North of Hope (16 page)

“And Dad ended up carrying Oakley in his pack on the way out.”

“That’s right.” Oakley had run alongside us with exuberant joy the whole trip, cutting her paws on the sharp Chugach shale until they bled, blooms of blood trailing her in patches of snow. Dad had found a way to put her in his pack and carry her the rest of the way to the trailhead. A family headed in on the trail had stopped to snap a picture.

“Did you guys do a lot of camping?” Sally asked me.

“I guess so,” I said. “It was just part of how our family, especially with Dad, spent time together. Camping, skiing, hiking, and for a while, running.”

“Remember when Dad wrote us notes to get out of school to ski when Alyeska hosted the Junior Olympics?” Ned asked.

“I’d almost forgotten. He loved skiing. Maybe too much for a while.”

“Why too much?” Sally asked.

“Well, one New Year’s Day we skied all day and then night-skied. We were at the bottom of the mountain and there was an icy mogul field. He caught an edge and fell and separated his pelvis. He was in the hospital for a week and was supposed to lie low for a year.”

“ ‘Supposed to’ being the operative words,” Ned said.

I nodded. “In March he put duct tape around his hips and went back out to ski again. Crazy!” I smiled at the memory. But I also remembered seeing Dad faint from pain in the hospital after separating his pelvis. He had been trying to use a walker on the way to the bathroom. Dad’s mortality dawned on me that moment, an angry flush of terror. He was vulnerable, just like I was. Just like I’d thought he was not.

“We never did anything like that growing up,” Sally said. “I bet it was fun.”

“Well, in that case, you’re pretty gutsy to make the Arctic your first big trip!” I said.

She smiled. “I figured, why not?”

We finished our lunches, took last swigs of water, and stood to head back down to camp.

Even going downhill required laborious effort, and that combined with our failure to meet our day’s goal made me again doubt my intentions and the wisdom of our journey. I’d leapt into this trip with a wild abandon. It made no sense to have come here with Ned, whom I didn’t trust, and another person I didn’t know. It made no sense to head straight to the place Dad and Kathy had died, a place still sticky with blood and drenched in lost hopes.

At the same time, this wilderness that had at first looked featureless was beginning to bloom around me. Watching wildflowers and birds against lines of landscape and light, I fell under the spell of beauty and wildness and felt a growing awareness of place.

But my mountains were failing me. The clouds pressed down on us, and we slumped under the weight of darkness. I felt heavy and inadequate. My legs, fatigued, stumbled. I cursed under my breath and stopped to rest, sucking air into my lungs, feeling my heart pounding.

And then, descending, we broke out below the clouds. Sunlight spilled onto the landscape, pooling in the river far below, a shimmering silver ribbon traveling the valley. The glistening thread of Kokutuk Creek in the mountains opposite wound through low hills to join the sunlight in the Hulahula. Dark clouds deepened the greens and blues of the landscape to the depth of timelessness, a glimpse of the eternal. A benediction. It seemed to me then that learning to see would allow me to witness, which could teach me how to know both this unfolding creation and God.

I had a waking dream. I was an eagle, soaring in the high, thin air. Hope was an eagle too, and not far from me. We glided far above the ridgelines, catching the air currents. But I was unsure, and flew toward Hope. Hope took pity, and flew toward me. We raced together through thin blue sky, and joined our claws, and fell, hurtling through clouds and past mountaintops. I was afraid. I clung in desperation. If I did not let go, we would both die. In my terror, I clutched tighter. The mountainsides blurred. Could I release my claws and spread my wings? Would I?

This was my challenge. I didn’t want to let go. I thought I was still in control. I didn’t want to do the one thing that life demanded. I thought if I held on tightly enough, if it hurt enough, I could keep Dad and Kathy with me. I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that they were gone. I could move toward their final campground and find them and hold them close. And even as my talons cramped into position, I felt the tearing away, and it hurt as much as the first pain, and I knew that if I did not break loose, I would be pulled down into that place called death and would not be able to return.

And still I needed to see. I needed to hear. I needed to know.

