by Brian Keenan
We had to keep a watchful eye on Jack and Cal. The floodwaters of these rivers take no prisoners. So I made my own obeisance to the spirit of the rivers that its passage through the land would be untroubled and that it would protect me and mine as we travelled across or on it. Even as we were careful of the creeks I could not but be aware how the orchestra of the water’s movement echoed out across the land. Everywhere the silhouettes that were trees had burst into leaf, as if offering up an uncontrollable, roaring applause. The urgency of everything around us made us more anxious to get off the road and further into the bush. Already on our sight line we could see the snowcapped peaks of McKinley or, to the native inhabitant, Denali, an Indian name meaning ‘the High One’.
Denali National Park is about 120 miles south of Fairbanks on the main route to Anchorage. Although we were on the major heartland motorway, the Pequod felt as if she really was at sea on several occasions. As had been explained to me, the concrete carpet of road had collapsed in several places into axle-breaking ruts, or had buckled into sudden ramps as the melting permafrost had allowed. But we were on the borderline between spring and summer and the road had not yet acquired the usual volume of traffic. By high summer there would be a wagon train of RVs congesting these highways, and if the surfaces got much worse many of them would be laid up by the roadside having accidentally driven into the permafrost shifts.
In front of us Mount McKinley’s snow-encrusted summit filled every vista, no longer a shadowy hulk in the distant horizon. At over twenty thousand feet it’s the highest mountain in North America. But then I joked with Audrey that everything was big in Alaska. ‘It has the biggest oil field, a glacier bigger then Rhode Island, the biggest bears, the largest expanse of emptiness anywhere in the world . . . some Alaskans on the Pribilof Island even live nearer to Japan than their own state capital Juneau! Now you can’t get anything much bigger than that.’ Audrey was unimpressed and rolled her eyes slightly as if to say ‘Really!’ then quietly pointed with her finger towards me and back to her mouth, her eyes all the time wide with emphasis. I took the hint and turned my attention back to the road rolling out in front of us. ‘Aye, aye, Starbuck,’ I answered.
I liked it that Denali was a being revered perhaps for more than its height and strength. It looks like the ghostly head of some ancient warrior, its stone face staring out from the shadow of its tarnished helmet. The native peoples believe the mountain was created during a battle between two magical warriors. The raven chief, Totson, pursued his enemy Yako down a river. Totson threw a magic spear, but Yako threw up a gigantic wave of stone to deflect the arrow, and Denali was born. In another story Denali is called ‘the home of the sun’. During the longest days of summer the sun makes almost a complete circle in the local sky and disappears for a few hours below the horizon. From certain angles it appears that the sun rises and sets behind the mountain, and an old Athabascan legend testifies to this with the words, ‘Surely we found the home of the sun and we saw with our own eyes, the sun goes into the mountain, and leaves its home in the morning.’
Somehow, as I looked out on this panorama, I was drawn into the story of the warriors and the specific reference to the fact that they had performed magic deeds. For me, magic seemed to be spilling out of the mountains. I knelt down to my two sons and pointed. ‘Do you see those silver-white mountains? Well, they’re magic, and that’s where we are going. To see the bears and the big moose and the foxes and the wolves.’ I knew it was Disneyland talk, but maybe Disney and Denali were not so far apart in terms of magic, and maybe Cal and Jack were looking on this fabulous landscape with the same sense of awe and wonder that a young native child might have as he goes on his first hunt with his father.
So we set our sail and drove the Pequod into the wilderness to berth somewhere in the lee of ‘the High One’. But because the park is a protected area the traveller is restricted to a series of camping grounds which move deeper into the wilderness. Still, much of the park is restricted from any form of human activity as it’s a critical habitat for wildlife and plants. Here the dynamic of nature unfolds according to its own laws and the way of life is left unmolested. Author Wallace Sterner wrote of such places, ‘We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. It can be a means of reassuring us of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.’ I wasn’t too sure what that last sentence meant. It shadowed my own feeling that wilderness places can affect us profoundly, but I wanted more than reassurance. I wanted to know how this Alaska might change people.
