A Solitude of Wolverines

by ALICE HENDERSON

  “What was Dalton studying?”

  “Mountain goats, mainly. There are some amazing cliffs around the bunkhouse. He was about to switch to the wolverine study. And he took regular weather readings from the gondola restaurant.” He pointed on the resort map to three buildings set far away from the lodge. “Here’s where the bunkhouse is.” He straightened up. “As a matter of fact, he came from Boston, too. He’d just finished his postdoc at Boston University when we hired him. But he’s originally from London, which is where his family still is.”

  “Huh, a fellow Bostonian.”

  He handed the keys to her.

  “Thanks.”

  He pointed toward the phone. “I wrote down some numbers there. Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, the sheriff’s nonemergency number, the state troopers, the power company. If you run into any hostile poachers out there, don’t deal with it yourself. Just call 911.”

  “Will do.”

  Then he stood just looking at her. “This really is great of you. Do you have a plan of attack yet?”

  She nodded. “I read a lot of the latest papers on wolverine research on the plane and am going to read more tonight. There’s a new field protocol researchers have been using, a combination camera trap and hair snare. In addition to more traditional tracking, like looking for scat, I’m going to build a few of these traps.” Biologists called them traps, though they weren’t traps in the traditional sense. An animal was being caught on film, or in this case on a memory card, not trapped in a cage.

  “Hair snares, eh?”

  “I don’t suppose you have a DNA lab tech on your payroll, do you?” she asked hopefully.

  He smiled. “Nope, but we have a volunteer who’ll run DNA.”

  “Great! I’d like to see how many individual wolverines are using the preserve.”

  “I’ll give you his contact info.” Ben fished around in his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. He thumbed through a collection of business cards, then found the one he was looking for. “Here. Take it. I’ve got another one at my office.”

  “Thanks.” She slid it into the back pocket of her jeans. “Once the snowpack starts forming, I can get out there on skis and look for tracks.”

  “That reminds me. There are plenty of cross-country skis and boots in the maintenance shed, some almost-new ones donated to us, some old-school ones left over from the lodge.” He gazed up through the windows at the mountains beyond. A white wind-sculpted cloud hung over one of them. “I envy you. I miss being out in the field. I’d love to stay out here and not fly back to Washington, DC.”

  “Does most of your work require being in the city?”

  He looked back at her. “Unfortunately. I used to be like you, doing a variety of surveys, traveling. Now I’m just in business meeting after business meeting. But it’s all for a good cause.”

  “Definitely.”

  “And this wolverine study could entice more donors to give money to protect this amazing place and others like it.”

  She smiled. It felt good to be on a piece of land that was already protected, knowing that if she did find any imperiled wildlife here, it would be safe, at least as long as it stayed in the area. But she knew that for wolverines, this was highly unlikely. An individual wolverine’s range could extend for hundreds of miles.

  He gazed around the room, then stood, thinking. “I think that’s it for the skinny on this place. Keep these maps. I’ll bring in the equipment from the car before I leave.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  She thought a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s go fire up the truck. Be sure it works. Want to go grab a beer while we’re at it?”

  It wasn’t what she was expecting and she laughed. “Sure. That sounds great.” This was definitely the most low-key job situation she’d been in.

  As he rolled up the maps, she tried not to notice if he wore a wedding ring, and when she saw he didn’t, she tried to stifle the little tingle of electricity that rose in her stomach. He’s a coworker, she chastised herself. And you’re still not sure what’s happening with Brad. But it was just nice to meet someone who really understood the lure of the wild. She’d been defending her desire to be out in remote places for so many years—to Brad, even to Zoe, both of whom were utter city spirits.

  They locked up the lodge and walked a couple of hundred yards behind the main building to a rickety maintenance shed. A padlock secured the decrepit wooden door, and Ben messed around with his own set of keys until he found the right one. Then he swung the door open. Before Alex stood the old truck, but it wasn’t what she’d thought. She’d expected a beat-up old Ford F-150 or something. This was a gorgeous 1947 red Willys Wagon.

  “What do you think?” Ben asked.

  “Wow.”

  “The resort caretaker heaped attention on it, kept it pristine. You drive a stick?”

  “Learned on my parents’ 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit.”

  “You want to drive?”

  “Sure.” She pulled out her keys, searching for the right one. Its old-fashioned contours were easy to spot. Stepping into the shadows of the shed, she took in the place. Shelves of old paint cans, gardening tools, and gasoline canisters lined the walls. In the corners stood collections of shovels, rakes, posting tools, and spare lumber. Cross-country skis leaned against the far wall, some wooden with decayed leather bindings, others looking almost new. A variety of boots were stacked neatly beneath them. She examined them, finding a pair in her size.

  Ben went around to the passenger side and climbed in. The wagon was unlocked. She slid onto the bench seat, taking in the wonderful old dials on the dashboard, the thin steering wheel. She inserted the keys and it started right up.

