June 13, 2001  -  Timing is Everything  -  Joe Creek, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Our bush pilot suggests an alternate location for our week-long basecamp in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Winter arrived late this year, delaying the migration of the 130,000-member Porcupine River caribou herd. For thousands of years, the caribou have made the 700-mile round trip journey from their winter grounds in Canada to their birthing grounds on the coastal plain of the refuge. The coastal plain provides the best chance of survival for the newborn caribou for a number of reasons: cooling coastal breezes lessen the menace of insects; there are fewer predators as grizzly bears and wolves are emerging from den sites in the mountains; and the plant life provides forage higher in nutrition than elsewhere. In a "normal" year, the herd would already have reached the coastal plain by now. But it's not a normal year and the caribou are late. We've got a better chance of seeing them if we're east of the coastal plain, so we load up the deHavilland Beaver and take off from the gravel runway at Arctic Village.

Flying north, we pass vast expanses of tundra pocked with endless lakes. Soon we reach the Brooks Mountain range, the steel-blue peaks veined with snow. The pilot spirals the plane low into a gentle valley and scouts landing possibilities. Two dozen caribou fill the view from the window. We touch down along Joe Creek and roll to a stop on a gravel bar. Unloading gear, we see more caribou in the distance, filing west toward the coastal plain, just as they've always done for countless millenia.