by Will Hobbs
“Of course not. As I tried to explain to him, tracking caribou with your laptop was just the newest tool, like rifles taking the place of spears. Anyway, it didn’t last long. Nobody was surprised when the government quit showing where the caribou were. So how can you track the … wait a second … do you have some kind of inside information?”
Ryan’s dark beard parted with a wide smile. “Yep, I’ve got a friend who’s a caribou biologist. Lives in Whitehorse. Ken Logan has been studying the Porcupine herd for a dozen years or more. He even spent five months following them on the ground once. Here’s the plan: I call him up on the sat phone, he calls up a bookmark on his computer—at the office or at home—and he’s looking at the present location of those hundred and twenty dots we were just talking about, superimposed over a map of northeast Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada.”
“He tells you if a bunch of the dots are coming together—if the mother of all herds is gathering—and you hike to that location?”
“Steering by my GPS,” he agreed with a nod and a smile.
“I bet you checked in with him this morning. What did he say? Are the caribou gathering?”
My brother surprised me with a shrug. “I didn’t call.”
“Why not? That’s what you came for.”
“I’m not in a rush.”
I put my coffee down. “After ten days, and what we’ve been through, you aren’t in a rush?”
Ryan took a long sip from his mug. “It’s a matter of first things first.”
“Like what?”
“I’m waiting on your feelings about where we stand.”
“My feelings? I don’t get it.”
“Okay, I’ll spit it out. After everything you’ve been through, you might want to think of putting the pedal to the metal tomorrow.”
“Meaning what?”
“We could reach the coast in a couple of days. By tomorrow afternoon we would be close enough to put in the call to Red.”
“You’d give up on finding the caribou and taking your pictures?”
Ryan looked me square in the eye. “That’s not nearly as important to me as you are. After what I’ve put you through, I am highly motivated to get you home safe and sound.”
For a second I was about to jump in and agree with him. Here was the chance to get home soon and in one piece after all that hardship. My natural instinct, though, was to hold back and think about it. Strange to say, I hadn’t even thought of quitting. Since we’d gotten the raft back, I’d assumed we were going to chase after the caribou.
I sat there letting this soak in. The sooner I got home, the better my chances of seeing my grandfather before he slipped away. I pictured what that would be like. Jonah would ask, “Did you see caribou far as your eye could see?” I would have to say, “No, Jonah, we had some trouble. We had to give it up, didn’t really try….”
That was hardly the good-bye I’d been picturing. And I really did believe Jonah when he said he’d be there when I got back, that he wasn’t ready to make his last journey just yet. My brother and I had plenty of food, and nobody was expecting us anytime soon. July 15 was the date Ryan and Red had agreed on for Red to pick us up on the shore of the Beaufort Sea. July 15 was a long ways off—twenty-one days.
But did it really make sense to patch up the trip after it had started so badly? To go out on the land, for who knew how long, after we’d lost more than half of our bear protection, such as it was? We’d already had more than a lifetime’s worth of bear trouble on this trip … wasn’t it crazy to risk even more?
Here was another thing that argued for calling it quits. Even if we did find the mother of all herds, how was Jonah going to feel about the way we did it? He was going to ask how we tracked the caribou, the signs on the land that we followed.
I decided to spit it out. I said, “Jonah wouldn’t like the idea of us tracking caribou that have been chased by helicopters into nets and then tranquilized. Give me an example that would convince him it’s okay for those government experts to put satellite collars on the caribou.”
“Fair enough. You can tell him some of the things the caribou biologists have learned about the Porcupine caribou using these methods. For starters, they’ve found out that two-thirds of the calves are born on the Alaska side of the coastal plain. Only one-third are born on the Canadian side.”
“We already knew that. Like Jonah always says, just ask the old hunters.”
“Well, you know how it is, the science guys are all about data and facts. They set out to learn why the caribou calve more on the Alaska side. Part of that involved studying the survival rate of calves born to collared mothers on the Alaska side compared to those on the Canadian side. Get this: calves born on the Alaska side survive more often than calves born on the Canadian side.”
