“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 through 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.”
“Look,” Toni said. “You can see it again. But just the top. It looks like it’s floating out there, above those clouds.”
They sat watching the mountain appear and then disappear, but finally Craig said they’d better get going.
“We still have a long hike back, plus a long drive.”
“At least it’s mostly downhill,” Buck stated.
“And no knife-edges,” Shoop added.
Buck hurried ahead and was soon in the lead. He recognized where he’d watched the Arctic ground squirrel, and was turning to go down the steep hillside when Craig called out.
“Wait up a second. Instead of retracing our steps, let’s go back a different way. There’s something I want to show you.”
Craig went the opposite way around the pile of rocks. They followed him a few minutes up a slight rise and then stopped. Below them the land leveled out into a huge, almost perfectly flat expanse. The short tundra plants that covered the flat made it look as smooth as a blanket pulled over a bed. Another mountain rose sharply to the left.
“Wow, that’s bigger than ten football fields,” Buck said. “What made it so flat?”
“A glacier,” Craig said. “Isn’t it cool looking? You can’t see it from up here, but at the far side there’s a sheer cliff that drops off hundreds of feet into a ravine.”
Following Craig, they made their way down to the flat. They angled across it and started up the steep incline to their left. About halfway up, they stopped climbing and skirted the side of the mountain. It was easy walking now, and Craig let Buck lead the way again.
A big rockslide edged the side of the short sparse tundra. It wasn’t the loose gravelly rock like on the knife-edge and it wasn’t anywhere near as steep, but large gray-and-black-speckled boulders were jumbled one on top of another down the side of the slope. The rocks were blocklike with flat sides and sharp edges, but among them, Buck saw something that looked out of place. Something the wrong shape and the wrong color, too. Something brown with a rounded edge. Buck moved closer.
“Cool! Look at this!”
Shoop instantly turned on the camera as Buck carefully climbed over some rocks and picked something up. When he turned back around to face the others, he held the curved shape of a Dall sheep horn to his head.
“Wow!”
“Let me see.”
“Do you think a grizzly killed it?” Buck asked Craig, handing the horn to Toni.
“Probably not,” Craig said. “Sheep tend to stay high up on cliff faces where bears can’t get to them. It may have died from disease, old age, or even falling off a cliff. That happens sometimes. If a bear found a dead sheep, it would eat it, but wouldn’t drag it far away. There is no sign of a sheep skeleton here. The horn was probably carried here by a wolf.”
After everyone got a good look, Buck balanced the horn against a rock so it sat upright. He took a picture with the mountains in the distance and the valley below, showing through the circle of the horn.
“Lay it back down flat before we leave,” Craig said. “If someone else comes along, they should find it the way it would normally be in nature, just like you did.”
“Do rangers post where things like this are found so others can come look for them?” Toni asked.
“No, that would be just asking for trouble,” Craig answered. “All sorts of people would be hiking up here, looking for it.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“A couple of things. First, this spot wouldn’t be so quiet and peaceful. That’s what this park is really all about. All sorts of space. Six million acres of it. Enough for everyone to discover what true wilderness is like for themselves. Not lots of people clumped together all in one spot.”
“What’s the other thing?” Buck asked as he rejoined them.
“Telling people where artifacts are may encourage someone to steal them,” Craig said.
They started walking again. The caribou had all wandered off by the time they could see the big open valley below them. The truck was in sight, but Buck was so tired, he thought he’d never get down the mountain and back through the thick alders. Toni was dragging her feet too. As soon as they got in the truck, she rested her head against the window and shut her eyes. Dad and Craig also looked tired, but Shoop was wide-awake. He sat in the front seat, holding up his hands, his index fingers pointing up and his thumb tips touching, making three sides of a box. He looked through this box from one side of the road to the other, through the front windshield, and, turning in his seat, through the back.
“What’s he doing?” Buck whispered to his dad.
“Pretending he’s looking through a camera,” Dad whispered back.
They had driven up the hairpin turns that led to the Stony Dome overlook and were now going down the other side when Shoop suddenly yelled out.
“Stop!”
Craig put on the brakes. Buck, Toni, and Dad all came to attention. Turning around and climbing onto his knees, Shoop leaned awkwardly over the back of the seat and looked out the rear window. “Look at that light. That light is perfect.”
Everyone turned around. A large bull moose stood in the tundra near the overlook, yet it was easy to see why Shoop was more excited about the light than the moose. The moose’s body blocked the sun, but a glow outlined the shape of the moose. Rays of sunlight coming from the broken clouds seemed to touch each antler point, looking like they radiated from them. The moose put its head down to graze, unconcerned about the truck, and the rays no longer appeared connected to the antlers.
“We might have one chance,” Shoop said. “And we need to be quick or we’ll lose the light. Toni, get the shotgun from the floor. Slowly, put it out your window. Real slow. You don’t want to spook the animal. I’ll shoot from the opened door. Buck, do you remember what you were going to say if we saw a moose?”
Buck nodded.
“Good. I want you to slip out the door on your dad’s side, but don’t close the door. The noise would spook it. Duck down so it can’t see you, and go around the front of the truck. I need you to get between me and the moose. So as soon as you get around the truck and are hidden by my door, drop down and crawl to that rock with the orange lichen. Do you see it?”
Buck nodded again.
“The alders should hide you until you’re in the right spot,” Shoop continued. “Then slowly stand up. Keep your back to the moose, your eyes on me, and when I give you the thumbs-up, say your line. Don’t whisper. Just say it in your normal voice. We’ll only have one shot. We have to make it work. Okay?”
Buck nodded a third time.
“All right, then, let’s go!”
Buck scrambled over his dad, slipped out the door, and crept, bent over. He peeked around Shoop’s door. The moose was still there, grazing. Keeping his eyes on the moose, he crawled toward the rock but froze when the moose looked up. The big bull’s ears twitched a couple of times. It took a half step forward but went back to grazing. Buck crept forward again. Even though the lichen-covered rock was only a few feet away, it seemed like miles. He could feel his heart beating rapidly, and he tried to stay calm. He finally reached the rock and looked at Shoop. The camera’s red light was shining. Buck slowly stood up. Shoop cleared his throat. Not loudly but just loud enough. At the same time, he gave Buck a thumbs-up, and Buck rattled off one of the scripts he had practiced.
“The official state land mammal, the Alaska bull moose is the largest member of the deer family. Its antlers can span more than six feet from end to end.” Then he stretched his arms out wide, like Dad had instructed when he practiced. “He’s ginormous!”
Buck hadn’t been able to see behind him, but when Shoop had cleared his throat, the moose had lifted its head, the sun had glowed in rays behind its huge antlers, and Buck had been captured on camera, stating his script. As Buck’s arms had stretched out, the moose had trotted off, over the side of the hill, and was gone.
“Great shot! And just in time,” Shoop said as a green bus drove past them. “I caught the light, and I’m pretty sure I missed the bus. How was the audio, Toni?”
“No go,” Toni said with a sigh, the earphones on her head. She saw the disappointment on everyone’s face. “Sorry. You can hear the bus, but it also sounded like a helicopter or something was in the background.”
“Helicopter? Here?” Shoop asked.
“Could have been,” Craig said. “There are a lot of what they call flight-seeing tours over the park. Which way did it go?”
“I didn’t see it. I just heard it through the earphones,” Toni said.
“The mic is real sensitive,” Shoop explained. “It can pick up all sorts of things. Not a problem, though. Buck can repeat the line and we’ll do a voice-over, syncing the words with the lip movements. The important thing is that I got the shot and it is fantastic!”