“The Wild Geese,” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes.    Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here.

The Canning River Delta, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

June 4, 1:07 am

All night long under the midnight sun, the Arctic sings its spring song. Floating in from somewhere behind the wind are the voices of this land: the various musics of Greater White-fronted and Canada Geese, Pacific and Red-throated Loons, and Long-tailed Ducks (we used to call them Oldsquaws), along with a few quieter fowl I cannot name. Nestled in the candlelike glow inside my yellow tent, I lie awake, listening. The temperature hovers below freezing, half the tundra remains covered in snow, the lakes are still frozen over—but these water birds, eternal optimists of the Arctic plains, are arriving ’round the clock, en masse and in voice, for their summer ventures. Off to the north I hear the excited chatter of Tundra Swans. A few hours ago, outside my tent I looked up and watched seven of them materialize out of the mist: elegant, slow-winged creatures pure as snow, passing closely above with the grace of angels.

Bowing into the morning fog on a raw northeast wind, I make my way to the cook tent to build a mug of boreal coffee. Six of us have established a temporary research camp here on the northern fringe of the delta, in the very northwestern corner of the refuge. I’ve joined the others as a volunteer biologist for a study of the nesting success of the local birdlife.

We arrived by bush plane over the past two days, as weather allowed, and set up our bivouac: six identical sleeping tents crowd together like a clutch of eggs, and fifty yards off stands a cooking tent and a warming tent with a wood stove. Farther yet our tiny, makeshift latrine enjoys a holy and priceless view. The tents are staked against the arctic wind with foot-long pieces of rebar hammered into the frozen ground. Yesterday we used ice chisels and sledges to pound larger holes to erect two separate three-wire bear fences, one around our sleeping quarters and one around the food tents. There are a few griz about, and we hope to see them, but they are not welcome inside. The fences are electrified by solar panels—powered by the sun like the living tundra itself.

Around us stretches the vast Arctic prairie, now a mosaic of white snow and golden brown cottongrass and sedges. When the ocean fog lifts (camp is only two miles from the shore of the Beaufort Sea), we can see thirty miles south to the Sadlerochits, last mountains before the North Pole, and beyond them to the massive Brooks Range, blue and infinite in the distance.

Out of the fog and that infinity, the feathered tribe continues to arrive. More Tundra Swans wing in from their winter waters on the Chesapeake Bay; White-fronted geese appear, with their high-pitched laughter, up from the Texas coast. The loons have come all the way from the Yellow Sea off China. We see two long lines of Black Brant—a subspecies of Brant—fifty or more in each, flying eastward, low over the whitened tundra along the coast, nearing the end of their jaunt from Mexico. Must be something about this place, something attractive and valuable that draws them here. Otherwise, why would so many species come from so many distant places for the most important function of life—reproduction? And I don’t mean only water birds. Arctic Terns and many of the shorebirds return here from even more distant places. Caribou and polar bears choose to give birth here. What some have blindly called a barren wasteland appears to me more like a coral reef of the north, a huge sponge of productivity.

Ten Snow Geese, then twenty more, fly across, white as alabaster under a cerulean blue sky. Pintails, Common Eiders, and King Eiders arc overhead in pairs and small groups. The commons are more likely to move out to the coastal barrier islands to breed. A drake King Eider flies close by at eye level. His body is black and white, but his head is the marvel: red bill, orange forehead, green cheek, blue crown and nape—nearly the full spectrum from the neck forward. The Harlequin Ducks are nearly as audacious, but we won’t see them here. They nest up in the mountains, where they walk underwater along the stream bottoms, foraging into the current in the fashion that the water ouzel made famous.

Of all the birds that nest in the refuge, I consider the Pacific Loon the most elegant. With its velvet gray hood, splendid black-and-white collar and cape, and polished poise on the water, it embodies a reserved handsomeness, dignity, and grace. I say this without bias, although my work has focused on loons for nearly three decades. In truth, I haven’t studied Pacific and Red-throated Loons much at all and still have a difficult time separating their voices.

Today we make our first formal visit to two of the twenty research plots established three years ago when the study began. My compatriots take a primary, focused interest in the shorebirds, our most numerous clients on the swaths of tundra. I’m keeping an eye out for loons and waterfowl—the larger feathered spirits. There’s something about how a swan can raise its cygnets from eggs to fifteen pounds over a short Arctic summer by eating cold vegetables that seems magic to me. The local Inupiat still hunt these creatures, and their knowledge of them is based upon the oldest research ever undertaken in these parts: the science of survival.

Swans float about like icebergs on the river in front of camp. A single Red-throated Loon rockets downriver. One minute later: cacophony at the river bend. She’s found some friends—or maybe antagonists. It’s hard to tell, given the caterwauling. Either way, it resounds with excitement.

