Nigu-Nuiqsut Trip Tales

Nigu-Nuiqsut Trip Tales

An overtly whimsical account of a month spent in a place that can only be processed as poetry. 

“There is much to set the imagination working when men feel their own littleness.”- Helge Ingstad

The Western Arctic is a place full of magic.  It is a land where the summer sun shines at midnight, compass hands grind on their axis, and caribou trails rake across the landscape like ancient veins.  It is one of the few places left on this earth where you can drift for weeks along wild rivers without seeing another human footprint. 

In late June of 2011, the Nuniamut month Erniwik, meaning “young are born,” I set off to do just that: to drift.  When people asked me why I was going on this trip I replied simply “to see what is there.”  Part of it was for work- the Western Arctic is an area that I work to protect from a triage of threats from increased access (roads), large industry (oil, gas, mining), and climate change.  I wanted to gain the stiff knees of one who had experienced a place and ground-truthed it for themselves.  Part of it was for play—the chance to hike, explore, and live outside for a month.

I expected the bugs, the bears, the wind, the flowers.  What I didn’t expect was the profoundly interactional nature of my experience of all of these things.  The more I adjusted to the place, the more absurd and anthropocentric the idea of “seeing a place” became.  As my body adjusted to life on the river, my senses blurred and became inseparable. I tasted wind, saw scents, and felt rough-legged hawk calls in my shoulders. 

I was not observing, but participating.  I went on a walk late at night and the next morning wolf prints accompanied my boot prints on the sand.  The other animals were watching us just as we were watching them.  I came to believe that the real root of that which we call “magic” is the spine-tingling experience of living in a world made up of multiple intelligences.

This is the story of my first real arctic trip.  It is told through short paragraphs and poems.  It is about being a fledgling.  In the arctic, fledgling birds often crawl, hop, and slither before they fly--

Things we carried:

Two pots and one pan

Layers for rain, wind, bugs, and sun

Ziploc baggies of dehydrated mandarins

Rolled red tents

Books full of birds

Bug dope, varying percentages of poison

Wet hiking boots

Thumb-callus lighters

Fog-filled binoculars

Back-up dessert

Enough collected rocks to sink our boats

A GPS with a habit of reporting that we were floating on land

All folded,

Compressed,

Stuffed

Into colorful sacks

And tied into green canvas

Folding canoes

But most important of all,

A deep and grateful sense of wonder

For the rivers that carried it all.

Life like a River

Our journey was above all a river trip.  The rivers gave us transport, nourishment, metaphors, and delight.  Rivers are the coursing veins of the arctic tundra. It is indescribably pleasurable to travel the age-old path of nutrients.  In two pack canoes, our party of four traveled 360 miles on a path worn by glaciers, rivers, and caribou.  Our path began at the headwaters of the Nigu River, tucked inside the Gates of the Arctic National Park. The Nigu flowed through the Brooks Range Mountains and joined the Etiviluk.  The Etiviluk took us through the foothills and united with the Colville, the great west-east holding river that drains the Western Arctic and has been the traffic route of people, plants, and animals for millennia.  The Colville took us to the Coastal Plain, to the top of the world.  It was adventure on a horizon-hopping scale.

Floating

We are shimmying down the river

Slowing down,

Adjusting out angle

Choosing lines

Twisting hips

Our crescent vessel slides

Down shoots of water and rock

Chasing v’s of perpetual motion

Catching small waves

Lean away from the water

Lean into the rocks

Our logic protests

But the river prevails

The water is endless motion

Surface ripples swirl around patches of drowned tundra

Small brilliant-colored arctic grayling breach the surface

Their sail-like fins mirror wings

Of the birds that swoop above.

Mixing Metaphors

The trip was a break from many of the constructs that I accept in my daily life.  The theory of linguistic relativity states that we see, hear, and experience as we do because the language habits of our community predispose us to certain interpretations.  In the arctic, many of these habits were broken.  The constant pursuit of a faster, more efficient way of working was replaced by the pace of the river.  The constant drumming of beeps, thumps, and electronically reproduced jingles was replaced by bird songs and river rapids.   My metaphors became mixed.  Cars become streams, planes became bumblebees, and the songs stuck in my head belonged to the tree sparrow.

 Far from the bustling traffic, gleaming mirrors, and buzzing communication devices that frame our modern lives, in the Western Arctic, I had the increasingly rare pleasure of getting to know a piece of earth as it was made.  

You Know You’ve Arrived When…

Your metaphors shift from artificial

to natural

cars become streams

               the song stuck in your head belongs

to the tree sparrow.

               Luxury becomes stuff sacks properly arranged

into a pillow.

               Planes become bumblebees

You stop picking up caribou antlers.

Ways of Being- Feathers in my hair

One day I picked up a feather.  Resting on a spongy moss throne, it called to me.  As after my fingers lingered over the tundra balancing the treasure in my grasp, my gaze was called upward, by a Rough-Legged Hawk.  The bird circled above me and issued a piercing call, its beak forming a perfect “o”.   It felt like a nod.  I tucked the airy striped feather under my bandana, so it hung in my peripheral vision, to the right of my eyes, like a strand of my own hair.  As I paddled that day, I reveled in the tickling sensation of the feather’s strands playing across my cheek.  I felt the perfect way it cut through the wind.  A feat of evolutionary engineering attributable only to that which is divine. 

The more I wore the feather, the more a part of me it became. When the sun circled endlessly, glaring down on my pale skin, the feather shaded my like an extended eyelash.  When the headwinds slowed our progress and made our shoulders ache, I listened to the song of the wind through the feather, and felt soothed rather than obstructed.  When I became bored, its presence reminded me of the constant spectacle of soaring life that was occurring all around me.  It was a gentle teacher, calling my attention to the fine-tuned receptive fields of my own senses.  It reminded me of how badly we need what David Abraham describes as “renewed attentiveness to this perceptual dimension that underlies all our logics, through a rejuvenation of our carnal, sensual empathy with the living land that sustains us.”  During my time in the arctic, feathers in my hair became a daily ritual. 

To Paddle the Colville

If you paddle quietly down the Colville

Your dripping paddles awaken ripples

And a sensory buffet.

Melting banks smell of rich humus.

Solid and fertile

With a hit of mammoth poop

Lupine drapes like grapes of the North

Expelling its fragrance over the mossy bank

Like a trapeze dancer arching its back to the world

Arctic poppies bob on gravel bars

Bouncing lightly to the tune of the wind

Like an old-fashioned film reel, they watch

The drifting fog carries hints of its origin, the sea

And rain brings out the scent of Alder

Yellow-billed loons dance and dive

Punctuating the moist atmosphere with their haunting song

Once you catch a fish

You smell them everywhere

On the rocks

Fossils retain the chalky zing of moments,

Not unlike this one,

Suspended in time.

Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes

The only constant in the Arctic is change.  Some of the conditions may seem less than ideal, but by realizing that all is change, I was able to shiver, swat and otherwise float through these challenges in good spirits.  I reveled in a sense of excitement each night as I turned my thoughts to sleep, wondering what kind of world I would wake up to the next morning.  In this way, the land teaches us to trust in new days, in small miracles.  Our prayers become simple: “please make more.”

Mountains, foothills, bluffs, coastal plain.  Landscapes, skyscapes.

No animals, more animals than you can point your binoes at.

Wear all of your clothes and shiver, take them all off and swim.

Sun, rain, hail, wind, snow, sun.

1,000 bugs, no bugs.

Low water, high water, slow water, swift water, clear water, silty water.

One fish, two fish, red fish, giant pike fish.

Caribou

Tundra must be at least 30% caribou- their hair, excrement, and bones fortify the soil.  Their shed antlers add a touch of majesty as they slowly intertwine with the mosses and lichen that made them grow.  Caribou are endlessly giving vessels in the tundra cycle of life.  Their hoof prints aerate the soil giving breath to new life.  Their paths blaze routes used by many.  From the air they look like the marks of a giant rake.  They evoke the sensation of running one’s fingers through dark brown humus.   

Seeing these keystone animals alive and roaming is an exhilarating experience.  “Caribou!” one of us will shout and all tasks are dropped, all binoculars raised. In playful moods, we raise our arms above like antlers, hoping to lure the curious herd-driven animals closer. 

My first brush with a caribou came as a surprise.  I was on my first hunting trip in the arctic, and absorbed completely by early-September blueberries that appear like deep blue apparitions, dripping seductively from orange-leafed plants.  I felt an odd quiver in my upper spine.  I looked up and my eyes met a cow, standing carelessly fifteen feet in front of me.  She glowed silver, as if from another world.  Though I knew in my bones, I was the foreign one here.

The last caribou we saw in the Western arctic was running along the shore about twenty miles from Nuiqsut.  Its dark profile galloped along the river like a stallion.  He ran as if he was being chased, but our human eyes could find nothing pursuing him. 

What did you see?

Our common greeting when returning from lone wanderings.  The protocol response was a formula:

“Number, species, behavior, notes.”

For example: “Two semi-palmated plovers, broken leg act, probably with fledglings nearby.

We knew better than to brag, so we indicated the extraordinary—that is to say everything—with our eyes.  I often spent the final leg of my adventures preparing my response to this inevitable greeting.  “twelve mastodon, tusks still attached, doing ballet.” A smile.  “Made use of my bear spray.” A wink.  On my final saunter through the wetlands, my response came from the lupine: “two, the last lines from that Joy Harjo Poem.” 

“Do it in beauty

Do it in beauty.”

On that day, no one asked.

As time passed, we began to see signs of our species.  Cans of beer and Coca-Cola, piles of ashes, flames long since extinguished, large pieces of metal, oil barrels.  The flares of the Alpine oil field, and finally a four-wheeler marking the village of Nuiqsut.  From there we were an airplane hop to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay), a skip to our car, and a jump back to Fairbanks.  Where my metaphors again entered a gauntlet, and I searched for a way to reconcile how my way of being in the world had changed.

Re-emergence

My metaphors are all mixed up.

Birch leaves shimmying in the morning breeze appear

Like black squins on a flapper’s dress.

Are those paters in the sand from wind, stone, or tire>

Is that a bird or a bag?

Turbulent water or passing traffic?

What exactly is the center

Of the world—

True north or magnetic north?

My internal compass grinds

Along its bearings.

But my hope beats with the promise

of a new day.

Lessons learned await

Realization.

Spring Breaking

Spring Breaking

Ice on the Tanana just after break up

Spring is something Alaskans bet on.  Literally.  Each spring, thousands of itchy Alaskans pay $2.50/ticket to guess the precise second that the ice on the Tanana river will break. The Nenana Ice Classic (http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/)  is the state’s longest-running and most profitable (last year’s jackpot was $279,030) game.  It is so popular that this year the Ice Classic’s manager is lobbying the Alaska state legislature to change the statute governing charitable gaming so that they can sell tickets using broadcasting (aka: on the internet!) instead of in little red and white striped jars at local retailers.

After seven months of solid snow, it is hard to avoid the fanfare associated with seeing dirt again.  At first the idea of bare ground felt like an affront to my winter wonderland.  I had come to covet my well-worn trails, their simple pathways to my vital places.  I had just mastered my wardrobe, just put on my studded bike tires.  All of this warming temperatures and increasing sun was literally causing rain to fall on my parade.

the UAF Polar Bear (students get pics riding it in bathing suits in -40)

In protest, Sara and I tried to get the most out of the last bits of our winter.  We played a frisbee tournament called "No sand on the Chena"  (the Chena is a river)

We competed in a race called the Infamous Ivory quest.  Since we were dog-less, we human jor'd it.  

And we did a nice last minute ski-to-cabin trip in the white mountains....

...to soak it all in.  Nothing like spring skiing with a pack!

Protest * Cramp * Flex * Submit

I remember the first time my feet touched the actual dirt.  It felt disorienting, like when you first set foot on a skating rink.  My arches protested, flexed, cramped, and finally submitted.  This is how spring came to me.

But there is no fighting it.  It happens in an instant.  The combined inertia of a winter’s weight of snow. Seeping overflow, building tension.  Until something cracks, slowly unearthing a chain reaction.  Blue butterflies signal, reindeer are born, the sun graces midnight, miniature violets follow Lapland rosebay follows anemone follows birch buds, follows green-bean bluebells, all following the lead of pussywillows, greeting the world, fuzzy side out.

Alaskan spring has captured the creative powers of writers much more articulate than I, so in stead of waxing poetic about the return of smells (like the outhouse and compost) and the necessity of Fairbanks’s full-on clean-up day for all the litter we find as the snow melts, I will share some reflections from the writers that have served as my guides to seasonal change:

History 

A path goes to the outhouse over the wooden bridge,

and one to where the slop bucket's dumped. 

Down to the truck, behind the cabin for firewood. 

In winter they pack hard as if they'd Last forever

any good map would show them. 

There's history under the bird feeder,

fallen seed pressed between snows,

a geology voles tunnel through.

My boots mutter along the trail as I listen in. 

