Month: November 1982 (Page 3 of 6)

Singing in the rain, we went down the river and soon spotted a herd of about twenty caribou far down the river. Taking out my camera, I paddled close to the shore and drifted silently towards them. My heart beat a little faster as I came alongside them and listened to the curious clicking they made as they walked. I got several good pictures before they turned and plunged into the river, swimming strongly with their antlers sticking high above the water.

Byron enjoyed a more exciting experience. A huge herd that he estimated at well over a thousand animals plunged into the river and began swimming across directly in front of him. Later Byron told us, “I was a bit nervous, you know, for I was heading straight for what looked like a picket fence of antlers. But the silly caribou didn’t even seem to notice me. I just drifted right through the herd. I could have clonked a bunch of them over the head with my paddle, I was that close.”

When we camped, I picked blueberries but couldn’t find many. Giving up, I headed back to our camp just above Driftwood River when I found a few isolated bushes loaded with berries. I stripped them clean and planned to make jam when I had gathered a few more.

Byron read a few lines from his journal, and I admired, as always, his clear, concise thinking. Too often my thoughts merely ramble and wander through relationships and emotions, memories of failures and triumphs and visions of future wonders. My mind is like a jungle, a vast jungle full of feelings, doubts, emotions, ideas, and dreams, all growing without direction, and I’m hoping that the jungle will someday be trained into a garden. Or maybe it would be better to say that I feel I’m traveling along a twisting uphill road with branches in every direction, and as I travel along, I constantly question the road I’m on and the one ahead. Yet as I look back, I find the road changed—the curves and twists are gone, the forks have disappeared, and I realize there was only one road for me.

We were obviously very slow learners and once again had to put the rain fly on the tent in the middle of the night. Sleep had eluded me anyway. Opposing forces kept tearing me apart. One said, “Go back home when you are done. You’ll be more free to do the things you really want to do.”

Another voice screamed, “You are home. All you have to do is wake up.”

Next morning we battled a strong wind and Doug shouted, “It’s just like the Mackenzie, remember?” It was and I felt frustrated and tired. Getting off the river, I climbed the bank and spent a few minutes on the sweet-smelling tundra picking blueberries. At least the wind kept the mosquitoes away.

A thunderstorm drove us off the river, but when it blew over, the river became completely calm, and we cruised easily to within about ten miles from Old Crow. Feeling ambitious, I turned my blueberries into jam—an easy procedure. Wash the fresh berries, take out green and rotten ones as well as stems and leaves, put them in a pan, add a very small amount of water, just enough to keep them from burning, and simmer until most of the berries have broken. Add sugar to taste and cook another five minutes. Cool and enjoy.

At Old Crow we saw Tom and Steve’s canoe and we pulled ours beside it. After wandering through town, we found the store, and the manager invited us for tea and bannock. When we walked in, there were Steve and Tom. As we chatted, Byron mentioned he had seen a huge herd of caribou crossing the river. That little piece of news quickly spread through the town. “Too early,” one old Indian man told me, “too early and too far.”

The store manager explained, “The natives here really depend on the caribou for food. They don’t make a lot of money, but if they can get their caribou, they do all right. Here, try some dried caribou.” He shoved a bag full of strips of black meat toward us, and we each tried a piece.

“Not too bad,” announced Byron, “at least when you compare it to what it looks like.”

We walked around town talking to some of the natives. One grizzled old man spent about 45 minutes telling me about a fabled gold mine up the Bell River high in the mountains. I asked several other people about it, and one guy said, “Everybody has heard of a gold mine on the Bell, including the guy who made up the story.”

Another interesting character, a missionary named Roger, seemed friendly and eager for someone new to talk to. He had canoed the Eagle, Bell and Porcupine Rivers to Old Crow earlier in the summer so was very interested in our trip. We were invited to the store manager’s place for supper. People constantly ran in and out of his crowded apartment, the TV blared, and I started to suffer an acute case of culture shock. After so long in the peace and quiet of the wilderness, adjusting to the hustle and bustle of everyday life even in a small town seemed difficult. The lure of good food kept me there, and when it appeared, I was glad I had waited. We ate steak, potatoes, bannock, and, for desert, ice cream and bananas.