As my colleagues pointed out, the racket these two species make can hardly be called a song at all. And by strict definition they are correct. Any ornithological text or field guide will tell you that neither loons nor waterfowl sing songs; they utter calls. In the absolute scientific sense, this is true. Problem is, I’m not an absolute scientist; romantic biologist might be a better description. I cherish these voices because they symbolize the north lands that I love. And if, as the bioacousticians suggest, these voices are tuned to carry through misty winds and above the white sound of driven waters, then they are tuned by the landscape—they are voices of the land, much as their very bodies are built of and powered by local stickleback and blackfish. Even the Red-throated Loon’s cry, compared by some to the sound of a cat in despair, rings eerily melodic if you happen to carry an affinity for loons as I do. To my ear all these voices, in their innocent melancholy and exuberance, reach to that place where laughter and tears meld, and life celebrates itself upon the land. It is music to me.

The wind whips up again in the evening, rattling and wrestling with the tents, another night of wild percussion drummed into our delicate human spirits. The wind, too, is a voice of the land—that same wind that lifts the wings of Tundra Swans and carries the yodels of loons.

Every day we walk the plots. Lapland Longspurs and a few sandpipers have already begun nesting in tiny alcoves in the sun-warmed and hay-scented tundra. The snowfields are disappearing by the acre despite the biting cold of the wind. Ice water collects in the polygons, fills the ponds, and seeps in slow, cold currents through the grasses and sedges into the river and down toward the sea. On average, only seven inches of precipitation fall here each year, but it’s hard to think of this place as a “polar desert” when we’re marching through water up to our knees. Unable to soak very deeply into the soil due to the solid barrier of permafrost, the snowmelt remains on the surface, available to wildlife and irrigating the grasses and sedges. Often we wade across ponds filled with a layer of water above ankle-deep muck, our soles treading upon the concrete hardpan of ice—the permafrost.

Purple saxifrage, first of the Arctic blooms, flowers around us from its low cushions on the drier soils. East of camp I found a broad scatter of swan feathers, a few bone fragments. Over by the river we stumbled onto the skull and rib cage of an arctic fox. A few miles to the north lies the entire skeleton of a muskox, its flesh eaten and the long bones gnawed apart. Here and there on the tundra we find the shells of Long-tailed Duck eggs, the antlers and ribs of caribou. We watch for the droppings of foxes and wolves, deposited on the peat mounds and often twisted with the hair of lemmings and occasionally caribou, sometimes containing the tips of feather shafts. There’s a grizzly track frozen into last year’s mud near my tent. On the riverbank we see many tracks—all sizes and makes of waterfowl—along with those of fox and weasel, and now and then a burst of feathers. All the chapters of life here lie open to the sky. Every walk is a treasure hunt.

Cold again; windy as usual. My crew finds the first Canada Goose nest today near study plot 4B: four eggs nestled in gray down upon a grassy bowl on a small island. The Tundra Swans, first of the waterfowl to nest, are incubating too, down on the lower delta.

Loons of both species, often singly, fly overhead almost constantly now, in different directions, reconnoitering the melt waters, one might assume. Loons are, of course, not waterfowl at all. According to current theory, they are more closely related to penguins and frigatebirds. Adapted to diving, they navigate poorly on land and require stretches of open water for take-offs and landings. Because of this, they will be among the last to alight upon the lakes as they thaw.

More and more waterfowl arrive. Red-breasted Mergansers have appeared, as well as a pair of Northern Shovelers. Someone has seen a pair of Spectacled Eiders, a threatened species listed formally under the Endangered Species Act and a rare nester here. Most of the United States Arctic population nests farther west, where oil leases are likely to be developed. But this was a pair, male and female, and they are known to prefer river deltas, so we are hopeful.

The Long-tailed Ducks would make an interesting study. Tens of thousands of them molt and gather into large groups to stage on the lagoons behind the barrier islands before fall migration. We see them floating, almost always in pairs, on the coldest-looking little ponds among chunks of ice. Common breeders on the coastal plain, they are unusual in two ways. Unlike the other waterfowl, Long-tailed Ducks utter sentence-long calls and molt continually in a sequence of phases from spring through fall, rendering a long series of ephemeral appearances far too numerous and variable to be represented in any field guide. Though ornately beautiful in earthen tones, for half the year it is impossible to match their color patterns with any page in a field guide.

Off the corner of plot 4A I spot a Peregrine Falcon sitting dark and quiet upon a low peat mound, waiting patiently. There’s a reason the Peregrine was once called a “duck hawk,” but this hunter is more likely watching for the rustle of a sandpiper or a nice, warm lemming. (There are a lot of lemmings about this year, which might take some of the predation pressure off of the birdlife.) We honor the peregrine’s presence by pausing our survey so as not to scare up any study birds, duck or Dunlin, for its dinner. I carry no prejudice against predators, myself. After all, I belong to that league, and so does the cute little arctic fox, and the loon. We’re all part of the balance.

The wind howls, coating my spectacles with droplets of fog, burning color into the skin of my cheeks. A harsh land? Some would say so. Who could deny it? But it is this very harshness that illuminates by contrast the abundant and exuberant life here—song and sex and celebration, bloom and productivity. The harshness of winter here drastically reduces the numbers of predators. And the same latitude that creates the long, dark season also creates a summer with twenty-four-hour-a-day sunshine that swells the lowly cottongrass and sedge with solar energy, which in turn becomes goose feather and swan song.

