by Judy Young
“What about Toni and me?” Buck asked. “Shouldn’t we have some?”
“I’m not comfortable letting kids have bear spray. People can get hurt if it’s not used correctly,” Craig said. “When in bear country, it’s best that kids stay with adults and not wander off on their own.”
“I got the point,” Buck said under his breath.
As Dad and Shoop attached the bear spray to their belts, Buck pulled out his compass. The article about compasses in the orange junior ranger booklet said to look for a distant landmark. Buck looked around. There was a mountain ridge with bumpy knolls on top that looked like knuckles on a fist. Buck took a compass reading. The knolls were in a south-southeasterly direction and lined up with the number 120 on the compass. Buck put the compass back into his pocket, pulled out his camera, and looked again at the numbers he took off Rek’s GPS reading.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked, showing Craig the picture.
“That’s a coordinate of an exact spot somewhere here in Denali, but I’d need a map or GPS to know exactly where. Why?”
“It’s the coordinate of where the bear cubs are,” Buck said. “I’m just curious about what all those little marks mean.”
“You’ll have time to discuss that at the compass class tomorrow. But right now we’re never going to get to that bear den if we don’t get started.” Craig turned to Shoop and Dad.
“After we cross this valley, we’ll follow that creek and then head up until we reach that bench,” he said, pointing toward a small creek and then a flatter sweep of tundra. “Beyond that, out of sight from here, we’ll follow a caribou trail that goes along a knife-edge. The den is on the far side of that mountain with the knobby-looking top.”
Buck smiled when Craig used that mountain as his landmark too.
Toni pulled Buck aside. “Do you know what a knife-edge is?” she whispered.
“No, but with a name like that, I think we’ll recognize it when we see it,” Buck answered.
From the road, the valley looked like it would be easy walking, but it wasn’t. They were waist deep in alder bushes that grabbed at their legs and scratched their arms. Craig led, avoiding places where the alders were over their shoulders.
It was also a lot farther across the valley than it appeared. After thirty minutes they were only about halfway to where the land dropped down to the creek. Craig kept up a running conversation as they walked, quietly telling about the park, his various responsibilities, the animals he had seen, the mountains he had climbed. Suddenly he stopped.
“Freeze!” he commanded in a firm but whispered voice. “Buck, look through your binoculars. About a hundred yards out that direction, just at the edge of that ravine. There’s an animal there, but I can’t tell what it is.” As Craig pointed to where the land dropped away, he slowly pulled the bear spray from its holster.
“All I can see is a brown patch through the leaves.”
“Keep watching it.” Craig took off the safety and rested his finger on the trigger of the bear spray.
Buck kept the glasses to his eyes. The brown patch moved, and he was able to see antlers, then its head and then its shoulder. “It’s a caribou. It’ll be walking out from behind those bushes in just a second. It doesn’t know we’re here.”
“It won’t unless it sees us move,” Craig whispered.
“Let me see the binoculars,” Craig, Dad, and Toni all whispered at the same time. Buck gave them to Craig, who glanced in them for just a second before handing them to Toni.
“It’s a young bull,” Craig whispered.
Even without binoculars, Buck could clearly see the caribou now. It moved a few feet then stopped to graze. Shoop slowly brought his camera up. The caribou saw the movement. It stopped grazing, looked toward them, sniffed the air, took a few more steps, and then sniffed the air again.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Craig said. “We’re downwind of him. He senses we’re here, but he can’t smell us.”
The caribou was curious. It kept sniffing the air and coming closer and closer, then sniffing the air again. It was only about fifty feet away when it finally saw them. It turned and trotted away but only for a few feet before it stopped, turned, and sniffed the air one last time. Shoop was getting it all videoed.
They were watching the young bull when Dad whispered, “Hey, look over there.”
Out of the same ravine, a female caribou came, followed by a calf. More and more females and calves came walking out from the draw, some crossing in front of them, others behind them. Soon the five of them were surrounded by dozens of caribou. They grazed, unaware of the people, and as they grazed they continued to slowly move across the valley.
