STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our friend and colleague Elizabeth Arnold has died. She'd been treated for cancer in Anchorage, Alaska. She was 66. Elizabeth covered national politics in the bright years of the 1990s and darker times after 9/11, and she kept ranging farther afield as one of the correspondents who defined NPR - Anne Garrels, Mara Liasson, John Burnett, Elizabeth Arnold. They'd travel anywhere to tell a story. Elizabeth climbed the Himalayas.
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ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Zhongdian, China, elevation 9,800 feet. You can get a hit of oxygen here for the price of a beer. But the base of our climb near the Tibetan border is in even thinner air - more than a day's bone-jarring drive still higher.
INSKEEP: She was trying to keep up with climate scientists.
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ARNOLD: We're heading up to 16,000 feet. Not sure where we are now, but it feels like it. We'd better catch up with these guys if we can.
INSKEEP: Clearly, Elizabeth was comfortable outdoors. She had started her journalism career in Alaska at a local paper called The Tundra Drums. Her son recalls her calling into his third-grade classroom once from the North Pole. Elizabeth Arnold returned to Alaska in her later years and taught journalism to students who aspired to write about the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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