Paddlenorth

by Jennifer Kingsley

  All of my longing to get home had disappeared.

  I pulled out my camera and took a self-portrait of the three of us with our heads close together and the tundra rolling away behind us. Our last moment of the trip, in some ways. Our new leader was waiting on the beach.

  It would never be the six of us again.

  Levi, Tim, and Jenny on Day 53. CREDIT: JENNIFER KINGSLEY

  GREG HAD KNOWN about the boat before we did. The ice shifted just in time for him to call off the plane from Yellowknife. Within twenty-four hours on August 15 and 16, he talked to the air charter, his contacts in Gjoa Haven, and the “nice ice people” from Environment Canada, and he emailed our families three times with updates. The messages read as though he were out on the land with us, and in spirit I think he was. It was hard for him to trust the final leg of the journey to a stranger, but in the end he felt that “this crossing should be as our adventurers planned it originally.”

  JERRY ARQVIQ WAS a big man. I stood about a foot taller than him, but he still seemed big to me. He and his twelve-year-old nephew, Kenny, stood on the beach in their rubber boots. Each wore a baseball cap with the hood of a hoodie pulled over it — Jerry’s red, Kenny’s black. Over the hoodies they wore winter jackets; Jerry’s was a parka style with a rip in the back of the right arm that went from the shoulder to the wrist. Jerry had sunglasses and a handlebar moustache; Kenny, a big smile and chubby cheeks.

  Levi strode over to them and extended a hand. “Boy,” he said, “are we ever glad to see you.”

  “Do you want some chili?” Drew asked. “It will take us a while to get ready.”

  In the first hour, we tripped over each other to chat with the new members of our group. How is the ice? Do you want some tea? How should we load the boats? On and on. Jerry said almost nothing, and Kenny settled in to play with our cameras and eat some supper. Our social skills felt stiff; we were out of practice. We gleaned that the last three days of wind had been enough to free the harbor in Gjoa Haven. Many people had left the village in their boats to hunt and fish, and Jerry and Kenny had come for us. There was still plenty of ice, and they had to cross a particularly wicked piece of water to reach Montreal Island.

  “But you made it,” I said to Jerry, “so that means the water is calm enough to cross?”

  “Calm enough for us,” he said, looking at Kenny, “not for you.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Okay. I’ll go take my tent down.”

  Levi and I left to pack our stuff while Drew took Kenny over to start a bonfire. It had been too windy to burn what remained of Drew’s woodpile, and Drew would be damned if he was going to leave before torching it. We needed time to pack anyway, and rushing wasn’t really Jerry’s thing.

  Over at the tent site Levi said to me, “We seem pretty high-strung compared to them.”

  We packed our bags but kept out every layer of clothing we had in anticipation of a freezing cold nighttime boat ride. Back at the beach, we pulled the thwarts off our longest boat so that we could nest a 16-footer inside it, and Levi rigged a bridle to help tow the boats smoothly inside the wake. We stacked our bags at the water’s edge for loading, and I tried to memorize the way the beach felt beneath my feet.

  JERRY’S BOAT WAS an open 22-foot aluminum speedboat — the workhorse of the North — with a 75-horsepower Honda four-stroke engine. A custom-built plywood shelter took up the front third of the boat, and that is where Jerry and his family could sleep. It doubled as a hold during seal-hunting expeditions. The dashboard had a small plexiglass windscreen and a plastic ghetto blaster with a tape deck. Some fishing lures dug into the plywood next to the engine controls. All of our gear fit into the hold, and all of us fit into the cockpit. We towed the boats on different length lines behind us. Even with all of my clothes, including my down coat, I still felt the biting cold, so I hid behind Captain Kenny (as Jerry called him), who seemed comfortable in his hoodie and ski jacket.

  Jerry stood motionless at the wheel as we revved up far faster than the six of us had gone in weeks. The evening light was enough for him to navigate by. Kenny alternated between filming us with our own cameras, pulling his wooden toy boat alongside the big boat, and pointing out birds that we could barely see. Shorebirds, seagulls, little birds — he searched them out in the gloaming and told us their names in Inuktitut.