The town was noisy late into the night with dogs barking, people shouting, and radios blaring. I was ready to leave early in the morning and had my canoe ready to load when Byron came and announced, “We are going to climb the mountain behind town today. Didn’t Doug tell you?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Well, Roger, you know the missionary guy, said he’d go with us so we thought we’d go.”

Although the tone of his announcement upset me a little, I had nothing against climbing the mountain. We followed the semblance of a trail leading through some very swampy ground under a row of poles leading to a relay station on top of the mountain. After climbing high enough to get a good view of the Porcupine River Valley, we sat down to rest. The others soon went on, but I couldn’t get motivated to continue. Something about being far above the Arctic Circle and choosing to climb the only mountain with a relay station on top didn’t appeal to me. Instead I circled away from the poles and crossed to a ridge down which I ambled slowly, stopping often to feast on the abundant blueberries.

Tom and Steve plus two German boaters who had been at Old Crow when we arrived, were all on the beach loading their boats. Because the two Germans didn’t speak English well, it was difficult to carry on a conversation. They had flown into Summit Lake with their folding kayak and were going to Fort Yukon. One said, “If we knew the weather before here, we would not come. Rain, rain almost everyday.”

“Well, why did you decide to come all the way here?”

They told me in halting English, “A man, he wrote good book back home about this canoe trip. We just want to do it too.” Several of the natives in Old Crow had told us that about 80% of the people canoeing past were Europeans, and now we knew why.

While we stood about chatting, four well-dressed, obviously wealthy tourists walked down to the beach. They were, as they put it, on a flying tour of the western Arctic. Next stop, Inuvik, and they planned to be there for supper. We paddled away while the tourists roared off in their plane. I wondered who might be getting the most of a tour of the Western Arctic.

Doug and Byron wanted to be on the move, so late in the afternoon we set off across Summit Lake. The small creek leading to the Little Bell started innocently enough, flowing high and full, but then we ran into brush clogging the creek. I gave up using a paddle, hunkered down low, and pulled it along by grabbing the brush. Soon we slid into the Bell, which was running extremely high and overflowing its banks in many places. With a very strong current we made good time swinging rapidly around the tight bends until we came to a log jam extending most of the way across the river from one bank and a sweeper hanging part way over the river from the other bank. Byron opted to try first and slid under the sweeper, which was about three feet above the water, made a sharp turn to clear the log jam, and maneuvered into the open water below the jam. Doug followed, but he went under the sweeper a little farther out in the river. I started to turn my canoe preparing to follow when I heard Doug say, “Oh no, no, no, damn…”

I spun my canoe around and drove it onto the shore leaping out in the same motion. I could see the white bottom of Doug’s canoe pinned up against the logjam. Thinking that Doug might be trapped underneath, I ran to help but then saw to my relief that he had grabbed the overhanging sweeper as his canoe capsized. I asked, “Hey, are you all right? I thought you were a goner when I saw your canoe pinned. Shall I come out and help you turn it over?“

“Hell no, I got into this one myself, and I’ll get out. Damn it all anyway; why did this have to happen to me?” Doug fumed. He managed to right his canoe, bail it out, and at his insistence, we continued on. The current became even stronger as we neared the Bell. Then we rounded a corner and the flooded river went wild. We slammed our canoes into bushes and got out to look at the rapids. As far as we could see, waves filled the river disappearing finally behind a hairpin turn. What we saw didn’t bother us; what might be around the corner make us think twice before running it blind. Because Doug was wet and cold, we decided to camp.

The water level dropped more than two feet during the night, but the rapids didn’t look any less formidable. I climbed a hill behind our camp, looked them over, and satisfied myself that we could do it. The extremely fast current shooting down the narrow brush-lined channel allowed no escape until we reached the end of the rapids. After one more look, we went for it slashing through the battle lines of tangled waves and spray and dropping through the rapid as if we were riding a water slide. Waves splashed over our bows, and the shore went by in a blur.

With one more exciting ride down a rapid, we hit the comparatively wide and calm Bell River. After paddling upstream for a few days, going downstream seemed effortless with each stroke pushing the canoe skimming along like a breeze on the surface. Thunderclouds marched their way in ordered columns above the high rocky summits, but we wound our way through them and dodged each row of clouds getting in on the tail end of each shower. As a result, the sun shone as it rained making for lovely rainbows, and rain didn’t seem to matter.

