by Will Hobbs
“We’ll have to get the word out. It might show up in town anytime now. This is one more bad sign, Nick. Things are changing so fast, I don’t know what the world is coming to. I don’t even know the names of some of the birds and the insects that are showing up. The crazy winters we’re getting these days, less and less sea ice, more wind and open water in summer, harder to go whaling, the caribou not showing up where they used to and not so many, more bad storms with lightning, even. We’re not supposed to get lightning up—”
Jonah’s voice caught and he started coughing real bad. My grandmother looked startled. I quickly poured him a cup of tea. He was able to drink a little and stop coughing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That stuff about things changing for the worse isn’t any fun to talk about.”
Jonah shook his head. “Fun has nothing to do with it. It’s important to talk about those things. We have to deal with whatever comes, Nick. We’re just going to have to adapt, that’s all. We have always adapted—that’s why we’re still here. It’s going to be up to you and the rest of the young people.”
“We’ll do our best,” I said, without being able to picture what that even meant. If the future didn’t include enough animals to hunt, I had no idea how I would live or what I would live for.
3
A LETTER FROM ARIZONA
I made a beeline for home. The walk to my side of town took only ten minutes. My mother was away, but the rest of the family was there, my aunt Becky and my cousins Billy and Suzanne.
My mother was six hundred-some miles away in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, taking the classes she needed for a better nursing job at the clinic here. It was killing my mom that she couldn’t be home to look in on her father every day. I knew how afraid she was that he might die while she was away.
“Any luck?” shouted Billy as I came through the door. Billy was eleven, keen on hunting, and starting to get good at it. Suzanne, two years younger, was asking the same question with her eyes, as was Aunt Becky, who was at her sewing machine working on a pair of sealskin mukluks. She sews for the Aklavik Fur Company.
“No luck,” I mumbled, putting off my story until I’d eaten. My eyes went to the counter and the stove top. The dishes were already done. It was seven in the evening.
“Plenty of stew left in the pot,” my aunt said cheerfully.
“Thanks. Smells great. I’ll get washed up and be right back.”
“Tell him about the letter,” said Suzanne. She was doing homework at the kitchen table across from Billy.
I was in a hurry to take a look at my aching shoulder but there was something in Suzanne’s voice that stopped me in my tracks. I get a lot of emails, but letters almost never. “What letter?” I said as casually as I could manage.
“It’s not from Canada,” Billy chimed in with a knowing look.
“It’s from the States,” my aunt explained.
“It’s mysterious,” added Suzanne.
As soon as I had the envelope in hand, I saw what it was that had them acting strange. The letter was addressed to Nick Powers, which used to be my name, but not for the last three years. When I was twelve I told my mother I hated the name Powers. I still remember her reaction. “What’s up?” she teased. “Won’t you miss the kids at school calling you Super Powers?”
“A little,” I admitted. “I just can’t relate to Powers. It’s not who I am. I want to have your name and Jonah’s. I want to be Nick Thrasher. That’s who I am.”
So here I was, three years later, getting a letter addressed to Nick Powers. My eyes went to the name of the person who had sent it: Ryan Powers. I’d never met Ryan Powers but I knew who he was—my much-older half brother. We had the same biological father, an American named Conrad Powers. My white DNA comes from him.
My mother and my father met by chance at Shingle Point, where most of Aklavik goes every July to escape the bugs, to fish, and to hunt beluga whales. Conrad Powers was kayaking the Northwest Passage across the top of Alaska and Canada all the way to Greenland. He was the first to ever do it in a kayak. “An adventurer” is how my mother describes him. He never came back to marry her, like he was talking about. He died climbing a mountain in the Himalayas when I was only a month old.
“Hmmm,” I said, slapping the envelope against my leg. “I wonder what this is about.”
Inside the bathroom, I set the letter aside and took a look at my shoulder. I’d gotten off with a couple of welts.
Just to be safe, I scrubbed the welts with soap and sterilized them with rubbing alcohol. My eyes kept going to the envelope. The return address was Flagstaff, Arizona. I already knew my half brother lived there. When I was born he was thirteen years old. These days my white brother would be … twenty-eight.
I used to check out his website when I was younger, but I hadn’t been on it since I changed my name. I made myself get over my curiosity about him.
I was dragging my feet about opening that envelope. “Later,” I mumbled, “after I eat dinner.” It’s not like I wasn’t curious to find out what the letter was about. It’s just that I didn’t want to react like this was a huge big deal.
Why, I wondered, was my brother getting in touch now, when he never had before, back when I was always hoping he would? I used to imagine he would take me on his raft through the Grand Canyon. Maybe that’s what the letter was about, now that I was old enough to do something like that.
I couldn’t resist opening it before going to bed. Big mistake. Between my brother and that awful bear, I ended up tossing and turning all night. Soon as I got up next morning I picked up the letter and reread it. Here’s what it said:
Dear Nick,
Hello up there at the roof of the world. I should begin by telling you how many times I’ve meant to get in touch, or better yet look you up so we could meet in person, get to know each other, maybe spend some time together. Sorry to say, I never got it done.
