WEBVTT - Ep. 26: Where the Primeval West Abides 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:05.320 A trip through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crown 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:10.240 jewel of America's wildlife preserves, reveals a stunning, prime evil 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:16.040 world under constant threat of becoming a national sacrifice. I'm 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:38.440 Dan Flores, and this is the American West, where the 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:44.800 prime evil West abides. What wakes me is a sound 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.200 I've never heard, or to be truer to the actual experience. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:54.280 Two sounds to which my memory banks cannot assign. Cause 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.760 one is a soft, gentle sort of chuffing, coming awake 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.920 to the slanting light out the tent door. I register 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:07.520 this one first, an auditory accompaniment to the angled light, 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:10.880 which lands in my foggy consciousness as a kind of 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:16.280 language I cannot translate. The other sound is almost as delicate, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.400 but more percussive. It appears to reach from the faraway 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:25.560 to the nearby, a tinkling with a thousand source points. 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:31.320 It's June the twenty second, the day after summer Solstice, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.080 twenty nineteen, and with my wife Sarah, and eight of 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.880 our friends, we're waking in what could well be primeval America. 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:44.679 We're in Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, at nearly seventy 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:48.720 degrees in north latitude, and on summer solstice that far 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.160 up the curve of planet Earth, we're experiencing a new 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:57.040 cosmic reality. There's a powerful sense of being slightly off 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:01.920 the apex of a gigantic sphere, a sphere that's spinning 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:06.600 underneath a light source that never switches off. No matter 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.120 how late you go to bed or how early you 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.079 wake up, the light source is there, throwing the same 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:18.120 fingers of dawn, sunlight and shadowing throughout the day and night. 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:21.720 To be geographically specific. 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:25.480 From our put in high up in the Brooks Range, 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.600 we've now spent nine days descending. 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:30.480 The Hula Hula River. 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.760 The Hula Hula is named by or four and Awaiian 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.800 islander who is either on a whaling ship or a 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:44.320 ship pursuing wealth and firs here two centuries ago. Nine 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.360 days from this smallish stream's headwaters, we're now out of 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.520 the mountains and in the vast coastal plain of America's 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:57.919 Wildlife Crown Jewel, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And we've 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.800 been living with these oblique life light angles the whole trip. 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:06.520 But this far away, nearby tinkling sound and its chuff 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:11.360 chuff accompaniment are new Both those sounds, it turns out, 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:16.840 are emanating from thousands upon thousands of Cariboo who have 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.720 been migrating out of mountains filled with dinning wolves to 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.600 gather in the relative safety of the Arctic plane, where 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:29.000 they're coming to drop their calves. Heard after herd is 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.480 passing by within one hundred feet of our camp this morning, 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.920 conversing in a murmur that audibly rises above the flow 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.920 of the nearby Hula Hula. That's the chuffing I'm hearing, 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:47.400 its quiet Cariboo road trip conversation, pulling the tent fabric 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.680 aside to hear better. My first guess is that the 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:54.800 tinkling is the clicking of Cariboo hoofs passing through the 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:59.480 stiff eight inch high willows blanketing the riverside tundra. But 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.640 the more acutely I listen, well, what it actually sounds 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:08.320 like is an almost deliberate popping in their leg joints 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:10.240 as they walk past. 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:13.280 The truth is we've. 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:16.919 Been paddling down river among Caribou herds for days now, 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:18.839 but not in these numbers. 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:19.680 Now. 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.160 Everywhere we look, they're the only upright things in an 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:27.839 otherwise horizontal world. Tan and white bodies rocking along in 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:32.080 a kind of slow motion parade. They seem aim towards 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.680 an indistinct assortment of white blocks miles out that we've 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.400 been seeing for the past couple of days. And I'm 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:43.400 now starting to suspect our icebergs in the Arctic ocean, 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:48.680 elevated by mirage above the flatness of the plane. But 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.599 the caribou pulled me away from that thought. On the 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:56.240 opposite river bank, only yards away, herd males with antlers 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.479 and faces black at squid ink. 0:04:58.640 --> 0:04:59.800 Clack over the rocks. 