Thoughts come and go,

though I've forgotten now,

worries punctuated by clouds of breath. 

Two thousand pounds of wood cut I winter's narrow light,

there's my conclusion.

Then history softens in the sun. 

Where I walked is runoff now and cold black earth. 

Here's a photograph of those paths,

only a month ago,

That's what the world was like,

a few ways of going. 

They're only where a man once walked,

what he needed for a little while.

April is amnesia,

a green Assumption. 

There's a soft hiss off new leaves,

unlike autumn's sound of tin. 

The forest returns as it has always been,

washed of the steps of man.”

- Joe Enzweiler, A Winter on Earth

“Spring was my favorite time of year, and it took extra energy to stay in a bad mood.  The sun came home to the Arctic and shone tirelessly on the shimmering world of snow.  Midwinter diminished into memory and the darkness of next winter seemed inconceivable.  Warm smells rose form the black soil of exposed cutbanks, birds shrieked and carelessly tossed leftover seedsdown out of the birches.  It was a season of adventure calling from melting out mountains, of geese honking after a continent-crossing journey, of caribou herds parading thousands long on their way north to the calving grounds, sap running and every arctic plant set to burst into frenzied procreation.  Spring was the land smiling, and I couldn’t imagine my life without that smile.” –Seth Kanter, Ordinary Wolves (70).

“One afternoon, silently at first, the whole river began moving.  Inside we felt something in the air, maybe a dog pacing around his chain, maybe geese honking and lifting off as ice pressed in, or that other sense we have never learned enough to name.” –Seth Kanter, Ordinary Wolves, 92.

“We can’t all live that pitch.  But every so often, something shatters like ice, and we are in the river of our existence.  We are aware.” –Louise Erdrich

Winter Wonders

  The Northern Lights

The Northern lights are the pinnacle privilege of an Alaskan winter.  They evoke gasps from even the most wrinkle-eyed old-timers.  Seeing them is a prize that outhouse-goers laud over those with running water (the outhouse is one of the only reasons you might wander outside at three in the morning in negative thirty) and a serious point to consider when deciding where to live.  Their activity is tracked in the Daily News Miner, and occasionally they make it on the front page.  

The Northern Lights from the front page of the DNM http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/12304647/article-Solar-flare-fuels-spectacular-aurora-in-Alaska?instance=home_lead_story

The northern lights make you think of others.  A good show is a widely accepted excuse to call friends at two in the morning. They are a temporary cure to cold fingers and noses.  They are something that you want to capture and share.  But camera phones can’t cut it.  To get an impression of the Northern lights, you have to set up a long exposure on a steady platform.  I will try for you.

When I first heard of them, I imagined that the northern lights would be a theatrical performance, like an Imax movie preview shown at the planetarium.  It would be awesome with a capital “A.”  The colors would dash, the tempo of the music would pick up, soaring panoramic shots would swoop you straight to the edge of a cliff. In that first moment of silence that marks any good fall, you discover that you have wings.  And those wings are the fluttering lights.  Well it’s not really like that.

I first saw the lights from Pat Stanley’s yard along the Yukon River in the summer of 2009.  At first I mistook them for movie premiere skylights, but quickly dismissed this given that my feet were planted in Fort Yukon, an Athabascan village located above the Arctic Circle and 150 miles from any sort of town with big lights.  As comprehension dawned, I was surprised at how quiet and normal it seemed.  Instead of a star wars soundtrack, I heard the gush of the Yukon.  Instead of flying, my urge was to plant my feet and sway.  Instead of a laser light disco, the lights looked like big, silk curtains, rippling in the chilly September sky.  They looked more natural than I had expected- like a cave drapery in the Carlsbad Caverns.  As Pat and I stood on her porch and watched, I was reminded how unnecessary our human need to embellish, decorate and complicate that which is already whole, natural and beautiful

I see the aurora as a show opener, a teaser, a path to a way of living that is conscious of all of the miracles around us.  It is a suspension of belief that we explain through science.  I am told that the aurora occurs when supercharged electron particles from the solar wind interact with elements in the earth’s atmosphere.  Solar winds take 40 hours to travel from the sun to the earth, at a speed of 1 million miles per hour, and they follow the magnetic pull of the earth’s core, straight to the north (aurora borealis) and south (aurora australis).   The green lights that I see in Fairbanks are oxygen and the pinks and purple are nitrogen.

I prefer more poetic versions.  Stacey told me that the Saami people of Finland believe that the lights came to be when the fox ran across the night sky, sweeping the heavens with its tail, and leaving behind a spectacular glow for the people of the north to see.  In the case of the northern lights, seeing is believing.

Sounds of a cabin

The gentle ticking of the battery-powered rooster alarm clock that my mother sent to me this summer when I had no electricity.  Back to the old days, I smiled.  Now I leave the batteries in, a wasteful act justified by my love for the simple, soothing sound.  Knowing its there, keeping the beat.

The hiss of water spilling out of the cracks of our old, white tea pot.  The one that we got from Jen as she left for the Amazon and that we later saw its sibling occupying space in Barb Miller’s garden.  It is old and rusty and when you remove the cap you can see that water only boils in patches.  But we fill it each morning, warming water for tea, oatmeal, and the wooden bowl that is our face wash.  Probably contracting cancer, but addicted to the simple oldness of it.

The whir of the Toyotomi stove sitting at the couch’s shoulder.  Its fluctuations have come to mean warmth, and safety.  The old stove is the best seat in the house.  I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor atop a half-finished rug that Sara is weaving out of old sheets. 

The gentle melody of Bon Iver, Amos Lee, or Daisy May that wraps around the small glowing room in the evening.  The “talk of the nation” that seeps into our 7:32 dreams and pulls us into a new day. 

The whimpering of Chandalar dreaming, his legs spinning and his ivory fur glowing by the light of an omnipresent candle, like a Caravaggio painting.  

The late night kerr-unch of a moose on our porch, sampling our ancient frozen jack-o-lantern bate.  The sound drifts into my dream as a parrotfish munching on coral, stripping Velcro.  Speaking our excitement through shining eyes, Sara and I tiptoe lightlessly to the kitchen window, where we watch the impossibly long legs and triangular sloped back of a moose calf through our very own fishbowl.

Night Skiing

I think that skiing is making me a better dancer.  It is one of those rare and perfect forms of balance.  Not the self-assuring mind balance I wrote of this summer with the log bridge, or the flat-footed balance of my morning yoga pose when I stand on one leg and arch the other in the air behind me, like a judo ballerina, reaching forward to the day.  It’s a feeling of controlled oscillation.  A slow adjustment of your body played out on your feet: the rolling pressure: arch to ball to heel to side.