  “There’s a little pub in the town to the east. Caters to people driving from Vancouver to Glacier National Park, so it’s got a nice rustic lodge kind of atmosphere, and even serves all kinds of elaborate coffee drinks with soy milk, all in compostable cups. There’s even a small little bookstore there in one corner of the place. Field guides, thrillers. It’s pretty sweet.”

  “Just tell me the way,” she said, shifting into reverse and backing onto the road.

  The nearest town to the east was twenty-six miles away, quite a distance to get a beer. But the company on the drive was great, and she didn’t mind. She fought back memories of the shooting, glad to think about something else. They talked easily with each other, at first chatting about their flights and the weather, and soon getting into more serious topics like poaching and climate change. It was refreshing to talk to someone with similar viewpoints.

  By the time they pulled into the parking lot of the pub, Alex felt like they were fast friends. The town, Bitterroot, was tiny, with a population of only 1,100, but it had a hardware store, she noticed, which she’d have to visit before going out into the field. She had schematics of how to build a combination camera trap and hair snare. The store had closed at four p.m. that day, so she’d have to come back tomorrow.

  Inside the pub, they ordered beers and told each other stories about different wildlife surveys they’d been on over the years. She told him about the time she’d lost nine pints of blood recording threatened northern long-eared bats in the mosquito-infested Northwoods of Minnesota, and he described a narrow escape from rhino poachers on a preserve in South Africa, which ultimately led to the men’s capture.

  He was funny and kind, and when the time came for them to drive back, Alex found herself reluctant to say goodbye to him. They drove back still talking, but comfortable silences had begun to spring up, and they rode together companionably, enjoying a gorgeously red sunset over the mountains.

  Back at the lodge, they unloaded all the equipment from his rental car, and she walked him back outside. “I hope everything goes well in Washington,” she told him.

  He smiled. “Me too. I’m going to be beat after this red-eye flight, though. Two flights in one day can really wear you out.�
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  “Hopefully you’ll be able to sleep and won’t have a kid kicking the back of your seat.”

  “Or a person who takes three hours to tell me a tedious story that should take only two minutes, like how they built the deck on the back of their house.”

  She laughed. “That might actually put you to sleep. I sat next to a man once who wouldn’t shut up about his sexual exploits with flight attendants. And to make it more creepy, I could tell he was making it all up in an effort to suggest he was some sex god and that I should join the mile-high club with him.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s just push that thought away. I’m going to end up sitting next to someone content just to read a book.” He smiled, looking at her thoughtfully. “Goodbye, Alex. Be careful out there.”

  “I will,” she told him, holding out her hand. And then he surprised her by pulling her into a hug. She smelled his alluring scent again. Her chin rested briefly on his warm neck, and he held on to her for a little longer than a casual hug would last.

  Then he cleared his throat and pulled away. “I’ll call and check on you.”

  “Okay. Have a good flight.”

  He gave a small wave and got into the Honda. She watched as he turned around and drove down the driveway, giving her one last wave.

  She sighed, watching him go. She was all alone now, something she’d been looking forward to. Solitude, a chance to think, a chance to hike and clear her head, a chance to look for wolverines.

  A solitude of wolverines.

  Going inside and locking the lodge door behind her, Alex stepped into the darkened lobby. She flicked on a light and checked her watch: 9:14 p.m. That was 11:14 p.m. Boston time, and she yawned.

  Grabbing her pack, she headed upstairs to the first room. It was chilly in there, but she knew once she was under the covers, it would be toasty. Brushing her teeth and changing into her pajamas, she considered the day ahead of her. She’d go back to town to the hardware store, then if she returned in time, hike out and build the first camera trap.

  She climbed into bed, stretching out under the cool sheets, and powered up her tablet to brush up on current wolverine research.

  While she’d always been fascinated by them, like most people, she’d never seen a wolverine in the wild. Not only was their population density low in any given area, but they frequented steep terrain that lay beneath many feet of snow in the winter. Not exactly places where humans tended to go. Climbing was nothing to a wolverine. If a jagged, near-vertical mountain lay directly in its path, it simply climbed straight up and straight back down, even if that meant summiting a peak that would take humans days to conquer with ropes and climbing gear.

  Wolverines walked and loped, ran and cavorted. They averaged 4 miles per hour no matter what the terrain looked like, be it level and bare or deeply covered in snow or almost vertical. Researchers in Glacier National Park had once recorded a wolverine summiting Mount Cleveland, the tallest peak in the park, astounded as it climbed the last 4,900 vertical feet in only ninety minutes. Another had traveled 220 miles in only thirteen days.

  Wolverines had a feisty reputation. Capable of fighting off grizzly bears, they stalked the snowy woods, looking for food, always on the move. Able to conquer prey many times their size, wolverines had been known to take down animals as large as moose. They could fight off several wolves at once and were known to eat everything on a carcass, even the bones and teeth. And this fearsome reputation belonged to an animal that weighed an average of only thirty-five pounds.

