The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960

by Douglas Brinkley

  Before the Muries, nobody had done proper reconnaissance on caribou for the Biological Survey in Arctic Alaska. By 1922 the domesticated reindeer industry in Alaska was booming, producing a bigger net profit annually than copper, gold, and silver mining combined. The hope in Alaska was that reindeer meat would become competitive with beef as a source of protein. The Biological Survey published articles such as “Reindeer in Alaska” (1922) and “Progress of Reindeer Grazing Investigation in Alaska” (1926). The Muries thought that this kind of analysis of reindeer farming was the job of the Bureau of Animal Industry; after all, reindeer were domesticated animals. The Muries saw reindeer as a threat to the indigenous caribou herd. Interbreeding caribou with reindeer was, to their minds, biologically unsound.19 All of the Native Americans had their own reverent names for caribou; reindeer had been lumped together by early French voyageurs under the term la foule. Each Athabascan group had a loving name: udzih (Ahtha), bidziyh (Koyukon), vadzaith (Gwich’in), and tutu (Eskimos).20

  On afternoons in the far north, while Olaus was out collecting, Mardy would wander around the banks of the Porcupine River, staring into the crystalline, sparkling water, amazed at the varied colors of smooth rocks. She’d comb through gravel bars, looking for animal skeletons to bring back to camp, daydreaming about writing an as-yet-untitled book about Alaskan Native tribes. Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), a rather rare raptor, sometimes circled overhead. The river water was about sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit, too cold for a swim. Also, if she stripped naked, the mosquitoes would torment her. So Mardy contented herself with just hiking and pondering, thinking about ancient cave dwellers, caribou herds, and what bird might be magically flushed out of the low-lying bush, startled by her meandering. “Gravel bars are havens in the North Country,” Murie wrote in Two in the Far North, “providing some refuge from the scourge of Alaska.”21

  Roughing it in the utterly wild Arctic had tribulations and frustrations. But both Olaus and Mardy considered the honeymoon a success, especially when they stared at the night stars together. North of the Arctic Circle you could dip your cup in a stream and drink the cleanest water on the planet. Bears, foxes, grouse, and other animals were fattening on the blueberries of summer. Because neither of the Muries had been overly concerned about physical comfort, everything that happened to them in the Koyukuk was fun and scientifically useful. There was enough wild land in the Arctic so that they never felt claustrophobic or hemmed in. The Muries had, they believed, been in harmony with the will of God. Now, returning to Fairbanks, they agreed that preserving the biological integrity of Arctic Alaska would be the duty of their lives. Spending time in the deep Arctic made them see every experience from birth to death with new eyes. When they built a log home in Moose, Wyoming, they carved over the upright piano the “Mardy and Olaus Murie Life Philosophy,” developed during their honeymoon: “The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.”22

  The Muries were in high spirits after their Arctic honeymoon. As the temperature plummeted and the winter days turned short, they talked about the awesome Brooks Range to anybody who would listen. Back in Fairbanks, exhausted, they indulged in a week of well-earned sleep. They then headed to Washington, D.C., for the rest of the winter. Olaus wrote up the official report of the honeymoon expedition to be submitted to Dr. E. W. Nelson of the Biological Survey. The Department of Agriculture liked typed reports and Olaus, a dedicated bureaucrat as well as an intrepid biologist, handed in a batch of them. Mardy had gotten pregnant on the Arctic trek and was happy at the prospect of becoming a mother. That spring Olaus was dispatched to the Alaska Peninsula to conduct field research on brown bears. Unable to come with him because of the pregnancy, Mardy stayed with her mother in Twisp, Washington, where the Gillettes had relocated along the Methow River, unable to endure another bleak winter in Fairbanks. That summer the Muries brought a boy, Martin, into the world.

  With Martin, the Muries returned to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1925. Olaus had become celebrated as perhaps America’s leading Alaska wildlife biologist—an honor that had previously gone to William Healey Dall, who died in 1927. Murie met regularly with fellow biologists at the Cosmos Club to compare notes about bears—and discuss the prospects for preservation in Alaska. Geologists were concluding that because of the shallowness of the Beaufort Sea, combined with ice-clogged harbors, drilling for oil in Alaska’s North Slope wasn’t economically feasible yet. Transporting petroleum from the Chukchi and Beaufort seas was deemed dangerous, unrealistic, and even foolhardy. Also, demand wasn’t high. There was still plenty of oil left in the fields of Texas and Oklahoma.

