Disappointment River

by Brian Castner

  We fell into our camping routine, as we did each time we stopped. David would set up the tent, unroll our bags and pillows, and purify water, wearing the bladder of the gravity-fed filter from his forehead like a tumpline. “Camping is just a series of chores,” he said. “That’s why I like it.” Cooking was my job, and after a few days of struggles—marked by cold oatmeal and crunchy pasta—I figured out how to start and maintain a roaring fire in the finicky BioLite stove. Fortunately, the banks of the Mackenzie always had plenty of driftwood and dried grass, and I could cook our chili or beef stew right in the main kettle, no extra dishes required. I always served David his dinner first.

  The next day, Jeremy would fly in, and I’d drop David in Fort Simpson. I’ll really miss him, I thought. David’s a good traveling companion. He liked to talk, to fill in the quiet spaces, but I eventually grew to welcome the distraction. Always good company, not picky, did his share of the work without complaint.

  After our dinner, a boat pulled up to our campsite, a white family from Fort Simpson. After a week alone or in indigenous towns, it was jarring to see this polo-shirted group out on a jaunt, as if they were just taking a drive to get ice cream, as if this wilderness was not wilderness but tamed for precocious five-year-olds with flip-flops and toy fishing rods.

  It was clear that David and I were out of place, maybe even in the way, as though we had pitched a tent in a town park. So I asked, “Where do people usually camp along this stream?” and the father answered, “They don’t. You’re only twenty minutes from town.”

  Twenty minutes from his home, weeks away from mine.

  * * *

  ————

  For the first two hundred miles, from Great Slave Lake to Fort Simpson, the Mackenzie is green, and when the wind ripples the water, it looks like alligator skin.

  But then the Liard River comes in from the west, flush with silt from the melting glaciers of British Columbia, and where the two great rivers meet, Doug had warned us of an eddy line large enough to dump our canoe. I had no desire to tumble as I did at the Slave, as the consequences would be far worse.

  I took this seriously—checked that our gear was tied to the canoe’s thwarts and then checked again, squared our line through the eddy wall—but when David and I did cross to Fort Simpson, we saw no swirling boils or dangerous rip currents. Only a color change, from green to mud, chocolate smoothie in the blender. The meeting of the rivers was a bit of a disappointment, as had been Mills Lake before, though we counted ourselves fortunate to catch the Mackenzie on a tame day.

  At the public boat launch at Fort Simpson, the shore was flat and inviting, but when we ran aground, our canoe did not grind to a halt as it would on gravel or sand. It squished. I got out and my feet sank into the dark Jell-O, almost up to my knees. Fort Simpson sits on an island of silt ten thousand years old, the slough formed when the clear main channel meets the laden mountain river. Mound and scrape, mound and scrape, the Mackenzie and Liard work like a painter preparing drywall.

  David stayed with the canoe while I walked into town to look for coffee. Morning tea had so far kept away my caffeine-addict headaches, but so close to civilization my desire for black coffee went all the way to my groin. While searching for the convenience store, I was approached by a white guy with a long goatee. He said his name was Dean, and he offered to show me around town.

  “Welcome to the last stop of civilization,” he said as we drove in his big-wheeled pickup truck. Fort Simpson is no metropolis—a gas station, hotel, liquor store, tourism office, grocery store—but it is the final commercial stop on the highway. From here, the dirt road trickles only a little farther to Wrigley, which Dean said “doesn’t count,” because it’s so small. Otherwise, for the next seven hundred miles to the north, the tiny local communities are accessible only by boat, plane, and winter ice roads. Dean said he used to live in a village like that. Originally from Alberta, he had worked as an educator in the far north for decades. His last assignment was in Nunavut, and he took the Fort Simpson job “to move south.” He was wearing a purple T-shirt with a spell-casting wizard on it because he was on his way to work; he was using medieval-themed board games to teach adults to read, making the shirt a sort of uniform.

  “You have Dene in America, you know,” he continued. “You just call them Navajo. That Windtalkers movie, it’s all Slavey words.”

  This is true. The Dene tell a story of wandering, that thousands of years ago there was a cataclysm in the north—the geologic record confirms a volcano eruption in the right place and time—and the whole of their people fled south, along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Some kept walking, and settled in the desert, and now call themselves the Navajo. But some turned around and returned to the north. Both groups, though, the Dene and the Navajo, remember that story and can each understand large portions of the other’s language.

