This New Moon is notable as a central eclipse event because it is a total eclipse of the Sun in Sagittarius. It will span just under three and a half hours — from beginning, to maximum, to end point — with the whole process only obvious in certain parts of the world (principally Chile and some parts of Argentina, according to timeanddate. com). Locations in Antarctica, the southern part of South America, and southwest Africa may also experience what seems like a partial eclipse version, depending on how the weather affects visibility. Regardless, it is the symbolism of the total eclipse of the Sun that is most significant for us in this instance.
While it’s true that a total eclipse can still describe significant global shifts and tangible physical changes that may detrimentally affect whole nations and many of their citizens, it is worth remembering that one person’s disaster can be another person’s opportunity. In other words, there may be hope, in any situation symbolized by the eclipse, for new energy or redemption of some kind. After all, the basis of this cosmic scenario is a New Moon, under normal alignments of the Sun, Earth, and Moon.
This exactitude of alignment that creates the shut-out light experience of the solar eclipse, with the three bodies configured as though in a straight line, is technically termed a “syzygy” — an astronomical word that developed in the 17th century to describe a conjunction, where two bodies are coupled or yoked together. The word is also used in anatomy in the context of describing twelve pairs of cranial nerves. “Syzygies are the nerves that carry the sense from the brain to the whole body” (Oxford English Dictionary). Such symbolism is not to be lost on astrologers who might view the Sun’s intelligence as the light force, carrying information to and from the body, which we could, in turn, see as represented by the Moon, with its feelings and emotional impulses running along the nervous system and the arteries.
So it is with our eclipse moment, involving the Sun, Moon, and Earth, bringing together forces that affect us, partly physically but also psychologically. Therefore, crucial areas of life will have greater sensitivity now and perhaps increased challenges to manage: business, work and finances, relationships, home and family life, and health. If we are to manage this intense period, we may need to hold on to our own light — our sense of promise, hope, creativity, and continuity, even in the context of experiencing pain, loss, change, or other tests and challenges. Our biggest task will be to recognize where we can continue to find or create unity, perhaps on a larger scale than ever before.
Sagittarius is key here, emphasizing the union of nations, cultures, and dreams so that there is a greater alignment and striving for transcendence. It may be higher knowledge, a higher love, more expansion across space, or a simple recognition that it’s important to be exposed to something new. It could be through travel, conversation, study, and the like.
With Jupiter is besieged between Pluto and Saturn — all in Capricorn — we may have to battle narrow thinking. With Saturn at the critical 29°, there is a sense of “do or die.” Mercury and the South Node are also conjunct the Lights, adding to the flexibility of Sagittarius’s mutable quality, yet reminding us to learn from — and not ignore — the lessons of the past.
The Sun’s light may be blocked during this total eclipse, but our memories and willingness to negotiate and find progressive solutions need not be. A trine to Mars in Aries from the Sagittarius grouping is a further reminder to use individual energy wisely, sending out positive arrows of communication rather than threats.
This article is from the Mountain Astrologer, written by Diana Collis.
Center for Humane Technology (the creators of “The Social Dilemma” documentary on Netflix) is hosting.
Share your story and help create the conditions for change.
We regularly host conversations on a wide range of topics with experts and concerned citizens like you. Learn more about issues you care about, share your experiences, and find out how you can take action.
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS
From Fractured Reality to Shared Understanding
Join a discussion with leading organizations working to heal the deep divisions amplified by social media.
Entertainment One U.S., LP (on behalf of eOne Music); PEDL, ASCAP, LatinAutorPerf, Abramus Digital, UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA – UBEM, Warner Chappell, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, LatinAutor – PeerMusic, UMPI, and 9 Music Rights Societies
“To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But, in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much.”
In this poem, a man writes about his wife’s life-drawing class. She’s been sketching a naked male model for weeks, and the poet worries, comparing himself, trying to figure out how he feels. This poem moves from anxiety to request to consent to reciprocality. His self-consciousness about sharing his body with someone is transformed into trust and vulnerability.
For those of you who had the pleasure of knowing Scot Loomis, it is with great sadness that I have to report his passing last Sunday from cancer. Scot was a delight to be around and will be missed.
