When those letters arrived on the Back River, I felt both loved and forgotten. Both feelings gave me freedom. The letters snipped another thread between me and them, here and home. In a counterintuitive way, the mail increased my commitment to the river. Every day, every event demanded something new. More attention. Less resistance. This trip had a big cover charge, but I began to think we had paid it.
IN THE DAYS after we released the Dead Girls’ canoe, our path and the caribou’s tangled together. The caribou became those people you run into in the neighborhood; you’re delighted to see them, but you never know which encounter will be the last. Your overlapping patterns won’t endure forever, and you know that. The day you don’t see them will turn into a week and then a month, and you’ll never be sure whether they moved across town or simply changed their schedule. As with the girls, we had been on a collision course with those caribou all along. Although we never knew how far the animals spread around us, we learned that an empty riverbank could fill in minutes. I wondered whether we had ever been just one hillside away from them before.
On the third caribou day, the number swelled further, and some grazed right at the river’s edge, where we could take a closer look. We floated 25 meters away. Tim took a picture of me from behind against a backdrop of animals. I snapped one of Alie when she turned to face me, like a rock concert picture with the band in the back. In some places, the males with big antlers gathered, separated from the mothers and young. The sound! We hadn’t been close enough to hear it before. Thousands of hooves clacked and squished as they hit the ground, and the legs themselves, the feet, added to the din; with each step an adult caribou takes, a tendon slips back and forth over bone, and it fills the air with the sound of fingers snapping. In the foreground, little calves, far from their mothers, would chase each other — tails straight up — and pounce from springy legs. Mothers keep track of their babies by calling out constantly, and the little ones whine back. When the calf is ready to eat, as we saw over and over, he dashes back to the udder and bashes his head against it, again and again. All of this amid coughing and snorting and the ever-present wind.
Caribou midsummer. CREDIT: TIM IRVIN
As the herd slowly moved across our field of view, the edge emerged, along with its stragglers. The ones not likely to make it to winter. The outliers who would die from exhaustion or age, though a wolf or bear was likely to pick them off before that. We had seen stragglers already. One or two would run crazed along the river’s edge as they searched, against minuscule odds, to find their herd again.
A caribou in mid-migration looks more like a hungover survivor of a bar brawl than a symbol of wilderness and freedom. In summer, the herds that travel together are called a post-calving aggregation, and they move, sometimes in huge groups, back to the tree line, where they spread out again. Their thick winter coats haven’t yet covered up the summer’s damage from exertion, stress, and the torment inflicted by parasites. Bald spots, scratches, and holes turn their dull brown fur into a record of injury. Dark circles surround their eyes, even the calves’, and their snouts are black as soot. Ribs press against the skin. Caribou are punished by so many insects that they sometimes perish from a slow drain of blood. Mosquitoes and blackflies hound them until they snap from the torture; some will run miles to get away. They also have to deal with more sinister specialists, including the warble fly, whose larvae burrow under the skin of the caribou’s belly and crawls across the ribs until it gets near the spine. There, it cuts itself a breathing hole and makes a wet nest, where it feasts throughout the winter until late spring, when it pops out, pupates on the ground, and emerges as an adult fly the size of a bluebottle but without any mouth parts (it has already eaten enough for a lifetime). Populations can reach into the thousands on a single host, but they may be less disgusting than the nasal bot flies, who deposit live, active larvae into the caribou’s nostrils. Those larvae spend the winter in their host’s throat, and by spring they’ve made a tight mass of maggots, which the caribou try desperately to eject by coughing and sneezing. Finally, by hacking like a tuberculosis patient, the caribou hurl the larva to the ground, and the cycle starts again. Caribou are the tundra’s Job. They might be a spectacle of nature’s power, but they are no less a miracle of survival.
Finding those animals was a dream come true for me, and it was tempting to imagine a deeper meaning. I had prayed hard for a caribou to cross my path until I saw how that desire was holding me back from appreciating the rest of the journey. So I let it go, which I hated doing, and then they appeared. It sounds like a lesson from a book of daily meditations — let go and your deepest desires will come true — but it isn’t. The tundra cuts a person down to size, disabusing us of new age notions that we are at the center of it all. That alone is a good reason to go there.