Here’s what I’m writing about. I’m going to be close to Aklavik next month. I’m going to drive my pickup all the way from Flagstaff, Arizona, where I live, to Whitehorse, then on to Dawson City and all the way up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik.
I’m going to be right across the delta from where you live—if you’re still there—so I could arrange to fly over to Aklavik. That would be great, but if you happen to be in Inuvik, that’s another possibility.
Before I go any further I should fill you in on myself and what I’m up to. The last four years I’ve been making my living as a wildlife photographer. These last two years, I’ve been taking pictures for National Geographic magazine. I’ve been able to travel to some of the most remarkable wild places left on earth and shoot truly amazing wildlife.
To backtrack a bit more, before I was a professional photographer I made my living as a raft guide rowing people down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. I did that for four years. I’m coming north in June to run the Firth River in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
From everything I’ve read and heard, the Firth River will put me in the best position to photograph the Porcupine caribou herd at a time and place where I have the best chance of seeing big numbers of them. Too many trees where they winter, in the Porcupine River country.
Of course I’m hoping to photograph lots of other Arctic wildlife during the same time, especially the barren-ground grizzly. I might as well cut to the chase and tell you I’m hoping you’ll join me for this trip down the Firth River.
I realize this is a long shot, Nick. If you’re interested, there are a few things you and your family need to know. It would be just the two of us making the trip. Normally I travel alone. Traveling with a group makes it nearly impossible to photograph wildlife. I have plenty of expertise when it comes to wilderness, white water, and medical—I’m an EMT. Still, there’s always an element of danger when you’re way out there, as I’m sure you know very well, living where you do. I will have a satellite phone along in case of emergency.
Talk it over with your moth
er, Nick. Like I said, it’s a long shot. You probably have plans for the summer. Another thing … this trip won’t be anything like the raft trip down the Firth River that tourists take. Instead of eleven days, I’ll be taking three to four weeks. You might be bored to tears. If you choose to join me, I will cover all your expenses. I have a bush plane booked for June 15.
See what you think and write me back. We can go back and forth by email if that works for you. In any case, I hope to see you next month. Please give my best to your mother. One more thing … I’ll be writing the article as well as taking the pictures. Right now I’m thinking of the title as “Change Comes to the Arctic.” I have been following the issue of climate change in the North for years now, and would greatly benefit from your outlook on the decline of the caribou and more. Looking forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely,
Your brother Ryan
4
NICK’S BEAR
School wasn’t my first priority after breakfast. I headed downriver with Wayne Tetlichi, head of our Hunters and Trappers Committee, to fetch my rifle. Wayne had a camera along in hopes the bizarre bear had left prints. He was also hoping we could find scat or hair.
Wayne was Gwich’in Indian, in his forties, lean and smart as a whip. I had hunted with him a couple of times. As a tracker he had no equal. I eased back on the throttle as we approached the spot. Wayne reached for his rifle just in case the monster was still hanging around.
We went ashore, cautious as could be. Real quick, Wayne came across a set of quality tracks in the mud. “Big ’un,” Wayne said, as he handed the rifle off to me and began to take pictures of the longer footprints from the back feet and the shorter footprints from the front feet.
I could see for myself that the tracks indicated polar bear, from their size and shape and the short claws on the front feet. Grizzlies use their long claws for digging up rodents. Polar bears don’t need those; they swat seals. These tracks even showed hair on the soles of the feet, another indication of polar bear.
Wayne didn’t say anything, but I could pretty well guess that he was wondering if my imagination had gotten away from me. It wasn’t as rare as it used to be for a polar bear to show up fifty miles south of the Arctic Ocean. Hunger and desperation had driven one nearly five hundred miles south, down toward the Great Slave Lake.
We went looking for my rifle and found it in the bushes. The bear had sent it flying about twenty feet through the air. Wayne tracked my bear a mile onto the open tundra in hopes it had left some scat. It hadn’t, but when we returned to the river and discovered my shredded game bags, Wayne found strands of hair on them. To my relief, the hair was distinctly brown. “Like a grizzly’s,” Wayne said with a nod in my direction. “You said the head and neck fur was brown. Makes sense, the hair on these bags would be from the head or neck—probably face.”
Wayne put on the latex gloves he had brought along. With the hairs zipped inside a kitchen bag, he said, “I’ll get this to Roger McKeon. He’ll have it tested. If this bear is something new and dangerous, people need to know.”
Roger McKeon is Canada’s big expert on polar bears. People up here respect Roger McKeon for what he knows but don’t feel right about the way he gets that knowledge. Harassing polar bears from helicopters, shooting them from the air with tranquilizer darts so you can put a satellite collar on them and track their every movement—that isn’t right. As Jonah would say, “You never mess around with wildlife.”
I heard Roger McKeon talk about polar bears only six weeks before, when he came to Aklavik to meet with the high school kids. He told us he’d been collaring polar bears in the Canadian Arctic almost thirty years, and they were getting harder and harder to find even by helicopter on account of the vanishing ice. He told us that more and more polar bears are turning up drowned, especially after storms, which used to be unheard of.
