, and ONLY by plane during the summer and fall months, when the trail disappears into swamps and marshes.

On occasion, my husband, Pete Lanigan, takes travelers on guided hikes through the area to observe wildlife and safely experience this majestic wilderness which remains virtually as it has been for many thousands of years.

Ellie holding her crystal

(Note the crystal on the ground.)

Pete found the crystal I sent Ellie, on a hilltop just beneath the tundra moss at the time the photos were taken and brought it home to me, along with a few others, as a gift. I was struck by the pure energy of these crystals as well as by the realization that no other human hands had touched them as long as they had existed. I left the moss attatched to the surface of the crystals as a reminder of their origins. When these crystals are wet, one can still smell the northern land from where they came. Ellie's crystal seemed to want to travel and tell its story long before I sent it as a gift to Ellie this June.

"Ellie's World" Blog Talk Radio

Arctic and Alaskan Adventures June 15, 2009 (60 Minutes)
Ellie Crystal and Kari Lannigan talk about "The Last Outpost of American Civilization" from an ecological, social and metaphysical perspective.