  As we passed Ogle Point, the water came up shallow and the sea ice closed in. I stood up to get a closer look as Jerry trimmed the motor and jogged between the floes. He clearly needed to concentrate, but I couldn’t stop my flow of questions, and he answered patiently.

  “I love to drive in the ice,” he said. He explained that cracks tend to open on full or new moons and that ice-filled areas are usually navigable in the middle — you have to push through the edges to get to the clear spots. “When the ice is open, there is always a way through,” he said, “but if it is starting to pile up on itself, stay out.” We had learned a lot during our summer alone, but Jerry raised the bar. Our piles of gear looked excessive. Our chatter, including my own, grated on my ears.

  “I want to teach Kenny about the ice,” Jerry continued.

  Darkness and ice closed in on us around midnight, and we saw the lights of Gjoa Haven, a few miles away, around the same time. Hot showers. Mattresses. Jerry slowly picked his way between the floes. Kenny pushed some pieces away with a paddle, and Jerry nudged others with the hull. The bright ice stood out against the black water.

  “Wasn’t like this on the way over,” Kenny said.

  “I think we should go to that island,” said Jerry. He gestured behind us.

  But we were so close to the village.

  “Or else we’ll run out of gas,” Jerry added.

  Another chance to give up our expectations.

  We found a beach on the island nearby and got out the tents. Jerry and Kenny didn’t have one, and they only had one blanket, so we slept three to a tent and Levi opened up his sleeping bag to share with Kenny, who slept fine (Levi didn’t).

  “Wake me up when it clears in the morning,” Jerry said. He stretched out on his back and fell asleep right away.

  We got up early, eager to get going, and set about making breakfast. Everyone was up but Jerry. I went to his tent and said good morning.

  “Is it clear?” he asked, though I suspect he knew the answer.

  “Uh . . . no,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Tim and I headed up onto the island’s gravelly slopes in search of water. We promptly got turned around in the fog and spent an hour trying to find camp again, never mind the water.

  “Couldn’t find any,” we explained on our return. We didn’t mention getting lost.

  “You don’t get water from up there,” said Kenny. He rolled his eyes a little and pointed out to the ice. “You get it from over there.”

  We strapped him into one of our life jackets and Tim took him out in a canoe to get fresh water from the snow that lingered on the sea ice. Obvious, once Kenny pointed it out.

  Kenny looked nervous as he stepped into our tippy canoe. When he sat on the bottom of the boat, his life jacket pushed up around his ears. He gripped the gunwales. Tim pushed the boat into an ice floe, and Kenny set a pot and paddle down on top of it. He stood shakily and tested one foot on the ice. Solid. He eased up onto the floe — back in familiar territory — and relaxed immediately. Tim followed, and they used their paddles to shovel snow into the big pot, which Tim took back into the canoe. “Thanks!” Kenny said as he shucked the life jacket and took off across the floe in his hoodie and baseball cap.

  Tim sat in the canoe and watched Kenny pull from his jacket a piece of caribou antler with a line and hook tied to the end of it. He started jigging.

  “There’s fish under here,” he said with a grin.

  The morning passed. Kenny looked around in our stuff and took selfies with our cameras, Jerry slept in, and the six of us watched the weather for any sign of change, just as we had been doing al
l summer.

  Jerry emerged as the fog thinned enough to see Gjoa Haven again.

  “I think it’s time to go,” he said. We loaded up.

  Jerry swung his boat around the ice with ease now that we could see the path, and before we reached the harbor the ice had disappeared again. A cluster of low buildings clad in gray, blue, and beige siding made up most of the town. Gravel covered the roads and yards, and people zipped around on ATVs. The village could have been next to any number of our campsites from the summer; tundra stretched undisturbed right next door. Jerry slowed down outside the harbor and pulled out a tiny cell phone. What now? He grabbed the top corner and pulled out a silver antenna the length of his arm. He punched in a number and started up in rapid Inuktitut. We looked at Kenny.

  “He’s calling my uncle. We’re pretty much out of gas.”

  When we finally bumped against the dock at Gjoa Haven, we were running on fumes.

  I hesitated on the threshold of the boat; we would fly out that afternoon. It was time to return to showers, beds, clean clothes, family, news, cars, wallets, and fresh fruit. But we would leave much more than that behind.

  EPILOGUE

  I FELT LARGER than life in my bridesmaid’s dress a week later in Toronto, as if everything in the world had shrunk except for me. I had agreed to have my hair cut and to shave my legs — though that only exposed more scabs and bruises — but I refused a manicure and pedicure. I was proud of my leathery hands and cracked feet. My face was deep brown and creased, while the rest of my body looked wiry and pale. The tiny shoulder straps that crisscrossed my back felt impossibly delicate.

  In the days after our return south, we sent packages to Camp Widjiwagan for the girls whose things we had collected, but we didn’t hear back from them.

  George Drought and his wife, Barbara Burton, received medical attention in Baker Lake — but Barbara’s left arm, which she had used to lift the pot off the stove, had to be cared for at a burn center in Ontario. She wore a compression stocking for a year to minimize scarring. George did not have any lung damage, and the blisters on his face soon healed. They received a settlement from the stove company. The couple continued to paddle together until George’s health prevented it. He developed Lou Gehrig’s disease and, positive until the end, died in 2012.

  As for the other explorers, it has been almost sixty years since the Moffatt expedition, but it still makes the pages of paddling magazines. In a recent interview, Skip Pessl, the trip’s second-in-command, summed up his group experience: “People revealed themselves as imperfect. We all did.”1 For George Grinnell, revealing himself came slowly; it took him forty-nine years to complete his memoir of that summer.

  In 1961, the northeastern part of Lower Garry Lake was renamed Buliard Lake so that we might remember the priest’s story, but his legacy is best felt on the land and in the empty tent rings that line the banks of the rivers and lakes.

  George Back was knighted at age forty-two, the same year he retired. He had been on expeditions, almost continuously, for twenty-four years. He didn’t marry until he was fifty years old, after courting his fiancée, Theodesia Elizabeth Hammond, for three years. They took a ten-month trip to Europe, in which Theo described herself as a “sad coward.”2 I imagine Back journeying from one European attraction to another with his terrified wife in tow. After all that he’d experienced — from the Napoleonic wars to months of deprivation to commanding his own expeditions — how did he feel about domestic retirement with a woman like that? He outlived her by seventeen years and died at the age of eighty-two.

  I knew soon after our trip that I would grow distant from three of my paddling companions, despite how much I cared for them. That true encounter with wildness, and a brush with grief, was a strain on our young friendships.

  Still, every time I see a picture of Jen, she has the same beautiful smile on her face. Drew and his wife run a camp now. Last I heard from him he said, “I had no idea how that trip would change my whole life.” Alie has made a wonderful success of her writing career, and Levi has migrated to the city; he’s now an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the City University of New York and lives in Manhattan. Tim still heads to the wild every chance he gets, and so do I. We’ve both spent years exploring grizzly and salmon habitat on the west coast as guides and naturalists. Tim has gone back to the Arctic for two trips, including a seven-week solo, and I have returned to the North to guide.

  I have only one item in my house that I brought home from the Back River. It’s an antler from a young caribou, which I found on the riverbank. I brought it home as a gift for Dalton, who has remained a close friend, and he gave it back to me a short time ago. At the bottom end, where the antler would join the head, the bone in cross-section is porous and rough. The shaft of the antler feels smooth and curves gently; it is ridged by shallow canals through which blood vessels would have run when the antler was growing and covered in velvet. At its end are two prongs that head in opposite directions, and both have been chewed by rodents. If you grasp the antler in the middle and let it balance in your hand, it has a solid feeling. I have said that it’s hard to keep a grip on life down here when you are up there, and the opposite is also true, so it’s good to have something to hold on to.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SINCE OUR JOURNEY in 2005, this project has developed a community of supporters and committed listeners. I acknowledge everyone who has breathed life into this story.

