• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2993 0

the Muries’ perspective. On the other hand, the airplane was starting to have a profound effect on Alaskan life. Long dogsled runs could be replaced by two- or four-hour flights. In 1923 commercial service was established from Fairbanks. Territorial cities were now linked by daily flights. Two or three dozen smaller planes were also in operation, connecting far-flung mining camps. There were no radios or weather reports as support systems, however. A breakdown above the Arctic Divide was almost certain to be fatal. Pilots were literally on their own. When Christian missionaries took to the skies to spread the gospel, it was dangerous work. On October 12, 1930, two Catholic priests were killed in a plane crash near the village of Kotzebue.23

Steamers were also beginning to move logs from the uppermost timberline. And by the end of the decade the two-lane Steese Highway linked Fairbanks to Circle City on the Yukon River.24

While Alaska still had thick migratory caribou herds, market hunters were starting to drive up to Circle City to blast away at them. The country was too vast for a single game warden to patrol. Effective law enforcement under such circumstances was impossible. The rogues ran Alaska, dismissing federal authority every step of the way.25

Working at a feverish pace, Olaus submitted his encyclopedic study of caribou to the Biological Survey. There was a lot for the public to learn about their migratory patterns. Most Americans failed to appreciate the wonder of the caribou—or even to comprehend that reindeer were nothing more than domesticated caribou, or that caribou traveled longer distances than any other terrestrial mammal—up to 3,100 miles a year. When Olaus was assigned to observe the waterfowl along the Old Crow River in northeastern Alaska, Mardy insisted on coming along. She would carry the baby, Martin, like a papoose, slung on her back so as not to slow the expedition down. The Muries poled a scow up 250 miles of that muddy river, collecting the best field observations to date on the white-winged scoter (Melanitta fusca), pintail (Anas acuta), and American wigeon (Anas americana) as John James Audubon might have done. Olaus could only wonder what Audubon would have thought of Alaska’s abundant birdlife.

Employees of the Biological Survey in Washington, D.C., considered it sheer lunacy to bring a baby along on such an arduous trek. Mardy, who managed to keep daily diaries of their adventure, retorted that the Inuit had been doing it for years. Mardy dutifully recorded everything from swarms of gnats to styles of moccasins. Her once soft skin became as hard as scar tissue. Whereas Mardy’s honeymoon diaries had the feel of an accountant’s ledger, her journals from the Old Crow had the feel of another Thoreau in the making. “The river was empty, the other shore just a thick green wall,” she wrote. “At my back, behind the little tent, stretched the limitless tundra, mile upon mile, clear to the Arctic. Somehow that day I was very conscious of that infinite, quiet space. . . . We could see, far out over miles of green tundra, blue hills in the distance, on the Arctic Coast no doubt. This was the high point; we had reached the headwaters of the Old Crow. After we had lived with it in all its moods, been down in the depths with it for weeks, it was good to know that the river began in beauty and flowed through miles of clear gravel and airy open space.”

What a combination! Mardy wrote prose poetry about Arctic Alaska. Olaus, sticking to empirical evidence, recorded all the facts about the fauna. Photographs were also taken and Olaus’s wildlife drawings continued. Once they had conquered the Old Crow, anything was possible. They felt empowered. Much like John Muir, the Muries had a childlike passion for the wonders of nature. “I think we should go beyond proving the rights of animals to live in utilitarian terms,” Olaus wrote. “Why don’t we just admit we like having them around? Isn’t that answer enough!”26

Another baby, a girl named Joanne, was born in 1927. The Muries decided to relocate outside Jackson