As summer turned to fall, nights gradually darkened, and we were looking forward to bug-free nights again. We had been cooped in our tent almost every night since Fort Simpson. Now Byron and I began discussing the possibilities of spending the winter in the bush in Alaska at the end of the trip instead of going home. I had always wanted to try building a cabin and spending the winter in the wilderness but wondered if this was the right time and place. Byron kept talking, and the longer he talked, the more interested I became. Soon we were seriously considering the idea.

Next morning I climbed a large hill where butterflies swarmed among the yellow poppies covering the dry hills. And the view—picture a meandering river winding like a silver ribbon across a broad green valley. Rocky high mountains capped with snow shared the horizon with billowing thunderclouds, and a half moon sailed in the sky to complete the picture. Life had never seemed sweeter than in those few fleeting moments on top of that hill. I stretched out my arms to encompass the whole vast scene and shouted to the breeze, “What a way to live!”

I waved to Doug as he went by and danced down the hill. At lunch four beaver swam by and scrambled up the muddy bank opposite us. Byron paddled far ahead late in the evening, and he saw two moose, one swimming in the river. Byron said, “Could have just paddled right up to him and hit him over the head with my paddle.”

The Bell River flowed slowly along the next day, now muddy from the Eagle River confluence. With the sun shining warmly, we paddled bare-shouldered and sweating for the first time since the Upper Mackenzie. I saw my partner’s canoes on the shore where they were eating lunch and, spotting a creek just before them, I pulled into it to get some clear water to drink. To my surprise I heard a voice say, “Hello, Mike.” There were Tom and Steve.

“How the devil did you get by us?”

“We saw your canoe up above those rapids on the Little Bell, but we didn’t see either Doug’s or Byron’s,” explained Steve. “Tom thought you must have already gone so we went ahead and ran it. Scared the hell out of us. If we’d had a lick of sense, we would have stopped there too.”

“Well, what are you up to now? Going to stop in Old Crow?” I asked

“Yep, we’ll probably see you guys there. We need to pick up more food.”

After lunch Doug left, and I asked Byron, “Did you talk to Doug about this log cabin idea before you suggested it to me?”

“No, but I told him that we were considering it, and I figured he wanted to get a job right after the trip was over and wasn’t too interested.”

I said, “That’s good. We’ve been getting along real good since the Rat River, and I didn’t want to get him upset with us talking behind his back.”

In the afternoon I was tremendously excited to see my first caribou. At first glance they appeared as if they were about to fall on their faces. Their antlers seemed far too big for their bodies. They appeared rather unconcerned and showed little fear when I came quite close.

When we caught up to Doug at the confluence of the Bell and Porcupine rivers, he remarked, “I saw four caribou this afternoon. How about you?”

“Well, I guess I saw about six or seven,“ I lied.

Then Doug said, “I outdid you. I had a caribou swim down the river in front of me for about two miles, right down the Porcupine River.”

I laughed and said, “It sounds more like the caribou outdid you.”

We could hear them snorting and splashing as they crossed the river about a mile below our camp. Early in the morning, thinking I had heard something in the canoes, I jumped out to make sure it wasn’t a porcupine. In previous camps I learned that they just love to chew things you really wish they wouldn’t, one of their favorite items being a well-used wooden paddle. I wasn’t about to let my best paddle be chewed. The horizon glowed gold, but nothing seemed to be around.

When we broke camp in a cloudy, drizzly excuse for a day, the mountains were blanketed in fog. Streamers of mist poured into the valley like broken waves from rocks. As we strolled along, towing our canoes farther into the mountains, I thought of Doug’s comment the night before, “I wouldn’t mind living up here someday.” ‘It seemed to me foolish to wait, and I thought that we might as well start now. We were here and alive. After lunch the sun appeared, and the mountains seemed to be hanging in the sky draped with green robes of tundra flowing down their sides. Although the elevation wasn’t great, the timberline in the valley gave the impression of tremendous altitude. We had seen grizzly bear tracks along the shores quite often, and that combined with absolutely no sign of man make us realize we were really in wilderness.

