The Cabin

Don’t let the boogies get into your head, Adah.

I repeated the words over and over like a mantra.

Stay calm, Adah. Breathe.

Something outside the cabin was moving. I grabbed my aapa’s old rusted knife, left behind from an earlier trip. It wobbled, heavier than my own knife, as I tried to find a good grip. After my small dinner of caribou meat and melted snow, I’d packed my own knife and cooking pot in my backpack and stowed the pack in the sled outside to make my predawn departure smoother. I had more wolverine traps to set on the way home and wanted to have everything ready to go.

How could I have known that some . . . thing would come in the middle of the night?

Crunch. Crunch.

The slow crushing of iced-over snow echoed loudly in the still air, even muffled as it was by the wooden walls of the cabin. I could tell by the rhythm of the footsteps that the thing walked on two legs. I scanned the dark space, searching for anything else I could wield as a weapon, but . . . nothing.

Crunch. Crunch.

It couldn’t be a person. During deep winter in the vast Arctic wild, people didn’t walk around in the middle of the night. People didn’t travel at night at all, unless it was an emergency. No other hunters were down here, and I was the only one with a trapping line this far south, 40 miles from the nearest human being.

My body shook with the combination of restrained breathing and adrenaline. Whatever was out there was making its way to the back side of the cabin. There was a single small window there, the size of a laptop screen.

I lifted Aapa’s knife, readying myself. I gritted my teeth and flexed my fingers, chiding myself for leaving my rifle outside. But it was well below zero, and since there was no fear of bears this late in the season, I’d left the rifle outside to prevent water from condensing on its surface. Such condensation required significant time to dry or you risked a misfire.

Crunch. Crunch.

More sounds—waxed paper crinkling, then a bundle being picked up and set back down. The creature rejected my stash of leftover caribou meat. No Arctic predator would pass up the chance for free food. Even if it was full from an earlier meal, it would take the frozen meat and bury it for later. If it was an herbivore, it would not be examining anything that smelled of humans and blood, and it would be part of a herd or group and not alone.

What was this thing?

Come on, I thought. Pass by the window.

More crunching, and this time I heard the metallic scrapes and clangs of one of my traps being moved. The creature was strong, then—my shoulders still ached from carrying and setting the traps all day. The trap banged again, sparking a memory from yesterday, something I’d dismissed as insignificant.

Yesterday afternoon, I’d set up three bucket traps. After placing the second one, I’d taken a bit longer to disguise the trap after setting it. Wolverines, in addition to being fierce and violent, are very smart. If they sense a trap, they can snag the bait—smears of rancid bear fat—without getting caught, so disguise is crucial.

As I brushed the snow smooth around the trap site, arranging loose sticks to point the animal in the direction I wanted, I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I turned to see a short dark figure dart behind a tree about a hundred yards away. As I pulled my rifle from my snow machine and raised it, I whistled loudly, like my aapa had taught me; an animal would poke its head out to investigate the odd noise. When nothing moved, I yelled a quick “Hey!”

Still nothing.

Strapping the rifle across my chest, I hopped on my snow machine. The sound should have made any animal run from the tree, but nothing emerged. I drove off to the side, hoping to get a better view of whatever it was and at the same time putting a little bit more distance between us.

To my surprise, the space behind the tree was empty.

Thoroughly creeped out, I set off down the frozen river toward the cabin, throwing uneasy glances behind me. But as soon as I was settled inside, I dismissed the sighting as I’d been taught to do. If you run into anything odd in the Arctic wilderness, the Elders said, leave it alone.

The trap outside banged again. Was it the same creature I’d glimpsed yesterday? Had it followed me here? Was it watching me?

Was it . . . hunting me?

My pulse surged, my heartbeat drumming in my ears. Could it be looking for a way in?

I shook my head, remembering the advice of the Elders: Ignore it.

No matter what you see or what you hear, ignore it. Whistling? Ignore it. Distant chatter that drifts in and out of hearing? Ignore it. Footprints that are moose-like but definitely not moose? Ignore them. Weird glowing lights humming along the mountain ridge? Definitely ignore that.

Arctic winters are mostly filled with darkness, and we all grew up hearing stories of the scary things that go bump in the almost-24-hour-long night—boogies, as my aapa called them: the little people with 10 times the strength of humans that still hated the Inupiaq tribe from a war lost hundreds of years ago. The willow people that stole items or family members from you as you passed through dense brush. Spirits that came down from the sky that looked like northern lights and removed your head for foot games.

