Grizzly Peak

by Jonathan London

  This is no dream! Not this time! But as in the dream I had of flying, the chill I feel verges on thrill. I poke my head out of the tent to see if what I hear is a grizzly.

  From our tent all I can see is a huge bulk of darkness. A living shadow. Nosing up to the bear locker, less than ten feet away.

  I think again of the Boy Scout who, according to Ranger Pam, “lost his life.” I’ve heard about grizzlies pulling people out of their tents and eating them.

  I’ve dreamt about it, too! Just moments ago!

  I pull my head back into my tent.

  But what good is a tent going to be against a grizzly?

  I poke my head back out at what I’m now positive is a grizzly bear. I swear I can see the hump on its back. I can smell it. Damp fur, rank breath.

  Death.

  Is it moving toward the tent now? In the darkness I can’t tell.

  The confining space of the tent tightens around me. I can’t breathe. Should I wake my dad?

  The grizzly snorts once, scrapes the ground with huge claws, and snorts again.

  It’s time to wake my dad!

  DAY FOUR

  A GRAVEYARD

  OF BOATS

  Dad! Dad! There’s a grizzly outside!”

  Immediately, Dad snaps to attention, sitting up like a jack-in-the-box. He pokes his head out of the tent for a second, then grabs a can beside his sleeping bag and starts shaking it—hard! It sounds like there are coins in the can. It’s like a metallic rattle.

  I start clapping my hands together and yelling, “Go away, Bear! There’s no food in here!”

  Unless, of course, it decides we’re food.

  The grizzly swings its massive head toward us, chuffs—steam blowing out of its huge nostrils—then swings away, slowly, and slowly sways off into the greater darkness of the forest.

  I stop yelling and clapping. And Dad stops shaking the can full of coins—which I hadn’t seen before.

  We look at each other.

  And breathe.

  Dad puts down the can. Then he puts a hand on my shoulder, and says, “Good job, Aaron. You kept your cool. I should’ve brought a whistle. Some people blow them to keep away bears. But they scare away all the other wildlife, too. But last night, I dropped some coins into this empty bean can before I went to sleep. Just in case.”

  Before I can say anything, he slides back down into his sleeping bag and says, “If you hear the bear again, shake the can. And wake me up.”

  I close the tent flap and try to sleep, but I’m too excited. Nothing like a grizzly to give you that jolt of caffeine!

  Wish I had my iPod. Music would help me calm down. I miss my music.

  I try to slow my breathing, and after awhile, for the first time, I hear the distant roar of the Chute. It’s been there all along, but I didn’t notice it above the sounds of the forest. A deep, rushing roar, muffled by trees. Like the wind through the forest. A dark wind.

  In the morning we inspect the grizzly’s tracks. They circle the bear locker, come near our tent, then lead back up toward the mountains.

  I’m glad I cached the food. I’m in no mood to go hungry for the rest of the trip. And I’m in no mood to be a meal for a grizzly, drawn to our tent because of the smell of food.

  I tell Dad about my dreams: the beast, the grizzly chasing me, and then the grizzly crashing into our tent. It seemed so real.

  “Some dreams become real,” he says. “They become who you are. They reflect your fears, your wishes.”

  While Dad starts a fire, I write the grizzly dreams in my journal. No way are they about my wishes, that’s for sure! Then I write about the real grizzly and the tracks it left behind.

  We eat breakfast and break camp, speaking only when necessary, the grizzly always in the back of my mind. Now we stow our gear in the cargo holds and get ready for the Chute. I tell Dad that I want to sit in the aft cockpit again, in back. I want to control the kayak through the rapids.

  “Not a good idea, Aaron. Your shoulder’s hurt and with the high, fast, snowmelt water this could be dangerous.”

  “My shoulder’s fine!” That’s a lie. It’s still crazy sore, but I’ve been banged up worse from spills at local skate parks.

  “We’ve got to be able to turn on a dime,” Dad says. “I really don’t think this is the right time for you.”

