by Helen Thayer
Soon Patch lay down and seemed content to wait. After consuming more than half the carcass, the bear withdrew a few feet and sat to lick his paws. Patch dashed forward to rip chunks of meat from the seal and gobble them down, as if worried that the bear might change his mind. Indeed, in several minutes the bear rose and, after a short growl, resumed his meal while Patch again retreated and watched. This time the bear finished off the seal except for a few small pieces. Apparently satisfied, he walked toward the open water and allowed Patch to eat the last bits.
On this journey we had encountered several members of the sea ice pack spread several miles apart. By instinctive reasoning they had apparently established that it was wise to spread out and follow different bears to share food. The earlier episode in which we met all eleven wolves in one place indicated that the family met occasionally in sheltered areas, perhaps to escape the full brunt of storms when hunting was impossible. After observing the playful intelligence of the summer pack, we wouldn’t have been surprised if the sea ice group also gathered to exchange news and catch up on games.
We had detected the interaction of two major Arctic predator species, both intelligent hunters with a need to find prey wherever they could in the harsh conditions of the ice pack. That the polar bears shared their seal kills demonstrated the ability of both species to understand the needs of the other. Now we had observed winter and summer wolves as both groups shared food and established at least a primitive interspecies emotional bond and communication.
Our next task was to travel to the delta and the place John had marked on our map, where he had often watched a family of wolves gather at a winter meeting place. Our hope was that they would add to our knowledge of the ways wolves live in both summer and winter in the wild.
Camp
TO AVOID THE WATER and reach smoother ice, we skied in a southeasterly direction toward the Canadian coast. Charlie caught the scent of another seal lair hidden beneath the ice surface and dug down, but its owner had left, probably at the first sound of the intruder.
Dangerous ice conditions had tested us almost to our limit, leaving our nerves taut. After two weeks on the sea ice, I craved the feel of solid land beneath my skis. We skirted east to find a dry route around more open water. The violent breakup had completely changed the surface of the ice since we had traveled across it on our way north. Newly formed ridges and recently opened areas of water blocked our path. We swung southwest to follow the Canadian coastline all the way back to Tuk.
After a day of uneventful hard skiing, we reached the coast not far from Tuk and stepped onto land, relieved to leave the sea ice behind. No more ice breakups, open water, polar bears, or long detours. We were eager to locate the wolves’ gathering place on the delta that John had so enthusiastically described.
After setting up camp three miles outside Tuk, we took inventory of our supplies. In spite of the frustrating delays over the last twenty-seven days, we had more than enough provisions and stove fuel left to complete our trip even if our planned thirty-day expedition extended to sixty days. Charlie’s dry dog food supply was ample at two pounds per day. Our equipment, which had taken a savage beating on the sea ice, had survived in reasonable condition.
The noisy arrival of two snowmobiles from Tuk put an abrupt end to the silence. Sitting astride their idling yellow and black Polaris machines, the young Inuit men introduced themselves as Mark and Tommy. Mark, probably in his twenties, with broad shoulders and powerful arms, lisped slightly through the gap where his two front teeth should have been. Tommy, of similar age, tall and slender, wore a perpetual smile on his ruddy-cheeked face. Arched eyebrows accentuated his conversation. After they scrutinized our gear and the supplies we had already laid out, Tommy emphatically proclaimed that he could see a serious need for more cookies, bread, and breakfast cereal.
“Give us fifty dollars and we’ll bring back good food,” Tommy said.
Bill handed over the money. With a roar, they throttled their machines across the snow toward Tuk.
“What the heck,” Bill said as we watched them disappear. “Even if we don’t see our money or the food, they were a cheery pair.”
Two hours later we were pleasantly surprised to hear the two men racing back across the snow toward our camp. Mark towed a six-foot long wooden sled called a komatik. Tommy proudly pulled back the tarpaulin to display an array of food topped by twelve large chocolate bars. Then he unwrapped a newspaper parcel of muktuk, the blubber of beluga whales. We had tasted muktuk, a standard Inuit food, on a previous northern journey. Now just the oily smell of it made our stomachs turn. It was too much for our kabloona stomachs, even though it contains the health-giving omega-3 fatty acids so important in the fight against heart disease.
