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BEING CARIBOU by Karsten Heuer

BEING CARIBOU

Five Months on Foot with a Caribou Herd

by Karsten Heuer ; photographed by Karsten Heuer

Pub Date: May 1st, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9565-6
Publisher: Walker

In this sketchy digest of his 2005 account for adults, Heuer, a Canadian Park Warden, retraces the trek he and his wife made to protest oil developers’ plans to drill on calving grounds used by caribou each year in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Skipping over most of the day-to-day details, such as how they fed themselves for five months, he recounts encounters with wolves, bears, wild storms and, worst of all, seasonal clouds of mosquitoes and blowflies so aggressive that even the tough, normally imperturbable caribou stampeded in panic. Along with—or perhaps because of—physical privation, he and his wife also experienced mysterious sounds and déjà vu visions. Aside from plenty of big color photos, there isn’t much information here about caribou—but the hazards of their seasonal migration come through clearly, as does the author’s voice and agenda. (index, map, resource list) (Nonfiction. 10-12)