I wonder if the wind tires the goose in the same manner that it soaks away my energy. If so, she doesn’t show it. Down puffed out against the chill, contour feathers preened with oil to shed the mist, that goose out there by 4B nestles down on five eggs tonight, facing the wind and keeping alert for the wrong kind of company.

Out on the plots the tundra is greening up. I find the single flower, bright and cheery, of a buttercup, second one I’ve seen this week. Who can call it a barren wasteland where the innocent buttercup blooms?

The loons are largely gone from the river now. We see them, as well as many of the waterfowl, in pairs on the ponds. One of the characteristics of loons, swans, and geese that seems to pique a certain human wistfulness is the fidelity of these mated pairs. They are said to mate for life, and scientific studies have illustrated that this is for the most part true. Some of them, the loons especially, hold a strong landscape fidelity as well. If Pacific and Red-throated Loons follow the behaviors of Common and Yellow-billed Loons, as we assume they do, they will return to the same lake or pond, and sometimes the same nest site, year after year.

Ducks are a different clan, with a different strategy. Most of them appear to flirt about each year, courting new mates and breaking up shortly after intentions are spent. Interestingly, it is the ducks that show different plumages between the sexes, males strutting about in bright breeding colors designed (by the great evolutionary stylist) to attract females, a necessary requirement every spring. The females are usually drab, giving the benefit of camouflage to the nest sitter. The loons, geese, and swans, which generally mate for life, have no need of such dress-up; plumages are identical (at least to the human eye) between genders.

Pair fidelity appears linked to brooding and rearing strategy as well. After breeding, most of the drake ducks have fulfilled their ecological responsibilities and disappear to the molting areas and an early start south. But both male and female loons, geese, and swans share in the raising of their young at least to fledgling (flying) age. Among them, only the loons share equally in incubation duties.

No loon nests yet. The Yellow-billed Loons I’ve studied in the western Arctic would be on eggs by now, secreted down by the narrow open margin of a larger frozen lake. But they are not known to nest on the coastal plain of the refuge, perhaps due to a relative paucity of larger lakes here. They seem to be social creatures, preferring the juxtaposition of many larger lakes in the western Arctic, where the plain is wider. But they migrate through here, and the local Natives know them well. A hunter from Kaktovik told me that he remembered a single Tuullik feeding thirteen people around his father’s table. And how did it taste? About a five, he said. On a scale of ten? No, he said, once every five years would be often enough.

Clearest hour of the season so far, tonight. We stare out across the green-gold prairies to the Sadlerochits, snow-veined and purple in their Arctic majesty. Above and beyond them, the rarefied pinnacles of Mounts Chamberlin and Michelson in the Brooks reach toward a three-quarter moon. The first little longspurs hatched today; I’ve seen the tiny miracles in their little grass caves. More of the geese are hunkered down laying eggs. The Pacific Loons are yodeling, defining and defending their territories, a behavior penultimate to breeding. But I hear another music beyond them, more a feeling than a sound: the subtle chords of exultation from the land itself. Or perhaps my own heart.

Today is a day off for me, and I plan to mosey overland to a distant set of ponds where I’ll scout for loon nests. We haven’t found one yet. I pack my field notebook, lunch, binoculars, and shotgun (in descending order of importance), and set out before noon. The gun is loaded with slugs for the rare case of a grizzly threat. Every team or individual from our crew venturing afield is required to carry one. Wouldn’t want to lose one of us; we have enough paperwork to do already.

I walk north in a set of parallel ruts that runs clear to the coast. Made decades ago by a vehicle driving on the tundra, they remain scars in the earth today and will for a long time to come. This may be a harsh land, but it is delicate, too. Its wounds heal slowly or not at all.

The water birds up here are the wariest I’ve ever seen. As I crest a low hill, a pair of Canada Geese a hundred yards away lifts off in fright, discussing it in counterpoint:

Gaak
Leek
Gaak
Leek
GaakLeek
GaakLeek
LeekGaak
Leek
Gaak
Leek
GaakLeek. . . . Polite, graceful, but intolerant of me, they disappear, still conversant, behind a low roll of tundra.

We already know many of the effects of industrial invasion on these timid creatures from studies conducted west of here, where oil and gas exploration and development have occurred. Obviously, a spill anywhere, particularly during staging or migration, would be catastrophic. Nesting and feeding habitat losses; disturbance of these wary and retiring creatures at critical times; changes in hydrological schemes and lake levels; and the usual increase in opportunistic predators, which feed on refuse and find shelter at developed sites. These include bears, foxes, ravens, and gulls, which also keep a hungry eye out for wild eggs and nestlings. All are factors either proven or considered likely to add to the challenges of breeding and survival of the waterfowl and loons here as well as shorebirds and other members of the feathered tribes.

The very study I am part of has been undertaken to better understand the significance of these factors, although the National Academy of Sciences has already reported them as part of the cumulative environmental effects of oil development. Although this Section 1002 area does not support a preponderance of nesting water birds, it is the refuge’s heart of production for waterfowl and loons, and includes critical migration habitats. Our site on the Canning River delta is important to the study because here there is no development. It serves as a “control” or “benchmark” area against which the effects at developed sites may be compared. The refuge’s coastal plain is the last part of our Arctic coastal plain that is not available for leasing—the last benchmark area. Everything from Point Thomson to Barrow is open for leasing or already developed. And, ironically, the Canning River delta could be the first spot in the refuge affected by industrial changes. This is the entry point from the existing oil fields to the west; the Alaska State government hopes to build a road nearly to the refuge boundary, just a few miles from here, if the oil companies don’t get to it first.

