The World We Lost

THE PROBLEM of how I was to make my way south to Brochet from Wolf House Bay was resolved one morning when Ootek burst into the cabin to announce that he had seen an aircraft. Sure enough, a Norseman plane on floats was lazily circling over the tundra to the west of us.

I had long since given up hope that the pilot who had brought me to Wolf House Bay would ever return, and so the sight of this plane sent me into a dither of excitement. Remembering the smoke generators with which I had been supplied, I ran to get them. To my surprise they worked. A mighty coil of black and oily smoke went soaring into the high skies and the Norseman (which had disappeared to the west) reappeared, homing on my signal column.

It landed in the bay, and I went out by canoe to greet the pilot, a narrow-faced and unprepossessing-looking young man chewing a wad of gum. He had much to tell me.

As the months had passed without any word from me, my Department had grown increasingly disturbed. Not only had they received no wolf reports, but some four thousand dollars’ worth of Government equipment had vanished into the tundra void. This was serious, since some inquisitive member of the Opposition might at any time have got wind of the matter and asked a question in the House of Commons. The possibility of being accused of carelessness in the handling of the public funds is a bogy which haunts every Government department.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were therefore asked to find me, but clues were scarce. The pilot who had taken me into the Barrens had since gone missing on a flight over the Mackenzie district and the police couldn’t find any trace of him, let alone discover what he had done with me. Eventually, and after a great deal of sleuthing, the police got hold of the rumor circulating in Churchill to the effect that I was a Secret Service agent who had been sent to spy on the floating Russian bases at the pole, and they so reported to Ottawa, adding that they did not like being made mock of, and the next time the Department wanted something found, it had better be honest with them.

The pilot who had landed to investigate my smoke signal had not been sent to look for me but was engaged in a prospecting survey, and his discovery of me was purely fortuitous. However, he agreed to carry a message back to his base informing the Department where its equipment was, and suggesting that a plane be sent to pick it up immediately, before the freeze-up came.

With Mike’s assistance the pilot took advantage of the landing to top up his gas tanks from drums carried in the fuselage. Meanwhile I departed to complete some unfinished business at the wolf-den esker.

In order to round out my study of wolf family life, I needed to know what the den was like inside—how deep it was, the diameter of the passage the presence (if any) of a nest at the end of the burrow, and such related information. For obvious reasons I had not been able to make this investigation while the den was occupied, and since that time I had been too busy with other work to get around to it. Now, with time running out, I was in a hurry.

I trotted across-country toward the den and I was within half-a-mile of it when there was a thunderous roar behind me. It was so loud and unexpected that I involuntarily flung myself down on the moss. The Norseman came over at about fifty feet. As it roared past, the plane waggled its wings gaily in salute, then lifted to skim the crest of the wolf esker, sending a blast of sand down the slope with its propeller wash. I picked myself up and quieted my thumping heart, thinking black thoughts about the humorist in the now rapidly vanishing aircraft.

The den ridge was, as I had expected (and as the Norseman would have made quite certain in any case), wolfless. Reaching the entrance to the burrow I shed my heavy trousers, tunic and sweater, and taking a flashlight (whose batteries were very nearly dead) and measuring-tape from my pack, I began the difficult task of wiggling down the entrance tunnel.

The flashlight was so dim it cast only an orange glow—barely sufficient to enable me to read the marks on the measuring-tape. I squirmed onward, descending at a forty-five-degree angle, for about eight feet. My mouth and eyes were soon full of sand and I was beginning to suffer from claustrophobia, for the tunnel was just big enough to admit me.

At the eight-foot mark the tunnel took a sharp upward bend and swung to the left. I pointed the torch in the new direction and pressed the switch.

Four green lights in the murk ahead reflected back the dim torch beam.

In this case green was not my signal to advance. I froze where I was, while my startled brain tried to digest the information that at least two wolves were with me in the den.

Despite my close familiarity with the wolf family, this was the kind of situation where irrational but deeply ingrained prejudices completely overmaster reason and experience. To be honest, I was so frightened that paralysis gripped me. I had no weapon of any sort, and in my awkward posture I could barely have gotten one hand free with which to ward off an attack. It seemed inevitable that the wolves would attack me, for even a gopher will make a fierce defense when he is cornered in his den.

The wolves did not even growl.

Save for the two faintly glowing pairs of eyes, they might not have been there at all.

The paralysis began to ease and, though it was a cold day, sweat broke out all over my body. In a fit of blind bravado, I shoved the torch forward as far as my arm would reach.

It gave just sufficient light for me to recognize Angeline and one of the pups. They were scrunched hard against the back wall of the den; and they were as motionless as death.

The shock was wearing off by this time, and the instinct for self-preservation was regaining command. As quickly as I could I began wiggling back up the slanting tunnel, tense with the expectation that at any instant the wolves would charge. But by the time I reached the entrance and had scrambled well clear of it I had still not heard nor seen the slightest sign of movement from the wolves.

I sat down on a stone and shakily lit a cigarette, becoming aware as I did so that I was no longer frightened. Instead an irrational rage possessed me. If I had had my rifle I believe I might have reacted in brute fury and tried to kill both wolves.

The cigarette burned down, and a wind began to blow out of the somber northern skies. I began to shiver again; this time from cold instead of rage. My anger was passing and I was limp in the aftermath. Mine had been the fury of resentment born of fear: resentment against the beasts who had engendered naked terror in me and who, by so doing, had intolerably affronted my human ego.

I was appalled at the realization of how easily I had forgotten, and how readily I had denied, all that the summer sojourn with the wolves had taught me about them…and about myself. I thought of Angelina and her pup cowering at the bottom of the den where they had taken refuge from the thundering apparition of the aircraft, and I was shamed.

Somewhere to the eastward a wolf howled; lightly, questioningly. I knew the voice, for I had heard it many times before. It was George, sounding the wasteland for an echo from the missing members of his family. But for me it was a voice which spoke of the lost world which once was ours before we chose the alien role; a world which I had glimpsed and almost entered…only to be excluded, at the end, by my own self.