Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part installment about encounters with wolves the author had during a trek in the Brooks Range.
In August 2010, in the central Brooks Range, I ran into a wolf in the willows above a small creek. I was alone and at the beginning of a six-week trek that would end at the village of Noatak, near the Chukchi Sea. The wolf glanced at me, then looked to the scrawny trees and hesitated. Its head seemed oversized, ribs showed through its mangy gray coat and one paw was mangled.
Instead of running away, it began to approach on three legs.
I’d encountered wolves a number of times before in the Arctic. My favorite was during a nearly month long ski through the eastern region, popularly known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
My partner Ben and I’d spent the day wading through deep snow and periodically encountering bands of caribou. They were skittish, and for good reason.
We found the remains of seven or eight in as many miles recently killed by a wolf pack. Wolverine and fox tracks led from one kill site to the next. Each carcass had been reduced to bones and hides. Even the stomachs, minus their contents, had been eaten.
Near dusk, a caribou leapt out of the nearby willows and plowed through deep snow before sprinting away on hard packed snow atop a river.
A moment later a large wolf emerged from the willows. He froze, and for a half-minute stared at us with a look of wild defiance I’ll never forget.
Slowly, he trotted away on the frozen river. I dropped my backpack, yanked out my camera and skied after. The wolf paused, superimposed against mountains pink with alpenglow and dotted with small groups of caribou, and looked back.
Suddenly, I heard and felt a strange whistling. I spun around to see wolves running up the valley. They sprinted with lolling tongues and glanced in our direction before deviating to give us a wider berth.
One, a yearling, ignored me completely and passed within easy stone-throwing distance.
Earlier in 2010, just 30 or so miles from where I encountered the injured wolf, I was camped with my dad and older brother Luke during a caribou hunt. We were making coffee when a caribou and a wolf came charging past our tents. The caribou didn’t seem to notice us but the wolf stopped and stared as it panted. It turned away from the caribou and headed back toward the mountains.
Later that day, I skied up a valley and studied the tracks of the two. The wolf had chased the caribou over at least two mountains and for more than 10 miles when they’d blundered into us.
A day later, Luke and I barely missed encountering a wolf pack. Their fresh track showed where they investigated our trail briefly. One’s tracks were so big that I could fit my hand, with my fingers outstretched, inside with room to spare.
Four months after that caribou hunt, I watched the desperate wolf approach with growing alarm. It came within 40 feet and even though it felt silly, I yelled and waved my arms over my head. The wolf did a strange hop back into the brush.
I hiked on thinking of Simon Paneak, a Nunamiut man who passed away in 1975. He, with John Martin Campbell, wrote the book “In a Hungry Country” about his life in the Central Brooks Range. More specifically, I thought of Paneak’s stories of wolves preying on people before firearms were introduced into the country.
I could hear the wolf in the brush paralleling me. Occasionally it let out a short, miserable, ominous-sounding howl. A few minutes later, it tried approaching again.
I yelled and waved my arms over my head. It stopped for a moment and then continued. I was carrying Luke’s .357 pistol for inadequate protection against grizzlies. I pulled the pistol from the holster and, feeling stupid and embarrassed, yelled as harshly as I could.
The wolf froze and then did a strange hop back into the willows.
Twenty minutes later, the wolf approached again. At thirty feet, I leveled the pistol at the animal.
“Leave me alone!” I yelled as loud as I could.
Its eyes were filled with what appeared to be horror. There was nothing heroic or even that dramatic about the encounter. It wasn’t any of that mountain man versus savage beast bull-honky. It felt almost comical in a really screwed up way. Both of us were similarly frightened. Both of us did not want to die.
Looking back, I believe the wolf knew if it didn’t kill me it would die. Sometimes, I get the feeling that maybe it wanted me to kill it.
I’m still not sure why I didn’t pull the trigger. Maybe it was because I was confident it could not hurt me, armed as I was.
Maybe it was because I don’t like killing animals I don’t eat.
Maybe it was because I tricked myself into thinking there was hope the wolf would somehow survive.
Maybe it was that, preoccupied with my own survival, I lacked the compassion to help it die.
“You should go now,” I told the wolf.
It hesitated before glancing around skittishly and then slowly hopped back on three legs into the willows. It climbed above the creek bank and paralleled my movements for the next three and a half hours. Its howling kept me on edge until it wandered up a valley and left me to silence.
Almost three weeks later I’d encounter wolves again, but under very different circumstances. My column next week will detail that experience.
• Bjorn Dihle is Juneau writer. His first book, “Haunted Inside Passage,” will be released May 2, 2017. He can be reached at bjorndihle@yahoo.com.