The delicate thread holding our group together had stretched to the breaking point. Doug ate lunch very quickly and then wandered up the beach to Byron and me and announced, “I’ll be on the right side of the river somewhere.” We finished our usual long lunch break and caught up to him at the Donnelly River. We had been paddling for ten hours, and although we had covered only 32 miles, I thought it time to call it a day. When Byron pulled up, Doug asked, “How much farther are we going to go today?”
“Looks like a good spot to camp just down the river a bit,” I suggested slowly.
Anger clouded Doug’s face as he exclaimed, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you guys. I think we ought to go to Snafu Creek. Good grief, we’ve got a good current; it’ll take us only a couple of hours.” He stormed to his canoe, pushed into the current and said, “I will be drifting until you catch up.” And over his shoulder he yelled sarcastically, “I hope I don’t drift too far.”
Byron and I watched him go, and I said,” We’ve got a real problem here.”
Byron replied, “Yeah, I guess we do, but I don’t think it’s got that much to do with the pace. Doug’s not enjoying himself, and he just wants to get off this river as soon as he can.”
“Do you think he might quit?” I asked.
“No, he’s too proud to quit. He’ll probably keep going even if he hated the entire trip.”
I asked, “Well, how do you feel about the situation? Do you want to speed up?”
He thought a minute and then said, “I’ve got three priorities: first to enjoy the trip, second to get along with the group, and third, to reach the Bering Sea. I’ve been having a good time until now, and I don’t want to rush along.” I agreed that I didn’t want to rush, and his priorities were similar to my own.
We caught Doug and suggested a camping spot about a mile away. Doug seemed to agree so we set up camp, but Doug just stood around while we lit a fire and unloaded our boats. He kept looking as if he was about to say something but didn’t know how. Byron finally told him, “Well, old boy, spit it out.”
Doug then said, “I think it would be better if I went on alone for a while. You guys want to go too slow and…“
Byron rather abruptly interrupted, “Look I want to enjoy the trip, get along with everybody, and get to the Bering Sea, in that order.”
Doug angrily answered, “Well, it’s not my right to insist that we should be making fifty miles a day when you don’t want to, but it’s another thing to not reach the Bering Sea because we’ve been fooling around. You guys have gotten too damn lazy. I’ve got too much energy to stick around anymore.” He threw the tent poles in my canoe saying, “Here’s your damn tent poles. I’ll meet you in the East Channel somewhere near Inuvik.”
“Take care,” Byron admonished, and Doug was gone, a lone canoe on the wide river.
I had been sitting on my heels and remained silent while the scene unfolded, afraid to say anything for fear of saying something wrong. I was reasonably sure that the real problem had little to do with the pace but that it was just like Byron said; he had not been enjoying himself and just wanted to get off the river as fast as he could.
It seemed strange to sleep in the tent with only one other occupant and to wake in the morning and see only two canoes on the beach, only two pots on the fire, and only two paddlers to venture into the river in the rain.
The river roared along, nearly 2 1/2 miles wide, through what is marked on some maps as the Spruce Island Rapids. The river appeared to reach a dead end, with cliffs rimming the river on all sides. As my canoe swept along irresistibly with the powerful current, a narrow gap in the cliffs scarcely a fourth of a mile wide opened, and through that gap the river swept with all its power into a narrow canyon known as the Ramparts. Here the massive limestone cliffs rose 200 feet above the river shutting out the rest of the world. Dark shadows chased streaks of brilliant sunshine dancing on the river with only sky, river, rock, and two lonely canoers swept along in the current.
When we stopped for lunch and to dry out, I walked up a gully to the top of the cliffs overlooking the river. Beauty surrounded me. Everything was endowed with a special portion of whatever it is that makes us say, “Wow, look at that!” Flowers, covered with raindrops, brushed lovingly against my feet and filled the air with their lovely scents. Along the tops of the cliffs deep, soft, and very wet moss covered the ground. A few trees hunched on the edge of the cliffs, beaten by the wind and yet still standing, proud to be trees. I wanted to call out to Doug from the cliff tops, “It’s a beautiful world. Slow down and enjoy it.”
The gorge gradually became a wind tunnel with waves piling like huge monsters in the middle of the river. We stayed close to shore, out of the biggest waves but also out of the strongest current, slowing our progress. The cliffs came right down to the water’s edge forcing us to be cautious because, with no place to get to shore, a capsize would be very dangerous.
Before long we realized we were getting almost nowhere and the wind was increasing, so we stopped at the first possible campsite and planned for an early start. In order to make it easier to get up, we made up our own time which we called Stanley Standard Time. Byron set his watch ahead four hours, and we planned to get up at our usual time of about eight o’clock, in reality four 0’ clock.
