We said good-bye to John and Corin to travel the last hundred miles to the sea. Only twenty went by before we stopped for the night about three days from the ocean. Not feeling well, Tom went directly to bed. Steve said, “He’s been pushing himself pretty hard to keep up with you guys.” ‘
Byron replied, “That’s funny, we’ve been just loafing along the last couple of weeks. Although come to think of it, Ill be glad if I can keep up this pace when I’m sixty.”
Because this would be the last night with Tom and Steve, we kept the fire bright and teapot hot on the last night as we reminisced about the wild and wonderful things we had done. Sometimes, as on cue, conversation stopped, and the sounds of the night did the talking. Waves lapped on the sandy beach, the wind whispered through the willows, and an owl hooted his lonely song.
Next day we stopped at Fish Village but didn’t turn up any demons in the ramshackle buildings. Good friends and traveling companions Tom and Steve disappeared into the light shimmering off the river with a wave and “Have a good life. See you someday.”
I stopped several times to climb the banks of the delta and walk, run, and skip across miles and miles of big grass, soft plains with cranberry bushes carpeting the ground below waving grass.
Next day when we tried to find the channel taking us to Emmonak and the ocean, our observations didn’t match the map because a big channel just wasn’t on the map. We saw a barge moving down the channel so we followed hoping the pilot knew where he was going. When we reached the town, uncertain of where we were, Doug spotted some guys on a tugboat and went over to ask, “Are we at Emmonak?”
They laughed and said, “Yep, you are here. Why don’t you come on up for a cup of coffee?”
After chatting for a few minutes, we excitedly pushed down the channel toward the ocean. In a pleasant daze we stopped for the night barely six miles away. We could hardly believe we were actually going to get in our canoes next morning and paddle to the Bering Sea.
A seemingly endless stream of boats came up the channel all evening, and nearly all stopped for a few minutes to chat. One of them gave us some whitefish so we could have a fish feast to celebrate completing our journey. Tired as I was, I couldn’t go to sleep. I wanted to scream with joy one moment and cry my eyes out the next.
I lay in my cozy sleeping bag and remembered — those first paddle strokes, the huge and beautiful mountains of jasper, the green Athabasca flowing beneath them, the fear and excitement of the first white-water, the dry feeling in the mouth when the first waves cascaded over the canoe. I thought of the quiet beauty and wildlife of the Little Buffalo and our wild bout with the ice and wind of Great Slave Lake. I remembered the mighty Mackenzie, its bigness and wild weather, the tough ascent of the Rat River and the incredible glory of the Richardson Mountains—what a memory! I pictured the Bell and Porcupine Rivers meandering through the green valleys and the majestic beauty of the Yukon River. Yet the inconceivable marvelous experience had to come to an end. I wrote in my journal by candlelight in a mood of outrageous exuberance yet tempered by the knowledge that the trip was almost over.
“The time came for us to go and so we went. The whole world lay in front of us. We did not own a single acre, and yet the earth was ours. We pierced the heart of the season, traveling with our canoes into the very core of the season. Our journey was a journey of new beginnings, a voyage of new expectations, a quest for a new happiness. We flung ourselves totally into the wilderness. And we did not come back sorry.”
It had seemed impossible that we would actually one day paddle into the Bering Sea. But of course, if happened. The last few miles were fittingly against a strong headwind. And then we were there — 4,000 miles, 4 1/2 months, 2 million paddle strokes — it all ended when I pulled my canoe on the beach, climbed the low bank, and stood with my partners gazing over the Bering Sea.
We had traveled for 134 days to reach this goal, yet it was not the end that counted. It was all the magic moments in between the beginning and the end. We were silent and lost in our thoughts, remembering all the good times and feeling both sad and glad at the same time. A shower passed over, and in its wake a beautiful rainbow stretched across the sky. I smiled with a quiet joy. We had seen a lot of rainbows.