(Post #1 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)

It was, perhaps, a good thing that our first Arctic trip of the summer taught us that plans are only something from which one deviates. We would return to that lesson on this trip.

Smoke from distant forest fires swallowed the drone of Coyote Air’s Beaver de Havilland just a moment after the plane vanished from sight. Peter and I began hauling our bags of gear in several trips to our tent site on the treeless tundra bluff and our kitchen site on the rocky beach of the Nigu River. The valley stretched miles across, and through the shifting smoke the ridgelines of mountains ringing the valley appeared briefly and then were gone. We were alone, the only people for over a hundred miles in any direction. An hour after the plane departed we heard something neither of us had ever heard before, and will never forget: a chorus of wolves howling, arcing up to a mournful climax and finally drifting off into the breezes.

The Western Arctic encompasses Gates of the Arctic National Park, our  nation’s second largest national park, as well as the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, our largest block of public lands. The Nigu begins in Gates but flows primarily through this NPR-A. Though thirty years of presidential administrations have recognized this area for its ecological complexity and temporarily protected it from development, this last great wilderness has no permanent protection.

Winds began to clear the smoke in the afternoon, and we headed out to hike up a nearby ridge. Both dry soft tundra lichen and boggy tussocks made up the landscape, as well as stretches of knee-high willows.  Indiscernible birds tossed by air currents came into and out of sight, all intrepid travelers to the Arctic from four continents. Marveling at the approachable mountains and vastness, it took us a while as we hiked up the side of the mountain to notice it.

Peter stopped. “What’s that?” I stopped too.

“Where?”

“Just up the hill, straight below the dip in the saddle.” Peter pointed. My eyes traced a line from his finger to the verdant hillside. Among the rocks scattered throughout the tundra was one that moved, and was brown.

“Wow. Grizzly. He’s coming our way.”

“He can’t even see us yet- and we’re downwind.”

We stood still and started yelling loudly, trying to keep our tone focused and low. I banged my trekking poles over my head. After several minutes, continuing to descend toward us, the bear halted, perhaps just hearing us for the first time. He stood up on his hind legs, tall.

Have you ever had a grizzly stop and consider you closely? What must we seem, fleece clad and clumsy, stumbling awkwardly through his home, barking strange noises?  We paused for a moment in our greeting, momentarily overcome. An encounter with the ultimate paradigm of wilderness. “He’s beautiful!” I said quietly.

“Hee-llo, HE-llo!” we continued to yell. Considering us for what seemed some time but perhaps was only thirty seconds, the bear turned, and bounded back up the slope in remarkably smooth bounds until he disappeared over the ridge. The power and grace of his movements seemed antithetical to his vast bulk, and yet perfectly in harmony. Why in the world he thought he needed to run- even if that is the stereotypical reaction of bears- escapes me.

And then we reached the top of our nearest protrusion. Below us the Nigu river scrolled in serpentine curves through the valley, gracefully as calligraphic embellishment, one particularly long oxbow seemingly as carefully crafted as an artisans metal work. In that oxbow sat the wolf den as it had been reported to us anyway, though we had not seen any activity there, only adding to the air of enchantment.

Though a haze still hung in the air, we could see the valley stretched wide from the east from where the Nigu wound, several miles to the west of us and then north. Mountains in all directions embraced us, standing tall against the sky and yet with slopes as seemingly easy to walk as a golf course.

The wolves sang us to sleep that evening, even if briefly, their howls punctuated by a few staccato barks.