Late in the afternoon I noticed a cracked rib in my canoe. Since I stepped on it every time I got in the canoe, I assumed the constant use had broken it. I didn’t consider it a serious problem but mentioned it, “You know, guys, I’ve got a little crack in a rib in my canoe. When we stop tonight, I’ll have to do some repair work.”

“Well, I’m pretty tired. We might as well camp right away,” said Byron.

After emptying my canoe, I realized I had a big problem with five cracked ribs, some of them completely torn away from the hull laminate. In one place the hull itself showed signs of damage. The constant flexing between the relatively flexible hull and the stiff ribs caused them to crack. Every rock I had dragged the canoe over had taken its toll.

Getting out the patch kit, I went to work first cleaning the bottom of the canoe thoroughly, paying special attention to the areas around the cracks. Then I propped up the canoe so the sun would shine on the inside and dry it. Next I sanded the area around each crack and cut out patches of fiberglass mat. I carefully applied the patches to the ribs using a flat stick to spread the resin, which I had mixed with a high concentration of catalyst so it would harden overnight in the rather cool temperatures.

Early in the morning as I lay listening to the sounds of the dawn, I heard a faint rush of wings and then a piercing scream cut abruptly short. It must have been an owl catching its breakfast. Doug decided to get up four hours before our usual rising time, and he started a fire, but I rolled over and went back to sleep. He explained later, “I woke and couldn’t go back to sleep. I thought of how hungry I was and then how good pancakes would taste. Pretty soon I couldn’t stand it anymore so I got up and made some.”

The patches on my canoe seemed to be okay as I loaded my gear. I felt a little dubious about the patch job, as conditions hadn’t been exactly ideal for doing fiberglass work. Lining was easy, and we had even paddled a few stretches when we came to a very strong current funneling through a narrow chute. With no place to line on our side, we needed to ferry across to get a good footing on the opposite gravel bar. The catch — just below the chute the current made a sharp right angle against the cliff. In other words, if we were unable to make the ferry in time, the current would slam us against the cliff. We elected not to try it but instead positioned ourselves in the water about a canoe’s length apart along the chute and pushed and pulled our boats through one at a time.

As we approached MacDougall pass, the Rat gradually became clear. Later we reached the forks of the Rat where two streams flow into the river making a three-way junction. It didn’t take long to make the 100-yard portage and put our canoes into the very swift stream above a small falls. But we had trouble making progress—the stream was mostly too swift to paddle against, and brush lining the shores forced us to wade while towing the canoes.

Then the current slowed almost to a standstill, and we paddled easily in a valley floor about ten feet deep. Byron stopped to climb the bank and shouted, “Hey, come on up. I’m in a different world here. The wind is blowing, and it’s green everywhere.”

We scrambled up and Doug pointed back saying, “Wow, that’s where we came from. Just look at that little river winding along. And look at those mountains. There’s hardly a tree in sight. This is northern beauty!”

Although the stream gradually became swifter, we could still paddle. Brush began to choke the stream at spots, and the tight bends became increasingly difficult to negotiate. We had planned to reach the firs of the little lakes lying at the head of the Rat River, but evening came too soon. So we camped on the wet, hummocky tundra and immersed ourselves in beauty. Doug wandered to the top of a small knoll, and we watched him trudge across the open tundra, a tiny speck lost in the immensity of the land. When he returned, he said, “You know, while I was up there on that hill I tried to compare these mountains with others, like the Sierras or the Cascades, but it’s funny. I just couldn’t seem to do it.”

“I’ve had the very same feeling,” I remarked. “It’s like they are beyond comparison with nothing like them anywhere.”

At sunrise I poked my head out and watched the sun, hidden behind a jagged peak, make the flaming orange clouds shoot aloft and set the mountains on fire. High in the sky whole companies of small luminous clouds hovered about like very angels of light.

We set off on the last stretch of the Rat, a string of little streams and lakes with high water allowing us to avoid the usual portages. As usual, the maps were inaccurate, but we found our way without difficulty however, paddling became difficult because the streams ran high and fast and were brush clogged in places. We felt frustrated to put all the effort we could into making progress when continually, at the most inopportune times, brush grabbed at the paddles. We pulled our canoes over two beaver dams, and suddenly we were there, paddling across the last lake to the portage trail leading over the divide and MacDougall pass to Summit Lake, the Yukon Territories, and the Yukon River watershed. Surprised to see another canoe tied up at the portage trail, we paddled across the lake to find two men returning for another load. Big bushy beards and clothes and equipment showed the wear and tear of a long journey.

