Summer of the Wolves (5 page)

Randall came over to Nika. “Gideon's in my grade,” he said. His face was serious.

“I'll come see you. We'll do stuff together. You can sleep over,” she said. She punched him gently on the arm. When she noticed his new friends watching, she decided to hold back on the sisterly hug.

“Yeah, okay. Later . . .” he said, and punched her back, his smile rebounding. He turned and clambered into the Camerons' boat. Thomas and his mother untied the ropes.

“See you later, Nika,” Claire said. “Sorry to be in such a rush. Don't want to be late. Come over for lunch one day. We'll get to know each other.” She threw her rope into their boat and climbed down beside Jasper. Thomas lightly hopped into the back, giving Nika a quick smile. Then with one pull he started the motor and backed up before turning to point the bow out into Anchor Lake.

Randall's arm waved a goodbye circle in the air above him as they buzzed away.

The sound of the Camerons' motor faded, leaving an oil smell hanging in the air. Ian busied himself loosening the tangle of ropes she'd made on the post.

He looked as awkward as she felt. They didn't know a single thing about each other and yet here they were, staring at each other over an undiscovered scrap heap of family history.

“I have a job to do today. We'd better get going.” He dangled the rope in his hand. “Ready?”

“I don't think I want to go along,” Nika answered.

Ian turned back, his eyebrows raised in surprise. He seemed puzzled. “Well, I could take you into town. I have a friend who works at the library. Or you could stay at Pearl's alone, I guess.” He hadn't worked this through.

Nika kind of enjoyed seeing him struggle. “I guess,” she muttered.

“This trip might not be one hundred percent fun, but we have to go today,” he said almost to himself, looking off at the water.

Then he held out a hand to help her into the boat. “Oh, come on. Come along. You might enjoy it.” He looked at his watch. “Could be we'll see a wolf,” he added as he started the engine.

 

As the storm continued to flog the trees, the silvery-tan wolf ran from fence to fence, her legs bent in fear, her ears flattened. With a deafening crack, a huge white pine fell, crushing the fence on one side of the pen. To escape the sounds, the wolf climbed through the branches of the fallen tree, scaled the trunk, and jumped free. She ran cowering through slashing water, through bending and breaking trees. She ran for hours. Finally, exhausted, she slept in shadows. She woke up in a strange forest. Nothing smelled familiar. Slinking behind fallen trees, skirting meadows, she ran again.

It was weird. It had been so cold earlier. Now the day was almost like Pasadena. Nika dressed in her usual California outfit—ripped skinny jeans, a crop top with a cami underneath, and flip-flops.

Ian took one look and shook his head and pointed to the loft. “You need sturdy long pants, a T-shirt, a longsleeved shirt, that anorak I had you buy, a hat, and boots. You know the ones from the camping store?” His brow wrinkled. “It's only May. This is unusually warm. It might get cold later.”

Nika silently turned and went back up to her room. On the closet floor were the brand-new camping clothes. She tore off the tags and pulled on the khaki pants and a T-shirt. The clothes looked like something from one of Randall's fishing catalogs. She was glad she wasn't going to see anyone she knew.

The stiff new pants whispered as she followed Ian down from Pearl's cabin. Stillness hung like heavy cloth, punctured occasionally by birds that sounded like squeaky wheels and beepers. When Ian and Nika scrambled into Maki's waiting plane, the lake mirrored an upside-down forest on both sides of the inlet.

Maki checked a list and yelled “clear,” and they rumbled from the inlet, revving to a roar as the Beaver floatplane plowed the water.

“Got to find the sweet spot for takeoff!” Maki shouted back to Nika as the plane turned in a new direction, then revved up until the pontoons pulled free from the water and the plane lifted into the air.

Nika wasn't as scared this time, and she relaxed against the seat, looking out the window at the trees and lakes below.

“You can listen,” Ian said loudly as he adjusted dials on one of the blue metal boxes. He handed the box and headphones to her. “I set it for wolf number three-three-two, from the Stone River Pack.” As if Nika could hear anything in this noisy plane! But she followed his gestures and put on the headphones. Radio signals squeaked and crackled and hissed against her ears.

Ian twirled dials on his box and pulled a clipboard into his lap. He looked back at her and asked, “You take that pill?”

She removed one earphone. “What?” she shouted.

“Did you take the pill?” he yelled back.

Nika nodded. Well, she hadn't, but it was in her pocket, just in case. She hated how Dramamine made her sleepy.

Ian shouted again over the engine noise, “Number three-three-two's signal was in the same place yesterday as it was the day before! Maybe the collar came off!” It seemed to worry him. What worried Nika were the baked-metal smells and the occasional tilting. She took a deep breath and hoped they wouldn't be flying for long.

She looked down at the sea of trees, some of them lime green with new growth. The plane's shadow skittered across the water below. Small islands bristled with trees. How did Maki even know where they were? Everything below looked the same.

Soon they were flying along the edge of a narrow lake shaped like a poorly drawn letter U. On the near shore the forest was slashed through with fingers of black.

Shouting again and leaning back from the front seat, Maki said, “Fire! Last year!” The fewer words the better in a floatplane.

In a little while Nika heard a steady beeping from her blue box. Ian pointed, and Maki eased the plane in that direction. Ian listened, looked down, then waved his hand in a circle. He folded the map into his lap and wrote on a clipboard. Listening, he gestured for Maki to circle a different spot, not too far from the first. Finally he gave Maki a thumbs down.

The plane leaned one wing sharply and circled lower and lower, flying the length of the lake again before coming back to land. Nika held her breath and counted. She knew what he was doing this time—landing into the wind. This time she had no need for a bag. Maki cut the engines thirty feet from a sand beach and drifted until they ran onto the sand with a loud
screech.

