The freezing-cold glacial water moved beneath us. I watched the etchings of currents hinting at complexity beneath the otherwise smooth surface. It was secret water, shadow water, dream water. And it was wild water, birthed in the mountains, running to the sea. It lived. It breathed. “Live water heals memories,” says Annie Dillard. It seemed to me that this water threatened to open them back up.
“Sheep in the mountains,” Ned commented.
Far to the east, thirty or more Dall sheep drifted slowly across the mountainside. I smiled slightly, almost against my will. I craved beauty; I wasn’t ready for beauty. Were they the same flock Dad and Kathy had seen last year on arriving at Grasser’s?
The river flowed here between limestone mountains on both sides, austere rock with wide valleys and steep cuts. Utter wildness and immensity surrounded me. But a sticky web of determination, horror, fear, exhilaration, and desperation held me fast, even as the river ran freely. I considered that we safeguard our fears more closely than our joy. I came here city-soft, and flabby, in spirit and body.
The summer sun was unexpectedly warm, but the weather shifted fluidly. I wore an old dry suit on loan from Sally. It was made of a heavy nylon incapable of breathing and had thick rubber funnels at the neck and wrists to keep out icy water. I alternately sweated and froze.
The mountains soared on either side. The river was open here, though not deep. Each paddle stroke loosened my joints and my mind, and at some point I didn’t recognize, I felt the rhythm of my paddle and the rhythm of the land. Our journey moved forward as smoothly as the river’s surface, but we were an alien presence in this wild, open space burdened and freed by the emptiness that stretched and settled with threat and promise. Although I’d hoped that Dad and Kathy’s journal, their exploration, would guide me on this trip, hoped that if my body traversed similar paths, perhaps my spirit would find them still here somehow, so far it seemed I saw only shadow.
Sally started out as captain, sitting at the stern and steering. Ned and I sat on either side forward on the raft.
“So the captain gives the commands on the boat,” Ned explained. “And the people in front execute on those commands.”
“We can practice,” Sally said. “I’ll give the command ‘Paddle right!’ and the person on the right paddles forward. Or ‘Paddle right, back-paddle left!’ if we really need to make a hard turn.”
“What else do we need to know to read the river?” I asked. I knew some of what would follow from having taken kayaking courses in western North Carolina years earlier, but I was not too proud for a refresher from people proficient in the sport.
“The big thing to pay attention to is the difference between a hole and a rock,” Ned said. “Think of it like a smiley face or a frowny face. See how the water over there to the left pours over and it looks like a frown?”
“Sure,” I said.
“That’s a hole. If it’s big enough and you don’t take it correctly, it can push a boat to the bottom and hold you there.”
“Doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“I don’t think there’s anything on this river big enough to do that,” Ned said, “but it’s something to pay attention to.”
“Great. And what about the rocks?”
The banks moved behind us smoothly. Beyond us, the mountains seemed to recline, gentle and firm.
“Paddle both,” Sally said. Ned and I took several strokes, gaining speed in a shallow section. The rocks below scraped the bottom of the boat, but our momentum propelled us forward.
“See how the water moves around that rock about one o’clock?” Ned said.
“Yes.”
“You can see the rock protruding from the water, and the water is going around it, like a smiley face,” Ned said.
“So that’s good?”
“Well, you can see where it is. Really, by itself it isn’t a problem. If you hit it, you’ll bounce off of it. You just have to be careful if there are several of them, or if there’s a hole in front of it.”
“Paddle right, five strokes,” Sally said. I took five strong strokes and the raft moved left, skirting the rock Ned had pointed out.
“Anything else?”
“You need to be able to read where the current is and what it’s doing,” Ned said. “So look ahead. Can you tell where the water’s going?”
A strong current curved gently toward the right bank, and tiny ripples indicated a gravel bar on the left. “Toward the right.”
“Exactly,” Ned said. “We want to stay in the current as much as we can, but it will take us into the bank if it’s strong enough, so you have to start paddling away from the bank before you get all the way there to stay in the current.”