At the campsite’s check-in that evening we were informed that some of the furthest campsites were now closed and only vehicles were allowed to go and stay at the furthest available site; backpackers and overnight hikers were forbidden from large tracts of the park. Foodstuffs of any description were not to be carried into certain areas and all food waste was to be stored inside vehicles and brought out of the park on departure. I was more than dismayed as the list of prohibitions continued. There was a curfew on people detouring off designated trails, and all animals had to be kept in their owner’s vehicles or walked on a leash within the campsites. The exasperated look on the other visitors’ faces mirrored my own. What had happened? Was it a sudden epidemic or earthquake? Alaska, I remembered, had had several in its history. When I asked what the problem was, I was told, ‘Wolves, sir.’ In the past few weeks it had been reported that a wolf pack had taken to raiding some sites, particularly those in the more remote areas. The ranger explained that no-one had been attacked and wolves coming anywhere near campsites or humans was most unusual. ‘Wolves do not like people and always keep well away from them,’ he emphasized.
His words reminded me of the electric tension in Jack London’s take on the confrontation between man and beast. At ten and eleven years old my imagination had no knowledge or interest in the symbolic or metaphorical significance of the author’s work, but for a few seconds I was back in my childhood with London’s snarling, salivating wolf pack.
The ranger was unaware of my momentary lapse and was patiently explaining the necessity of such precautions. ‘This behaviour is so unusual that we need to nip it in the bud before something really bad happens. We do not want the wolf pack to consider the campsites as easy pickings so we are making sure we eliminate any such behaviour from becoming established. If the wolf doesn’t react to you like a real bad smell and want to avoid you like the plague then we’ve all got problems!’ The ranger’s final comment might have had a folksy ring to it, but his face displayed serious intent.
There was nothing to be done but accept the limitations. Having purchased what we required we headed along the prescribed route to the furthest campsite allowable. It was almost full when we reached it but we soon reversed into an empty bay and had supper cooking on the stove.
I turned my thoughts again to the wolves. After all, this was their place, and the early-evening dog show outside my window was poor compensation. What seemed to disturb the rangers was that the wolf pack’s abnormal behaviour disturbed the critical balance in nature that makes wilderness unique. What had caused such a drastic change in their normal pattern I could not ascertain. Neither were the rangers sure. Trying to apply my human, city-bound logic would be useless. I had a notion that the only way I could begin to understand was somehow to shed my preconceptions and merge my mind with the wilderness itself. And even if I was cribbed and confined in the Pequod I was determined the wilderness should not be denied me.
When the coast was clear and I was assured I would not be accosted by some fellow traveller with a menagerie of miniature canines, I decided to go for another walk, only this time well outside the confines of the camp. I took my camera as an excuse. Audrey seemed hesitantly content, but warned me not to go too far and not to stay out too long. She knew my predilection to ‘go into solitary mode’ when I got restless, but this time there was a genuine hint of anxiety about my going. ‘I’ll not be long and I will be
careful,’ I assured her.
The camp had acquired an almost unreal silence. Apart from the occasional yapping dog, as I passed there was little to suggest that there were probably sixty or more people squeezed into this tiny half acre. The intermittent flash of TV screens or a sighting of people reading in the curious evening light simply added to the emptiness of the place. It was actually more sterile than empty, I thought as I passed the last camper van. It was from upstate New York, and I heard faint traces of what I thought was Ravel’s Bolero. I thought of Dan, and Johannes Sebastian Bach or maybe Black Sabbath blasting out against a howling white-out. Maybe the Bolero was better. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to swell my sombre mood for a moment, and my desire to get away. Within minutes the camp and its occupants were gone.