WE STOPPED AGAIN to walk into the hills and watch. This time, to my surprise, Jen, Alie, and Drew stayed at the boats while Tim, Levi, and I walked on. They would barely see the caribou from down at the riverbank, and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to spend more time watching them. We had talked about it being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a first for all of us, but perhaps it had been enough for them already.
The three of us found a huge boulder to lie on, shoulder to shoulder, and we passed the binoculars back and forth. Zoom in. Zoom out. I felt a little bit like one of those caribou, except my herd was small. I had grown strong but tired, bug-bitten, and hungry. Given the length of the caribou’s journey and ours, I wanted to stay together with the herd for a while. I wanted it for myself and for Tim.
Once Tim had come to terms with leaving his dad alone for the summer and decided to continue with the trip after his mother died, what he wanted and needed from the tundra became extra important to me. I wanted to smooth the road for him somehow, though I couldn’t articulate it at the time. Because of what he had been through, I thought his opinion about a group decision should carry more weight than the others’. If Tim didn’t give his opinion, which he often didn’t on that trip, I would guess or consult with him privately and then stick up for that point of view. I had been to the hospital and the funeral and seen his father’s spirit burned up by grief. If our trip had some healing to offer, I would try to find it. If popularity was the price, so be it. I felt protective of Tim, and it could make me impossible to negotiate with on seemingly trivial points of group process. “We need a rest day.” “We should stop checking the time.” “We came here for the wildlife.” Oh, I could be stubborn.
Tim and I talked about the trip and his grief during our time alone. He loved to watch the wolves, muskox, and bears; he hated to rush; he wanted to rest. In the city, I would have taken him a bouquet of flowers or food for the freezer. On the tundra, I tried for moments.
My approach, which I never thought rationally about, likely caused more harm than good. For one thing, we had a long way to go and couldn’t afford to stop on every whim. For another, grief keeps its own counsel and won’t be bullied. It’s an emotion that must be accommodated — it moves in with you for a while — and all we could do was make room.
I felt peaceful tucked between my two friends, but we had the rest of our herd to think about. The others were likely trying to be patient; it was cold after all.
“Should we go back?” I ventured after a long time on the rock between my friends. I didn’t want to and knew Tim wasn’t ready. He would have sat there all day, joined the herd if he could. His pace was out of step with that of a group trip, in which compromise, especially about timing, is inevitable. He was already thinking of the seven-week trip he would take three years later all by himself. That way, he would never have to bend to anyone else’s schedule. He could follow every fascination, and he would. “Finding those caribou was one of the most fortunate things that had ever happened to me,” he told me later. “It was hard to be with people who didn’t share that.”
Spending time with us made him dream of spending weeks alone.
We packe
d up and left the caribou behind, sort of.
Later that day we pulled out to scout a big set of rapids, another pinching-in of the river. Our shoes sank into the sandy banks. Curved, parallel white lines that mirrored the lapping of the waves contoured the beach. The lines were thin and bent and beautiful, but I didn’t realize what they were until I crouched down.
“Ring around the tub,” said Tim in amazement.
Caribou hair, from thousands.
I swore I could still smell them.
CHAPTER 13
ARRIVAL
THOSE CARIBOU DAYS ticked by in a wash of beauty. The weather stayed clear and warm with enough breeze to discourage the bugs. We tackled the rapids and whooped and hollered as we nailed each line. We ate dahl, burnt popcorn, spaghetti, molasses cookies, bulgur hash, pizza, vegan macaroni and cheese, and walnut chocolate chip bannock. We fished, and it was hard to catch something small enough to eat. Long sunsets bathed us all in candlelight for hours each day. We were starting to look weathered; we were earning our stripes.
I had reached the part of the trip that had felt unattainable a month ago. I believed that I could hike, paddle, and lift big packs out there forever and not be tired. I became wiry and wide awake. I imagined that my eyes were clear; I could have used the compass mirror to check, but I didn’t. Life was more beautiful with nothing to reflect it but the water’s surface.