Skijoring is balance in that you feel that you are a glorious utilitarian: maximizing the circumstances of slippery snow.  Instead of the fighting, sinking of your studded running shoes, with skis you peacefully embrace the ground.  Unlike mechanical machines, the dog in front of you needs only food and a warm place to sleep.  He can turn around at any point and senses far more than your eyes.  Sometimes, in particularly dense woods, I look more at Chandalar’s ears than the nooks around me to detect moose.  You can feel the dog’s steps glide your hips and together you are invincible.  You feel as if you are gliding through an endless portrait, witness to the evolving colors that the sun paints the sky.  The gliding comes our like singing.

Night skiing is a matter of rhythm.  Terry Tempest Williams wrote: “peace is the perspective found in patterns,” I would add “skiing is the key to the patterns that produce peace.”  Any movement over the snow creates a squeak, and it is impossible to ignore the scratchy melody you create.  On one hand it is the sound of productivity, and I feel the warm blood flowing through attentive, engaged limbs.

On a warm night, the clouds cover the sky like a down comforter, and in their mist the light pollution from the city creates an odd sheen, it is as if the world is dangling in a perpetual dawn.  A component of my brain resents this light for its false nature, but another honors its beauty, and urges me to embrace the urban beauty, the complexity of change in my stark clean world.  This light sweeps into the cracks and prints of the trails, momentarily suspending their imperfections and my usual caution.  I can focus on the soothing rhythm of my skis.  Liberated from the duality of day and night, I breathe in a feeling of endless possibility. 

On a lucky night, the cloud blanket sheds snow.  I glide slowly, my gaze fixed upwards as the droplets of ice descend and fill the porous land with their subtle light.  In boggy areas, miniature spruce pose stoically from under hoods of snow, like a giant game of chess, waiting for spring.  On a clear night, the air is crisp and the moon shines strong.  As we traverse a thin spruce-lined trail, I ask my friend Brad what he would do if the world ends next year.  He sighs and I imagine his smile behind me, “honey, I’m already doing it.  This world is heaven, people just refuse to see it.” Embarking into the cold night, I question my sanity, but returning I never feel quite ready to go back inside.

Winter Mirages

Why the Rose-colored glasses?

Reading over my letters, I realize that I paint an impossibly sunny picture of my life up here.  Sure, there are lots of double rainbows here, but the exceptional natural beauty that surrounds our little valley does not dissolve all ills.  I do not wish to portray that Alaska is a magical pocket of the world unaffected by economic depression, corruption, homelessness, climate change (which is actually happening 4 times faster in the arctic then elsewhere) racism, sexism, and boy trouble.  All of these things are real here.  Nor is it the case that my personal orbit is utterly free of obstacles, self-doubt, and fear.  In the last twenty four hours, for example, I  shattered a ski binding, our dog was hit and killed by a car, and our cabin nearly caught fire.  How tenuous is the pivot that changes life as we know it.  So why, when I sit down to capture my experiences of this place does everything come out like cotton candy?

Reason 1: Be practical: when you are 22 years old and live thousands of miles from home in a cabin without a lock, its best to not freak out your audience.  Especially if this audience includes your grandmother and a host of family and friends that you are subtly pressuring to drop $1,000 on a visit.  For example, when I called my mother (the only cell phone number I have committed to memory) from the inside of a car repair shop after getting lost on skijor trails and locked out of work for four hours without my phone, wallet, or a worthwhile pair of pants in negative twenty I explained it in terms of a “slight miscalculation.”

Reason 2: I am generally determined to use humor to make the best of whatever comes my way and learn from challenges.  These letters are about sharing the good that comes out of my experiences, even if they aren’t all ephemeral when actualized.

Reason 3: Fairbanks is technically a desert.  I often see things through the sheen of my bright red hair.  The result of this combination is that lately I’ve been seeing mirages.  Mirages are created when the air next to the earth becomes warmer than the air immediately above it.  I think they must also happen when fresh dry snow performs synchronized swirling, skating before the car in sheets, disguising and bedazzling the road below.  And when I light a candle to watch the light dance.  The world that each us sees is the creation of our minds.  The world that I’ve always seen has been nothing short of magical. 

In order to illustrate this, I offer a literal picture:

This is a shot that Kyle took of the stars and moon over a river in Denali.  I was present for the inception, and I remember it well.  The smell was windswept and lonesome.  The sound was humming liquid tranquility. The feeling was that of being pulled forward by your clavicle by some universal beckoning of the starry night.  If you were to look behind the camera lens, you would find me, wrapped in a scarf, eyes half closed, absorbing these details.  Back home on a computer screen, the picture looked comparatively bleak.  The river was flowing glass, but the starts lacked their twinkle, the feeling was lost.  On Photoshop, he adjusted levels of tone, light, coloration and to my amazement, the picture came alive.  “There!” I exclaimed, “that is how I see the world.”  This is what I try to capture for you.

Lately my mirages have been focused on the rotation of seasons.  The sun has returned in earnest, in nine-hour shifts, to banish the frigid chalky tone from the sky.  March is a sweet reprieve from the harsh temperatures of February and the darkness of December.  We can feel the sun again.

Skiing along the valley trails

The summer flashes arise

The sweet snow lanes before me

Transform to dew drops

In a murky marsh

Full of bugs and sun

The world bumps and bustles

With light and lithe

We lighten ourselves

Narrow down our loads

And begin to twirl

So in this letter I have attempted to address some of the challenges and how I convert them to joys.  In case I was getting too poetic and mushy…we do have a real problem on hand.  This section is about the latest developments of our outhouse, read on at your own discretion. 

Battle of the Poopsicle:

I first became aware of the danger looming behind our cabin when I came home from my lower forty eight trip in January.  I was excitedly slipping on boots to head to the outhouse when Sara’s face stopped me in my tracks. 

“Erm-be careful…” her expression threatened to implode to laughter or crying.

“There’s quite the-er- look in the hole.”

I did so.  And to my surprise I encountered a veritable stalagmite of frozen excretion, decorated like a Christmas tree with whisps of toilet paper.  The popsicle was menacingly close to the foam seat.  Impalement was a clear danger.

“Aaaah!” I ran back to the cabin laughing explosively.

