“BEARS ARE VERY CURIOUS AND WILL INSPECT UNFAMILIAR OBJECTS TO SEE IF THEY CAN EAT OR PLAY WITH THEM.”
MONDAY, AUGUST 12
Early the next morning Buck and Toni led the way as Dad and Shoop hauled their gear to the covered bus stop at the campground entrance. Other campers were there, talking excitedly in anticipation of what they might see, but when the foursome arrived, their attention turned to them.
Many recognized Dad. Shoop and Toni backed away as a crowd gathered around him and Buck. Dad answered questions about the new show, introducing Buck as the star. As a green bus pulled up, Buck looked beyond the crowd. Standing to the side, Shoop had the camera aimed toward him. The red light blinked then turned black.
“You were filming me?” Buck asked as Shoop and Toni rejoined them.
Shoop grinned. “Promo shots, dude,” he said as the bus driver opened the door and stepped out.
“Hi, I’m Jerry,” the driver said. “You must be the Bray crew. I saved the front seat for you. It’s the best seat in the house. Most of the mountain views will be out the left, and you’ll be able to look out the front window and the door with unobstructed views.”
“Thanks,” Dad said as they got onto the bus. Dad stowed their equipment in the racks above the seat as Shoop sat down with the camera.
“The second-best seat is the last on the left,” Jerry whispered to Buck and Toni before he turned back to board the other people.
The bus was already nearly full with campers from the front country campgrounds who had been riding for over an hour already. Buck headed to the back. The last seat had a clear view not only out the side but out the back window, too.
As he slid in, Toni pulled her sketchbook from her backpack, tossed her backpack up onto the rack, and sat down. She flipped through several pages until she came to a half-finished bird. Willow Ptarmigan, Alaska State Bird was written at the top. Buck watched as Toni drew.
“That’s really good,” Buck said.
“Thanks,” Toni replied. “Shoop’s teaching me about photography, but I prefer drawing. When school starts, I’m signed up for an art class. What about you? What do you like to do?”
“I don’t know. I like science, and I know a lot about animals,” Buck said, “especially wild animals, but until now all I’ve done is read about them. Dad’s always gone, and the only wildlife I’ve ever seen is a squirrel when I’ve been with my grandparents in a park.”
“Shoop told me you lived with your grandparents in Indiana,” Toni said.
“Yeah,” Buck said. “What about you? Where do you live?”
“Missouri,” Toni said. “My mom is a professor there, but for the next year she’s teaching in England. So that’s why I’m here with Shoop.”
“Are there bears in Missouri?”
“Some black bears in the Ozarks, but I’ve never seen one.”
Toni went back to drawing, and Buck watched her as people boarded. As an older couple sat down in front of them, Jerry announced there was only one seat left. Buck looked past Toni across the aisle. A teenager was sitting by himself in the last seat on the right. Earbuds were in his ears, and his head was leaning against the window, his eyes were shut, mouth open, and he was sound asleep.
The people still standing in the bus stop pavilion were in pairs, and no one wanted to split up. Jerry was explaining that another bus would be along in about fifteen minutes when a man came running around the corner from the campground. Buck could only see the top of a black knit hat as the man ran by the bus windows.
“Are you by yourself?” Jerry said to the man.
“Yeah,” the man said.
“You made it just in time. One seat left.”
Buck was trying to get his camera out as the man came down the aisle. It was zipped in the pants pocket by his right knee, and the zipper was stuck. He gave the zipper a hard tug, and it opened so suddenly, Buck’s hand knocked into Toni’s sketchbook. It flew off her lap and landed in the middle of the aisle one seat ahead of them. Toni stood and leaned over to pick it up, but the man was there before her. He kicked at the sketchbook just as Toni’s hand reached for it. His boot plowed firmly into Toni’s fingers. Toni cried out in pain as the sketchbook skidded under the seat in front of Buck.
Buck’s eyes had followed the sketchbook, but now he looked up. The man had a beard and mustache. Large dark wraparound sunglasses covered his eyes, and the black knit hat was pulled down low, covering his forehead and ears. In the man’s hands was a red backpack. A bear claw dangled from the zipper pull.