–Dena Jo Kanner (November 18, 2020 on Facebook.com)
It is with deep sadness we report the death of Scot Loomis, 73, of Taos, NM on November 15, 2020. Scot passed after a long battle with cancer. Scot was born March 11, 1947 in Weymouth, MA. When he was 9, his family moved to Lancaster, CA where he attended Lancaster High School and U.C. Berkeley. In 1975 he visited Hawaii and stayed for 37 years. Scot loved to travel and visited Russia, Estonia, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand, the Tahitian Islands, the Caribbean islands, Ecuador, Peru, Belize, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. On Oahu Scot worked for the Honolulu Advertiser as Database Manager. And although he was legally blind, he never let his vision be an obstacle. In 2012 Scot and his wife, Laura, retired to Taos, from where they continued to travel. Scot was a friend of Bill’s and found a calling in working with others. He often said, “I may die with this disease, but I don’t have to die from it.” He passed with 35 years sobriety. Scot is preceded in death by his father, Milton Elsworth Loomis and mother, Ethelyn Elnora Loomis, nee Potter. He is survived by his wife, Laura, his sister, Bonnie Loomis LaBonte (Rich), many nieces and nephews, and many friends. He will be greatly missed. (staradvertiser.com)
[Scot had a long history with The Prosperos. We welcome any comments from the Bathtub Bulletin community from people who knew him. –Mike Zonta, BB editor]
On December 14th, 2020 we have one of the most important astrological events of the year: a New Moon and Total Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius.
If you’ve been paying attention to eclipses, you already know how powerful they are. But not all Eclipses are made equal. Partial eclipses, while still fated, are less impactful than Total eclipses.
The upcoming Solar Eclipse is a Total Solar Eclipse, so it’s a biggie.
The Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius is also a South Node eclipse. South Node eclipses (unlike North Node eclipses) are connected to clearance of karma. “What goes around comes around”.
Although they tend to have a bad rep, South Node eclipses don’t always come with negative consequences.
The South Node is much like a payout. Some people can have their greatest achievements and recognitions at a South Node eclipse.
The difference here is that while North Node eclipses bring something new in our life, South Node eclipses deliver outcomes based on previous actions. At a North Node eclipse, you are creating new karma, at a South Node eclipse, you reap what you have sown.
However, this eclipse is a Solar Eclipse or a New Moon Eclipse and you may be well aware that New Moons and Solar Eclipses are associated with new beginnings.
So how come we have both an ending (South Node) and a new beginning?
If you look back in your life you may discover that your greatest turning points were a combination of both endings and new beginnings. To seed something new, we need to clear the space.
A new beginning can only happen when we tie up some loose ends. Moving to a new city or country is a new beginning, however, it is also an ending, because you leave behind a part of your history.
The Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius on December 14th, 2020 is the most important eclipse yet since the Lunar Nodes have moved in the Gemini/Sagittarius axis, so something fundamental about the Gemini-Sagittarius Nodal transit will be revealed.
Gemini Vs Sagittarius
The Gemini/Sagittarius axis is the axis of knowledge, of how we make sense of the world. But Gemini and Sagittarius have different approaches to knowledge.
Gemini rules our primary thinking process, how we process and make sense of information, from a logical, fact-based perspective.
Sagittarius rules the higher thinking processes such as abstract thinking and imagination.
Both Gemini and Sagittarius are concerned with information.
If Gemini is the basic delivery of information (without opinion statements), Sagittarius is deliberately crafted communication that can be used to educate/influence opinions or to share propaganda.
If Gemini is defined by curiosity, and approaches everything with a beginner’s mind, Sagittarius can lack curiosity and prefers to follow the marked path, which has advantages and disadvantages.
Sagittarius doesn’t waste time reinventing the wheel, and can indeed save time and energy by sticking to what’s already proven to work. After all, we wouldn’t want to come up with a new law every other day.
The downside is that it can also fall victim to dogma, and can get stuck in paradigms that have outgrown themselves. The flip side of “following the marked path” is missing important information, reaching flawed conclusions, and ultimately, making bad decisions.
Now, since the upcoming eclipse in Sagittarius is a South Node eclipse, it will likely expose the limitation of the “Sagittarius” approach, and all those themes ruled by Sagittarius, are now up for reform.
