After the haze from faraway forest fires had cleared, we would often sit speechless watching the low light from the midnight Arctic sun paint the gentle hills and mountains around us. The light is perhaps one of the biggest gifts of the Arctic, one of the spectacles of this part of the world less noted than the wildlife. It is the light that pulls together the magic of the most northern lands of our world.

On day nine, just one day before we were scheduled for pickup, winds blew the smoke from those still burning fires back into the Arctic. The clean lines of mountains and valleys dissolved into the brown greyness. It was almost fitting; the Arctic had opened itself up to us, bestowed on us gifts beyond our wildest imagination, allowed us to understand, if only for a moment, our connectedness to the most wild and remote places on earth. And as we prepared to leave this place, its mystery returned, bringing us humbly back to the recognition that our ordinary lives were in many ways different from this land. We were reminded of  the importance of retaining and bringing back that sense of connection, that sense of mystery, to those who don’t have a chance to visit here.

We did a short hike, heading into the hills behind camp. A small group of caribou came toward us from across the valley. Despite their distance below, we could hear their hooves clattering against the stone, then splashing as they entered the river to cross near the wolf den. They then trotted out of site around the mountain. We did not see the wolves, which seemed to be missing a golden opportunity. The caribou would get by this time.

On day ten, we sat and waited at the beach for our scheduled pickup. And waited. There was no sound of a plane. As the smoke thickened, we lost the views of the ridges over which Dirk would be flying.  At dinner we rationed our food, aware that we might be waiting a long while. We counted out our remaining food to figure out how to make it stretch for a couple more days.

A ground squirrel building homes on both side of our kitchen came closer and closer. We named her Winnie. Despite not being indulged by any generosity on our part, she came within feet of us. “Great,” Peter said wryly. “Not even the ground squirrels are afraid of us out here.” If the grizzly and wolves had not set us securely in our place, Winnie certainly did. Still we waited. We did not hear or see the wolves. We watched the wind and the clouds and the river.

Our friend Mark at Denali who has done a lot of work in native villages commented once to us how coming from our culture as we do, it is difficult to really experience a native village. No matter how short or long our stay, we have a finite amount of time to spend there; we know a plane will leave at a certain time, and that we will be on it. In many ways, we visit timeless places even more superficially than we might otherwise, expecting to take in what’s around us quickly and file it away. We are not there to truly be part of a place. In the villages, Mark said, if the weather comes in there wont be any flight. And then you head out hunting, maybe, or fishing. The necessity of scheduled events is not present; the ability to be flexible and be a part of whatever situation evolves in weather, in opportunity, in culture, is much more practical.

I wonder how much the same is true of wilderness. When we choose to travel into wilderness and be dropped off by bush plane, miles from anyone else, hours from the nearest road, we assume a degree of flexibility and risk not as present in a more accessible destination. And yet still we expect to come into the country, and then leave after a certain amount of time. Perhaps it is the ultimate in hubris to think that we can truly be a part of such a place with this kind of expectation, utterly presumptuous to think that we might understand some part of it.

Sitting on the beach, we watched tiny fish jump across the river. We didn’t have a fishing pole. I wondered if we would be able to fashion one and successfully catch fish? We picked blueberries every day, but could we learn to survive here as ancient people did, as the animals did? I felt completely inadequate, ill-equipped to live into all seasons of the land, even survive the waning summer days.

In the week and a half we had spent here, a few willow leaves had yellowed, bear berry plants had reddened in higher elevations, and termination dust had fallen on distant mountain peaks. In early August, fall was arriving. With endless daylight in summer, it is seasons that move through the Arctic more than days, adding to the feeling of entering another dimension altogether. Waiting for the pick up, we were jolted out of the timelessness we had entered and recognized it with sadness.

On our second morning waiting for the plane, we unzipped the tent fly and looked out. The wind had shifted, but the smoke appeared the same. We lay back down. A few hours later, as if in a dream, I heard a buzz. “Peter!” I sleep much more lightly than Peter, who enters his own world until forcibly awakened. So he woke with a start, disoriented. “It’s Dirk!”

We elatedly jumped up and started packing furiously. Peter went to the beach to collect our kitchen, and I started to work on the tent. I’m not sure we’ve ever packed so quickly – quickly enough to get over our embarrassment at our excitement, and almost forgetting how much we wanted to stay.

This was our world – we were of this world – but we also were visitors. We lived the border life, as Thoreau said. We have an obligation to work to protect this world, so that our children and grandchildren one day will experience this wildness, connect to the most elemental parts of creation, understand from where they have come. But we live somewhere else altogether. Dirk took off into the wind, climbing above the smoke to deliver us safely to Coldfoot.