  That was the good news, from the Muries’ perspective. On the other hand, the airplane was starting to have a profound effect on Alaskan life. Long dogsled runs could be replaced by two- or four-hour flights. In 1923 commercial service was established from Fairbanks. Territorial cities were now linked by daily flights. Two or three dozen smaller planes were also in operation, connecting far-flung mining camps. There were no radios or weather reports as support systems, however. A breakdown above the Arctic Divide was almost certain to be fatal. Pilots were literally on their own. When Christian missionaries took to the skies to spread the gospel, it was dangerous work. On October 12, 1930, two Catholic priests were killed in a plane crash near the village of Kotzebue.23

  Steamers were also beginning to move logs from the uppermost timberline. And by the end of the decade the two-lane Steese Highway linked Fairbanks to Circle City on the Yukon River.24

  While Alaska still had thick migratory caribou herds, market hunters were starting to drive up to Circle City to blast away at them. The country was too vast for a single game warden to patrol. Effective law enforcement under such circumstances was impossible. The rogues ran Alaska, dismissing federal authority every step of the way.25

  Working at a feverish pace, Olaus submitted his encyclopedic study of caribou to the Biological Survey. There was a lot for the public to learn about their migratory patterns. Most Americans failed to appreciate the wonder of the caribou—or even to comprehend that reindeer were nothing more than domesticated caribou, or that caribou traveled longer distances than any other terrestrial mammal—up to 3,100 miles a year. When Olaus was assigned to observe the waterfowl along the Old Crow River in northeastern Alaska, Mardy insisted on coming along. She would carry the baby, Martin, like a papoose, slung on her back so as not to slow the expedition down. The Muries poled a scow up 250 miles of that muddy river, collecting the best field observations to date on the white-winged scoter (Melanitta fusca), pintail (Anas acuta), and American wigeon (Anas americana) as John James Audubon might have done. Olaus could only wonder what Audubon would have thought of Alaska’s abundant birdlife.

  Employees of the Biological Survey in Washington, D.C., considered it sheer lunacy to bring a baby along on such an arduous trek. Mardy, who managed to keep daily diaries of their adventure, retorted that the Inuit had been doing it for years. Mardy dutifully recorded everything from swarms of gnats to styles of moccasins. Her once soft skin became as hard as scar tissue. Whereas Mardy’s honeymoon diaries had the feel of an accountant’s ledger, her journals from the Old Crow had the feel of another Thoreau in the making. “The river was empty, the other shore just a thick green wall,” she wrote. “At my back, behind the little tent, stretched the limitless tundra, mile upon mile, clear to the Arctic. Somehow that day I was very conscious of that infinite, quiet space. . . . We could see, far out over miles of green tundra, blue hills in the distance, on the Arctic Coast no doubt. This was the high point; we had reached the headwaters of the Old Crow. After we had lived with it in all its moods, been down in the depths with it for weeks, it was good to know that the river began in beauty and flowed through miles of clear gravel and airy open space.”

  What a combination! Mardy wrote prose poetry about Arctic Alaska. Olaus, sticking to empirical evidence, recorded
all the facts about the fauna. Photographs were also taken and Olaus’s wildlife drawings continued. Once they had conquered the Old Crow, anything was possible. They felt empowered. Much like John Muir, the Muries had a childlike passion for the wonders of nature. “I think we should go beyond proving the rights of animals to live in utilitarian terms,” Olaus wrote. “Why don’t we just admit we like having them around? Isn’t that answer enough!”26

  Another baby, a girl named Joanne, was born in 1927. The Muries decided to relocate outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with the Grand Tetons as their backyard. Olaus had been tasked by the Biological Survey to make a complete study of the famous 20,000-head elk herd, which, in his words, “had fallen on evil times.”27 Having filled their library shelves with first editions of all the important Alaskan books and reports, they devoured knowledge about every facet of Arctic Alaska.

