3 Among the Wolves (2 page)

We conceived of a yearlong project in which we would attempt to live close to wild wolves, to share their home range, to feel their emotions and observe their lifestyle. Our main goal was to gain greater insight, over a summer, into wolves' food-sharing habits with land-bound animals such as grizzlies and ravens. Then, the following winter, we hoped to observe the same behavior among wolves, polar bears, and foxes.

Due to the extreme difficulty of studying wild wolves up close at their dens and on hunts for a lengthy period, little of the wolves' food-sharing behavior has been documented. Radio
collars and airplanes have allowed some study of this elusive animal, and respected, hardworking biologists such as Adolph Murie, David Mech, Rick McIntyre, Diane Boyd, and Renee Askins have gained valuable knowledge from years of following wild wolf tracks and studying other clues. Their research has informed our own study of wolves in the wild.

Much of the scientific knowledge about wolves comes from the study of captive animals, however, and studying managed packs has many drawbacks. No matter how well an enclosure is set up, the wolves still live within wire fences, a barrier to their innermost emotions and survival skills. They cannot use their considerable intelligence and inherited knowledge to find prey and return it to the den after a nightlong hunt. A pack in captivity must always be managed. If abandoned, its social order disintegrates, tensions rise, and members often die or are killed. In contrast, wild wolves depend on instinct and experience to establish ranking and boundaries, and only in their natural environment can wolves interact with other species.

We had no interest in raising or studying wolves in captivity. Our experience would have to come in the wolves' home range, according to their own boundaries and rules. But how could we possibly camp close enough to a den to observe and photograph a family? Wolves' secretive nature would likely make them vanish at the first sign of humans. We would have to find a wild pack, discover its den, and gain the group's trust. Then we would try to spend an entire summer with them. Later we would attempt an expedition to observe wolves in the Arctic for more than three winter months.

Wildlife scientists told us the goals of our summer and winter expeditions were sound, but gaining a wild pack's trust could be an impossible challenge. One day while visiting a wolf rescue center near our home in Washington State, Bill and I spoke to one of the keepers about our plans. When I mentioned Charlie and his upbringing, the keeper suggested that Charlie might be
the answer to our problem. The more we thought about the idea, the more it made sense to us. Charlie's paternal family included a wild arctic gray wolf who entered the picture three generations ago. This ancestor was a member of the same species as the Yukon wolves,
Canis lupus
. The rest of his kin were Canadian Eskimo huskies, an Arctic sled-dog breed said to be distantly linked to wolves: intelligent, hard working, loyal, and easily trained. The combination of this remarkable breed and his wolf genes, although distant, gave Charlie a distinct edge in the wilderness.

The Inuit people from whom I bought Charlie had raised him not only around polar bears but near wolves, so he felt completely at ease with these distant cousins. Some wolves, in fact, even took shelter under the settlement buildings where Charlie was raised and had foraged for scraps. Until our dogs back home in the Cascade Range of Washington taught him to bark, he had howled like a wolf. As he and I had returned from the Pole, I watched him romp with year-old gray wolves on the sea ice.

Not only that, Charlie was a natural alpha—the leader of the pack. At home, he dominated our other dogs. Even the donkeys, goats, alpacas, and cats treated him with a level of respect that they never extended to each other. He was their undisputed leader.

Perhaps we could depend on Charlie's insight into wolf life, his inherited wolf nature, and his proud alpha bearing—which resembled the best of wolf behavior—to impress a wild wolf family and earn its respect. Perhaps Charlie would be able to communicate with a wild pack as he had with his Arctic playmates. If he could bridge the gap, we might be able to make new discoveries about wolves' hidden lives. If a wolf family accepted him as our alpha leader, regarding Bill and me as his pack, they might permit us to camp close enough to their den for our study.

Charlie weighs almost 100 pounds, making him smaller than some male wolves, who can weigh as much as 120 pounds. He
has a black, wolflike coat with white paws, a white chest, and a white-flecked muzzle. Unlike a wolf's ears, which stand up, the tips of Charlie's ears flop over, a trait he inherited from his mother. He has a typical Eskimo husky chest, which is considerably broader than that of an average wolf. Although always the boss, Charlie's nature is very doglike, easygoing, and gentle.

I first met Charlie three days before my solo 1988 trek. The local Inuit were concerned about my safety because I would be traveling among polar bears. They offered me one of their best bear dogs as a gift, but I insisted on paying one hundred dollars for him, all I had left in my expedition budget. As soon as I saw the big, nameless dog, I fell in love with his soft eyes and tenderness. I called him Charlie, and we set forth together to the Pole. We bonded and became best friends. Along the 364-mile journey he protected me from seven polar bears and even saved my life when one charged me.