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:05.080 There are pregnant cows, also with antlers and posses of adolescence. 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.760 We've already seen wolves, most of them black, along with 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.640 grizzly bears and doll sheep. But the real wildlife miracle 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:17.240 here is in the vast numbers of cariboo. I noticed 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.400 that some herds with brand new calves, the little guys 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.400 jetting and poegoing across the tundra, have finally abandoned their 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:30.520 relentless march northward from the mountains. They've arrived ten days 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.720 earlier in Arctic Village on the other side of the 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:38.599 Brooks Range, gwitchin tribal Elder Sarah James had told us 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:43.120 that the Porcupine Cariboo herd is three hundred thousand strong 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.800 these days. Seventy five year old Sarah, with her long, 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.919 silver streaked hair, was funny and eloquent and committed. She 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.960 travels the world fighting to keep oil drilling out of 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.720 the refuge, a looming threat in twenty nineteen and an 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:04.640 even more frightening possibility in twenty twenty six. Sarah's got 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.240 the bona fides for that kind of activism. That tribal 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:12.800 name means people of the Cariboo. Sarah and her people 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.960 are the modern American equivalent of the Bison Indians of 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:21.160 the nineteenth century and earlier. The Cariboo are in our 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:26.159 hearts and we are in theirs, she told us. Now 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.839 standing by my tent, surrounded by thousands of Cariboo moving 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:35.520 slowly through a vast grassy landscape, in a scene reminiscent 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.920 of the nineteenth century Great Plains or maybe East Africa, 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.120 I'm as gobsmack as I've ever been in my life. 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.960 For the first time, I'm experiencing a version of original America. 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.359 The continent Humaniyed first marveled over more than twenty thousand 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.320 years ago. This must be what it was like to 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:59.560 experience bison herds to the horizon, her passenger pigeons streaming overhead, 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.480 and day long flights that blocked out the sun. Now 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.120 a quarter of the way through the twenty first century, 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.000 what's required for a primal experience of the natural planet 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.360 is being in one of Africa's grand game parks, and 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.360 parts of the Amazon are in some wildly remote piece 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.960 of North America, like this Arctic plane up at the 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.760 roof of the world in the United States of our 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:29.520 present century. This wild coastal plane in sight of Arctic 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.320 waters is one of the last continental places to preserve 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:38.280 a tantalizing echo of wild America as it waded across 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:42.720 the millennia for its destiny to play out. Here are 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.160 my first ten experiences of this place, as kept in 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:54.440 my daily Journal. June fifteenth, twenty nineteen, Arctic Village, Alaska. 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.920 Sarah James, who travels the world advocating for the Arctic 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.680 Wildlife Refuge and the Native of Life, rides up on 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.920 her Honda four wheeler to meet us on the airport 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.640 tarmac where our group is just deplaned. There are ten 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.120 of us lower forty eight ers. Our two guides who 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.760 do this float trip repeatedly when brooks range snowmelt raises 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.560 waters in the river's high enough to do it, are 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:25.360 from Arizona and Colorado, with one exception. The remaining eight 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.440 of us are from Santa Fe, New Mexico, most of 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:34.000 us longtime friends, several of us writers. Sarah, who is 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.760 addressing us from the seat of her Honda, looks to 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.320 be fifteen years younger than her actual age, and she 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:45.040 is naturally easy going and personable. As she starts to talk, 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.679 I noticed with some curiosity that of her fellow villagers. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.720 I can see everyone is also moving about the airstrip 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.120 and the village streets on four wheelers. As we blink 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.040 in the bright high latitude sunlight and swat at the 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:04.360 occasional mosquito. Sarah is telling us about her people's situation. 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:09.520 I jot down a few notes. Minus seventy degrees fahrenheit 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.920 used to be our normal winters here, she's telling us, 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.120 but this last winter minus forty was the coldest. 