Snowy Owl banked to his left, and caught the updraft coming off the butte overlooking the river. He could feel the weather was changing — the long endless winter night was drawing to a close, and the land of the midnight sun was beginning to emerge from its peaceful slumber. Below him, Arctic Wolf was padding along a well-beaten path through the snow alongside the river. Caribou herds had cut this path through the snows early last fall, using it to cross the low-lying tundra plains. Wolf was lean, and some would say mean, from his long night foraging, from his hunts late into the extended Arctic night. This is the life of a lone wolf in the Arctic wilds.

Snowy Owl and Wolf were long-time friends, though Snowy Owl knew to keep a respectful distance when it came to Wolf. Wolf didn’t mind Snowy Owl’s caution — he imagined he would do the same were the circumstances reversed. He often wondered what it would be like to glide silently on the night air as Snowy Owl did, seeing one’s prey from on high, then swooping down with nary a sound until your sharp talons grasped your quarry and you eased up into the chill night air once again. Wolf’s life was difficult by comparison. The long night of the hunt took its toll, especially when the herds were small and the snows deep. The deep snows slowed the caribou, but it was cold and dirty work, however you sliced it. Wolf didn’t mind, for his line had long hunted the Arctic wastes, and while winter was often harsh and extracted a price, it was a good life and rewarding. This was home.

Snowy Owl swooped down and silently floated up behind Wolf, whose vigilant ears missed his approach. Wolf padded on effortlessly, and then with that sixth sense, turned and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. There was Snowy Owl, and the two moved together across the tundra in the growing light. Snowy Owl liked Wolf. Theirs was a unique relationship that began when Wolf’s mother saved him from certain death at the jaws of a band of renegade wolves from the southern regions. Snowy Owl’s mother had been killed by the alpha wolf, and just as they moved in on their little prey, Wolf’s mother stepped in front of the pack and would not move, nor would she let any pass. This was unheard of, and Snowy Owl to this day does not know how or why it happened that way. Snowy Owl escaped a cold fate, and feels nothing but gratitude to Wolf’s mother.

Often Arctic Wolf would be seen racing across the tundra in pursuit of an animal, while above Snowy Owl flew circles and swooped in some form of sympathetic union with Wolf until he caught his prey. After Wolf finished his meal, he left aside a portion for Snowy Owl. Snowy Owl, for his part though, did not accept any of the gifts left for him by Wolf — he couldn’t go that far. He did, however, understand Wolf, and appreciated the gesture for what it was. Wolf grasped that Snowy Owl couldn’t accept the gift of food left from the hunt, and didn’t take it personally, but continued to leave portions for his close yet distant friend.

Willow Ptarmigan — Will for short — loved the long Arctic winters. For much of the time, the sun is on its night-ward journey below the horizon, and time stands still. Will loves that endless sense of time, that quality of stillness of the Arctic during these periods of sundown. The hues of night are magical — deep lavenders, purples, and blues bordering on black, the shade of the underside of midnight. And the wonder of night flight requires that sixth sense that birds of the Arctic own, permitting the hunt during the extended winter’s night. Will is a distant cousin of Snowy Owl. He, too, likes Arctic Wolf, and like Snowy Owl, caution dictates he maintain a safe distance. Will won’t join in the hunt with Wolf, although he is fascinated and watches from a distance. Even to watch from above, as does Snowy Owl, he feels is too close, but he doesn’t judge Snowy Owl for his involvement. “There, but for the grace of god…,” he often mutters under his breath, watching Snowy Owl on the sympathetic prowl. He marvels at Wolf’s prowess, and with not a little bit of fear. Wolf leaves portions of his kills for Will, too, and Will doesn’t miss the fact. Like Snowy Owl, Will can’t bring himself to accept these gifts. Never in all his family’s history has a Wolf had a coexistent relationship with any Ptarmigan; it just wouldn’t have happened. Will doesn’t try to make anything more of it than that it is happening, and that Wolf is just another creature in the harsh Arctic wilds making a go of things, surviving. Survival is very dear to all creatures in the north, and it isn’t significantly different for any creature: defy nature, and the price is eternal sleep, a state of permanent midnight sun.

