Being Caribou

by Karsten Heuer

$36.99

With skilled storytelling and a deft sense of detail, Karsten Heuer takes us along on a trek of staggering proportions and, at times, remarkable hardship. To follow the Porcupine caribou from their spring grounds in the Yukon to the shores of the Beaufort Sea in Alaska, where they gather to calve, and back again, Heuer and Leanne Allison travelled for more than five months. They journeyed an estimated 2,500 kilometres by foot and on skis, in territory so remote that they did not see another human being for weeks at a time. A detailed account of the journey from this perspective alone would make for a gripping read, and the misadventures and glorious moments that Heuer does describe do quicken the heart and leave the reader’s mouth dry in anticipation. Close encounters with grizzly bears and awkward creek crossings in frigid temperatures merely provide the backdrop for the real narrative pursued by Heuer and Allison. Being Caribou is at times an adventure story, at times a detailed explanation of wildlife biology, but at its heart, it is a tale of a endangered group of animals and the fight to preserve their precious habitat. In the world of the Porcupine herd according to Heuer, the why is every bit as important as the how, and many times more significant than the who. Not that the author neglects to keep his readers engaged his own personal struggle and story, as well as Leanne’s. The pair share awestruck moments, witness to the power of the animals they are tracking, and they also spend time close to despair; hungry, footsore and falling behind the caribou. This human drama is woven into the work with a careful touch. It does not drive the story, nor our interest, but it helps to maintain it. It’s the caribou who are the true protagonists, and never more so than during the section of the book devoted to describing the calving season. Alone with the thousands of animals, newborn and otherwise, Heuer and Allison begin to feel less like foreign observers and more a part of the momentous events happening around them. In fact, their entire journey was in many ways a reaction to the “textbook” divsion of the world. The Porcupine calving grounds are part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, land that, for now, is not open for oil exploration and development. But this may not last. Under the calving grounds, geologists believe, sits the largest oil reserve in the United States. Heuer was well aware of the positions of the pro-environment and pro-development camps. But, as he writes early on in Being Caribou, the one voice he had not heard was that of the 123,000 member Porcupine caribou herd. Now, through his book, he has given that voice, those voices, a chance to be heard, and hopefully understood. 

Being Caribou concludes in truly heartbreaking fashion. Returned from the Arctic wilderness, Heuer and Allison venture to Washington D.C. to present their story and their opinions to the politicians and bureaucrats with the power to make a difference. What they find is a hardened indifference to their emotional experience. The bottom line, they are informed, is cheap gas.