Never Say Die (19 page)

That evening I called home from the hospital in Inuvik. I told my mother I was in good shape, but Ryan had to get sewn up a little. She had me on speaker. My cousin Billy got all excited when I explained that Ryan had a run-in with the grolar bear. Billy wanted to know all about it. I told him it was a long story. “Jonah wants to see you really bad,” Billy said.

“Tell him I can't wait,” I said. “We've got some pictures to show him.”

“Lots of caribou?”

“Oh, yeah.”

My mother said that the Royal Canadian Air Force sent a plane to take a look at Shingle Point. They were reporting that 40 percent of the plywood cabins had been swept away, and most of the rest had taken heavy damage. “Sounds like we'll have to rebuild, Nick.”

“This summer, I hope.”

My mom asked if I was going to bring my brother home to meet everybody. “Tomorrow,” I told her. She asked if she should pick us up at the Mackenzie River ferry with the motorboat. “No,” I said, “Red Wiley is going to fly us home free of charge.”

There's not much more to tell. I met up with Jonah right where I left him, at home in his recliner. “So happy to see you, Nick,” was the first thing he said. And the second was, “Billy says you saw lots of caribou.”

That put a big smile on my face. “More than lots, Grampa.”

“That's good to hear. That's just what I was hoping. You must have quite a story to tell.”

“Do I ever. I'll be back to tell it after you rest up.”

He looked doubtful about that idea.

“Grandma said you should rest,” I told him.

“Well then, okay.”

“It'll be better with Ryan here. He's getting cleaned up right now. Then it's my turn.”

“The bear and the wolf are at the edge of town. You hurry back.”

“You better believe I will,” I promised.

A couple hours later the whole family gathered at my grandparents'. Jonah was alert as can be, watching Ryan's slide show on my laptop as I sat by his side and told our story. Jonah's eyes went wide at me telling of the raft flipping over and me and Ryan finding ourselves under the ice. He looked to my brother for an explanation. Ryan smiled and shrugged, and said, “I guess there's a first time for everything.”

Jonah chuckled. I could tell he had liked Ryan from the moment he walked through the door.

The pictures Jonah enjoyed the most—no surprise—were the ones Ryan took of the immense caribou gathering on the upper Trail River. Jonah wanted to see those over and over. “My, my,” he kept saying. “That's what it was like, all those years ago.” He put his hand over mine and rested it there.

Two days later Jonah died in his sleep. The weekend after his funeral, people came from far and wide to remember him. The community hall was packed. There was throat singing and drum dancing and fiddle music and tables full of food, most of it from the river and the land and the ocean.

That night Ryan gave his slide show to a packed house. People wanted to see pictures of caribou, and did they ever! It was a celebration of our land that did everybody proud.

People took to Ryan in a big way. And to think how afraid I had been, only weeks before, of him even showing up in Aklavik.

I wish Jonah had lived long enough to see that issue of
National Geographic
. The cover story was Ryan's “Change Comes to the Arctic.” The cover photo was of the grolar bear at the Last Mountain campsite, standing at the edge of the Firth River. Even without a human arm in its jaws, the strangeness of the creature and the look in its eye jumped out at you.

The article ended with Ryan reporting the results of the new 2010 census of the Porcupine caribou herd, and the relief that washed over Aklavik when we heard the amazing news. The aerial survey had counted 170,000 caribou, up from 120,000 in 2001. “Why the Porcupine herd was rebounding while the Bathurst herd to the east was collapsing,” Ryan wrote, “has the caribou biologists scratching their heads and calling for further study. On the street in Aklavik, people say that's the way it's always been—boom and bust—and trust that they and the caribou will survive whatever their warming climate throws at them next.”

Ryan stayed with us for three weeks, and helped us rebuild at Shingle Point. He cleaned a whole lot of fish and even tried some muktuk. I think he liked the experience of chewing blubber better than the taste. My brother took a lot of colorful pictures out there. My favorites were of the fish racks, bright red with drying char, and the ones of a fifteen-foot, milky white beluga whale being butchered.

Ryan talked to the elders and he talked to the young people. Lots of people wanted to feed him. He claimed he gained ten pounds.

The morning before Ryan flew back to Inuvik to collect his truck, he took the picture of me in front of Moose Kerr School, the one on the article's last page. I'm pointing to Aklavik's motto,
NEVER SAY DIE.

We keep in touch by email. Ryan hopes I'll go to college instead of working in the diamond mines or on the offshore rigs if and when the big oil companies start drilling in the Beaufort Sea. He offered to teach me how to do landscape and wildlife photography. He says there will be a huge demand for photographs from the changing North, especially from an Inuit photographer.

Truth be told, I got hooked when I first turned through the pages of Ryan's article and saw a photograph of three magnificent caribou bulls fording the Trail River. In the background, an ocean of caribou is lapping against the mountains. Hey, I thought, I took that picture.

A closer look, and I noticed lettering in small print alongside the photograph.
NICK THRASHER
, it said. Jonah would have liked that.

WILL HOBBS
is the award-winning author of nineteen novels, including
Far North, Crossing the Wire
, and
Take Me to the River
.

Never Say Die
began with the author's eleven-day raft trip in 2003 down the Firth River on the north slope of Canada's Yukon Territory. Ever since, Will has been closely following what scientists and Native hunters are reporting about climate change in the Arctic. When the first grolar bear turned up in the Canadian Arctic, he began to imagine one in a story set on the Firth River.

A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives with his wife, Jean, in Durango, Colorado.

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ALSO BY WILL HOBBS

Changes in Latitudes

Bearstone

Downriver

The Big Wander

Beardance

Kokopelli's Flute

Far North

Ghost Canoe

Beardream

River Thunder

Howling Hill

The Maze

Jason's Gold

Down the Yukon

Wild Man Island

Jackie's Wild Seattle

Leaving Protection

Crossing the Wire

Go Big or Go Home

Take Me to the River

Cover art © 2013 by Vince Natale

Cover design by Sarah Nichole Kaufman

Copyright © 2013 by Will Hobbs

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www.harpercollinschildrens.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hobbs, Will.

Never say die / by Will Hobbs.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When fifteen-year-old Nick Thrasher agrees to join the photographer-brother he has never met on a journey down a remote Arctic river, their search for migrating caribou turns into a struggle with the elements and a fearsome bear that is part polar bear, part grizzly.

ISBN 978-0-06-170878-7 (trade bdg.)

ISBN 978-0-06-170879-4 (lib. bdg.)

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062223845

[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Inuit—Fiction. 4. Climate change—Fiction. 5. Caribou—Fiction. 6. Bears—Fiction. 7. Canada—Fiction. 8. Aklavik (N.W.T.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

12 13 14 15 16 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition