After we left Fort Good Hope we would not see another town until we reached Arctic Red River. This was the most remote and loneliest stretch on the Mackenzie River. We noticed that the trees were getting much smaller, and we were approaching the northern limit of trees although being down on the river meant that we would never cross that theoretical limit.
As we approached the Mackenzie Delta, the current gradually slowed and many sandbars attested to a slower current. We didn’t worry too much about running aground, but often one channel would have much more current in it. I often climbed the bank and looked over the river always getting a dramatic change of viewpoint; from the bank the size of the river and position of islands and sandbars became obvious.
The most marvelous sight greeted me next morning when I stumbled out of the tent still half asleep—blue sky stretched from the limits of the vast horizon. After weeks of rain at least once every day, it seemed a dream. When Byron and Doug crawled out, no one said a word about the cloudless sky as if were anybody to mention, the sunshine, the spell might break, and we would wake up in the rain. On this magic day a lynx bounded away, startled I’m sure by a bright red canoe. Next I rescued a dragonfly lying on its back in the water by giving him a flip with my paddle. As the water rose in the air, it emerged from the spray and flew away. I owed the dragonflies a favor since they eat mosquitoes.
Then in the top of a spruce tree I spotted two bald eagles being dive-bombed by gulls. The eagles snapped at the gulls but would not leave their tree. Later a pert little red fox poked his head over the bank and watched calmly as I drifted by. Often I drifted alone with the sky in the middle of the river and the wide-open emptiness of the land and sky. The natural serenity and rhythm of the river all called to me. “This is the real world,” I seemed to hear, “and out here the world is okay.” The world was okay as I paddled along that morning, and I can still picture in my mind the sunbeams dancing and flashing on the water as I sat atop the bank fifty feet above the river watching as first Byron and then Doug slipped silently by, moving smoothly downstream.
We were approaching Arctic Red River and wondered how to get to Inuvik to pick up our food boxes. Our original plan had been to canoe down to Inuvik and then back to the Rat River. Now Byron suggested, “You know, we could hitchhike into Inuvik, paddle out to the Beaufort Sea, and then come back up the Husky Channel to the Rat River. That way we would get to see the ocean and delta a little more.”
“I don’t know,” I mused, “I wonder what the wind and current is like in the delta. We could have a hard time getting to the ocean against the wind and then have a rough time getting back to the Rat River against the current.” As we talked the sky blushed subtly at the last caress of the sun, and an afterglow shone along the horizon as if Mother Nature were clinging to her memory of the day. I took a chance and slept outside. Doug and Byron had no faith in the weather, and they were right. I was roused by tiny raindrops and had to crawl into the tent.
The next day we traveled through a series of rainstorms and patches of bright sunshine to within a short morning’s paddle of Arctic Red River. The combinations of sunshine and rain created some marvelous rainbows and dramatic lighting, a show worthy of the finest nightclub on earth. Sunshine poured through the dark clouds like a waterfall of light. Following each drenching shower a huge rainbow spread its hues arching across the sky.
A torrential rainstorm passed over just before we stopped to camp. After I pulled my canoe on shore and shook the water off my hat, I said, “I hereby apologize to Robert Mead for all my insults and for laughing at his book. He’s right; there is a lot of rain and wind on the Mackenzie.” We had been poking fun at his book, Ultimate North, because he seemed to always emphasize the negative aspects of his journey.
In anticipation of town the next day and remembering the odor in the tent the night before, I thought I ought to take a bath. While I debated the relative merits of a swim in the river over a sponge bath with warm water, Doug quickly pointed out, “All you’ve got to do is take off your clothes, get out your bar of soap, and wait for the next rainstorm.”
“Thanks a lot. You’ve just made up my mind. Can I borrow your big pot to heat water for a sponge bath?”
Mosquitoes and rain drove us into the tent early, but at times we enjoyed a cozy evening reading a book or writing in journals while rain pattered and mosquitoes buzzed outside. But the wind whistled down the Lower Ramparts and blasted our exposed camp all night. Hunger finally drove us from the tent, but rough water kept us huddled around our fire until, becoming impatient, we launched our canoes. The waves were huge, water crashed over our bows at regular intervals, and we traveled in conditions we would have never dreamed of earlier.
The Lower Ramparts, less spectacular than the Upper Ramparts, exhibit grey shale cliffs. Soon we reached town and Byron asked, “Well, here we are. What do we do now?”
“Just as we always do,” I answered. “We’ll sit here and wait for a providential event.”
Instead we received the opposite. We had decided to forward our boxes to Arctic Red River to avoid going into Inuvik, so Doug and I walked to the post office and found on the door a notice, “Due to the ongoing postal strike, no outgoing mail will be accepted. I stamped my foot saying disgustedly, “Good Heavens! What a time for a strike. I’ve got only thirty dollars with me. That ain’t enough to buy food to get to Fort Yukon where I have money waiting. I’m going to be eating a lot of fish or else starving.”
“Well, hold on to your hat. Maybe we can work something out yet,” Doug soothed. We went into the office and talked to the girls there. They seemed to think that if we went to the post office in Inuvik, the postmaster would probably give us our mail.
After a little conference around a fire, we decided to hide our gear and canoes on the other side of the river near the ferry crossing and hitchhike into Inuvik. With no luck before the ferry stopped for the evening, we went back to our carefully hidden canoes and set up camp.
In theory this seventieth day of our journey marked the halfway point. I watched a curious rabbit nose among willows and recalled times when the weather had been at its worst but we laughed and sang our way through the rain and waves. We were learning to feel more deeply the wonder of the world and a wild and beautiful land. The magic stayed with us, and I thought, “If it’s half as good as the half we’ve known… Here’s Hail to the rest of the road.”
We caught a ride next day and had no trouble getting our boxes from a kind postmaster who just happened to walk into the building when we came up. Ina few hours we were back at our canoes with thirty days of food, sufficient to take us over the Richardson Mountains and down to Fort Yukon. We muddled along the rest of the day doing things we put off while traveling day after day. We patched a few gouges in the canoes and on a couple of paddles that were starting to fray on the end, cleaned out our packs, and reorganized our food and gear.
As we sat around the fire in high spirits I read a portion of a letter from my grandmother. “I am shocked that you plan to stay up there until September 15. It will be winter up north by the middle of August, and you will freeze to death. I looked at the map, and there is no way you can get from Inuvik to the Porcupine River, as you suggested, as there are mountains in between, and how can you carry your gear so far?”