Winter Study (13 page)

“Normally
we don’t trap wolves in winter — too great a danger of a foot freezing
off in the trap before we get there,” Ridley said to the group.

“Not to mention people’s feet freezing off,” Adam put in.

“But we’ve done it before,” Ridley went on, ignoring the aside.

“Two
years ago, we thought we had a virus threatening the population and
couldn’t wait till summer to check it out, and we’ve had to do it a
time or two when we couldn’t get what we needed to do finished in the
summer.” He took a topographical map of the island he had folded at his
elbow and spread it out, shoving jam and peanut butter and milk aside.
Anna held on to her bowl and spoon lest it be removed in the sweep.

“I
don’t know what we’ve got going this winter, but I don’t think it can
wait till summer. If somebody dumped an animal here, chances are it
won’t survive the winter, but it might live to reproduce or just screw
up the wolves’ patterns. Worst case, it will reinfect them with parvo
or some other virus. ISRO wolves have isolation for protection, but
they’ve not been exposed to mainland diseases and have little tolerance
for that kind of exposure.”

Ridley
was rather enjoying the lecture, but Anna sensed beneath it he was
nervous about the decision. Customarily there were four experienced
wolf researchers on Winter Study. With Rolf Peterson retiring and the
extra beds taken up by Homeland Security and Anna, Ridley was having to
deal with greenhorns. Ignorant greenhorns.

“You,”
he said to Robin, “and you,” looking at Anna, “and Bob and you,
Katherine, will hike up to the Malone Bay area. There’s a cabin there
you can base yourselves out of, but plan on a couple nights of winter
camping.” He traced a finger up the Greenstone toward Malone.

Sending
Robin made sense: she was an experienced trapper and winter camper.
He’d included Anna to assist Robin and further her education in
prey/predator relationships. Anna suspected he was sending Bob and
Katherine just to get rid of them.

Malone
Bay was fourteen or fifteen miles over ridges. The trail was only
moderately difficult and stunningly beautiful, with a canopy of trees
that suddenly opened to frame views of Lake Superior. Robin could make
it in a day even under January conditions. Anna wasn’t sure she could,
not if she had to carry any significant weight. Katherine would be the
slowest and for that Anna was grateful. It was a far better thing to be
graciously considerate of a weak link than to have to admit to being
one. They would need to overnight on the Greenstone Trail.

Camping
in the glow of long summer evenings in the mountains, waking on the
shores of a lake to the crisp bite of autumn on the air, sleeping away
a hot afternoon beneath an overhang of sculpted rock in a desert creek
bed: this was the stuff of heaven. Anna would — and had — walked days,
carrying a heavy pack on her back, to enjoy these fragments of paradise.

Dragging
oneself out of an always-inadequate down bag, hoarfrost on the tent
ceiling shattering into a thousand needles of ice stinging one’s
cheeks, struck her as a pastime slightly more attractive than wearing a
hair shirt, yet still not as much fun as self-flagellation. The only
upside she could think of was that, since it was a work assignment, she
would not be expected to have fun. “Fun” froze at about fifty-two
degrees Fahrenheit.

With
the front sitting on the island, Jonah couldn’t fly. Everything had to
be packed in. A wolf trap, including transmitter and eight feet of
kinkless chain, weighed ten pounds. Anna and Robin each carried four.
Because of her small frame and lack of backwoods experience, Katherine
was given only two; still, her pack weighed in at forty-two pounds,
eleven more than was optimum for a woman her size. Bob carried six
traps. With the tent and other supplies, his pack weighed seventy-five
pounds. He swung it onto his back with a minimum of effort, and Anna
was impressed. She was less impressed when it became clear he wasn’t
accustomed to backpacking. Ridley had to adjust his buckles and straps.
Neither man was comfortable with the process. Anna got the feeling that
Ridley didn’t like to be that close to Menechinn and Menechinn didn’t
like having his ignorance made public.

BECAUSE
OF KATHERINE, they set a slow pace. Freed from the fear she would shame
herself by huffing and gasping and throwing herself facedown, crying “I
can’t go on” — all of which would have been distinct possibilities had
she been trying to keep up with Robin — Anna took pleasure in the
simple act of breathing out of doors, moving away from “civilization”
and into the backcountry.

Ridley
had mapped out five miles of trail west of Lake Siskiwit for the
trapline. East and Chippewa both claimed the mapped section of the
island as part of their territory. Several pack interactions had been
recorded in the vicinity.

Ridley
and Jonah had had the rare luck to watch one unfold. The photo sequence
Ridley captured remained some of the study’s most compelling footage.
For some reason, a female had been drummed out of East pack. Ridley and
Jonah watched the lupine drama play out, with all the pathos of

Troilus and Cressida,

beneath the supercub’s wings.

