checklist.
The engine fired smoothly and the plane began to taxi, skis sliding over the ice. The nose blocking the view forward, Anna looked out the side window at the pack. Ravens inked the snow in ever-changing kaleidoscopes of black and white. They ranted and teased, flying at the wolves’ heads, then stopping in a sudden outthrust of wings inches out of reach of the wolves’ jaws. Suddenly the radio-collared female whipped out of feigned sleep, and where there’d been a bird there was only a few feathers and new drops of blood, bright and jewel-like, on the snow. Neither wolves nor ravens turned a head as the supercub roared by.
The engine revved up to a determined bellow and the cub picked up speed. The tail lifted off the lake and the horizon came down; Beaver Island was approaching with considerable speed, and Anna unconsciously braced herself for collision. Then they were airborne, banking around Beaver and flying down Washington Harbor. Forgetting the mike was voice-activated, Anna laughed aloud with the gust of pure expanding freedom.
“I feel it every time,” Jonah said.
The NPS was Anna’s favorite bureaucracy, but a bureaucracy all the same, and it had endless safety regulations. Aviation safety experts had come up with the mind-boggling discovery that many crashes were caused by the airplane colliding with the ground and passed rules about how low and slow was acceptable. Jonah Schumann exhibited a fine indifference to the rules. Anna could almost feel the treetops tickling the airplane’s canvas belly.
She loved it. Except for the cold and the racket, it was like flying in dreams.
“East pack has been hanging around Mott Island, but we haven’t found Chippewa Harbor pack yet,” Jonah said in her ears.
Isle Royale was forty-two miles long and no more than twelve across at its widest point. It was hard to believe a group of seven or eight big animals could stay out of sight from air surveillance, but they did. Wolves traveled long distances, and slept a lot during the day. It wasn’t unusual to “lose” a pack for a week or more.
“We’ll head up toward Malone Bay, see if we can scare anything up,” he said. Malone Bay was about halfway between Windigo at the west end of the island and Rock Harbor at the east. Malone Bay was one of the backcountry outposts; the ranger was inevitably dubbed the “Malone Ranger” because of the isolation.
Anna settled into the joy of flight, of being up where there was air to breathe instead of sequestered in a smoky bunkhouse, of seeing the island in a glory of white and black.
The bed of Lake Superior had been gouged out by glaciers. Isle Royale, made of tougher material, was scored and slashed but remained above water. From the air, the colossal shredding was evident; ridges ran the length of the island, and smaller islands, long and thin as scratches, stood offshore separated from the main island by deep channels. Hikers unfamiliar with the topography frequently underestimated the difficulty of traveling through country boned with sharp stone ridges and crosshatched with swampy valleys.
As they flew toward Malone Bay, Anna caught glimpses of the Greenstone Trail, a ribbon of white weaving in and out of the trees.
“This goes any lower or we get any wind, we’ll have to head back,” came Jonah’s voice in Anna’s ears. She looked from the trail to the sky. The cloud ceiling, high and solid looking in Windigo, was lower, the clouds darker. Situated in a cold basin of water, the island’s microclimates were pronounced and unpredictable.
Anna didn’t want to go back; like Peter Pan, she wanted to fly to the first star to the right, then straight on till morning.
An expanse of white unfurled inland from Lake Superior between the airplane and the cloud mass. “Siskiwit Lake?” she asked. Siskiwit was the largest lake on Isle Royale.
“Siskiwit,” Jonah confirmed. “Hey!” He banked the cub so suddenly that Anna lurched to one side and banged her elbow on the Plexiglas window.
On the clear expanse of ice, seven black figures made a fan-shaped pattern like the wake of a boat behind a larger dot. A pack of wolves had chased a moose out of the trees and onto the open area of the lake, an old bull by the look of it. Jonah closed the distance quickly and flew low and to the side so Anna could get pictures.
“Chippewa pack, I think. I guess it could be East. Holy moly, look at the blood! You’d have thought the ticks would have drunk so much there’d be hardly enough left to fill a thermos,” Jonah said with more glee than Anna thought seemly. “Looks like what you’d get if you crossed Jackson Pollock with Bloody Mary.”
