Nature’s classroom
What the caribou taught me about being together, and apart
Recently, as each thread of our ordinary existence unravels and travel feels like something we used to do, I’ve been holding tight to a single mental image. The deep brown gaze of a caribou calf as it passed inches from my face. The whites of its eyes as it glanced at me in surprise. The animal’s fear of the unknown dwarfed by its clarity of purpose.
On St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, my husband and I had set out on a 4,000-mile, human-powered journey from Bellingham, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest to Kotzebue, Alaska, far above the Arctic Circle. For nearly six months, traveling by rowboat, ski, packraft, foot and canoe, we’d made our way across some of the most remote landscapes on
Earth.
In the last days of our trip, we were canoeing down the swollen Noatak River in the Brooks
Range of northern Alaska. Bundled and shivering, we never imagined we’d find ourselves hunkered down on a riverbank surrounded by caribou, our breath mingling with theirs.
But late one afternoon, as we rounded a bend in the river, I noticed what looked like a branch floating downstream. And then another. By the time we realized we weren’t seeing branches, but antlers, two caribou had landed on the far shore. They pranced and shimmied, water flying in beads off their coats. Waiting at the river’s edge were dozens more animals, poised to cross. We pulled our canoe out at the next eddy and stopped to watch.
When the last of the animals had finished their swim, we hiked along the brushy bank to find the trail they’d followed to the river. At our feet was a crisscross of tracks, pressed freshly into the soft mud.
At first, everything was still. Then a wave of sound approached like a squall across the water and we crouched down to hide in the bushes. We felt the wave of energy before we saw the first animals, funneling down the hillside toward us. Suddenly we were embedded in the migration of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd. So close I could have reached out and touched their backs, the animals passed in single file on the path beside us. There were dozens of caribou, then hundreds, and soon we lost count.
In magazine spreads and documentary footage, caribou migrations look perfectly choreographed. From the air, tens of thousands of animals move synchronously as they dance across the tundra in sinuous waves. On the ground, backstage with the dancers, I discovered a different scene entirely. Instead of an orderly procession, the migration felt jumbled and jostling, anarchic and frenzied.
This was made worse by the fact that the river crossing had formed a bottleneck: Each caribou had to decide whether to leap from a 6-foot bank into the swirling gray water below or to continue down the trail to another entry. In the moments of indecision, it was almost always a cow and calf that first took the plunge. The calves held tightly to their mothers’ sides, each pair exchanging quiet grunts as they splashed in the swift current. They were the ones with the most at stake; they were also the ones that couldn’t afford to delay. Still, they hesitated and stumbled, sometimes stepping forward only to jolt back a moment later, letting another caribou pass.
Each animal’s actions were driven by something larger than itself. Behind the chaos was the collective need to move. And no matter how frantic the motion felt, no matter how many more animals came down from the hills and joined the bottleneck of the river crossing, I never saw a single shove. No caribou were pushed into the water or trampled against the bushes. It was as though a safety bubble hovered around each animal, with an unspoken, absolutist rule shared among the herd:
Just days before we’d met the caribou, we’d waited in a rainstorm on a riverbank for a food resupply that didn’t come. We’d lain in our tent, shivering and scared, and wondered if we’d meet our end by this most slow and plodding of means. For almost five days, we survived on two crumbly granola bars, a few tablespoons of olive oil and a package of instant ramen.
When the plane finally came to deliver our resupply, we ate until we were sick. As we paddled away the next morning, I wasn’t sure what lessons we had gained, except the fact of our own obvious and humbling mortality.
But on that rainy afternoon, in the collective energy of bodies in motion, hurtling themselves into the current of a cold Arctic river, grace abounded. For hundreds of miles we’d traveled in the shadow of caribou, trusting their wisdom to guide us over terrain that often felt impenetrable. By following their hoof prints and rutted tracks across the mountains, we’d learned that there was always a way forward.
When a caribou calf stopped to sniff me then skittered away to join the others, I realized I’d found what I was looking for. Faith in the unknown. Beauty when I least expected it. The visceral relief of bearing witness to something much larger than myself.
In the evening, we set up camp on a nearby island. As dusk fell, we sat in silence with our shoulders pressed together and watched the steady stream of animals crossing. Later, as I lay in my sleeping bag in the dark, I heard them splashing still. By morning, the caribou were gone.
We set off down the Noatak River again, each paddle stroke carrying us closer to the Chukchi Sea, and the end. We understood in principle that it wasn’t possible to disappear into the northern wilderness for half a year and come back unchanged. What we couldn’t envision was what this return might look like in practice. Suddenly, I knew it didn’t matter. There are some things we can’t understand until we live them. To have been among the caribou was all the closure I would ever need.
In the end, perhaps we aren’t so different from the caribou crossing the river. By gathering the courage to jump, waiting for the shock of the cold water to pass, and feeling the ripples of our individual choices, we begin to move as one. To survive together, we must be brave. We must be compassionate. We must learn when to step forward as leaders and when to step aside so others can pass safely. And during those moments when fear steals my breath, I will remember the steam rising from the backs of caribou, see the mothers plunging boldly into the cold water with their calves by their sides and let myself believe that we, too, can find our way.