“A GRIZZLY USES BODY LANGUAGE TO SHOW ITS MOOD. HEAD SWINGING, SWATTING, AND JAW POPPING ARE CLEAR SIGNS OF BEING UPSET.”
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14
The next morning it was cold and overcast, but Buck and Toni were excited about going to the compass class on their own. Again the backseats were vacant, and Buck headed straight for them.
“I’m glad Rek isn’t on this one,” Toni told Buck as the bus pulled away.
“Me too,” Buck said. “I don’t see anyone I recognize. We even have a different bus driver.”
Just like Jerry had, this driver kept up a running commentary as he drove.
“Everyone is interested in the big five,” he said. “Grizzlies, moose, caribou, wolves, and Dall sheep. I’m sure we’ll see grizzlies, caribou, and sheep. Maybe even a moose if we’re lucky. Probably not a wolf. They’re rarely sighted. But I’m more interested in the little five: black bears, lynx, red fox, wolverine, and beavers. Actually, thirty-nine different mammals live in the park. We also have ermine, river otters, Arctic ground squirrels, snowshoe hares, hoary marmots, martens, mink, weasels, and pika, not to mention various kinds of shrews, voles, and other rodents, including one kind of mouse, a meadow jumping mouse, and one bat, the little brown bat.”
From there the driver went on to list birds, then insects, and finally ended the list of animals with the only amphibian, the wood frog.
“In the winter the wood frog freezes solid. Its heart stops beating, and it doesn’t breathe until spring, when it thaws out.”
“I feel like a wood frog,” Buck said to Toni. “I’m about to freeze solid.”
The window just in front of them would not stay shut. The people sitting beside it had tried to shut it, but just a little bump would send it sliding down again, the cold damp air blowing right into Buck’s and Toni’s faces.
Buck stood up to see if there was another seat open, but the bus was filled. So he pulled his backpack down from the rack and took his jacket from it. He handed Toni her backpack, and she pulled out a jacket, mittens, and a knit hat.
The driver had moved on to lists of plants, starting with trees. There weren’t too many types, just eight species of spruce, willows, and birch. Then he started up on shrubs and flowers and then on to nonflowering plants. Buck and Toni looked out the window at the passing landscape. Having been up and down the road several times now, they recognized places and saw how Craig and the bus drivers knew where certain animals hung out. The big grizzly boar was spotted in the braided riverbed. Not at the exact spot as the other day but downstream a little ways. Although Denali was now behind clouds, the lone caribou that had stood in front of the mountain was still around. This time, though, it was walking near the road. A few miles farther a big herd grazed, but now the caribou were on the opposite side of the road. The Dall sheep could still be seen on the cliffs across from the Toklat River rest stop, where they had stopped before. Buck still couldn’t lift the antlers to his head, but this time he also went in the gift shop with Toni and they bought some more Beary Bites.
“Just past this bridge is where the grizzly sow and cubs are,” Buck said after they had left the Toklat rest stop.
“I know,” Toni said, standing up. “Shoop already has a lot of shots, but I’ll get the camera ready just in case.” She pulled the small camera from her backpack and sat back down.
As they crossed the bridge, bright orange traffic cones were spaced alongside the road. Sticking out of them were signs like the one Toni had bought for Buck. About every twenty feet they read AREA CLOSED—BEAR DANGER.
“Those signs weren’t there before,” Buck said.
“I wonder what’s going on,” Toni said as the bus slowed slightly.
“There’s recently been a grizzly sow with twin cubs in this area, but they’re evidently having some sort of problem, so we can’t stop,” the driver said. “I’ll go as slowly as possible. You may be able to see them. They’re usually on the left.”
They drove past three ranger trucks parked beside more orange cones. The rangers were all standing behind their open doors, binoculars balanced on the doorframes. One was Craig.
Buck looked across the tundra and spotted the sow not too far from where they’d first filmed her and the cubs. Now she wasn’t calmly eating every blueberry in sight. This time she was clearly agitated, pacing back and forth and swinging her head from side to side. She stood up on her hind legs, just like when the dark cub had come up to the truck. She dropped to her feet again, made a short charge in the direction of the rangers’ trucks, and then stopped, whacking at an alder bush with her gigantic paw.
As they drove on out of sight, voices throughout the bus speculated about what was going on with the bear.
“Did you see either of the cubs?” Buck asked.
“No, but I videoed the sow. Too bad we couldn’t get audio.”
“Shoop better be careful,” Buck said, and smiled. “You might take over his place as best cameraman in the country.”
“Camerawoman,” Toni corrected him, smiling back.
The Eielson Center was about fifteen minutes past the Stony Dome overlook. As the bus pulled into the parking area, the driver told the passengers his bus would be at the center for about twenty minutes.
“Those wanting to take this bus back can leave their things on the bus. But if you want to stay here longer, make sure you take all your belongings with you. You’ll be able to take any other green bus back.”