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.960 It got, although the snow was really deep. 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:24.200 Their village, whose name in their language translates to village 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.040 with high banks, was founded on this spot because of 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.479 the nearby tree line and the Caribou migrations. 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:32.080 She says. 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:36.760 They follow the caribou migrations from towers they've built around 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:40.600 their country, which stretches from the highest place in the 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.959 Brooks Range to as far as we can see. She adds, 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.360 the caribou migrations are changing, but they still come to 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.720 this valley and to old crow flats, places with lots 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:55.160 of lakes and food sources. We call our herd the 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.520 Porcupine Cariboo, and we've always hunted them. We cease to 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.680 hunt in June when the new embryos form in them, 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.160 and wait until the training of the calves is finished 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.800 before we resume, she tells us. At one point the 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.080 Porcupine herd dropped to as low as one hundred and 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.320 twenty thousand, but now it's almost back to its normal 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.600 size of three hundred thousand. There are plenty of predators 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.960 other than us, she says, a great many wolves, and 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:27.120 also plenty of grizzlies, and there are lynks and wolverines too, 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:33.320 everything living to some extent on the Cariboo presence. While 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:37.439 Native people have hunted the refuge long before its official designation, 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:43.640 the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are Anwar dates to nineteen sixty, 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:48.480 when the Eisenhower administration set aside eight point nine million 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:52.079 acres of the Brooks Range and the Coastal Plain as 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:57.880 the Arctic National Wildlife Range. When the epic Alaska Lands 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:02.640 Bill passed in nineteen eighty, the Carter administration upgraded the 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:08.000 range to a full refuge, expanded to a whopping nineteen 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:12.760 point six million acres, four times the size of Yellowstone 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:18.000 National Park. It overnight became the crown jeweled wildlife preserve 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.800 of the entire seventy five year old system, a true 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:27.880 Yellowstone of America's wildlife refuges. Ecologist Olos Murray and his 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:32.560 wife Marty were famous early advocates for anwar's creation and 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.440 for wilderness designation of nearly forty percent of it, But 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.520 the Alaska Lands Bill left the one and a half 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:43.880 million acre coastal Plane, the so called ten oh two, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:49.800 open to potential oil and gas exploration. That opening, and 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.560 the threat its posed to wildlife, to the caribou, and 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:58.880 to the Gwitchin way of life, is what motivated Sarah's activism. 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.480 I think of my elf as an educator protecting my 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:08.320 way of life, not as an activist, she insists, to us, recycle, reuse, 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.040 and refuse is my motto. I first went to the 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.880 Plains Indian people because of their history with Buffalo, to 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:20.000 get resolutions to support us in stopping oil and gas 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:20.640 in anwar. 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:21.679 She tells us. 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:25.840 The National Congress of American Indians has supported the protection 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:30.160 of anwar with a standing resolution, but other Native people 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.560 surrounding the refuge, the coy yukon the Crees and the 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:38.880 people of Cactovic Village in the Beaufort Sea have supported 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:43.599 drilling and development. Coastal Plain people are in tougher conditions, 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:48.360 she says. Still, we all breathe the same air. We 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.240 need to help one another. The Republican Congress and Trump 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:55.679 administration is really hard, but if we keep working on 0:12:55.720 --> 0:13:00.760 our goal for seven generations, we'll finally win and educate 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.079 the world in a good way and they'll get it. 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:11.640 June sixteenth, twenty nineteen, It's a stunning morning at our 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.760 first camp on the Hulahula. We arrived here by Bush 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.679 Plain around noon yesterday after what well may be the 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.439 grandest Plain ride of my life from Arctic Village north 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.040 through the Serrated peaks and defiles of the Brooks Range, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.520 flying through valleys with knife edged peaks looming far above 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:36.079 us on a perfect blue sky day. No wonder olass 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:40.520 and Marty Murray, Sigurd Olson and William O. Douglas were 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:45.319 so bewitched by this country. As for me, it's entirely 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:50.560 revising my conception of wild America. The view of our river, 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.679 the hula hula from the air, a silver thread dissecting 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.840 an immense mountain valley carpeted in tundra, was as alluring 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.640 a scene as I've ever witness Yes, looking down on it, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.880 the thought repeatedly formed in my mind, Holy shit, we 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.120 get to travel down that through this. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:09.560 A cold wind. 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.600 Blowing from the north off Arctic Sea ice last night 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:17.359 belied the bright, welcoming sunshine of our arrival in the afternoon, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.600 But today is both sunny and quiet. Basically, it's a 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:25.200 perfect day for a river trip into the wild unknown. 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.120 This is our first day of travel on the river, 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.320 so we got the bear talk from our guides last night, 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.000 with accounts of blonde grizzlies that know nothing of humans, 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:39.120 and especially of polar bears that see you and come 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.760 knocking on the door. Polar bears mean business, and these 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.680 days they come inland. We're just a couple of days 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:50.120 away from where other anwar travelers have had exciting experiences 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.920 with polar bears. From this put in camp, near the 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.040 Bush Plain landing Strip, which is little more than a 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.120 level couple of one hundred yards of river cobbles clear 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.480 of willows, we've so far seen a red fox trotting 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.160 along the opposite cutbank from us, and eight nine doll 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.000 sheep on the green tundra slopes of the surrounding mountains 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:16.280 from our guides Arizona and christa saddler with whom I've 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:20.040 rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and Kevin 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:25.960 Thursty McDermott, a burly and likable fifty something West Slope Colorado. 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:30.560 We're hearing accounts of Caribou herds, herds in the thousands, 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:36.600 the many thousands downriver. Later, on June sixteenth, in Evening Camp, 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.080 the river float commenced today not just with doll sheep, 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.200 but also a wolfback on the slopes above camp. As 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.240 we were preparing to set off, the sheep had been 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.400 in bunches of ten to fifteen. One of the flocks 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.480 was above us as we launched our rafts. Another was 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.080 near us at noon. A group of backpackers who were 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.960 also dropped off yesterday and camp nearby, though, came to 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.680 our tents before we shoved off this morning with a 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.840 one word announcement wolf. 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:09.600 It pulled up everyone in camp. 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.120 I got about ten seconds of glass time of a 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.760 black wolf maybe half a mile away through my binoculars, 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.360 then nothing, but following a lapse of twenty minutes, again 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.280 came the cry wolf, and this time we picked up four. 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:30.200 This pack included a black wolf that traveled second in 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:34.880 line behind a lead brown animal. A silver gray wolf, 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.560 hard to pick out against the gray talus slopes, moved 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:42.040 in and out of the line, occupying various positions, but 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:46.520 sometimes going its own way. Another brown wolf trotted at 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:50.720 the rear, usually some distance behind. The group, appeared to 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:55.920 be moving stalking, would not accurately express their actions, closer 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:59.600 and closer to a grazing flock of white doll sheep, 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.360 always one hundred yards or so below them, prompting the 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:08.160 sheep to move up mountain, always maintaining the same distance. 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:08.480 From the wolves. 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:15.439 This pack howled several times a faint peeling of canine expressiveness. 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.840 While it was not my situation, having lived in Montana 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:24.160 during and after wolf recovery there, several of our group 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:29.000 had never in their lives seen wolves nor heard real 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:33.480 wolves howl in the wild. Sadly, that's the case for 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:37.160 most modern Americans on a continent where wolves were once 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.760 the commonest of Keystone predators present here for more than 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:45.399 five million years. That's how anomalous the last one hundred 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:49.920 years of wolf absence has been. This is a paddle 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.159 trip down the Hula Hula. We're traveling the country in 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.639 two rafts, a guide manning the rudders of each, with 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.680 four of us providing the paddle power for each raft. 