We heard so much about them from the naturalists at Jasper... facts such as that wolves mate for life, that they are the most devoted of parents and that in any pack there will be only one breeding pair... the dominant male and female, thus ensuring the strongest offspring, the rest of the pack acting as guardians and bringers-home of food... that we’d willingly have travelled anywhere in the hope of actually seeing them.
Unfortunately, said the warden, there was little chance of that. Now they are protected the wolves are increasing in Jasper, but there are still only about six or seven packs in 65
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The Coming of Saska the Park. Living in the remotest areas, they are sometimes seen by travellers in winter. Never in the summer, though.
Experience has taught them to keep away from men. The best he could offer was a night-trip into their territory in the hope of hearing them call.
One of the naturalists would take along a tape-recording of another pack howling. He’d amplify it into the night and if we were lucky, we’d hear a reply.
We went on the Saturday and it was a memorable day altogether. We spent the afternoon high in the mountains at Maligne Lake where we saw a bear-warning chewed by a porcupine (they climb the poles and eat chunks out of the board because they like the turpentine in the paint); a picnic party by the lake complete with the family cat on a tremendous length of string (the notices also warn you that dogs and cats, for safety, must be kept on leads at picnic sites and in no circumstances taken on the trail); and our first black bear of the trip.
We saw him in a clearing in which, having been told by one of the naturalists that he had seen a lynx on several occasions, we sat camouflaged in the long grass for ages, hoping to see it ourselves. Normally lynx are shy but this one, said the naturalist, wasn’t bothered about people at all. Only a few days previously he’d been lecturing a group about moose, the Maligne Lake area being one of their haunts and, noticing his audience staring past him as if mesmerised, he’d turned to see the lynx crossing the path right behind him. As boldly as you like, he said; this was obviously one of his crossing points and as the humans were so preoccupied...
The lynx must have been somewhere else that day. In two hours of sitting there being bitten to pieces by mosquitoes 66
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we saw no sign of it. Eventually, in desperation, I stood up and did my imitation of a Siamese cat’s fighting call.
At home it always brought our two on to the scene at the double. Alas, no lynx appeared in answer to the challenge.
Instead, about a dozen gophers shot out of their holes and stood on their hind legs craning at us from their look-out hillocks and, a minute or so after I’d stopped calling, a bear came into the clearing.
The gophers went down their holes like snooker balls.
As for us, nobody needed to remind us to look for a handy tree. We were behind the nearest one like yo-yos on elastic
– in my case with a trial foot up to see if I could reach the first branch fast if I had to. After which, precautions duly taken, we held our breath and watched the bear.
It was a big one. Probably a male, since adult females usually have their cubs with them. A black bear by species, though in this case its actual colour was brown, with a lighter, mealy muzzle. If it knew we were there, it gave no sign. Just passed through the clearing with the massive padding soundlessness that is the most striking thing about a bear’s walk; like the noticeable silence of a ballet dancer’s shoes on a stage when for a moment there is a pause in the music. Its head swayed from side to side, short-sightedly scanning its surroundings as it went. It made a playful bound at something – probably a movement in a gopher hole. There was nothing particularly outstanding about its passage but we, behind our tree, scarcely dared breathe for excitement. Our first bear of the trip, met up with when we were on foot. If it had spotted us we’d have been up that tree in a flash.
It didn’t, but we discussed the bear all the way back to the camper, all the way down the brake-testing switchback 67
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The Coming of Saska bends that led to the Jasper-Banff road, all the time I was cooking supper by the side of Medicine Lake. (The sun was setting gloriously; might as well eat here and watch it, we decided; we’d be all set then for the wolf expedition when we got back to Wapiti.) Which was how, cooking sausages, gazing out of the window at the sunset and talking to Charles about the bear, I nearly caught the camper on fire.
A saucepan sputtered into the frying pan, the fat flared up... in a moment the cooker top was a sea of leaping flames. Charles dealt with it by slapping a saucepan lid on to the frying pan. With the air cut off, the flames died down. For a moment it had looked pretty dicey, though, with the flames shooting up round the curtains over the sink. Which was why, when the wolf expedition moved out of Wapiti campground at 11 o’clock that night, our camper was last in the convoy. It was the first time we’d driven in the dark in this vehicle and Charles said he preferred to take it easy. It wasn’t our camper. I’d just almost caught it on fire. He intended to return it intact.
We were given the route. Left along the Jasper-Banff Highway. Right up the track towards Mount Edith Cavell.
Left after about a mile, where the road forked sharply. We couldn’t miss it, said the naturalist. There weren’t any other turnings. And about twenty miles in, we’d come to Leach Lake. The other cars would be parked in the shadows under the trees, and he’d be down at the lakeside fixing up the equipment.
That was what he thought. The camper wasn’t a fast vehicle in any case and what with going uphill, and Charles driving carefully because it wasn’t ours, and looking out at snow-covered mountains in the moonlight and wondering what it was that at one point went across the road ahead 68
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of us... when we got to Leach Lake and I wound down the camper window, it was to hear a pack of wolves in full song. Closer than I had ever expected. It sounded as if they were just across the lake. Yips and yaps and a solo baritone howling which was the leader of the pack giving tongue. Then, after a pause, the others came in in chorus; melodious, yet somehow spine-chilling; muted and hauntingly mournful.
‘Quick!’ I whispered, grabbing the tape-recorder, sliding down out of the camper cabin and heading towards the lake on tiptoe. Charles, switching off the camper lights and pocketing the keys, slid out on his side and tiptoed after me. We were almost there, the wolves howling in glorious Valkyrie chorus, when Charles had one of his thoughts.
He’d just nip back and put on the camper sidelights, he said. It was last in line on the road, and if another vehicle came along in the dark...
It was no good my saying there were enough reflectors on the camper to light it up like a fairground in another car’s headlights. It was no good my asking who on earth would be this far up in the mountains at this hour. Charles, following the dictates of his conscience, went back. I went with him. I definitely believed about wolves being friendly but I preferred Charles to be around when they were.
So he switched on the sidelights, which also turned on the string of lights that, by law, mark the outline of large vehicles travelling at night in Canada, and there we were, twenty miles up in the mountains, suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.
The wolves wouldn’t mind it: they’d have seen lights on campers before, said Charles – and certainly there was no diminution in their howling. So he shut the camper door 69