The value of this area as the final wild comparison was not missed in the argument for protecting these refuge lands the first time around. Lowell Sumner himself suggested that this is a place where the land could still have the “freedom to continue, unhindered and forever, if we are willing, the particular story of planet Earth unfolding here. . . . ”

If we are willing.

Don’t think about it, I’m thinking. We came here to celebrate, not to fret and mourn. The northeast wind whistles through the grass. The nesting geese hunker low, facing into it. A veil of down and breast feathers stretches off behind each one in the downwind, southwesterly direction, eroded from the thick, blanketlike covering that insulates their eggs. As I approach the ponds, one of them flops off her nest, calling in consternation.

So far I’ve been referring simply to the Canada Goose, or “CAGO” in the birders’ shorthand that I use in my field notes. But someone working the far opposite extreme of my field of wildlife science has been peeking into the genes of these geese and has decided that they ought to be divided into two species, Lesser Canada Goose (actually the larger of the two) and Cackling Goose. Because the Canadas here in the Arctic are of intermediate and differing sizes, the scientists aren’t certain what to call them, and so we have promised to collect a few feathers from each nest for DNA analysis.

Interesting work, but there is a danger, I think, as we divide and categorize life. Focus down too fine, and you lose the big picture. The poets recognize this: “Erase the lines:” wrote Robinson Jeffers, “I pray you not to love classifications. / The thing is like a river, from source to sea mouth / One flowing life.”

Amen to that. Nevertheless, biologist that I am, I wade out on the slick permafrost pond bed toward the nest. The goose flushed at my approach, and I have a responsibility now. I collect a dozen breast feathers from the veil into a plastic baggie and then reach down to close the downy nest liner over the clutch like a purse—field etiquette to minimize heat loss and camoflage the nest from predators until the goose returns. When I lean over the eggs, their radiant heat warms my face with remarkable intensity: six hot little globes of sunlight recycled and resurrected into life, cooking along embryologically at 100 degrees F out here upon the open prairie, eighteen inches above the ice age.

I walk the shoreline of another pond with a pair of Pacific Loons on it, and here I find what may be the very beginnings of nest construction—a rude circle of soggy grass pulled together on a shoal just offshore. The pair acts nervous and I leave quickly, but not before observing a pair of Spectacled Eiders nearby and a nesting Canada Goose with a pair of King Eiders hauled up and dozing against her nest, male on one side, female on the other. Relating these wondrous sightings to my colleagues over dinner, I hear of their own remarkable observations: Camp hit a record high of 39.5 degrees F today, three caribou appeared across the river, and someone collected the first mosquito (deceased).

Summer Solstice

We find a skiff of snow on our tents this morning. The Arctic summer arrives, and I must fly out tomorrow. I’ll miss the loons and the eiders laying their eggs, their newly hatched broods, the griz following the caribou in. Generously, I leave all that to my colleagues.

In the evening I take a seat on the saxifrage and look out over the complex of ponds on the lower delta. Geese, swans, gulls, loons, all varieties of ducks—Lord, everything I’ve been seeing seems to be out there in a huge array and concentration, and all of them are singing and shouting at once in so many tongues. Exuberant, self-willed, so full of life. I pause a long time here with my notebook on my knees, scribbling my thoughts and prayers beneath a warm Arctic sun. Biologists are concerned about the status of Northern Pintail and Long-tailed Duck populations. The Spectacled Eiders are threatened, and the King Eiders seem to be disappearing. Across a few decades, Alaska’s Red-throated Loon population declined by half. There is much to do, much to defend. But for now, and for a long time into the evening, I will tarry here and listen. It is enough that the night is magic, and down on the delta the angels are singing.

Kaktovik, Barter Island

September 13

Dropping out of the clouds over the Hulahula River, my first impression of the landscape is how red it appears. The tundra as far as I can see appears cloaked in rusty rubescence, not the tawny green I’d left behind nearly three months ago and fifty miles to the west. Autumn by the Beaufort Sea: season of the aurora borealis, the Inupiat whale hunt, the arrival of polar bears. And the final upshot of the water-bird season: the great migratory gatherings, the final exodus.

I walk south of town and onto the tundra. The sedges have turned to gold and the cottongrass is fading, too, its mop-tops looking a bit wind stressed. Along the edges of standing water, which is just about everywhere, the Arctophila grass has gone red (carotenes over chlorophyll)—the rouge I’d seen from the air.

Near a small freshwater lake, I come upon several hundred Greater White-fronted Geese hunkered down in the lee of the wind. They appear to be a congregation of family groups. Occasionally one or two of these short strings will take flight—laughing like schoolgirls. A significant number of white-fronts stage on the refuge coastal plain prior to fall migration, primarily in August, stripping the sedges to boost fat reserves for transit out of here. I suspect these may be among the last waves to fuel up on the local pasturage.

