In some of Alaska’s remotest areas this Thanksgiving, there’s a different kind of bird in the sky – a frozen turkey dropped for residents unable to pick up their own for their holiday table. 

Alaska native Esther Keim is now in her third straight year of the Alaska Turkey Bomb, a service in which she drops frozen turkeys from a small plane to remote areas of the south-central part of the state. 

Keim told the Alaska Gear Company that she remembers living on an Alaskan homestead as a child.

“I grew up in Skwentna, Alaska, which is about 50 miles northwest of Anchorage,” Keim said in a video about her efforts. “In the fall, in the freeze-up, families would be stuck out there because you can’t travel, everything would be freezing up. It’s not safe.”

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She continued, “We had a friend that would fly and drop a turkey for Thanksgiving. I just remember it being so exciting and so fun. He would drop a newspaper and inside the newspaper was a pack of gum.”

She said to a kid “that couldn’t just go to the store, a pack of gum just meant so much. You know, you can’t access the store so easily, and you have to plan in advance. “

Keim said freeze-up at the beginning of winter and breakup at the end are “three weeks minimum” when it’s hard to travel. 

Having since moved to Anchorage, she said she was inspired to start the Alaska Turkey Bomb by her childhood memories and after hearing of a neighboring family near where she lived on the homestead who were going to go without on Thanksgiving in 2022.  

“He was saying how one squirrel doesn’t split three ways very far for dinner, and I had a thought in my head when he said that that I’m going to airdrop him a turkey,” Keim told the Alaska Gear Company. 

She said it quickly turned into, “you know, ‘I’m going to do this for all the families that are stuck out there because I remember what that meant to my family and to all the rest of the families. It was pretty special.”

Keim noted that in “the bush” there are no roads and the only way to get to the home is by plane, snowmobile or boat at Thanksgiving time. “Everyone is stuck.” 

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She said airdropping the birds is efficient, “because we can get to so many families so quickly.” 

Keim added that she put “something special” in the turkey bomb for the three families she dropped to who have kids because “as a kid growing up out there I understand what candy meant, and the lack of it.”

Keim and her pilot Heidi Hastings flew so low when dropping the packages to the kids that she told the Associated Press she was able to see some of the children’s reactions, “and I could see their excitement.”

This year, Keim’s 30-some turkey deliveries included 80-year-old Dave Luce, who, along with his wife, lives northwest of Anchorage on the Yentna River. 

The Luces have known Keim since she was a child.  

Using her airplane that she recently rebuilt with her dad, Keim and her pilot Heidi Hastings fly over the homes until they see a person outside. Then they come around “low and slow” and drop the bird.  (Mountain Mind Media/Alaska Gear Company via AP)

They venture into the nearest town about once a month in the winter via a 90-minute snowmobile ride.

Luce said: “I’m 80 years old now, so we make fewer and fewer trips. The adventure has sort of gone out of it.”

“She’s been a real sweetheart, and she’s been a real good friend,” he added of Keim, who delivered them a 12-pound bird this year. “It makes a great Thanksgiving.”

Using her airplane that she recently rebuilt with her dad, Keim and her pilot Heidi Hastings fly over the homes until they see a person outside. Then they come around “low and slow” and drop the bird. 

Keim relies heavily on donations for the turkeys and purchases about 20 at a time, which she leaves in her truck until it’s time to fly. 

“Luckily it’s cold in Alaska, so I don’t have to worry about freezers,” she joked to the Associated Press. 

Keim said she wants to turn the Alaksa Turkey Bomb into a nonprofit. (Esther Keim via AP)

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“My vision with this is to make it into a nonprofit organization where I can get funding and more support that I can reach more parts of Alaska because there are so many families that live rural and that live off-grid,” Keim added.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

In the southeastern reaches of Alaska, landscapes are being dramatically reshaped as ice gives way to water.

Recent images released by the NASA Earth Observatory reveal striking changes to the region’s proglacial lakes, formed as glaciers retreat and meltwater pools at their fronts.

Over the past four decades, three lakes—Harlequin, Alsek and Grand Plateau—have grown at an astonishing pace, transforming the region into a burgeoning “lake district.”

The trio of glaciers feeding these lakes—Yakutat, Alsek and Grand Plateau—descend from Alaska’s inland mountains to the coastal plain southeast of Yakutat borough.

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Glaciers are massive, slow-moving rivers of ice formed from compacted layers of snow that accumulate over centuries, flowing under their own weight and reshaping the landscapes they traverse.

An analysis by glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College highlights the dramatic retreat of these glaciers between 1984 and 2024.

During this time, Yakutat Glacier’s main arm retreated 4.3 miles, and Alsek Glacier’s northern and southern arms retreated 3.3 miles and 3.4 miles, respectively.

Grand Plateau Glacier’s northern arm saw the most significant change, retreating 4.8 miles.

These changes were captured in a pair of satellite images from the Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellites in the summers of 1984 and 2024, revealing how water now fills the void left by ice. Together, the three lakes almost doubled in size over the 40-year period.

