3 - The Ring of Stone in the Arctic

When I graduated from college in 1986 with a degree in biology and philosophy, one of the first real science jobs I got was as a botanist working for the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I spent 2-3 months there for three summers in a row, in 1987, '88, and '89. What this entailed was getting flown from Fairbanks, where the main Refuge office is, 400 miles north across the dark crags of the Brooks Mountain range, to the small native village of Kaktovik, which is situated on a little island just off the north coast of the continent, at the edge of the Beaufort Sea.

The Refuge had their field station in the village of Kaktovik, and this is where we would stage our gear and fly by helicopter to our study sites on the coastal plain of the Refuge. The coastal plain is a region between the north slope of the Brooks Range and the ocean, that stretches from the peaks and glaciers down through rolling foothills, and gradually flattens out to the wetlands and lakes near the coast. Several glacial rivers and streams make their winding journey from the mountains, north across the coastal plain, to the sea.

Being a harsh and snow-covered environment for all but 2 or 3 months of the year means that all the vegetation is short, and a person can see for miles in all directions. The wildlife, which is what the Refuge is famous for, is visible for miles away. Immense herds of caribou come there for the lush carpet of vegetation, for calving in the summer, and this, along with lemmings and other small mammals, attracts wolves and grizzlies and eagles and wolverines. The low-growing greenery also feeds muskoxen and moose, and the wetlands breed billions of insects, which feed birds of many kinds.

Being 200 miles above the Arctic Circle means that for two months of the summer, the sun is running circles around the sky, getting higher over the mountains in the south and lower over the sea in the north, but never setting.

All this makes for a spectacular place to be set down by helicopter to collect vegetation data. The crew of botanists was put out in teams of two people each, to stay in each location for a week at a time. Our gear for the week consisted of nylon North Face tents, down sleeping bags, Therma-rest pads, rubber boots, rain gear, winter parkas, freeze-dried food, a Coleman camp stove, a filter to take the glacial silt and parasites out of the river water, or a 5-gallon collapsible water jug if we weren't camping by a stream, a minimal camping cook kit, our personal clothing, and our botany data collecting gear. Oh, and also a shotgun and slugs in case we were visited a little too close for comfort by a grizzly.

After our days of doing field work, we were free to roam the tundra in the golden slanting light of the Arctic night, or in the frequent fog. Our study sites were usually 10-40 miles from the nearest human habitation, which was the little native village on the coast.

I remember sitting one evening with my co-worker, on a rise above a river, looking over the rolling plain, listening to the buzz of mosquitoes, and steeped in the immense feeling of the life force that has the temerity to burst forth in the brief two months of summer with such intensity that the ground is covered in a lush greenery and flowers and the insects appear in swarms and the birds come in droves from the opposite end of the earth to eat them. We looked at each other silently, both feeling that the other could feel it too; the palpable deep and vast humming OM of the earth and her life force, which normally is drowned out by the distractions of our human environment.

It was a discovery on a different evening walk, though, that this post is about.

Along the glacial rivers are wide flat flood-plain gravel bars with patches of chest high willows and a carpet of lichens and flowers. I was wandering along one of these gravel bars when I was stunned to see an oblong ring of stones.

These stones were placed close together in an oval about 10 feet long and 5 feet wide. They had clearly been put there by people, and by people who were not brought there by helicopter, because they had been there for a very long time. Vegetation grows slowly in the arctic, and these six-inch stones were covered halfway up by the layer of soil and lichens that had formed over the gravel, and the part of the stones that were above the ground level were covered themselves in lichens.

I stood there in wonderment, feeling a visceral recognition that there had, indeed, been humans living here long before white people showed up with their modern technology.

I felt myself drawn into the circle, and with a slightly trepidatious feeling of invading a sacred space, I stepped inside the ring of stones and sat down at the eastern end facing west.

As soon as I sat down, I had a subtle but distinct opening of awareness, as though some internal portal opened in my body. I was transported, like a time traveller, into what it felt like to be a human actually living here year-round, with this place as my home, and no access to materials or food other than what was provided by the plants and animals and stones that I was surrounded by.

I felt how being entirely dependent on this place, and these neighbors of plants and animals, for every single one of my needs, was like being suspended in, and supported by, a net made of living cords of gratitude, connected to all the animals and plants and stones which made my life possible.

My civilized brain was telling me that living in this extreme environment must have been harsh and difficult and fraught with scarcity and fear. But my body told an entirely different story of beautiful connections, and trust, and gratitude, and of a joyful vitality that I had never actually experienced in my own life up to that point.

I suddenly realized just how disconnected I was from this amazing place, in spite of my awe and appreciation for its beauty. My nylon tent, my freeze-dried food, my rubber boots... I didn't actually know where any of it came from, not to mention I had flown here in a helicopter and would leave again in a few weeks...

I was overcome with a great sense of sadness for what was missing from my own life, and of envy for the people who had made this stone ring. I felt like I was living a life of numb disconnection from what was really keeping me alive. I was suddenly aware of a deep but forgotten possibility, and wanted to live with this same aliveness and connection to all the beings that I depended on for my life...

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This experience was another seed that got planted deep in my body, (like my childhood glimpse of being Love,) that got covered over but not entirely forgotten, as I went about my civilized life. I realize now that it would subconsciously be a big part of why I decided to give up trying to save the world with science, and buy land so that I could try to live a life with the sort of visceral cords of gratitude and connection to my place on this earth, that I had sensed sitting in that ring of stones.

As I've learned more about indigenous lifeways and worldviews, and read some direct accounts of life as an indigenous person, and also had some direct experience of feeling the connections of gratitude and aliveness with the trees and other beings I live with and depend on for my life here, my memory of that encounter with another way of being, that came through the portal of the ring of stones, has expanded and become more than a memory of that particular event.

It feels like that glimpse is actually a time-travel portal that connects me to my own ancestral past, that opens my internal senses to feel an ancient birthright of vitality and connection that I carry inside me, that can continue growing and expanding as I pay attention to the way my body can feel the direct interweaving of my essence and the essence of the beings who give their vitality and beauty to me.

And as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that, in fact, time does not feel linear at all... it feels like a fluid substance that permeates my experience and allows for transfer of energies and information back and forth from different places that I've been. THAT is not something I expected to emerge from the writing of this story!