Coming into the Country (42 page)
Read Coming into the Country Online
Authors: John McPhee
“They have everything wrong,” Ed inserts. “They think it's all ice and snow and igloos here.”
Ginny continues: “They wonder how Alaskans get their mail, and what they do in winter. They can't believe anything can grow here. They're amazed we can't buy any land. They think Indians are Eskimos. They know nothing about Alaska, and yet they've been manipulating us for years. We thought statehood would put an end to that.”
“They don't understand trapping. They don't understand the harvesting of animals,” Ed says. “And they say that Alaska is âfragile.' All this delicate-ecology business just kills me. How could it be so delicate if it has survived all these Siberian winters? Alaska would be O.K. as a state if the feds hadn't kept two-thirds of it. Now, under the native-land-claims act, they want to make eighty million acres into parks. My contention is that nothing stays the same in this earth. Everything changes. You can't keep anything. Even the vegetation changes. So all this preserving thingsâit doesn't work.”
Ginny is still fuming at the magazine. “Oh well,” she says, shoving it aside again. “The bad image of trapping has at least raised the price of furs. People down there are afraid they won't be able to get them.”
Moose racks protrude from under the gables of buildings in the compound. It is important to the Gelvins, as to Alaskans generally, that this custom be seen as a symbol of respectârespect for the moose and for the needs of the people who use moose to sustain their lives. “If people had to buy meat and raise a family, it would be pretty rough,” Ginny says. “It is a serious thing to get that meat. During the season, in the fall, people don't say âHello,' they say âDid you get your moose yet?' We help each other out. People who don't get their moose will be given a quarter here, a quarter there, by others.”
“The best way to shoot a moose is to be doing something
else when he walks up to you,” Ed says. “The best thing in the world to call a moose is to chop wood. When one comes near, I grunt like another bull, and he comes nearer.”
else when he walks up to you,” Ed says. “The best thing in the world to call a moose is to chop wood. When one comes near, I grunt like another bull, and he comes nearer.”
The four dressed quarters of a good-size bull moose will weigh maybe seven hundred pounds. Deduct a little over a third for trim and bones, and what is left is upward of four hundred pounds of meat, or nearly enough in itself to see a family of six through a winter. Meanwhile, the competition for the meat moves in packs through the nearby terrainâthe Preacher Creek pack, the Porcupine Creek pack, the pack near Medicine Lake, the pack between Central and Circle. Ed remembers a time when he was off working on a drilling rig somewhere and saw a copy of
Not Man Apart,
the journal of the conservation organization called Friends of the Earth. It contained an article on Alaskan wolves. “I couldn't believe the misconceptions. Some of the things it said were outright lies. It said wolves live on weak, sick, and crippled moose and caribou. That is not true at all. Do you think a moose that has run hard for many miles and has been encircled four or five times is weak, sick, or crippled? Sometimes you see a moose standing up with blood pouring out of it and big hunks of meat torn from its body. Would a sick moose be standing? There aren't that many sick moose in the country. Wolves seem to know when calves are coming. They hang around and grab them when they drop. Are the calves sick? They are certainly weak. People like the Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club have the idea that we want to kill
all
the wolves up here. We like wolves. They're a part of everything else. People need their fur for ruffs. But they also have to be controlled if we are going to harvest game.”
Not Man Apart,
the journal of the conservation organization called Friends of the Earth. It contained an article on Alaskan wolves. “I couldn't believe the misconceptions. Some of the things it said were outright lies. It said wolves live on weak, sick, and crippled moose and caribou. That is not true at all. Do you think a moose that has run hard for many miles and has been encircled four or five times is weak, sick, or crippled? Sometimes you see a moose standing up with blood pouring out of it and big hunks of meat torn from its body. Would a sick moose be standing? There aren't that many sick moose in the country. Wolves seem to know when calves are coming. They hang around and grab them when they drop. Are the calves sick? They are certainly weak. People like the Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club have the idea that we want to kill
all
the wolves up here. We like wolves. They're a part of everything else. People need their fur for ruffs. But they also have to be controlled if we are going to harvest game.”
“I see a lot of women writing these articles,” Ginny comments. “Seems kind of strange.”