Solar Eclipse In Sagittarius – Truth Vs. Misinformation
Information censorship is a big topic at present – which is not surprising if you are an astrologer. The South Node is in Sagittarius after all.
And while people have mixed opinions about this (probably depending on how much Sagittarius vs. Gemini energy they have in their charts), one thing seems to ring true for most: nowadays, people have just about ‘had enough’ of being told what to think, and what to believe.
Information censoring is NOT what North Node in Gemini wants, and the South Node eclipse in Sagittarius will expose some corrupted attempts to influence our belief system.
Telling people what information is true and what information is false is a double-edged sword.
We may do it to protect others, but on the other hand, how can we be so sure we know what’s good for them? Where does our freedom of thought infringe on another person’s freedom of thought?
This is a catch 22 but with North Node in Gemini and South Node in Sagittarius, one thing is for sure, more and more, people want to think for themselves (North Node in Gemini) and not be told what to believe (South Node in Sagittarius).
Social Media censoring information as false news has infuriated many. Not because the news was or was not false, but because Social Media has ‘decided’ what is true and what is false on our behalf, ignoring that most of us have enough critical thinking to make up our own minds and to decide for ourselves.
And since the North Node is in Gemini, our ‘let me decide for myself’ instinct has been awakened!
But then again, sometimes censoring information may be the ‘right thing’, how a Sagittarius would say. We don’t want to have violent or abusive content online, especially if our children have easy access to it.
What kind of information ‘should’ be broadcasted and what kind of information ‘should’ be censored is not an easy question to answer – especially when the Lunar Nodes are on the axis of knowledge and information.
However, it is in the back-and-forth dance of the North and the South Node that we can find, perhaps not the ‘right’ answers, but at least, better kinds of answers.
What we can expect from the Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius
Sagittarius is the sign of moral conduct, philosophy of life, higher truth, law and judicial systems, religion, globalization, foreign relations, long-distance travel, trade, higher education, publishing, and broadcasting. Here are some developments the Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius can bring:
Rebellion against being told what to think and what to believe in
Changes in the way information is communicated and broadcasted
Truths may surface, something that has been hidden may come to light
Some irrefutable beliefs/moral standards may be questioned
Important laws may be changed
Developments in long-distance travel and international trade
Reforms in higher education
Of course, the Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius will not impact everyone equally. If you have a planet or an angle close to 23° Sagittarius or Gemini, then you will be impacted directly.
If you don’t have a personal planet or angle close to the degree of the Eclipse, the eclipse might not influence you directly, but it will still influence you indirectly, because global events affect us all, irrespective of our natal chart.
From social theorist and psychotherapist Rabbi Michael Lerner comes a strategy for a new socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion for one another. Revolutionary Love proposes a method to replace what Lerner terms the “capitalist globalization of selfishness” with a globalization of generosity, prophetic empathy, and environmental sanity.
Lerner challenges liberal and progressive forces to move beyond often weak-kneed and visionless politics to build instead a movement that can reverse the environmental destructiveness and social injustice caused by the relentless pursuit of economic growth and profits. Revisiting the hidden injuries of class, Lerner shows that much of the suffering in our society—including most of its addictions and the growing embrace of right-wing nationalism and reactionary versions of fundamentalism—is driven by frustrated needs for community, love, respect, and connection to a higher purpose in life. Yet these needs are too often missing from liberal discourse. No matter that progressive programs are smartly constructed—they cannot be achieved unless they speak to the heart and address the pain so many people experience.
Liberals and progressives need coherent alternatives to capitalism, but previous visions of socialism do not address the yearning for anything beyond material benefits. Inspired by Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Carol Gilligan, Revolutionary Love offers a strategy to create the “Caring Society.” Lerner details how a civilization infused with love could put an end to global poverty, homelessness, and hunger, while democratizing the economy, shifting to a twenty-eight-hour work week, and saving the life-support system of Earth. He asks that we develop the courage to stop listening to those who tell us that fundamental social transformation is “unrealistic.”
END OF THE WORLD predictions based on the Mayan calendar failed to materialize in 2012 but a prominent Christian evangelist believes the world could still end this year – just four days before Christmas.
