Paddlenorth

by Jennifer Kingsley

  I walked away from the group to take a pee. I was out in the open, but privacy was mostly forgotten by then. I peeled the top of my wet suit down to my waist, and steam rose to my face. When I released myself from the neoprene and squatted, a hot rush of blood splattered on the ice. It melted the surface and made a tiny pool. Relief washed through me at the sight of the blood, and I felt a thin cord break between me and my life at home.

  The landscape did not change all day. Morsels of ice collided in the intermittent pools of open water and filled the air with their tinkling. The drag of our boats provided a constant background hum as the ice scoured and scrubbed us with each step. Drew and Jen balanced their boat across a gap in the ice for a photo, and Levi lay on his belly for some close-up ice shots. I posed with one leg on either side of a wide crack. Drew went in up to his armpits once, and so did I.

  The stubborn irritations that had been bothering me began to recede. The sweat against my body and aching muscles helped to work them out. The enormity of the ice shifted my perspective too; my frustrations with the schedule and my worries about the group didn’t seem like such a big deal when compared to the task at hand. We all felt the cleansing; what had been so uncertain at the beginning of the day now seemed like an adventure. Annoyances simply let go — as if they couldn’t make it across the ice.

  By late afternoon, the white ice lost some of its shine, and rotten gray ice transitioned to bigger and bigger pools of open water. With a paddle-swirling flourish we arrived back in our preferred medium: water. We hooted in triumph, and the air felt clear of any tension or sorrow.

  The journey was set to begin again, but if I wanted a fresh start, I had one more thing to take care of.

  I walked away from camp that night toward a rise of land in the distance. From the top, I scanned the landscape once more, inch by inch, for caribou. I turned around twice, searching each bump and stone for signs of life.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the air. “It’s okay. Thank you anyway.”

  My desire to find that herd of caribou had become a distraction. It was time to let go.

  That night, the barometer continued to drop.

  BY 7:30 THE next morning, we had packed up the boats. The wind rose quickly, but we were anxious to leave our wet campsite, which was covered in goose droppings. Our location was relatively protected, so the wind didn’t force the water into waves but skittered across its surface like sheets of rain. It pressed against the blade of my paddle at every recovery stroke and flattened my jacket to my chest. By the time we had crossed to the first set of nearby islands — mere rock piles between us and the main shore — the wind had overpowered Levi and Jen, and they lost control of Bluebell. Luckily, she washed onto some of the rocks, but we couldn’t stay there long.

  The wind was building from the north, which forced us offshore. On the other side of those rocks, the lake opened up, and the storm blew unimpeded for 25 kilometers. Whitecaps crowned the steep waves, even though the fetch, or distance across open water, was only 100 or 200 meters. Conditions in the middle of the lake would be deadly. We rafted up and planned one last crossing to the mainland, where we could set up camp and hunker down.

  Alie and I pulled as hard as we could to bridge the remaining 75 meters to the mainland shore. The wind shoved our bow toward the open water, and we fought our way closer to the bank a few inches at a time. When our boat finally crunched onto land, we splashed to shore and pulled our canoes onto a beautiful crescent beach below the ridge of an esker. We hiked our gear bags up the beach, away from the kitchen area, in search of flat land. The wind grew every minute.

  Alie, Jen, and I worked together to set up our tent. The pegs pulled out of the ground and sprayed gravel, and wind hauled at the fabric as we fought to push the poles in. We had to yell to be heard. The boys were at work on a second tent 75 meters away. We moved our tent to a more sheltered spot, where we tried, once again, to peg it down. I thought we had it secured when a powerful gust filled the tent, yanked out all of its pegs, and sent it high into the air.

  Jen hung on to one corner of the fly, just above the buckle, and ran with the tent as it sailed toward the lake. Alie and I took off after her.

  Jen had less than 100 meters to slow the tent before it hit the water, but it kept accelerating. She ran like a kid with an oversized kite until the rainfly started to rip. Alie and I heard it tearing, distorting as the fabric changed shape and picked up speed. Jen tripped and landed on her chest, head facing the water, nylon sail still gripped in her right hand.