  From the beginning, thank you to:

  Lynne Van Luven for inspiring me to get with the program in the first place, and David Leach for supporting me until I found the story I was looking for.

  Lorna Crozier, Tim Lilburn, Karsten Heuer, Ryan Hilperts, Eric Higgs, and my classmates Scott Amos, Sally Stubbs, Garth Martens, and Aaron Shepard.

  Although I needed commitment and language to write this story, one of the hardest things to find early on was a space to write in. Thanks to those who gave me a quiet place: Sherwin Arnott, Becky Cory, Ruth Nelson, Mark van Bakel, Todd Carnahan, David Leach, Bo, Jenny Manzer, and Meg and Adam Iredale-Gray.

  I have half a lifetime of thanks for Tim Irvin, who never stops believing in me, even when I do, and people can do great things with friends like that. Thank you to my other Back River tripmates for the incredible contribution they have been to this journey: Levi Waldron, Drew Gulyas, Alison Pick, and Jen McKay.

  Thank you to the Banff Centre and its Literary Journal­ism program, including all of the 2010 participants and my admirable editors, Don Gillmor and Ian Brown.

  Also:

  The Canada Council for the Arts.

  Martha Magor Webb (Anne McDermid & Associates), for saying yes and being a talented voice of reason and encourage­ment.

  Nancy Flight for her clarity, care, and skill.

  Jennifer Croll for her good-natured corrections and clarifications.

  Rob Sanders and the team at Greystone Books for their enthusiasm and commitment.

  Aaron Spitzer and Up Here magazine, which published portions of this manuscript.

  Lake journal, which also published an earlier version of this story.

  Tassy Kingsley and Bruce Kingsley, without whom I never would have stepped into a canoe.

  Many people showed up at the right time and made a special contribution to this story, including Jenny S., Madeline Sonik, Heidi Braun, Jason Guille, Dalton Wilcox, Nicola Temple, Andrew Westoll, Christopher Hink, Charlotte Gill, Greg Gulyas, Barbara Burton, Ingrid Paulson, and Lesley Cameron.

  The final thank-you is for Toby Meis, who has been down this river with me more times than I can count.

  The mind has its own Mercator projection. The here and now retains, more or less, its true dimensions, while events from our past get pushed to the margins — stretched and distorted like the North and South Poles. For this story, I have explored the poles of my memory, and I take full responsibility for the projection that I have smoothed and pieced together in order to share it.

  ENDNOTES
/>   CHAPTER 5

  1 Back, A Long Yarn. Unpublished memoir (up to 1819), quoted in Steele, The Man Who Mapped the Arctic, 26.

  2 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 99.

  3 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 61.

  4 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 105.

  5 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 109.

  6 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 114.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 Tranströmer, “Guard Duty,” Selected Poems, 111.

  CHAPTER 7

  1 Choque, Joseph Buliard: Fisher of Men, 63.

  2 Choque, Joseph Buliard: Fisher of Men, 109.

  3 Groups of nomadic Inuit had names specific to the regions they traveled. Thus, it is difficult to tease out which name belonged to whom and at what time.

  4 Names of groups, families, and individuals differ between historical accounts.

  5 Choque, Joseph Buliard: Fisher of Men, 173.

  6 Pelly, “The Mysterious Disappearance of Father Buliard, o.m.i.,” 34.

  7 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 250.

  8 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 253.

  9 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 256.

  10 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 260–261.

  11 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 283.

  12 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 294.

  13 Tester and Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes), 282.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 Not her real name.

  2 Not her real name.

  3 Layman, “The $100,000 Rescue,” 19.

  4 Irvin, “Stick with the Facts,” 7.

  5 All quotes in this paragraph from Pick, “Paddling Back in Time,” online comments.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 127.

  2 Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 133.