Mayan calendar: Pastor Paul Begley warns of ‘doomsday’
Many conspiracy theorists and doomsday preachers were convinced the world would come to an end on June 21, 2020. The bizarre claims were based on supposed predictions made by the Maya calendar, which according to some, ran out of time last week. But as the world failed to disintegrate over the weekend, some have now been forced to revise their doomsday predictions.
According to Paul Begley, a Christian evangelist and online personality from Indiana, US, the Mayan calendar will have another shot at getting it right on December 21, 2020.
The date, previously linked to 2012 doomsday predictions, also happens to be the day of pastor Begley’s birthday.
Pastor Begley said: “Of course, the Mayan elders said this could have been the end of the world today. They might have made a mistake.
“Well, they obviously made a mistake on December 21, 2012, so they said maybe today would be the end of the world.
End of the world: A preacher has claimed the world could end on December 21, 2020 (Image: GETTY)
End of the world: Many people have amde bizarre claims about the Mayan calendar (Image: TWITTER)
“And they made a prediction if this wasn’t the end of the world today, certainly my birthday will come again.
“December 21, 2020, during the great conjunction when Jupiter and Saturn come within 0.1 degrees of one another and create the brightest star in the skies since the star of Bethlehem.
“It will be the closest Jupiter and Saturn have been since 1623 and it won’t even come that closes again for another 500 years.
“So this is so rare and it’s going to be on the winter solstice.
“It’s going to be on December 21, 2020. The Mayans now reorganising and saying this could certainly be the end of the world as we know it.”
It’s going to be on December 21, 2020
Pastor Paul Begley
Pastor Begley is a prominent purveyor of doomsday prophecies linked to passages in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The firebrand preacher often cites from the Bible’s Book of Revelation, which speaks of signs in the heavens and the earth that will precede the end days.
When an annular eclipse of the Sun occurred on June 21, pastor Begley said it was a surefire sign of the end times.
The preacher has similarly called Blood Moon lunar eclipses prophetic signs and waits for the day of Jesus Christ’s return.
Most scientists, however, agree the world is not going to end any time soon.
End of the world: Many people thought the world would end on June 21, 2020 (Image: TWITTER)
End of the world: There is no evidence the world will end any time soon (Image: GETTY)
There is also no evidence to support the bizarre idea the Mayan civilisation knew anything about when the world was going to end.
After the original Mayan calendar scare in 2012, NASA said: “News flash: the world didn’t end on Dec. 21, 2012. You’ve probably already figured that out for yourself.
“Despite reports of an ancient Maya prophecy, a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, or a reverse in Earth’s rotation, we’re still here.”
Astronomer Edwin Charles Krupp, the former director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, also said: “What did the Maya themselves think about End Times?
“There is no evidence that they saw the calendar and a world age ending in either transcendence or catastrophe on December 21, 2012.”
Experts have also rubbished claims the world is going to end this year.
Konstantin Bikos of TimeandDate.com said: “The end of the world is near – again! For centuries, doomsdayers have prophesied the apocalypse.
“But there’s a tiny catch: None of the end-of-world predictions ever come true.”
[It is the understanding of the Bathtub Bulletin that December 21, 2020 represents the beginning of a new astrological cycle, the so-called Age of Aquarius, not the ending of the world. –Mike Zonta, BB editor]
In the fall of 1975 I read a scientific report that made me sit up straight in my chair. It was entitled “The Eskimo Hunter’s View of Wolf Ecology and Behavior” and appeared in a peer-reviewed volume of technical papers called The Wild Canids, edited by Michael Fox. At the time I was in the middle of researching a book about wolves, so I read carefully every paper in Fox’s book. The one I regarded as a watershed statement was co-authored by Bob Stephenson and a Nunamiut Eskimo hunter from the central Brooks Range named Bob Ahgook.
In the early 1970s, the notion that indigenous peoples had anything of substance to offer Western science about wild animals, any important contribution to make to the overall study of wildlife, was either scoffed at by professionals in wildlife science or gently dismissed because the indigenous information, purportedly, “lacked rigor.” The report by Stephenson and Ahgook flew directly in the face of this idea. In my mind, their observations on wolf behavior were far and away the most interesting in Fox’s volume, though few recognized the revolutionary nature of this piece back then.
