Winter Study

Anna pulled on a sweater, stepped into her clogs and went outside. In Rocky Mountain, even in the backcountry, there was sound: a jet high overhead, birds singing, water running, wind through the pine trees, squirrels scuffling in the duff. In Mississippi, life buzzed and chirped year-round. Even Texas wasn’t silent; when all else failed, the wind howled and whispered and suggested angry things.

Here, in the thick fall of snow, the silence was absolute. In an indefinable way, even silence was muffled by the slow white flakes.

Anna hated to think of these winters being peopled by lodges, snowmobiles and skiers and beer. Though she’d never come to the island in January again if she could help it, she wanted to know there was a place where silence lived.

Opening the park in winter would effectively shut the study down. The noise and humanity attendant on a winter resort destination would disrupt the wolves to the point the study would no longer be viable.

There was no reason for Homeland Security to send one of their own to evaluate it. The NPS had debated every salient point regarding the study, first with David Mech, then Rolf Peterson and now Ridley Murray. The research was prestigious, high-profile and cheap. People loved the wolves, loved knowing they were around. At every campfire talk, regardless of the subject, the first question was always, “How many wolves are there?”

Pursuing its mandate to keep America’s borders safe, Homeland Security needed to plug up corridors used by unsavory aliens. Big Bend in Texas bordered on Mexico, as did Organ Pipe. Glacier, Isle Royale and Voyageurs national parks shared a border with Canada. Many national parks had stretches of seacoast within their boundaries. If Anna squinted and tilted her head, she could vaguely see the logic of souping up security in these areas, but the border parks were a drop in the bucket when one looked at the landmass of the USA. That which was cynical in her suggested the war on terror had gone after the parks because they were high-profile. “Protecting Our Parks” made a much better headline than “Taking Away Your Civil Rights.”

But why bring in anybody? And why Bob Menechinn? He was more interested in collecting trophy heads than doing science. Unless he was here to rubber-stamp what Homeland Security wanted stamped. Yet when the agency contacted the park and Winter Study team with a list of possible evaluators, Ridley recommended Menechinn. Was it because Menechinn could be bought? Bought with what money? Professors weren’t exactly overpaid. The NPS wouldn’t touch a deal like that. Maybe Michigan Tech. Maybe an angel who loved the park had ponied up.

ROBIN RETURNED EARLY. Adam wasn’t with her. So dull was the day, Robin’s return was heralded with great excitement. She had pictures of the track of the gigantic hound. The camera was plugged into Ridley’s laptop, and they gathered around to see if the paw prints were all they’d been advertised to be.

Robin had traveled fast, but there’d been at least a half an inch of snowfall before she’d reached her destination. The light was lousy for photographing tracks, directionless and muted. Tracking was best in the morning and at sundown, when the light was low enough it caught the minute contours of the prints. She’d used a pen for scale – the proper tool was a small ruler, but a pen or a dime was often as good as it got.

Shouldering Jonah aside, Anna leaned in for a better view.

The paw prints did appear significantly larger than those of the other wolves, but, in the diffuse light and with the snow obliterating the edges, it was hard to be sure they had actually been made by as large an animal as they suggested.

“They could have been made when a normal-sized wolf was running. Or this one here.” Robin leaned in, and her long hair fell across Ridley’s shoulder. He didn’t seem aware of it. For all Bob’s covert flirting and Jonah’s overt silliness, Ridley, the young alpha of this pack, had evidently mated for life. Robin put the tip of a well-shaped finger with cracked skin and a broken nail on the screen. “It could even have been made by a second wolf stepping almost but not exactly in the first one’s track. It seemed clearer before, but now I don’t know.”

“Anna saw something,” Jonah said.

Anna’d been thinking the same thing but didn’t want to commit herself. “Thought being the key word,” she said, but all eyes were on her. “On the way back from Siskiwit, I saw what looked like a huge wolf curled under the branches of a tree. It could have been anything, but it looked like a wolf.”

“Huge?” Ridley questioned the word.

“Half to twice the size of a normal alpha.”

“Wolves here run seventy to eighty-five pounds. Are you talking a hundred-and-sixty-pound wolf?” Ridley asked skeptically.

“Like I said, thought is the key word.”

“And you thought you saw huge tracks.” This was to Robin, and Anna couldn’t tell if Ridley believed them or not. He’d donned his scientist’s mien and she couldn’t read past it.

“I saw them,” Robin said firmly, abandoning her earlier wavering.

“Okay,” Ridley said, and: “Okay.” The second okay was more to himself than the others, and Anna wondered what he was giving himself permission to do.

7

“Good morning, campers!” Ridley said as they settled down to their oatmeal the following morning. Anna got a bad feeling and shoveled more of the thick porridge into her mouth.

“Normally we don’t trap wolves in winter – too great a danger of a foot freezing off in the trap before we get there,” Ridley said to the group.

“Not to mention people’s feet freezing off,” Adam put in.

“But we’ve done it before,” Ridley went on, ignoring the aside.

“Two years ago, we thought we had a virus threatening the population and couldn’t wait till summer to check it out, and we’ve had to do it a time or two when we couldn’t get what we needed to do finished in the summer.” He took a topographical map of the island he had folded at his elbow and spread it out, shoving jam and peanut butter and milk aside. Anna held on to her bowl and spoon lest it be removed in the sweep.

“I don’t know what we’ve got going this winter, but I don’t think it can wait till summer. If somebody dumped an animal here, chances are it won’t survive the winter, but it might live to reproduce or just screw up the wolves’ patterns. Worst case, it will reinfect them with parvo or some other virus. ISRO wolves have isolation for protection, but they’ve not been exposed to mainland diseases and have little tolerance for that kind of exposure.”

Ridley was rather enjoying the lecture, but Anna sensed beneath it he was nervous about the decision. Customarily there were four experienced wolf researchers on Winter Study. With Rolf Peterson retiring and the extra beds taken up by Homeland Security and Anna, Ridley was having to deal with greenhorns. Ignorant greenhorns.

“You,” he said to Robin, “and you,” looking at Anna, “and Bob and you, Katherine, will hike up to the Malone Bay area. There’s a cabin there you can base yourselves out of, but plan on a couple nights of winter camping.” He traced a finger up the Greenstone toward Malone.

Sending Robin made sense: she was an experienced trapper and winter camper. He’d included Anna to assist Robin and further her education in prey/predator relationships. Anna suspected he was sending Bob and Katherine just to get rid of them.

Malone Bay was fourteen or fifteen miles over ridges. The trail was only moderately difficult and stunningly beautiful, with a canopy of trees that suddenly opened to frame views of Lake Superior. Robin could make it in a day even under January conditions. Anna wasn’t sure she could, not if she had to carry any significant weight. Katherine would be the slowest and for that Anna was grateful. It was a far better thing to be graciously considerate of a weak link than to have to admit to being one. They would need to overnight on the Greenstone Trail.

Camping in the glow of long summer evenings in the mountains, waking on the shores of a lake to the crisp bite of autumn on the air, sleeping away a hot afternoon beneath an overhang of sculpted rock in a desert creek bed: this was the stuff of heaven. Anna would – and had – walked days, carrying a heavy pack on her back, to enjoy these fragments of paradise.

Dragging oneself out of an always-inadequate down bag, hoarfrost on the tent ceiling shattering into a thousand needles of ice stinging one’s cheeks, struck her as a pastime slightly more attractive than wearing a hair shirt, yet still not as much fun as self-flagellation. The only upside she could think of was that, since it was a work