Sometimes hunters would come back with tales of incredible encounters with beings they’d barely evaded, and sometimes hunters just disappeared, never to be heard from again.

These stories were told half for fun and half as a warning, but the warning wasn’t really about supernatural beings. The moral of every story was that you should never panic, because panicking could expose you to real dangers, like extreme cold, falling into water, or becoming vulnerable to known predators. Most of the battle of thriving in the Arctic was fighting the thoughts and fears in your head.

So, yeah. I’d heard the stories. But I never thought they might actually be true.

I relaxed my grip on Aapa’s knife. Maybe the thing prowling around outside was just an especially fat weasel. Or a wolf pup that walked funny and wasn’t hungry.

Right. Except weasels aren’t that heavy and they love caribou meat, and it wasn’t wolf pup season.

I glanced at the PLB—the personal locator beacon—sitting on the table. The bright-green plastic glowed. My iPhone didn’t get service this far out, but I could set off the PLB, alerting search-and-rescue people that I needed help.

But as far out as I was, it would take a few hours for anyone to arrive, and by then, whatever it was could be long gone and I would have to explain to a group of tired and angry volunteers why I called for help in the middle of the night. No. Not the PLB. Not yet anyway. This was only the second time my aapa had let me travel by myself, and I couldn’t disappoint him.

Not many women trapped fur-bearing animals in the Arctic, and an even smaller number of teenage girls trapped, maybe one or two across the whole region every other generation. My male cousins had complained about a girl taking over this part of my aapa’s trapline, though they clearly thought that it would be a temporary phase, like that year I had bright-blue hair. But I loved trapping, and I loved a challenge, and I knew I had what it took to be a trapper full-time.

Ever since I was 5 years old and my aapa taught me to snare ptarmigans by predicting how they behaved, I was hooked. I’d spent the past 12 years learning the languages of trapping and animal behavior, and I never shied away from all the backbreaking labor trapping entailed.

Aapa had been happy to teach me. Inseparable since I was born, we were so alike, even down to the way we stood with one hip cocked and our arms crossed. When I got old enough, I asked for camping gear and vehicles instead of Barbies and dresses.

I could almost hear my aapa now: Don’t let the boogies get into your head, Adah. He always said the words in a quiet, measured tone, the one he used when I needed to take what he was teaching seriously.

His warning in my head, I gripped his too-big knife tightly in my right hand and made my way to the back of the cabin. If I knew what this thing was, it would no longer be a nameless boogie. I could predict what it would do and make a plan.

I grabbed the flashlight off the table and crouched in front of the back window. The footsteps started again, shuffling around the northwest corner. Any second the thing would be in view from the window. As soon as the snow crunched beneath the glass, I flicked on the flashlight and held it to the window.

I blinked.

There was nothing there. No creature. No tracks. Nothing but clean, undisturbed snow.

Before I could process what that meant, shuffling sounds came from the opposite side of the cabin, near the front door. How had it moved so quickly—and without leaving tracks? Everything leaves tracks. Everything.

Quietly, I crept to the front door, which was secured only with the rope loop. The bear latch, a long piece of thick wood that slid into blocks on either side of the door, was propped against the wall. With one swift movement, I lowered the latch into place, wood scraping against wood. No sooner had I secured the latch than the door jerked inward with a thud.

The thing was trying to get in.

Could the creature see the rifle leaning against the wall outside? Did it know what it was?

With stiff, cold hands, I checked the bear latch to make sure it was secure, then backed away from the door, panic making me stumble.

The door rattled again.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and started recording a video. The groaning of the door stopped.

I crept forward, the whispers of my thick wool socks against the plywood floor sounding impossibly loud and heavy. I pressed my ear against the cabin door, and almost as if the creature knew what I was doing, it began moving away, crunching the snow as it retreated into the distance.

The silence stretched on.

If I was going to retrieve the rifle, it was now or never. I propped the phone near the door, still recording, lifted the latch, and pushed the door open just enough to slip through. The cold clawed at my bare fingers, but I forced them around the rifle’s foam cover. As soon as the weapon was inside, I slammed the door shut and shoved the latch back into place.

The noise triggered another sound—footsteps running back to the door. It rattled again, harder this time.

