“So it’s public land?”
“If I recall, some of it’s public-owned, but most belongs to the Athabascan Indians. Look, if you’re paying customers, I’ll fly you anywhere you wanna go. But I have to ask, why the Wolverines? Next to the Brooks Range, McKinley, the Wrangells, they ain’t much to look at. And it’s an awful long flight for such dinky mountains.”
“I’m afraid we have our hearts set on it,” Kalyn said.
Buck swung his boots off the desk and leaned forward in his chair. “What exactly you wanna do out there?”
Will said, “We’d like to spend two nights. Do some camping and hiking.”
“You have gear?”
“No.”
“I can outfit you with everything you’ll need.” Buck took a pocket calculator out of a drawer and began punching in numbers and mumbling to himself. “Four hundred miles round trip. Gear rental for two nights. Three people. Guided? Unguided?”
“Just the three of us.”
“You’re looking at around three thousand.”
Kalyn glanced at Will. He nodded, mouthed “I can cover it,” then turned back to Buck. “We’d like to leave as soon as possible. Today would be ideal.”
They went to meet the bush pilot at 1:00 P.M. at the Chena Marina, a floatplane pond on the outskirts of Fairbanks, found Buck loading supplies into a cargo pod under the fuselage of a high-winged single-engine Cessna 185. The exterior of the Skywagon did not inspire peace of mind, the green-and-yellow design scheme chipped and faded, dents in the amphibious floats.
“I think I’ve got you all set,” Buck said. “There’s supposed to be some weather coming in this evening, so we should get in the air straight away.”
It was a four-seater, with plenty of storage space in back, the interior upholstered in light gray carpeting, the leather seats covered in sheepskin. Devlin begged to sit next to Buck, and she was awarded copilot status. They got themselves buckled in, and soon the engine was firing up, Buck taxiing away from the docks toward the end of the pond, his voice blaring through the headsets that everyone wore: “Should be up about ninety minutes.”
“How fast and high will we go?” Devlin asked.
“Hundred and twenty knots at forty-five hundred feet.”
“Cool.”
They’d reached the far end of the lake.
The three-hundred-horsepower engine wound up, the prop disappeared, and the Cessna accelerated on the water.
Will stared out the window as the shore raced by, the plane skipping across little waves, and he was thinking about their conversation on the drive over from the hotel. He and Kalyn had agreed on the ground rules of this expedition. They were going to look. Not get involved in anything, with anyone. If they found something, they’d wait for Buck to come get them, notify the authorities on their return to Fairbanks. Safety, protecting Devlin—that was their top priority.
The bumps soon turned into smooth forward motion, Buck easing back on the stick, Devlin watching his feet work the rudder pedals.
They soared over the trees. Will swallowed, his ears popping, the pond, the city of Fairbanks falling away beneath him, and he could see at once how small and insignificant it seemed, surrounded on every side by miles and miles of muskeg bogs and untouched boreal forest, marred only by an occasional road and the braids of the Chena and Tanana rivers. He reached forward, patted Devlin’s shoulder, felt Kalyn squeeze his hand.
THIRTY-SIX
For fifteen minutes, they followed the westward track of Alaska 3, climbing steadily toward cruising altitude. That gray thread of pavement hooked south toward Anchorage, but they flew on, due west into the Alaskan bush.
Not even the brown, unpeopled waste of northern Arizona rivaled this level of desolation. No sign of human habitation. Endless spruce forests interspersed with patches of turning paper birch—veins of gold from Will’s vantage point.
They flew over foothills, expanses of high tundra. Buck pointed out herds of caribou and a massive white bulk far to the south—McKinley, highest mountain in North America.
An hour into the flight, Devlin asked, “Are there grizzly bears where we’re going?”
“You bet,” Buck said. “Bears live everywhere out here. And you want to avoid them, especially now. It’s late season and they’re trying to fatten up in advance of hibernation.”
“What about wolves?”
“Plenty of those, too.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Oh, no. You’re lucky if you see one. Also keep an eye out for caribou, moose, fox. One good thing about coming to a little-known place like the Wolverines—the wildlife will be abundant. Hey, I think I see our destination way, way off on the horizon. Samantha, why don’t you take the controls for a little while?”
Will felt nauseous and he had a crushing headache from the noise.
“We’ll be in the Wolverines in just a minute here,” Buck said.
“Could you do a quick flyover?” Kalyn asked. “Just so we can get a sense of the area.”
“Sure.” He pushed the stick and the Cessna dipped earthward, Will’s stomach lifting, Devlin squealing.
“It’s like a roller coaster,” she said.
The plane banked left.
“That’s them?” Kalyn asked.
“There’re your hills.”
They were only a thousand feet above the ground now, and the Wolverines lay beneath them like a succession of low earthen waves. It was undisputedly a minor range, a rippling uplift amid a vast, otherwise-unbroken forest. They could see the whole of the chain in one glimpse—wooded hills rising toward the biggest mountain of the bunch, a four-thousand-foot unnamed peak, most of it above timberline and blanketed in scarlet and yellow from the turning underbrush. A valley cut through the middle of the range, and it was here that they spotted two lakes, one in the middle, one on the eastern edge.
