Books
Author releases children's version of award-winning Being Caribou
By Lynn Martel - Canmore
Rocky Mountain Outlook
Jul 18 2007
Once upon a time there was a wildlife biologist, his adventuresome wife and a 123,000 head caribou herd. Every year, for 27,000 years, the caribou herd migrated across mountain ranges from the Yukon to calving grounds on Alaska's Arctic Coast.
Then one day, when the biologist and his wife learned that oil companies wanted to drill for oil right in the very strip of land where the caribou cows gave birth to their calves every spring, they decided they would follow the herd for five months to learn what the caribou's lives were like as they migrated across all those mountains, and how drilling for oil in their calving grounds might affect the caribou.
And after the trip was over, the biologist wrote a book, and his wife made a film to share their story about living among the caribou.
The biologist, Canmore resident Karsten Heuer, has actually written two books about his and his wife Leanne Allison's impressive journey as they followed the Porcupine caribou herd for 1,500 kilometres from Old Crow Yukon to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on the Alaska Coast from April to Sept. 2003.
The first book, Being Caribou, published by Seattle-based The Mountaineers, was awarded Grand Prize at the 2005 Banff Mountain Book Festival Competition. Allison's film of the same title has won 17 international awards, including a Gemini Award for Best Science, Technology, Nature, Environment or Adventure Documentary Program in 2006.
And now Heuer has written a children's version of Being Caribou, recently released by New York publisher Walker & Company - Being Caribou; Five Months on Foot With a Caribou Herd.
Aimed toward an eight to 13-year-old audience, the 48-page hardcover volume features dozens of spectacular colour photographs guaranteed to captivate the eye of any 'tween - groups of caribou plowing through shoulder-deep snow and swimming across swollen rivers, wolf packs on the hunt, grizzly bears and ptarmigan and unspeakably adorable minutes-old fuzzy caribou calves.
With eight concise chapters flowing through the paces of their journey - dictated by the decisions of the migrating caribou - including Spring Migration, Calving, Post Calving and Summer, Heuer tells the story of their journey in simple language, and a snappy, energetic style.
But as with the photos - as many as three per page - Heuer packs an astounding amount of information into each chapter and paragraph, in an easy to read narrative.
He describes being shocked when a local Gwich'in hunter, Randall Tetlichi who offered to take Heuer and Allison to look for caribou by snowmobile, pulls out his rifle and begins shooting, but then uses the scene to explain how hunting is an essential element of who Tetlichi and his people are.
Heuer then shares how Tetlichi told he and Allison about a time when people could talk to caribou, and caribou could talk to people.
"Then he told us to pay attention to our dreams," Heuer writes. "I thanked him for his stories and advice but didn't believe them. I was a scientist and a park ranger. As far as I was concerned, they were just legends and myths."
As such, Heuer sets up the perfect thread through which to weave his story. Detailing the steps of their adventure, he describes arduous travel following hoof tracks in deep snow, of watching wolf packs chase swift-moving caribou, of enduring fierce snowstorms while the caribou simply keep feeding, and of hungry bears stalking himself and Allison.
Much like the original adult version however, Heuer focuses on telling the tale of the caribou, of their circle of life as they give birth right outside the couple's tent flap, and of the magic of it all.
"And then it happened: the thing that Randall had told us to watch out for when we said our goodbyes two months earlier. In our exhausted and hungry state we began to have visions. The line between being caribou and being human shifted. The animals talked to us through our dreams."
With a masterful touch, Heuer takes the story full circle, through the life cycle of the caribou, through the cycle of their journey across the landscape through the seasons, and through the cycle of their own discoveries - igniting young readers' minds to the idea that people and wild animals really can talk to each other, if only people would re-discover how to listen.
By telling the caribou's story, Heuer shares how in doing so, he hopes their important homeland in ANWR can be saved.
And then the caribou might live happily ever after.