“Here’s how bad it’s getting,” McKeon told us. “Last summer, a polar bear swam nine days and four hundred and twenty-six miles across the Beaufort Sea in a desperate search for ice to haul out on. We knew Ursus maritimus could swim two hundred miles … four hundred is phenomenal. In freezing seawater, it must have taken every last ounce of her strength. Unfortunately, her two-year-old cub drowned along the way.”
With a shrug and a grimace, McKeon said, “Polar bears can’t survive without their platforms of ice, my friends. Neither will their prey, the ringed seal. Without doubt, the planet is warming, and the climate is changing almost everywhere. Where it’s changing the fastest is in the Arctic. In your lifetimes, the polar bear will probably go extinct in the wild. Think about that when you choose to take Aklavik’s quota. That’s all I’m asking. The choice will be yours.”
McKeon left the gym with a scattering of applause, mostly from the teachers. The rest of us didn’t know how to react. If there’s one thing the people of the Arctic don’t like, it’s people from the south telling us “the right thing to do.” Polar bears have been part of our diet since forever.
Back in town, Wayne headed for the post office and I headed for school. With testing behind us and only a few weeks to go, we were having a lot of assemblies. I walked into the middle of one about employment in the mining industry. I can’t say I paid good attention to the people from the Diavik Diamond Mine or the pictures they were showing. I had two years before I graduated high school. I wasn’t excited about working hundreds of miles from home in a giant pit, or on an offshore oil platform when the government gave the green light to the oil companies to go after their discoveries under the Beaufort Sea.
Mostly I wasn’t paying attention because my mind was on that letter from my half brother. It was exciting to hear from him, but at the same time I was resentful that he had waited this long, like I didn’t exist. At the end of the letter, when he said he wanted to find out what I thought about climate change and the decline of the caribou, it seemed like a clue that his invitation was more about his article than it was about me.
This line of thinking had me disappointed with myself for being so small-minded. Ryan had said it was a chance for us to get to know each other. And the offer he was making was generous and incredible, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As I first read the letter, the name of the river he was going to run really jumped out at me. Jonah had been telling me about the Firth River since I was a little kid. “A hunter’s paradise,” my grandfather called it. He hadn’t been back since he was a young man, but whenever he told stories about it, his memories were keen as yesterday.
The assembly was coming to a close and so was the back-and-forth in my head. Here’s what I knew for sure: even if I wanted to go on the trip, there was no way I would do it, not while Jonah was dying. I needed to stay and be with him, and say good-bye when the time came.
A couple of days went by with me not answering the letter. It wasn’t like I had to do it right away.
Meanwhile, Aklavik was on alert for “Nick Thrasher’s bear,” as it was being called. At school, having to tell my story over and over again was getting old fast. Hearing “Nick’s bear” made my skin crawl. People from Aklavik are not out to get attention. The hunters who have the most to brag about never do.
I got an email from my mother. She asked what was up with the letter from my brother. Aunt Becky mentioned to her that I had gotten it but hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Which was true. All I said was, it’s something I need to think about, and please don’t say anything about it to the grandparents. I wanted to spare Jonah from having to think about what I should do about my brother and his invitation.
By the time of my mom’s email I was ready to bounce the letter off her. Rather than give her a secondhand version of what my brother had written, I faxed her the letter from the clinic with Aunt Becky’s help. While I was at it, I gave my aunt the short version of what was going on.
Soon as I faxed the letter to Yellowknife, I emailed my mother that there was no way I would go on my brother’s river trip on account of Jonah.
She emailed back after she’d read the letter and my email. I understand you wanting to stay with Jonah, but he might pass away sooner rather than later. Your brother sounds like a real expert in the outdoors, like his (your) father was. If you really want to go on the trip and have that time with him, you might think about just telling him where you stand. If it works for him to wait until he gets to Inuvik to find out if you’re coming, the two of you could start talking about what the trip would be like. You could find out if it was a good fit for you.
Thanks, Mom, I wrote back. That’s really good advice.
A few minutes later I sent my first email to Ryan. I was really cautious about his invitation. I didn’t want to act excited, even though I was. All I said was, I’m interested but can’t be definite, and then I explained why.
Ryan emailed back that he was happy to be in contact with me, and he completely understood. He thought it was great that I was so close with my grandfather. He would just proceed as if I was coming, right up to when it came time to shop for groceries in Inuvik.
My mom thought Ryan’s reply was pretty classy. It showed he really wanted to get to know me and have me along.
The famous photographer sent me a checklist of the clothing he was bringing along, for me to make use of if that was helpful. He said he had rafted a river in Canada’s central Arctic the summer before and knew we had to be prepared for ninety-degrees Fahrenheit and also for cold rain and snow. Any clothes I didn’t have already that I might like to take along, he would be happy to buy for me in Inuvik before we flew out for the trip.
I told him I didn’t have one of those bug shirts with the see-through mosquito netting in the front of the hood. Good, I’ll get you one, Ryan wrote back. As I found out last summer, the bugs on the tundra can get really bad.
We were getting along pretty well on the email. The chances of me going on this trip were slim, but it felt good to be in touch with my half brother.