  The description of the wolverine’s diet from the field guide she’d brought along sounded like Bugs Bunny describing the diet of the Tasmanian Devil: porcupines, hares, beavers, marmots, ground squirrels, caribou, moose, berries, plants, eggs, roots, and carrion, including deer, wild sheep, elk, and birds. Wolverines would even go for old dried bones that had been lying out on the forest floor for multiple seasons.

  Females denned in deep snow, often as far down as ten feet, and relied on the insulation and protection of a healthy snowpack to raise their kits. But as the earth warmed due to anthropogenic climate change, the amount of snowpack was being reduced, and there was concern that wolverines would not be able to den in many of the sites they’d used in the past. Descendants of a giant Ice Age weasel, the wolverine used to be found as far south as New Mexico, but now they had vanished from much of their historical range.

  Wanting to formulate a concise plan for how she’d undertake her population study, she leaned back on her pillow. Tales of wolverine researchers had provided riveting reading for her over the years. Hearty souls who loved snow and the backcountry, many of them skied in high-altitude, deeply snowed-in areas, searching for the elusive predators. Dedicated wildlife cinematographers hid in blinds for weeks at a time, hoping to capture footage of wolverines at carcass sites. Wolverine research called for a certain type of person who was okay with long hours alone navigating rugged terrain.

  It suited her perfectly.

  Population studies frequently involved live-trapping wolverines. Large cages were constructed of logs, and the trap closed when the wolverine tugged on a piece of meat inside. As the trap swung shut, a message was sent to researchers that something was in the trap. Biologists then had to leave immediately to hike out to the animal. Wolverines had such high metabolisms that in a short period of time, their body heat would melt the surrounding snow, making them wet and vulnerable to hypothermia.

  After hurrying out to the trap, researchers would lift the trapdoor open just a crack via a cable and peer bravely into the dark confines of the cage. Sometimes they got foxes, martens, fishers, and lynx, but they’d know almost instantly from the growling if there was a wolverine inside. Through the crack, one researcher would jab the animal with a dose of tranquilizers. Once sedated, the wolverine would be tagged with a surgically implanted radio transmitter. GPS and radio collars were of little use because wolverines were notorious for tearing them off after a few days.

  Biologists then waited for the sedated wolverine to wake up and become active. Leaving tranquilized wolverines alone was unacceptable, as they could be prey for wolves or succumb to hypothermia. So researchers hung out and chatted until the animal woke up. Then they’d lift the trapdoor. Despite their snarling and pacing, wolverines weren’t prone to immediately jump out. Instead they’d weigh the situation, decide the coast was clear, and dart out, running to safety.

  Alex had already decided her study would involve a different kind of trap. She didn’t have the extra manpower to live-trap wolverines, so she had decided on the less invasive method she’d described to Ben, one that involved setting up a bait station to photograph visiting wolverines and snaring their hair for DNA.

  After jotting down more notes, she started to nod off. She’d gotten so little sleep the night before that her body ached for rest. Setting aside her tablet, she picked up a paperback novel that she’d bought at the Denver airport during her layover. She’d been in an exciting part when the plane landed, wondering what would happen next. But before she’d read even a paragraph, she was asleep, the book falling onto her chest.

  The book’s thump woke her with a start, and for a second she had the eerie feeling that someone was in the room with her. Vengeful ghosts. She glanced around, her heart rate slowing, and then put the book on the bedside table and switched off the light. But she struggled to fall back asleep.

  Wind whistled through the boarded-up windows on this floor, and she couldn’t fight the feeling that she was now in a strange and maybe unwelcoming place.

  Four

  The next morning, Alex stepped out of the shower, drying her hair with one of the new fluffy towels Ben had placed in the laundry room. The lodge’s old towels were still stacked next to the new ones. Threadbare and thin, the old towels reminded her of those at her grandmother’s house. Growing up during the Depression, her grandmother had never wanted to waste anything, so she held on to her linens in spite of frayed
edges and holes worn in the sheets.

  Alex dressed quickly, the second floor of the lodge chilly. As she pulled on her jeans, movement outside drew her attention to the window. She looked down toward the front of the lodge, where she’d parked the Willys Wagon when she’d returned from hanging out with Ben in Bitterroot.

  A man stood beside the wagon, putting something under the windshield wiper. He wore a black cowboy hat, a faded denim jacket, jeans, and black cowboy boots.

  He moved away from the wagon and suddenly stared up right at her window. Their eyes met. He had a lean, tanned face with a few days’ growth of stubble. His frame beneath the jacket and T-shirt was wiry and fit, and he looked to be a few years older than her.

  He frowned up at her. Grabbing her shirt off the bed, she hurried out of the room and down the steps. She heard a car start up, and by the time she opened the front door of the lodge, she heard the car moving away down the resort drive, out of sight behind the trees.

  Pinned beneath the windshield wiper on the truck fluttered a note. She freed it from the blade and read it:

  You’re not welcome here. Leave while you still can.

  Alex’s face flushed. She’d expected to be treated like an outsider in Bitterroot, but she hadn’t expected outright hostility like this. Clenching her jaw, she gripped the note.