A big black bear ambled across the hillside, a study in the science of lovely laziness. He poked with one big paw at a rotten log, tossed a few slivers of decaying wood into the air and then, with a sigh of pleasure, rolled in the debris. He didn’t have a care in the world, and as long as he had plenty of food and solitude, he was happy.
I contrasted him to us humans; we are always hurrying here and there, trying to do so much, and in reality doing so little. We had just passed under the Alaska Pipeline and seen the tourists in their motor homes and cars parked by the shore. One of the motor homes had a big sticker plastered across its back bumper, “We drove the Haul Road.”
Not impressed with the hustle and bustle, I continued down the river, pleased to stop and do as I pleased. We had stuck together in the Yukon Flats but now had resumed our loose but efficient method of staying together while paddling miles apart. We had an unspoken agreement to stay on one side of the river unless it was obviously advantageous to cross. After traveling together for so long, we were pretty much attuned to the other’s preferences and could usually unerringly follow each other.
The fast current pushed us along rapidly, and even with the wind against us we still covered over fifty miles. Although beautiful, the size of the surrounding country seemed most impressive. Massive mountains, the huge river, the whole land had an aura of spaciousness.
Finding clear water to drink had been difficult in the flats so we appreciated the good, cold water of the pretty little stream we camped by. After supper I walked through the woods admiring the flowers and leaves covered with sparkling water drops from the shower that had just passed over. When the sun broke through, it illuminated the droplets, clothing each tiny flower and leaf with a bracelet of diamonds. The shining orbs danced everywhere, so as I picked my way through the forest, I showered diamonds heedlessly.
Next day I watched Doug paddle ahead of me, a lone canoe on a silver path. The sunlight shone and danced on the river, lighting the river’s path beneath the towering black mountains topped with dark clouds. My paddle moved automatically as my canoe forged a path through the waves, and every stroke made a note in a perfect symphony.
Later Doug asked, “Mike, are you sure you ought to baking those brownies?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“When I paddled here, I could smell them baking for about a mile. And look across the river. I don’t see why that bear over there couldn’t smell them too.”
I looked and sure enough, there stood a bear. I laughed and said, “Ah, he wouldn’t swim all the way across the …” My laughter stopped short when the bear plunged into the river.
Doug said, “What did I tell you? He’s coming for those brownies.” But then the bear reappeared, and we relaxed. The silly bear continued to dive into the river and scramble back out. We wondered if it might be fishing, but he couldn’t possibly see fish in the muddy water.
Long before we could see anything, the unmistakable roar of a huge mass of rapidly moving water reached our ears. We stopped just above the place marked on the map simply as “The Rapids” and looked it over. The large mound of rocks in the middle of the river created all the noise as the river cascaded around them. The rest of the river swirled and boiled through a narrow channel. We whizzed through it and stopped for lunch on a huge rock by the shore.
With little wind we cruised rapidly, zipping by the town of Ramparts on the other side of the river. Late in the afternoon we were so far apart that the other canoes were just tiny white specks on the dark river ahead. When we stopped, we got out the map measurer to check our day’s progress. “Would you believe it,” announced Byron, “We just did a 66-mile day.”
Doug was in high spirits for another reason. He had stopped to talk to two guys at a cabin and ask questions about Alaska. He said, “The guys invited me in, gave me a cup of coffee, and started asking questions. They were interested in my canoe, and one of them offered to buy it for four hundred dollars if I put it on the barge and sent it to Fairbanks. Then he offered to pay for shipping as well. I got his phone number in Fairbanks; he was just out here for a visit to one of his friends.”
Byron said, “Well, that’s good. Maybe if it works out we can put both canoes on the barge. Selling these boats will sure help if we stay in Alaska.”
We stopped in Tanana to mail letters and buy a few odds and ends. We had been pronouncing “Tanana” to rhyme with banana and soon discovered the correct pronunciation: “ta-na-naw.” Soon we were pronouncing banana to rhyme with Tanana. Doug wanted to go to the store and ask if they had any ba-na-naws for sale.
As we continued leisurely to the Torzitna River, clouds drifted overhead and periodically dampened our conversation. Byron and Doug were discussing where and what they would go and do after the journey. I went a little way up the Tozitna River and, as I moved along, I thought of the passage I had just read in Walden. “Let us settle ourselves and work and wedge our feet downward through the slush and mud of opinion and prejudice and tradition and delusion and appearance, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion until we come to a hard bottom and rocks in a place which we can call reality, and say, this is and no mistake” (Thoreau).