We made it to camp just before a brief but determined downpour and enjoyed short naps in our tents. As evening approached, Jamie walked toward us, inviting us to join the group downriver for dinner. We headed over to the considerably more comfortable setup the guides had rigged, including a cooking and eating tent made of mesh for mosquito protection. Karen and Jamie’s years of outdoor cooking experience provided a dinner that even after a few days of dehydrated food seemed nothing less than gourmet. I was surprised that they cooked next to the eating tent, which was only a short stroll from the sleeping tents, and kept their food in plastic barrels, not bear cans. Maybe we really were overreacting with our precautions.

“We were just talking about the history and geology of the Arctic,” Jamie said as we joined the rainsuit-clad clients in the mosquito tent.

“Thanks for letting us join y’all,” I said, with a general smile toward the clients, their eager faces still bright with the newness of their trip.

“The Arctic as we know it used to be a part of a refugium, which is a place that was not covered in ice during the last ice age,” Karen explained.

“That’s kind of ironic,” Sally said.

“It is, in some respects. A huge ice sheet covered much of North America, and glaciers carved deep into the Brooks Range, but this area of the Arctic north of the mountains was bare. That’s one of the reasons there are so many remains found here of dinosaurs and ancient peoples.”

“Can you explain the polygons we saw flying into Grasser’s?” I asked.

Karen nodded toward Jamie.

“They’re pretty cool,” Jamie said. “The permafrost below the surface layer of earth can be up to a hundred thousand years old.
As the surface freezes and thaws, the expansion and contraction of land causes it to buckle. Have you heard of the naturalist named Pielou?”

I had, and several of the clients nodded. I guessed it had been on their suggested reading list.

“Well, she explains that tundra polygons form when the freezing earth cracks, contracting from extreme cold. In the spring, meltwater seeps into these cracks and freezes the next winter, forming an ice wedge. This process continues every year, and the ice wedges get bigger. As they grow, they push up soil on either side into a berm. Meltwater collects in the low centers in the spring. The soil is very different in the center from the soil on the ridges and the outside edges of the polygons, and supports very different plant life. This is what you see as polygons from above.”

I was happy for the even meter of speech, the gentle flow of information that had nothing to do with bears, nothing to do with grief, nothing to do with fear. I sat back and listened, enjoying the low din of cooking and conversation around me, surprised that I seemed to crave companionship as much as solitude.

One of the clients on the trip, a silver-haired man in matching blue rain jacket and pants, asked about the political history of the Arctic. Karen responded. “The refuge was originally formed in 1960, though it was smaller then, just 8.9 million acres. Back then it was called the Alaska National Wildlife Range. In 1980, ANILCA—the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act we’ve talked about before, which preserved more than a hundred million acres of Alaska for parks and refuges—renamed the area as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and increased the area to just more than nineteen million acres. But ANILCA also opened Area 1002 to further study.” Karen pronounced 1002 as “ten-oh-two.”

“1002 is named for the section of the law titled ‘Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Resource Assessment.’ What we
know as the coastal plain is the 1002. Despite strict timelines for completing the assessments, fifty years later the fate of the coastal plain is still undecided.”

An attractive middle-aged woman from Texas in a red raincoat chimed in. “But you’ve been talking about how sensitive the area is. Why wouldn’t it be protected?”

“Great question. I think it should, but there are still some people who want to develop, even though the chances of finding anything of value are slim. Money is a powerful motivator.”

“What was it Jamie was saying about the compression of ecological zones?” someone else asked.

“The more we know, the more we understand how complex the land is and how little we actually know,” Karen continued. “The refuge stretches from just east of the Prudhoe Bay oil development to the border of Canada’s Yukon Territory, and from the northern coast to south of the Brooks Range. The Brooks Range reaches toward central Alaska in the west, but angles close to the coast in the east. The proximity of the range to the sea compresses several ecosystems into a very small space, making the Arctic Coastal Plain an area of remarkable biological diversity.”