The State of Alaska has been auctioning the skins of wolves killed by the state in a program of wolf control. The program annoys the Gelvins. Wolves, they say, belong to the people, not
to some government agency. For the state toâin effectâget into the fur business is a bad precedent. Hunters at present can shoot two wolves a year, and trappers can take all they want, but that does not keep the numbers sufficiently down. “In the forties, there was a situation like now,” Ed Gelvin says. “Wolf were up. Caribou, moose, and sheep were down. A big poison and bounty-shooting program followed. By the sixties, things were just about right. There were plenty of wolves and moose and caribou and sheep. The bounty was still on, and we could hunt from planes. Then all these wolf-loving outfits came along. The outside pressure stopped aerial hunting. Wolves are high now and game is low.”
to some government agency. For the state toâin effectâget into the fur business is a bad precedent. Hunters at present can shoot two wolves a year, and trappers can take all they want, but that does not keep the numbers sufficiently down. “In the forties, there was a situation like now,” Ed Gelvin says. “Wolf were up. Caribou, moose, and sheep were down. A big poison and bounty-shooting program followed. By the sixties, things were just about right. There were plenty of wolves and moose and caribou and sheep. The bounty was still on, and we could hunt from planes. Then all these wolf-loving outfits came along. The outside pressure stopped aerial hunting. Wolves are high now and game is low.”
Even Ginny's brother is sometimes “one of them that don't understand.” In the same mail with the
Alaska
magazine was a letter from him saying that nature has its balance and advising her, “Don't fool with it.”
Alaska
magazine was a letter from him saying that nature has its balance and advising her, “Don't fool with it.”
“But it's not a balance,” she says. “It's feast or famine. The cycles go up and down. Some years there are rabbits all over the road to Circle. Some years there are none. Nature can't cope with itself. Enough wolves should be shot to keep things even.”
From the air, the Gelvins see the wolf-moose story in all its phasesâthe chase, the standoff, the kill, the sign. They see a ring of wolf tracks where a pack first encircled a moose, and a while later another ring, and then another, another. Each time, the moose fended off the wolves, recovered its wind, broke out, and ran on. Now the plane goes over the resting pack, perhaps five wolves. Not far away, the Gelvins will see the moose, its forelegs spread like an A-frame, its head down, its blood bright red on the snow. Returning later on, they see nothing where the moose was but a hoof and some hair, within a tracked circle. A sticker on the rear bumper of their Chevrolet pickup says “EAT MOOSEâ10,000 WOLVES CAN'T BE WRONG.”
A number of times a day, as I walk back and forth between
Curly's cabin and the main one, I pass Tara, in her pen. Not only is she fenced in, she is also chained to a stakeâa double precaution. I have spoken in a soft soothing voice in her direction for weeks on end, but I remain a stranger, and whenever I come near her she races around her stake in the tight circles it prescribes, while from her throat comes a threat so guttural and wild that it calls into question the strength of the chain and the fence. Her mother was pure wolf, from Anaktuvuk Pass, dug out of a den by Eskimos. Taraâpale, silken, a flowing runner when she pulls a sledâhas the long legs of the timber wolf, and they fairly whirl her around the stake, a flying blur, but, as fast as they move her, her eyes are always on mine. Her eyes are ochre. She once got out, and slit the throat of Andrea's pet dog, Lazarus. Lazarus survived. But I have no doubt that if Tara were to come off that chain and out of that pen as I am passing by, there would be nothing much left of me but a rubber hoof and a little hair on the unencircled ground.
Curly's cabin and the main one, I pass Tara, in her pen. Not only is she fenced in, she is also chained to a stakeâa double precaution. I have spoken in a soft soothing voice in her direction for weeks on end, but I remain a stranger, and whenever I come near her she races around her stake in the tight circles it prescribes, while from her throat comes a threat so guttural and wild that it calls into question the strength of the chain and the fence. Her mother was pure wolf, from Anaktuvuk Pass, dug out of a den by Eskimos. Taraâpale, silken, a flowing runner when she pulls a sledâhas the long legs of the timber wolf, and they fairly whirl her around the stake, a flying blur, but, as fast as they move her, her eyes are always on mine. Her eyes are ochre. She once got out, and slit the throat of Andrea's pet dog, Lazarus. Lazarus survived. But I have no doubt that if Tara were to come off that chain and out of that pen as I am passing by, there would be nothing much left of me but a rubber hoof and a little hair on the unencircled ground.