Previous generations of Inuit were far healthier than today’s people. True hunter-gatherers, the traditional Inuit ate large quantities of seal and beluga meat and blubber in addition to other foods taken from the sea and land. The introduction of white people’s foods such as sugar, margarine, dairy products, and candy, in addition to abundant supplies of alcohol and tobacco, have caused a steady decline in Inuit health. Tooth decay, obesity, heart disease, emphysema, and diabetes are common.
“We thought you’d like these after your dinner,” Tommy said, pointing to the chocolate bars with his sparkling smile.
“Here’s your change.” Mark handed Bill twenty-one dollars. After Bill refused to take it, Mark turned to me. “Missus, you take it.”
“No, it’s yours,” I said.
Mark waved his hand toward both purring machines and replied with a grin, “They do get hungry. Thanks.”
After we unloaded the supplies, both men gunned their engines to circle our tent and, with a final dramatic salute, roared away to Tuk.
We packed the six loaves of bread, fifteen boxes of some type of nondescript crunchy cereal, and four large sacks of frosting-covered vanilla cookies into stuff sacks to load onto our sleds. The bread would automatically freeze, preserving it. Broken into pieces, it would make a fine addition to our dinner soup.
Bill chewed a slice of fresh bread and nodded his approval. “It’s good.”
Knowing we could never eat the muktuk, I gave some to Charlie, who gobbled it in seconds and looked for more. Clearly the smelly blubber wouldn’t go to waste. I wondered if it reminded Charlie of his life in the North, before I met him, when all he ate was seal and whale. I put the rest in a safe place on my sled to ration it to him over the next several days.
Under more blue skies and a light wind, the temperature at -21 degrees, we set out to find the delta wolf pack. Four willow ptarmigan leaped into the air. The sudden throb of their wings startled us, while Charlie boisterously charged to the end of his leash. But the wily birds landed safely in another thicket, chattering in high-pitched, indignant voices. Although brown in summer, their plumage turned white in winter, making it the perfect camouflage against foxes and snowy owls. These tough birds don’t migrate for the winter; instead they burrow into the snow, where the temperature is several degrees warmer than outside.
In the delta camp, Mackenzie approaches and turns toward me, suspicious. This animal is clearly the Alpha.
The next night, as we wrote in our journals in the dim light of a tiny candle that threatened to go out at any moment, we noticed a laserlike beam of light penetrating the tent walls. In a minute we were outside, gasping at the sight above us.
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, sent an immense curtain of soft green light pulsating across the sky, wavering in delicate curves as if it were a bridal train filling the heavens, swirling and moving to a silent script. A soft rose color gradually washed across the green, only to retreat slightly, as if to share the universe with the green that now pulsated in unison with the rose. Although the lower edge of these auroral displays usually does not reach closer than a hundred miles above the surface of the earth, the bottom of this one seemed to brush the horizon; at the top, the lights curved out to the infinity of sp
ace.
The northern lights are caused by charged particles that penetrate the atmosphere along the magnetic fields of the polar regions, creating a solar wind circling the earth at high latitudes. The enormous wall of light, sometimes several hundred miles long and at times more than 150 miles high, moves in waves across the heavens.
Mesmerized, we ignored the chill of the night air. The pulsating curtain drifted away as if to leave us, only to return, all the while moving back and forth in great folds and curves. Eventually, as the light faded to a dark sky full of stars, we returned to our sleeping bags, cold but in awe. Of all the auroras we had seen, this was probably the most spectacular.
Although short on sleep, we rose at dawn. In a biting twenty-mile-per-hour wind, we skied across the willow-covered coastal areas to reach the delta’s interior in four days. The wilderness here remained in deep winter’s brittle grip. Still at least five days from Inuvik at the end of February, we arrived at the place John had marked with a large black X on our map.