Toni stood frozen in the middle of the aisle, her left hand tightly holding the fingers on her right. Her eyes were as wide as if she were face-to-face with a grizzly.
Without saying a word, the man pushed past Toni, tossed his backpack up onto the rack, and sat down next to the sleeping teen. He put his head back and crossed his arms as if he were going to sleep too.
“Are you okay, honey?” the older woman sitting in front of them asked Toni.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said quietly, but tears had welled up in her eyes. She quickly sat down and bowed her head, letting her long hair hide her face, but she still held tightly to her injured fingers.
“Do you want me to go get Shoop?” Buck asked. “It might be broken.”
“No, Shoop’s not too good with injuries, especially if there’s blood. He faints. But it’s not broken. See?” Toni let go of her hand and opened and closed all her fingers. Her little finger and ring finger were turning purple, and blood was smeared across them. The woman in front turned to look too. Then she got up, unzipped a side pocket on a big gray backpack on the rack, and stepped back beside them, holding a small first aid box.
“Let me see your hand, sweetie,” she said. Soon Toni’s fingers were cleaned up and bandaged.
“There. Does that feel better?”
“It throbs a little,” Toni said, forcing a smile, “but yes, it’s much better. Thank you.”
“I’m Romana Rail, and that’s my husband, Gerald.” Gerald reached over the seat and handed Toni her sketchbook.
“I heard that your friend is Buck Bray, but what’s your name, sweetie?” Romana continued.
“Toni Shoop. I’m the cameraman’s daughter.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you two. Now, let me know if you need any more help.”
As Romana returned to her seat, Buck leaned near Toni and whispered, “Do you know who that is?”
They both glanced across the aisle. The man had not even lifted his head.
“Yeah,” Toni whispered back. “It’s Rek Malkum.”
The bus had started moving, and as they crossed the Teklanika River Bridge, Jerry’s voice came over the speaker.
“If you see some wildlife, just call out and we’ll stop,” he said. He continued talking, keeping a running commentary about what they saw and telling them other interesting facts.
Buck looked out the window as the bus started a long climb. The narrow road twisted and turned. The tires were only a few inches from a sheer drop-off with no guardrails. A braided riverbed lay far below. Jerry made a joke about how the park service had never lost a bus on this pass.
“They are always able to find ’em.” He chuckled. “Eight hundred feet down.”
The passengers groaned at the lame joke, but Toni whispered to Buck, “I’m sure that joke isn’t helping Shoop any. He’s afraid of heights. And I know the twisty road has made him carsick, too.”
Buck chuckled. “No offense,” he said, “but Dad’s told me Shoop’s scared of just about everything.”
“Yeah,” Toni agreed, smiling. “Blood, heights, snakes—you name it.”
Buck stood up, looking over everyone’s heads toward the front of the bus. Shoop was leaning over, his face in his hands. Dad had the camera and was taking shots of the treacherous pass through the front windshield. As Buck sat back down, he glanced again at the seat next to them. Both Rek and the teenager still looked like they were sleeping. Buck had barely returned his gaze out his own window when he saw something. Excited, he put the binoculars to his eyes and then yelled out the first thing that came to his mind.
“Animal! It’s an animal!”
The bus stopped instantly, and everyone had their noses to the windows.
“You’re right!” Jerry said over the mic. “Good eyes back there. Way down on that riverbed you’ll see the first bear of the day. He’s probably eating soapberries.”
“I see it!”
“Where?”
“Over there.”
Voices called out all over the bus. Most of the people on the right side of the bus were now crammed in behind people on the left side, trying to get a glimpse of the bear. When Buck turned to hand the binoculars to Toni, Rek no longer had his head back, but he wasn’t even trying to see the bear. He was clicking different icons on what looked like a smartphone.
“We’re a long ways from that grizzly, so it’s not the best photo op,” Jerry said. “We’ll probably see more bears before the day’s done, but when we stop for wildlife, you need to be as quiet as possible so as not to upset or scare it away.”
The bus started moving again, and Jerry continued talking. “Now just up here, you’re in for a treat. It’s nice and clear this morning, so we’ll get a good view of the Great One, which is what Denali means in the Athabascan language. It used to be called Mount McKinley, but in 2015 the United States officially changed it to Denali.”