  Scientific expertise had its social advantages: the Muries’ home soon became a virtual bed-and-breakfast for conservationists wanting to learn more about Alaska. Olaus continued his frequent business trips to Washington, D.C.; a third child (Donald) was born; and Bob Marshall’s new “wilderness philosophy” became their guidebook. Their love story was famous in the conservationist movement during the dark days of Herbert Hoover.

  And then Franklin D. Roosevelt became president. Suddenly, the White House cared about what they thought—imagine that. Throughout the New Deal years, 1933 to 1940, in fact, the Muries joined Bob Marshall as the world experts on Arctic Alaskan wildlife. Olaus—who was called the “father of modern elk management”—shuttled between Fairbanks, Jackson Hole, and Washington, D.C. He adhered to Charles Darwin’s belief that “a man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”28 Bringing the three children with them, the Muries also traveled in British Columbia and the volcanic Aleutians. Marshall came to stay with them in Wyoming to plot conservation strategy. Olaus’s brother Adolph, a wildlife biologist himself, continued assisting in their pioneering studies of the great Arctic caribou herds and Jackson Hole elk. In 1940 Adolph published his landmark Ecology of the Coyote in Yellowstone, the first serious predator study in the history of the National Park Service.29

  Being an ardent preservationist also had social drawbacks. Very few people want to discuss moose dewlap or black spruce seedlings over supper. To many Alaskans, the Muries were a bore. Moreover, the Muries’ occupation didn’t bring in dollars. So it was a memorable occasion when Olaus and Mardy visited Washington, D.C., in the early 1930s to have dinner with Bob Marshall, cofounder of The Wilderness Society. He was “full of enthusiasm and eagerness,” as Mardy put it, to learn about grayling spawns, lagoon ice, gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) delivering calves, and marshy cotton grass. Experts like an audience, and Marshall was a fine audience for Olaus and Mardy Murie. What Bob gave to the Muries, and what initiated a lasting friendship, was the momentum needed to win the fight to keep Arctic Alaska roadless.30

  The Muries and Marshall weren’t alone in their heartfelt concern for the fate of Alaskan wildlife. Aldo Leopold, for example, was sickened by the slaughter of bears. When the writer and photographer John M. Holzworth published an awe-inspiring book about the brown bears and bald eagles on Admiralty Island, Leopold entered the fray to save places rich in wildlife.31 Leopold, in fact, urged that Admiralty Island should become a national bear reserve. Leopold also wanted the Katmai National Monument to be enlarged to encompass a feeding area for brown bears. (The highest density of brown bears ever recorded was at what is today Katmai National Park: 551 bears per 1,000 square kilometers.32) When the Alaska Game Commission, bowing under political pressure, came up with the policy that the only good bear is a dead bear, Leopold led a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill, petitioning the special Senate Committee on Wildlife Resources to save Alaska’s bears. “I personally lack first-hand knowledge of Alaskan conditions but I strongly lean to the belief that where commercial interests conflict with bear conservation, the former have been given undue priority,” Leopold wrote to Senator Frederic Walcott of Connecticut. “I favor the sanctuary and will strongly support any policy when your committee of others may evolve to not merely perpetuate the species, but to assure such perpetuation on the largest range in the largest possible numbers.”33

  All three Muries (along with Aldo Leopold and Marshall) became very active in The Wilderness Society when it was created in 1935. With a unified voice, they were determined to save Arctic Alaska for perpetuity by writing books and holding chautauquas. They had earned the right to preserve the unfathomable Arctic by loving it more than anybody else. When they spoke about Arctic sea ice being continually converted into fresh ice, they were believed because of their doctoral and master’s degrees. When Marshall suddenly died, while only in his thirties, Olaus and Mardy stepped in to fill the void. What Mardy had learned best from Marshall was to attack conservation issues with a “pixie sense of humor.” The fight to save natural resources in Arctic Alaska would be a long, hard struggle. But they were on the side of the angels. As Edward Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire, later wrote, “the idea of wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders.”34 Important landscapes throughout America that were unprotected—such as Arizona’s Tumacacori Highlands, California’s Eastern Sierra, Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains, Oregon’s Mount Hood, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Forest, and Washington’s Wild Sky—had grassroots defenders, locals ready to stand in front of a timber truck or fight in courts for injunctions. In Arctic Alaska the Muries had replaced Bob Marshall as the frontline defense for the Brooks Range on both the local and the national level.

