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Early one morning comes a banging on the door of Dave Mech's shack behind the Eureka weather station on Ellesmere Island. "They're right out here. They're right out behind the building."

We scramble to dress and look outside. We spot three white wolves by the shore of Slidre Fiord. We mount our ATVs and putt-putt toward them.

"Look at the feet on that thing," Mech says. He's right; they're huge.

The wolves are scarcely afraid. We park the machines, and the largest circles us at a distance of a few metres.

"If it looks like it's going for my neck," Mech says as the wolf slinks behind him, "let me know."

During the morning, we follow the three on our ATVs, around the station and then up the nearby creek to a deep ravine, where they lie down to sleep. We do the same, casting an occasional glance toward the wolves.

As is so often true in the natural world, nothing seems to happen. As though the land is the face of a giant clock, the sun traverses the sky, the shadows pivot, the wolves shift position, a musk ox in the distance descends the hill, crosses the river and ascends the other side of the valley. And everything remains as it was hours ago. Or a thousand years ago.

Ellesmere, northernmost island in the Canadian Arctic, is generous of space, stingy of sustenance. Arctic willows, the only trees, grow centimetres long and hug the ground like grasping fingers. The tallest plants, bright yellow Arctic poppies, are 13 centimetres high.

We have flown into the weather station and small Canadian military base at Eureka, on the 80th parallel, less than 1,200 kilometres from the North Pole. It is June, and the sun, which has been shining continuously since April 14 and won't set until Aug. 28, circles us in 24-hour cycles, dipping in the north at midnight, and angling higher in the south at noon.

Boxed in by black hills to the east and west, Eureka is known as a thermal oasis. Don't put much stock in the term. The average high in July, the warmest month, is 6 Celsius. The record low in winter is -55. Precipitation averages 6.4 centimetres a year. This oasis is the coldest desert on Earth.

Other than polar bears, which don't stray far from the sea, only seven types of land mammals live on Ellesmere. They aren't much afraid of humans and have few places to hide. For those reasons, Ellesmere is a fascinating place to observe wildlife.

Since 1986, Mech, a senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Minnesota adjunct professor and one of the world's foremost wolf experts, has studied Arctic wolves. Sitting in plain view, Mech has recorded the interactions among the alpha pair and subordinate wolves. Following the pack on an ATV, he has watched wolves hunt and kill musk oxen. He has seen the pack evolve as wolves lived and died, as old gave way to young. He has learned things about wolves no scientist has ever seen.

"The kind of stuff I got here was not just the objective behavioural stuff, but the kind of thing you get from living with a pet of some sort," he tells me as we inspect an old den site on a rocky ridge. "You get an insight into the thing. You get to know the animal."

Life here runs in cycles and fluctuations -- boom and bust, plenitude and scarcity. Arctic hares dot the tundra like white flowers one year and vanish the next. Musk oxen die en masse. Wolves come and go. In 1998, Mech arrived to find only two adult wolves and no pups. That in itself was not unusual. Occasionally wolves produced no offspring. But he discovered something else as well: carcasses of musk oxen strewn across the plain.

"Something was really screwy here. Lots of dead musk oxen. No calves. And no young hares. I started thinking, 'What is something common to both hares and musk oxen?' "

He examined weather records and discovered that an extremely short summer preceded the die-off. Snow had begun to accumulate in August. The summer of 2000 was likewise short, and the following year he again found no young oxen or hares.

Without prey, wolves presumably dispersed or died. In 2001, Mech saw no wolves, only a single set of tracks that seemed to pass through his study area. In 2002, he saw no sign of wolves at all. Nonetheless, he decided to return each summer to monitor the recovery of oxen and hares and to wait for the wolves to reappear. Last year, he invited me to come along.

"Why?" I asked. "I'm no biologist."

"If I fall off my ATV and break a leg, I need someone to drag me back to camp."

It is nearly midnight, the sun is high, and we race along a prescribed route on ATVs, counting all the hares we see. The hares, as big as house cats, are snowy white. As they rear up to survey the countryside, we can spy them from several hundred metres away.

As we motor along, Mech points out each hare he sees. Cruising along behind, I follow his arm to the right, find the hare and scan intently to spot more -- so intently, I don't see as he points off to the left, until it is too late. I swerve and gun the ATV to put distance between me and a musk ox that has charged, snorting and prancing.