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.359 The river's shallow, rarely deeper than three feet, and fast 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:08.800 with snowmelt, with numerous braided channels. Looking down at the 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.520 cobbles in its bed as we slip through its waters, 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.920 the sight is of a shimmering transparency. But seen from 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:20.040 the banks, the Hula Hulas waters take on a mesmerizing 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:24.359 green turquoise hue from water's edge to the crests of 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:28.600 the Brooks Range peaks surrounding us. We're above timberline. The 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:33.719 country that rolls up the slopes is pure tundra. This evening, 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.600 we're in a fine camp among low willows along the 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.080 west bank. Cariboo tracks in the mud are in some 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.680 profusion only feet from Sarah's in my tent. But we've 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:47.800 not actually seen a Cariboo, at least not yet. I 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.879 should add that evening is pretty much an artificial construction. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:57.520 Here above the Arctic Circle a week from summer solstice. 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:02.640 The sun circumnavigates our sky at a kind of inclined angle, 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.920 highest at noon when the sun is due south, lowest 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:08.800 at midnight when it's due north. 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:10.240 But it never sets. 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.320 So this is a trip that's actually taking place over 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:19.800 a nearly three hundred hour long single day. At least 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:22.760 we can tell whether it's morning or afternoon by which 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.880 side of this mountain valley the sun is. In mornings, 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.480 it skims the peaks on the east side of the valley. Afternoons, 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.320 it dodges in and out of the mountains that confine 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:38.800 the Hula Hula to our west. June seventeenth, twenty nineteen, 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.040 we're about to leave this Cariboo camp, which we've named 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.360 such because as we slept, Cariboo herds began to migrate 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.960 past us. It didn't take long to get among the Cariboo, 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.399 and just now a single black wolf is on the 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:58.240 slope above the path the herds have been taken. There 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.120 was considerable rain in the night, and this morning clouds 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.160 top all the mountains around us. The days so far 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.280 I've been in the seventies, but without the sun it's 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.320 cold enough to put on our healey hansome wetsuits today 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.320 over four or five layers of smart wool, and our 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:20.919 everyday footwear mid calf rubber boots. Thirsty tells us this 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.919 morning that the wolves den in these mountains, which is 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.119 why the Caribou migrate out to the coastal plain to 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.400 drop their calves. Wolf dens are commonly on high overlooks, 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.120 so the wolves can spot cariboo below. He says he's 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.840 seen a pack stampede of herd over a cutbank in 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.840 a move very similar to a bison jump. He also 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.280 told us that in summer, musk ox descend to the 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.199 edges of the rivers to sleep and cool off in 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:53.080 the shade of the big chunks of permafrost. We see 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:58.240 everywhere slewing off the cutbanks in the summer warmth. Today 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.600 is a cold, gray day with a north wind blowing 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.800 steadily up the river and in our faces. This feels 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:10.359 like Alaska in the Brooks Range up near the Continental Divide. 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.520 Nothing for it but to paddle and look forward to 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:22.080 camp and warm sleeping bags. June eighteenth, It's after seven 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:26.480 pm of an absolutely gorgeous day in the foothills of 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:30.040 the Brooks Range, and we're just down from seven hours 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.200 of hiking up to a ridgeline high above the green 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:38.280 Valley of the Hula Hula. Since we've been making good time, 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:41.200 this was a layover day and we got to watch 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.280 caribou herds heading north through the valley during much of 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:48.240 the morning. We made this camp late yesterday after many 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.760 miles descending the river, and are now in sight of 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:56.480 the final canyon and the only cataract rapids on the Hulahula, 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.600 which we'll run tomorrow. A successful run through those rapids 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:03.320 will take us out of the mountains and onto the 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:08.000 coastal plain. Yesterday was a big descent of many hours 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:12.960 of paddling under overcast skies and a cold wind erin 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:17.320 our only California, and at twenty five, the youngest member 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.359 of our party got tossed from our raft in a 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.280 boulder garden rapid late in the day. It required nearly 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:27.760 two hours after that mishap to find a suitable camp 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:31.280 for the evening, but Erin was an absolute trooper about 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:33.280 staying wet for so long. 