Paddlenorth

by Jennifer Kingsley

  The second gift was a ring he had carved by hand from caribou antler. A thin, polished circle that fit perfectly. I knew it was foolish, but I wore it on the trip, even when my fingers swelled from cold and wind. During a storm one night, early in the trip, the pegs holding down my tent’s vestibule pulled out of the ground. The wet fly slapped at our door, soaking the tent and making a racket. I opened the tent door, and while the rain lashed my face, I reached out with the edge of the fly in my hand to force it back into the ground. As I drove my hand down on the metal peg, it connected with the ring and smashed it into three pieces. I lay on my stomach, half out of the tent and exposed to a driving wind, and looked at the fragments in shock. It was hard to hold on to home out there.

  On the Back, part of me wanted to let go of everything and imagine that life on the river was my only life, but I struggled to find my rhythm. I worried about Tim, and I still felt distant from Jen, Drew, and Alie. I expected the tundra to clear the cobwebs, turn on the creativity, dispense with my worries, and strengthen my body. I wanted it to do the work for me. Perhaps I was becoming one of those people who ask too much of the wilderness, who cram it so full of expectations that it becomes more of an idea than a real place. I was tired of reading about the wilderness as a backdrop for so-and-so’s personal struggle; yet there I was, dragging my anxieties across the North. I longed to be my best self and was afraid that person wouldn’t show up.

  To calm myself, I decided to organize something, a tactic that usually works. I turned to my packing list. There were certain things I didn’t want to forget for next time, like how my underwear line was digging into my backside day after day while I knelt in the boat.

  — Underwear — 3 pairs with different panty lines! (1 cotton, 1 polypro or something, 1 other)

  — Socks — liner socks, neoprene socks, wet socks (preferably high and bug-proof), dry socks (definitely high, thick, loose, and bug-proof)

  I should have brought a bandana to wipe my nose. A down jacket was much better than a down vest. Long underwear tops must have a high neck to keep bugs off.

  I also dreamed about my future that night. I wanted to start a school that taught bush craft and all the practical skills of a simple life that are trickling away. I imagined writing books, especially about food for a trip, and paddling in manageable places, like Algonquin Park, near my hometown. In my mind, I slipped over the side of the boat and felt the kiss of warm water. I lay naked on warm rocks and ate fresh fruit.

  Before sleep, I chastised myself: Stop imagining yourself away. Be here; it’s only week two.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, it was my turn to share a tent with Levi, and we lay beside each other as the wind pressed the fly into the tent ceiling and drizzle speared the nylon.

  “This is one of those nights I feel especially grateful for our tents and sleeping bags,” Levi said.

  I smiled to myself and immediately split open my dry, cracked lip. “Me too.”

  “Do you remember Bob Dannert’s weather system?” he asked. We had met Bob three years before in Bathurst Inlet and been impressed by his extensive CV of solo paddling.

  “No.”

  “Shit, Shit Squared, and Shit Cubed. Shit weather is wind, rain, or cold. Shit Squared is two out of three. He said you never paddle in Shit Cubed.”

  We slept soundly and woke early to the same pressure on the fly. The tent felt dank and small.

  I unzipped the door to a blast of cold air and rain. I could barely see into the mist. Shit Cubed.

  I longed to fall back to sleep, but it was my turn to be Leader of the Day and therefore to assess the weather. The Leader of the Day was Alie’s idea, and it helped to cut down on the time spent making group decisions. Rather than relying on consensus (endless) or majority (divisive) we took turns bearing responsibility for the final call. The Leader of the Day’s job was to gather information, canvass opinions, and lead discussions. The final decision on everyday things like when to stop and where to have lunch was the burden and privilege of the Leader of the Day. By rotating the position equally, we all got a turn in the hot seat, which made it harder to criticize others and carried a built-in incentive to go easy on them; it would always be your turn soon enough. Leader of the Day provided a structure that complemented our paddling and cooking teams, and we also took turns as Navigator of the Day to share the map work. Clearly assigned roles helped off-duty times feel more free, so we still had room for the people we bonded with easily: Jen and Drew made each other laugh; Tim and I talked a lot. New friendships were developing too: Drew asked Tim about wildlife; Alie and Levi lounged by the water.

