Wolverine on the Utokok, by Josh Ferris

Lying in northwestern Alaska, the Utukok River twists 200 miles through sharply folded green hills with rocky ridges that stretched east and west in long rows – Archimedes Ridge, Meat Mountain, Eskimo Hill. Once you’re on a ridge the hiking is easy.

One night I turned from Richard and Sharon, saying I would take another route down and see them soon in camp, but instead of returning to camp, I decided to climb to the top of a nearby knoll for the view.  That knoll lead to a slightly higher knoll beyond, and then another.  I knew that I might never reach the summit, so I hiked faster and faster, trying to make the final peak that I felt was close.  But a moose cow and calf appeared in a ravine and scrambled to the top of the final knoll.  The cow and calf stood there framed in silhouette against the sun.  The cow approached the brow of a hillside and gauged the route of their escape.  The land fell sharply away in a steep decline.  I didn’t have the heart to push them on – they had come up here to take refuge from the mosquitoes that formed relentless clouds everywhere but on the windy hilltops.  I reluctantly turned back.  But with my goal abandoned, I turned to see that the low tundra and rocks were glowing in russet light.  Every blade of grass and flower stood out from deepening shadow.  I ran back down the hill feeling foolish and full of life, everything beat at once, and the world glowed.  Two figures emerged over the brow of a hill calling my name.  Long past midnight Richard and I sat talking in the cook tent, long enough to watch a wolverine scramble along the far bank in a roiling mass of fur and muscle, piss on a stump and hunt on again.

I filmed easy images of stupidity,  a group of caribou appeared, caribou and drums…what a cliché…but there it was…a reality right in front of me…and so I filmed the caribou as they walked among the barrels and then wandered off across the tundra…This was a larger group of caribou than we have been seeing, they moved across the tundra with determination, down the hill towards the river…heading some place they know and we do not…some place they know or sense or feel, some place we can only imagine…which lives in our imagination and gives meaning to this place…We continued across mud sucking tussocks to the second group of drums…I filmed and took photographs and then we headed back to camp walking across a field of wild flowers…white, yellow, pink, blue until we reached the dark flowing river. Just above the river we found the partially eaten remains of a caribou calf…a reminder of the darker rules which govern this place…Then we were into the boat…dark mud and melting ice lines the bank leading down to the dark water…We crossed back to camp, prepared dinner as the sky filled with fast changing clouds…silver light…yellow shafts of sunlight raked the hills…and then the sky opened up with high scattered clouds lit by the low angled light of the sun…Three caribou descend the hill above us and cross the river…they disappear into the glare of light to bright to see…They leave a lone caribou on the hill, who suddenly jumps and runs…We watch as two grey wolves lope across the tundra in the direction of the lone caribou…a story to imagine, with no details to tell…There is a cold wind, there are clearing skies…

The gravel bar is a jumble of jagged clay rock; there are fossils everywhere, worms and seashells, fragments of petrified wood, fern leaves, an ancient world frozen in stone. I imagine myself walking in an ancient arctic rain forest. We climb up the cliff above our tents following game trails and eating blueberries. There are caribou antlers laying in the tundra and caribou grazing on the distant hill.

Reaching the top of the cliff I can look across the river and see a distant oil rig. It is hard to know just how big it is, but it must be big, it fills a distant ridge. The rig unsettles me; I am looking at the last thing I want to see, like looking at a cancer cell under a microscope…there it is, real, solid, not a vision, or an idea…a reality, as real as the caribou or the fossils at my feet.

Later, with the sun low on the horizon, the hills are streaked with yellow and in the distance I can see the vertical tower of the oil rig…It is vertical in a horizontal landscape…it sits there alone…a sentinel that defines the looming threat of more towers, pipelines, roads, gravel pits…all of it representing millions of dollars of investment…money spent to pour oil into the sky.

There are caribou on the gravel bar, there are caribou on the surrounding hills…the river shines blue, the air has gotten colder, there is a light wind…I can barely hear the hum of the land

by Richard Kahn

The owl flies silently over my head, white and brown wings making no sound…over the river into the tundra, the owl drops out of sight and then emerges from a fold in the land a small creature tucked in its talons…Screeching peregrine chicks hidden somewhere on the cliff face, strident calls, chaotic screaming…pleading, hidden from view. The adult falcon, invisible, screeches a warning…

A group of silent black and white geese run across the gravel bar…Gulls watch, their incessant call not so much the call of the wilderness, but more like a reminder that the familiar lives in the most exotic places…or, perhaps, a reminder that the exotic is merely a perspective shift of the familiar.

Loons call, they are distant silhouettes on the water, sometimes sounding like ducks or geese…sometimes laughing…they run across the surface of the river beating their wings as their feet stir up white wakes…They leave the surface, turn and head upstream, heads down, necks extended, wings beating the air, they fight to fly unlike the hawks, eagles, falcons and owls who float effortlessly on the air…hovering, soaring, hurtling towards the ground, blasting straight into the sky.