Jamie looked up from the stoves. “One hundred and thirty species of shorebirds migrate from every continent in the world to the Arctic each summer to breed and nest, and in the case of waterfowl, to molt. Many of these species travel thousands of miles without stopping.”

The man in the blue rain suit shook his head in awe.

“You know that little bird we saw yesterday?” said Karen.

“The common redpole,” the woman from Texas said eagerly, looking at her field notebook.

“Right, exactly. That little guy gains three times his body weight to make his migration. He almost can’t get off the ground when he begins migrating. And the buff-breasted sandpipers come here all the way from Argentina,” Karen said. “Northern wheatears
come from Africa and Asia, and tundra swans come from Chesapeake Bay.”

Several people scribbled in their notebooks. I listened in appreciation. Even Sally and Ned were attentive.

“The Porcupine Caribou Herd we’ve talked about travels farther in its migration every year than any other terrestrial mammal, up to three thousand miles a year, depending on their route. They usually calve on the coastal plain, where they can avoid predators and where the calcium content of the tundra is higher than almost any other soil on earth.”

“It’s like Africa, but wilder!” the man in blue said.

“That’s right, though, ironically, not as many people know of or understand this wilderness,” said Karen.

“So the caribou we saw yesterday was probably from that herd?” asked another woman.

“Possibly, though there is also a smaller Central Arctic Herd here that ranges from Prudhoe Bay to the Okpilak River,” Karen explained.

“We saw moose up on the ridgeline today,” Ned said. “Is that common? We didn’t think we’d see them so high in the mountains, or so far north.”

“It didn’t used to be so common,” Karen said. “But the vegetation has really been affected by climate change, and now willows are growing faster and farther north than they ever have. Moose love willows, so they’ve come north too.”

I was glad to learn more about the place into which I’d been thrown by circumstance. It occurred to me then that I had a choice about what I’d been given: to grit my teeth and try to muscle through, or to train my wounded spirit to the possibility of wonder. There was so much here I didn’t know and didn’t understand. So much more beauty than I’d expected. I had much to learn.

Karen and Jamie served up a hearty chili with a green salad, and we finished with apple cobbler made in a field Dutch oven.
The group regaled us with stories and thoughts about rivers and about travels in Alaska and other wild places, and we enjoyed easy conversation before retiring to our camp to sleep. The companionship of the wilderness girds the soul, but human companionship in the wilderness warms the heart.

Adding the grace of music to the truth of doctrine … we pluck the fruit of the words without realizing it
.

—St. Basil,
Hom in Ps. I
(PG 29.211)

I
’m squirming in my seat tonight. This rehearsal is painful. We’re getting closer to performance, so we’re into the details. Repeating passages again and again, trying to get the rhythm right, and the words. Nothing inspires me about being here right now. I’m not here because of Dad or Kathy, or because of beauty, or because of music or prayer. It is only the requirement of attendance that got me in my seat, on time, attentive.

More work with the men of the choir tonight, and I think of all the office work I still have to do when I get home before bed, things I need to have done before I go in to work in the morning. I don’t have time to be here. And why do things I choose always have an element of discomfort? Who designed these chairs to be so uncomfortable? I take some solace in memories, which seems to be my new
modus operandi
on the other side of an event showing me life is a blend of not only present and future but the past too.

I’d spent hours in these folding chairs accompanying my dad to his opera choir rehearsals when I was a child.

Dad sang with the Anchorage Opera Chorus when I was young, occasionally singing short solo parts like the gatekeeper in
Rigoletto
. I remember the conductor as a woman of extreme talent and beauty. Her name was Elvira Voth. Pitying my attendance at Dad’s rehearsals, perhaps, she gave me the task of writing down measures she wanted to revisit over the course of a rehearsal. I took my responsibility seriously, sitting on a hard metal seat just behind her, as single-mindedly intent as her choristers were. She spoke the measures to me over her shoulder as she continued conducting: measure 36, measure 141. I wrote them down dutifully.

We attended the free opera dress rehearsals as a family. I remember just before the storm scene in
Rigoletto
someone yelling up from the orchestra pit, “The bass drum! Can anyone find the bass drum?”