“Never heard that. How come?”
“Here’s what seems to be the answer. The forage that produces the most nutritious milk—cotton grass—grows more abundantly on the Alaska portion of the calving grounds. Thanks to cotton grass, caribou milk has the highest fat content of any land mammal.”
“Cool. I didn’t know that.”
“Here’s something else about the Alaska side of the calving grounds: there’s fewer predators over there. The land is too flat and wet for wolves to make their dens. The wolves have to stay within reach of their dens to be able to feed their young.”
“Okay, but how does knowing all that change anything?”
“Well, the calving grounds on the Canadian side lie within Ivvavik National Park, which was created to permanently protect them.”
“Sure, that’s why we agreed to the park. Ivvavik means ‘birthing place’ in our language.”
“Here’s the rub. On the Alaska side, the calving grounds don’t have permanent protection.”
“Why not?”
“When the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was created back in 1980, oil had already been discovered underneath the strip of coastal plain where the caribou drop their calves. Congress postponed the decision whether to develop that small piece of the overall refuge for oil or protect it for the caribou. The way it stands today, it’s still up to which way the political winds are blowing.”
“That’s not right. What kind of wildlife refuge is that?”
“It is what it is, and it comes up for a vote every few years. It’s a squeaker every time. The pro-development senators show pictures of caribou grazing in front of pipelines, and claim you can take the oil out without harming the caribou. They never mention the studies done by the American and Canadian caribou biologists. Maybe they don’t even look at them.”
“What do the studies say?”
“That caribou can tolerate a certain amount of development where they graze, but none on their calving grounds. If their birthing place becomes an oil field, the Porcupine caribou herd would likely collapse.”
“You’re going to put all of that in your National Geographic article?”
“For sure. National Geographic has eight and a half million subscribers. A new article about the Porcupine herd and those caribou studies will help, no doubt about it.”
“People way down there actually care?”
“They don’t want the caribou to go the way of the buffalo. That’s why I’m after the photos, to show that the caribou still roam in vast numbers, and are worth saving. And if I can put a human face on the subject by featuring Aklavik as one of the thirteen Native communities in Canada and Alaska that depend on the caribou, people will have even more reason to care.”
So much for thinking that my brother wouldn’t be able to write about the caribou and us. He must’ve spent no end of time learning all this stuff before he came up here. So much for thinking he had to be a hunter to care about hunters.
Now I knew. Ryan and I—Jonah, too—were all on the same side. “Call Whitehorse,” I said.
17
HOT ON THEIR TRAIL
I jumped up and went for the sat phone. It was a clunker, nothin
g like a cell phone. “Call Whitehorse, Ryan. Right now. Let’s find out if the dots are coming together.”
“Only if you’re going to sleep on it tonight, whatever we find out. I don’t want you passing up the chance to head straight home without thinking it through.”
“Deal. Let’s make the call.”
Ryan put the sat phone on speaker so I could follow the conversation. His friend the caribou biologist picked up. Ken Logan was surprised that Ryan hadn’t checked in earlier. “Thought you might have had some trouble.”
“We did,” Ryan agreed. “Long story. We’re fine now.”
“Glad to hear it. What’s your present location?”
Ryan gave him our GPS coordinates, adding that the river map showed us just upstream of Surprise Rapid and Big Bend Roller Coaster.
“I was thinking of you yesterday,” Logan said. “My computer monitor showed two of our collared caribou about to cross the Firth, heading east. Wondered if you might be in position to photograph a pretty good mess of caribou as they swam the river. I left a message with the GPS coordinates on your sat phone.”
“We weren’t checking our messages. We happened to be there, though. Saw fifteen hundred or so.”
“Good deal. Since then, lots of dots have been crossing the river downstream of your current position.”
“Heading which way?”
“East, toward the Babbage River.”
“Where were most of the calves born this year?”