The camp was located by a small stream, and as I followed it I soon found it was a tributary of a larger river, one of many, I suspected, that shift and remake themselves as the waters swell after the glacial meltdown. The river would give me a bearing and its clear banks would reveal any creature I preferred not to confront, in time for me to make my exit. I was relieved to be gone and trudged on glad-heartedly. I had noticed as I was leaving that a few more campers had arrived. They and several others had window stickers declaring ‘Jesus Saves’ or imploring me to ‘Seek ye the lord while he may be found’, or some other variety of biblical text. I was doubly glad to be away from them. ‘Why do these salvation merchants come here?’ I asked myself again.
Then the noise of the water and the amplified silence of the outback dispelled such thoughts. I walked on, leaving everything else behind, and absorbed the world around me. A few mosquitoes disturbed me, but it was still the sub-arctic and the chill breeze soon blew them away. The riverbank was dotted with aspen, larch and poplar, and beyond that dwarf birch, blueberry and stunted willow, which seemed to be everywhere. Young snowshoe hares also seemed to be everywhere, and not the least bothered by my presence. I stopped after some twenty minutes and climbed onto a huge boulder. Some dried-out trunks of trees from last year’s meltdown were still trapped under it. The bulk of the stone and the size and number of the tree trunks told me all I needed to know about how powerful these waters could get at the height of summer.
I sat down and let the wilderness wrap itself around me. But this trance-like torpor lasted only a moment, and then my senses seemed suddenly and simultaneously alive, pushed by some kind of automatic adrenalin into new levels of alertness. Perched on top of my solitary rock, I experienced the same feeling I’d had on the Chena River – a feeling that it is not only creatures that inhabit the outback. It felt as if I had been stalked to this very rock, that all around me a thousand eyes were squinting and bearing down on me. ‘Wolf pack,’ I thought, panicked by the sudden sense of estrangement. But there were no wolves, not real ones, just my imagination creating them. But imaginary wolves are still real enough, and though they were only in my head they still meant something. And anyway, I cursed, isn’t that why I came here? Damn Jack London and his wolf pack!
I reflected on what my guide Debra had explained to me about Inuit people and their world view. To their mind there is always something in the air that watches. However remote a place one finds oneself in, one is never truly alone. But if my sense of dislocation when sitting alone was real, I was certainly no happier in the community of the campsite. If I had been born here I would surely conceive the world differently; even my imaginary wolves would have more significance. To the Inuit mind the invisible and real worlds are one and have a meaningful relationship.
Their ‘Distant Time’ stories, an extensive coda which outlines and defines the proper relationship of everything in nature from the minute to the cosmological, begin with the wonderfully liberating premise that in a time prior to our present order of existence animals were humans. At some stage certain humans died and metamorphosed into plants and animals while retaining human qualities and personalities. It is almost the vision of Darwin in reverse. In this cosmology the wolf is one of many significant beings, along with the bear, wolverine and lynx. Such spirit beings should be treated with great respect, for not to do so could bring serious harm. Consequently, hundreds of tales and taboos have evolved around the treatment of these creatures. To offend an individual animal is to offend against the species.
Because of their mutual origin, the distinction between animal and human is obscure and the two orders co-exist with unique empathy. The creature has all the qualities of the human and can even understand human behaviour. In this belief system the wolf is considered most like humans. They possess intelligence and strength, and live communally. Even today it is believed that wolves will leave fresh kill for humans as a repayment of service in a bygone age.
I had unearthed much of this material when my love of Jack London’s books had made me look for an imaginary prototype for the wolf-dog–man nexus, something that was clearly derivative from the native peoples’ belief system. Jack London’s stories were fables, and in their own modern way were themselves ‘Distant Time’ stories with their own expostulatory critique.