We saw a lone wolf track, but no wolves. Charlie zealously pressed his black nose into the hand-size paw prints, then aimed his head at the sky and howled with delight. He waited, as if expecting an answer, but there was only silence.
We skied toward a few wind-tormented trees, crossing more wolf tracks. Most looked old, but a few still retained the sharp edges of new prints. Charlie stopped twice, head tilted to one side, listening. Later, closer to the trees, he howled again. A short cry came from our left but stopped midnote, to be taken up moments later by several blended voices from deep within the shadows of the trees.
We reached a meager forest on higher ground. Close by, we pitched our tent on a patch of flat tundra with a view of the open delta, its immensity surrounding us on three sides, enfolding us in the serenity of isolation. Behind us in the fading light, the ghostly shapes of the forest were reflected in the snow. The ice road lay several miles away. We had seen no sign of snowmobiles or their tracks for days.
While we erected the tent, Charlie scent-marked several wolf tracks that crisscrossed the snow. So far we hadn’t sighted a wolf, but the air was thick with their presence. As soon as the tent was up I stood aside, expecting Charlie’s customary beeline inside for my sleeping bag, but he was preoccupied with carefully marking a roughly circular perimeter about fifty feet away.
He inspected the entire site, then scent-marked the tent on three sides. “Oh boy, here we go again,” Bill said.
With his territory adequately claimed, Charlie sat expectantly outside the tent door, waiting for the visitors he seemed certain were close. After an hour we glimpsed a lone wolf gliding through the deep shadows of the forest.
At midnight, under another tapestry of northern lights that lit up the sky, Charlie stepped outside and aimed an intense stare at the area to the right of our tent. As we followed his gaze, we detected a slight movement. Charlie howled. Minutes later came a single call, then quiet yips, from a second wolf. They seemed so close that I looked around, half-expecting to see one at my side.
After a few minutes of quiet, Charlie returned inside, and we followed. But sleep didn’t come easily when we knew that wolves were watching us from trees only two hundred feet away.
Next morning in the early light, a sudden chorus erupted. Six wolves stood at the edge of the forest, howling. The moment we stepped out of the tent, they stopped abruptly and then silently exchanged stares with Charlie. Within seconds Charlie sat down with his head turned to the side to avoid direct eye contact. We settled on our sleds and looked away submissively as well. First one wolf moved a foot closer; then another stepped forward. They froze in place when we looked directly at them, then relaxed as we feigned indifference.
The six quietly spread out, but remained close to the security of the woods. They moved without aggression, only with the curiosity we had also observed in the summer wolves. But their curiosity was tempered by nervousness as they eyed Bill and me sitting motionless on our sleds.
After a few minutes Charlie rose, tail curled high above his back to signal his alpha status over his human pack, just as he had with the summer wolves. He immediately became the sole focus of attention. A male, mostly blond with gray markings, approached alone, stiff-legged and cautious, to sniff and then resniff Charlie’s painstakingly laid-out scent marks. After marking some with his own scent, as an added gesture of dominance the wolf defecated on a scent mark, then returned to his family, who had watched from the trees. This animal was clearly their alpha.
After an hour of strutting, renewing scent marks (including those on our tent), and yipping occasionally, Charlie, with a hint of arrogance, turned his back and strolled into the tent. He reappeared a few minutes later, still under the intense scrutiny of the wolves, none of whom ever took their eyes off the tent when Charlie disappeared. The dominant male again faced Charlie, but now slowly waved his tail. Charlie replied with a gentle fanning of his own tail. The two appeared to have agreed to be friends. We were ecstatic: This was the pack John had described and their acceptance of Charlie would allow us to remain in the area to observe them. To signify the end of the visit, Charlie re-entered the tent and lay down in his customary place across my sleeping bag, while the alpha, finding himself ignored, led his pack into the woods.