  At a gas station, Dean and I picked up coffee, so hot I couldn’t drink it, and delivered it to David, who was struggling to move the canoe in the suctioning silt. “We call this our beach!” Dean said, and then, “It’s almost lunchtime, we should go to Pandaville.”

  “We’ve been told we have to go,” I said, but then I explained our experience in Fort Providence and how we were reluctant to leave the canoe unattended. Dean was sympathetic.

  “We have problems with alcohol and poverty up here,” he said. “But our drunks don’t come out until after three. And just because you had your stuff stolen in Fort Prov doesn’t mean it will happen here.”

  Dean helped us drag the gear and canoe into the bushes, camouflaged in the willows and invisible from the road, and then we returned to town.

  Pandaville was furnished with folding chairs and stainless steel food warmers and served a “smorgasbord” for lunch: double-fried chicken wings, double-fried dumplings, rice, egg rolls, noodles, wonton soup out of a can. It was hot and salty and I ate four plates.

  Two men joined us during our meal. Sean, the former mayor, had a long gray beard and sunken cheeks that made him look like he had stepped out of Yukon gold-panning central casting, but his eyes were sharp and he asked smart questions about American politics. The other man was Reg, fat and happy and crude. “I’ve never paddled the river,” he said, “but I’ve paddled a couple young girls in my life.” He owned the Mackenzie Rest Inn, the best in town, where David would stay the night.

  After lunch, David and I quickly returned to our canoe and found everything intact. Jeremy was not scheduled to arrive until evening, so we took turns walking into town to stretch our legs. I stopped at the grocery-and-hardware chain known as the Northern store—founded in 1987 and named for the North West Company—and stocked up on oatmeal, trail mix, apples, and pears still covered in frost from shipment. Dean’s prediction proved true; after three o’clock the streets were packed with intoxicated panhandlers, the largest crowd loitering outside the liquor store. David wanted to check into the Mackenzie Rest Inn and take a shower and I didn’t blame him, so I killed time alone on the edge of town, guarding our belongings.

  I felt like a tramp, and looked like one too: unwashed, ripped shirt, soiled pants rolled up to mid-calf, all my possessions lashed to a boat. I matched the children’s book illustrations of Huck Finn. Not Tom Sawyer, mind you, but Huck. Tom was always welcome back in town after his short doses of romantic pirate life. Huck was the one actually stolen from. No one had run me out of town exactly, but I did feel confined to the outskirts, ducking in quick to grab some food before pushing off down the river.

  Jeremy’s plane landed in Fort Simpson on time, and then he hitched a ride from the airport to the boat launch. The van pulled up and I gave David a hug good-bye and then Jeremy got out. He was sparkling clean, with a long beard and bright white sandaled feet. His face looked nervous.

  Blue-black clouds were building quickly in the south. We had an hour to get out of town and find somewhere to camp.

  “Let’s go, man,” I said. “We’ve got a thunderstorm to outrun.”<
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  — 17 —

  INTO THE MOUNTAINS, JULY 1789

  The water held as “a fine Calm,” and Mackenzie found equal harmony in the geography and the land, as everything lay before him exactly as he expected.

  The day before—lost in the lake of the slapped beaver tail, their Red Knife guide as ignorant of the land as they—Mackenzie chose to follow the north shore. Soon it had grown shallow, though, and dangerously so. The lake bed rose ever so slowly, imperceptibly, until it became a bog; they were trapped on an inch of water in every direction. They pushed back, turned west, discovered deeper water along the southern rim. The sun was setting when they finally made camp on the marshy banks and ate a supper of days-old caribou, their hunters returning with meager fare despite the throngs of waterfowl breeding in the reeds.

  But in the morning, there was reason for optimism and expectation. The narrowing river pushed south and west, just as Mackenzie hoped. His latitude readings thus far put them in line with the large inlet discovered by Captain Cook. Pond’s map had proved correct to this point: the Slave River deposited them on the south shore of Slave Lake, they found the river to the west, and it was wide and strong. They launched the canoes at four o’clock, and soon the river bent, “our Courses S W b S 36 Miles.” Perfect, veering southwesterly, right on target for the inlets of Alaska. At this rate, they’d make the Pacific as planned, if Mackenzie could keep the flotilla on schedule.

