A narrow frontier between warm and cold latitudes extends 500 miles from the Alaskan mainland, separating the tempestuous Bering Sea from the Pacific: the Alaska Peninsula, a cloud-cloaked land of active volcanoes, rolling tundra and the greatest concentration of the largest bears on earth. The writings of naturalist Loren Eiseley inspire this cinematic essay on a landscape where bears outnumber people and the sockeye salmon run is the most prolific in the world.

At the base of the peninsula lies Katmai National Park, a wilderness larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite — combined. Farther down the peninsula, a giant volcanic caldera emerges on the horizon, so remote that more people climb Everest than visit Aniakchak National Monument. Alaska is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the planet. In Alaska’s Wild Peninsula, filmmaker John Grabowska profiles the remote Alaska Peninsula and asks how climate change will affect this magnificent land of wilderness and wildlife. N. Scott Momaday narrates the film.