One night, Mech and I motor up Blacktop Creek. The shallow stream meanders and braids, spilling diamonds of light from the tawny hills. We scare up a lone male. With long hair flowing from its flanks and haunches, it runs like a bull in a hula skirt.

Soon we come upon a herd of 15 adults and three calves. They course up a hill. After a couple hundred yards, they stop and turn, ready to bunch into their defensive posture. Reassured we haven't followed, they turn and trot away.

As the stream peters out, we head over a saddle and into a verdant depression, where we scare up six adults and three calves. They gather into their semicircle, packed so tightly the calves disappear.

The abundance of calves is reassuring. We park the ATVs and climb a rocky slope. The view overlooking Blacktop Creek is as beautiful as anything I have seen in the Arctic -- a sweep of about 150 square kilometres taking in contoured hills, sharp gullies and gentle swales. Pestered by mosquitoes that emerge in the warm sunlight, we scan the distance with binoculars and spotting scope, counting black dots, trying to discern adults from calves, waiting for more dots to emerge from ravines, and counting again. Finally, we agree we have spotted 59 musk oxen, including at least seven calves. In years past from this perch, Mech has counted as many as 151.

Oxen, hares and wolves are not the only life to ebb and flow. Humans here have been subject to the same fluctuation, migration and displacement.

One evening, on a gravelly point along the fiord, Mech and I come upon a dozen tent rings. The site is littered with bones, mostly of musk oxen, many broken to expose the marrow.

Three cultures occupied sites near Eureka during two long periods -- from 2500 to 1000 BC and 700 to 700 AD. Most recent were the Thule, immediate predecessors of the historic Inuit. What brought them this far north? Why did they vanish? The onset and retreat of warmer weather, perhaps. Maybe also the appearance and disappearance of important marine mammals and familiar game. The sites contain bones of whale, harp seal, Ross's goose and brown lemming, animals now found only farther south. The reasons are difficult to know, but vanish these humans did. (Aside from the Inuit settlement of Grise Fiord in the south, the island is home to Alert and Eureka, military and weather-monitoring installations.)

The cycles of the Arctic are recapitulated in a life of a single man. Now 67, Dave Mech is ancient by the standards of active field biologists. He knows that every year the wolves go missing is one less chance to revisit one of the most exhilarating episodes in his long career. For that reason, he is especially glad to find wolves now -- to watch the cycle of death and life once again.

As we nap and wait by the ravine, the female wolf suddenly awakens and howls.

The big male responds.

All three wolves rise and begin to lope up the creek. We follow on our machines. Finally we reach the end of a sandy ridge. Unable to continue, we watch the snowy forms vanish up the coulee.

"That bodes well," Mech says. "That's just what we want, a mated pair in this territory." Excitement fills his voice. "It's so nice to be following those little white specks across the country."

Pack your bags

WHERE TO GO

Visitors can hike almost anywhere on Ellesmere. Most tourists explore Quttinirpaaq National Park at the northern tip. A long-term backpacking permit costs $100. Some also trek near the Eureka weather station (as we did) or the Inuit settlement of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere's southern coast.

GETTING THERE

Canadian North flies from Edmonton to Yellowknife, Cambridge Bay and Resolute Bay. Fly Kenn Borek Air (867-252-3845) from Resolute Bay to Ellesmere.

OUTFITTERS

Companies that offer trips to Ellesmere Island include:

Wilderness Adventure Company: Parry Sound, Ont.; phone: 1-888-849-7668; Web: http://www.wildernessadventure.com. Offers various guided hiking trips.

The Great Canadian Adventure Company: Edmonton; phone: 1-888-285-1676 or (780) 414-1676; Web: http://www.adventures.com. Offers kayaking trips.

Canada North Outfitting: Canastota, N.Y.; phone: (315) -697-3245; Web: www.canadanorthoutfitting.bigbluesky.ca.Offers trips to the world's most northernly park, Quttinirpaaq.

MORE INFORMATION

For a visitor's packet, contact Quttinirpaaq National Park in Iqaluit; phone: (867) 975-4643 Web: www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/nu/quttinirpaaq. Information about Ellesmere Island can also be found at http://canadianparks.com/nunavut/ellesnp/index.htm.