We scraped the rocky bottom several times, and the heavy raft proved unwieldy in the shallow water. But the river here was a single channel, and the path of the current was clear.
“Whoa, watch out!” Sally yelled.
I twisted around on my seat to see an Arctic tern streaking from the sky toward us, black-hooded head on a lean, white body with forked tail and tapered wings. It dove straight at the boat, its screech following its tail feathers as it pulled up and away just before impact.
“She must have a nest around here. Paddle forward!”
The tern swooped again, pulling up just inches from us.
“Keep paddling!” Strong paddle strokes forward, a third surgical swoop, and she arced gracefully away.
I took a deep breath. “That was a little unnerving.”
“No joke,” Sally said.
I glanced back nervously to be sure the tern wasn’t following us. Its screaming descents echoed inside of me like a warning, a prophecy I wasn’t equipped to understand. The sudden violence of its appearance sheared away any pretense of comfort. Then again, perhaps it was a blessing. Nowhere is it guaranteed that a blessing comes with comfort. I had quit my tent and come here for God; maybe I wasn’t prepared for what he would say or how he would say it. Maybe I wasn’t prepared for what he would not say.
Instead of fear, I should have found inspiration: the Arctic tern’s endurance and tenacity are legendary. Like most birds that come to the Arctic to nest and bear young, the Arctic tern chases the sun to the Antarctic every winter, making the global journey again the next summer. Perhaps in anticipation of life’s demands, chicks are born with eyes open and covered in protective down, able to move about, an adaptation classifying them as precocial and giving them a head start on survival. Tough and enduring. I didn’t feel tough. I would need to find a way to endure.
Save for the Arctic tern, the day was full of bouncy wave trains and “rock gardens,” mazes of exposed rocks in shallow sections of the river. I acknowledged my pleasure with reluctance, but I couldn’t help laughing at the bounce of the boat, smiling—even, for just a while, grinning.
Halfway through the day, after we pulled over for a quick snack, Sally said, “Why don’t you try the captain’s position?”
“Really?” I asked. “I haven’t done this river stuff as much as you guys.”
“You’ll do fine,” she said. “Don’t you think, Ned?”
“You’ll do fine. Try it and see if you like it,” he said.
I took the captain’s seat at the stern. Despite my inexperience, our new arrangement worked well, as Ned and Sally could anticipate the requirements of the river from the bow. I liked having the back of the raft to myself with space and time and quiet to think.
“How’s that look to the right for a campsite?” I asked, as evening approached with only the slightest dimming of daylight. I did a strong back-paddle on the right side. The raft swung toward the bank. I looked for the eddy, where the current curled back on itself after a small protrusion of land, resting on its journey. “Paddle forward!” Ned and Sally pulled with their paddles, and when the water was shallow enough, Sally jumped out and grabbed the rope to pull the raft onto the shore. The three of us hauled the raft well up and out of the water. It moved easily with the water
’s support.
On their first day on the river, Dad wrote in his journal that it had been windy and cold, and they’d had to go a long way to find their first campsite because of the aufeis. Still, in his entries, the excitement of the journey is palpable. I found myself reading and rereading his simple notes, just so I could look for a connection, so I could imagine their joy, so I could imagine them alive.
