Surrounded by mosquitoes and drenched by thunderstorms, we didn’t even stop for lunch on the last miles of the Little Buffalo. I had two mental images of Great Slave Lake: in the first we reached the mouth of the river and looked across a lake still covered with ice; in the second we looked on an angry sea of white-capped waves. Both images were wrong—our first glimpse of the huge expanse of water revealed no ice and only a gentle swell on the lake.
As we stopped to eat a few more bites at the mouth of the river, the mosquitoes were marvelously thick, just as I had imagined them in the Northwest Territories. Twenty could easily be crushed with one pointless swat; millions more arrived ready to die for a taste of blood.
Elated to be on the big lake, clear and bluegreen, we soon raced with all our strength to reach a point of land reaching into the lake before a threatening thunderstorm. We seemed to pick up energy from the tremendous force of the storm, and every stroke felt effortless even though we paddled with all our power. We reached the point just before the storm and quickly pitched the tent before the wind roared down the lake so hard that the water level on the windward side came up three or four inches. Doug’s paddle floated away, and he had to splash out in the waves to rescue it. I had to move my packs quickly away from the rising water.
It was a glorious storm. Any sensible person would have stayed in the tent waiting for the rain to cease, but not us. We have no sense when pursuing beauty, and we stood in the driving rain watching the lightning shoot from the clouds and listening to the thunder boom. Briefly the rain turned to hail, and then the storm blew on as quickly as it had begun leaving in its wake a hauntingly beautiful rainbow.
Next morning water stretched from horizon to horizon like a huge mirror on which our bow waves created long diagonal ripples. Stopping for lunch on a 30 by 20 foot wide island, we found one bush and a dead wolf prompting us to christen it Wolf Island. Our usual two-hour lunch break doubled and tripled until eventually we spent the night. In the morning we were wind bound, so we built a fire in the shelter of the one bush. I read poetry, and we discussed life while consuming endless cups of tea. For another pastime we watched ice floes drift by and we kept hoping one would hit the island. None did.
Next morning fog and mist covered a much calmer lake, but I hadn’t slept well and felt terrible. By the time I pushed my canoe into the water, Doug and Byron were far out in the lake. Grasping my paddle, I drove my canoe forward with all my strength. Soon my paddle swung in a good fast rhythm, the canoe surged through the misty waves, and all my resentment and misgivings melted away. I felt alive all over again. The cold air and icy water made me think, “This is what we were expecting; let’s enjoy it.”
More of what we expected greeted us as we rounded the next point. Ice! As far as we could see! We pulled to shore, built a fire, and talked about the situation. I said, “Looks to me like we just caught up to the seasons.”
Byron said, “Looks to me like we could maybe squeeze along the shoreline.”
“Yeah, it’s clear all along the shore. I wonder if it will be deep enough,” I replied.
“I think it will be. We can do it. After all, we deserve this,” said Doug. “It’s our only option other than wait for the ice to melt.”
We tried paddling along the narrow path of open water, but sometimes we had to drag our canoes over ice foes. The intense sunlight seemed to bounce off the ice and transform the very air into pure light, and the water made a shining path between shore and blindingly, dazzling ice floes. The breeze shifted the floes, which broke the ice, and the broken pieces danced with the waves sounding like a gigantic wind chime a hundred miles long.
At the end of a happy day becoming intimately acquainted with ice on Great Slave Lake, I lay my sleeping bag on the rocky shoreline to watch the sun set and rise. Ice stretched east, west, and north as far as I could see from horizon to horizon. As the sun sank in the northwest, the sky slowly darkened, and the ice gradually turned orange and then purple. When the sun inched below the horizon, the ice became ghostly white in the dusky twilight.
I awoke to see a big, golden ball rise into the clear sky. Slowly it sank into my consciousness that the ice had all moved about 200 yards away from the shore. “Great,” I thought, “We’ll have no trouble with ice today.” I rolled over and slept until the mosquitoes came with their wake-up call.
After a few miles of traveling in relative ease, the wind shifted and blew the ice back into shore. Soon we found ourselves in candle ice eighteen inches thick, too hard to paddle or poll through and too soft to walk on. Byron and I went ashore and walked around the next point to see how far the ice extended. Prospects for further travel seemed rather dismal until the wind shifted or the ice melted, and the next day ice still stopped progress.
Surprisingly, I found that obstacles added to rather than detracted from the trip. The ice seemed just what we needed. Tensions disappeared as we united against a force stronger than.ourselves. I was glad to be stopped by a lake full of ice. We had absolutely no choice in the matter and somehow that seemed exactly right.
“What is there to life but to seek adventure?” I wrote once in my journal, and I’m sure it is partially true still. Seeking adventure is great, but there is a fine line between adventure and risking one’s life foolhardily. Risks are part of any adventure, part of the bargain. But I have always felt that the risk of being seriously hurt or killed is very much overrated. In my experience, the only times I have been in danger of being badly hurt or dying have almost always occurred as a result of my own stupidity such as the next day’s example.
A strong west wind blew during the night. When we started across the bay, bobbing up and down in the gentle two foot swells, the only visible ice jutted from the east side of the points. As we neared the second and third points, the wind began to increase in strength. Almost instantly the waves became mountainous walls of water. We increased our tempo, hoping to round the point and reach sheltered water. The waves were so high I could see Doug or Byron only when we came on the crest of a wave simultaneously. When we rounded the point, to my utter dismay we saw ice lining the shores solidly as far as we could see. With a vast expanse of angry, white-capped waves and a shore lined with heaving chunks of ice; we had no choice but to go forward, hoping to find an opening in the ice. Returning against the wind would be impossible.
My hands froze to the paddle shafts as I used all my strength to drive the canoe forward. The wind increased, until it became only a matter of time before the waves would be too big to handle. With the water temperature in the 30’s and ice floating in the water, a capsizing or swamping would probably be fatal. A huge curling wave sloshed over the side of my canoe, spraying ice water across my face and chest. The lake had us; she was showing us who was boss.
But she let us go. We found a narrow channel between two huge ice floes and slid into the opening pushed by the waves, dodged several little ice floes, and with great relief set foot on solid ground. We built a roaring fire and settled in to wait for the wind to die. As we watched, the wind slowly shifted the ice and sealed the opening through which we had escaped. Lady Luck seemed to say, “You’ve learned your lesson.”
Something about the awesome bigness of the lake, its strength and power, made us feel something akin to reverence. It could have vanquished us with no notice or care, yet it was beautiful.