Scanning the lake I find to my delight a pair of Pacific Loons with a chick that still is not quite adult size. At my approach they utter a catlike MAAA-AAaaaaaaaw and move away. The pair has foregone the exodus of their conspecifics, remaining behind to fledge this chick. Given the late nesting dates over on the Canning, I imagine that such families throughout the area are right now challenging their deadlines in an ages-old drama in which the tooth of the arctic fox, the sharp eye of the peregrine, and the bite of autumn freeze-up contribute to the loons’ grace and survival by removing the slow, the inept, from their reproductive gene pool.

Walking the shoreline I find the tracks of a grizzly sow and cub, strolling the opposite way. On the horizon above the far shore, half a mile away, I see the griz herself, perched atop a peat mound like a circus elephant balanced on a barrel. I deduce from her movements that she is digging for lemmings. We peer at each other for a moment, across the distance. No threat for now, we’re both thinking, but we’ll keep an eye out.

A pair of swans with three blue-necked cygnets flutters in from somewhere, perhaps driven by my approach. The young are fledged but not yet as tall as their parents—another family pushing the deadline. Good luck to them, too. They swim together nonchalantly but directly to the south shore to continue on foot into the wetlands there. At a mile away they stop and begin to feed again, among numerous families of pintails I hadn’t noticed.

One of the loons takes off, flies above the bear uttering a phrase I hadn’t heard before, circles the lake, and disappears. Several white-fronts lift, fly off, but circle about and return. Excitement fills the air: die Zugunruhe, the behavior biologists used to call it—“unrest before the journey.” A hard chill rides in that same air, and my hands are growing stiff. The grizzlies remain occupied with their lemmings, the swans have disappeared in the marsh, and the loon adult and chick have moved to the center of the lake, safe from two-legged intruders. I sneak off to leave them all in peace, walking in the tracks of bears back toward town.

The wind has changed overnight and blows jauntily from the west now, under clearing skies. The fog has lifted, disappeared.

Out by the lake, and across all the tundra I cover, there are only a few geese to be seen. The pintail families are reduced to singles hunkered down in the ditches, lifting only at my immediate approach. Juveniles, I assume. A pair of scaup has appeared on the lake, en route eastward. They seem to prefer the company of Glaucous Gulls. Safety in numbers, perhaps. The loon chick floats beside one remaining adult. And with the swans I count only two cygnets. A Peregrine Falcon passes overhead; I’d seen it dive on a pintail earlier, narrowly missing. The bears have disappeared.

Through the rarefied air I can now gaze out past the island, across the mainland tundra, up the Sadlerochit River to the golden foothills and all the way to the mighty blue-and-white Brooks beyond. Somewhere out there, scattered across the refuge coastal plain, 300,000 Snow Geese may be feeding. They move in from western Canada to these rich prairies in mid-August to fuel up on cottongrass stems and horsetail shoots for their autumn migration. In three weeks they may consume as much as 4600 tons of cottongrass alone, biologists calculate. It may take years for the cottongrass stands to regenerate after an intensive harvest, so the geese require an extensive foraging area. For them and the Greater White-fronted Geese, these limited feeding areas across the entire coastal plain are crucial; loss of habitat or even disturbance there at this time of year could diminish their survival rates, particularly for juveniles. Aircraft disturbance is the primary concern. Disruption of feeding here could reduce their migration fat reserves by up to 50 percent, reducing their chances for survival along the way to their wintering grounds.

I scan the far-off tundra hard through the binoculars—10×42s, excellent glass—hoping for some distant waggling line of white against the burnished tundra, before the golden foothills, but see no sign of them. Perhaps they, too, have already left for the Sacramento Valley, Bosque del Apache, Chihuahua.

An air of anticlimax: On the saltwater in the lagoons I see only a few small groups of eiders (females and young; the males left a long time ago, avoiding all reproductive chores beyond conception), a pintail here and there, a few Red-breasted Mergansers, several bands of White-winged Scoters, and one solitary Surf Scoter, bouncing in the waves. Several larger flocks of twenty to fifty Long-tailed Ducks float about, but tens of thousands of them that had staged in the lagoons between here and Canada have left. The last of them that I see stream in before the pink twilight in nervous flights from the sea, coming in low over the barrier islands into the safety of the lagoons for the night.

On my final day of maneuvers, I walk a few miles west to a set of ponds where a local says he’s seen hundreds of waterfowl recently. The tundra around the ponds is littered with the feathers and droppings of geese, but the ponds are perfectly quiet and empty of birdlife. Only a family of Short-eared Owls remains in residence. They flap about and perch on the peat mounds, watching me from beneath Groucho Marx eyebrows.