6/17/05 Wind continued all night & fog to the ground after 2:00 AM. By 7:30 it lifted and signs of blue sky but cold strong wind from the north…. It’s nice to be on the water—a pretty little river with a lot of bounce! Shallow and braided in many areas. We saw many sheep and groups of 35! Stopped at Potok…. The wind made going very slow & cold in the face. We camped at a bar at 4:00 and had a really nice dinner … to bed by 8:30. A really nice day for us both. Rich
Kathy spotted a pure white wolf—huge about 1/4 mile away running on the slope. He would lope, then stop and look at us—really something … Some rock faces started appearing and then the wind really came back in force. (I forgot to mention we got out earlier at East Potuk Creek—another landing area—pretty neat.) At Koloktuk Creek there was an extended rock garden. We both got high ended and Kathy couldn’t get off so I threw a rope and pulled her off. This led to a pretty neat rapids with a lot of rocks to dodge and then a right turn and a drop at the end. Kathy decided not to paddle so I paddled both boats. The boats with the load and the wind don’t maneuver so well. We began looking for camp spots and were immediately in aufeis on both sides and no campsites for a long way. The excitement of the day was a very big collapse of an ice shelf adjacent to me—it created a sudden large wave which flipped me over. Kind of fun but a big surprise. We always try to keep our distance but the wind was driving us into the ice much closer than normal—maybe 30’. Kathy saw it all … she said a 3’ wave. The rest of the day was tough. The clouds kept building, wind I would guess was 40 MPH in our face. Water kept whipping up all over us. It was tough to stay in any channel. We wound up lining boats a fair distance. Finally we found a sand bar that would work and we set up camp about 5:00. We think we may start leaving earlier to avoid the inevitable and unrelenting cold north wind that picks up later in the day … Rich.
I was glad we hadn’t faced similar winds or aufeis so far. It was hard thinking of Dad and Kathy out on this river, fighting the wind. It was harder thinking of them having been on the river, and then no longer being. This journal entry was Father’s Day, the day I had talked to them on the sat phone.
The three of us walked the tundra around our chosen campsite, looking for bear sign and for areas to set up the tents and the kitchen. I automatically recalled my military training, a posture of aggression and defense that felt both natural and unwelcome. I looked for clear fields of fire, lines of sight. Open tundra rolled away from our campsite for a mile or more before reaching the base of the mountains, and the low mosses, sedges, and lichens allowed visibility that satisfied both wilderness and military requirements.
We made our kitchen two hundred yards north of the boat and close to the river. The kitchen is where we would store the food and all the cooking and personal hygiene items. When camping in bear country, anything that has a fragrance must be stored well away from the tent, because it can attract bears. We knew that we had far more gear than we needed—several stoves, water filters, and tents, in case anything broke down, clogged, or tore. Fortunately, heavier loads are easier to manage in a raft than in a backpack. Sally brought a bivvy sack and a large mesh tent, anticipating the mosquitoes. Ned brought two smaller mountaineering tents. I brought a tarp. The redundancy, even if excessive, offered all of us a sense of security.
Of the many suggestions to mitigate risk that percolated among the guiding community after last year’s attack, one was that sleeping in a floorless tent might help afford visibility and preclude entanglement in the tent fabric. That’s why I’d brought a tarp; it would provide shelter, visibility, and, if needed, mobility. But as I attempted to set it up, the wind ripped the thin material out of my hands. Annoyed with myself, I borrowed one of the two tents Ned had brought with him.
We also set up a bear fence around our sleeping area, a set of thin electric wires on stakes and a small battery-powered energizer. Bear fences were first developed in New Zealand to control sheep. Some outdoors outfitters used them to protect food stashes or even bush planes. The fence was intended to shock and thus deter a curious animal. Dad and Kathy had traveled with a bear fence on the Canning River, but had not brought one with them on the Hulahula. I was far from convinced of its efficacy. Sally and I began to set up our camping gear. I pulled out the collapsible tent poles and assembled them before threading them through the sleeves of the tent.
“I’m sure people would think we’re overreacting, setting a bear watch, on top of having a bear fence, guns, and bear spray,” I said. I blew into the small valve of my sleeping pad to inflate it, soon feeling light-headed from the attempt.
“Well, the bear watch is fine with me,” Sally said.
“I doubt that anyone else does it or would even recommend it,” I said. “It just seems like a good idea, given everything. Our family back home will be more comfortable. Maybe it will even be nice, having a few quiet hours alone at night.”
Ned said nothing, finally clipping the last wire of the bear fence into place and connecting it to the ground and energizer. He pushed the power button, and the quiet but persistent high-pitched beeping, assuring the user of its operation, began.