“Typical year. Two-thirds were born on the Alaska side of the coastal plain, one-third on the coastal plain in Ivvavik National Park.”
“About those dots that have been crossing the river—how many?”
“Twenty-seven dots, with more on the way. After they swam the river, they fanned out to the north and south, but now it looks like there might be a convergence in the foothills of the British Mountains, north and east of you. You might be in a position to photograph the biggest post-calving aggregation since 2001.”
“How far should we take the raft downriver before we start walking?”
“Ten miles, no more.”
“Then how far east?”
“Twenty-five miles, maybe—depends on what they do. You’re in for some hoofing for sure. Stay in touch. I’ll be tracking them from home as well as the office. Does your GPS have the maps of the Yukon Territory’s north slope?”
“Yes, and photo view as well.”
“Excellent. I’ll send you there like a guided missile.”
They arranged for Ryan to call from ten miles down the river. Soon as my brother switched off, he got out his river guide and turned to the map with the stretch of the canyon we were in. He showed me where we were, then pointed out a campsite down the river at Canyon Creek. “We could get there today,” I said, “if we really got with it. I’ll sleep on it there, okay?”
“Canyon Creek it is. Did you want to call home, let them know you’re okay?”
“It’s expensive, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but don’t even think about that.”
“They’re not expecting me to call … no, I don’t want to. I might find out something I don’t want to know.”
With that we turned to doing the dishes and breaking down camp. We carried the raft to the river, pumped it up, and strapped on the frame. It took another hour to load and rig the gear. Around three in the afternoon, after nine days without the raft, we launched back onto the river.
Surprise Rapid was waiting just around the bend. Our rain gear saved us a drenching from the ice water that cascaded inside the raft. All I had to do was hang on. Without a lick of trouble, Ryan took us through Surprise and all the way through Big Bend Roller Coaster, which was two miles long. Turns out he knew how to row a white-water raft after all. We pulled into the mouth of Canyon Creek, set up camp, and made supper.
Crawling into my sleeping bag that night, I thought about that decision I had to make, but not for long. I was dead asleep in a minute or two.
I woke a little after six in the morning to the smell of coffee. I crawled out of the tent and Ryan poured me a cup. “I’m in,” I said. “I wanna see those caribou, and I want you to get your pictures.”
“Good deal,” he said. “Thank you.”
After breakfast we climbed to the rim of the canyon to use the sat phone. Ryan called his friend in Whitehorse. More and more dots were coming together on Ken Logan’s monitor—more than thirty thousand caribou!
Under heavy backpacks that morning of Day 11, we paused on the shoulder of the ridge above Canyon Creek to take in a last glimpse of the gear we were leaving behind. Ryan had been extra cautious, deflating the boat and rolling it up for fear of high winds or a bear having a bad day. After that we carried the boat, frame, and everything else up the slope to a spot out of reach of Noah’s flood.
Ryan left a note in an empty jar that said who we were. He dated it June 25. Ryan brought out his second camera, gave me a few instructions, and hung it around my neck. I told him I wasn’t very big on taking pictures.
We turned away from the Firth River and dropped into a wide green valley without a single tree. Ryan stopped now and again to take pictures of the expanse of rolling tundra. He was keeping his GPS handy in his shirt pocket, and scrolled the map every so often to update our exact position. After a couple of hours we stopped to rest and eat. Ryan called Ken to see if we were still headed in the right direction. Here’s the first thing the biologist said: “Bet you guys have the hoods of your bug shirts zipped up.”
“That we do,” Ryan said. “But how’d you know?”
“Because those dots on my computer monitor have scattered. Looks like the caribou stampeded out of the foothills to get away from the bugs. Climbed onto the high ridges where the wind is blowing.”
“I hope this doesn’t mean the weather is going to put an end to the post-calving aggregation.”
“There’s hope in the forecast. There’s a storm brewing in the northern Pacific, and some of the models show it heading across Alaska and onto the north slope of the Yukon Territory. If it even brushes the north slope, you’ll get plenty enough wind to keep the bugs grounded. The caribou will come down off the ridges to feed and have their big reunion.”