  They had attained the edge of Peter Pond’s personal knowledge. “So far Pond,” the map had read. White men had never gone farther than this. Only two more landmarks remained before they reached “So far Cook.” The hobbled Rocky Mountains to the south, and then, soon after, the great waterfall, the largest ever seen.

  * * *

  ————

  There appeared before them the barest hint of elevation. “Upon the South side of the River is a Ridge of low Mountains running East & west by Compass.” It was a worn massif, indicative of an exhausted range that would succumb to the riverine thoroughfare he transited. A hopeful sign that Pond’s reports were accurate.

  To the north also lay a wide low plateau covered in thick forest. His Red Knife guide called it Horn Mountain, the land of the Beaver Indians. Those Indians traveled to Fort Chipewyan and the Old Establishment to trade, and while Mackenzie saw no sign of them on the shore, his hunters did find a white goose “which appeared to have been Shot with a Bow & Arrow & quite Fresh.”

  They paddled another fifteen miles, by Mackenzie’s reckoning, and then, in the early sultry evening, an “appearance of bad weather.” They made for shore but not in time. “Before we could pitch our Tents it came on a violent Tempest, of Thunder, Lightening, wind & Rain.” The voyageurs couldn’t even take shelter under the canoes before getting “a compleat soaking.” To Mackenzie’s surprise everyone was in high spirits, though, he later discovered, for a troubling reason. “The Men and Indians are not so much displeased with it being the Means of their camping a couple of Hours earlier than they would otherwise have done & the latter are very much fatigued having ran much after wild Fowl, which have cast their Feathers.” Mackenzie was setting a grueling pace, especially for the Chipewyan hunters, who were tracking game all day and then paddling hard to catch up after killing the party’s supper. Despite the early camp, they made fifty-five miles that day.

  They embarked a full ten hours later, their longest rest since sleeping and trading with the Red Knife Indians on Slave Lake. It was July 1, four solid weeks on the move. Soon the river tightened as it never had, down to only half a mile wide. The current increased still further, and the walls of the channel closed in, “the land high on both sides.” There was a great sense of expectation in the air. Perhaps the waterfall was coming.

  Mackenzie started taking more measurements, sounding the river depth in the heart of the current and then calling the readings to Steinbruck; the Scot spoke in English to a German writing in phonetic French, his spelling as consistent as Peter Pond’s. Nine fathoms in the narrowest stretch, twelve fathoms where a small river flowed in from the south. But then Mackenzie’s lead bob snagged and the line started to play out, the weight held “fast at the Bottom,” and Mackenzie ordered the canoe back. Barrieau called the reverse, and the milieux dug in but still they drifted on. “The Current is too strong to steer’d.” Normally, Steinbruck and Mackenzie did not paddle with the men; their gentlemanly class rarely allowed such an infraction. But now, against the heart of the current, everyone took up the labor, to work back upstream. Barrieau, Ducette, de Lorme, Landry, their two wives, the two gentlemen. They failed. “With 8 paddles, as a Man, could not break it,” Mackenzie said. The lead weight still tangled at the bottom of the river, eventually Mackenzie was forced to snap the plumb line, and they floated on at the mercy of the current.

  * * *

  ————

  That afternoon the storms came again. “Thunder, Lightening, Wind, and Rain, which ceased in about ½ an Hour and left us wet to the Skin as we did not land.” The heat of the day was forming fast-moving thunderheads, and yet in these far northern latitudes the detritus of winter followed them. “Great Quantities of Ice along the Banks of the River,” Mackenzie wrote, as they wound among islands of tall mud banks topped with hedgehogs of spruce. They landed on one and found the wooden poles for four lodges, much broken and rotted, “which we concluded to have been Crees, upon their War Excursions.” Judging by their condition, Mackenzie thought the camps six or seven years old.

  A little farther on, they stuck to the northern shore, seeing the land on the other bank rise to a rocky cap and then yawn open, where “the River of the mountain falls in.” The water was still moving at great speed, but now it was swollen with the flow of two rivers. They covered the next thirty miles in only a few hours, and then a daunting view. “The Mountains of the Southerd in sight.” A blue ridge of far-off peaks, stretching across the horizon.

