During these hot, windless days, the bugs chase the caribou to the coast, where cool breezes and fog blow in from the Arctic Ocean's pack ice. Post-calving groups of up to 10,000 individuals line up like wind vanes. The smell of caribou perfumes and thickens the air. Cream-colored hairs tinged with chocolate, remnants of their winter coats, carpet the tundra. Sounds of coughing, wheezing and baying blow on the wind.
Open water separates the coastal tundra from barrier islands holding back the ice.
Dinosaur-looking footprints of tundra swans track the mud. Handsome old-squaw ducks in their summer plumage and long quill tails careen over the lagoons in tight flocks of 50 or more. In the center of the low barrier islands, among the bleached whale ribs and gravel, unmoving female king eider ducks sit in their deep, downy nests. Four-inch waves lap at the ocean beach below cruising glaucous gulls, painted snow white. Offshore, bearded seals and bowhead whales nudge through open leads.