Ryan gave his friend our coordinates, and mentioned that we’d been seeing a lot of fresh caribou scat. He wondered if there were any dots close to our present location.
“You bet. Six, pretty well clumped. Got your pencil ready?”
Ryan jotted down the coordinates we needed to be able to steer toward those six dots. We marched on. My pack wasn’t nearly as heavy as my brother’s, but it felt as heavy as the load of caribou meat I had carried on my back six weeks before, on the day the grolar bear surprised me on the bank of the Mackenzie. Ryan and I were carrying food for nine days, a backpacking stove and plenty of fuel, his heavy camera gear, our tent, sleeping bags and ground pads, and enough clothes to weather a snowstorm.
Steering east according to Ken Logan’s directions, we followed a newly trampled caribou trail through a low pass. We dropped into a basin where we came across a caribou highway two feet wide cut into the dark earth. It was flanked by minor trails on both sides. Caribou like to follow one behind the other, moving in parallel lines. A big herd has dozens of leaders and cuts dozens of trails. We were walking in the wake of a very large herd that had passed this way only hours before. The tundra was littered with fresh droppings, and the air was sharp from dark spots of urine that hadn’t yet evaporated.
We followed the caribou highway back and forth across a creek, climbing all the while. I almost bumped into my brother when he stopped dead in his tracks. I stepped to the side to see what he was looking at: two stragglers, a cow with her calf.
The cow was no more than a hundred feet away, facing our direction, but didn’t seem to see us. She was sneezing and shaking her head. Her legs were splayed; she barely had the strength to stand. Her head was down, and thick strands of dark snot were hanging from her snout. Her calf
, alert and healthy, was grazing about twenty feet away.
The mother caribou was engulfed in a swarm of botflies. I’ve always hated bots with a passion. They’re about the size of houseflies, but they’re more like wasps. They lay their eggs in the nostrils of the caribou, and the larvae grow by the hundreds and thousands in the animal’s sinus cavities and lungs. The bot swarm we were looking at wasn’t the first to get at this caribou. She was so far gone, she was already blind.
Ryan was taking pictures as the mother caribou went down. She tried to rise but didn’t have the strength. As her calf came to her, Ryan took more pictures. We didn’t stay to see the end of the story. Ravens would come down to feed as soon as the mother was dead, possibly before. Scavengers watching the ravens would soon follow—a wolf or a bear, maybe a wolverine. By the next day there would be nothing left of cow and calf but bones and hide.
We kept to the caribou trails we’d been following, up the creek and all the way up a tongue of tundra that ended at the foot of a rocky slope. When we looked up we saw hundreds of caribou lining the ridges. Ryan got out his telephoto lens and took some pictures of them silhouetted against the blue sky.
We made another bunch of miles before we stopped for the night on the far shore of a river shallow enough to wade. Ryan called Whitehorse. Ken said that the concentration of dots we’d thought we were gaining on had picked up the pace and moved twenty to thirty miles that day, east through the foothills. We would have to cover a lot of ground the next day to stay within striking distance.
In the middle of the night I was wakened by the clicking of caribou tendons. I had never heard the clicks this close. It was just after three in the morning, bright as day of course. The wind was fluttering the tent. Through the yellow fabric I saw that we were surrounded by caribou. A bull with a trophy rack was grazing on Ryan’s side of the tent. I reached for the camera he’d given me and turned it on. I switched it to automatic like he had shown me and snapped the silhouette of the long-snouted head and wide, branching antlers.
The sound of the shutter didn’t disturb the caribou but woke Ryan up like I was hoping. He looked at me groggily. “Caribou,” I whispered, “all around us.” Ryan wormed his way out of his sleeping bag. Quietly as possible, he opened the netting door and crawled outside with his camera. The caribou didn’t spook. When my brother came back into the tent half an hour later, he said he’d taken pictures of the herd passing through camp, with our tent like a boulder in the middle of a river.