Travel Reference
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I'm afraid to put my feet down for fear of crushing a stray bloom, and at the same time
I want to lay down and roll in this profligate, perfumed profusion like a bear.
There are herbs, too, the pink plumes of bistort, a powerful astringent, white clusters of
labrador tea, high in ascorbic acid content and used to treat colds. There are the yellow-
centered white blooms of mountain avens everywhere you look, a primary food source for
Dall sheep. There are tall white flowers on reddish stems, bear flowers, another favorite
bear snack and yet another version of the saxifrage.
On the way to lunch, a fox trots past our van with a ground squirrel in his mouth, also
on his way to lunch. We walk down the nearly dry bed of Little Stony Creek and sit down
on a small rise dotted with bright patches of more moss campion. Jenna spies some
purplish pink shooting stars, which she tries to convince us are very rare, but then we
stumble across another patch and another and another, the place is lousy with shooting
stars, and she gives up.
Halfway through our sandwiches Jenna points, and on the hillside above us is a blond
grizzly with two cubs, one blond and one brown, grazing on bear flowers. After lunch we
drive up the road, only to closely encounter the bears we saw at lunch to the point where
Jenna won't let us out of the van. On the way home she finds us a field of lemon yellow
arctic poppies, and an old bull moose with a silver muzzle and half his rack missing
stretched out in a lush patch of diamond willow, alternately dining and napping. A golden
eaglet waves a wing at us from her nest. Two women in full packs disappear into the
brush at the side of the road.
That night everyone sits around at dinner (Copper River red salmon, yum) bragging
about what they've seen and done. The flightseers flew right up the mighty Kantishna
Glacier, and the Fenwickian son-in-law caught an actual fish. The strenuous hike is de-
scribed as “strenuous.” The one thing we all agree on is that our stay has been far too
short.
But the next morning we get up and have breakfast (vegetable frittata) and get on the
bus anyway, and bounce down the road to our first pit stop, the Eielson Visitor Center. I
come out of the bathroom to find everyone clustered at the edge of the parking lot, bin-
oculars raised. “What's up?” I say. “Wolves,” says Johann, our driver. At first I think he's
kidding, but no, I get out my binoculars and look. It is definitely a caribou in full flight, a
