Of course I’ve seen the inferential evidence—the photographs and movies, the broad tracks in the sand, the deep claw marks on a spruce tree higher than I could reach, the fresh bear shit steaming like hot caviar on the trail. And I’ve heard and read the testimony of many others. What does it come to? Inference. If p then q. It could all be a practical joke, a hoax, even a conspiracy. Which is more likely? asked Mark Twain (I paraphrase): that the unicorn exists or that men tell lies?

The grizzly bear is a myth.

The high peaks of the Brooks Range stand behind us, to the south, barren of trees, dappled with snowfields and a few small glaciers. To the east is Canada, the border perhaps another fifty miles away. The nearest city in that direction would be Murmansk. Murmansk, Russia. The nearest city to the west is also Murmansk. The nearest city in any direction is Fairbanks, almost 400 miles to the southwest. (If you are willing to allow Fairbanks a place in the category “city.” And why not? We are a generous people.) The nearest permanently inhabited or reinhabited town, after Kaktovik up there in the Beaufort Sea, is an Athapaskan Indian settlement called Arctic Village a couple of hundred miles away on the other side, the southern wetter side, of the Brooks Range. White folks, I am told, are not welcome in Arctic Village, especially after sundown. And when the sun goes down in Arctic Village it stays down, in winter, for three months.

After the Australian outback, this is the most remote spot on which I’ve managed to install myself on this particular planet, so far. But it seems benign here, at the moment: especially the river flowing nearby, its water clean enough to drink, directly, without boiling or purifying. Imagine the rare, almost-forgotten pleasure of dipping a cup into a river—not a stream but a river—and drinking the water at once, without hesitation, without fear. There are no beaver in the Brooks, no domestic cattle, no permanent humans and extremely few transient humans, and therefore no conform bacteria. So far.

And the sun keeps shining, circling, shining, not so intensely as in the desert or at high elevations (we’re only twenty-five hundred feet above sea level here), but more persistently. With a doughty, dogged persistence: that midsummer sun never will go down.

The breeze continues to blow from downriver, a chill wind off the ice pack ninety miles north, but welcome to us here and now because it keeps the mosquitoes busy. They cling to the brush and weeds when the wind blows, come forth for blood transfusions only when it stops….

The wind stops. Instantly, like magic, the air becomes filthy with little black bodies, hypodermic beaks, the whine of a billion tiny flapping wings. Dana and I smear hands, necks, hair, faces with a repellent poison and set to work erecting the cook tent. The mosquitoes are annoying but tolerable; they’re here for better reasons than we are. And Dana for better reasons than I: he is a professional boatman, wilderness guide, mountaineering instructor, ice climber. He is paid to be here.