“Horseshoe Lake,” Ian said as he climbed out onto the pontoon and then hopped to the sand, beckoning to Nika with a tilt of his head. “Used to be a major logging lake.” He leaned his large pack against a rock before coming back to help her.

Maki shouted, “See you at five!” and pulled the cockpit door closed.

Ian tucked his pants into tall, fancy-looking boots and waded back into the water, slowly maneuvering the plane until it was heading out.

“Gotta stay dry this time of year. This water is still really cold,” he said as he returned to the beach. The yellow plane lumbered down the lake.

“Why doesn't he stay?” Nika shouted over the noise.

“He also does surveillance for fires. They asked him to do a run today.”

Nika watched the plane lift off. When she looked back at the wall of tightly woven trees and bushes beside the beach, she thought maybe she should have taken that Dramamine and stayed with Maki.

Throwing on his pack, Ian said, “Coming?” He parted some thick branches with his hand.

“Where's the path?” Nika shouted, rooted to the sand.

“We call this bushwhacking,” Ian answered as the bushes closed behind him.

Well, she didn't want to be left alone here either. She followed in his wake. As the forest began to wrap around them, she felt a sudden fear. The wind in the tops of the trees whispered and moaned, but where they walked, it felt hot and still. Branches grabbed at her legs and feet. The only sounds were the crunchings and thuds of their footsteps. What if Ian fell and hit his head on a rock? She'd be scuffling for mushrooms and setting snares for bunnies, like people in reality TV shows.

Lots of the trees still had no leaves, just tiny buds and, occasionally, small white flowers. Nika tripped and stubbed her new boots on rocks, tromped through snarls of twigs and fallen logs, grateful that her uncle had made her change, especially the flip-flops. They gradually climbed a small hill where several large trees were snapped off, leaving yellow scars and jagged stumps.

Ian turned his head as he walked and said, “Quite a storm just before you came. Unusual for this time of year. Lots of trees down. It was even worse south and west of here, where a straight-line wind completely flattened some areas.”

They continued up a gradual rise until the trees thinned and the taller pines took charge. The walking became easier with fewer bushes to stumble through. But crisscrossing the forest floor were massive half-rotted tree trunks so big that she had to sit on them to swing her legs over.

Ian took a large antenna out of his pack and unfolded it. It was shaped like three big Ts strapped together. He plugged the wire into one of the blue boxes. Soon a rhythmic beeping came from his box. He didn't use the earphones this time but turned the antenna this way and that until the beeping got louder. When it did, they hiked in the direction the antenna pointed.

Every few minutes Ian stopped and listened, pointed, then walked in a slightly new direction. Nika was hot. So much for cold in May. She wished now that she hadn't brought the extra clothes. She took off the anorak and tied it around her waist. She was down to a T-shirt and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. Maybe she could just wait right here. Then she looked at a shadow that seemed to move beyond the hill and decided, maybe not.

At the top of the rise, she took off her hat. Welcome soft breezes spread coolness through the damp roots of her hair. Ian stopped, pulled off his pack, put down the antenna, and looked at Nika. “I guess I haven't explained much to you about why we do this.”

Nika was glad for a break in the walking. “To study them, right?”

Ian nodded. “Wolves live where we can't follow them around very well to see what they're doing. After our hike up here, you can imagine. Anyway, with the radio collars we can track their movements and get an idea of their territories.”

“How do you get the collars on?” Nika asked, thinking that she couldn't quite imagine anyone, even Ian, marching up to a wild wolf and sticking a collar on him.

“Well.” Ian looked uncomfortable. He took his hat off, ran his hand over his hair, and put his hat back on. “Well, honestly, you've hit upon my least favorite part. Maybe someday we'll invent a better way, but for now we have traps. We pad the trap to avoid injury, but it's still a trap and has to hold the wolf firmly. After catching them, we inject them with a drug to make them sleep. We blindfold them so their eyes won't be damaged. Then we put the collar on and take measurements and blood samples.”

“I don't like the trap part,” Nika said, wondering how long a wolf might have to wait to be released. She looked to see if Ian minded her speaking up.

“I don't blame you. Most people wouldn't,” he said, “but it allows us to learn things. We need to better understand how wolves and humans can share wilderness areas.”

Nika was quiet. Wolves were becoming real to her. There was at least one right nearby. She glanced quickly at the shadowed trees.

Ian settled back on a rock. “Historically, by the midseventies, wolf numbers in all of the lower forty-eight states had dwindled to just a few hundred, all located in Minnesota's Superior National Forest. The bounty ended in 1965 and they were declared endangered and protected in 1974. In other places in the world, healthy populations still exist, like Canada, Alaska, and Russia.”

He reached over to offer Nika a fruit bar, then continued, “Wolves can live in most of the northern hemisphere as long as they have prey and a chunk of wilderness. And tolerance from humans. Around here their numbers are pretty good since they are protected and studied. Not everyone likes that fact.” For a minute Ian seemed to catch himself. “Sorry. I suppose this sounds kind of like a lecture in school.”

Nika shrugged. She liked listening to Ian better than stumbling through the woods.

“Why do you like them so much?”

“To me they represent true wildness. They're like we used to be a long time ago living as families, pack members helping to raise the young. Mates can stay together for years. Humans may have learned to hunt large prey as a group from watching wolves. Many people think they have the most complex social behavior of any animal other than primates.”

Funny,
she thought. He loved the fact that wolves have families, but he spent his time wandering around the world all by himself.

Ian adjusted his heavy pack. “You really got me going! Well, back to work! Ready?” he called over his shoulder, leading the way.