In having come to this place, remote, untouched, we incur a great responsibility. A responsibility to share with others the wildness and wilderness of the most remote areas of our continent. A responsibility to share the mysteries of wolves and bear and birds and light. A responsibility to live in a way that the earth might also be sustained, and to encourage others to do the same. If we do not, this last wilderness will be gone forever. If that happens, there is no more wilderness. We kill an integral part of ourselves, of what makes us human in the best ways, in the ways we will never truly understand because they are part of a larger, deeper web of life which we cannot replicate. We can only destroy it – or protect it. If we allow the wilderness to be lost, we also lose ourselves. And for that there can be no redemption.

We rewarded ourselves after two long days of tundra and river travel with a rest day, getting out for a shorter hike and reading. Peter and I traded Pielou’s A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic and Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams back and forth. We also both finished Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food.

Then we were ready to get out and explore. The Nigu River is known for its ancient man sites, seasonal buildings of the Nunamiut, “people of the land,” a group of Inuit which lived inland in the winters and then moved to the coast to trade in the summers. Most of these sites were downriver of us, though we had heard of one possibly closer to the headwaters. Looking at the maps, though, it looked like ten miles out which in tundra terrain was not within our range for a day’s travel. Still, we headed upriver.

We stopped to sit and watch the wolf den from a distance for a half hour or more, but the entrances sat silent and dark, as before. We continued on. As we crested a small knoll thick in willow and dwarf birch, a rancid smell floated up on the breeze, normally clean and almost sweet with the tundra scents. “Can you smell that?” I asked Peter, doubting myself. “It’s really awful!” He could. “I wonder if it’s a kill.” I yelled across the tundra around us in case I had missed seeing something around us and pulled out my bear spray. “I hope it’s a wolf kill and not a bear kill,” I said tentatively. Bears will defend their kills by an aggressive attack, and I wasn’t sure wolves would be quite as concerned about us, though I didn’t know. Peter started scouting around, and I looked hard up and down the slopes around us, feeling a tickle of apprehension creep up my spine. Then we saw a brown area on the tundra below us.

The stench intensified as we approached the spot. Tundra plants in an area approximately 10 feet by twenty feet were matted down and had browned. A caribou leg bone, still attached by ligaments by completely free of flesh, lay curled as if it may have been sleeping. The hoof and hair above the hoof was intact. Bones scattered the area, all picked clean, beetles finishing the job on many of them. Many bones were no longer intact or had been pulled apart; it was a long way from an intact skeleton. And yet the kill was recent enough to still permeate the air with the smell of death and decay.

Pielou mentions in her book the human propensity to anthropomorphize and romanticize wolves because of their similarities to our domestic canine companions. But she notes that one only has to watch a wolf bring down a caribou and begin to eat it while it is still alive to quickly dispel these notions. Bears will frequently come to steal a wolf kill, which, according to naturalists, wolves will relinquish. Because of the proximity of the kill to the wolf den it seemed reasonable to assume that this had been a wolf kill, but there were also two piles of bear scat on the scene. The kill had been shared, intentionally or not.

Most astonishing was the utter decimation of an animal. If there was any proclivity to bestow upon the purity of nature any notions of pastoral peacefulness, coming upon a kill will rapidly change that understanding. And yet this animal had been returned, utterly and completely to the land which had produced it. Violently, surely. But completely.

I was happy to continue on. Crossing the river, we headed across a boggy area and then up onto a long ramp of tundra, climbing several hundred feet. Beginning our ascent we heard a familiar howl, and saw at the top of the ramp a quarter mile away one of the dark wolves, pacing and howling. The wind was strong, so that his howl carried to us in waves. By the time we reached the top, he was gone.

At the top of the ramp though, standing against the strong cold wind, a circle of stones stood out. We investigated. It was a small circle, about six feet across and a foot or two high, looking out and down into the valley with a view to the east and the west. “Well, there aren’t any boy scout troops out here to build this,” Peter said. As far as we could tell, it was remnants of the heavy Nunamiut activity here years ago. Nunamiut built structures to hunt and to live, stone fences to corral caribou into lakes where, slowed by the water, they were easier to shoot. Ninety percent of the Nunamiut diet was caribou.

While the land itself lent a sense of the ancient, the undisturbed and timeless, considering the human presence here hundreds and thousands of years ago added a layer of history incrementally closer to our understanding. It connected us to this place all the more, weaving together the strands of land, animal and human history into the original tapestry of the earth. The sense of completeness seemed to support and buoy us as we hiked. We continued on the side of a mountain, past several small lakes draining one into the other, before turning back.

