The Last Wild Place: War Over Arctic Oil

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Very few of the people in Washington with their finger on the panic button have ever seen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Murkowski is planning to lead a Senate delegation here when the weather warms up.) For those who do travel to Alaska's far north, the experience stretches the imagination. To visit a new drilling station in Prudhoe, one that extends only a few acres on the surface but can access 75 square miles underground, or fly over a convoy of trucks spraying water on the tundra to form ice roads strong enough to bear the weight of mobile drilling rigs is to be in awe of our industrial prowess. But to walk at sunset over the tundra of the refuge--where there is silence, an eternity of chill whiteness, a lone raven high overhead and the tracks of an Arctic fox leading toward snowcapped mountains under a pale sky of aquamarine and violet--is to be in awe of something far greater. America now faces the momentous decision of what to do with all this whiteness.

--With reporting by Ann Blackman and John F. Dickerson/Washington