One summer day, Ed and I made a two-hundred-and-fifty mile run in the pickup to collect a shipment of dog food in Fairbanks. Not far from town, we came to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which descended a long incline like a pneumatic message system in an as yet incomplete department store. We pulled off the road to contemplate this wonder; and as we sat there Ed mentioned an oil-drilling rig he had helped assemble in the far north, years ago. It had a jackknife mast. “You do the work on the ground, and then the thing stands upâa hundred and fifty-seven feet high.” He had done all of the welding, in winter, with temperatures at forty and fifty below.
“How was that?”
“Pretty cold, most of the time.”
The rig drilled a dry hole, and then was moved sixty miles to try again. The second drilling found oil. It was the discovery well of the 1968 oil strike in Arctic Alaska, and was called Prudhoe Bay State No. 1.
Across a sea of fresh dirt, a D9 Cat with a side boom was
holding a section of pipe in a sling. Welders, with their pinpoint fires, were beading away, making a butt-weld joint. We walked over for a closer look. With their face masks, their heavy suiting (against cold that did not happen to be there), they looked like astronauts. Ed said they had six passes to make, six revolutions of the pipeâthe first bead, the hot pass, the filler (three times), and the cap. The pipe was no wider than the spread of a child's arms, but nonetheless the work seemed to me long and tedious. “To me it's not,” Ed said. “You have to pay attention to see that the metal's going in there right.” He spoke with the welders. He said he was surprised they weren't using low-hydrogen rods. The welders looked up with interest, and talked tensile strengths in Oklatexan accents. Unused rods were lying around in profusion on the ground. As we left, Ed picked up some, like a figure gathering flowers. One of the pipe weldersâa big man in cowboy bootsâcalled out, “Hey there, yâall don't need to do that. Y'all just back your truck up here and we'll give you some.” Ed responded to the suggestion. Into the back of the pickup the welders set several cylindrical cans full of high-tensile rods. Driving away, Ed said the hourly wage those men got was no more than it would be in a place like New York. What attracted them was the overtimeâten- to fourteen-hour days, time and a half Saturdays and Sundays. Some miles up the road, we stopped and looked at another pipeline, of larger diameter, built many years ago on an eighty-three-mile route to carry water to float gold dredges. Ed said he resented the long struggle carried on by environmentalists telling Alaskans they should not build their oil pipeline. The delays caused by the great battle had injured the state. “The pipeline is using resources,” he said. “It's a way the state can pay their bills. It doesn't spoil the appearance of Alaska.”
holding a section of pipe in a sling. Welders, with their pinpoint fires, were beading away, making a butt-weld joint. We walked over for a closer look. With their face masks, their heavy suiting (against cold that did not happen to be there), they looked like astronauts. Ed said they had six passes to make, six revolutions of the pipeâthe first bead, the hot pass, the filler (three times), and the cap. The pipe was no wider than the spread of a child's arms, but nonetheless the work seemed to me long and tedious. “To me it's not,” Ed said. “You have to pay attention to see that the metal's going in there right.” He spoke with the welders. He said he was surprised they weren't using low-hydrogen rods. The welders looked up with interest, and talked tensile strengths in Oklatexan accents. Unused rods were lying around in profusion on the ground. As we left, Ed picked up some, like a figure gathering flowers. One of the pipe weldersâa big man in cowboy bootsâcalled out, “Hey there, yâall don't need to do that. Y'all just back your truck up here and we'll give you some.” Ed responded to the suggestion. Into the back of the pickup the welders set several cylindrical cans full of high-tensile rods. Driving away, Ed said the hourly wage those men got was no more than it would be in a place like New York. What attracted them was the overtimeâten- to fourteen-hour days, time and a half Saturdays and Sundays. Some miles up the road, we stopped and looked at another pipeline, of larger diameter, built many years ago on an eighty-three-mile route to carry water to float gold dredges. Ed said he resented the long struggle carried on by environmentalists telling Alaskans they should not build their oil pipeline. The delays caused by the great battle had injured the state. “The pipeline is using resources,” he said. “It's a way the state can pay their bills. It doesn't spoil the appearance of Alaska.”