Nome Teleson cinched the wide belt to his parka tighter to close out the chill wind, and pulled the drawstring of his hood close around his face. The wind had picked up, causing the temperature to drop, and it was beginning to rain; any colder, and the rain would turn to snow, and they would have to delay their departure. He climbed off the tarmac into the back seat of the small but powerful bush plane joining his party, and shortly the thundering engine propelled the aircraft down the runway and into the chill air. Soon the buildings and lights of Fairbanks were behind them, and the lone plane reached for altitude.

Teleson is an Alaskan wilderness guide, a skilled though alcoholic plier of the wilderness trade, who comes by his skill and reputation through grit and determination, and a native intelligence in aces. However, for Teleson, life in the north is hard, and his soul does not fare well in that environment, for he is short-suited in the ways of the inner life, and has an obvious dislike for people. This is generally not a good thing, unless one is resigned to an isolated and contemplative order, or has joined the legions of the foreign in a distant wasteland. His attention span is brief, due in large measure to the legacy of a sour disposition left him by his alcoholic mother. He learned early in life that to survive, one had to climb over others or bring them down. He learned this lesson well, and feels no qualms in advancing his cause in life at the expense of all others. He is known for his sharp mind, though perhaps more so for his sharp tongue, and exhibits no mercy when it comes to pouring his venom out at the expense of others. This he does easily, and with little discrimination — his is an equal opportunity vitriolic and practiced tongue.

In the back seat next to Teleson sits his longtime partner, Bimbeau Juhrtone, an angular, angry, and reclusive French-Canadian hunting guide and fur trader, expert in the ways of Arctic creatures, and the deadly means needed to bring them down. He is sickly, given to a tubercular condition that has plagued him off and on for the past ten years, and which wracks his frail body when he coughs, which is all too often. He is pale of skin, and in the whiteouts of nasty winter storms, takes on the mantle of a ghostly apparition. His senses, though, are ever sharp, keen in discerning the slightest shifts in the weather, and observing of minute changes in the ways of creatures of the northern wilds — the better to know their intimate wanderings, and their ultimate weaknesses. Teleson and Juhrtone traffic in the trade of those who hunt not for utility, as for food or clothing, but for sport — for those obscene masculine trophies that grace the dens of the wealthy.

Ghuy Jailor sat in the seat next to the pilot. This is his first trip to the northern wilderness of Alaska. He came to “bag a big one,” as they say in the inner smoking rooms of his exclusive business club back in Chicago. He looked down, and through the slashing rains saw a meandering river cutting through rough terrain, with rocky crags reaching up past the tiny plane’s wings on both sides. “Damn, they’re close!” he shouted, but his words were lost in the explosion of sound inside the plane’s cabin. He had selected the seat next to the pilot, a place of importance in his mind, and now was trying not to look fearful. He was brought roughly back to the present when the plane caught a sudden downdraft and his stomach rammed up into his throat. He gasped, and the knuckles of both hands turned even whiter.

The noise inside the tiny bush plane was thunderous for the chain of explosions in the powerful engine, and the shaking unnerving. Outside the winds buffeted the plane, tossing it about wildly, and the spars and bolts of the old workhorse creaked and groaned, giving the occupants good pause for worry. Their bush pilot seemed oblivious of their imminent deaths. Teleson and Juhrtone clutched their armrests with such force, the plane seemed to groan all the more. They were certain they were going to crash into some frozen lake or into the side of a glacier. Suddenly the plane nosed down, and dark clouds whipped past and beads of rain formed on the Plexiglas around them and were driven by the force of the winds toward the tail of the plane. “We’re going to die!” screamed Juhrtone against the roar of wind and engine. “Arrrrgh!” came a cry from deep within Teleson, as he felt his trousers grow warm and a trickle run down his right leg. Jailor’s eyes grew large, and his mouth opened wide, but no sound came forth. The pilot was calm, eyeing the mountainous terrain as earth and thunder came rushing up to engulf them. His hand was rock steady as he guided the bush plane skillfully down into the valley between two closed-in and jagged ridges, his eyes all the while seeking a stretch of gravel to serve as a landing strip. With the wind howling and his passengers screaming, one silently, the pilot pulled the plane out of its dive, leveling off just at the last moment, and the plane’s huge tires slammed down onto the gravel sandbar. The plane bumped and jounced, water and debris splashing on the undersides of the wings, and after an interminable stretch, eventually came to a halt. Even with the howling of the winds and slashing of the rains outside, it seemed deathly quiet inside the plane’s cabin. They were down.