Opting to give the wolf den a wide berth again, we hiked back on the opposite side of the valley and through what turned out to be a marshy bog, at times deteriorating to what amounted to reeds growing in a shallow pond, mud pulling at our boots with every step. It stretched well over a mile, and I despaired of my boots, now soaked. Peter’s leather boots fared slightly better. Finally we saw a small tundra protrusion ahead and aimed for it, then planning to turn back toward our camp.

The feel of dry tundra under our boots was a relief. After slogging through the bog, I was exhausted. We leaned onto our trekking poles and talked about our dinner plans when a movement ahead of us startled me. “What is that?” Four ears poked into the air just above the willows. We took another step, and tiny heads and bodies came into view- two wolf puppies, one light, one dark. They looked at us with surprise but not alarm, and then turned around and disappeared. “let’s look over the mound!” I said. “Maybe they are just playing!” Another step forward, and Peter said “I think it’s another den.” “But the main den is by the river back there! Why would they have two?” A quick look revealed that Peter was right. Puppy scat littered the ground just outside another hole into the earth, and several bones lay around, notably a section of vertebrae with partial ribs still attached, perhaps brought back from the kill site we had discovered. We backed away, and waited at a distance for a long while, but the pups did not reappear.

We later learned that there is frequently a rendezvous site where pups are brought away from the main den to play and explore, and that must have been what we had stumbled upon, despite our efforts to keep a reasonable distance from the den we knew about. Though we had more bog to get through to get back to our campsite, we walked back hardly aware of the mud through which we walked.

The Arctic had given us more gifts than we deserved, far more than we expected, far more than we had even hoped. Perhaps that is the gift of all wilderness, and all life. If we only allow ourselves to be open to it. But to allow us to feel a part of this timeless and primeval land, to see the circle of life pulsing through it, and to know that we were a part of that energy even as we had separated ourselves from it in our normal daily life – that was the gift we have now that we will never lose.

(Post #3 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)

It was time to get on the river. Wolves woke us again that morning with their howls, and we were reluctant to leave our wide embrace of gentle mountains and treeless tundra, where our eyes so easily roamed the slopes around us and an air of enchantment seemed to float on the breezes.

“We have to come back here some time to base camp,” I said to Peter as we set-up the Klepper folding, canvas-skinned kayak we planned to take downriver. “It’s just beautiful!”

We climbed into the kayak and pushed off into the current with some sadness, leaving our perfect setting in soft Arctic late afternoon light. The beach slipped away behind us and disappeared as the river turned a corner.

After a hot and dry summer, the water was exceptionally low. The v-hull of our kayak, over-loaded with a pregnant woman, a six-and-a-half-foot tall man and gear for eleven days, was too heavy for the upper river. After fifty yards of a concentrated paddle, avoiding the myriad rocks seeming to clutch at our boat, we bottomed out. We clambered out of the cockpit. With difficulty, we pulled and carried the heavy boat over the rocky shoal. Water trickled in tantalizing sunlit threads over the gravel bottom of the river, not deep enough to cover our neoprene boots. We repeated this for five hours. We had only traveled five miles.

Our campsite for the night was determined by a rock. Large and smooth, hidden in a shallow wave train, it snatched the rubber bottom of the kayak. The kayak stopped immediately. The front pitched forward. Before I knew what happened, water was up to my waist. It was 10 PM.

We pulled the kayak and the gear to shore and began to dry what had succumbed to the water. Another 106 miles of river flowed in front of us yet to come. Plans to explore along the way could never be realized at the pace we were forced to take with the low water.

As the sun skittered across the horizon in the cool midnight air, we decided that our primary purpose of coming to the Western Arctic was to spend time together in the most remote wilderness on the continent, not to accomplish a river trip. The river would be here later. Wilderness reminded us of flexibility, and just how small we were. We would go back upriver to our perfect beach. Our hope for a week of base camping would be realized.

After one grueling cross-tundra ferry of supplies the next day, we pulled and lined the boat back upstream, walking in the river while guiding the kayak with ropes on the bow and stern. Tellingly, what had taken five hours to descend took only three hours to line back upstream. As if to confirm our decision, less two people and some gear, the Klepper glided easily through the water against the current. The same hull that had reached for the bottom earlier now cut through the river like soft butter. We were back at our beach at 11 PM.