An hour later, we were looking from a summit pass long distances across the peaks of the country. We paused, taking it in, and he told me another story remembered from the North
Slope. He and the others would now and again see a lone raven, flying over the flat tundra. It would fly on and on, close to the ground. Below the raven, almost always, was a running fox. Mile upon mile, the fox stayed under the raven. If the raven sped up a bit and settled to the ground, the fox then stalked the raven. When the fox sprang for the capture, the ravenâat the last momentâwould jump into the air, and fly on across the tundra, with the fox running below. The relationship was apparently static, a ritual equilibrium, a possible pantomime. One day, such a pair came flying and running almost into camp. The raven set down. The fox went into its assassin creep âone crafted step after anotherâand then made a sudden dash. The raven jumped into the air. After a short flight, it came down, and was again stalked and rushed by the fox. Again it made a short flight, and settled down, even closer to the crew. The fox renewed its subtle glide, this historically futile contest with the raven's eye. Once more came the move, the rush, the leap. The fox caught the raven, ate it on the spot, and left a pile of black feathers on the ground.
Slope. He and the others would now and again see a lone raven, flying over the flat tundra. It would fly on and on, close to the ground. Below the raven, almost always, was a running fox. Mile upon mile, the fox stayed under the raven. If the raven sped up a bit and settled to the ground, the fox then stalked the raven. When the fox sprang for the capture, the ravenâat the last momentâwould jump into the air, and fly on across the tundra, with the fox running below. The relationship was apparently static, a ritual equilibrium, a possible pantomime. One day, such a pair came flying and running almost into camp. The raven set down. The fox went into its assassin creep âone crafted step after anotherâand then made a sudden dash. The raven jumped into the air. After a short flight, it came down, and was again stalked and rushed by the fox. Again it made a short flight, and settled down, even closer to the crew. The fox renewed its subtle glide, this historically futile contest with the raven's eye. Once more came the move, the rush, the leap. The fox caught the raven, ate it on the spot, and left a pile of black feathers on the ground.
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Joe Vogler came into the country in 1944. He was from Barnes, Kansas, near the Little Blue River, where he grew up on a farm that had been homesteaded by his grandfather. On a boyhood day that stands particularly fresh in his mind, he saw a guinea hen running around the farm in agitation and dismay. “I mean, she was a-talkin'. She was raising hell.” Near her nest was a large bull snake, awkwardly out of streamline, with bulges below its neck. He feared serpents, but he killed this one with his corn knife, and cut off its head. “My goal in life is to serve a good purpose.” From its tubular body he gently squeezed twenty-one eggs. He wiped each one with his handkerchief and returned it to the nest. The guinea hen eventually hatchedtwenty-one chicks. Joe had come along before the snake had a chance to crush the eggs.
He went to a one-room school. He bucked his teacher. He swam in the Little Blue, fished for bullheads and carp, and put out trotlines for channel cats. “We planted a hundred and eighty acres of corn one year and we didn't raise a cob as big as my finger. When it's dry, it's bad there. My mother and father are dead now. This is my country up here.” As a result of the dry weather and agricultural depression of 1921, a number of neighbors had to give up their homes, and Joe formed a boyhood wish for enough gold dust to pay his taxes as long as he lived. He went to the University of Kansas and earned a law degree, and was admitted to the bar in the same year. It was 1934. There were no jobs, so he went home and put up the harvest. The Great Depression kept him on the farm, and he never really practiced. He was not much interested in the law anyway, but the general absence of opportunity embittered him. A few years later, he had a job with Dow Chemical in Texas, and he lost itâin large measure because he referred to Franklin Roosevelt as “a dirty rotten son of a bitch of a Communist traitor.” It was an era of intense patriotism. It was the height of the Second World War. Vogler's remarks were not looked upon favorably by his superiors. His animosity toward President Roosevelt was grounded in the view that Roosevelt “put the government into the business of providing security instead of opportunity,” and it seemed just a matter of time before a good part of the creative vitality of the American people would disappear into an absorption with security, a craven and self-defeating need. The Dow people told him he was unfit to work for Dow Chemical, unfit to get along in the American society. This was clear enough to him, and he left for Alaska. “The only two things I have ever been afraid of are snakes and claustrophobia,” he likes to say. So he chose to live in a country where he had nothing to fear.
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