Now that we had established contact with the pack, we reread the notes John had written about his experiences and what we might expect from these delta wolves. His sudden switch from hunting wolves for their pelts to looking for wolves, as he told us, “just to be around them,” had caused him to travel widely over the boundless delta.
A dedicated loner from Cambridge Bay farther east on the northern coast, John had no family ties in Inuvik. He had traveled north after leaving his job in Whitehorse and fell in love with the wide-open space of the delta. He passionately traversed the frozen waterways, forests, and willow thickets on his snowmobile looking for wolves, and in the process developed an intricate knowledge of the territory.
Four years ago he had camped close to our present tent site to wait out a brief snowstorm and discovered wolves living in the shelter of the nearby trees. They stayed for several days before heading across the delta to hunt. He followed at a discreet distance to avoid spooking them. After losing sight of them several times over hills and in trees, he caught up just as they chased down an aging caribou. They gorged themselves, then slept curled up in the snow. After another three days of hunting, much to John’s surprise, they returned to where he had first seen them and stayed for three days. He camped a half mile away and kept watch with binoculars from a rise in the tundra.
Led by an alpha male and female, the family repeated the cycle throughout the winter. With spring’s first signs of thaw, they disappeared into the hills south of Inuvik, where John suspected they denned, ready for the new season’s pups. Although he searched, he never found their den. They repeated the same hunting and resting cycle each winter. Their numbers remained between six and ten, with some young adults dispersing.
Once John watched a fight between a midpack wolf and a stranger, a large dark gray animal. The fight to the death was won by the strange wolf, who continued to live on the fringes of the pack for several weeks. Eventually he challenged the leader. After a brief fight the leader ran for his life. That night, mournful howling filled the air from a distance. The alpha female left immediately, presumably to join her mate. Then the howling stopped, and John never saw either wolf again.
The stranger took over the position of alpha and bonded with a midpack female, who became the alpha female. John described him as dark, young, powerful, and extremely dominant. He was still the alpha in late January, when John had last visited the area.
One thing in John’s notes puzzled us: The alpha leader he described was nowhere in sight. Leadership had changed. The alpha we now faced was lighter colored, looked laid-back, and appeared to rule with serene control. Rather than having lost a leadership fight, we speculated, the alpha John had seen had probably died from injur
y or disease. Perhaps this new alpha had been the family’s beta wolf and had automatically stepped up in rank when his leader died. The present alpha—Mackenzie, as we chose to call him—was far less assertive than Alpha of the summer pack. He reminded us of lovable, calm Beta, who taught the pups and disciplined the teenagers with the same gentleness we saw in Mackenzie.
A yearling bear enjoys a back scratch on the ice while his mother hunts at the water’s edge.
We were sure that Charlie had confirmed his dominance over Mackenzie when we saw him turn his back on his visitor and enter the tent to abruptly conclude the visit. His actions demonstrated that he had a stronger personality than Mackenzie, whose manner was reflected in the behavior of his family. In our first encounter with the summer pack the entire group had stepped boldly forward, their posturing demanding a reason for our presence. But the delta group had stayed back, allowing Mackenzie to do all the investigating. When we first met the delta family, Charlie had no need for lengthy bouts of posturing and submission, a striking contrast to our initial rendezvous with the summer wolves.
Now that a positive relationship had been established, the wolves occasionally appeared at the edge of the trees and watched us. Haughty Charlie occasionally afforded them an indifferent glance; he seemed to make a point of showing them that he would communicate only on his terms.
At the end of the first day’s contact, as darkness fell and a chill wind sent icy fingers down our parkas, we ate dinner and retreated to the warmth of our sleeping bags. We were thrilled about the day’s events. A successful connection with a third wild wolf pack, in addition to the summer family and the sea ice pack, was beyond anything we could have wished for. We owed a great debt to John, who, once he understood that we would never harm the wolves, unselfishly shared the vital information that helped us find this delta pack. We eagerly looked forward to when he would visit us on the delta, as he had promised.