Exhausted and happy, we bundled into warm clothes. My rain-coat no longer would zip over my expanding belly when I had on my fleece, but still worked as some wind protection unzipped. We settled into our original kitchen site and made a quick meal – Mexican black beans, cheese, and salsa in tortillas. We leaned back into our Crazy Creek camp chairs on the beach, the peaceful small river flowing quietly, talking and laughing in gratitude and relief for the trip upriver and our arrival.

I happened to look up as we ate. As we sat on the beach, just across the twenty-foot wide river sitting on the tundra bank was a silver-white wolf. Her calm wild eyes watched us steadily. We barely breathed, as though our breath might whisk her away. Then, as silently as she had arrived, she stood up and disappeared in the willows. She appeared again on our side of the river, trotting easily on the spongy tundra up the bluff behind us to inspect our tent. And then she was gone. We sat on the beach without moving, not wanting an errant move to somehow displace the magic.  Even if this night were our only experience in this place, it was enough. Even if this night were our last on earth, it was enough.

This place, this faraway and ancient Arctic wilderness, had shown us yet again her beauty and her mystery, revealed so much so unexpectedly, when we were willing to just sit and wait. If only we could all understand how intrinsically important preserving our last great wilderness was, and protect it. If only we could know that this place would always be here. If only we could be assured our children and grandchildren could come to this place, and see these mysteries.

After securing our kitchen on the beach, we headed to the tent under the soft Arctic light of a midnight sky. Snuggling into our sleeping bag that night, nearby howls climbed through the soft night air, shivering along the breezes.

(Post #2 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)

Wolf howls woke us our second morning, which continued to astonish us as though they were the first we had heard. Before heading downriver in the Klepper, Peter and I wanted to explore more of the beautiful valley in which we had set up camp. The haze lifted slightly the next morning, and after picking wild ripe blueberries to have with our oatmeal, we headed out for another hike.

Though we had not seen any bear sign, other than the actual bear, as we crossed the river we noticed a large paw print of a grizzly just on the side of the water; interestingly we never saw diggings, as were common in our trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and had not yet seen any bear scat; wolf scat was everywhere.

The tundra on the far side of the river was mostly wet tussocks and bogs, but a few small hillocks of dryer tundra or clumps of willows offered occasional relief. We didn’t have to go far before we had our next surprise though. Taking advantage of the occasional dry tundra hillock we paused- and from behind another hillock in front of us suddenly appeared six wolves, four dark and two light, looking at us while trotting and running off into the tundra, dispersing widely and seeming to float over a landscape which caught and held our every step. How nature photographers get shots of wildlife eludes me; the wolves appeared and then were so far off as to be impossible to catch closely. We remained frozen, letting our eyes follow these wild and mystical creatures. The continuous wind carried their howls and barks to us intermittently, snatches of another world which we were finding was also our own. We must have stood there for a long time. We were like small children first encountering the ocean, maybe, or some new reality so foreign and of surpassing mystery that we would never be able to look at the reality we had once known in the same way.

When the wolves were out of sight on the wide tundra before us, we continued on, no more gracefully but held by the spell of the land.  We curved around the hillock from which the wolves had appeared, to sit and watch the den. Built into a high bank on the side of the river, several entrances stood out against the dirt, but there was no more movement around them. It is the time of year that puppies might have been expected to be seen, but the den remained quiet, still.

Despite spending most of our free time out of doors, before seeing a lone wolf trotting down the dirt park road behind the camper bus at Denali last summer, neither Peter nor I had ever seen a wolf.  Our brief encounters in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge the month before had seemed a gift we never could have anticipated or hoped for. Our experiences in two days in the Western Arctic were almost too much to take in.

Longtime Arctic naturalist Pielou notes in her A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic that many naturalists will go their lifetime without ever seeing a wolf. We did not feel deserving. Over dinner that night we talked little, sitting on our rocky beach, stunned in gratitude and wonder, before falling asleep in our tent, again, to the sounds of howls carried on the wind.

Do you want to be part of preserving our nation’s northernmost public lands in Alaska? Join the Alaska Wilderness League today- the only organization in Washington D.C. working non-stop for Alaska’s wilderness!

Aufeis on the Aichilik just downriver from the confluence of the Leffingwell Fork

To make it to the airstrip, we had to reford the Aichilik- though this time below the confluence with the Leffingwell Fork with higher water. We planned to make it to the landing strip a day early. My digestive track was upset- to say the least- so we determined if we arrived a day early and there was a chance of being picked up it was worth it; if not, a great chance to explore around the camp. This was a known wolf area as well, so spending extra time seemed to be a good idea.

Walking out of camp I literally almost tripped over a sandpiper chick; startled, it squawked and hopped across the tundra, still flightless, with the same general markings as an adult but rounder, still with its baby fuzz. Perhaps finding nests was purely happenstance. Or extreme patience. Luck. Or blessing. Certainly it is privilege at its essence.