  The current was still roaring, the great waterfall surely just ahead, and Mackenzie began to imagine portaging his cargo through and over such an expanse. “As our Canoe is very deep laden and that we are in daily Expectations of coming to the Rapids, which we have been made to dread, we hid 2 Bags of pemmican in the opposite Island.”

  It was a considered, though risky, plan. It would reduce their weight in heavy swells, and lessen their burden for the long journey ahead. If they lost boats, rifles, provisions in the upcoming rapids, at least there would be a backup stockpile of food available. And on a return journey, back to Fort Chipewyan, they’d be glad for the stores, if hunting proved elusive. “I expect [the stock] may be of service in time to come,” Mackenzie wrote.

  Awgeenah and the hunters felt otherwise; get too hungry too far down the river, and they’d starve before they could make it back. “Our Indians are of a difft. Opinion, they having no Expectations of coming back here this Season, [in which case] of course it will be lost.” When the Chipewyan traveled such long distances, they followed the herds; when Awgeenah and Matonabbee took Hearne to the Far Off Metal River, their journey lasted many seasons, and they did not return the way they had come.

  On this, Mackenzie kept his own counsel, and the party landed on an island, to cache the pemmican and set up their tents for the night. They found two encampments that appeared fresh, maybe only a year old. The lodges looked familiar, like many other Indian settlements Mackenzie had seen, except for one key detail.

  “By their way of Cutting the Wood they must have had no Iron Works,” Mackenzie wrote. He had reached a place where not even the tools of white men had yet penetrated.

  * * *

  ————

  Early morning sun warmed the mountain air rolling over river chill; they awoke to fog. They launched the canoes anyway, and when the fog cleared several hours later, they discovered the water was no longer pale green. It was muddy and rich, the silt of mountain runoff, and Mackenzie thought he knew the source: “the Fog prevented our seeing” more streams joining this grand river, tum
bling down from “very high Mountains ahead.”

  They were the largest mountains any of them had ever seen. Taller than the cliffs around Lake Superior, taller than anything in Awgeenah’s Barren Lands or along the Coppermine. “The Tops of them hid in the Clouds, ran as far as our view could carry,” Mackenzie wrote. They were a horrid barrier to his progress, “Barren and Rocky,” inhospitable to life and monstrous in their impenetrability. Nothing grew on their slopes except at the base—a green forested wedge, flat and tilting into the river—and then to the north, even more knobby mountains, great irregular lumpy crests.

  At noon another storm hit, more rain and lightning, and when it passed, Mackenzie saw the mountains glow. “There appears a No. of White Stones upon them which glistens when the Rays of the sun shines upon them. The Indians say they are Maneloe Aseniah, or spirit stones.”

  Cliff edges, canyons, summits in the clouds. The whole party was set on edge; how big was this waterfall, to be formed by such peaks? “We went on very cautiously here expecting every moment that we would come to some great Rapid or Fall. We were so full of this that every person in his turn thought he heard a Noise & the falling of water, which only subsided in our Imaginations.” The river turned—Mackenzie noted the change as west by north to north by west, for twenty-one miles—before heat and exhaustion forced them to camp on the rocky ramp along the river’s edge. The Chipewyan hunters returned late, worn out, carrying only a beaver and a swan. Mackenzie dismissed their weariness. “The Indians complain much of our hard marching, that they are not accustomed to such hard fatigue.”

  The morning rain hung heavy on them. They were among the mountains, rising on either side, and trapped in a funnel of wind that blew hard in their faces. They paddled for only three hours before Mackenzie called a halt to wait out the rain. He had Steinbruck add up the mileage from the logbook: 217 miles west, 44 miles north, since Mackenzie’s last celestial observation on Slave Lake five days before. While stranded on that lake’s south shore, waiting for the ice to clear, Mackenzie had calibrated his compass, by using his quadrant to determine when it was noon, precisely. That is, to measure when the sun reached its peak, relative to the horizon. At that moment, the sun aligned with true north, and by comparing that reading with the direction in which his compass pointed, he could determine its declension, how far it skewed. At the time, at Slave Lake, he figured the magnetic gauge pulled 20 degrees east of true north. But now, in the mountains, storms blocked the sun at noon, and he could not use his quadrant. His measurements were disrupted; he could only make estimates. But still, they seemed on track.