  I had nearly caught up when the tent started dragging Jen through the gravel. With a final snarl, it ripped free, leaving Jen trampled on shore. I sprinted past her as the tent swooped skyward and then plummeted, partially deflated, into the lake. It stopped for a moment, until the wind found a new purchase and dragged it away.

  Get the tent get the tent get the tent, I thought. The water is cold, I reminded myself as I closed in on the lake. Hypothermia would be better than losing the tent. I’m still wearing my pfd.

  I ran into the water up to my chest and started swimming. I grabbed the fly at the same instant the ice water breached my clothing and struck my skin. I heaved back toward land. Jen had recovered and followed me into the water up to her thighs. She grabbed my arm; then Alie ran in and grabbed hers.

  We pulled the soggy tent back into our arms.

  The guys had almost finished erecting their tent when I looked up, incredulous, to realize they hadn’t heard a thing. The wind’s howl had drowned us out as it shredded our little home and dragged us across the beach.

  “Hey!” I screamed. They came running.

  I climbed into their tent to change and beat back the cold while the others set up our third shelter and reinforced them both with extra pegs and rocks at each corner, inside and out. The first tent lay soaked and broken under a third matrix of stones. The air temperature had dropped to 1 degree Celcius. We regrouped for lunch to the east of our camp in the true shelter of huge moss-covered rocks left behind by glaciers. We were doling out the chocolate when a muffled thump reached our ears.

  Tim scrambled up the rise to look down at camp.

  “That sounds like a boat,” said Jen.

  “Boat in the water!” Tim yelled. He took off toward the beach.

  I sprinted behind him, losing ground. I shoved the chocolate in my hand into my pocket.

  My mind scrambled for a plan, and I decided to swim after the lost canoe, even though I was wearing my only remaining dry clothes.

  “Where are you going?” Tim yelled when he saw me sprinting for the water. He had already grabbed two paddles and was dragging a second boat toward the lake. Still not thinking clearly, I leapt into the boat while it was still grounded, 10 meters from shore.

  “Get out!”

  By now, Drew was next to us, keeping his eye on the first boat as it blew offshore with the storm. It had landed upside down, thank God, so we had a chance of catching it. Alie and Jen ran to our third boat, which was starting its own log roll. Levi tossed us an extra throw rope, and we shot away from the beach under the force of three paddlers and a hurricane-force wind. It pushed against our backs like a heavy hand.

  “We’re almost there!” I yelled.

  Drew reached out from the bow to grab the submerged boat, but the wind sped us past it.

  “Turn around! Turn around!” Drew called.

  The wind threatened to force us into the open water. But if the fetch got too big and we tried to change our direction, the waves would swamp us.

  Tim pried his paddle against the water and turned us. We balanced carefully and fought back upwind to our canoe, tied a throw rope to its bow, and pulled ourselves back to shore where we could haul it in safely. I flopped back against the sand to catch my breath.

  We tied everything down.

  Two hours later, I filled up on pasta and pesto sauce hastily prepared behind a rock by Jen and Tim, then headed to bed.

  Alie, Jen, and I lay jammed tog
ether in one tent inside a circle of stones that locked down the floor; we had to raise our voices to be heard. The wind bent the tent poles. Gusts snapped the nylon fly and created a violent luffing. The fabric pulled up against my back — the tent wanted to launch skyward. Our tent sat behind the crest of an esker, partially protected, but the walls still shook out of control. A loud crack announced the next squall. Rain lashed the fly, and the wall bent inward, pressing against Alie’s cheek.

  I tucked in tight between my two roommates. I held out a camera and took a portrait of our faces bent together and showing teeth and wind-burnt skin. We all wore our hats and jackets at the slumber party. It was only the three of us in the world that night. Somewhere off to our left and down the hill the three men sardined into our remaining tent, but they couldn’t have heard us if we had called out to them. I worried the wind would tear away the walls and ceiling to leave us lying on the tent floor, exposed to the darkening sky.

  CHAPTER 9

  SEARCH

  NONE OF US were in shape to travel the next morning, though the wind had calmed considerably. Drew, Alie, Jen, and Tim teamed up to reorganize the packs, clean the wannigan, and do a food inventory. Levi and I contemplated the pile of wet nylon that needed a second life. The tent itself only required minor repairs, but the fly was ripped nearly in two.

