I spotted their gentle silhouettes in the distance when my truck topped a rise on the ice-covered Haul Road. They were there for just a moment, and disappeared from view as I sank into a valley. I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief as the truck rumbled to the top of the next hill. There they were again. As the sun has migrated north, people in most of this hemisphere have been searching for the first spring daffodil. I’ve been searching for caribou. Not narcissus poeticus with their potent pollen, but rangifer tarandus with antler-stamens bobbing in the new soft April light.
For the last couple of weeks, my eyes have strained to turn each distant dark spot on a snowy hill into a sign of life, to no avail. When I finally saw them, they were easy to recognize. Grey-ghost caribou in pale winter coats, carrying unborn babies to North Slope calving grounds as they do each spring -- a jagged shuffling line of bodies that reassures me we’ve all survived another winter. Just a small group, but over the next few weeks, their numbers will swell to thousands.
This long hard winter left me impatient for their return. Last year, they were tilling our snow-covered hillsides in March, but this year, lacking the human constraints of numbered days, they’ve just been smart enough to stay south of the Brooks Range while we gritted our teeth through winter's final minus fifty mornings. Their tenacity is built on this foundation of wisdom from a thousand thousand migrations. Perhaps that’s why it feels like magic when they appear. One minute, they’re not here -- then they are -- it's not just easy to see them, it feels natural. They don't arrive in a bright splash of color like a daffodil, but as a subtle sign of life in a stark landscape. And they don't appear because I was looking, but for their own reasons and in their own time.
Ah, hope! Sometimes you are there just for a moment before you fade, then come into view again, as constant as spring migration. You appear as a flower, a sunrise, a migrating caribou -- not because we are looking, but mysteriously in spite of our struggles -- in so many forms, and yet so faithful, so easy to recognize if we are willing.
For the last couple of weeks, my eyes have strained to turn each distant dark spot on a snowy hill into a sign of life, to no avail. When I finally saw them, they were easy to recognize. Grey-ghost caribou in pale winter coats, carrying unborn babies to North Slope calving grounds as they do each spring -- a jagged shuffling line of bodies that reassures me we’ve all survived another winter. Just a small group, but over the next few weeks, their numbers will swell to thousands.
This long hard winter left me impatient for their return. Last year, they were tilling our snow-covered hillsides in March, but this year, lacking the human constraints of numbered days, they’ve just been smart enough to stay south of the Brooks Range while we gritted our teeth through winter's final minus fifty mornings. Their tenacity is built on this foundation of wisdom from a thousand thousand migrations. Perhaps that’s why it feels like magic when they appear. One minute, they’re not here -- then they are -- it's not just easy to see them, it feels natural. They don't arrive in a bright splash of color like a daffodil, but as a subtle sign of life in a stark landscape. And they don't appear because I was looking, but for their own reasons and in their own time.
Ah, hope! Sometimes you are there just for a moment before you fade, then come into view again, as constant as spring migration. You appear as a flower, a sunrise, a migrating caribou -- not because we are looking, but mysteriously in spite of our struggles -- in so many forms, and yet so faithful, so easy to recognize if we are willing.
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