The five of them stood motionless, watching, until the caribou herd had moved on past them. Even then they remained silent.
It was Buck who finally broke the silence. “It’s a strange feeling,” he said so quietly, he could barely be heard. “I felt like I was part of something that has been going on for centuries and not part of it at the same time.”
“That’s what I like about being in the wilderness,” Craig said. “It’s a mystical feeling.”
“It made me feel really small,” Toni added. “Did you know the caribou would be there?”
“There’s an old Athabascan saying that no one really knows the ways of the caribou except the wind.”
With that, they all continued walking, each with their thoughts. But when they reached the creek and started following it upstream, Craig quietly started talking again.
“It’s a conundrum in bear country,” he said. “You want to make noise as you hike so you don’t startle a bear. That’s why I talked all the way across the valley. But at the same time, you want to be quiet so you don’t scare all the other wildlife away.”
“In the junior ranger booklet it says you can wear little bells in bear country,” Toni said.
“A lot of hikers do,” Craig said. “Your jingly bracelets do the same thing. Makes just a little bit of sound to alert animals, but not enough to scare them away.”
“What if that had been a bear back there instead of caribou?” Buck asked. “Would you have sprayed it with the bear spray?”
“Only if it charged us,” Craig answered. “If that had been a bear, we would have immediately retreated.”
They followed the creek for some time, and when the walls started closing in like a canyon, they climbed up over an embankment. They were higher now, and the alders had given way to the short spongy tundra. Still they kept going higher, their way steeper and steeper until they reached a point where the mountain dropped all the way around them. Mountain after mountain stretched out as far as they could see. Mountains that couldn’t be seen from down below on the road.
Buck stood right at the top and stretched his arms out from his sides, twirling in a circle as he said, “I’m at the top of the world!”
“Get that on camera,” Dad said. “Then we’ll have some lunch.”
Shoop put the camera down on the ground, took off his backpack, and pulled out an audio recorder and a little mic hooked onto a small clip.
“After I hook you up with this lavaliere mic, I want you to say that again, the way you did just now,” Shoop instructed. He clipped the mic to Buck’s shirt and hooked the recorder to his belt. Then Buck repeated what he said, twirling around again.
I’m starting to get the hang of this, he thought as he took a sandwich and scrambled up a large lichen-covered rock pile. A reddish squirrel with a short tail scampered out of the rocks and ran straight toward him. It stopped a few feet in front him, stood up on its hind legs, and proceeded to lecture Buck with a series of sharp little barks. Then it darted back into the rocks. A few seconds later it ran out from a different spot and barked at Buck again. It kept darting in and out of the rocks, letting Buck know how it felt.
“Hey, little fella.” Buck was talking to it. “What are you all upset about?” As Buck spoke, his voice was still being recorded, and Shoop cand
idly captured the Arctic ground squirrel reprimanding Buck for being on the top of its mountain.
After lunch they continued on their way, following a caribou trail up and over another mountain. They were so high now there were just patches of tundra among bare dirt, solid stone, and crumbly shale. Ahead of them two steep slopes of crumbly rock met to form a long, almost pointed edge.
“That must be the knife-edge,” Buck said to Toni. There was barely room for the narrow caribou trail that went along the top. The sides slanted away so steeply, one false step would have had them tumbling, unstoppable, for hundreds of feet. Buck couldn’t even see where the bottom was.
“You have to take it slow,” Craig told them. “Place one foot carefully at a time and, whatever you do, don’t step off to the side. With that loose dirt and rock, you’ll start sliding instantly. Do you kids think you can handle this?”
“No! No, no, no, no, no!” Everyone turned to look at Shoop. He had backed away from the others, and his expression looked as if someone had a knife to his neck.
“I’ve been handling this all along, and it hasn’t been easy,” Shoop said, moving his arm all around to show how high up they were. “But I’m not doing that!” His voice was in a panic.