  “That must have been a hurricane force wind,” Levi said, “and we need to fix it up to withstand another one.”

  I fetched the repair kit, and we climbed into one of the other tents to mastermind the fix. We pinned the 8-foot-long Y-shaped rip with precision and began to sew. We worked toward each other with tiny stitches, as even as we could manage.

  “It’s like surgery,” I said. We barely spoke. I focused solely on the tiny motions of my needle. Back home, I would have found the task tedious and annoying; I would have wanted to be doing something else. It took us four hours to put the pieces back together.

  “Ta da!” I said when we presented our work to the others, “Can you find the seam?”

  IT FELT GOOD to put the lakes and their extremes behind us, but we felt closer for having been through them. It was time to shift our focus to the white water that would only get bigger as we inched toward the ocean. Over the next four days, we stepped up our technique and confidence as the rapids grew in power and complexity. I would perch on a boulder at water level and read each twist of the waves. Which rocks were deep enough to clear, which curlers soft enough to break through. I needed to memorize the river’s intentions and plan our reactions. Then I would stand with the others, often Tim and Levi, and we would confer by pointing features out to each other and speaking in code: “See that pillow behind the small curler? Not the river right one. Next to the rooster tail. We need to punch through that vee but avoid the boil.” Once we agreed, we would make sure everyone knew the plan; then I would walk back to the boat while chanting it under my breath, “Vee, left of the pillow, back ferry right, nose past the hole, eddy out river right.” All of the features would look different from the top of the set, so I had to find landmarks and remember the plan.

  Each day the forces intensified. More and more often, the plan included a critical maneuver that took me to the edge of my comfort zone. Whatever you do, don’t touch that eddy line. Jen was keen to learn, but the harder the rapids got, the more difficult it was to work on skill building. We just had to get through it before my heart jumped out of my chest. We would review the rapid together, and I would say something upbeat like “Okay, let’s do this!”

  LATE ON THE cold afternoon of our twenty-fifth day, we arrived at Rock Rapids — a dozen kilometers of ledges, falls, submerged rocks, and recirculating waves that we would have to portage and paddle. The river flowed swiftly: dark, loud, and as wide as a city block. As we back-paddled into camp, we noticed a pile of gear and two green canoes, too close to the rushing water, on a small island near the far shore.

  Rocks blocked our view of the island, so perhaps we couldn’t see the people, or maybe the pile was a food cache. I felt too cold to think. The sharp wind and near-zero temperatures had returned, which kept away the mosquitoes and blackflies, but the persistent chill made us hungry and clumsy.

  That evening, the sky hung like sheet metal, overcast without visible clouds. Only three colors remained: black in the river, silver caps on the waves, and the drab olive of lichen. Nobody took pictures. The bank curved around our camp like an amphitheater; in the distance, rapids rumbled an ominous soundtrack.

  A tarp broke the worst of the wind at our kitchen site, but tendrils of air still breached my filthy pants, long johns, double toque, and down-filled coat. My fingers ached as I lit the stove and fumbled through food bags to find lentils and rice. Jen and Alie lugged packs up the hill and looked for tent sites. Levi tinkered near the boats, rechecking a spray-deck repair and calibrating his barometer. Tim and Drew lashed a broken seat back together using parachute cord and a piece of wood. Their newest game was to pretend they were Jacques and Jean-Luc, Quebecois voyageurs who adored the tundra. And Drew asked questions about the wildlife, Tim’s favorite subject. On the water, Drew’s posture and paddle stroke had begun to loosen, and he seemed to be drawing strength from each of our successes and worrying less. Tim, in turn, took strength from Drew’s renewed courage.

  THE NEXT MORNING, the weather was blustery but clear, and there were still no bugs — perfect for portaging. The open sky restored breadth and contrast to the landscape and revealed bright patches of heather and lousewort. The river shone and chattered. We took a load of gear down a caribou trail past the first set of rapids, a journey of about twenty minutes. On the way back, I couldn’t get the image of the silent camp near the far shore out of my mind.