The bus went around a curve, and suddenly there it was. Denali loomed up bright white, twice as high as the surrounding mountains. A hushed whoa was whispered through the bus as it pulled to the side of the road.
“Take lots of pictures,” Jerry said. “This will probably be the only time you see Denali today, from the looks of it.”
Buck took some photos and then looked through the binoculars. Plumes of snow were blowing off the tall peaks. When he had woken up that morning, Buck had read the junior ranger booklets. Now he could see some of what the mountaineers had to face as they ascended to the summits of Denali’s north and south peaks. There were narrow lines of jagged rocky edges where the snow was blown thin, steep ice-covered faces, and sheer dropoffs that climbers would need to avoid. And as clouds began to hide part of the mountain, any mountaineers up there would soon find themselves unable to see through a thick, freezing fog. Buck still had the binoculars to his eyes when Toni called out.
“There’s a caribou!”
Again more voices, this time quieter. People pointed and clicked cameras. Buck found the caribou with the binoculars, then handed them to Toni, who in turn handed them to Romana and Gerald. At the front of the bus, Shoop was back at the window, his camera resting on the window frame, capturing the lone caribou walking across the tundra, Denali in the background.
“What’s he doing?” Toni whispered to Buck.
“Filming, it looks like. I don’t think he’s sick anymore.”
“No, not Shoop. I mean Rek.”
Buck looked across the aisle and turned back to Toni.
“That’s weird. He’s brought a map up on his phone,” he whispered, “but Shoop told me you can’t get a signal in the park.”
“Let me have your camera.” Toni snapped a picture so discreetly, Buck barely realized she had taken one. Then she looked at the picture, zooming in on Rek’s device.
“It’s not a phone,” she whispered, showing Buck the picture. “It’s a GPS receiver. He doesn’t need a signal. GPS receivers bounce off satellites, phones bounce off towers.”
“Oh,” Buck said, wondering if he’d missed that in the junior ranger booklets. “Why would he keep checking his GPS? He doesn’t need directions. He’s on a bus. Besides, there’s only one road.”
“The only time he sits up and pays attention is when animals are around,” Toni said. “I think he’s recording where they are.”
As soon as the bus started moving again, Rek put his head back. Twenty minutes later the bus stopped so everyone could look at a herd of caribou grazing on the tundra.
“Those are all females,” Jerry informed them. “Both males and females have antlers, but the male’s antlers are bigger. Females stay together, with the young. Mature males only come to the herd during rut.”
Before looking at the caribou, both Buck and Toni glanced across the aisle. Rek was busy with the GPS again.
They had been on the bus for more than two hours when Jerry turned off the main road and entered a parking lot.
“This is the Toklat River rest stop,” Jerry announced. “We’ll be here twenty minutes. You can usually see Dall sheep on the mountainside across the river. That big tent is a gift shop, and on the patio, caribou and moose antlers are on display. Feel free to pick them up.”
The aisle was instantly jammed with people. By the time Buck and Toni got off the bus, Dad and Shoop were already by the river, Shoop’s camera aimed high at the cliffs. Using his binoculars, Buck spotted the bright white sheep with curved brown horns. They ran along very narrow cliff edges without any hesitation. He watched them for a minute, sharing the binoculars with Toni, and then headed toward the antler display.
“Come here, Toni,” Buck called, holding out his camera. “Take a picture of me being a caribou.”
“When I get back,” Toni answered. “I want to look in the gift shop first before it gets too crowded. Another bus just pulled in.”
Buck looked toward the parking area. A second bus had parked next to theirs and its doors were just opening. The first person off was a boy about Buck’s age. Without hesitating, he came racing across to the antler display.
“Hey, I’ll take your picture,” Buck said to the boy, “if you’ll take mine.”
“Sure!” the boy said. Buck gave the boy his camera and then picked up the huge set of antlers attached to each side of the top part of a caribou skull. But he only got them to chest height before he put them back down.
“Man, those caribou must be strong to hold these things on their heads all the time,” Buck said. “They’re so heavy, I can’t even lift them up to my head.”