A telling silence. As those spirits arrive with the spring snowmelt, so do they disappear on the autumn winds. The white-fronts, the pintails, and the rest of the swans wing eastward; the Brants, the eiders and Long-tailed Ducks, and the loons disappear into the west. The four-month burst of life under the all-night sun is over; only the stragglers remain. Even the whales are migrating past us toward warmer seas. The Kaktovik whalers beached their third bowhead last night, and the polar bears have swum a hundred miles from the pack ice to clean its bones. Time to leave this place to them, the Gyrfalcons and ptarmigan and other spirits who will keep watch on the place over winter. Among the latter is Cygnus, the swan, my celestial talisman. I saw her three nights ago, high in the sky with the aurora playing through her outstretched wings. The same constellation is also known as the Northern Cross. Cygnus, head down in the sky, becomes the crucifix, heads-up. “Anticipate resurrection,” wrote Terry Tempest Williams.

Of course. That age-old story of the cycle of life: departure and return—and then revival. Here we find it rendered by both the swans and the stars, the ecological texts and the Gospel (one a metaphor of the other). We are not at the end of a cycle after all, but rather a beginning—an embarkation. Here, those anxious voices have been crying all along—here is where it all begins.

I march eastward again, across the quiet and empty tundra toward my dinner, the big silver bird, and that other world down below. Nearly back to camp I hear, startlingly close above me but invisible in the mist, the excited laughter of geese.

© 2006. “Angels in the Mist” by Jeff Fair reprinted with permission of the publisher from Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, published by Braided River, an imprint of The Mountaineers, Seattle, WA.

Jeff Fair is a wildlife biologist with four books to his credit, including Moose for Kids and The Great American Bear. His essays have appeared in Alaska Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Equinox, Ranger Rick, Audubon Magazine, and Appalachia, where he is a contributing editor. In 1998 he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Farrand/Strohm Writing Award, and in 2001 he was selected for the Alaska State Council on the Arts’ first Tumblewords roster.

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.

My husband Peter, our friend Mark and I sat on the tundra, an odd assortment of three colorfully clad humans, dwarfed by the immensity of the world we had just entered. Not only dwarfed- the scale of the Arctic defies attempts to describe it. It utterly subsumes you. We sat on one side of the braided glacial Jago River in a valley framed by gentle limestone mountains across from a several dozen caribou grazing, moving rapidly to the south upriver. Specks of brown downriver promised another part of the herd moving in our direction. Strands of river wove in and out of the main channel over wide gravel bars and by tundra banks lined by small willows. I was four months pregnant with our first child, just beginning to have to adjust my backpack strap under a swelling belly. It was Peter’s and my last summer of just the two of us.

We were starting out on an eleven-day journey backpacking in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, leaving the village of Fort Yukon that morning in a Cessna 185 with large round wheels for tundra landings. In discussion with our pilot the night before, we altered our route, beginning a drainage further west of the original plan and thus significantly lengthening our planned hiking route. We hoped for the chance to see part of the epic Porcupine Caribou migration, but there are no guarantees with wildlife or in the wild, especially as the migration route slightly changes every year. To see caribou at our drop off location made our decision for getting started on travel difficult.

Our first visitor to our campsite

“We wont make it to the pick-up point if we don’t get some miles under us. It’s an aggressive schedule.”

“But this could be the end of the migration- seems like it makes sense to stay put.”

“We could stay a few days…this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, even if there is only a chance!”

We reached a consensus by virtue of sitting paralyzed by awe, watching the increasing herd of animals across river; even the remote chance to watch part of a migration trumped our original plans. This was not an easy decision for three type-A, goal oriented people, nor did it need to be long discussed. We snuggled into down jackets, leaning against our backpacks and alternately reading, dozing and watching the caribou across from us.

Numbers continued to grow. Caribou spread from the riverbed up the side of the mountain. Bulls with prodigious racks sauntered with the dignity of old age, smaller females which had lost their racks while calving, younger males with smaller antlers moved with movements still curious and ungainly. Three caribou on our side of the river walked up to our strange huddle and stood and stared curiously from a respectful distance of twenty feet, quivering with alertness, before continuing their journey. Individually, their delicate legs and wide deep brown eyes suggested fragility, but strength emanated from the growing group moving through a landscape of prehistoric proportion and temperament.

Hoping to get ahead of the growing mass of animals, we staked the wires of our electric bear fence around our backpacks, and headed upriver wearing our warmest clothes for the deepening chill in the air. Night was falling. The light softened, but would not darken at this time of year. Walking in the direction of the caribou- perhaps we could get a bit more perspective on their movement. Even if we had only caught the last few hundred migrating, this was the experience we had only dreamed of.

To keep things in perspective on watching these caribou in the Arctic- the 120,000 strong Porcupine caribou herd migrate further than any other land animal in the world- annually as far as 3,000 miles. As a result, the caribou of the Porcupine herd are slightly smaller than the nearby Central Arctic herd and others migrating shorter distances. The migration is the focus of a huge controversy on the possibility of drilling what is known as area 1002- the coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is the last 3% of Alaska’s coastline possible to protect. Because the mountains come so close to the sea along the eastern coastal plains, several ecological zones are unusually compressed in a small space, producing biological diversity at which scientists marvel. The Porcupine caribou frequently calve on these plains where they are more free from predators, a time of special sensitivity for them.