From the beginning of the colonization of the New World, Western science has had an ingrained, cultural prejudice against the validity of what indigenous people know about wild animals, about what they have learned during their centuries of living with them in the same environment. Their observations on social dynamics, cooperative hunting, ecology, neo-natal behavior, and diet were considered “contaminated” by folk belief or to have been based too often on anecdotal evidence alone.
*
Immediately after reading the Stephenson/Ahgook paper I wrote to Stephenson, a wolf biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), and asked if I could fly up to Fairbanks to speak with him. I’d not yet come across his perspective in the literature on wolves but very much wanted to listen to what he had to say, both about wolves and about his interactions with the Nunamiut. I arrived in Fairbanks in March 1976, which was late winter in interior Alaska. Bob picked me up at the airport and offered me a bed at his cabin outside the city, in Goldstream Valley. Three days later I was sitting next to him in the back seat of a Bell 206 JetRanger, a four-passenger helicopter, flying across Nelchina Basin, in the drainage of the Susitna River south of the Alaska Range. We were looking for wolves to radio collar.
This was a mind-boggling excursion for me, to find myself so suddenly on the front lines of wolf research. I was nearly speechless with appreciation at Bob’s invitation to go into the field with him, and for his trust that I would be capable as an assistant working alongside him. In the days that followed, I came to marvel at the breadth of his knowledge of wolf anatomy, morphology, and social behavior.From the beginning of the colonization of the New World, Western science has had an ingrained, cultural prejudice against the validity of what indigenous people know about wild animals.
After that first meeting, and after I finished the book I was working on, Of Wolves and Men, Bob and I traveled together extensively across central and northern Alaska. We canoed up the Yukon River to explore Charley River, which had just gained protection as a part of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve; we flew out to St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea during walrus-hunting time there; and we camped at several places in the central Brooks Range (all of them now part of Gates of the Arctic National Park). Our intent on these trips, for the most part, was simply to watch animals together.
It wasn’t until decades later that I was able to look back on those trips and comprehend how deeply the major themes of my professional writing life were informed by these excursions with Bob. My gratitude for his company and expertise, for his introduction to other wildlife biologists, and for his hospitality whenever I came to visit, knows no bounds.
*
In June of 1979, Bob and I journeyed up to Anaktuvuk Pass—a village of just 110 people back then—where I finally met Bob Ahgook, Justus Mekiana, and some of the other hunters Bob had worked with in the early seventies. The afternoon our plane landed there, nearly every woman in the village rushed down to the airstrip to greet Bob. Some years before this, after Bob started living sporadically at Anaktuvuk in a sod house he purchased from Justus, a flu swept through the settlement. Bob nursed dozens of people through this epidemic, emptying honey buckets, changing and washing bed linen, and cooking meals. The senior women in particular never forgot his courtesy and allegiance.
I listened in on his conversations with the hunters during our time in Anaktuvuk as they caught up with each other’s lives. The regard in which they held Bob was obvious. Relations between ADF&G personnel and indigenous hunters in many of the villages back then were less than friendly. Bob, however, had not originally come to the village to lecture people about adhering to state hunting regulations; he’d come to hear what the local hunters had to say. He was eager to get their insights into the nature of amaguk, the wolf, especially about the parts of its life that had not yet made it into the professional journals. No wonder, when he initially approached them about it, they had welcomed him to travel with them as they set out in early summer to look for wolf dens.
Beyond his own empathetic personality, his obvious lack of racial prejudice, and his respect for people with backgrounds very different from his own, Bob had a sharp sense of humor. One day when we were all sitting around telling stories, especially about wolverines as I remember, Bob told a story about an arrogant man and his humiliating comeuppance. The Nunamiut men roared at the well-delivered punchline. One leaned so far sideways on his stool he fell over. Another man nearly spit his dentures.
Bob helped pioneer something new and unprecedented in Western wildlife science— the inclusion of traditional indigenous knowledge (TIK) in peer-reviewed wildlife publications. (There were a few others in the Fairbanks office of ADF&G at the time who sought out indigenous knowledge and gave it equal standing with Western-based knowledge. I think immediately of two marine mammalogists, John Burns and Bud Fay, and of Kathy Frost and Lloyd Lowry, both of whom I worked with later when I was researching another book, Arctic Dreams; but the road to advancing mutual cultural respect in Alaska was to be long and hard.)
