Four Quarters of Light (31 page)

As we exited I picked up a leaflet, just one of many on display at the rear of the hall. It was about the Gwich'in way of life and the ideals and values that every Gwich'in was supposed to develop in themselves, and display in relation to others. The list read as follows: self-sufficiency, hard work, care and provision for the family unit, humour, honesty, fairness, love for family, sharing and co-operation, responsibility to village, respect for elders, respect of knowledge, wisdom from experience, respect for land and national practice of tradition, honour of ancestors, and, finally, spirituality.

Patrick passed by as I was mulling over the list. ‘Good speech!' I said, and was about to continue by saying that I thought his father would have been very proud of him, but part of me thought it would be too patronizing. Patrick, after all, was a man. In any case, it was really his mother's attention and praise that he wanted, though he hardly knew it himself.

Later that evening I lay in my tent listening to the giddy fiddle music lilting out across the tundra. I could tell it was going to be another long night, that the revellers would do their best to burn up the midnight sun. The gaiety and laughter emanating from the community hall seemed at first somewhat at odds with the list of qualities the young Gwich'in were expected to display. But as I read through the leaflet again I thought it extremely demanding.
If one was to attempt to work out all these qualities in one's daily life it could make you appear sullen, self-righteous, or just plain dour and boring. So the wild fiddle music, the hedonistic laughter and the dancing were the perfect antidote. Even if it meant I could get little sleep for another night.

I thought about what the bishop had said in his address, about the Gwich'in being fine theologians, and likening them to the early Christian Church. If one could live one's life according to such precepts then I could see how one could come to terms with the big question of the human condition and the existence of God.

I remembered the conversations I had overheard when I first arrived. The young people were talking of movies, videos and cars. The outside world had already eaten into the fabric of village life. The oil industry would bring the adolescent fantasy world closer. Already I was sure that many of the young people who spoke of village life and who were now at university or college would not return again permanently, especially the young women. Yet I concluded that whatever their innocence and naivety, these young people did display a marked degree of integrity, responsibility and respect that was well in advance of their urban contempories in the lower 48 or anywhere else.

I thought again of Patrick, with his passion and intensity. I remembered how quickly this young man had been caught up and transported by the spirit dances. I also recalled how the chief had praised him for his true Gwich'in qualities. Then I remembered how he had stalked me, wanting to talk but too shy or too stubborn to ask. I was sure there was a great anger buried in him. His questions about Ireland were really an attempt to fill in some of the blanks about his mother, yet in his own way he had become a mother to the tribe, hunting and providing for the village during the long, dark winters. Yes, I was sure Patrick would remain here. The outside world would draw back the restraint on his hurt and resentment just as the wilderness could contain it. Maybe its vast emptiness mirrored another kind of emptiness inside him. He could live with it and lose it here. The code of the
Gwich'in allowed him to live in some kind of peace and harmony. Of all the young people who spoke that afternoon, it was Patrick's speech that was short, direct, even defiant. He had found something that was worthy, and worth protecting. He would not desert it. I envied him.

The bowling-ball surface of the tundra on which I had been sleeping for four nights now was taking its toll on me. This would be the last day of the Gathering and I was looking forward to moving on. I had spent part of the last uncomfortable night thinking about Chris McCandless and Patrick. They were of a similar age and both had taken refuge in the wilderness, though culturally they were poles apart. It seemed to me, though, that they were driven by the same aesthetic. The code the young Gwich'in were expected to adhere to would have been something young McCandless would have admired.

They had both chosen the wilderness as a place where they might find a quality of existence that would nurture them, but it was obvious why Patrick alone would survive. He was part of the wild, and his uncluttered imagination allowed him to live in harmony with the place. Chris, on the other extreme, was an aesthete of the imagination who I felt had brought himself to an intellectual terminus. Perhaps he chose to refine himself out of existence and find some living, revelatory correspondence in the wilderness. Both young men were compelled by different kinds of hunger, one more emotional and the other intellectual. A part
of me wanted to believe that it was a love hunger, one human and the other spiritual. Patrick had found the care of his community and the world he inhabited sufficient compensation for his lack of motherly love, and had in his own way become a kind of foster mother to the village. Chris was a doomed Icarus and had flown too near the sun and too deep into the wilderness, and it had taken him into itself.

You can only receive what the wilderness offers, and already I was beginning to feel that I would find living here very difficult. It would be physically and psychologically very demanding. You would need a code of living such as the Gwich'in had in order to steel yourself against the harshness of life in the Arctic. Everything in their way of life was conditioned by respect, responsibility, integrity and sharing. Chris McCandless had had no-one to share with, and I was already doubting what I could share with these people.

Eventually I'd had enough of this thinking. I was tired, sore, cold and hungry, and already people were gathering for breakfast. I hurried out of my leaky tent, unashamedly wanting the warmth of coffee and the companionship of people.

Over a mug of coffee and some moose mince gravy and biscuits some of the camera crew informed me that everyone was packing and heading for Caribou Pass, so if I wanted to catch a ride I should get my gear packed and get myself out to the airstrip in the next few hours. Some of the crews had arranged for inflatable rafts to be flown up from Fairbanks so they could navigate down the Kongakut River that winds through the easterly end of the Brooks Range, where they hoped to film the caribou ‘on the hoof'. There was already excited talk about fifty or sixty thousand animals on the move out of their coastal calving grounds from a pilot who had already arrived and was waiting to load the crews. A four-day float down the Kongakut River seemed thrilling, but I had already learned just how ill prepared I was. I could only just about survive in the village, and in any case I had used up all my film and my pocket ‘idiot-proof ' camera would be useless in such a vast landscape with thousands of caribou
grunting over it and the majestic mountains looming down on us.

I breakfasted heartily and decamped rapidly, making sure to return the polystyrene boards and plastic sheeting to the caravan. I made as many goodbyes as I could, but they were awkward as I was still an outsider. One of the village elders said to me as I tossed my backpack onto the small Mazda truck that I had arrived in, ‘When you see the caribou you will understand why our brothers, the caribou, need our protection.' Then he winked and smiled. ‘And you must thank them for letting you sleep on their grave.' As the truck bumped its way along the dirt road to the airstrip I had an odd feeling that that last statement was more than simply a joke at my expense. Another part of me wondered if this small native village would still be here in five or ten years' time.

When our six-seater Cessna took off I closed my eyes as inconspicuously as I could. This time it wasn't so much my fear of flying as exhaustion. Four almost sleepless nights added to the intellectual energy one spends trying to observe and understand the experience of living in a remote outpost had drained me. We were touching down on the tiny airstrip at Caribou Pass when I was gently nudged awake.

Everyone spilled from the aircraft enthusiastically. There were a few other small aircraft waiting. Their occupants had already disembarked and were scouting the immediate environs for the best vantage point to film the caribou. Our pilot, who had made this trip hundreds of times, suggested we would find good viewing about a few hundred yards from the airstrip on a bluff top that overlooked the vast sweep of the Kongakut River.

The hike to the proposed site was quickly achieved. Everyone was too keen to get a sight of the herd as it moved south to worry too much about having to carry heavy camera equipment. I had no such encumbrances and quickly had my tent erected. Within the hour, everyone was on serious caribou alert.

From our vantage point you could look down on the river as it meandered with effortless indulgence through the valley and disappeared into the distant mountains that filled the horizon no matter where you turned your head. The pattern of sand bars and
shingle islands that the river threw up gave it the appearance of a gigantic but magnificently mosaic serpent. The Brooks Range seemed to go on for ever, and to take on the blue hue of the Arctic sky. The silence was so absolute that all of us instinctively whispered, afraid to shatter the impressive fragility of it all. We sat watching and waiting, allowing the silence and the magical light to enfold us. I prefer to think that each of us chose not to speak because a part of us was swept away on that magnificent river and another part of us was gliding through the cerulean haze of mountains and sky. It was intoxicating, because it heightened all your senses and lifted them onto another plane.

Occasionally a small group of caribou, no more than half a dozen strong, would drift into our sightline and there would be a few seconds of excitement. But this was not what we came here for and none of us would be content until we saw several thousand or so of these creatures rolling across the landscape, shattering the stillness with their beastly presence.

From another point I could look out over the coastal plain, which has been the battleground of environmentalists and oil magnates for decades. Through a set of borrowed binoculars it looked like a huge empty meadow. This tussock and tundra bog meadow stretched into the famous calving grounds designated ‘area 1002' by Congress more than a quarter of a century ago. It seemed an ignominious name for one of the most spectacular birthing sites on the planet. But when something is reduced to the blandness of a number it loses its power to impress, and that I'm sure is why the oil interests who want to rip it asunder prefer a number to any proper description. At the moment it was empty and desolate. Within a day, or less, we hoped it would be submerged in a huge ocean of animal flesh as the migration got underway.

I recalled what the Gwich'in had told me about the caribou. They were extremely sensitive to humans, noise and vehicles. I could understand that any creature born into this silence would be. But I could also imagine looking through my binoculars at a hundred miles of service road, pipelines, oil and air pollution, and
a few sickly animals scavenging a living. The Gwich'in also explained that the herd could not simply relocate. This calving ground offered ample nutritious plant growth to enrich the production of milk in the pregnant animals. If that was reduced then the calves would not have enough winter fat to survive and the females would be unable to produce new calves the following year. Everything was so delicately balanced that even the slightest tampering with nature could have dramatic consequences. One of the villagers had explained that even the wolf and the bear do not come here to hunt, for they too understood that this was a sacred place.

That evening I didn't miss the fiddle music, and I slept better than I had the previous night. At this high level the ground was less uneven, and I had enough sense to make myself a mattress out of handfuls of bearberry bushes.

I woke to the sound of aircraft arriving. It was the cargo of inflatable rafts that some of the crews had ordered in Fairbanks. Our pilot, who had stayed with us, chatted with the newly arrived pilot who informed him that the herd was making its way out of the calving grounds and moving south. With this announcement the camp exploded into activity. My hopes dropped and I thought we were going to miss the migration, but our pilot told us there was a small strip near the calving grounds where we could get some shots of the herd as it moved off. They might not be as dramatic as the river shots would have been, but at least it wouldn't be a wasted journey. We packed hurriedly and were off in some twenty minutes.

In another fifteen minutes, after scanning the tundra beneath us, we landed near Demarcation Bay on the icy edge of the Beaufort Sea. It was late afternoon, but the sun could not dispel the chill air. As we unloaded, the pilot passed his binoculars around. In the foothills in the distance we could see swathes of animals but they were miles away. The pilot gestured for us to gather our gear and move away from the aircraft. When we had gone far enough from it so as not to be immediately associated with it, he told us to camp and wait.