  Unbeknownst to the Muries, there was a U.S. Supreme Court justice—William O. Douglas, a legal prodigy from Yakima, Washington, just turning forty—who was ready and eager to push the agenda of The Wilderness Society forward in very dramatic ways. Even when the Supreme Court was in session, he would often wear western-style shirts and pants. History would soon know Douglas as “nature’s justice” for his relentless conservationist efforts to protect America’s wild places. “I hiked, rode horseback, and took canoe trips through all parts of the United States and often related my experiences in public,” Douglas wrote. “I became increasingly alarmed at the pollution of our rivers, at the darkening skies due to smog, at the silting of rivers due to overgrazing and reckless logging practices. I saw beaches despoiled by industry and Lake Erie turning into a cesspool. I saw highways destroying wilderness areas. I was shocked at the manner in which ‘development’ programs were ruining the wilderness recreational potential of the nation.”35

  Almost miraculously, the Muries cast off their grief over Marshall’s death because Douglas was there to step into a new leadership role. A public intellectual, Douglas was always astutely political when it came to protecting wild America. Nobody before or after him championed the freedom to roam—the general public’s right of access to wilderness—more enthusiastically than Douglas. “Commercial interests unrestrained by biologists, botanists, ornithologists, artists and others, who see the spiritual values in the outdoors,” he wrote, “can in time convert every area of America into a money-making scheme.”36

  The inherent difficulty of mining or drilling in Arctic Alaska became powerfully clear to Americans on August 15, 1935, when the beloved humorist Will Rogers and his friend Wiley Post, a renowned aviator, crashed near Point Barrow. Rogers had named the little Lockheed Orion plane Aurora Borealis to honor the northern lights. After hunting and fishing near Fairbanks, they had decided to see the Arctic, which was just becoming popular in sportsmen’s periodicals. Their aircraft crashed into the water, and their widely reported deaths were a warning to other enthusiasts that the North Slope airspace was as unpredictable as the roughest seas and that nature was still decidedly in charge. “When Will Rogers died with Wiley Post in 1935 in an airplane crash in Alaska, an important influence went out of American life,” Douglas wrote in his memoir Go East, Young Man. “Apart from FDR, there have been no presidents in this century who could m
ake America laugh. We need laughter for good health. I have left my saddle to the Will Rogers memorial in Oklahoma.”37

  Starting in 1937, Olaus Murie occupied a seat on The Wilderness Society’s board. Like Douglas, he became known for his articulate dissent against proposals to build huge federal dams in Glacier National Park and Dinosaur National Monument, and against Rampart Dam on Alaska’s Yukon River. Throughout the late 1930s the Muries also turned their attention to the Aleutian Islands, leading a reconnaissance mission (similar to the Harriman Expedition) to study sea otters and birds. “What a rich prize and privilege the assignment was,” Victor B. Scheffer, who accompanied the Muries to the Aleutians, recalled. “Our chief mission was to make a ‘wildlife inventory’ of those treeless, nearly unpopulated islands that reach for 1,100 miles westward from the Alaska Peninsula.”38

  Chapter Thirteen - Will the Wolf Survive?

  I

  A damnable problem regarding Mount McKinley in the 1930s was that wolves were blamed for the decline of its Dall sheep population. Alaskans were at war with wolves, direct competitors for suppertime meat, and therefore hunted them relentlessly. Wolf dens were destroyed like rats’ nests—best to kill the whole goddamn litter. Some grown wolves weighed as much as a 175 pounds and could run twenty-five miles an hour when chasing prey. They could eat a huge amount of meat—around 20 percent of their gross body weight. A wolf pack could devour a full-grown moose every two or three days. The “big bad wolf”—the term used in Walt Disney’s 1933 animation The Three Little Pigs—was considered vermin, a wanton killer, best eradicated. Wolves were also villains in children’s tales such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. “They’re all dirty killers,” was a popular remark.1 When a wolf appeared around a bend of the Yukon River or in the Gates of the Arctic, an Alaskan instinctually reached for a rifle.