  “Survival, Dad. Self-confidence. Remember? That’s what you’ve been harping about. How am I supposed to build up my self-confidence if you never give me a chance? Last night you said, ‘Good job!’ Now we’re back to you always being boss. You just don’t trust me. I can do this!”

  “There’s too much at risk here, Aaron. If we wreck the kayak on the rocks. . . . We don’t know when the next boat’s coming along. And we could lose all our gear and food. I don’t know, Aaron. Maybe on the Cariboo River. That’s supposed to be a real challenge too, but maybe not quite as dangerous as this.”

  “I’m sitting in the back! If you don’t trust me with this you can hike around the Chute and meet me at the other end. I’ll run it myself!”

  Dad takes a deep breath, then is quiet for a moment. “Okay, okay,” he says after awhile. “You win! You did keep your cool last night. You didn’t panic. Now this is against my better judgment, but—”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad!” But I smile a bit when I say it, because he gave in, after all.

  We climb into the kayak—me in back—and push off. A family of harlequin ducks scatters among the reeds. The colorful papa duck makes a racket of quacks. I wonder if he’s squawking at his son.

  Now that we’re out on the water I can hear the roar of the rapids loud and clear. The Chute starts right at the exit of Lake Isaac. I’m totally psyched! Stoked!

  Normally the Chute’s not supposed to be all that hard to run, but the moment we eddy out to take a look, I can see we’re in for a wild ride. The volume from the spring snowmelt has pushed it up to the level of a real torrent, with treacherous obstacles still poking up above the water. Broken trees and huge boulders, like the slippery backs of hippos.

  Remember, we’re not in a river kayak, which you can turn on a dime. We’re in a big, heavy lake kayak. I pull up the rudder so at least I can steer with my paddle.

  Dad looks back at me, a most serious look on his face. Then he turns and faces forward.

  We pull out of the eddy and back-paddle at the top of the Chute for a moment to check it out one more time.

  Then I say, “Let’s roll!” and we take off like a rocket, plunging through the first hole, and burst through a tall standing wave.

  “Yee-haw!” I shout, like me and Cassidy did back in Desolation Canyon. “Bucking bronco!”

  The current grips our kayak and I think Dad’s yelling something at me, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the rapids. I open my mouth to yell back but my mouth fills with water.

  It’s freezing! We’re thrashing and bouncing down the rapids. Water explodes in our faces.

  I’ve learned enough from sea kayaking to keep the nose pointed into the waves. I dig in and swerve us around a boulder. In the boulder’s eddy on the down-river side, we see something that sends a chill through me deeper than any cold.

  Half of a canoe.

  It’s wedged into the river bottom, the stern sloping up and out of the river.

  I wonder where the other half is. And the people who were in it. I think about the Boy Scout who lost his life.

  And now I remember what Dad had called the Chute:

  A boat graveyard.

  Are we next?

  DAY FOUR

  ROLLER

  COASTER

  We swirl and weave down the Chute and enter a ninety-degree curve to the right that might be too tight for our long lake kayak. We get swept beneath some snags and sweepers—low overhanging tree branches—and when I dig in my paddle near the stern, so we can pivot to the right, the upper blade tangles in the branches.

  Our kayak stops but the water keeps pushing and suddenly t
he boat swings sideways to the current.

  We’re going over!

  At the last second I wrestle the paddle free from the overhanging branches and straighten the boat out. We duck beneath the limbs and break loose. The current takes us away.

  But the bank is rushing up fast. A back eddy tries to pull the nose of our kayak around but we battle our way through it.

  Now we see the bow of the busted canoe poking straight up between two boulders.

  We’re headed right for it.

  Water gushes over it and up the sides of the boulders. The bow of the canoe trembles in the turmoil, but it’s stuck there.

  And we could get stuck too.

  Twenty feet. Ten.

  It rushes up at us like an angry gravestone, but I dig my paddle in, hard, and at the last second we slide around it.

  Then we’re at the inside elbow of the bend—waves pounding our hull and forcing it down, under water. We almost stall.

  “Paddle, Dad!” I yell. “Paddle harder!”

  He does what I ask. Maybe I’m the captain now.