Channeling the Pillsbury Doughboy, she lifted the camera and pushed her body closer to the window as the plane banked and circled for another pass. The wolves had been on the moose for a while, harrying it in hopes it would die of a thousand cuts or exhaustion. Reading the tracks, Anna could see how the battle had unfolded: the line of hoofprints from the northern shore of the lake to dead center; behind, the single-track wolf paw prints spread out among the trees – the pack pushing the moose to open country. Once on the lake, the wolves’ tracks fell into close formation behind the hoofprints, keeping back from the sharp hooves and bone-breaking antlers.
“They’re going in,” Jonah shouted in her ear.
A wolf lunged, battening onto the narrow haunch of the moose. Trying to throw off the beast locked on its rump, trying to keep the pack in front of it where it could use its front feet to defend itself, the bull spun around, the center of a tornado of gray-furred predators. Blood spattered in a mutant circle thirty or more feet in diameter. In the trees, the moose would have slammed the wolf on its rear into rocks or tree trunks, tried to smash it with brute force. On ice, the moose was at a disadvantage.
Blood and beasts tangled in a macabre snow angel, then the moose broke off and bolted for shore, the wolf still hanging off his haunch. A second wolf drew down, long and lean, and streaked across the snow, then lifted into the air, struck the moose’s other rear leg, bit down and hung on. The moose, with this burden of death, fell to its knees. The rest of the wolves began to circle. To Anna’s surprise, the bull struggled to its feet, three wolves on it now. Twice more it fell and twice more rose and fought on.
“Can we land?” Anna asked.
“I don’t trust the ice. Nobody’s checked the thickness yet,” Jonah said. He brought the supercub lower for the last act of the moose’s life. Three wolves on its back, the others made side rushes, cutting at the tendons in its legs. The moose stayed on its feet another ten yards, then stopped.
As if he was not being savaged by wolves but had chosen, like Geronimo, to fight no more forever, he folded his long legs neatly beneath himself and sank onto the ice. Wolves closed in, tearing at the moose’s sides, ripping out entrails in a wild display of color on the white canvas of snow.
Anna breathed. Till that moment, she’d not been aware she wasn’t. The savagery and death didn’t sadden her. As the wolves fed, she didn’t feel anger toward the predators, nor did she feel sorry for the prey. What moved her was the stunningly beautiful dance of life and death. The bull was old. Tough as he was, he probably wouldn’t have lasted the winter and, if he did, he wouldn’t live to mate next rutting season. Today he had died as he was meant to, gone down fighting with a respected enemy, his body nourishment for the next cycle of life. The wolves would stay with the kill till they had consumed it; nothing would be wasted. Ravens and foxes would feed. Come spring, fishes would get the bones.
The cub banked and climbed, and Anna lost sight of the dinner party. “Did you get some good shots?” Jonah crackled in her ears.
“Damn.” Anna heard a breathy chuckle in return.
“Greenhorn,” he said without malice. “We got to head back. Look at the horizon east there.”
The horizon had solidified into a dark wall. Clouds touched the surface of the lake. Both water and air were the color of slate. A mile or so out, whitecaps snapped to life on black water.
Jonah radioed Ridley to let him know about the kill and that they were returning to Windigo.
There was a moment without response, then Ridley came back: “Robin saw fresh tracks along the Greenstone Trail. It wasn’t Middle pack; they haven’t moved. If you’re looking at Chippewa Harbor pack, then it’s not them. It’s either East pack or a lone wolf. Could you swing by and check it?”
East pack was so named because the east end of ISRO was its territory. Wolves were warriors; they protected their turf, and the fights were vicious and often to the death. East pack that far from home would indicate a major disturbance in the population, proof of Ridley’s assertion that “something stirred them up.” A lone wolf wouldn’t. On ISRO, only the alphas mated. Maturing animals would often leave the pack to seek another lone wolf with whom to start a new pack. Occasionally they joined a rival pack. Most often, after a month or two, they came home humbled. Wolves, like other sentient beings, had their own minds. One female had been noted to move, apparently with ease, between all three packs.
“Roger. We’re nearly there,” Jonah replied to Ridley. To Anna – or himself – he added: “A couple of minutes out