Caribou are the only member of the deer family with equal opportunity antlers; both male and female grow them. And both male and female shed them too, every year. Given the prodigious racks on caribou standing out even from far across the river, that those racks grow in a year is awe-inspiring. Beyond the significance for the caribou though, these racks also nourish the land. When they are shed along the coastal plains and foothills, large numbers of rodents gnaw them and then defecate creating some of the most calcium rich soil in the world. Just another small example- of endless examples- of the interdependence of life in the Arctic, a grand example we can see in the world around us any day and any place, if only we will look.

Caribou cross the river away from us

We moved easily upriver on firm tundra, the lichen and moss crunching softly underfoot. With the undulating tundra judging distance seemed impossible. We came to the first bend, seemingly steps from our camp but in reality a mile or more of walking, another group of caribou hundreds strong appeared in front of us! They covered the area from the steeps of the mountains to the riverbed. Some reclined easily, chewing on lichen they pulled from the tundra. Most grazed heartily. A large group, alarmed by our sudden appearance, headed for the river and crossed in a straight line, dark felted racks silhouetted against milky glacial flow. One by one they crossed; once across, each shook, almost a shimmy, diamonds of water offered to cool Arctic air. And then, with a wary glance toward us, they moved with stately steps across the rocky river bed to the opposite bank. Still they moved upriver.

In the midst of glory, we had affected behavior; distressed by our incompetence, we slipped into the riverbed to mask our movements below the bank and the sparse grey-green willows atop it. Passing the resting group, the three of us clambered clumsily onto the bank upriver. We walked slowly up the tundra hillside and found a place among small white flowers called mountain aven to sit where we could simply observe.

Watching the increasing mass of animals was like watching an advancing army. Though impossible to estimate the numbers, they covered the landscape, a wavering border clearly defining the forward edge of their movement. Constantly moving forward- an encampment on the move. The land itself come to life. The Jago River flowed to the north; this wave of animals flowed south. On occasion a large section would suddenly shift directions and run, as though of a common mind. Currents of life moved in all directions; the constant was the flow.

In the Arctic, the idea of self evaporates immediately in the rarefied air. It is the wide sweep of the land; it is the light. The light particularly is exquisite; after eight PM the shapes of mountains are highlighted by simple water-color swaths of light of varying colors, blues, yellows, ochres, browns. There are no trees, nothing to grant perspective, or interfere with the idea of space. There is nothing to interfere with imagination, or spirit. And now, in such light, the movement of epochs playing before us, playing around us. It was as though we had stumbled into an ancient world, our souls and our psyches plunged into the illimitable play of the wild.

So we sat a part of the tundra. We sat for hours, past midnight, shivering even in the midnight sun as the temperatures slid south. But shivering just as much from the movement of a life force we could not have imagined around us. Caribou continued to fill the valley. Initially avoiding us, the caribou grazed in an arc thirty feet away. Sometimes they stopped. They peered at us, black masks on their eyes and down their noses, large dark eyes, coats varied from the lightest brown to deep chocolate, spotted and plain. As they swung away from us, just as quickly they circled back around until caribou grazed, dozed, and on gallivanted all around us, uphill as well as down, upriver and down river. Younger animals seemed especially curious and ran toward us, stopping short to stare. I’m not sure we breathed, as though to exhale would blow them away as easily as extinguishing a match, might cause this magical apparition to disappear as astonishingly as it appeared. But this was no apparition; even the breaths of the caribou were audible. Breathing, tearing at the tundra, snorting, burping, galloping, the clicking of their tendons and ligaments, hoofs tapping on rock in the riverbed or mountains. Sitting among them, I felt a part of me was of them, too. That in coming into this world, I had discovered a reality of my own I had never before understood.

My hands rested on the roundness of my belly underneath my fleece. Thousands of animals became an ocean washing over us, following an understanding eluding our species. Their eyes held a sympathy and understanding of life – and death- more pure and free than ours. Inside of me new life swam in its own sea of origin, swam with the same purity as this world in which we intruded. I envied the connection of this wild place and my unborn child, I no longer as free having lived in a world of my own making. I wished to make this wildness my world, knowing that my connection was real but tenuous, a lingering remembrance of ancient ties. An ache of perception of this vaporous connection, of my inability to maintain it within the realities of life, struck me hard. I watched and felt the life in and around me, willing it with all I had to sink into and hold me.

At 1 AM, we reluctantly headed back to our backpacks, thoroughly chilled and hungry. We hiked silently, wanting to step respectfully, not further disturb this world, feel the connection just a moment longer. At camp, Peter fired up the Whisperlite camp stove, and the comforting hiss and blue flame boiled water for our first dinner. The cold that had crept under my down jacket, fleece, polypropolene and wool hat slowly dissipated, replaced by warmth seeping back with tea and food. Our brief comments of wonder to each other hung in the lightness of the Arctic air.

Surrendering our plans to wilderness, we had been invited to witness one of her greatest spectacles, to feel her energy and life move around and through us. The risk of accepting, of turning away from what we lived in our other world, was to accept our own fragility and insufficiency, and yet was also to stand in reverence and astonishment.