The bush pilot helped a shaken Ghuy Jailor out of the plane, as two equally shaken wilderness guides climbed out of the plane and onto the gravel airstrip. The pilot smiled as he unloaded the backpacks, food and equipment, one very large gun case, and the deflated river raft. The rain continued in slashing torrents, and a fierce wind blew out of the north. The pilot shouted to Jailor above the roar of the wind that he would pick them up at the mouth of the river on the Beaufort Sea in three weeks for their return trip, and wished them well. As he lifted off the makeshift airstrip, he circled twice, and dipping his wings, chuckled as he flew off to the south toward Fairbanks.

Juhrtone and Teleson worked quickly to erect their tents in order to be able to get out of the rain. Once that was completed, Teleson worked steadily to set up the cook tent, which would serve also as the dining tent and the protective day tent against the hoards of mosquitoes that lurked just beyond sight, waiting to pounce when the rain stopped.

“There’s a wolf beyond the ridge!” shouted Ghuy Jailor as he stumbled into camp, exhausted from running just a short stretch of hillside. Juhrtone and Teleson dropped what they were doing, and grabbing their powerful weapons from the gun case, raced for the ridge to the south of camp. Both were in considerably better condition than Jailor, but both struggled in the final approach to the ridge of the hill. They dropped to their knees just as they approached the crest, and crawled slowly to a vantage point giving a sweeping view of the side of the hill opposite the bend in the river. There in the shadows near the river’s edge was a dark figure that the two men quickly identified as a large arctic wolf. Curiously, the wolf was followed in the air above by two birds, which were mere dots from this distance, and which Teleson guessed they were two Peregrine Falcons. Very curious, thought Teleson. Slowly, Juhrtone and Teleson moved down the hillside, gliding silently from one rock to another, from behind one mound to another. Here their skills became evident. As they approached within 100 yards of the wolf, Teleson took up a position behind an outcropping of low rocks and rested his powerful rifle on a rock ledge. He retrieved a powerful scope from his inner vest pocket, and quickly mounted it on the rifle. He adjusted the sight, accounting for the distance to his quarry, and put his eye to the eyepiece. The early morning shadows gave way to a highlighted image, a fine cross-hair at the center of the scope’s viewing area now resting on a spot just behind the shoulder of the grey wolf. Teleson sucked in his breath, breathed out just a little, and held it. He gently squeezed the trigger, but before he could complete the action, the vision in the scope was blurred by a flurry of wings, as a loud screeching pierced his ears, and he was struck by a sudden shock of pain in his left hand that cradled the rifle. Teleson screamed and jumped back, dropping his powerful weapon. Juhrtone whined on being attacked by a frenzied Willow Ptarmigan, and swung his rifle around and fired several wild shots in the direction of the winged apparition, narrowly missing Teleson. Teleson yelled for Juhrtone to cease shooting, and screamed again as Snowy Owl’s talons narrowly missed his eyes. With an unnerving squawk, Will Ptarmigan beat his wings about and pecked at the head of a babbling Juhrtone. Bimbeau Juhrtone, flailing his arms about to ward off the flying attack, soiled himself.

Suddenly, Arctic Wolf leaped over the low rock formation and into the fray, snarling and snapping, his teeth ripping. Juhrtone threw down his weapon, and still flailing his arms about, fled down the hillside toward the river. Teleson screamed a curdling wail, and beating his arms to ward off the grey wolf, scrambled away, and he too fled toward the river. Ghuy Jailor, who had been watching the scene unfold, picked himself up and fled in the other direction. Wolf loped down the hillside, howling, snarling, and snapping his jaws, now more for effect, adding to the fright of his would-be assailants in their flight to safety. Snowy Owl dropped down onto a low mound at the foot of the hill and chuckled. Will feathered his wings, and came to rest beside his companion. Wolf padded silently back, and sat a safe distance from Snowy Owl and Will. “Thank you,” he said, his eyes alternately holding those of his two friends. “It was nothing,” Will replied. “Yes,” added Snowy Owl.