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:36.200 Yesterday was also. 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.760 A two wolf day, both wolves black and solitary. 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.440 The second a strapping big. 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:47.320 Animal that ran effortlessly across the hummocky tundra before spotting 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:50.440 us and squaring up three to four times to look 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.240 directly at us from only a couple of one hundred 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.280 yards away. We've not seen a bear yet, but watching 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:01.760 caribou herds crossed his open country produces an emotion that's 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:06.000 difficult to put into words. Timeless keeps coming to mind, 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:10.040 but you shudder a little bit at that one. As 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:14.600 gray and cold as yesterday was, today has been a sunny, blank, 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:15.920 blue sky delight. 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:18.520 The clouds still wrapped. 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:20.800 The peaks as we rose and had coffee, but by 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.080 the time breakfast was done, the mist had lifted and 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:31.000 Arctic sunlight flooded the mountains. June twentieth, It's ten in 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.800 the evening in the Arctic wilderness, and Sarah and I 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:40.640 are celebrating our fifth anniversary with tequila and uncontrolled substances, 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:44.000 and now Earl Gray tea too hot to drink. 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:46.359 Almost the past. 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:50.800 Two days have unspooled in a country of such unblemish 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:54.320 natural qualities that I'm realizing I've lived a kind of 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:56.720 emasculated existence for much. 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:57.240 Of my life. 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:02.399 Primeval America is what this is. We've so far seen 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:08.159 one native hunting camp, three or four bush planes arking overhead, 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:14.760 and the occasional jet flying from JFK to Tokyo. Otherwise, 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:19.679 we're traveling through the world of our hominin origins, or 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.960 at least one hell of an approximation of it. Today's 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:27.840 our third straight day of gorgeous sunshine, which means we 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:30.120 ran the canyon and its rapids in. 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:34.080 Beautiful, bright light. Yesterday, the rapids. 0:24:33.600 --> 0:24:37.399 Including the Hula Hoop rapid, we slipped through in good 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:41.480 morning high water. Other than sticking our raft on a boulder, 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:44.600 we had no incidents and took a long lunch on 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:48.760 a sunny, flowery hilltop where the Brooks Range opened suddenly 0:24:49.040 --> 0:24:51.800 into low green foothills speckled with. 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:55.360 Caribou antler sheds. That setting. 0:24:55.440 --> 0:24:58.320 Once we were underway after lunch was the scene of 0:24:58.359 --> 0:25:02.080 our most exciting wildlife experience yet. I was in the 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:04.840 front of our lead raft so got the first glimpse 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:08.600 of a bulky, furred form rolling along up the right 0:25:08.680 --> 0:25:12.679 bank of the river. It was a familiar hump shape 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:16.000 a grizzly, which, with a couple of bounds, was out 0:25:16.040 --> 0:25:19.920 of sight. As we paddled a riverband towards where he 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:23.880 had disappeared. The sound of our voices must have bounced 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:25.960 off the low cutbank. 0:25:25.520 --> 0:25:26.840 Where the bear had headed. 0:25:27.400 --> 0:25:30.040 The result was that our raft was in the direct 0:25:30.080 --> 0:25:33.439 line of fire. When the grizzly came galloping through the 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:38.320 willows to water's edge, straight for us. It looked for 0:25:38.440 --> 0:25:41.320 all the world like a charge, except I could tell 0:25:41.480 --> 0:25:45.600 the bear had not really seen us. Just as bear 0:25:45.680 --> 0:25:49.880 paus hit the river's edge, Thirsty muttered something about not 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:52.720 wanting to share a river with a bear and loosed 0:25:52.800 --> 0:25:57.040 a piercing whistle. The small black eyes in the grizzly's 0:25:57.160 --> 0:26:02.479 lovely symmetrical face suddenly lost us. There was a split 0:26:02.600 --> 0:26:06.680 second what the fuck on his face? Then a studied, 0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:11.879 almost slow turned to his right like a nonchalant damn it, 0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:14.600 I think I may have left the burner on back home. 0:26:15.400 --> 0:26:17.000 Then, like a corner horse. 0:26:16.800 --> 0:26:20.679 Under quirt, he was boundering through the willows at escape velocity, 0:26:21.280 --> 0:26:26.240 directly away from us. It was a supreme sensory moment. 0:26:26.760 --> 0:26:30.280 We had been privileged to see a gorgeous grizzly bear 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:35.560 at a distance of maybe thirty five feet. We camped 0:26:35.640 --> 0:26:39.840 yesterday and still are today, at a spot below k 0:26:40.080 --> 0:26:46.159 Gat Hill, which we climbed today through increasingly larger caribou herds, 0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:50.640 all steadily pulled northward, as if by some throbbing magnet. 0:26:51.600 --> 0:26:54.080 From here you could see the next river valley to 0:26:54.160 --> 0:26:57.520