We crawled into our sleeping bags at 3 AM- now officially on Arctic time. In the land of the midnight sun, time ceases to have significance. Truly we walk in eternity, an eternity of light and of life. Perhaps in a way we always do, if we have the eyes to see it. So we slipped into our sleeping bags. Guiltily. Still across the river the mass of animals moved. No matter the wondrous scenes given us, the needs of our fragile bodies ultimately override the controls. The miracle of migration. The warmth of a down sleeping bag. A memory which will last forever. Not only a memory- an understanding. A participation. Resonance of immersion in the energy of life at its essential essence.

We camped the night before heading into the bush on the side of the dirt airstrip at Fort Yukon, the Gwichin vilage where Kirk Sweetsir operates his two Cessna 185s for Yukon Air. An old painted sign on a rusted metal shipping container says “Welcome to Ft. Yukon North of the Arctic Circle. Population 687.” There are no roads to Fort Yukon, but it is a port on the mighty Yukon River. Otherwise only bush planes service this tiny population. Despite this, Fort Yukon was the furthest west outpost of the British Empire in North America-first established as a Hudson’s Bay Trading Company outpost in 1847…back when it was still Russian…continuing until expelled by American traders in 1869 following the purchase of Alaska. It is also the final resting place of London born and Kings College educated Archbishop Hudson Stuck, co-leader of the first successful expedition to climb Mt. McKinley (Denali)- sadly the only thing worth mentioning by Wikipidia- but who also served the native community of Alaska for over thirty years, famously traveling thousands of miles by dog sled in his missionary work. When he died of pneumonia in Fort Yukon, he requested to be buried in the native cemetery.

Zipping up my fleece against the relentless mosquitoes in the nine PM sunshine, I leaned over our map Kirk had spread on the container floor. Peter and Mark, my husband and a friend of ours, huddled in. “I was going to drop you off here. Caribou are west now though.” “What about the Jago?” Peter asked, looking at the next major drainage over. “Sure, we could do that,” Kirk said. “You guys can cross over one of these passes to get the Aichilik…” He pointed to an area where the contour lines were amply spaced in the mountains between the two rivers. “Come down this drainage- this is where the wolves den- and you can head south from there. Wolves have been working this whole bank here-” he gestured to parts of the Aichilik. “Had a black one come right into Robert’s tent last week and steal a cabbage! Never seen anything like it in my life!” Kirk was referring to Robert Thompson, an Inuit guide out of Kaktovik. “I don’t know if you’ll see caribou, but this valley is beautiful. I think you’ll really like the terrain.”

As Peter and I lay down for the night in our new tarptent, a lightweight mesh tent with a single layer of nylon, I pulled a t-shirt over my face to keep out the midnight sun.

Kirk loaded us on the plane the next morning. “Just be sure the bear spray is packed in your packs,” he directed. “You guys are lucky,” he continued. “June’s had the worst weather we’ve seen in years. It’s just now clearing up. Gotta drop you guys off, and go pick up some guys on the Jago coastal plains. Sounds like their plane crashed on the way to pick them up!”

These three guys were friends of ours- Mark and Andy Moderow and Paul Denklewater had pack rafted the Jago River the previous week in 35 degree weather and howling, 60 mph winds, sleet and rain. They had been sitting at the coast accompanied by grizzly bear for the past two days.

Kirk is not your typical Alaska bush pilot, though he’s been flying the Alaska bush most of his life. Born in Ruby, Alaska, an Athapaskan village of 100 on the Yukon, Kirk started to fly, and then went back for a Masters in Geology at Cambridge-the one in England. He met his wife there who was getting her doctorate in criminology. They live in Fairbanks in the winter and Ft. Yukon in the summer, from where Kirk flies people to the bush, and his wife advises the British government on policy decisions.

We take off and head north, the endless Yukon flats eventually swelling into gentle hills and then proper mountains of the stormy Brooks Rage. Low clouds block several valleys and passes, and Kirk navigates his way through them seemingly without effort, and with one deep turn where the g-forces press us into our seats. We fly over a high plateau area in the approximate area of the continental divide; that term is used loosely and has little meaning here, he explains. Essentially it determines which rivers flow south and which flow north. We fly over the Sheenjek, where we are meant to arrive in 11 days and where the Muries famously camped in the mid-1950s, revisited only a couple of years ago by George Schaller.

As Kirk picks his way in and out of valleys further north in the range, he finally opts to fly over the foothills and avoid the passes all together; as the Cessna floats over the open and rolling tundra landscape, tiny brown shapes become visible. “There’s a group of caribou,” Kirk notes, as several hundred of these shapes make their way east spread loosely across the foothills. Another group, then another become visible, all moving slowly in the direction we are flying.

We swing into the Jago River valley. We are minutes from landing, but the fingernails I have dug into my palm for the last half hour have lost their effectiveness. I lost my breakfast in a plastic bag, quite humbly as the one other pilot on the plane. Bush flying is a long way from straight and level. Kirk nicely ignores my breach of protocol, and comes in for final on a long tundra strip. Across the river from us are maybe two hundred caribou. “Looks like you guys got lucky,” Kirk said. “They’re all moving toward this valley!”

Dropping our backpacks and shotgun, Kirk waved, turned the plane around and disappeared against the open mountainous landscape with astonishing abruptness. The only sound now was the wind, the mosquitoes and our own small voices.