Ignoring the stiffness in my hand, I unzipped the rifle cover and loaded a round, the freezing metal burning my frigid fingers. The white of frozen skin cells peppered the rifle’s surface. In one smooth motion, I knelt and lifted it against my shoulder, training it on the door.

After what felt like forever, the footsteps moved away.

I waited a breath longer, then lowered the rifle. My phone was still recording. I pressed the stop button. It was 5:26 a.m.—only an hour left before I needed to leave.

I fed the stove a few logs, adjusting the damper and vent for a slow burn. I grabbed my rifle and flicked on the safety, then wrapped my sweater around it carefully, hoping the fabric would absorb the beading moisture, and set it aside within arm’s reach.

Aapa’s knife I kept on my other side, along with the flashlight. I wrapped the sleeping bag around myself, wincing as the cold, silky lining brushed my frostbitten skin.

A shiver snaked through me, and suddenly I wanted to get home immediately, maybe even leave my emergency winter gear behind to lighten my load and shorten the trip. It would be risky riding the snow machine in my exhausted state, unable to see the intricate details of the terrain in the total dark, but fear clawed at my mind.

Then Aapa’s voice found me again: Don’t let the boogies get into your head, Adah.

In the cabin, I was safe, warm, and secure, and I needed the dim half-daylight to see my way home. The smartest move was to stay here a little longer.

I shoved all the boogies, all the fear and what-ifs, from my mind, closed my eyes, and, in spite of myself, fell asleep.

An hour later, I opened the door to find the world dim with a barely visible winter sun hovering behind the mountains. I hadn’t heard any noises in a while. Whatever the thing was, I was confident that it had moved on.

Emerging in the chilly predawn air, I circled the cabin. Footprints should have shown easily, but there were only my own. Not even a depression or disturbed snow pile. Everything was clean.

My unease returned, and I packed my gear quickly. I scarfed down a protein bar and drank cold coffee from my thermos, threw on my heavy parka and winter gear, and hopped on my snow machine.

The three-hour ride home was uneventful and quiet—too quiet, without the usual movements of clumsy ptarmigans or winter-hungry rabbits.

It wasn’t until I rounded the end of the frozen river and glimpsed my village that the tension finally left my body.

With only a hundred houses or so nestled in the bottom of a wide valley surrounded by huge, ancient mountains, Anaktuvuk Pass barely qualified as a village.

But it was my home, and I’d never been so happy to see it.

Aapa stood waiting outside our house, his tall, wide form like a mountain. He was dressed in his lightweight winter gear, a shovel in his gloved hands.

His dark-skinned face broke into a wide smile as I pulled up, but then worry lines bloomed.

I rolled myself off the snow machine and involuntarily squeaked as he lifted me off the ground in a big hug.

“Adah! Panik, you’re early!”

I extracted myself from his arms and removed my goggles and face mask.

“Aapa, something happened this morning,” I said. “I think I ran into a boogie.”

Walking into the house, I was greeted with the warm scents of cooking yeast and sweet dough. The short round figure of my aaka stood at the stove with her favorite spatula in hand. Sourdough pancakes bubbled pleasantly on the hot pan.

Aaka ran over to me, her hug enveloping me in a cloud of oil and hotcake batter.

“Paniga! So early,” she said. “Just in time for sourdough, though. Hot from the pan.”

Three maple-syrup-drenched pancakes later, I told them of the events of this morning. When I finished, I played the video.

Aapa leaned back in his chair and grunted. He didn’t doubt my ability to read snow tracks; he’d taught me himself. His dark-brown eyes looked over my face for a minute. The worry lines faded a little.

“You did good, Adah,” he said. “You didn’t panic. You did what you were supposed to do. You came
home safe.”

After all those stories, I finally understood what Aapa and the Elders had been talking about. I’d confronted a boogie, but that wasn’t the only kind of boogie there was.

Fear and panic, self-doubt and rash decisions . . . I’d known those were to be avoided, but after last night, it was suddenly clear: Those states of mind were just as much boogies as the creature kind.

Aapa’s expression turned serious. “Maybe you can take over my trapline to the west next year?”

I sat a bit taller in my chair and raised my eyebrows in a silent yes, a wide smile on my face. There would be boogies, sure. But fear wouldn’t be one of them.

_{Abridged from “The Cabin” from RURAL VOICES. Copyright ©2020 by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson. Reproduced by permission of the publisher Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.}

^{This story was originally published in the February 2022 issue.}