  Tim and I wanted to investigate. But Drew didn’t want us to cross the river. The current sucked the water into whitecaps, and sliding backward during the crossing could send us into miles of chutes and ledges. If that happened, we wouldn’t survive the first corner.

  “It’s too far,” Drew told us. “The current’s too fast.”

  Levi was confident we could make it. Jen and Alie didn’t say anything. Our policy was never to do something if one person in the group was uncomfortable. In this case, only two of us would take the risk directly, but a bad outcome for us would affect everyone else. In general, we tried to keep things as equal as possible, but that didn’t always work, and we weren’t always equal. Tim and I had logged a lot of miles, and we had much more experience reading water than Drew did.

  “Make your own choice,” Drew said, “but I think that staying here is the smartest decision for the group and most consistent with what we agreed to.”

  My ego dug in. I wouldn’t be dominated by Drew’s fear. Part of me stuck up for him — he was committed to our safety — but his thinking was skewed by his nerves.

  “We wouldn’t go if it wasn’t safe,” I said.

  We headed down to the river.

  Fueled by fear and the tension with Drew, I took up my best paddling posture. Knees spread and braced against the hull. Back straight, leaning forward from the waist. My blade thrust far in front for quick strokes and maximum power. Tim would control our angle from the stern; all I had to do was paddle like hell.

  I began to paddle forward, hard, while Tim nosed us into the flow. We would use a forward ferry to move the boat across the current. By pointing our bow slightly toward the opposite shore, the current would push on our exposed hull and take us there. The more we pointed across the current, the faster we would move. If we opened our hull too much, we risked being spun broadside and losing ground. If we slipped back too far, the river would feed us to its rapids.

  I saw nothing but the tip of the bow and the waves off the starboard quarter. Our boat crept toward the island. River splash jostled my ears. Halfway there, my low shoulder started to burn. Sweat prickled across my sternum.

  “More power!” Tim yelled over the rush.

  I stared into the middle distance and dug in.

>   I couldn’t tell from the pull of the water how much we were slipping back relative to shore. There was a place behind us where the downhill pull of the river would overpower our boat and force us to ride it out. I could feel that rapid licking our heels. The canoe surged ahead with each stroke, but it felt like we were stuck in one spot until gravel clawed our hull on the other side.

  We yanked the boat out of the water and saw that we had actually gained ground in the crossing. On our way to the abandoned gear, we passed the two green canoes, which sat overturned and parallel to each other by the river’s edge. Twenty paces farther on, five green canvas canoe packs slumped in a circle. Thin leather straps crisscrossed over the tops to close them, but other items lay strewn on the ground: a bag of flour, a four-liter Coleman fuel container, one boot. Off to the side, six paddles had been stacked on the rocks. A beautiful Werner with a carbon-fiber shaft caught my eye; it was probably worth two hundred bucks.

  “Hello?” Tim cried. “Is anybody here?”

  “Hello?” I echoed.

  We split up on the small gravel island and scanned the ground. A mound of green at the island’s downstream tip, only fifty paces away, rose above the rocks. Crowberry and goose droppings tangled down the back of it. No tents. The air seemed still, despite the wind, and the tundra took on the closeness of a deserted apartment.

  “There’s nobody here,” I said, stating the obvious.

  We worked the cracked straps from their buckles and peeled back the fabric. The plastic liners inside each pack were open. In the first four, blackened pots, stoves, fuel, sacks of parboiled rice, and cake mixes were jumbled together in messy piles; the rubber limbs of hip waders sprang out of the fifth. Each green flank of canvas declared “Camp Widjiwagan” and a phone number printed in faded black marker.

  Tim walked back around the island to look for any other clues. It was a terrible campsite, and only inexperience or mishap could have made the campers choose it. I scanned the gravel by the packs for scraps of evidence. Upstream from us, the river widened to a kilometer across, riffling and shallow with exposed rocks at each bank. Across the river, the rocky arena of our previous night’s campsite sat empty, the others having portaged all of our gear. Downstream, the river rumbled and shot froth into the air. A hike up into the hills, from the backside of the island, wouldn’t have been impossible from where I stood. It was only a short hop to the mainland. Maybe the girls had used their third canoe to reach a hiking spot. Why would they risk landing on this island in the first place? How did they get away from here?