In 1984, the lakes spanned about 50 square miles. By 2024, they covered 90 square miles—an area larger than New York’s Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes also carved by ancient glaciers.

“The lakes that are forming in this region are immense, starting at the mountains and spreading toward the coast, making this a new lake district that is unique in our nation,” Pelto said in a statement.

Pelto suggested this lake system could represent the fastest-growing collection of lakes in the U.S. in this century, reflecting the accelerated retreat of Alaska’s glaciers due to climate change.

The lakes are not only expanding but also undergoing noticeable transformations.

Alsek Lake, for instance, appears much bluer in the 2024 image compared to 1984. This shift suggests that the lake is receiving less “glacial flour”—fine-grained sediment carried by meltwater streams, according to a NASA Earth Observatory article.

As sediment levels drop, the lake’s water will continue to darken, allowing more light to penetrate and potentially fostering aquatic life and fishery development.

The pattern is one that is repeating across Alaska and the Arctic more broadly.

According to the National Park Service, glaciers within Alaska national parks shrank by 8 percent between the 1950s and the early 2000s. This pace ticked upward, with 13 percent lost from 1985 to 2020.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about glaciers? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — In the remotest reaches of Alaska, there’s no relying on DoorDash to have Thanksgiving dinner — or any dinner — delivered. But some residents living well off the grid nevertheless have turkeys this holiday, thanks to the Alaska Turkey Bomb.

For the third straight year, a resident named Esther Keim has been flying low and slow in a small plane over rural parts of south-central Alaska, dropping frozen turkeys to those who can’t simply run out to the grocery store.

Alaska is mostly wilderness, with only about 20% of it accessible by road. In winter, many who live in remote areas rely on small planes or snowmobiles to travel any distance, and frozen rivers can act as makeshift roads.

When Keim was growing up on an Alaska homestead, a family friend would airdrop turkeys to her family and others nearby for the holidays. Other times, the pilot would deliver newspapers, sometimes with a pack of gum inside for Keim.

Her family moved to more urban Alaska nearly 25 years ago but still has the homestead. Using a small plane she had rebuilt with her father, Keim launched her turkey delivery mission a few years back after learning of a family living off the land nearby who had little for Thanksgiving dinner.

“They were telling me that a squirrel for dinner did not split very far between three people,” Keim recalled. “At that moment, I thought … ‘I’m going to airdrop them a turkey.’”

She decided not to stop there. Her effort has grown by word of mouth and by social media posts. This year, she’s delivering 32 frozen turkeys to people living year-round in cabins where there are no roads.

All but two had been delivered by Tuesday, with delivery plans for the last two birds thwarted by Alaska’s unpredictable weather.

Among the beneficiaries are Dave and Christina Luce, who live on the Yentna River about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage. They have stunning mountain views in every direction, including North America’s tallest mountain, Denali, directly to the north. But in the winter it’s a 90-minute snowmobile ride to the nearest town, which they do about once a month.

“I’m 80 years old now, so we make fewer and fewer trips,” Dave Luce said. “The adventure has sort of gone out of it.”

They’ve known Keim since she was little. The 12-pound (5.44-kilogram) turkey she delivered will provide more than enough for them and a few neighbors.

“It makes a great Thanksgiving,” Dave Luce said. “She’s been a real sweetheart, and she’s been a real good friend.”

Keim makes 30 to 40 turkey deliveries yearly, flying as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) from her base north of Anchorage toward Denali’s foothills.

Sometimes she enlists the help of a “turkey dropper” to ride along and toss the birds out. Other times, she’s the one dropping turkeys while her friend Heidi Hastings pilots her own plane.

Keim buys about 20 turkeys at a time, with the help of donations, usually by people reaching out to her through Facebook. She wraps them in plastic garbage bags and lets them sit in the bed of her pickup until she can arrange a flight.

“Luckily it’s cold in Alaska, so I don’t have to worry about freezers,” she said.

She contacts families on social media to let them know of impending deliveries, and then they buzz the house so the homeowners will come outside.

“We won’t drop the turkey until we see them come out of the house or the cabin, because if they don’t see it fall, they’re not going to know where to look,” she said.

It can be especially difficult to find the turkey if there’s deep snow. A turkey was once missing for five days before it was found, but the only casualty so far has been a lost ham, Keim said.

Keim prefers to drop the turkey on a frozen lake if possible so it’s easy to locate.

“As far as precision and hitting our target, I am definitely not the best aim,” she joked. “I’ve gotten better, but I have never hit a house, a building, person or dog.”

Her reward is the great responses she gets from families, some who record her dropping the turkeys and send her videos and texts of appreciation.

“They just think it’s so awesome that we throw these things out of the plane,” Keim said.

Ultimately, she hopes to set up a nonprofit organization to solicit more donations and reach people across a bigger swath of the state. And it doesn’t have to stop at turkeys.

“There’s so many kids out in the villages,” she said. “It would be cool to maybe add a stuffed animal or something they can hold.”

___

Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska.