As Long as There is Life

Hope for a better 2024

On August 1, 2005, I flew as far north as I had ever been, to a barely visible landing strip cleared out of tundra. Ken, the pilot, eased the plane down, unloaded the gear, and left, leaving me alone at the northern edge of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Forty five miles from the nearest sign of people, I was the first person to arrive for a seven-day float trip down the Aichilik River to the Beaufort Sea.

At first, I was nervous; before Ken flew away, he had showed me how to use the shotgun, but we couldn’t find the shells. “In that case, I’d just try and hit the bear with this end,” Ken said, as he thrust the handle toward me. This was my first time in grizzly country so I stayed close to the gear and the shotgun, not that it would help if an omnivorous ursine arrived. As I started to walk and notice the landscape, however, I began to drop my trepidation. I found wolf and caribou tracks in the soft mud by the river. A dab of yellow flew by, a Labrador sulfur butterfly, and landed on a purple Oxytropis. I noticed small purple gentians, yellow cinquefoils, bluish harebells, pinkish valerians, and white louseworts dotting the low growing willow and cotton grass. My first bird was a glaucous gull.

By the time the next plane arrived, about two hours later, I was feeling more at ease, calmed by the beauty and tenacity of the life around me. (We did eventually see several grizzlies, always at a distance. The most spectacular was a blonde one that sprinted up a steep hill like it was flat. Far worse than the bears were the mosquitoes, which attacked en masse; at one point I killed more than 40 in my tent.)

L: Looking north out the Aichilik River, across the Arctic Plain, to the Beaufort Sea. R: Wolf and Caribou tracks.

This was neither the first nor the last time that what some call the naturalist’s trance had calmed my savage soul. No matter where I am—my backyard, the Cascades, a quiet glen—my focus on what’s around me, the smells and sounds, plants and animals, the expected and unexpected, provides a way for me to slow down, pay attention, and gain perspective. The simple act of taking my mind away from my troubles and leaning in toward what I love is profoundly wonderful and transformative.

My time in the Arctic came back to me when I was reading Buddy Levy’s Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk. This Arctic Expedition in 1913/14 is famous for the usual reasons: bad weather, bad equipment, and bad planning. The basic story is that the Karluk got stuck in ice in August in the Beaufort Sea (near where my raft trip ended) and drifted 750 miles west before getting crushed. The crew spent months on the ice and on Wrangell Island, before getting rescued in September 1914.

At one point, after months of eking out a miserable existence (the typical traveler’s issues of too much and too little, in this case, cold and food, respectively), meteorologist William McKinlay was trail breaking in yet another attempt at survival. Cold, in despair, and deeply upset at a fellow crew member, he came across a “lovely little wildflower.” It immediately gave him a sense of calm. “As long as there is life, there is hope,” he wrote in his journal. He ultimately survived.

I have been trying to think of something deep to write about McKinlay and his experience and I have realized it boils down to a simple thought: hope and courage and renewal can be found in many places. Sometimes the circumstances that enable us to recognize them are dire but often, and fortunately, they are not. Coming to the end of yet another troubling year of politics and war and climate change and tragedy, I sincerely wish all of you lovely little wildflowers of hope in whatever guise they arrive.