Alaska Dispatches
# 18  —  22 April 2001

Ptarmigan Hunting

	It seems like everyone in Alaska has their survival story. Mine is tame, especially compared to the stories you hear around these parts, but it’s a survival story all the same.
I had an incredible urge to hunt yesterday, since almost everyone I know (every male, that is) was out seal hunting. Nobody has invited me to go yet; I’m not sure why and hoping that it happens soon. Greg was heading out for ptarmigan and asked me if I wanted to go along. He asked me in the Yup’ik way, that is, by calling and saying: “I’m thinking of going out for some ptarmigan.”
They had a .22 caliber rifle on sale at the corporation hardware store. I wrote a check for the gun and 200 cartridges, and was home in 5 minutes. I don’t think buying firearms is this easy in California.
	It was a warm day, but wet, so I wore a fair amount of gear. I packed a thermos of tea, my sealskin hat and heavy-duty gloves, just in case. We left at 2:30, crossing the river and heading east toward Tern and Chiching mountains. These are more like hills, 400 and 300 feet high. However they dominate the totally flat landscape, and so are called mountains, even on maps of the area. Relying on them for reference on all of my trips out of the village, I have come to think of them as mountains as well.
I have spent some time in the vicinity of where we were hunting, since I have made several trips to collect water from a spring at the base Chiching, the smaller of the two mountains. Also, the snowmachine trail to the nearby village I have visited many times runs between the two mountains.
	I was excited to shoot my new rifle. For the first hour I trailed Greg, and we came across several flocks of birds. Ptarmigan are relatively easy to hunt. They allow you to drive your snowmachine to within good range, 50 yards or so, and get off a shot before they take off. But as Greg would arrive first and shoot, I wasn’t having much luck. I soon veered off to find my own flocks, and shortly thereafter took my first ptarmigan.
	My friend was hunting to the Southwest of me, but close enough so that we could keep track of each other. I assumed that Greg assumed I was helpless. It was a clear day, and from the higher spots on the frozen tundra I could clearly see Piniq to my left as well as the mountains to my right.
I am fond of dried ptarmigan, so was eager to bring some of the small birds home to learn the proper way to dress and dry them. It wasn’t cold, and it was great to be outside after being cooped up in the house all week. Still getting used to my new gun, I missed a lot more than I hit, but slowly collected a handful of ptarmigan, which I stuffed into my backpack.
As the afternoon wore on I lost track of Greg, and he of me, as we hunted. I sensed where he was, or at least I thought I did. Every once in a while I thought that I could hear his snowmachine or the report from his rifle. I kept telling myself that I would hunt my way over to him, but then I would spot a ptarmigan just over a crest, and widen my arc. Snowmachines are dangerous that way. It is easy to go far quickly, and easy to get disoriented. Eventually I decided to head back towards my friend.
	As I hunted my way west, toward where I thought Greg was, I noticed some fog starting to roll in from the coast of the Bering Sea toward Piniq. I traveled along, keeping the mountains to my right. I grew concerned about not finding Greg, but then I would once again think that I heard him, and would head off in that direction. He never materialized. The fog grew thicker, and I decided to drive towards a high spot of tundra to take a look around and decide what to do. I thought of marking the direction towards Piniq in the snow, but didn’t.
The high spot I drove towards turned out to be exposed tundra. As I got closer to the spot, it occurred to me that if I stopped the machine on tundra, rather than snow, I might get stuck. This was probably not true, but in any event I shut down the machine at the edge of the snow line and walked up the small hill.
There were large mink holes dug into the frozen tundra on the hill. The sun began to sink, the wind picked up and the air grew crisp. I took a deep breath, poured myself a cup of tea and looked around. Piniq had disappeared, completely enveloped in fog.
The mountains were behind me and still visible, but the fog was moving fast, and I got scared. I didn’t know if I should head towards where I thought I remembered Piniq to be, or wait for Greg, or head off toward the nearby village, or wait for the weather to change, or what.
Actually, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I had heard it many times, from many people. It is the first rule one is taught about traveling on the tundra. All the elders say that whenever you get disoriented, you should stay put. But I didn’t.