Buck and Toni gathered their things, and when they stepped off the bus, a teenager came up to them. She wore an official-looking shirt and name tag.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m K’eyush. You must be Buck and Toni.”
Buck was not expecting the volunteer to be a girl only a few years older than he was, and missed hearing what she said her name was. He glanced at her name tag, but it was no help.
“It’s pronounced Kay-yoush,” she said, noticing Buck’s look. “It means ‘bear cub.’ So you and I have something in common, Buck. We’re both named after an animal.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Toni said.
“Thank you. You and I have something in common too. Our long black hair and dark eyes,” K’eyush said. Her voice was soft, with a pleasant songlike rhythm. “All things in nature are related in some way. When I meet people, I like to find at least one connection right away.”
“I was expecting someone older,” Buck said.
K’eyush laughed. “Craig didn’t tell you? I’m sixteen. I’m here as a student conservationist.”
“What’s that?” Toni said.
“It’s a pretty cool program. You get to come to wilderness areas like this and help with different things, like trail maintenance or wildlife habitat programs. I’ve learned a lot about compasses and map reading, so I get to lead the class today.”
“Wow, that’s totally awesome. I’d like to do that. How do you get to be a student conservationist?” Buck asked.
“When you get in high school, you can apply,” K’eyush answered. “I’ll give you some information inside.”
“Inside?” Buck asked, looking around. All that was there was the parking lot, a set of stairs, and tundra plants.
“The Eielson Center is partially buried in the ground, so you can’t see it from the road,” K’eyush said, “and with tundra actually on the roof, it blends in with the landscape as much as possible. On a clear day the view of Denali is magnificent from here. But obviously that’s not the case today.”
“Where are they going?” Buck asked, pointing behind him at a steep trail on the other side of the road. A stream of people was on it, some walking up, others coming down.
“There aren’t many trails in Denali. A few in the front country and two here. That one goes almost straight up to the top of that ridge. And there’s a shorter one down there, in front of the center. It’s more of a nature walk than a trail, but for most people these are the only places they walk around in the park. Unfortunately, only a handful of people actually get off one of the buses and really experience being out in the wilderness.”
“We have,” Buck said proudly. “Yesterday we hiked with Craig. It was unbelievable.”
As they walked across the parking lot, down the set of stairs, and onto a patio, Buck told K’eyush about walking through the caribou herd, crawling in a bear den, and finding a sheep horn.
“Sounds like a great day,” she said as she held the door open for them. “I hope you have fun in my compass class, too. I have some things to do before that, though. Will you two be okay in the center by yourselves for a little while? There will be an announcement when the class starts.”
“Sure, but I have a question first. What’s going on with the grizzly and cubs that hang out just before Stony Dome?”
Buck explained what they had seen, but K’eyush had heard nothing about it.
Buck and Toni wandered around through the Eielson Center. They flipped up little flaps on a display telling about wildlife and then looked at a large round, three-dimensional relief model of the entire park. Snow-covered mountains and glaciers took up more than half of the model. There was a marker that showed where the Eielson Center was, and Buck and Toni tried to figure out where they’d hiked the day before. Then Buck wandered alone over to displays about mountaineers who’d climbed Denali, reading that the first people to ever reach the top did so in 1913.
After inspecting a wood frame backpack used by early mountaineers and a canvas tent they slept in, Buck went over to the big picture window. There was no view of Denali, just fog. To the side of the large window was a table filled with pelts. Grizzly, black bear, lynx, wolf. The furs were right beside a long counter, where two rangers stood ready to answer visitors’ questions. At that moment no visitors were there, and the two rangers were talking to each other. As Buck stroked the furs, he could hear them plainly. He listened intently until a lady came up to inquire about restrooms and put an end to the rangers’ conversation.
Buck looked around the large room. Toni was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a huge quilt hanging at the far end. She had her sketchbook out.
“Isn’t this cool?” Toni said as Buck rushed up. “The quilt has the whole mountain and all sorts of flowers and animals that are here in the park too. Since we can’t see Denali today, I’m sketching it from the quilt.”
Toni held up the sketchbook to show Buck, but he barely glanced at it.
“I have important news. The cubs are missing!”
“Missing?”
“Yeah, that’s why the sow was so upset. She can’t find her cubs.”
“How do you know?”
“I overheard some rangers.”
“The cubs were there last night when we drove by after the moose shot,” Toni said. “They were all still eating blueberries. What do they think happened to them?”
“No one knows. One of the rangers said the cubs might have wandered off and gotten lost, but the other said sows keep pretty good track of their cubs, so that wasn’t very likely.”
“Remember how Craig said a male bear was hanging around that area? Maybe it killed them,” Toni said.
“They talked about that, too, but said there wasn’t any evidence. If a boar killed them, the rangers would have seen the cubs’ bodies or a food cache, but they didn’t. They didn’t see anything.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know, but I do know one thing. The cubs didn’t just disappear into thin air.”