A large patch of lupine stands out on the tundra

We made our way down into the riverbed and forded the Leffingwell, continuing downriver on the east side of the Aichilik. A large area of aufeis, perhaps cooled by the shade of the canyon in which it sat, highlighted the curve of the river with its graceful white blue ice. Mark, the one with the highest liklihood of wet boots, scouted another crossing. We found it downriver another kilometer or so, a deeper clear stream, but easily passable. Even so, just the incremental increase in depth from previous crossings resulted in exponential additional force. The water was cold, so cold that it was painful at first, and almost immediately numbing. I felt fortunate that our crossings had been so relatively easy. And yet the frigidity of the river, the crossing itself, made me feel vigorously alive.

Once across the river, we ascended the bank to another long, open plateau. The landscape here is gentle, but hard, fragile, but indescribably tenacious, grand and approachable. It is wide and deep and open enough to hold even paradox. To hold life and to hold spirit. A long ago seabed, it knows the varied elements of the earth. It is ancient and it is wise.

A startled ptarmigan

Mark demonstrates the tussock depth for the last mile and a half of walking

This last plateau we would walk became tussocked almost immediately, the largest of our trip, up to a foot and a half or two feet deep. We worked for our mileage. Hard. Peter almost stepped on a ptarmigan, still slightly white under its belly, which squawked and flew a short distance away. The boys had the last of the Eat Local flapjacks, relishing each buttery bite. I guzzled nuun. Mark had already finished his gorp; Peter was saving the last bit for our last day. And finally we arrived.

Peter and Shannon at the last camp

An airstrip in the Arctic is simply a large, flat and dry enough space for a plane to land, no more. There are no markings, other than perhaps a tire track from  previous landing on wet tundra. We located the vicinity of the airstrip, and continued on to the river to camp. This camp sat at the end of the foothills; the coastal plains stretched out in front of the last range of mountains. After extensive scouting for sign, we soon had the Whisperlite hissing, the titanium pot dancing and made our last cups of tea.

The next day was rainy, 800 foot ceilings, and a thick fog rolling in from the plains. There would be no early pick up, and there was little visibility for exploration. We read and journaled and napped and fit in a couple of warm meals. Our final morning all we had was fog and a few lower clouds starting to burn off. Peter and I rose early to take another river bath. Another immersion in Arctic waters. Clear. Cold. Cleansing. Life giving. I got out first, dried and dressed. Peter was still drying when I saw a large flash of brown out of the corner of my eye.

One of the wolves on the bluff

“WHOOOAA,” I said in a low voice and immediately regretted it. Two large brown black wolves, downwind of us, stood at the river and leaned to drink. Their powerful canine shape dark against low silver-green willows and the deep blue of the river beyond them. A streak of sun bouncing off the water. Beautiful. Wild. At my low exclamation they looked up. And as quickly as they appeared, they trotted off on the tundra, keeping a wide arc around us and pausing occasionally to peer back. One ascended the bluff well beyond our camp, and then joined the second again in the willows. They disappeared as silently and magically as they had appeared, part of the wilderness we so often don’t see, or wont see. But which surely sees us.

Mark, Shannon and Peter hours before pickup

In my journal I wrote “I don’t ever want to leave this place.” And yet after eleven days in the backcountry, with our ursacks now empty of food and tea, our packs easily cinching down and pounds lighter, a few handfuls of nuts left, and a cold north wind blowing, the sound of the bush plane is a welcome one. It is so welcome that it appears ghostlike in your auditory imagination time after time before it actually appears. Standing at the pick-up point goes something like this. “I think I hear it.”
“Do you? I don’t hear anything.”
“No, I hear something. Maybe he’s behind the ridge.”
“Probably picking his way through the crud.”
“I still don’t hear anything.”
“No wait, I think I hear it too!”

And so on, For hours. Until the plane shows up.

But even in the front seat of the 185, warm air blowing on cold fingers, there is a feeling of wrenching, of pulling, of separation, of pain, in leaving a place that is sacred, and wild, and free, such as that place inside of all of us where we only dare to go on occasion because it is mystery, and mystery scares us. When we are in the landscape that is also sacred, we know we are a part of it, but comforts of our own creation, though superficial, pull us away. So we leave with that part of us as wild as the land enlarged, perhaps, or strengthened, or at least renewed.

Fording the Aichilik

The first order of business the next morning- morning relating only to the time we had breakfast and started moving, not hours on the clock- was to ford the Aichilik. From there we would ascend the saddle crossing over the range to the Leffingwell Fork.