  That day the decision to stay in camp was easy. Paddling would have been nearly impossible, so I let everyone sleep and headed to the food barrels. If we were weather-bound, we had enough time for cinnamon buns, and Alie and I were on kitchen duty that day. I unsnapped the lid of the baking barrel and found the basics for making bannock dough. I was careful to block the bags from the wind and rain as best I could. Huddled behind an overturned canoe, I poured river water into the flour mixture and squished it together by hand. Little flecks of dirt from my nails blended in. I grabbed a water bottle for a rolling pin and dropped the dough onto the wannigan lid. I tugged and tore the dough, patched it up, rolled it, and stretched it again until it covered the lid. I slathered margarine as thick as peanut butter on bread. Then I spread sugar, spices, and raisins on the dough and rolled it into a thick log. I sliced it into rounds and nestled them into the frying pan. A lid and insulating hood turned our frying pan into an oven. I hoped the buns would rise a little.

  Alie soon joined me and began her morning coffee ritual. I hadn’t seen Alie in a few years when she and Jen met the rest of us at the Yellowknife bus station after our twenty-four-hour Greyhound marathon. She had flown in. She wore rugged sandals, a skirt, a cotton jersey shirt with a boat neck, and a silver ball-and-chain necklace tight to her throat. One pin held back a curl of ear-length brown hair. Alie had lots of lake and swift-water experience from a previous Arctic trip and had done lots of southern paddling, so she was no stranger to camping. But she also read books like Anna Karenina and enjoyed them. She was already a published poet, and her first novel would be released that fall. Back home, Alie and her friends congregated at a family cabin called The Beaver, where they bonded over food, dancing, and deep conversations about life — clothing optional. I squirmed thinking about this group intimacy; I had never been to a women’s gathering. Alie’s necklace summed her up for me: tough and feminine.

  She was both easy and hard for me to talk to. When we paddled, I loved chatting about any subject, and she usually had ideas that led to an in-depth exchange. I told her about my parents and my love life. We wrote a song about rivers together and taught it to the others. But when Alie and I cooked or worked together, I felt awkward and distant from her. Procedures became confrontations, somehow, and I grew defensive. I tried to discuss kitchen setup or cooking ideas, but it often came out like a challenge instead of an olive branch. She’s made up her mind about me, I worried. It didn’t help that Alie often seemed tired and liked to sleep; I didn’t want to keep her up after supper and make things worse.

  As Alie carefully spooned the day’s ration of grounds into her special mug, I dug for some granola, up to my elbow in pancake mix. I pulled a bag from the depths in victory and saw that it had one of Alie’s handwritten quotations in with it. She had buried several in with our stores. The quotation read, “Task: to be where I am. Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd role: I am still the place where creation works on itself. — Tomas Tranströmer.”1

  The others quickly answered our calls of “Breakfast!” The buns bubbled and snapped in their oily pan, and six sets of grubby hands pulled at the stretchy dough. In our haste we burned our mouths. When the feast was over, we searched the moss for dropped raisins and ate them too.

  OVER THE NEXT few days the big lakes dominated our group talks. The wind had been growing during the afternoons and had reached a
point where it sometimes stopped us, and always slowed us. If the trend continued, we would be wind-bound on shore and fall behind on the schedule we had established. Once we reached the lakes, which stretched for over 200 kilometers, it would only get worse and could become dangerous. Alie suggested we switch to an evening paddling schedule to avoid the wind as much as possible. We could hike and explore in the morning, eat our big meal at noon, and then leave camp with our lunch packed for an evening snack. We decided to give it a try. It was a sensible thing to do. I didn’t think it would throw me that much.

  During the first day of our new schedule, Jen was unusually quiet. She and Drew liked to joke around in the mornings by making faces and putting on weird voices, silly stuff, but she wasn’t into it that day. On the water, she liked to sing, and sometimes she would get us to sing with her. At times it drove me insane — I didn’t come out to the tundra to listen to someone belt out campfire songs — but that was on my bad days. I admired her for it too; she could be cheery when the landscape wasn’t. One day, she sang me every song from Hello, Dolly!, which she had recently performed in. At first I loved it, then hated it, then laughed in disbelief that she was still singing an hour later. That afternoon, she broke her reliable paddling rhythm to look back at me.