East
pack had pursued the female till they cornered her on a finger of land
jutting into Siskiwit Bay. Too many to fight, she’d taken to the water.
The pack paced her along the shore, twice driving her back in when she
tried to reach land. Finally she no longer had the strength to swim and
moved to land through the teeth of her former pack mates. They didn’t
kill her immediately but dogged her, tearing at her back, neck and
flanks as she tried to escape. More than once, Jonah and Ridley
believed her dead, but then she would force herself up, repel her
attackers and run again. Finally the pack, as if tiring of the game —
or as a mob stoning a fallen woman will suddenly need a kill —
surrounded and savaged her, then fled as if the law was on their tails.

After
two more passes, Jonah and Ridley were sure this time she was dead.
They were turning for home when they saw a lone male from East pack
return. He nosed and pawed the downed female, and, after a while, she
staggered to her feet.

On
flights over the following days, they saw two bloody beds. The two
wolves not only survived but started the island’s third pack: Chippewa
Harbor pack.

Five
years later, the winter of 2005, East pack caught that same female away
from her Chippewa pack mates and killed her. The wolves remembered.
Anna couldn’t help wondering what pack law the female had broken that
had a statute of limitations that didn’t run out in half a lifetime.

Watching
the photographs click up on Ridley’s computer screen, Anna had found it
hard to believe these intelligent and phenomenally complex animals
could be hunted down and butchered so that some fool could have the
pelt and head for a hearth rug. But, then, human beings hunted down and
butchered one another for stranger reasons.

Two
miles up the trail, Robin turned the lead position over to Anna. The
young biotech was finding it impossible to hike slowly enough not to
kill her companions. Bob Menechinn, probably still smarting from having
Ridley buckle him into his pack, pointing out he was the tallest and
strongest and best able to protect and serve — an argument that
basically boiled down to “has a penis” — wanted to go first. Anna
stepped back, content to let him do whatever it was he needed to do.

The
third time he led them off trail, she suggested he drop back. She
added, “And make sure no one falls behind,” to keep the machinery of
the team oiled. She then set a pace that would challenge Katherine —
they had a lot of miles to cover before the light went south — but, she
hoped, would not exhaust her. Katherine was from a sedentary background
and carrying a pack too heavy for her. Anna could hear what it was
costing her in the push of her breath, yet Katherine never complained.
Anna admired her will to endure.

Anna
didn’t complain either. Her body would complain enough in a day or so.
Her pack weighed fifty-three pounds. She weighed one hundred eighteen.
Muscle wasn’t enough to offset the blunt trauma her joints suffered as
she lifted her feet and gravity put them down. Hips, ankles and knees
were going to ache like crazy. In her thirties, the aching was gone in
less than a week; in her early forties, two. Now she could look forward
to nearly a month of groaning every time she stood up.

Since
the alternative was to not backpack, Anna gave it no more than a
passing thought. What she did think about was her nose. Her nose had
become increasingly important. By closing one eye, she could see the
tip of it, but, up close, out of focus and viewed through eyes rimmed
in frosted eyelashes, she couldn’t tell if it was turning white and
waxy or not. Frostbite could be gnawing her nose off her face and she
wouldn’t know it. With increasing frequency, she slid her hand out of
its mitten and touched her nose, trying to see if it was warm or cold,
if it had feeling, but her fingers were cold and she could never be
sure, not positively sure, that her nose wasn’t frozen. So, in one or
five or ten minutes, she’d give in to the compulsion to go through the
whole process again. She was driving herself nuts.

THEY
HAD PASSED South Lake Desor and reached the halfway point between
Windigo and Malone Bay when Anna suggested they set up camp. The short
winter day was nearly gone, and Katherine was worn down to the point
hypothermia could set in if she didn’t get rest and hot food.

Anna
chose a hill where the Greenstone curved gently around what, in summer,
would be a tiny meadow waist-deep in wildflowers. In January, it was a
flat, white disk of land with white spruce nibbling one edge. Niggardly
snowflakes, desiccated by the cold, left a dusting less than half an
inch deep. Yellow-and-gray stalks of long-dead grasses poked up through
winter’s thin skin like old men’s chin stubble. White spruce crowded
the edges of the open space in a curtain of black, color leached from
the boughs by the day’s eternal dusk.

Anna’s
pack was too heavy to shrug out of without the torque twisting her
skeleton from its natural state. A kindly rock waited by the side of
the trail as if for that very purpose. Sitting on the edge, she let it
take the weight, unbuckled hip belt and chest strap and stepped free of
the shoulder straps.

Tempting
as it was to let the instrument of her torture topple to the ground,
she lowered it as carefully as she could, then stood with a groan.
Apparently her grace period had grown significantly shorter since last
she’d carried an overloaded pack.

Robin
followed suit and leaned her pack against Anna’s. Bob and Katherine
stood dumbly on the trail, two spavined nags asleep in the traces, too
tired to think or move without direction. That Katherine did so didn’t
surprise Anna. She was nearly to that point herself. Only pride and the
promise of hot drinks kept her moving. That Bob had reached paralysis
wasn’t what she’d expected.

Big game hunting,

she remembered.

Big
game hunters were not known for long, arduous treks carrying heavy
loads. There were native peoples for that, and ATVs to carry the
carcasses and the conquerors back to the lodge and the wet bar.

Uncharitable,

she thought without caring.