Force of nature

"In 1920, during his first fall studying the caribou, Murie ran behind the herd like a hungry wolf through the boreal forest," Waterman writes. Conditions were austere, to say the least. Olaus Murie would sleep between his sled "dogs to stay warm and to stop them from tearing each other apart with hunger." And once, he subsisted for a whole week on only a moose heart. In the process, he personally counted half a million caribous, and drew conclusions about their biology and behavior that still hold water today.

At that time, large predators were officially considered menaces that had to be eliminated so that they wouldn't threaten the game species that humans hunt, like elk, sheep and caribous. You can still hear echoes of this sentiment from some elk hunters in the lower 48 states who accuse the wolves reintroduced 10 years ago to Yellowstone of decimating local elk populations. But Olaus Murie discovered that predators such as wolves actually strengthened the caribou herd overall by culling the old and the sick and the weak.

What began as a mission to figure out how to best exploit a so-called natural resource ended up stopping government plans to domesticate the wild caribou herds. Olaus Murie "advocated that the herds be left alone with the wolves and bears, and that all species be given large and uninhabited tracts of habitat," Waterman writes. "Although these conclusions would become more widely accepted a half-century later, in 1926 Murie's science shocked and stunned government bureaucrats, who appreciated wildlife only for its potential economic value."

In the ensuing years, Murie and his wife, Mardy, became the biggest advocates for the protection of their beloved tundra. Olaus' experience in the backcountry gave him credentials enough to make the case to local Alaskans, and lent a scientific basis to his advocacy that even bureaucrats in Washington couldn't deny. Mardy's indefatigable letter writing, inspired by her trips to the Arctic with Olaus, including their honeymoon, helped to make the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a reality in 1960, just three years before Olaus' death. Margaret "Mardy" Murie would live on for more than 40 years; in that time she became a kind of conservationist hero and grandmother to the movement to preserve wilderness.

The University of Alaska's first female graduate in 1924, Mardy grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and lived to be 101. Until the end of her life in 2003, Mardy didn't use a computer, TV, dishwasher or answering machine. And forget cellphones -- her telephone was a rotary-dial model. Late in life, she was sanctified by many admirers, who would make pilgrimages to her mountain home in Grand Teton National Park to seek guidance from the matriarch. But Mardy refused to just hand out pearls of wisdom like some avuncular seer. One instructor at the Teton Science School came to her asking how he could be a better teacher. She asked him a few questions, including if he spelled the word "pine marten" correctly, and concluded: "I think that you're doing your fair share -- you're doing great."

At a memorial celebration for Mardy Murie, a high-ranking government official remarked in conversation: "They'll never drill the Arctic refuge. It just won't happen." And that's the last line of Waterman's book. Will that sentiment prove to be overly optimistic to those who dread the creation of another industrial perdition? That's beyond the scope of "Where Mountains Are Nameless." But with the future of the refuge now hanging in the balance, Mardy's acolytes may soon be thankful that she didn't live to see 2005.

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