What to do?  Naturally, I sought advice of locals at work, social events, and the supermarket.  Lori suggested that we melt it out with hot water.  Sara wanted to with a shovel.  We don’t have a shovel so I suggested a ski pole.  Marla advised us to hold our attack until it was cold and brittle, as in –40.  Liz suggested we invite a polar bear over for tea.  Our ever-practical executive director suggested adjusting our angle when using the facility.  An unmentioned comrade told us to move our outhouse, set up a shrine, and have people throw pennies at it and make wishes.  Thus far the only action taken has been to laugh a lot.  I tried to knock it down using an old board, but to little avail.  We are still collecting suggestions if you’re feeling particularly clever.

This is from the world ice carving championships.  Put here to illustrate how tough the ice is!

Dancing off Burnout

In the non-profit line of work, we have to remain ever vigilant of the looming possibility of burnout.  In a brainstorming session for our 40^th anniversary, we decided that the Northern Center is the smallest group of people (8 staff, 13 board) working to defend the largest territory (arctic and subarctic Alaska) with the smallest budget.  I have driven by the Northern center on more than one Friday night and seen the telltale lights of overtime.  There are days when the problems, corporations, and risks seem incomprehensively huge and I feel acutely inexperienced and underprepared.  At times like this, I turn to the advice of the fantastic generation before me. 

“That’s what I would say to you, in the midst of these difficult times.  If you are going into that place of intent to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the wildlands in Utah, you have to know how to dance.”- Mardy Murie

This is a different kind of dancing.  It is the kind that you do when its negative thirty outside and you’re antsy.  The kind where you walk straight from the door of the bar to the dance floor.  And spend your week’s grocery funds on a Rusted Root concert (very worth eating oatmeal for lunch).  It’s the kind of movement that is born from moments of exasperation where you realize that your options are to laugh, cry, or dance and you choose all three. 

Dancing in Snowshoes is Not Advisable

            A similar thing happened with the snow.  Even the worst of Michigan snow days could not prepare me for the effects of our latest snowstorm.  The trails vanished.  Cars vanished.  Mailboxes were nowhere to be seen.  The lake that I generally run across became a depository for extra snow, and I sunk in over my waist and had to break the trail for Chandalar by crawling on my elbows.  Baby steps.  Having no shovel, I snowshoed, then skied, then walked my trails clear.  Sara crawled on top of her car and log-rolled it clear with her body. 

The only real course of action is to laugh in exasperation and make snow angels.  They are my version of graffiti, and I have been marking the trials with them.  Each day on my romps, I make a point to fall straight back into the snow and swish my arms and legs like windshield wipers.  I love the feeling of the snow molding around and supporting the curve of my back like tempur-pedic foam.  Relish the chance to listen to my heart beat and feel the blood circulate through my limbs.  Lying in my little dip of snow, I can meld in with the world and take a moment to get the snow’s view of the birds.

Caribou Hunt

 My First Caribou Hunt in the Arctic

(most photos by Jon Miller)

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Call

As distracting as it can be, I always enjoy picking up the phone at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.  Answering our phone is like reaching your hand into one of those mystery Halloween boxes full of noodles or confetti, or eyeballs. I am never sure whether the person on the other line will begin yelling about our efforts to “shut down” a mine or admonish me for my formal “thank you for calling…how can I help you” and invite me to a potluck at their cabin.  On this particular late August morning, I answered the phone and a man named Jon Miller invited me to join him and a friend on a caribou hunt on the border of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Of that first conversation, the only words that I really heard were “go,” “Arctic Refuge,” and “September.”  I said yes before he finished the sentence. 

Getting Ready

            Reality trickled in slowly as I began to prepare for my first trip to this mythical place that has captured my heart, mind, and work plan, since high school.  The unknown is in many ways the essence of adventure, and judging by how little I knew going in, this seemed like a guaranteed adventure.  The hunting agenda, for example, was something that I had not really anticipated.  Desperate to secure my spot, on that first phone call I bragged, “I helped slaughter a pig on my study abroad in Thailand-- I don’t have any problem with killing animals.”  Nothing could have been farther from the truth.  Up until this point, I had never shot anything more potent than a laser tag gun.  When I was ten years old I threw a righteous fit when my dad tried to store a gun in our garage.  A classical product of my expensive liberal arts education, my car back in Michigan’s bumper sticker reads: “bare feet not arms.”  And my role in the “pig slaughter” had been to brace one hand on the pig and the other on my friend’s wrist, nurse-style, and grimace while another classmate stabbed the already unconscious animal in the heart.  When my boyfriend at the time tried to prepare me by taking me to the local Sportsman’s Warehouse and making me face up to the bevy of mounted animals, my toes curled and I retreated to trying on silly coonskin hats. 

To further complicate matters, I was packing for my first true arctic camping trip that was to take place in a month where snowstorms and ice fog were commonplace.  My gear fairies smiled knowingly and prepared me for a blizzard.  Over wine and chocolate, I described the few hazy details I had managed to remember about the trip to my boyfriend’s parents, long-time wilderness guides.  Carol half-smiled at my blind eagerness and Jim decided I was in for quite the trip, and packed me extra-thick socks and hand warmers. 

You know how you’re not supposed to go to the grocery store when you’re hungry?  Well I went shopping for this trip when I was hungry, excited, and expecting to freeze to death.  In this state of delusion canned peas and real potatoes seemed like reasonable pack food and I poured into my drybag enough heavy rations for about three weeks of Oregon Trail-style starvation. 

As I ran around like a squirrel gathering gear for a long, cold, winter, I also reached out to the people around me for guidance.  My friends were clearly jealous.  Aaron wrote: “enjoy the hunt, Miss Hertz.  I hope it is safe, successful, and full of beauty and meaning.  You know: like my outhouse will be.” Kaarle mocked concern, noting that bears are “attracted to ginger (both the color of my hair and the flavor of the chocolate I had stockpiled for the trip), especially before hibernating.”  In that arena, my parents back in Michigan expressed genuine fears about the fauna.  “Aren’t there bears there?” my dad worried, “how will you hang your food on the (treeless) tundra?”  Details I had no answer to.  At least my dairy-free, locavore, roommate was sensible.  Her parting words to me were, “bring us back some meat!” 

And So It Began

I woke up on the day of our departure full of that wonderful sense of precariousness that comes when you place your life firmly in the hands of near-strangers and resign to enjoy the ride.  Jon and Sven picked me up bright and early from the Northern Center in a packed-to-the-brim red Toyota.  I was meeting Sven, a German teacher at the local high school, for the first time and we immediately bonded in contemplating how on earth there was going to be room for any amount of dead animal in the overflowing truck.  “Relax,” I instructed myself as I climbed into the rigidly straight-backed backseat, “its an adventure.”  And so, like generations of slightly crazed settlers before us, we headed north on the only road that goes north- the Dalton highway.  This road parallels the famous trans-Alaskan pipeline all the way to its source: Prudhoe Bay.