“Works,” he said, his voice flat. Ned wasn’t engaging, at least on the surface. From experience, I knew this meant he was holding things in. It had been so long since I had seen him that I no longer knew how to expect his reticence to manifest. On a family trip in college once, he’d lunged at me from the guest bedroom he shared with Sam when I came in to get my roller bag; afterward Dad pinned him against the wall to make the point that he was not to physically threaten anyone in our family. Later, Dad was overcome by emotion. It was one of two times I’d seen him cry, the first when he and our mom had told us they were divorcing. “I shouldn’t have confronted him like that,” he said. “I shouldn’t have challenged his manhood.”
“Really, Dad? Instead, you’d just let him threaten the women in this family?”
Of course Dad wouldn’t let that happen; he was the force moderating Ned’s anger and physical threats, whether they were directed against my mom, Kathy, or me.
But that had been more than a decade ago. People grow up, I thought. Young men become men, don’t they?
I gave Ned a quick hard look, then looked away.
As the three of us walked to the kitchen site, I rested the shotgun on my shoulder.
The decision to bring weapons had not come easily. Since the Inuit always travel with high-caliber weapons in the Arctic, it seemed a good idea. Still, many naturalists and other adventurers do not believe in bringing weapons into the wilderness. And I couldn’t help thinking of Faulkner’s Ike leaving his gun behind.
A month before departing for the Arctic, I’d met my younger brother, Sam, off I-5 halfway between Portland and Seattle to pick up Dad’s two guns, which Sam had stored at his house in Oregon. He handed me the long black plastic cases in a fast-food parking lot. I placed them carefully in my trunk. The gravity of transferring firearms weighted the cases even more. It felt like an illicit activity. It also felt like the first real step toward the Arctic trip.
I also knew how important it was to be comfortable using them. My good friend and running partner Trea, a marine, agreed to go with me to an indoor range before the trip. Inside the one-story, warehouse-style building, well-maintained weapons hung on the walls and neatly stacked boxes of ammunition sat on shelves. We each carried a gun case.
The manager, a middle-aged man in jeans and an untucked plaid shirt with a knife case attached to his belt, didn’t try to suppress his amusement at two women coming through the door. We laid the cases on the counter.
“What
do you have there?” he asked.
“45-70 Copilot and a pistol-grip shotgun,” I said, feigning confidence and suppressing a laugh at the clash of what I’d come to understand as city life in Seattle and large caliber weaponry.
The manager raised his eyebrows. “What you gonna do with those?” The condescension disappeared from his voice.
“Protection from bear in Alaska,” I said.
“So you’ll be using slugs in the shotgun, right?”
I nodded.
“Slugs are too big for this range,” he said, then hesitated for a minute. “Come on back.” He grabbed headphones and ammunition.
We followed hopefully into the narrow hallway of firing lanes smelling of gunpowder and metal.
“Okay, you ever shot this before?” he asked, sighting down the barrel of the 45-70.
“No, but we’ve both shot other rifles—M16s, M60s,” I said.
His eyebrows raised again, then relaxed into a smile. “Who woulda guessed? Okay, well, this is gonna kick a lot more than those. See, those have recoil built into them. These don’t. You want to really jam it into your shoulder, like this,” he demonstrated, pulling the butt of the rifle firmly into the pocket where his shoulder connected to his arm. “And you know you don’t want to anticipate the shot. Just take it from there.”
He dropped a cartridge into the chamber, moved the lever down and back to the stock, sighted down the barrel easily, and fired. A paper target down the lane took his shot dead center. He handed me the rifle. I pulled the heavy wooden stock into my shoulder. Breathe-relax-aim-squeeze-shoot. Wait for the pause after you exhale to pull the trigger. My training flowed easily back, and the stock slammed into my body. I concentrated on the target. Breathe-relax-aim-squeeze-shoot and wham! Another slam into my shoulder.
North of Hope Page 6