Gerald was walking by.
“Here, boys, let me help you,” he said. Gerald lifted the antlers to Buck’s head. Once Buck had them balanced, Gerald stepped away and the boy snapped a picture. Gerald helped the other boy too and then wandered off to watch the Dall sheep.
“You’re part of that film crew, aren’t you?” the boy asked as they headed toward the moose antlers.
“Yeah, how’d you know about that?” Buck answered.
The boy pointed to the writing on Buck’s shirt. “Our bus driver told us a kid is making a TV show in the park and we may see you filming some of it. Must be exciting.”
“Not really,” Buck said, shrugging. “What’s your name?”
“Declan,” the boy said. “I’m here camping with my family.”
“Are you camping at Tek? I didn’t see you at the bus stop.”
“No, Savage River. It’s in the front country.”
They had reached the moose antlers, and they each picked one up.
“Wow,” Buck said, “a single moose antler is heavier than the pair of caribou antlers were!”
As they took turns taking each other’s pictures, Declan announced, “Here come my little sister and brother.”
Buck turned around and saw Toni heading toward them. A girl about Toni’s height walked beside her, and a smaller boy tagged along behind.
“This is Anna,” Toni told Buck.
“And I’m Liam,” the younger boy said. “Can I hold that?”
“Sure,” Buck said. He helped the younger boy pick up the moose antler, and Declan snapped a picture.
“We bought you some Beary Bites,” Anna said as Buck put the antler back on the ground. She gave Buck and Declan each a package.
“And I found this for you too,” Toni added. She handed Buck a small bag. Declan looked over Buck’s shoulder as he pulled out a white sign with a silhouette of a bear on it. Bright red letters said: AREA CLOSED—BEAR DANGER. Smaller black letters read: ENTERING A CLOSED AREA OR REMOVAL OF THIS SIGN IS PUNISHABLE BY A FINE OF UP TO $500 OR IMPRISONMENT FOR 6 MONTHS OR BOTH.
“Where did you get this?” Buck asked Toni. “You could go to jail for taking it.”
“I didn’t take it; I bought it. The lady in the gift shop told me there are real ones just like it, except they don’t have the stuff on the back.” Buck turned over the sign. On the back was information about bears and about the sign.
“They really mean it about not taking the real ones, don’t they?” Declan said.
“Yeah,” Toni agreed.
“Thanks! It will look great with all my bear pictures!” Buck said.
Dad and Shoop were coming across the patio toward them. “Time to get back to the bus, guys,” Shoop said.
Buck and Toni said good-bye to their new friends and raced each other across the parking lot. When they got to the last seat, Rek and the teenager were still there, both with their heads back and eyes shut. Soon the bus pulled out of the Toklat rest area.
Buck opened the package of Beary Bites and shared the bear-shaped fruit drops with Toni as the bus drove up one mountain, down the other side, and started across another bridge.
“Can I put this in your backpack?” Buck asked, tired of having the sign on his lap.
“Sure,” Toni answered. She let Buck slide out of the seat. He pulled her backpack from the rack and carefully put the sign in it so it wouldn’t get bent. As he was zipping up the backpack, someone called out, “Bears! Two of them. A sow with a cub!”
The bus quickly stopped at the side of the road. Buck dropped the backpack on the seat, and as he pulled his camera from his pocket, he saw Rek pull out his GPS device. Toni was already at the window, and Buck squished in between her and the back of the Rails’ seat.
About fifty feet from the window stood a huge blond grizzly, head down, eating blueberries. Everyone was very quiet. Buck slid the window down to take a better picture. He could hear the bear pulling branches through her teeth, raking in the blueberries. She went from plant to plant, never even looking at the bus.
The cub was darker than its mother. It was standing on its hind legs, looking intently in the opposite direction toward a thick clump of alder bushes. Soon a soft chorus of wow and awesome quietly echoed through the bus as another cub stepped out from behind the alders. This one was the same blondish-gold as its mother. It was also eating blueberries. The dark cub dropped to its feet and charged at the golden cub. Together they tumbled and wrestled with each other. The mother paid no attention. She just continued eating, and everyone continued watching until Jerry finally pulled the bus away.