Though we had been hiking on the Aichilik for the past two days, we had not scouted the eastern channel, which seemed to be primary. The north wind still blew cold, and the idea of ending up submerged in an Arctic river, or even temporarily soaked, did not sound appealing.

Peter and I put on our Chacos, and Mark kept on gaiters. We walked across the numerous tertiary channels to reach the main channel on the east. Mark walked ahead, scouting crossings. The view of the water from the other side of the river had been deceptive; the crossing was shallow, only up to our mid-calves, and we walked easily through the clear icy water. A wolf print on the other side of the river was imprinted in the sand.

Looking down on the Aichilik from the upper bank

Tundra walking from the river was dry and easy. We ascended a hundred feet up a very steep bank, and from there it leveled out. Caribou trails continued to cross the sides of the mountains here, left from tens of thousands crossing this saddle. Though there were no animals in view it was as though we could see them, hear them, running across this tundra just days before. As we enjoyed the shelter from the wind from the ridge to our north, the mosquitoes set in, never missing a moment’s opportunity. The saddle rose gently after the steep bank, and from its top descended as gently to the Leffenwell Fork. The valley of the Leffenwell opened on the descent, another gentle, approachable valley, a friendly, small river and high peaks to the south toward the Continental divide seeming to hold back the dark clouds. We camped that night on the banks of the Leffingwell Fork with the low roil of a rock garden below us, the mezzo gurgling of the rocks just outside camp, and the soprano of occasional splashes over large rocks upstream.

Back out of the mountains, we donned jackets and gloves to protect from the strong north wind. Our kitchen- where we kept all of our gear other than sleeping gear- was on a rocky beach just off a small channel of the river, and for the first time we had the company of harlequin ducks flying and floating by us, though keeping a fair distance.

Peter and Mark dig into the powdered eggs

By this stage in the trip we had progressed to full-on food fantasies. it is unclear in the annals of outdoor adventures whether this is brought on by some chemical in the freeze dried food or lack of fresh fruit and vegetables; perhaps it is the beginnings of scurvy. Taking a bite of Mountain House lasagne, I said “I’m going straight for the veggie pizza at Panorama,” referring to the pizza place in Carlo Creek just south of the cabin.

“I just want a huge salad,” Mark said. I felt then somewhat guilty for my unhealthy choice. “I’ll go for a pizza too,” Peter said. “Maybe even a good hamburger.” “With cheese,” I offered.

“Or a cinnamon roll from the Hi Spot,” Peter mused.

It is an interesting game we play in the wilderness with these ideas which end up as torture, extreme delayed gratification. Both of the guys were intereste in more food in general though.

“How many extra meals did we bring?” Peter asked.

“Three extra entrees,” I said. “But we should be careful in case weather comes in.”

“I have powdered eggs,” Mark said. “Should we break into those? We could do an extra entree tomorrow night, and we’ll still have extra. I think we’re losing weight.”

The guys had a second course of eggs that night. I determined I would have to be very hungry indeed to succumb to powdered eggs. But realizing that I hadn’t factored in the pre-natal calcium requirements into the food for the trip, raided the Tums in the first aid kit.

Peter, Shannon and Mark

We followed the river north the next day heading to the confluence of the Aichilik. Most of the hiking crossed a large open plateau, perfectly representative of the impossibility of judging distance in the Arctic. With the lack of “middle ground”, the close details and far horizons are all one has to sense their place in the landscape. The Arctic lends itself to dreaming and to thinking, but not to spatial orientation. It is similar perhaps to desert that way, and as environmental historian Paul Shepard points out, is is frequently these places that are sought out by mystics across cultures and centuries.

Geological explanation for the formation is that the Leffingwell ridge, by Catherine Hanks at UAF, is that it is the northern flank of a large east north-east trending that forms the range front of the Brooks Range. She explains (perhaps this is more meaningful to someone other than myself who is not a scientist) that “pre-Mississipian rocks of the Franklinian sequence form the core of the anti-clinorium, with Mississipian through Triassic rocks of the Elesmerian sequence forming the north and south limbs.” There is much more to it of course, but that seems to be the jist.

Spiritual and geological vectors lead us to the same truth.  The inviting open plateau challenged us with tussocks, and perceived distance. But it was a short day to the confluence nonetheless, where we found a flat spot of tundra for tents and set up our kitchen on the river bed.