I'll never forget that experience. As we approached an area of extremely rough ice, frequented by numerous bears, Charlie suddenly stopped and refused to follow me around a thirty-foot-high mound of ice. Instead he growled a warning. I stopped, released my sled harness and skis, and waited with a pounding heart. Moments later, an enormous male bear stepped out from behind the ice and paused, then charged straight to my 160-pound sled and flipped it over as if it were a toothpick.

Next, fixing his eyes on me, he gathered his powerful body and prepared to charge. With a speed born of terror, I unclipped a release on Charlie's collar. Bursting loose with an earsplitting growl, Charlie raced at the bear, grabbed his right rear heel, and hung on. The bear, his attention now turned to Charlie, spun in tight circles, reaching back to grab his tormentor. But Charlie evaded his grasp and hung on with all his might.

Finally, in desperation, the bear tore loose and raced across the ice with Charlie in hot pursuit, no doubt enjoying the most wonderful bear chase of his life. I watched them disappear,
astonished to have survived. Thirty minutes later Charlie trotted back. I ran to greet him with a grateful hug. Then he received his reward: peanut butter cups. He'd found them on my sled earlier in the expedition, and they'd become his favorite food.

Bill and I hoped Charlie would be the key to our studies of wolves this summer and winter. We had many uncertainties, and everything depended on the wolves' acceptance of Charlie as a go-between.

After my second ski trek to the magnetic North Pole, this time with Bill in 1992, we flew back to our base camp at Resolute Bay in the Canadian Arctic. There we met Ian Randle, a noted British biologist who had come there from England to study arctic gray wolves. Over dinner at Resolute Bay, Ian agreed that our plan might work. “It's extremely difficult to study wolves in the wild,” he told us. “They're smart, cautious, and hard to see. But if you're persistent, you have a good chance with Charlie as your alpha. I know of dogs and wolves who respect each other. Your situation is unique. Charlie's genes and experience could lead you to success.”

Having resolved to take Charlie with us, our next question was where we could find wolves. We were fairly sure we knew of a good winter location—the Mackenzie River Delta close to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, not far from Canada's northern coast. An Inuk friend had told us he had located and watched a group of wolves there during several winters.

Choosing the summer location was more difficult. Considering our many years of Arctic experience, one of the Arctic islands with unlimited visibility across the treeless tundra at first seemed logical. But our thoughts soon moved south to the tundra and mountains of the Canadian Yukon Territory, which we had also explored many times.

The northern Yukon is an immense, mostly uninhabited space, one of the world's last great wildernesses. Vast expanses of flat and rolling tundra silently sweep the spaces between mountain ranges. Here and there, stunted, twisted stands of black spruce struggle to penetrate the permafrost—a continuous layer of frozen earth a few feet to two thousand feet thick—as the roots seek nutrients from the frozen soil. Wildlife abounds and the sun shines twenty-four hours a day in summer. The barren, rocky summits cast long shadows across the land.

As summer slips into winter, the tundra foliage turns a dazzling red, orange, and yellow. Radiant displays of northern lights, or aurora borealis, grace the dark winter heavens. As snow begins to fall, the tundra's tiny plants, some of which grow only a few inches in a hundred years, become dormant. The land's many moods, its challenges, and most of all its peace, continue to attract us.

Although the difficult terrain could make our already daunting task even more of a struggle, the Yukon might be the perfect place, especially if we found a relatively inaccessible area where hunters rarely visited. Wolves might be less cautious around us if they had not already been habituated to humans.

We flew home from Resolute Bay having decided to make a reconnaissance trek with Charlie to the Yukon's Richardson Mountains. If we found wolves and if Charlie could communicate with them successfully, as he had in the Arctic, we would have an indication that the plan might work, and we would begin preparing for an expedition the following summer. We realized there was a serious possibility that they might not accept Charlie or, worse, might attempt to kill him. But we reasoned that if he remained on his leash at all times he would be safe. He would always be close to Bill and me, and we would have complete control over how closely he could approach wolves. (We were never concerned that the wolves might attack us. Normally,
wolves prefer to keep their distance from humans—and as we would learn later, with good reason.)

Now, after eight weeks of searching and disappointments, we had found a den. The mountains and ridges surrounding this remote valley of open tundra would provide good views of the wolves as they carried out their daily routines and traveled back and forth from their hunts. And Charlie's successful conversation with the wolves was a hopeful sign that they would allow us to camp near their den next summer.

That night we jubilantly celebrated our success and Charlie's first wolf contact. We broke out the macaroni and cheese and opened a bottle of apple cider we had brought for just this occasion. As we raised our camp mugs under the sun-filled summer night sky, Bill exclaimed, “A toast to the wolves and Charlie!”