Ten hours of snoozing, chatting, and daydreaming, were perforated by gas stops at places like Coldfoot, a town of about 30 founded in 1900 when green prospectors got cold feet and, according to legend, ran away.  I scampered in and out of the all-camo-clad-male truck stops in my long johns, ignoring boring stares and treating every flush toilet as if it would be my last.  We saw quite a few trucks puffing merrily back south with antlers on their roof.  I initially read this roof décor as a particularly grotesque display of masculinity, until I realized that it was practical- there was no other place to put them.  As we passed this parade of army green, I envied their success and wondered what it would be like to trade places.  I watched one particularly camo-fied and rotund hunter waddle painfully out of his car and decided to stick with my team.  As we bumped along, above the Arctic Circle, through Atigun pass, and into the purple Brooks Range, I chewed over the names of the rivers: Yukon, Koyukon, Kobuk, Sagavanirktok, Ivishak, Chandalar.  I felt that odd comfort that comes from moving uncontrollably into a new horizon.  I had few expectations and a lot of trust.

Getting Out:

When we arrived around 6pm that evening, we began the process that would perforate the next week: hauling.  Jon’s truck took the first leg of the work, driving up what is nicknamed as the “Haul Road.”  But once we reached what seemed to me a random spot along the otherwise unmarked Haul Road, the hauling was all human-powered.  Gear from truck to parking area, parking area to staging area, staging area to gravel bar, gravel bar to canoe, canoe to other canoe, in an attempt to balance weight and give Jon, the most experienced paddler, the most precious cargo. 

Our goal for that night was simple: get as far away from the road as possible.  Jon was understandably protective of his hunting grounds and didn’t want to be spotted. And we were all anxious to escape the lights and earth-shaking sensation of being near the highway’s large trucks.  So we pushed our canoes into the river and were quickly afloat.  After an all too brief paddle down the first river, we began lining up the second.  In layman’s terms, lining is pulling a canoe up the river.  And not necessarily by walking along the bank.  Most of the time we joined our canoes in the river, sometimes in water that came up to my chest.  Lining is a slight improvement over a sourdough technique called “poling” in which a person sits in their canoe and uses a large stick to move themselves against the current.  In Jon’s poetic terms, lining is like flying a kite.  Except that this kite contains all of your food and provisions for a week, and you had better not mess up. At first I felt a bit like Benjamin Franklin must have during his early kite and lightning experiments. 

After a few hours of battling the arctic river, we arrived at a sandy bank christened by caribou prints and made it our camp for the night.  We ate delicious caribou heart sandwiches packed by Jon’s wife, Lou, for dinner and sat around the Kelly Kettle (a small rocket-ship like contraption that we used to heat water) consuming cup after cup of tea.  Before turning in I climbed a knoll in the expansive arctic night and sat on its brink in silence for some time.  My heart was jumbled, but in the turning light I felt something stir in my core; I began to feel acutely alive.

The next day brought a fresh round of battling with the river.  Sven and I negotiated and re-negotiated the best way to share our lining duties.  Jon attached a “centerboard” to the bottom of our canoe to keep the boat sailing straight.  We promptly lost ours in the first set of rapids.  We attached a rope to the bow and a rope to the stern.  After another near dump, we figured out that it was best to have Sven in front, providing a slow and steady pull and me in the back, using my line to steer the boat, generally straight into the bank.  I quickly realized the true beauty of a solid bank.  The braided river in front of us presented a constant challenge.  Every moment felt like a calculation: deciding which way to go, when to cross, where the water would be rough, which layer of the looming mountains ahead was the site of our camp. 

I created a mantra, constantly instructing myself to relax and use the flow of the river.  I imagined that the river was like a horse.  My little sister’s warning about how the animal could easily read my level of stress circled around my head. So I strove to create a mutual level of comfort and respect, which is hard to do with a body of water that is constantly trying to knock you off your three-sizes-too-big to fit over waders- tennis shoes. 

As a scrawny kid, I once ditched my slower-than-optimal family on a hike through Glacier National Park in favor of a faster-moving foreign group that passed us.  For the first few minutes it was glorious.  My calves burned, my new comrades clamored in a foreign tongue, the trail sped by.  But after a few more minutes I began to swallow guilt.   I did not stop to examine the incredible rainbow pebbles as my sister would have.  I had given up access to my dad’s stash of trail mix.  I have long since learned to value the journey over the destination.  So on this trip up the river, I savored little moments: the reprieve of flat banks, the evolution of rain and mist swirling around us, frosty dewdrops of late-season blueberries that melted in my hands.  I paid homage to the technological triumph of Stacey’s new chest-waders by sitting down in the river on breaks.  Jon laughed, saying he had never seen anyone do such a thing.  I smiled, reveling in the buoyant resistance of my waders and wool against the playful river.  Leaning forward, I drank like a caribou, straight from the river.

Taking it in

Being a newcomer to this part of the world, I had no concept of how long our journey would be.  So when Jon turned to me with an impossibly large grin that could only mean one thing: “welcome home.” It took me three seconds of disbelief to accept that we had made it to camp and about three more to feel instantly at home in the grassy, unmarked riverbank.  Camp was a little river wonderland.  It was located along a gloriously flat bank, circled on all sides by hills and rises and held in place by a particularly flat and clear river delta.  To my delight, the hole-filled tundra was dripping with blueberries.  I scurried around, picking enough of the sweet treats to clear a spot for the tent and turn my teeth purple. Home for the next week consisted of two tents: an orange dome for sleeping and a blue and white striped tee-pee shaped one for cooking that reminded me of a circus tent.  Sven rigged a tarp in front of the sleeping tent like a covered front porch.  We parked out canoes on the riverbank, tying them in for the night.

 After dinner, Jon and I took a walk in the expansive arctic light.  “This is wonderful country!” he proclaimed, as we sloshed through the marshy field behind camp.  I smiled and felt something inside of me release.  I have spent a good portion of my life nodding along, pretending to see and understand things to satisfy my teachers.  Something about that first walk made me decide to quit the habit for good.  There was so much to learn!  I toted my journal around like a life vest, but I wanted to soak it all in through my skin. 