*
On that first trip with Bob, to radio collar wolves in Nelchina Basin, I saw first-hand an exhibition of the knowledge Bob had acquired by choosing to turn first to the Nunamiut instead of investing his allotted ADF&G funds in flying aerial surveys. (He had been charged by ADF&G with learning how the Alyeska pipeline might be affecting the lives of wolves. He believed he’d learn much more by traveling with Nunamiut hunters first, questioning them about wolf behavior in general, before setting off to study wolves along the pipeline corridor.) One day we spotted a wolf trail in Nelchina Basin—seven wolves walking single-file across a frozen, snow-covered lake. They were more than a mile ahead of us when we sighted them nearing the edge of the taiga; when they heard the helicopter approaching, they bolted. We caught up with a group of three. Bob was able to dart two, one of whom entered a dense copse of trees before going down. As we got out of the helicopter in knee-deep snow, Bob said, “Female. Maybe six or seven.” In my naive way I jokingly said, “Oh, come on. You can’t sex and age that animal at this distance.”
Bob helped pioneer something new and unprecedented in Western wildlife science— the inclusion of traditional indigenous knowledge (TIK) in peer-reviewed wildlife publications.
“Well,” he answered. “That’s what those guys taught me to do, anyway.”
We followed the wolf’s tracks into the trees and found it lying on its right side, its eyes fully dilated because of the tranquilizer. I lifted its left rear leg. Female. I eased her lip up to reveal her premolars and the left canine. Her teeth were blunt and worn down, to the degree you’d expect in an older wolf. When we prepared to carry her back to the helicopter, I ran my bare hand up through the fur where her shoulder blades came together. I felt a distinct layer of fat there, and in that moment I understood what knowledgeable people meant when they referred to the wolf as a “social animal.” Though she was probably too old to hunt efficiently, she was still in excellent physical condition for late winter, usually the leanest time of year for wolves.
We moved her out of the trees to where the other wolf lay sedated on an open stretch of tundra. Bob said it would be less traumatic for them if they woke up near each other. He cut spruce branches to build a platform for the wolves, to keep their heads from going nose-down in the snow while they were immobilized. He placed cloths over each wolf’s dilated eyes to shield them from the bright light of the sun and began his field exam. We weighed them and then put the radio collars on.
I recalled this particular moment several years later when Justus Mekiana told me that sometimes when wolves approach a junction where two valleys meet, you can see them making a decision about which valley would be the one most likely to provide them with food. The female lying at my feet that time in Nelchina Basin, I thought, might very well have been a decision maker. Too old to hunt effectively, probably, but maybe she had something else to offer the pack: the experience needed to ensure that all of them would make it through the winter. She would know which of the two valleys was the most promising.
*
After a couple of days spent hiking around Anaktuvuk Pass and talking with residents on that 1979 trip, Bob and I flew west, paralleling the north flank of the Brooks Range, to arrive at an ADF&G field camp on the middle Utukok River. A half-dozen or more biologists were using the site that year for summer wildlife research. A large wall tent, set amid eight or so individual tents, served as a mess hall, radio room, and field lab. A landing strip had been smoothed out on an old gravel bar near the river.
The charter flight that had brought Bob and me there loaded up quickly with a couple of scientists and their gear and roared off for Kotzebue. After we pitched our tent and squared away our things, Bob began introducing me to people who were conducting research on caribou, tundra grizzly, arctic fox, wolverine, and, now that Bob was here, wolves. A JetRanger, a Super Cub, and a Helio Courier sat on the runway. The latter could fly very slowly, staying aloft at speeds other aircraft couldn’t maintain without stalling. A good plane from which to survey caribou herds.On that first trip with Bob, to radio collar wolves in Nelchina Basin, I saw first-hand the knowledge Bob had acquired by choosing to turn first to the Nunamiut instead of investing his allotted ADF&G funds in flying aerial surveys.