Although the land had doled out so much large-scale drama, the comfort of that week made it easier to appreciate the little things. We found gyrfalcons, who spend the entire winter up north; peregrines on cliffs, ready to chase down the smaller birds they hunt for food; and even two bald eagles, hundreds of kilometers from their usual range. Ptarmigan chicks scuttled through the dwarf birch. A woolly bear caterpillar rippled over dry soil. Delicate black casings of warble flies shone like onyx between the bushes. By an Arctic fox den, the adults broke stolen eggs in the midnight sun, and pups squealed while the yolks streamed gold onto the ground.
Going on personal trips, as opposed to working as a guide or naturalist, helps me reconnect with the mysteries of the land. I can forget the specifics of a ptarmigan’s nearly continuous molt that helps it blend into the tundra every season. I don’t need to remember that woolly bear caterpillars live seven years before turning into moths and that Arctic foxes steal goose eggs to feed litters of up to eighteen young. On my own trips, I don’t have to answer why the wolves are howling, how many bears are in the area, or what someone else should wear that day. I still pick up the field guide, but I spend more time outside the boundaries of my knowledge.
WE’D BEEN ON the river a month, and because of our night paddling on the lakes, we had stayed on schedule. We were into the biggest rapids by then — Escape, Sandhill, Wolf, Whirlpool. Eddy lines boiled into dangerous traps, and whirlpools sucked at the air. My arms felt like no match for the waves that slopped against the hull and fuzzed the land with their rush and roar, but I was ready to take them on anyway. I loved the tilt of the boat as we powered into an opposing flow and leaned all the way over in unison. I knew the weight of our boat and how it would react to each challenge from the river. I still suffered from a pounding heart and pre-rapid nausea — the stakes were as high as ever — but we were hauling ass, and it was fun.
Scouting Wolf Rapids. CREDIT: TIM IRVIN
I stretched at the river’s edge while we scouted the second of the Escape Rapids. This set was straightforward, meaning not technical or windy, but the water was gigantic. The waves in midriver stood 7 or 8 feet tall, much too big for open boats in the most remote corner of the Arctic mainland. A sharp rock turned up a diagonal curler so pronounced I thought of Hawaii — except the water here was black.
After scouting, Jen and I returned to the boat, where she took the bow, and I took the stern. Time to review the plan.
“Are you good?” I said to her.
“Straight ahead, river right, avoid the curler and the rock, eddy out.”
“Perfect.”
We let go of shore and let the river take us, as it wanted to. We accelerated — “Power! Power!” — into the tongue, and I overrode that part of me, always a little part, that wanted to grab the shore and wait (for what?).
The diagonal push that came from left to right tried to slam us back to shore. The wind would assist, but I pried us out, mid-tongue, until we moved beyond the black-on-black shadow that waited to toss us over. It passed a hand’s breadth from my hip, and we were home free, for one . . . two . . . until I angled toward the boiling eddy line. Chaos. Too much angle and we would sprawl over instantly, too little and it wouldn’t let us in.
Fortunately, adrenaline gave us extra strength. Jen reached across the boiling confusion and planted her paddle like a tree in firm soil. She leaned far over, beyond logic, and our whole vessel pivoted around her until we bumped up gently to the head of the eddy. Joy surged through me.
“Nice!”
Jen had the knack: trust, lean into it.
Farther downstream, an expanse of granite, inches above river level, served as both kitchen and dining room. Our last onion, from the girls, fried on the stove. My mouth watered. Tim and Drew spent a long time casting for the perfect lake trout. Tim filleted and battered it while its flesh twitched. Jen stirred the onion and added some pine nuts.
Pink swirls embedded in the rock curved under our feet as we settled a short distance from the stove, eager for our bowls. I had been off admiring the pink river beauty flowers in low light. My plastic bowl arrived, heaping with quinoa, onions, pine nuts, and crispy trout. The batter crunched between my teeth; the tundra hadn’t yet stolen its heat. The fish steamed; onions sizzled. We savored the food and licked our bowls clean.