  And straining our arms, shoulders, backs, legs, we drive our blades through the churning waves . . .

  . . . then burst out and rocket down the other side of the Chute.

  A broken canoe paddle sticks out of a pile of rocks near the cut bank, like an amputated arm waving good-bye.

  And then as quickly as we entered the Chute, we’re all the way through it.

  We glide for a moment in easy water and I’m about to let out a shout of victory, when we’re snatched by the “Roller Coaster,” as Dad called it.

  I’d forgotten about the Roller Coaster!

  Once again, the current grabs us and sweeps us away.

  Immediately, I see how it got its name. It’s fast and furious, with barf-inducing drops.

  But also like a roller coaster, it’s fun!

  But we’re not on rails and once again our fate is in our own hands, not some machine’s.

  And I’m in the back, guiding the two of us.

  And we don’t want our kayak to end up like the broken-in-half canoe.

  The good news is that there are no more boulders and no more bends, just huge standing waves. So I drop the rudder in and we hold a straight course down the center of all the crazy turbulence . . .

  . . . until, at last, we glide out into smooth water at the far end.

  Can I breathe now?

  We drift.

  About a quarter mile later, Dad shouts and points. A warning sign.

  I slow down and then back-paddle, trying to keep our kayak in place as I read the sign aloud: “Stop! Pull out! Cascades! Unpassable. Portage here!”

  Cascades? Those are small waterfalls! Dad didn’t say anything about waterfalls.

  I can hear them, like a continuous boom of thunder, and see the mist rising above the first drop a few hundred yards down the Isaac River.

  Now my dad does the craziest thing ever. He turns his head and yells over his shoulder: “We’re NOT pulling out, Aaron! We’re gonna run it! We’re gonna challenge our fate! CHALLENGE THE RIVER GODS!”

  My heart drops, like it did plunging down the Roller Coaster. I can’t believe my ears! I’m excited and furious and scared, all at the same time.

  This is so unlike him! Cassidy might have wanted to shoot down cascades in a kayak—maybe even his dad, Wild Man Willie.

  But not Dad!

  “HERE WE GO, KIDDO!” he shouts. A grin spreads across my face.

  And he starts paddling toward certain doom.

  And I paddle with him.

  DAY FOUR

  DANGER!

  Then just as suddenly, he stops paddling, turns back toward me, and shouts, “JUST KIDDING!”

  Just kidding? Whaaat? Kidding? It’s not funny!

  Then again, maybe it is. . . .

  I even grin, maybe clamping my teeth a little too hard.

  Dad yells that we have to eddy out and portage around the cascades, and I’m not arguing. We find a large eddy and I angle our kayak into it and we slide into shore, a little disappointed. Just a little.

  It’s not until then that I look up and notice the scenery. The Cariboo Mountains are brilliant white, glittering in their veil of snow.

  Dad steps out and pulls the nose of the kayak up onto shore, then grabs my arm as I climb out. Once I’m on land, he grabs my other arm and doesn’t let go. His eyes sparkle as they stare into mine. “Gotcha, didn’t I?” he says, a huge smile on his face. It’s about as close to a hug as he’s given me in a long, long time.

  “Nah. I knew you were too chicken to run the cascades.”

  He laughs and I feel a rush of pride and almost hug him. But the kayak knocks against my knee and I break loose and scramble up the steep bank.

  We have a hard portage ahead.

  The shore is steep and muddy and the trail is by far the roughest portage we’ve taken yet. It’s narrow and pocked with holes and studded with large rocks. We rig up the portage cart and Dad handles the bow and I push at the stern.

  After awhile, we take a breather to look down at the thundering cascades below. I sit on a rock and fantasize about shooting it in a river kayak someday. I’d learn to roll it—something impossible to do in a fully-loaded, two-person lake kayak.

  “Let’s come back and run this in river kayaks someday. Okay, Dad?”

  “I’d love that, Aaron.” He gives me a lingering smile.

  But the moment is broken when we start back down the trail. I take the lead, and maybe I’m thinking about the next trip instead of the present, and I let the right wheel roll over a big round stone and the cart flips over . . . and starts sliding down toward the river!