Camp

In spite of the wind, birds fought the breeze, and kept us company through the evening and the next morning. I wandered surreptitiously, I thought, looking for nests, with no luck. While sitting with our Backpackers Pantry (which we much preferred to Mountain House) dinner, though, we heard a commotion. Two birds which from camp looked like sandpipers, chased a ground squirrel, flying right above it on the tundra, making a racket, ostensibly driving it away from their nest. The squirrel was effectively deterred- it kept a course away from the furious birds.

We settled in for the night more comfortable and less imposing, it seemed, than the ground squirrel.

Arctic light up the drainage into the Aichilik- this drainage has no name

River walking in the drainage to the Aichilik

About a mile down, our drainage met another, larger drainage with braided streams on a wide bed. Neither of these drainages or creeks have names, part of the Arctic landscape untouched and nameless. Instead of scaling the steep slopes on either side and wrestling our way through miles of tundra, we dropped into this wider river bed, donning gaiters for the small fording we would do.

Caribou tracks

Semipalmated Plover

[caption id="attachment_533" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Common Redpole"][/caption]

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Female Harlequin Ducks

We made our camp on a small tundra section of a wide gravel bar, surrounded by active birds. As the evening set in, the temperature dropped especially precipitously. We scrambled for river baths and jumped into fleece and down. By midnight I had given up watch of the Arctic light for the comfort of the sleeping bag. Peter, bundled head to toe, remained outside in his Crazy Creek reading. And saw the wolf.

Peter rinses in the Aichilik

[caption id="attachment_517" align="alignleft" width="100" caption="Mark writes in his trip journal"][/caption]

Elegant Paintbrush

We retraced our steps the next day to an area we’d marked on the GPS as being especially full of birds, another boggy and willowy spot in a large gravel bar. For each camp Mark and Peter scouted extensively, looking for recent bear sign, ensuring we weren’t camping anywhere in someone- or something else’s territory. Old bear scat was all we found. We camped in peace other than the continued cold north wind. The next day we would ford the Aichilik and make our way over a saddle to the Leffingwell Fork.

His eyes moved to half mast but he rolled over quickly toward the mesh and I peered over his shoulder. Just outside of our bear fence were two caribou, munching, burping and grunting happily, looking at us looking at them through the mesh of the tent.

“OK, more ‘bou- sorry I woke you.” It occurs to me that his ability to sleep through anything will help him once this baby comes, but I’m doomed.

A sheep skull on the tundra reminds us of all seasons of life

Arctic time- we rose around noon, but the clock no longer had any meaning. Our valley was quiet; the caribou had moved on. A small straggler group of fifty continued south upriver. During breakfast and packing the camp site, additional smaller groups of twenty to thirty trotted purposefully down the mountain saddle we were about to ascend, following the direction of the herd which had filled the valley the night before.

Mark hiking up the first saddle out of the Jago River valley

Sometime mid-afternoon we got started, ascending the saddle to our east out of the valley. We wondered if we were missing another night full of caribou, but there are never any guarantees. The previous day had simply been too much for words. As if to support our reluctance, the tundra was alternately flat and dry, and in other places unbearably boggy.

The perspective of just a few hundred feet of elevation revealed more and more details of the Jago River valley, high peaks just beyond with thick cornices, the curve and gyrations of the path of the river curving gracefully through the valley below.

We reached a camp along the trickle of stream in the upper saddle that evening, opting to stay on our side of the ridge and save the crossing for the next day because we didn’t know what the water supply would be. Even as we served up another round of Mountain House meals, groups of thirty to fifty caribou trotted through the saddle. Mark and Peter walked across the valley with their cameras, but they were too late; once observed, the caribou galloped up the hills. Just before a dubious freeze dried desert, we spotted a larger group, another hundred or more, further back in the wide saddle moving along the mysterious migration path they seemed to have imprinted deep within them. Peter and Mark headed up the valley early this time, across the valley and up the hill. I stayed in place to reduce potential distractions to the caribou and watched.

Later Peter reported his experience: he climbed the hill on the opposite side of the valley, well ahead of the caribou, and found a small depression in the tundra grass. He lay there and waited for the caribou. He was upwind, and the sun was behind him. “The hill was concave, so I heard them before I could see them,” he said. “I could hear tearing and chewing the tundra plants. Then they broke over the hill. I don’t think they ever saw me- they just kept moving along their paths.”

Even remaining stationary on the tundra, from across the valley I could hear the clatter of the caribou hooves on rock, the snorts and grunts and forceful exhales as the group made their way up the slope. It was as though the air between us didn’t exist, the sounds carried so clearly and completely. We slept again that night in a magical cocoon of wonder.