But all this thinking had not cleared my focus but rather brought me to a crossroads. Yes, it had helped clear away the panic and fear that accompany being alone in a desolate place. I was comforted by this belief in the empathy between man and beast and the spirit world; I was intrigued by the notion of transmutation between man and creature. The whole fabric of traditional belief was about honour, respect and shared understanding. It was also about harmony, balance and order, and how things only become calamitous when the relationship between all these things is somehow broken. To the traditional mind, the body of a creature in death should be as revered as at any human passing. Those sightless eyes still see, lifeless ears still hear!
If the wolves were not savage beasts but rather my brothers, then this ‘living’ wilderness was here to receive me. If my sense of dislocation and fear was the problem, not the place I was in, then the wolf pack’s ‘aberrant’ behaviour was not ‘aberrant’ but rather a reaction to some fault or flaw in the system. The wolves had attacked no-one; they need not have ransacked campsites. Indeed, they could have stayed in the wilderness where no human entry was permitted. Wolves have their territory and remain in it for life. A few isolated campers could not force a whole pack to break with long-established instincts. It was whelping season – could that have contributed to their behaviour? I remembered the serious urgency of the ranger’s face when he explained the complications of the pack’s behaviour. Whatever the cause, it was an irrational act. The wolf pack had come to tell us something, something important, and it was communicating its urgency to us. The wolf’s power was not only in its physical presence; it was spirit power of the first order. We need only listen to it to understand. I was new here, even if I felt I had been somehow brought here. I asked the wilderness to forgive me and to be my guide.
It was time to return. There were the remnants of a trail running at right angles to the river. It would take me deeper into the bush, but should, I thought, bring me out somewhere near the road which would lead back to the camp. I felt easier with the land now, not feeling the need to cling to known features such as the river course. The night light was softer, but with that wonderful brightness that comes from nowhere specific but seems to radiate out from the land itself. The clarity of the light and the silence lent a sense of austerity to the world I was walking in. The landscape features on my horizon stood out in high relief. In this light I could scan distances that at other times would have been impossible. The vista across the tundra was giving way to the burgeoning summer. The tussocks of sedge and cotton grass were shedding their russet and ochre hues; the dry yellow of winter grass against the dark beech green of alder, dwarf birch and willow blended into brown and black. To my imagination the whole colour scheme was like a wolf skin. They were the passing colours of winter.
The reds, oranges, bright greens and early blues of mountain aven, fireweed, moss campion and various species
of saxifrage were breaking out. The tundra birds were settling into their ground nests, full of eggs. My approach neither stirred nor fussed them. If I came near they merely eyed me with curious intent. I returned their stare, wondering what communication might be passing between us. It reminded me of the way people look at one another at funerals, half recognizing a face you look at directly in the eye, the solemnity of the moment excusing the intrusion. In that exchange you ask questions, seek recognition and share something that you both know might never be spoken. I passed them by and they acknowledged me as if I were just another lone caribou.
Around me, as I neared the end of my walk, my eyes discovered more remnants of the changing season – pieces of bone and animal fur, fluffy fledgling feathers and the light flight feathers of more mature birds. Everywhere, it seemed, spiders’ webs were shining like crystals against the refracted light. It felt as if the whole landscape was opening itself up to me. Maybe it was the silence, maybe it was the acknowledging stare of the birds, maybe it was the glow of the evening, but the bright night seemed filled with beneficence and the final passing of winter.
Without understanding where it came from I began to sense another passing. What if one of the wolf pack had died at this time of change? The corpse of such a creature would embody great spiritual danger and should not be tampered with but left within the omniscient domain of nature. Only then could such a powerful spirit be appeased. Maybe that was it; maybe the pack was preparing their own funeral rites. Perhaps they were ritually cleansing the hunting grounds in proper observance, and those raided campsites were part of this, and also partly a way of communicating this powerful occurrence. I walked on with silent reverence, not wanting to offend. Maybe I had instinctively stumbled upon what it was that had thrown the whole functioning of this wilderness park into disarray and had so utterly perplexed the rangers.