Looking back I don’t know how we ever managed to walk very far on that trip.  Every three steps I took I stopped, entranced at some new flower or lichen “what’s this one?”  A trained naturalist and nature-phile, Jon was the ideal guide.  He taught me how to walk on the tundra.  How to read the plants to find firm ground.  How to approach knolls with a slow and weary stride.  How to survey with my binoculars like a prairie dog.  What kind of terrain bears are fond of.  He gently lifted the “anchor” I was in the process of tying to a birch bush and showed me how to tie a low, twisted knot to keep the canoe in place in case the river rose.  Being in the wilderness requires constant vigilance.  We were far from help and the awareness of our self-reliance manifested in our every action.  That night we passed what I could only describe as a portal.  It was a tundra pool that had stratified layers in perfect, nuclear green and iridescent blue echoing circles.  Without a camera to capture it, we stood mesmerized at this odd gateway.  “Want to jump in?” I asked.  “Nah, I think I’ll take this world,” he smiled.  We never found the portal again.

Sven and I in front of a tundra pond

The Patterns of Life on a Hunt

Over the next few days we settled into the rhythms of hunting.  It was so gloriously unlike the backpacking and canoeing I had done before.  As we prepared for the trip, I wondered why Jon hadn’t asked me to bring more than one water bottle.  Growing up on backpacking trips in the lower forty-eight, I had come to think of water as a burden: something to bleach with iodine, worry about, carry.  In the arctic, we drank from the river.  This powerful act never lost its amazement on me.  I crouched down on all fours and drank like a lion from a watering hole.  It was pure, cold delight.  Coming from the land of rivers that catch fire, the idea of drinking straight from a river was almost more than I could comprehend.  I thought places like this had disappeared a hundred years ago.  Think of how much care and protection it takes to keep a river that pure.  I marveled at what a wide and complex system of protected land it takes to make that a possibility, and how quickly it can all vanish.

Wonders like drinking from the river became part of my daily routine, as hunting became life.  I began each day by throwing on layers of fleece and Jen’s old wool army sweater doing yoga in my extra-tuffs on the plain above the food tent.  Sven would start the Kelly Kettle and brew up a third, forth, and fifth round of his special green tea and Jon would bring out a bag of his delicious, extra-fatty homemade granola.  I assessed the weather conditions by standing still and staring, judging how thick my socks should be and which layers to pack.  Down to the river!  The patter began: untie the boats, cross the river, walk to a high point, and sit there.  Survey, relax, read, nap, write, capture, be.  That was our agenda. 

Caribou are illusive animals, we would often hike miles in pursuit of one and turn around to see a small herd right where we had lunch.  So the key was to be patient.  Waiting, was part of our task.  Instead of feeling guilty at taking a break as I would on a backpacking trip, I luxuriated in this time. I laid flat on my stomach and explored patches of the spongy, layered tundra world between my fingers.  I was forever investigating the haunting call of a solitary Pacific Loon, the hexagonal pattern, scars from permafrost on a dry field of tundra.   Our lives consisted of these little moments, miniature dramas that held our trio completely captivated. 

Instead of snow or ice fog, we had arrived amidst an Indian summer.  I spent most of the afternoons in just long johns, basking in the unlikely sunshine.  I reveled in tundra naps, drifting in and out of consciousness to find the most beautiful dreamscape possible, cradled between my arms.  We ended days reclining in the cook tent, drinking endless rounds of tea and telling stories.  I asked my companions about everything I could think of- from survival skills to their weddings.  In a rare period of no bugs and no snow, we slept with our heads at the edge of our open tent door.  From this position I could lean back and see the aurora.  Under the light of this strange, shimmering sensation, I had vivid dreams. Ken Brower once wrote, “the wilderness turns you in on yourself with such force.  You’re turned outward and inward, and amazing things start to happen inside your head.”  Twisting in many directions, I too entered a state where I couldn’t clearly discern the difference between dreamed and lived reality. 

The "dreamscape"

Taking Animals

Hunting was like a compound game of ring around the rosy and hide and seek.  Jon was the shooter.  He would spot a good group of caribou and set Sven and I up to spy on them while he chased.  We had to tuck ourselves into folds in the tundra and lie very still.  The caribou were very skittish and could smell us from a great distance, so we took care to remain upwind from them. Although we had advantages in weaponry, the caribou had a knack for keeping us humble.  On the forth day, Jon ran a good mile in pursuit of a herd and watched in dismay as they changed course and nearly ran into Sven and I.  “Sven,” I whispered, “what do we do if they run us over?”  “Stay put,” he breathed.  We held our breath as the click click click of their hooves came within range of a perfect shot.  My eyes fixed on the furry white chests of the two bulls that led the group. The bulls carried much more weight than the cows, and walked with a sway, their chests rising in unison.  The tension was almost more than I could bare.  I felt like a ten-year-old waiting atop a slide, aching for an audience to tell about a great adventure.

Later that day, we caught them at the right time and place.  A clear shot and an old buck fell to the ground in a slow, fluid motion.  Sven rushed and I ambled to the scene to find not one but four animals slowly changing worlds.  I approached with hesitancy.  Tears poured unconsciously down my cheeks as I reached out to touch their still-warm fur.  I was torn between the wonder and majesty of seeing such a complex animal so up close and the hard fact that we were ending its life to nourish our own.  I racked my mind for a prayer, something to say to honor this delicate balance.  But all I could think of was to affirm the goodness of life, as for the first time, I felt myself a distinct part of the circle. 

Processing one animal is a hefty task; disassembling four with two newbies on board seemed hopelessly huge.  My tears subsided as my hands set to work.  I would have many hours of washing, hauling, cutting, and cooking to read the direction of my moral compass on hunting. We had taken these animals, and for a moment my dilemmas were suspended by the knowledge that the best we could do now was use them.  Jon was a calm yet efficient teacher.  We rushed around to each animal, cutting into its stomach to stop it from bloating.  My brain circled on words like “rumen content” and replayed instructions and organs.  It was difficult at first, cutting into the flesh, pulling back the esophagus, allowing my hands to become full of blood and rumen content.  But soon enough parts of the process became oddly soothing.  The act of dissecting.  Making an incision and then gently peeling the skin back, slicing gently into the bubbly fat layers with sharp knives as you maintain the right tension.  Laying the skin out like a tablecloth, a workspace.  The rhythms of taking an animal apart.  It felt a lot like canning vegetables for the winter, making applesauce, or recycled greeting cards. 

As time passed we became a smooth-running team.  The guys put their year building a house together to use in sawing tasks and I became the “gut diver,” assigned with the task of salvaging the liver, heart, tongue, tenderloin, and back strap.  I expected a smelly mess, but was pleasantly surprised at the sweet, earthy scent of the caribou, the planned biological order of their bodies.  The way that their organs were neatly encased, intricately connected yet easily separable.  There was too much work for one day, so we separated the meat out in bags and loaded our backpacks with the best cuts of meat for the trek back to camp.  Only a few minutes into the trek, we were greeted with a sunset that made us unshoulder our hundred-pound packs.