Doug’s departure forced me to take a good hard look at my motives and priorities. Why does anyone go on a long wilderness trip like this? I’ve been asked that many times. For a long time I gave a stock answer, “If you have to ask that question, you won’t understand the answer.” To some extent that is true, but it doesn’t begin to answer the question. The beauty of the wilderness is certainly part of the answer as is the feeling of doing something that few people can or will do. Being self-sufficient, doing your own thing, meeting a big challenge, being in great physical shape, getting away from the clutter and rush of everyday life, simplifying life—these are all reasons given by people who travel in the wilderness. One reason not often given but to me one of the most important is the sensation of timelessness that a long journey creates. We all long for timelessness in one form or another; we all wish for immortality. In a long journey time stands still to some extent. At the beginning the end seems so far away, an eternity away. It’s impossible to conceive of an end. Of course toward the end of the trip the timeless feeling disappears. Someday, perhaps, I will embark on a journey with no end and experience true timelessness, eternity.
Our idea of setting our own time zone seemed to work the first day. Twenty-five miles went by before lunch, and we joked about being obsessed with making miles. We crossed the Arctic Circle in the early afternoon and were welcomed by a blinding hailstorm. After an easy forty miles, we stopped to camp by the Tieda River.
Byron quickly caught two northern pike, and I boiled one and added the meat to a casserole base calling for salmon or tuna. Delicious! A disadvantage of starting early was going to bed with the sun high in the sky making the tent feel like a furnace because we had foolishly pitched it in the sun. We took a dip in the cold river and then the warm tent felt very comfortable, but it was still hard to sleep. A four-hour time change can’t be adjusted to immediately.
I awoke later to the sound of sheets of rain driving against a wet and sagging tent leaking in several spots. I got up and restaked the tent so the tent fly faced away from the walls of the tent and then burrowed back into my sleeping bag to wait out the rain. From the look of the clouds I expected another all-day drencher. But weather changes rapidly in the Arctic, the clouds blew away, the rain stopped, and we happily greeted the day. Byron had been smart and brought a piece of birch bark into the tent so we had no trouble starting a fire even with wet wood.
Late in the afternoon Byron spotted Doug’s camp on the opposite side of the river. We stopped, climbed the bank, and waved at him but didn’t see any reaction. Byron said, “He’s probably asleep. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on a night paddling schedule.”
“I figured that he would go on a 24 hour spree to get past the Arctic Circle, but I guess he didn’t if this is as far as he’s gotten,” I remarked.
Byron surmised, “Well, you know Doug. He’s probably having trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. I figure he will be back in a day or two.”
That prophecy turned out to be right as the next day I spotted what looked like Doug’s canoe on the shore. I thought, “Surely that can’t be him. He must have gone farther than this.” | approached carefully, wondering if he was still upset with us. “Anybody home?” I asked. No answer, so I peeked inside his tarp shelter and saw a fire burning and equipment left all over the beach. Byron came up and I asked, “Do you think he saw us coming and left?”
“No, I doubt it. Shall we wait for him or shall we just leave a note?” Just then Doug sauntered back with binoculars in his hand.
“Just out checking on the birds around here. Saw a big eagle just up on the ridge.” Then the problem at hand came back and he said, “I must say I’m glad to see you guys. I’ve had a lot of time to think the last few days, you know, and I don’t know, maybe this isn’t the kind of trip to do solo.”
“Look,” Byron said, “we’ll be eating lunch a couple hours down the river. Why don’t you pack up and meet us there?”
Doug caught up to us shortly after we stopped, walked to the fire, and asked somewhat timidly, “Do you guys mind if I rejoin you or do you want me to go on a little longer by myself?”
“No, we missed you,” assured Byron.
I fumbled around for the right words to say, hesitated twice, and then said, “Welcome back.”
Although we were glad to have the group together again, tensions lingered around the campfire that night. None of us knew exactly what to say. We wondered a bit about the rest of the trip. It might take some sort of challenge or disaster to bring us fully back together.
Now over 2100 miles into the trip, we couldn’t see either end. Jasper? It seemed like a place we had left years ago. And the Bering Sea? It didn’t seem possible to ever get there. I loved the rivers and felt I could go on forever. A mystique surrounds this kind of experience. It’s a magic blend of making miles and camping, of becoming saturated with beauty and facing untold hardships, of sublime moments of rapture and moments of deep depression. We had just faced a serious problem, and now it was time to go on the rest of the journey together.