“Where are y’all from?” asked Doug as we pulled to shore.

The older man (sixty years old we later learned) said, “Well, my home is more or less wherever my canoe is. We started paddling at Fort Simpson around the middle of June, and we’re kinda hoping to end up at the Bering Sea this fall. By the way, I’m Tom Findley and my partner here is Steve Railseobach.”

“Well, how about that?” exclaimed Doug. “You guys are aiming in the same direction we are. I’m Doug Kenyon, this is Mike Rieseberg, and over there is Byron Stanley. We started in Jasper, Alberta, in April and you guys are the first long distance canoers we have met so far. Are you going to camp at Summit Lake?”

“Yeah, I guess we will. Why don’t you guys camp near us, and we can get a little more acquainted,” invited Tom as they shouldered their packs and trudged across the portage.

We ate before starting the half-mile trek. I had carefully dried my hiking boots for this one portage, a good idea that turned out unrealistic. Before I walked 100 yards in the soggy tundra, my boots were soaked, and I realized that trying to make the portage in two trips was also an unrealistically good idea. So I rearranged my loads and made three easy trips to Summit Lake.

I took the little vial of Mackenzie River water I had collected earlier and ceremoniously poured it into Summit Lake symbolically joining the waters of two great rivers. Then we spent a fascinating evening getting acquainted with Tom and Steve. Doug, usually our spokesman, asked, “What do you do for a living?”

Steve answered, “I’ve just graduated this spring with a master’s degree in Civil Engineering, and this trip was sort of my graduation celebration. When I get back, I’ll have to look for a job. Right now I’m just trying to enjoy the summer.”

“Well, Tom, what do you do when you’re not canoeing? You said that your canoe was your home.”

Tom spoke in his smooth, mellow voice, “I left New York by canoe ten years ago with a group of friends, and we set out to go as far as we could. I’m the only one still going. I just canoe during the summer and find a place to stay over winter, often right where I stopped for the summer. I work at odd jobs to keep me in money.”

Doug asked, “Well, what did you do before this canoe trip? You must have had some sort of a career.”

“Yes, I did. I’ve a doctorate in chemistry, and I worked for years doing research for a big chemical company. Then I went to work teaching at a college in New York where we got together to go canoeing.”

“Do you find it easy to make enough money to keep going?”

“T try to live as cheaply as possible. Food is the main expense out here, and we eat only the simplest and most inexpensive food. Oatmeal, bannock, beans, rice—they’re all cheap. I do okay.”

Hearing bannock mentioned, we quickly asked him to show us how to make it. We had heard of it but never tried to make it. Tom obliged and began, “First you start with your basic mixture of two cups flour, one teaspoon baking powder, a little salt, and enough water to make stiff dough. From there you can add almost anything to bannock: sugar and cinnamon, raisins, fresh berries, mushrooms, nuts, dates. Milk powder gives a richer taste. If you never make it the same way twice, you never get tired of it.”

Rain damped our conversation and kept us to our tents until noon the next day. We had hoped for a sunny day to do some hiking in the mountains, but the clouds were So low and everything so wet that nobody felt like getting far from the fire. Later the clouds lifted, the sun shone, and Byron set off to climb Mt. Russle on the north side of the river. I threw my sleeping bag out to dry and began climbing an unnamed mountain on the south side. Loose rock covered with slippery reindeer moss made the going hard so I proceeded slowly not wanting to take a chance hurting myself. My feet were still sore from the beating they had taken while wading the Rat River. When I reached the summit, my eyes wandered over the Little Bell River, our next waterway, flowing down the mountains to the north, and Rat River with its chain of lakes to the east. Directly below lay Summit Lake, a sparkling jewel set in a ring of mountains with Doug paddling his canoe directly across its center. The world lay at my feet and enveloped me in peacefulness.