Peter hiking up the saddle

Shannon heading up the saddle

The next day we crossed over into another drainage which, about eight miles later, would take us to the confluence of the Aichilik. The hydrology depicted on the maps was not consistent with what we encountered; after passing our turn-off the first time, we finally headed up and over the pass through a narrow and boggy draw. The skies alternated spitting rain with deep blue skies. The bright Arctic sun seemed highlighted colorful and plentiful wildflowers, fields of white mountain aven, with the lower groupings if tiny pink moss campion. Bright yellow arnica. A few capitate louseworts with their otherworldly curved petals.

Then, halfway up the draw, the silhouettes of another thirty caribou appeared against the blue sky. Peter, Mark and I were spread out, each of us taking photos or enjoying the hike. The herd was trapped on the ridge with us in the narrow draw. They stood high on the ridge, peering down at us, heads held high and alert, some balancing seemingly precariously large antlers, delicate legs ready to bolt at any time.

Three of the caribou stand alert on the ridge

Then they sprung into action. Half of the group broke into a run, heading down the steep rocky hillside just below us. The other half wavered, uncertainly, and then ran the ridge the other direction. Rocks clattered. Their breaths heaved. We stayed perfectly still, but in the confined space there was nowhere for us to go. As the first group made it below us and halfway down the saddle to the valley they suddenly stopped, as though aware that they had left half of their group, or perhaps just catching out smell. They wheeled, and ran back up to the ridge from where they had come.

“Let’s get closer together,” I suggested to the guys.
“We’ll all get over on the right side,” Peter concurred. “Then they’ll have plenty of room if they want to go down the saddle.”

The three of us came back together, staying as still as possible to let the caribou decide their next move. They almost hovered on the ridgeline. Then, as dignified as though they had decided on this all along, they filed back on the ridgeline over the saddle where we were headed, and disappeared behind another rocky peak. As frustrated as I was for having been such a distraction for them, it was hard not to be simply caught up in the energy of the herd, still seeming to vibrate in the Arctic air, trembling along the ridge.

Over the saddle we descended in a rainstorm, which broke as we reached a strangely beautiful mountain stream, deep red as the rocks in Sedona, a pocket of iron oxide. The wind had picked up and blew away the rain clouds. Birds hung in the air or sang from hidden spots in the tussocked tundra. As we descended into the unnamed drainage we would follow for several more miles, willows appeared and increased in size as we lost altitude. The sides of the hills and the riverbed gave us better sight lines. Though a wide gravel bed defined the bottom of the drainage, there was no water; it had earlier plunged to subterranean channels.

We continued on picking our way through rocks and tussocks. Peter and Mark broke into the next day’s rations of Eat Local Flapjacks. At ten PM all of us were exhausted. Heavy packs, crossing a mountain pass and eight hours of hiking had done it- and we had only covered eight miles, firmly holding the average tundra travel time. We started looking for a place for a camp.

One problem was that there was still no water. Hearing a stream ahead of us flowing into our drainage, we moved on. And then we saw the fresh pile of bear scat. It was black and grassy, dark as fertilizer. We continued on. In a small muddy area in the creek bed, was a perfectly defined paw print of the bear, also recent and easy to identify with the claws visible, an easy sign of the grizzly which has particularly long claws suitable for digging. As we approached the drainage a loud cry split the evening air. A large black bird perched high on a cliff up the tertiary drainage. Its cry chilled each of us to the bone; it sounded something like a cross between a woman and a baby screaming. Another large bird swooped around the perched bird, all too far away to identify. The cut arced gracefully back into the mountains, verdant and gentle. And there was water.  But none of us wanted to head up it.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” someone said.
“Too much bear sign, and that bird…it’s creepy. There could be a kill up there.”
“Let’s keep going.”

My legs were dragging, and my energy had plummeted. We hiked up onto the small plateau above the creek. More fresh bear scat- within a day anyway- and several areas of recent digging. I finished one of my water bottles of nuun. My heart sank. We kept on. Passing the cut masked the terrible sound of the bird. We dropped into another cut and came back up on another plateau. It had good sight lines in all directions. We pulled out the maps and GPS.

“We could keep going,” Mark suggested. “Just push through. It’s about five more miles to the Aichilik, so we’d get there about five in the morning.”
“I’m done,” I said. “Unless someone doesn’t feel safe here, I’d rather stay.”

Having left the bear sign a couple of plateaus away, and feeling good about the visibility in our camp, we set up. The gravel bar below us was still dry. There was no water, other than a murky pool beneath us. Peter decided it would filter acceptably. We set up the dining area a particularly long way from our tents, put up the bear fence, and fell into our sleeping bags after two AM.