  “NOOOO!” I shout as we sprint after it, slipping on our butts and sliding in the kayak’s wake. We bounce down over roots and rocks, and watch as the rig crashes down toward the boiling cauldron of the cascades below.

  Just when I think all is lost, the kayak snags on a gnarly root.

  We slide down to it. Now all we have to do is haul it back up.

  A half hour later, back up on the portage trail, everything’s pretty well secured when Dad breaks his silence and snaps, “Aaron! You weren’t paying attention! You’ve got to focus on what you’re doing! This whole trip could’ve been ruined by your negligence!”

  “Dad, it was an accident!”

  I’m burning up with . . . what? Hurt pride? Anger? But I hold my tongue because, well, what’s the use?

  Sometimes I think that life with Dad is like shooting rapids, where success may be one stroke away from disaster. There are slow and easy parts—but then you always hit the rapids again.

  After the portage we do another short paddle down Isaac River, and come to another big yellow sign:

  DANGER!

  Waterfall Ahead

  Pull out canoes here

  It’s decorated with a drawing of a smashed canoe.

  This portage starts out steep, but soon it’s beautiful and lined with moss, and I don’t have to worry about flipping the kayak and losing it again.

  We take a short side trip to see the Isaac River Falls. It’s small but still pretty awesome. A wall of white water crashes down thirty-six feet. We stand in the thundering mist for a bit, then get back to work.

  The portage ends with a steep descent to McLeary Lake. A small, shallow gem of a lake set in the necklace of mountains.

  “Why don’t we camp here?” I say, and this time Dad agrees. It’s been a short day, but a hard and hazardous one. And except for spilling the kayak, it’s been a good day.

  Dad even says, “Let’s celebrate with the rest of the marshmallows after dinner!” When I tell him that I already ate them all he scratches his whiskers and gives me one of his looks.

  Then he grins, and says, “I guess an extra ration of hot cocoa will have to do!”

  No canned beans for dinner tonight. Dad breaks out a jar of marinara sauce and a box of spaghetti. I’m so hungry I could eat the box.

  While t
he sauce simmers and we wait for the pasta water to boil, we sit on a log by the lake and watch a family of otters playing at the mouth of the river. They take turns slipping down a natural mud slide and—WHOOSH!—splashing into the water, rolling down the current, then clambering out and trotting back up the slope, for another slide down.

  As if inspired by the innocence of their game, Dad starts to talk about when he was a boy.

  “It’s funny, Aaron, but when I was your age, younger, I . . . well . . . I wanted to be a jazz musician. I wanted to go to New York City when I was old enough and play jazz piano in the clubs there. Can you believe that? New York City!” He shakes his head and stares down into his cup. The falls can still be heard in the distance. The breeze is scented with cedar and a hint of snow. I expect him to go on, but he stays silent.

  It’s almost dusk, the sunset clouds still like the afterglow of a forest fire on the peaks to the west. “The water’s boiling,” he says and gets up.

  After dinner, Dad stirs the dying fire. Then he sighs and says, “My dad, your grandfather, he ridiculed me whenever I played jazz on the piano. He said nobody could make it as a jazz musician, especially not a white boy like me, since jazz and blues were invented by African Americans.”

  He pauses a moment, listening to the distant roar of the falls, and for the first time I notice the moon. It’s over half full now, knocking a million stars clear out of the sky.

  I look down into my mug of cocoa. The moon floats in the darkness, like the light at the end of a tunnel.

  He sets his mug down on a rock and sticks a toothpick in his mouth. “I tried to tell him that the great jazz pianist Dave Brubeck was white. He was my hero. Him and Miles Davis, who was black. They were like two keys on a piano. One black, one white.”

  It’s weird. Dad wanting to be a jazz musician. Me wanting to write rap songs. How ironic! He’s always saying that hip-hop is black music, “urban” music, and that it’s not my culture. He says: Forget rap. Hit the books and learn a skill. One time I asked him, “What about Macklemore? And Eminem? They’re white.”