“You could land on either of those lakes?” Kalyn asked.
“Yep. I’ll set down on whichever one you prefer.”
“Joe, do you see that?”
It took Will a moment to realize that Kalyn was speaking to him. “What?”
She was pointing out her window. “Oh, now I’ve lost it.”
“What was it?”
“Looked like a structure of some sort on the shore of the interior lake.”
“Could very well be,” Buck said. “I called a friend of mine after ya’ll left my office this morning, just hunting for a little information about the Wolverines. He said there was a gold strike out here, turn of the century, along the Ice River, which flows south out of these hills. Apparently, nothing much ever came of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were still some old structures down there.”
“This thing was big,” Kalyn said. “But it was in the trees. Hard to see.”
“Well, there you go. Be a great day hike for you three to undertake. Look, this cloud deck’s starting to come down on us. Where do you want me to land?”
They touched down on the outer lake, a turbulent landing, water spraying up onto the windshield, the plane listing on its floats.
When Buck killed the engine, it was 2:30 P.M. The prop sputtered to a stop, and the Cessna drifted up onto a sandy shore.
They climbed down one at a time onto the pontoons.
It was cold, a raw, steady wind pushing small waves onto the beach, the sky a uniform, textureless gray, mist falling out of it.
Will and Buck opened the cargo pod and carried the three backpacks up onto the beach.
Buck said, “You know a little something about camping, Mr. Foster?”
“A very little. Why?”
“Think you can figure out setting up the tent on your own? And how to use the water filter and the propane stove?”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“I’d stay and give you the rundown, but this weather’s coming in faster than I expected, and I’d like to get back to Fairbanks.”
“No, that’s fine. We really appreciate your flying
us out here on such short notice.”
“My pleasure.” Buck waded back over to the plane, climbed up onto the pontoons. “I’ll be back Sunday, three P.M., to pick you up. There’s no cell phone service out here, so just be aware of that. Don’t get hurt. You’ll be here?”
“Sunday, three P.M. We’ll be here,” Will said.
“I hope ya’ll enjoy your time out here, and I hope the weather holds for you.”
Buck climbed into the plane and shut the door.
The Cessna roared, and Kalyn, Will, and Devlin stood watching it from the sandy beach.
The engine screamed as the Skywagon sped away from them.
After thirty seconds, it lifted into the gray sky, eastbound.
They watched it dwindle, then vanish into the clouds, the drone of its engine fading.
Soon there was no sound but the lake lapping at their feet.
The Loneliest Sound
THIRTY-SEVEN
Kalyn knelt down, dipped her fingers into the clear lake water.
“Weird, how quiet it is.”
“I’m cold,” Devlin said.
“You’ve got gloves in the pocket of your fleece. Put them on, baby girl.”
Will sat down in the sand, pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket—a map he’d printed off from TopoZone.com.
“All right, look here.” Kalyn and Devlin flanked him, peering over his shoulder. “Obviously, the plane Kalyn saw yesterday didn’t land on this lake. Now the interior lake is the only other body of water in the Wolverines large enough to accommodate a floatplane.”
“You think that’s where that plane landed, Dad?”
“I don’t know. Part of me thinks there’s no one here but us and that we’re wasting time.”
“What was the alternative?” Kalyn asked. “Walk up to the Alaskan mob, ask them who they’re delivering kidnapped women to? We’d be buried in the tundra, pushing up glacier lilies.”
Will touched a point on the map. “We’re here.” He traced his finger over the paper. “The inner lake is here. That’s about six miles away.”
“Here’s what I propose,” Kalyn said.
“What?”
“We’ve got a few hours of light left. Let’s see how much ground we can cover. We’ll find a safe place to camp, close to the inner lake, so we can explore from there without having to drag these monster packs around with us.”
“Okay. I like that.”
. . .
There was no trail marked on Will’s map of the Wolverine Hills, but a stream connected the inner and outer lakes, and this is what they followed, progressing slowly for the first hour, taking their time navigating the mossy bank where they could, bushwhacking through underbrush where they couldn’t, the air so clean, redolent of white spruce.
They stopped midafternoon at the base of a waterfall, a set of smaller cascades above it. Will searched his pack and found the Ziploc bags containing nuts and dried fruit that Buck had packed for them. While he distributed the snacks and water bottles, Kalyn studied the map, tracing their path from the outer lake up into the hills.
“How far have we come?” Devlin asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out here.” She finally located the tight contour lines that crossed the blue line on the map, denoting the series of waterfalls.
“Looks like we’ve covered about . . . three miles.”
“Look!” Devlin whispered.
A pair of caribou were working their way carefully above the lower waterfall, stopping every few feet to look and listen.
They pushed on, the stream narrowing, becoming steeper, rockier, with fewer stretches of flat water and more cascades.
Devlin was leading the way, and she stopped suddenly, said, “Listen.”
Will heard only the babbling of the stream. “Devi, I don’t . . .” No, there it was—a man-made sound, possibly two of them, in the middle of nowhere, engines barely audible over the rushing water.
“That what I think it is?” Kalyn asked.
