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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll be traveling  as a party of two in a Klepper kayak along the Nigu River to the Etivluk River, and ultimately to the Colville River in the Western Arctic. The trip starts in the edge of Gates of the Arctic National Park- the second largest national park in the country and inaccessible by any road- then heads out into the Western Arctic, officially called the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. The NPR-A is the largest block of public land in the nation, and also the most remote- an hour and a half bush plane flight from the nearest road. These millions of acres are home to two different caribou herds, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, as well as sensitive areas for thousands of migratory birds from around the world. North of our trip is the sensitive Teshekpuk Lake area (see our page on Journeys of the Alaskan Wild). Last year the BLM deferred any oil and gas leasing in this environmentally sensitive area, one of the most important wetland complexes in the world which has been protected by every U.S. administration in the past 30 years.

We were lucky to talk to several people who have spent time in the Western Arctic, with reports of caribou from the largest herd in Alaska- the Western Arctic herd- wolves, grizzly and the well-known raptor populations. We’ve also heard that it is the worst mosquito year anyone remembers. But the Nigu is particularly known for its extensive archeological sites from early man migrations onto the continent. The best known is the Mesa Site but many others sit on ridges and lakes throughout the area. We will and do lots of exploring by foot in addition to about 110 river miles.

Please join us! And in the meantime, add your voice to the petition to President Obama to protect all of America’s Arctic. If you haven’t already, it’s a great time to join the Alaska Wilderness League, or make a contribution, as well! We look forward to bringing you a story from one of the most beautiful and remote areas on our continent and in the world!