British Columbia Wildlife As Seen From The Highway

Here is the fun part for me. Traveling along, vicariously.  On a long run without the distraction of would-be racecar drivers threatening my life I like to think behind the wheel.  So does, Bobby. Being a perfectly balanced partner that took me 60 years to find, she somehow breaks her thought process on a long journey to ask a philosophical question that then takes long hours of debate to answer, if it can be answered at all. Instead of spotting license plates, this is our “road warrior” pastime game.

I am fortunate that in six years of traveling together. We rarely have had to repeat ourselves on the subjects of extreme importance.  And, it is a handy habit when pre-writing one our style e-magazine articles. I distinctly remember after seeing both caribou, and a sign warning about caribou, and a car on the road — as above— that Bobby had me STOP for a picture! 

We have seen this combination many times before, but this event did lead to a long pseudo intellectual discussion as to why “outsiders,” or those who live in the “lower 48,” anticipate wildlife viewing as the number one reason for visiting Alaska. And not seeing a single moose from a cruise ship shore excursion bus happens to be the number one complaint. Come on you Princess people, spring for a city cab to ferry people from a long wait at the Los Anchorage airport, to where the “Office of Moose Control” has a sighting of Herman lounging in a backyard wading pool.  There is a city zoo I have been told is comparable to wild animal prisons, elsewhere.

To hunt wildlife with a camera, or binoculars— just as with a gun— you have to go where the game happens to be.  One of my AlaskaTravelMagazine articles has to do with the animals you will see when taking a green Denali National Park shuttle bus on an all day trip over a precarious road to (a truly) Wonder Lake.  Cruise ship passengers are herded into brown busses that have “trained wildlife naturalists” to help you spot the big three (bear, moose, caribou). These excursions don’t take the boat people tourists much past the in-park campground where a hard sided RV is required, as grizzlies are known to wonder through, as shown in my article, “How close is too close?”

The real answer to that depends on where that expert was trained. People love to quote the noted Adolph Murrie’s treatise on wolves, but have never read The Wolf Man of Alaska, whose only degrees happen to be winters spent at 40º below.  To the visiting “publish or perish” academic that will eventually love wolves to death, or force them to find new territory, as the Dall Sheep disappear from the craggy ridges above my cabin, my credentials are that I have witnessed just that. My crackpot (yet publishable) theory is that by limiting the (legal, big money) harvesting of Dall rams to horn sizes suitable for hanging on a wall, the JV squad of immature males left to guard the ewes and kids of a herd, don’t have a clue how this is done against an experienced Alpha wolf pack leader. Double that is the winter when visiting field biologists are back safe and sound in their Ivy League school, at the time when sheep and wolves have to take risks to when finding food to stay alive.

Know that I really enjoy spotting a wolf in their natural setting. It sends a thrill up my spine. Those enthusiastic young adults that seem to follow the Treadwell of Malibu school of Grizzly Bear management, as taught by Professor David Letterman (who pokes fun of bears for a fast buck), by signing an out of whack balance of nature petition to love these predators — you may be the one responsible for that oh so cute lamb not even clearing a ewes uterus before marching on into the food chain.

Holy moley, where did the miles go? I had best wrap this segment up. I have a feeling on the most basic level my excitement on spotting game does, in part, go back to my connectivity to the basic the nature of things, as the food chain. Having experienced myself that Dall Sheep meat is so iron and protein rich, I understand the wolves’ attraction. If global warming happens in my remaining years, bringing starvation to the breadbasket of America, I know which direction to lead my family.

At this time of the evolution of mankind on this earth —I warned you this stuff as philosophical— I prefer domestic mutton, cooked Basque style, over choking down a black bear (shoot it, you eat it) in very strong mincemeat pies. I like my steaks to taste a bit on the wild side, as Caribou, or a least the tough sweet taste of range feed beef, instead of the cut with a fork taste of artificial hormones, and the manure of force fed feedlots.

If the survival of the Murray family depended on it, I know we would all would wolf down wolves.  This, to maintain a balance of nature by taking care of the last of the lambs. I have a truly faithful sheepherding Border Collie I just couldn’t bring myself to boiling up in a stringy last supper stew (ala, Lewis & Clark) especially since I would need her partnership reinventing in civilization after the Great Global Warming Disaster thins the human race back to numbers this planet can support. 

So this is what I get out of spotting caribou, black bears, and moose (or is the plural, meese?) along the Alaska Highway. It is a sense of well being knowing that in a world where bovine critters are going mad, and engineered fowl are developing a new strain of flew, that our wild stocks may be a canary in a coal mine when it comes to man’s survival. 
Besides, on this highway, they are a good reason stay alert, and pull over for a safety break and photograph a creature that shares in the heartbeats of this planet.