Jen and Tim returned to the kitchen area, and I closed my eyes. Moments later, they were back.
“Oh my God,” said Drew.
I opened my eyes to find a golden cake, home-dried apples and bananas, and a pan full of melted chocolate.
“Fondue!” Jen exclaimed with a grin.
The river slapped behind us as twelve hands scooped cake and fruit into hot chocolate, then scraped every morsel from the sides of the pan. My stomach stretched blissfully.
The next couple of days proved to be rare weather gems: sunny, warm, and calm. We couldn’t help but feel the same way. In the city, every tangle with a friend or colleague must be overtly dealt with or silently buried. It was different on those cold, sweeping plains that made us feel both small and strong. Often, a dispute or cranky spell had more to do with when I last ate than anything more complicated or emotional. And the land governed our moods just as much. Just as crossing the ice had scrubbed away tension and the storm had forced us even closer together, so the beautiful days — with the sky wide and blue — made for peaceful travel and easy friendship.
We decided to camp early and pulled off a big ferry to river left, where we found ourselves in a jungle gym of granite. The water had dropped enough to expose shelves of layered rock that jutted out into the river and provided seats and countertops. We spread out to explore and relax, and then Alie came over holding the packet of facial masque her sister had sent.
“Do you want to join me at the spa?” she asked.
How could I refuse?
Tim and Drew didn’t want to play, so Alie, Jen, Levi, and I met on the warm rocks next to a little pool of water. Jen and Alie took charge.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Foot rubs, hand massage, hair brushing, facials — you know,” Alie smiled.
The awkwardness I would have felt doing these kinds of things back in the city hung on for a while, but I soon relaxed into relaxing. Jen dabbed a poultice of oatmeal and peppermint tea on my face, while someone else put my head in their lap and brushed my hair. I didn’t even know we had a hairbrush. Rubbing each other’s feet took some courage, but it felt great. Levi took special care to check that my toes — still swollen and purple from too much cold and wet — weren’t getting worse. He massage
d, salved, and bandaged a stubborn crack in my hand. A bit of extra time and effort turned a lazy afternoon into a luxury. At the end, we all lay in a row on the rocks and sighed. When I washed the cracked oatmeal off my face, my skin did feel smoother.
We pulled out all the stops that night, and Drew built a tiny campfire with his precious stash of driftwood. We ate by its glow.
As dessert was cooling, Levi walked over to the river but rushed back a few moments later. He called to us in an urgent stage whisper, “Guys! There’s a caribou making a hairy ferry!”
We all stood up to see, and sure enough, an adult male with a huge rack strained against the current. Caribou like to cross at narrow points, but this animal was making the same scary ferry we had made earlier to reach our campsite. The rapid had one smooth tongue at river right and a huge ledge beside two big, nasty holes at river left. The caribou had waded in and started swimming when Levi noticed it.
We stood up in time to see the caribou cross the smooth water with his body perfectly angled for a forward ferry. His scoop-shaped hooves pedaled the water below the surface. He was a third of the way across when his eyes darted to us, and his nostrils flared with a snort.
“We should hide,” said Tim, even though the animal had clearly seen us.
We crawled along the bank and ducked behind a group of boulders. As I left the kitchen, I grabbed the fresh cookies made with oatmeal and salvaged butterscotch chips and passed them out. It was time for some high adrenaline Arctic TV. We sat behind the boulders, munching our dessert and awaiting the outcome. We had clearly spooked this caribou. He needed a plan.
He didn’t want to come to our side anymore, but he didn’t change direction either. Perhaps he had fled a predator or was too simple or stubborn to go back on his decision. We watched as that lone animal played tug-of-war with the river at the top of the tongue, where the current was fastest. With each pedal of his legs, his head lifted higher out of the water and ruffled a wave around his neck. He kept the same angle, so the more he pedaled, the closer he inched toward us — above a bone-snapping hole that would surely tear him apart. Even the smooth line led to a wave train 6 feet tall.
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