CARIBOU TIME
It’s caribou time in arctic Alaska. The bright sun of summer fades; golden willow leaves flicker in the wind. To the north, the jagged heave of the Brooks Range rolls away to a limitless horizon.
Through these mountains come the caribou in long skeins, trotting down passes grooved with their trails and marked by their bones, restlessly pushing toward the wintering grounds far to the south. Centuries of use have worn these narrow, intertwined paths deep into the tundra; in a very real sense they’re the veins through which the land’s blood flows. Wolves, fox, raven, bear, and many smaller creatures depend in some way on the tidal abundance of caribou that pours south from the calving grounds in autumn and recedes northward each spring.
There is no certain pathway, no exact time. A valley alive with thousands one year could fall silent the next. The migration may begin in mid-August and move steadily through September, pass in surges weeks apart, or burst like a sudden flood across the tundra. In recent years, the main body of the herd has remained north of the Brooks Range well into late autumn. All that seems sure is that the caribou will come and go as they always have, following the strain of some deep inner song.
A few dark young bulls in velvet are the first to appear, then bands of cows and calves. Then bands of herd bulls, white-maned, heavy with fat, polishing huge racks, sparring in preparation for the rut.
In the narrow mountain passes and at river crossings predators wait, man among them. The caribou seem to shrug off death, moving toward the waiting hunters as if they know that the loss of one or even a hundred is no matter. Each individual is little more than a cell in the great single being of the herd.
Through bright, still days, sudden snows and cold rains, long into the night, grunting and snorting as they ford rivers in the dark, they press on. At times they pause to rest and feed, or eddy north again, retracing their steps.
And then they’re gone. The land sinks into white silence, and the passing of the caribou seems to have been a dream, a great procession of ghosts. But somewhere the caribou move on, always at home, yet never at rest.
• “Caribou Time” is the first essay in Nick Jans’ latest book, “The Giant’s Hand: A Life in Arctic Alaska.”
Though the essay is about caribou, it also establishes a theme in Jans’ life.
“I moved around my whole life,” he said in a recent interview. “I felt like a human caribou — and I came home.”
Reprinted with permission from Nick Jans. Books available at nickjans.com.