“Calm down,” Dad said. “I think you can. Just take it slow. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’ll be okay,” Craig added, shooting a puzzled look at Dad. “It’s not very far across, and the bear den is just beyond that.” Buck looked at the knife-edge. It was at least half a mile across it, maybe more.
“Shoop gets a little spooked at heights,” Dad explained to Craig. “Can he stay here?”
Toni turned to her father. “We can handle the bear den sequence, Shoop. You’re just going to use the small head-mount camera and lavaliere mic, aren’t you?”
Shoop nodded. And so it was decided. Shoop would stay and get shots of Buck as he went across the knife-edge and back. The rest of them would go on to the den without him.
Craig went across first to make sure the trail was secure, and then waited on the other side out of view, behind a little knoll. With Shoop’s camera rolling, Buck tentatively put his foot on the trail. It felt solid. He slowly took another step and another, looking down one side and then the other. He was about a quarter of the way across when he carefully turned around and yelled back to Shoop.
“It looks worse than it is. It feels like walking on any trail, just no room for wandering.” Then Buck continued across, making sure he placed his feet right where hundreds of thousands of caribou had before him.
TAKE 9:
“A GRIZZLY CUB IS BORN BLIND, HAIRLESS, AND TOOTHLESS. AND GUESS WHAT ELSE? IT’S BORN WHILE THE MOTHER IS SLEEPING!”
Buck stood with his back to a small hole dug into a protected corner of a mountainside. Holding the head-mount camera, Toni recorded Buck, who wore the lavaliere mic hooked to his shirt.
“It doesn’t seem possible that a full-size grizzly could fit into a little hole like this,” Buck said. He dropped to his knees as if he was going to enter, but then he turned his head to the camera. “But if a grizzly can fit, I guess I can too!” Then he disappeared into the hole. In a couple of seconds they could hear his voice echoing inside the tunnel.
“After sleeping all winter, when a bear comes back out, it’s rrrrr-ravenous!”
Buck exploded out of the den, his teeth bared, his hands curled like claws.
“That’s a wrap!” Toni said as they all laughed.
Toni put the head-mount camera on Buck’s head, and he went into the hole again.
“Man, does it stink in here! Kind of a sweet musky smell,” Buck said. Now no one outside could hear him, but the recorder captured his voice. He had crawled through the entrance of the grizzly den and down a short tunnel, and now the small light attached to the head-mount camera lit up the chamber. “There’s not much room. Just enough for a bear to curl up nice and comfy for a long winter’s nap.”
Buck moved his head around, videoing the den’s dirt walls. There were marks in the dirt made by the bear’s claws when it had dug the den. Dried and decayed vegetable matter was scattered about the floor. Buck picked some up and let it fall through his fingers. “I guess it used the tundra for a mattress. Not much to choose from way up here above timberline.”
He was just about to crawl back out when he stopped.
“Whoa!” Buck picked something up. He moved his head so the light shined on a big clump of thick brown fur.
“It might be a long cold winter up here, but wearing a whole blanket of this, you’d be toasty warm. Still,” he said, moving his head around to shoot the den one last time, “I’d want a little decoration to the place. A little fireplace over in the corner, a couple of pictures on the walls, and a cup of hot cocoa would make this place a little cozier.”
Buck crawled back out. Toni, Dad, and Craig were all sitting outside the hole, waiting.
“Look at this,” Buck said. He still had the bear fur in his hand. He handed it to Toni.
“Wow, it’s really soft,” she said.
The clump of fur was passed to Dad, then Craig, and back to Buck, who stuffed it into his pocket.
“You can’t keep that,” Craig said. “It’s illegal to take anything from a national park except photographs and memories.”
“It’s just a little piece of fur. What difference would that make?”
“Denali gets about a half million visitors a summer. If everyone took a little piece of something—a flower, a rock, or even a little piece of bear fur—the place would soon be picked clean. It’s important to let the wilderness remain wilderness for everybody to see and experience. And that little piece of fur could line the den of an Arctic ground squirrel.”