On any given day, these biologists might be ferried up into the foothills of the western Brooks Range or out onto the adjacent coastal plain. There they would set up spike camps and observe animals in the area for a week or so before returning to the base camp. One morning I joined one of the pilots to search for bears in a Super Cub. (It’s more economical to look for bears in a small plane and, having found one, to radio the base camp with coordinates than it is to use much more expensive helicopter time to do the searching. The biologist can then fly directly to the area you found the bear in.) About ten miles south and west of the base camp, we came upon a lone adult grizzly chasing a herd of about fifty caribou. The herd began running up a tundra slope and quartering away from the bear below and behind them. Instead of slowing down, the grizzly charged furiously up the slope, cutting across the radius of the turn the caribou were making. It hit one of the galloping animals hard in the shoulder and took it to the ground. The speed with which the bear ran up the hill was astonishing.
After spending another day or two with people at the base camp, Bob and I helicoptered south, up into the De Long Mountains. We set our camp up on a bench partway up the side of Ilingnorak Ridge, several hundred feet above the flood plain of the Utukok. Bob had heard about an active wolf den nearby, three-quarters of a mile west of us in a cutbank above the river.
The conditions around here were perfect for observing animals. After we set up the tent and put our food and gear in order, we began watching the wolves with 20-power spotting scopes. Three adults, a pair of yearlings, and four frisky pups, whom we then studied continuously for a week. The vast, rolling countryside surrounding us was treeless and the air was eerily transparent—at one point we were observing a herd of caribou that were six miles away according to our topographic map. The weather was clear and the summer sun never set. From the elevation of our camp we could look straight across and slightly down to the entrance of the den.
Our regular routine was to sleep for four or five hours when we felt the need, but otherwise to watch the wolves and other animals, unless we were taking a few minutes to cook and eat, or to stretch our legs. If we both were going to sleep at the same time, we left a spotting scope on a tripod in the doorway of the tent, focused on the den. If either of us woke for some reason, he checked the scope. If anything was going on, he woke the other guy up. One day we saw members of the pack create an ambush a hundred yards from the den and surprise a herd of caribou. It worked and they made a half-hearted chase before giving up. “Practice,” Bob observed.
Once when the adults and one of the yearlings were away hunting, we watched a single female yearling hold off an adult grizzly trying to get into the den, where the cubs were. Another time, I was sitting near our tent, steadily glassing the hillside beyond the den for any movement. Bob was asleep. I sensed something to my left and turned. There, thirty feet away, was a yearling wolf, sitting its haunches and watching me. I knew it was a yearling because its body hadn’t yet filled out fully, and because, by then, I had absorbed from Bob a little bit of what the Nunamiut had taught him about sexing and aging wolves. When the yearling got up, she walked off at a steady pace, heading straight for the den, weaving her way through tussock mounds on the mesic tundra. Two jaegers harassed her, diving at her head. She leapt up several times to try to snatch one of them out of the air, behavior, I now knew, an adult wolf would never have wasted its time with.
In October 2016, Bob Stephenson passed away in his cabin outside Fairbanks. His work with wolves, and later with lynx and wood bison, was groundbreaking. His field methods were sometimes unorthodox, involving, for example, tracking lynx in an ultralight he built and flew. He jokingly referred to his methods as “commando biology,” exploring the lives of wild animals in other-than-standard ways. Because he rarely said much about himself, never pursued fame or notoriety, never traded on his close relationships with the Nunamiut, and published little, he was not as widely known in his field as he might have been. What he cared most deeply about was the fate of the animals he studied. He wanted them to fare well in the world that was coming for them, which world, he believed, maintained a certain prejudice toward them, and accorded them little of the protection they needed to pursue lives of their own.
__________________________________
The following essay will appear in Nunamiullu Amabullu: Nunamiut and Wolves Local Knowledge from the Inland Iñupiat of Northern Alaska which is forthcoming in 2021 or 2022, general editors S. Craig Gerlach and James Nageak.
Barry Lopez is the author of six works of nonfiction and eight works of fiction, including Arctic Dreams, which received a National Book Award. His writing appears regularly in Harper’s, The Paris Review, DoubleTake, and The Georgia Review. He is the recipient of a National Book Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and other honors. He lives in western Oregon.
Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