  “Fifty days is a lot,” she said. “It seems like a lot.” She gazed out across the endless water. From here to the ocean and then on forever.

  “My hands are getting worse,” she added.

  She turned around again and spread her hands out on the red canvas spray deck. I climbed out of my seat and crawled forward. The backs of her hands were rough and chapped. Each finger was swollen out of proportion, so she could hardly straighten her fingers. The blisters had been spreading. At first there were only a few, but now they bloomed over each finger and each knuckle.

  “I think it’s the sun,” she said. “I try to keep them covered, but my hands get cold in wet gloves.”

  “Ouch,” was all I could think to say.

  I’m pretty sure there were tears in her eyes as she turned back to the front and gripped her paddle again.

  My hands were doing okay, but my feet had started to make me hobble. Long days in cold, wet shoes were taking their toll. My feet took ages to warm up each night, and they itched and burned during the day. Raised red welts crowned each toe joint, and red slices through the skin behind my toes were widening. Pools of blood sagged in the skin, making the soles dark and puffy. My toes moved slowly and cooled my fingers when I grabbed them. When I let go, they stayed white as I counted slowly to ten. The skin had become translucent and delicate. The opposite of what I needed.

  Tim had lapsed into quiet too, and his face looked heavy. All of us seemed to carry a burden as we pulled ourselves toward the lakes. It was like living in a world where you don’t exist, where nothing you do affects your environment. The land can neither see nor feel you. The lack of emotion in the outer world made the inner world more oppressive.

  CHAPTER 7

  LIBRARY

  THE EVENING SCHEDULE gave us enough relief from the daytime winds that we stuck with it. The main benefit of this change, according to me, was eating hot muffins for breakfast. Usually we had to cook them the night before, but now we had lots of time to make them when we got up. I tried to be gracious about the long mornings, the big lunches, and the endless night paddles, but I didn’t do a very good job. For some reason that eluded me, night paddling made me incredibly cranky. Theoretically, we still had time to explore in the mornings, but it never felt relaxed. Departure would hang over my head, and the others would keep referring to their watches to plan the day. That drove me nuts. I wanted to forget about the hands on the clock, at least sometimes, and pay attention to natural cues of light and weather — or at least try.

  I would mutter under my breath, “Didn’t we come here to get away from a schedule?” or, “Careful, we might be late.” I hated my mysterious bitterness but couldn’t seem to shake it. Sometimes Tim would shoot me a warning look or hiss “Take it easy” under his breath.

  “Don’t be crazy,” he said to me one night. “People are going to think you’re too intense.” We both knew it was true sometimes. On a previous trip, we had decided which fruit all of the paddlers were most like. Tim and Levi were apples — shiny, accessible, dependable — and I was a pineapple, good once you got past the spiky skin.

  Once everyone had grown comfy with the new schedule, the wind died completely and the temperature soared. We would paddle until midnight some nights, and I would still wake at six or seven while everyone else slept. I had always been terrible at sleeping in. Alie was the most prodigious sleeper of all of us, and the later we paddled, the more I resented her for it. On the rare occasion that I did get some extra rest, I woke drenched in sweat under the midmorning sun. The heat forced me out, only for me to be attacked by mosquitoes, which had finally hatched en masse. I slapped them out of my ears until my bug jacket was on and then scowled at the silent tents.

  Despite myself, during our free time I kept writing letters to Dalton in my journal. I described everything, reminisced, and made promises that were easy to write down so far away from home. On the river I could suspend my life, except for one detail: it had been several weeks since my last period, and I feared that one careless night would tie me to him forever.

  ON THE MAP, the dreaded lakes looked like moths with shaggy wings that spread north and south. By the time we got there, the river was so wide we weren’t sure exactly when we’d arrived. It took a day for us to be certain of our location, and we had to keep the map out constantly to keep track of the bays that would trap us in a dead end. The Garry Lakes sit in a black hole of Canadian geography, nowhere near any landmarks known to southerners, such as Hudson Bay, the Arctic coast, or the border between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. A height of land north of the lakes marks a boundary beyond which dozens of rivers flow relatively straight into the Queen Maud Gulf. The Back flattens into an east-west line with very little elevation change. It’s the heart of the tundra. Water rules the landscape.

