Researchers tended to look on the parks as their private laboratories and the Park Service as an annoying necessity at best and interfering ignoramuses at worst. A professional hazard of research was the tendency to narrow-mindedness. Often researchers lived for the one thing they studied. Anything that did not serve that study was viewed with scorn. The wolf/moose study on Isle Royale had decades of homesteading by researchers, most of whom came back year after year, six weeks in winter, six months in summer.

“Word came down from Washington. Terrorists.” Robin snorted, and Anna was surprised such a delicate sculpted nose could produce such an excellent snort. “If they’re from the Middle East, creeping across the Canadian border in the dead of winter to paddle to the island, they’re going to freeze their little terrorist butts off.”

Word had come down from Washington.

After 9/11, Homeland Security dumped money on the NPS. Everybody loved it. It was like Christmas, till they noticed the money was earmarked for law enforcement. Like Popeye’s arms, the LE divisions were puffed up in classic steroidal fashion, the interpretive programs relegated to the leavings.

Now D.C. sent down the “Interpretive Theme” for the year, and campfire programs – from the Everglades to Death Valley to the Kenai Peninsula – had to focus on pollution or endangered species or bioterrorism – whatever the folk in Washington thought was important at the moment. Never mind that the public wasn’t interested, or that the theme didn’t suit the park.

Free money was never free.

“ Lake ’s wide open,” the pilot said.

Anna looked at what she’d thought was the gleam of ice on the approaching shore of Lake Superior. Open water. In a colder winter, a pair of wolves had crossed an ice bridge from Canada and set up housekeeping on the island. The lake freezing solid from Isle Royale to the Canadian shore was rare; it hadn’t happened in over thirty years. She watched as water replaced land beneath the wings and Isle Royale began to take shape on the horizon. In the joy of seeing the island from the air, she forgot about Paul, the cold and the antagonisms of mere mortals.