And then there is the raven, dark shape, calls like a gull, flies like a hawk, soars with the eagles…In the middle of the night the raven’s call wakes me up…it is close, and unlike anything else I have heard here…sound like wind passing through a long pipe…a bird flute…it is unique and unlike the mimicking cries I hear from the raven during the day…If the caribou are the magician animals, dancing across the tundra, appearing and disappearing mysteriously in their own way, then the raven is the magician bird…dark like a shadow…silent or noisy at will, a mimic or a unique individual…secure, curious, nomadic…

NPR-A by Richard Kahn

Rain all night…the clouds are down on the lake…It is a cold grey morning…Patches of blue sky breaking through until the days changes in character…Bright sun, light wind, blue sky…the grasses glowing yellow…Pools of water gathered in the folds of the dunes…the hum of the land is loud in my ears…There are no caribou to be seen… their tracks in the sand have been eroded by the rain…The wind blows sand into the ridges…but the day is dry…We walk up though the dunes, past the loon pond and head south in the direction of the vanished caribou. Ground squirrels watch as we cross the tundra. We stop for lunch finding shelter behind an outcrop of blowing grass above a break in the dunes. A highway of tracks marks the passing of caribou. I set up the video camera pointing out across the sand looking east across the lake. We eat lunch and wait. There are several caribou in the distance…We wait…the caribou graze moving slowly in our direction…We wait…a young bull, a cow and her calf, the ground squirrels run across the dunes, they stand, they flick their tails, they chatter and then run for their holes in the side of the dune… The caribou graze and move closer, until the young bull is just below us. He looks directly at me, pauses, and then goes back to grazing…the cow and the calf move closer and then trot off to the east. The bull walks past us up the highway of tracks and disappears over the hill. In the distance more caribou graze and move closer…we wait…the bull returns…he takes another long look at me and then begins to graze. Caribou walk along the lake. A bull walks into the lake until the water reaches his chest…he stands there, brown body, blue water, his antlers silhouetted in the bright sunlight…the caribou graze around us. The ground squirrels chase each other through the tundra. We spend the day in the dunes, sheltered in this one spot, in the shadow of blowing grass, watching the caribou come and go…A day spent on caribou time…watching them meander from plant to plant, walk, sit, trot, graze and then disappear…We pack up, no caribou in sight, ground squirrels in their holes, a gull calls imitating a loon a loon answers. There is not a cloud in the impossibly blue sky…low angled yellow light has the grasses shinning and the dunes glowing…The lake is a deep blue rippled by the wind and shining bright in the evening light…there is a slight chill in the air…It is quiet, there are no animals to be seen…no birds singing, no bugs…just silence…peaceful serene…

Tomorrow we will leave this place, we’ll fly back to the Colville, back to moving water, cliffs, and tundra…This place is unique…A threshold…an entryway into another world, another arctic, another way to think about the land…There are no mountains here…There are no rocks…the only stone we’ve found in ten days is an obsidian spear point…Josh picked it out of the sand and blew away the dust…it shone deep black in the sunlight…We passed the point back and forth, touching the hand of a man extended backwards and forwards through time…and then Josh dropped the point back into the sand where he had found it…This is not iconic Alaska…but it is true wilderness…fragile…intricate…vulnerable. Filled with the change of the weather and the light…wind, silence, blowing sand, harsh cold, dark clouds, rain…migrating caribou…grasses and willows…intense in it’s simplicity…filled with poetry…powerful in it’s simplicity…spare in it’s grammar…It has taught me a simple notion…It is not what you take from the land that has meaning…It is what the land gives you…a concept so simple that it has eluded me until I walked across the dunes and sand of this place…This place is fragile, the caribou mark the land and the wind and weather erase their passing. The only sign of caribou are the deep trails they have worn over time into the tundra high above the lake.

Our presence is intrusive here. If we had met just two other people here we would have been crowding the space. This is a place which should be left alone…rarely visited but widely understood…the elements of wilderness distilled to their most basic ingredients. Sky, water, plant, bird, animal…mixed together they provide the flavor of wilderness. The willows are the caribou…the caribou are the willows.

Nothing wasted here, I reached down to pick up a handful of dried grass to scatter over the spot where I had pitched my tent and find a bird’s nest.

Time passes, one thing becomes another …the caribou tracks which had been a river flowing across the sandy plain have been erased by the rain and scattered by the blowing wind…the tracks become grains of sand the grains mark the passing of the wind forming ripples and eddies around the grasses that dance beside the lake…the sky unfolds around me clouds form and shred…the horizon encircles me…the sun on one horizon the moon on the other…the cloudless sky fills with darkness…fog descends over the dunes…the world turns grey…caribou drift through the mist…silence…only the hum of the land remains constant…ripples

(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.

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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.