In that classic way, the act of taking life enhanced my appreciation for the cycles of nutrients and life that fuel the earth.  Finding berry-stained antlers intertwined with the tundra reminded me of the cyclical nature of life without humans.  For the first time in my life I was really not afraid to die.  This feeling came not out of bravery, but from a deeper understanding of the circular patterns of life.  I could imagine no better fate than becoming part and parcel of this tundra world.  The power of nature, it seems, is the power of life in association.

John, Sven, and I model our VERY heavy packs

Other Tundra Life

            What about those grizzly bears?  You may be wondering.  I wondered too, but not with fear.  I have never felt so safe anywhere in the world as I did walking by myself in the refuge.  It is the kind of safety that comes from knowing that everything around you is in balance.  In the expansive, treeless tundra you can see for miles.  Binoculars enhance the experience, allowing you to witness nature as it is, to see up close but be at a distance.  How often do we get to see things simply as they are?

            Howard Luke, a much-adored Athabascan elder from the Fairbanks area, discusses luck as something you have to hold.  According to his tradition, luck is not a matter of odds and calculation.  Rather it is something that must be respected and maintained.  You maintain your luck by paying close attention to how you treat others and what animals appear to you as signs.  According to Howard, these animals use to be humans, and must be respected. 

I am still new to the act of reading animal signs, but it was difficult to ignore how our extraordinary luck with wildlife sightings.  Caribou made their presence known immediately.  “It looks like we just missed the caribou convention!” I remarked, after my first walk to gather firewood around the gravel bar of our camp.  One evening during dinner I glanced out of the tent and saw a perfectly framed large brown blob across the river.  “Bear!” I blurted.  “Musk ox,” Sven corrected.  I watched in awe as this giant, graceful cousin-it with horns ambled across the river, as if straight out of the Wisconsin ice age.  The next morning the same animal reappeared and paraded through the field behind our camp, and right into the perfectly framed picture: under a rainbow.  It would never again feel right to me to visit these animals in the confines of their farm in Fairbanks.

It seemed that each morning brought a new visitor.  One of my favorites was a lone white wolf.  It appeared in roughly the same spot, trotting attentively along the river.  It struck me how much this much-vilified wild animal resembled my Alaskan husky, Chandalar and nonetheless, took my breath away.  For a dinner show, we had a magnificent bull moose that strolled- uncharacteristically boldly, across the field, as if for our viewing pleasure.  We grabbed our life jackets and munched on cookie bars as the light changed colors across his 8-point rack.  Eager to practice for moose season, Jon thrashed some twigs together to call the rutting moose to us.  I protested at this idea that bringing a large, sexually charged moose into our camp with the idea that he was about to fight or mate.  Luckily, he seemed too absorbed in his stroll to mind us.  I could scarcely walk from one rise to another without finding a new treasure- blueberry stained antlers, a Short-Eared Owl feather, fossilized coral.  I found a sun-bleached ptarmigan egg, still whole, amidst the tussocks.  Before long I felt like one of those classic tourists, crossing off “wildlife sightings” in my journal.  Jon returned from a walk with a rare wolverine citing to add to my list.  The sky delighted us with Tundra Swans, Pacific Loons, and Northern Harriers.  We nearly hit a lynx driving back.

Not a Bear :)

Changes

            Nearly everyone that I have talked to that has spent a good amount of time about the Arctic has a certain glow in their eye.  It is a place that changes you in profound and mysterious ways.  The overriding sensation that I experienced in the Arctic Refuge was the feeling of being blessed.  It didn’t help that every time I looked down I saw Carol Kasza’s boots and super-warm socks.  I was kept the perfect temperature by Jen Landry’s wool sweater and Pam Miller’s gloves.  When I scanned the horizon for the next source of wonderment, I did so through Kyle’s, and before him, Mark Ross’s binoculars.  I used my dad’s headlamp and constantly collected antlers for my mom, who always dreamed of finding some.  I felt, for the first time the intense comfort of being mysteriously watched over, even if it was by the northern lights.  On one of our last nights, I took a long walk by myself under the stars.  The aurora was out and I couldn’t bear to retire to the tent.  I felt I might miss something.  So I curled up on the riverbank to watch and wait and quickly fell asleep.

A Parting Sign

            One of my favorite of Jon’s sayings was “that’s caribou for you.”  We said this with a mixture of exasperation and wonder at their unpredictable ways.  Some days we would hike miles to find caribou laying on top of our breakfast hill.  On the last day Jon had both feet in his dry suit and both boats packed when we heard Sven’s whistle.  Two bull caribou were literally parading through our camp.  We had one tag left.  Sven had to get back to prepare lesson plans, we apprehensive about the paddle ahead, but some things are too good to be constrained by time.  I smiled at Sven as Jon reached instinctively for his rifle.  We shot our last caribou.  It was the biggest yet. 

Sven models for his Christmas card shot

Bringing It Home

            I have always been of the belief that you should go with the flow of nature.  So my approach to whitewater canoeing with an 800 pound boat full of precious caribou was to go slowly, back paddle, communicate a lot, read the river, and use its tricks.  When he saw how nervous I was, Jon told me a story about the woman who had taught him to canoe.  As we prepared that morning, I conjured the presence of this woman: calm and competent in her mauve canoe.  Sven’s approach, on the other hand, was to build speed and use surges of power to dodge or ram obstacles.  It contrasted slightly with mine.  On the morning of our return paddle down the river both Sven and Jon were grim with worry.  As we tied and triple tied everything in, I tried to lighten the mood and my own growing anxiety with jokes and positivity.  They were lost on Sven.  Jon set the course, standing up to survey the river ahead and choosing whether to paddle or line sections, pointing out large rocks.  After a few hours of tense paddling, we saw a giant plume of dust- the road!  And just like that, our adventure changed.  There was still a great amount of work to do.  After more hauling, driving, and hauling, we spent a week cutting and wrapping the meat at Jon and Lou’s house.  As memorable as those hours before and after work were, something ended with the sight of that road.

The sunset over a tundra lake

Lessons 

            So what did I get out of my first trip to the Arctic Refuge?  A whole new palate of favorite colors.  A growing knowledge of the cycles of light and life.  A journal full of discoveries.  The ability to breathe from a place deeper down near my stomach.  And a big dose of hope- the kind of hope that comes from knowing just how much there is to fight for.

My favorite shot.