My mind raced through scenarios. First, I figured that I should try to get home before the fog totally enveloped the tundra, rendering zero-zero visibility, as I have seen it do. I knew that if I lost the mountains, I would become totally disoriented. I figured all along that the temperature wasn’t cold enough to kill me, and that I could have survived a night outside. I was within walking distance of Piniq, but it would have been a long walk. I didn’t like the thought of running out of gas (my snowmachine has no gas gauge). And if the machine were to break down….
I noticed snowmachine tracks heading toward where I thought Piniq was, and decided to follow them. I was inching along slowly and nervously. I told myself that this is exactly how it happens, yet I was powerless to stop myself and stay put. I needed to feel that I was doing something to try to better my situation.
There is Yup’ik saying for one in exactly my situation that translates as “when lost, don’t use your mind.” But this is totally counterintuitive, especially for me. All my life I have relied on my wits. My brain is what has allowed me to survive, perhaps even to thrive, in my culture and my world. My instincts did not allow me to simply do nothing, even though I knew that was what I should be doing. I needed to feel that I was doing something, anything, to try to better my situation through action. I was powerless against an overwhelming urge to act.
An arctic fox scurried across the trail in front of me and I reflexively veered off to chase it, until I came to my senses and shouted to myself: “What the fuck are you doing?” I found the trail again, but it soon ran into exposed tundra and I lost it. I motored along slowly, and finally decided that I should head back to the mountains. When I turned around to sight them, all I could see was fog.
Visibility was now down to a few hundred feet. Greg was gone. The mountains were gone. The village was gone. The trail was gone. I was really scared. I kicked myself for not having a GPS or a VHF marine radio, and for not bringing along some food.
I recalled some of the stories I have heard from guys who have lived here their entire lives, yet have still managed to get lost out on the vast, featureless expanse. Like Brandon, who was coming home from the same area I was in when he got caught in extremely dense fog. He wound up driving in between two buildings on the outskirts of the village and continuing for miles, thinking he was still heading toward home. Eventually his snowmachine ran out of gas, and he wound up spending three days and very cold nights out on the tundra without food, walking to stay warm, his clothes stuffed with tundra grass, until he was finally spotted wandering a few miles east of the village by his father.
Or Junior and his friend Jimmy who took their brand new matching snowmachines out to Dall Lake to hunt hare a few springs ago. They got caught in a spring storm and became disoriented in the blowing snow. When they finally rediscovered the yellow trail markers, they weren’t sure which way led toward home, so they flipped a coin, and took off in the wrong direction. When night fell, they saw the lights of the village behind them, turned around and promptly both ran out of gas at the same time. They started the long walk back along the trail, but Junior has a bum leg and after several miles was too exhausted to continue. He dug a snow cave and settled in for a night on the tundra while Jimmy walked back to town, barely getting across the river before high tide rendered it impassable, to send a search party out for Junior the following day.
Or the teenager who took out the honeybucket during an evening blizzard a few years ago. After he dumped the bucket, the wind tore the empty 5-gallon bucket from his hand, and he chased it for a minute before letting it go. This was long enough to become disoriented and to wind up spending the night outside in the raging storm, dressed for a 5-minute excursion.
Every winter, despite the nearly universal GPS units, search and rescue is called upon week after week to rescue someone lost, out of gas or broken down. I was panicked, mostly from all the stories running through my head. I was frustrated at myself for continuing to act and do, when I knew that I should be waiting and doing nothing. I prayed to god to let me find Greg or to see Piniq, to make it home.
Finally, I saw a snowmachine headlight off in the distance in front of me. It had probably only been an hour or two, but it felt an eternity that I had been lost. I pointed my machine toward the light and gunned my engine. I realized that it was Greg, and my heart soared as we zoomed toward each other.
Greg had started for home when the fog started to roll in, but then had gotten worried about me, and had come back to find me. He was driving around when he spotted me on top of the hill and started in my direction.
I told him that I had been worried too, and explained what I had been doing. I said that I thought I was heading toward Piniq. Nope, he replied, you are heading away from Piniq. I don’t like to think about what would have happened if we hadn’t run into each other. I don’t think I would have died, but it is impossible to say for sure. As soon as I got home, I called REI and ordered my own GPS.

©2001, Michael Thornton Wyman