  We camped on an island near the north shore of Upper Garry Lake, the second lake in the series of seven. We had another hot morning, and the midmorning sun threw shadows behind each stone and gave a metallic sheen to the land. The air had warmed enough to allow us to wear just two shirts, and the lake reflected wisps of cloud and blue. A few mosquitoes whined, and small blossoms of yellow, pink, and white leapt out like stars from the sky: snow cinquefoil, moss campion, Labrador tea, blueberries, cloudberries, three-toothed saxifrage.

  For a morning adventure, we walked to a cabin that sat alone in the distance. Its shell of thin boards had been burned dark and blackened by sun and cold. A rectangle with a slanted roof was tacked onto a simple square room with a peaked roof and one chimney — a cabin from a child’s drawing. Shreds of tar paper clung to the outside.

  We snapped a few photos and circled the little building. Beyond the front door, the green tundra gave way to pebbles as it sloped gently to the lake. Behind us, beyond our camp, a tall gravel ridge left by glacial river sediment rose and snaked away.

  The inside of the cabin was bare except for the occasional board and some lemming scat. A book lay propped up against one wall: The Man Who Mapped the Arctic: The Intrepid Life of George Back, Franklin’s Lieutenant, by Peter Steele.

  Alie walked over and picked it up.

  The inside front cover had been inscribed in black ballpoint pen: “July 10, 2005. YMCA Camp Widjiwagan Voyaguer [sic] girls of 2005.” Next was a short request followed by seven signatures: “If you take this book, please leave another.”

  In Yellowknife, we had heard of a group of young women from a camp in Minnesota who had flown in shortly before us. They were headed for the ocean too. I knew that senior campers sometimes took long northern journeys, a modern coming-of-age ritual, but my mum and I spent summers at the cottage, so I could only imagine the traditions these girls might have. Had they already known each ot
her? Who was their leader? It puzzled me to see seven names, because canoeists almost always travel two per boat. That meant that at least one of them didn’t sign, or that someone was traveling solo or sitting in the middle of the canoe, maybe on a pack. I didn’t envy the three-person boat, if there was one.

  These girls had been in the cabin two days before we arrived. We could overtake them at some point, or they might pull away from us. I wondered if they felt small out there, if they sang enough camp songs to shield themselves from the silence.

  Alie picked up the book and replaced it with her copy of War and Peace.

  IN AUGUST OF 1949, a floatplane buzzed low over the north shore of Upper Garry Lake. It banked, descended to the water, and skipped to a stop by a small island. A skinny man wearing thick glasses climbed out and stepped onto the tundra. The island would be his new home. He was Father Joseph Buliard of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and he was there to establish Canada’s most remote mission. That much he knew. What he didn’t know was that within ten years, as a result of forces set in motion by his arrival, this land would be emptied of its people, and he would be gone too.

  Buliard was born and raised in France, and he felt drawn to the most difficult missionary assignments from a young age. His first desire was to work among the Inuit of northern Canada, and by the time he reached the Garry Lakes, at age thirty-five, he’d already been in the Arctic for a decade. He’d served as a priest in the remote settlements of Repulse Bay and Baker Lake, on the north and west sides of Hudson Bay, ministering to Inuit around the Hudson Bay Company posts there. In each of those places, he experienced something that would shape the rest of his life.

  Repulse Bay was his first post, and he arrived in September of 1939. On the morning of November 6, it was –30 degrees Celsius when he walked out across the sea ice by himself in search of game. Five kilometers away from the mission, he fell through the ice. By a slim chance — a miracle, in his mind — he managed to grip the ice edge and haul himself out, but his hands were badly frozen. After the rest of his body recovered, Buliard’s hands oozed and gangrene threatened to set in. Because of bad weather, it took a month to get him to a proper hospital, where his hands were saved, but they remained swollen, painful, and highly sensitive to cold for the rest of his life. This accident only strengthened his resolve: “My enthusiasm is intact and if at all possible the Eskimos will see me back amongst them and I will spend my life for them willingly!”1