Buck pulled the fur from his pocket, but instead of turning toward the den, he turned toward Toni.
“Here, you take it back in,” he said, handing her the fur. “You missed out on touching the darted grizzly. You can’t miss out on going into a bear den, too.”
“Thanks!” Smiling, Toni took the clump of fur and crawled in. When she came out, Dad took a turn going in the den too, but Craig said he’d already been inside.
Craig explained, “Late last winter we came up here to do some research on bear hibernation—”
“But bears don’t really hibernate,” Buck interrupted. “Sometimes they wake up and come outside in the winter.”
“Yes, they do,” Craig agreed. “But we’re beginning to believe that bears do hibernate, just differently than other animals.”
“So how are they different?” Toni asked.
“Well, for one thing, a bear’s body temperature only drops about twelve degrees. Most hibernators’ body temperatures drop much more than that. That Arctic ground squirrel you saw back there? Its body temperature goes down to twenty-six degrees during hibernation.”
“Wow! That’s six degrees colder than when water freezes,” Buck said. “So when an Arctic ground squirrel says it’s freezing, it means it!”
“I guess it does,” Craig said, chuckling with the others. As Dad helped Toni put the camera equipment into his daypack, Buck looked toward the den.
“You said you came up here last winter?” he said.
“Yeah, this den had a mother and three cubs,” Craig said. “We took their temperatures, listened to their heartbeats, recorded how fast they breathed . . . that sort of stuff.”
“You went into the den when bears were in there?” Buck asked.
“We tranquilized the sow first to make sure she wouldn’t wake up,” Craig replied.
“You can’t take a rifle in there,” Dad said. “What did you use? A handgun?”
“No, a blowgun. That close up, getting stuck using a blowgun feels more like a mosquito bite than a mule kick. It’s easier on the bear.”
“Was the blowgun like what people in South America used with poison darts?” Buck asked.
“Pretty much,” Craig said. “I went into the den while the sow was asleep, blew thr
ough the tube to release the dart, then crawled out real quick and waited until the tranquilizer had time to take effect. Then we safely entered the den and took our measurements.”
“Holy cow,” Buck said.
“You only tranquilized the sow?” Toni asked. “Those cubs we saw yesterday looked big enough to hurt someone too.”
“Cubs are born in the winter and stay with their mother for up to three years,” Craig explained. “The cubs you saw were already a year and a half old. But the cubs in this den were only a few weeks old.”
“How big were they?” Buck asked.
“They weigh less than a pound at birth. The one I held wasn’t much bigger than my hand.”
“Wow,” Buck said, looking down at his own hand. He was quiet as they walked away from the bear den, but when they reached the knife-edge, he turned to his dad.
“Do you think I could become a park ranger?”
“Maybe,” Dad said. “Science and animals. It’s right up your alley.”
Shoop was right where they left him. He filmed Buck as he came back across the knife-edge and then told them that he shot some Dall sheep as they ran across the cliffy face of a mountain high behind him. He said he also caught an eagle on camera as it flew out from behind a rocky crag and soared right over his head.
“But mostly, I just sat here and marveled at that,” Shoop said, pointing beyond the others.
“Marveled at what?” Buck asked, looking at several snow-covered mountains in the distance under the gray, cloudy sky.
“Sit down and wait,” Shoop answered. “You’ll see.”
It wasn’t long before the clouds started breaking up and they saw what Shoop had been watching. All the mountains surrounding them, as well as the one they were sitting on, suddenly became dwarfed by the presence of the Great One. The clouds raced past the enormous mountain, opening and exposing a face here, a ridge there, and sometimes the bright white top of Denali showed before other clouds closed over it.
“It’s kind of like the wildlife around here,” Buck stated when suddenly the mountain totally disappeared again. “Something as big as a moose can just step into the woods and disappear right before your eyes. You know it’s there, but you can’t see it. You wouldn’t think a mountain that big could hide like that.”