Experiences come and go but memories stay, and I knew I would always remember the days in the mountains and on the water with my friends. Maybe someday if I return to the lakes and hills, I will still not understand why I go to the wilderness. Maybe it will still be some vague, mystical feeling that cannot be tamed or bought, much less brought to a town. But it will keep drawing me back to the land again and again.

Feeling great as every stroke took me farther from civilization toward the wilderness I love so much, I felt wonderfully independent with enough experience to go almost anywhere. At Point Separation the Mackenzie begins to split into many channels and spread out into the vast delta. It’s a tremendous maze of channels’snaking through a vast area of low-lying islands, ponds, lakes, and bogs stretching nearly 150 miles to the Beaufort Sea. We traced our route on the map through the southwest portion of the delta where we would leave the Mackenzie, go up the Peel River to Husky Channel, and follow it to the Rat River, which would be our path to the edge of the delta.

We had naively thought the current in the Peel River would be insignificant but were wrong again. Progress slowed as we paddled upstream, a new experience. The wind, of course, shifted, meaning we paddled against wind and current in exact accordance with the second law of canoeing. However, we were thankful for the breeze since we were paddling very close to shore to take advantage of the shore eddies and were collecting mosquitoes in great clouds.

I thought all day about time and how it is the only thing of real worth that we have, the very core of our existence. We cannot conceive of a world without time. Try writing about an event without making reference to time. And yet time can rob us of happiness and peace of mind. ‘No, it’s not time but our sense of urgency, that feeling that we have only so much time to live, that steals peace from us. The problem comes when we make a choice of how to spend our time using all the evidence we have, and then while doing that very thing we don’t enjoy it because of our sense of time urgency and the feeling that we should be doing more. It’s a false feeling. The desire to get the absolute most out of life is good only when it’s kept on a tight rein. It can all too easily run on and drive us into such a whirlwind of plans and activities that we will wake up in thirty or forty years wondering, “What happened? Where did my life go?”

By night we were riding on a cloud; we had paddled the Mackenzie River from the lake to the delta and thought we had the right to feel a little proud. I thought back on the magic moments spent on it and decided, “Yes, I got a tie with Mother Nature.” In my theory, no one can beat Mother Nature in her own ballpark, but if you’re lucky, she’ll let you off with a tie. If you don’t make it or don’t enjoy the journey, you lose, but if you can say at the end, “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” give yourself a tie.

Next morning we set off to find the fabled Rat River, first made famous by fur traders, explorers, and then Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. He attempted to run the Indians off and take over their trap lines. Albert Johnson successfully eluded several posses sent to arrest him, survived a dynamiting of his cabin, shot several RCMP officers, and finally killed himself as he tried to flee in the dead of winter to Alaska.

I was surprised to find it muddy as somehow my mind had pictured a clear mountain stream. The channel meandered with a sluggish current in a wild series of loops and bends. At one point, two meanders came within fifty feet of each other, separated by only a high thin bank. After climbing the bank and debating the relative merits of portaging over the bank or paddling three miles around the big loop, | chose to paddle even though the portage would have been quicker.

With banks only a few apart and no place to get away from them, the mosquitoes were terrible, but as soon as we camped, surprisingly, they became almost non-existent. I said, “Boy, I’ll tell you, I sure feel dirty. A bath is going to feel good.”

“Why are you going to take a bath?” asked Doug. “Why, I can still see your skin in spots; you can’t be very dirty.”

Although we knew the next stretch would be the most udialiles and physically demanding part of the journey, we were psyched for it and were not going to let anything stop us now. Several books described it as the toughest fur trade route in North America. That night we were forced out of our warm sleeping bags to put the tent fly on when rain began to sprinkle lightly, and it seemed most of the mosquitoes in the Mackenzie delta got back into the tent with us resulting in a battle to catch them. The rest crawled between the tent fly and the tent. When we awoke, the top of the tent was biack with mosquitoes, and it seemed as if we were between the prongs of a tuning fork someone had just struck. If we ventured out, we were likely to be picked up and carried away. When we did go out and removed the tent fly, we saw an incredible sight. Mosquitoes were piled solid an inch thick on top of the tent! A huge swarm arose, and we hurriedly stuffed the tent into its stuff sack and took off.

Avoiding the mosquitoes was hopeless. They were everywhere. Then rain began to fall, and all morning we suffered royally. We put away our maps to keep them dry and by noon felt a little consternation about our location. During lunch by a delightful little creek winding gently through lush meadows, dragonflies filled the air feeding on the countless mosquitoes. They took a liking to my red raincoat and used it as a landing strip and a dining table. They flew around, dipping and darting, until they had caught a mosquito and would then land on my shoulder to eat it. I silently cheered each time I saw a mosquito disappear into the ravenous chopping jaws. Usually the dragonfly stuffed in the mosquito headfirst and, chewing rapidly, spit out the legs and wings.

Strolling through the green meadows, I found a large pond with a muskrat seemingly oblivious to my presence. Terns, yellow-legs, ducks, and geese filled the shoreline while frogs leaped into the water in a panic, and schools of tiny fish darted here and there. The Richardson Mountains, snowcapped and beautiful, rose majestically against a thunderhead sky filling the horizon. I felt full of life from watching the teeming life all around.

In a mile or saw I caught up to Doug and Byron sitting in the middle of a lake wondering which way to go. The lake wasn’t marked on the map, and no one could say for certain where we were, so we paddled around the shoreline and found the river coming in on the other side of the lake. All afternoon we paddled from lake to lake through channels and found having three canoes a great advantage because we could cover three times as much shoreline. At one point we couldn’t seem to find the river anywhere, but we meandered through a marsh and finally found what looked like the river.

When we camped in a grove of spruce trees, I busily ate spaghetti and meatballs while some little blue damselflies busily ate mosquitoes. They seemed to like me, and one little fellow sat on my knee and ate five mosquitoes in about as many minutes. He was a much more fastidious eater than his big dragonfly cousins. He carefully bit off the head, worked his way through the body, spit out each wing and leg as he came to it, until with one final gulp the body disappeared.

We expected to be out of the delta and starting the rugged ascent into the mountains by noon next day, but that was not to be. We found ourselves in a series of big lakes with no river coming into them. We split up, diligently searched the entire shoreline, and then began to shoot bearings off the mountains with our compasses to locate our exact position. The compasses didn’t seem to work properly; sometimes our position would come out one place, but by moving 300 yards away and shooting the same bearing, our position could jump up to six or seven miles away.

Byron said, “I think we missed the river just before we stopped last night. Remember how we wandered through that big marsh? I’Il just bet we lost it right there”

Doug disagreed, “I don’t think we could have missed it there. We searched most of that area, and the only channel went this way. | think we ought to start portaging our canoes between the lakes and just head in the general direction of the mountains. Sooner or later we’re bound to hit the river again.”

“Well, I don’t have any desire to portage anywhere,” I protested carefully. “Why don’t we go back and check out Byron’s theory before we do anything too radical?”

We returned to the marsh and sure enough, we had missed it there. Our river was in plain sight. But a short distance later a huge logjam over 150 feet long blocked our progress. We slid our canoes through and over the jam, slipping and sliding on the muddy banks and the slippery logs, nearly falling in at every step. It was a little discouraging to stop for lunch only about two miles from camp and Byron said, “I sure hate to admit that we got lost. It sounds as if we didn’t know what we were doing.”

“Hey, we didn’t get lost,” Doug said. “We just spent the morning exploring some pretty lakes.”

The current increased as we came closer to the base of the mountains and so did the size of the river. According to the map, we were on the main channel, but we were twice joined by other channels, one about twice the size of the channel we had come up. I wondered then if we should have brought smaller scale maps (we had the one inch to four miles) or whether the smaller scale maps would have the same errors in larger form.

That night Byron pitched his tent for the first time. I wasn’t sorry to see him pitch it because he has the worst snore of anyone I know. Not satisfied with an ordinary snore at high volume, he added a variety of snorts, wheezes, grunts, gasps, and sighs to his nightly performance.

Next morning we reached our first rapid, just a riffle but too strong to paddle against, so we broke out the tracking lines. I tied 90 feet of quarter inch rope in a big loop to the bow and stern of my canoe. By pulling on both lines I could maneuver the canoe out into the stream and tow it along while walking on the shore. That is the theory anyway. In practice, we were in the water about as much as on the shore.