The sound of the planes grew louder. They couldn’t see them through the overstory of spruce trees, but they seemed to fly right over them before fading away, leaving only the whisper of the stream.
“No way one of those could be Buck, right?” Will said.
“I don’t think so.”
Devlin said, “Maybe one of them is the plane you saw yesterday, Kalyn.”
“No way to know, baby.”
It was getting colder and darker, the mist that landed and clung to Will’s black fleece jacket freezing into flecks of ice.
“We should probably start looking for a campsite,” he said.
It was another hour before they crossed a piece of ground level enough to pitch a tent on. They’d climbed more than a thousand feet from the outer lake, and the character of the forest had changed—the spruce trees more withered-looking, more space between them, the underbrush a violent red.
“Let’s camp here for the night,” Will said. “Pretty little meadow, close to the stream.”
They found their sleeping quarters in Devlin’s pack—a roomy four-person, four-season domed tent. Will hadn’t set one up in years; Kalyn never had. It took them the better part of thirty minutes to assemble the poles and finally run them through the corresponding sleeves, another fifteen to stake out the guylines and get the rain fly fitted. When the tent was finally erected, they tossed their packs and sleeping bags inside and climbed in out of the deteriorating weather.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Will said. “Wish I could say that I’m a master outdoorsman and will have a fire ready momentarily, but that’s not gonna happen with everything soaked.”
“Just fire up the stove and you’ll be my hero,” Kalyn said.
While the women inflated the Therm-a-Rest pads and unrolled the sleeping bags, Will took the kitchen set outside. He vaguely remembered the bush pilot warning them against cooking near the tent, so he found a grouping of rocks fifty yards away.
Pockets of mist had begun to form around the edges of the meadow, drifting between the poplar and spruce, and he thought about the previous night with Kalyn as he scanned the directions for the camp stove. It hadn’t been as strange with her as he’d feared it might be. Maybe they’d take a walk later tonight, talk about what had happened—the kiss, the obvious attraction they both felt for each other.
By the time Devlin and Kalyn walked over, he had a pot of water coming to a boil over a blue propane-fueled flame, bubbles rising to the surface, steam swirling into the air.
They drank hot chocolate and ate surprisingly delicious rehydrated suppers, standing in the meadow as the snow began to fall—big downy flakes melting on the rocks and trees.
No one spoke, and it was cold, wet, and nearly dark as they stumbled back toward the tent, the ground now frosted, their breath clouds pluming in the dusk.
“This sucks,” Devlin said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
They sat bundled in sleeping bags, their faces illuminated by a flashlight Will had rigged to hang down from the tent ceiling. In the poor light, they could barely make out one another’s faces.
Kalyn held the map under the flashlight. “I think I see where we are,” she said. “The contour lines stay together for a while after the waterfall, and then they spread out again. If so, we’re only about a half mile or so from the inner lake.”
“We made good time today, didn’t we?” Devlin said.
“We sure did. And you did great.”
Will said, “Well, we should probably get your therapy over with. Being at this altitude has got to be stressing your lungs.” Devlin sighed, climbed out of her sleeping bag, and stretched out on her stomach across the Therm-a-Rest.
As Will moved into position, Kalyn said, “Can I do it?”
“Um, I guess, if that’s okay with Devi.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Devlin said.
“Okay, show me how.”
Will unzipped the tent and poked his head outside. Snow da
nced through the beam of the flashlight, a few inches having already accumulated. He ducked into the tent and zipped the door back. Kalyn and Devlin were revving up for the final game in a three-set match of Rock Paper Scissors. Will would face the winner.
He said, “All right, Devi, all comes down to—”
The high register of a howl erupted in the dark—long, sad, and beautiful.
Devlin looked up from the game. “Was that a wolf, Dad?”
“I think so.”
“That’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard.”
Devlin lay in her sleeping bag, snuggled between Kalyn and her father. They’d turned the flashlight off, and it was black and soundless except for the pattering of snowflakes falling on the rain fly.
“Dad?” Devlin said.
“Yeah, honey.”
“Kalyn?”
“What?”
“Just wanted to see if you two were still awake.”
“Not for much longer. What’s wrong? You scared?”
“No. Well, a little.”
Kalyn said, “We aren’t going to let anything happen to you, all right?” Devlin felt Kalyn kiss her cheek, savoring the warmth of this kind woman beside her.
Devlin woke to the familiar noise of her father’s quiet snoring. Both he and Kalyn had slung their arms over her. The darkness was complete, without the slightest trace of light. She thought about the wolf, wondered if it was sleeping in a warm den or still tramping somewhere out there in the snow. She hoped it wasn’t lonely.
Her nose was cold, but the rest of her body felt comfortable and snug in the sleeping bag. Even her toes were warm. She wiggled them and shut her eyes, fell quickly back to sleep.
Devlin’s eyes opened. Still in the tent, buried in the warm sleeping bag.
She heard whispering, and it took her a moment to recognize Kalyn’s voice.
Devlin sat up. It wasn’t as dark as before, and she thought perhaps it was dawn already, until she saw the spill of light on her father’s sleeping bag.