I nearly swamped my canoe when | lost control of the bowline. It swung broadside and threatened to fill with water before I managed to swing it parallel to the current again. Another time when we tried to ferry across the river at the head of a rapid, Byron and I were both swept down the rapids backward.

The little adventure continued all day long as we slowly worked into a pattern; we lined our boats until we ran out of footing and then we would ferry across the river and continue lining. This part of the Rat River, known as the Canyon, is a continuous series of rapids and cascades in a multitude of braided channels. Since the river was running high and drops up to 35 feet per mile, the current is very strong. We passed Longstick River and the rapids known as Destruction City. At this point miners heading for the Klondike in 1898 were forced to abandon gear and rebuild their boats to make them smaller so they could pull them over the mountains.

All of us nearly tipped over at times. I took water over the side of the canoe once when trying to cross the swiftly flowing current. I missed my intended landing spot on the opposite shore and careened backwards through a strong eddy. I was not prepared to be spun around, and the canoe was almost overturned before I could apply a brace stroke and steady it. We went on too long before stopping and really tired ourselves, but the cold water seemed to disguise our sore and aching muscles. When I noticed Doug and Byron starting to stumble on rocks, I realized how tired I was and suggested we stop. We camped right where we were on a gravel island in the middle of the river.

My hands and feet started to feel the strain as we continued lining our canoes steadily upstream the next day. The constant walking on rough, uneven ground in tennis shoes was turning my ankles into rubber hinges so, much as I hated to, I decided to use my hiking boots. Wading a river is definitely not the way to treat a trusty pair of boots, but my feet and ankles were worth more. My hands were also feeling the pressure from pulling on a small rope ail day, so I solved that problem by taping the sorest spots and occasionally wearing gloves.

As the river became even steeper and the rapids more violent, our canoes took a real beating from being dragged over rocks while pulled up the steep cascades. Two guys could have handled each canoe much more easily with one on the bow rope and another on the stern rope.

Next morning I looked at the ominous clouds and said unhappily, “Oh no, just what we didn’t need. A little more rain while we wade in the river. Now I’m going to wish for a wet suit.” Doug and Byron had both brought wet suits particularly for this section of the trip, but I hadn’t been able to afford anything but the bare essentials, and a wet suit seemed to be one of the things I could do without. I improvised with long underwear, blue jeans, and rain pants. That combination worked almost too well, and it kept me cooking hot from the ankles up.

Fortunately, travel became much easier. Long gentle rapids were the rule rather than the violent cascades we had previously struggled with. After we passed the Barrier River confluence, the river became smailer and confined to one channel. The valley appeared to open out, but suddenly we were in a canyon again. This time the river flowed in a narrow channel with brush choking the banks forcing us to wade in water over our waists at times for about half a mile.

The afternoon drizzle might have dampened our gear and the countryside, but it did nothing to dampen our spirits. Happy with our progress, we enjoyed our new experience immensely. Even if pouring rain drove us to the tent immediately after supper, Byron merely said, “I’m glad it waited until after supper to start to rain.” That night I listened to the drumming rain and thought how I would tell about the Rat River. I could show pictures of us lining our canoes up rapids and fast water through a picturesque valley surrounded by mountains, but that would mean little. It wouldn’t tell anyone that we lined our boats up a countless string of rapids just like the ones in the picture. It doesn’t tell about the mosquito biting me on the nose that I can’t swat because both my hands are busy trying to control a canoe dancing along in some big waves or my stepping over a rock into a deep hole while straining to get the canoe up a steep rapid, or the rope wrapping itself around my feet and tripping me into the cold water. But that’s the way it is, and I’m glad. I could write page after page and you would still have to experience it for yourself to really understand the Rat River.

I came very close to capsizing next day. We had lined our canoes up a side channel, and when it rejoined the main stream, we had to get into the canoes and paddle past some bushes on the bank to get more footing. The main channel was flowing just about as fast as we could paddle, and I put every ounce of effort into getting past the side channel. Just as I was about to make it, I struck a rock with my paddle and snapped the shaft cleanly. Immediately the current grabbed my canoe and swept it down the side channel before I could do anything but stare at the broken paddle in my hands. Then I grabbed for my spare paddle as the canoe swept broadside. Just in time I resumed paddling and reached shore.

After that little incident, I switched to using a double bladed paddle because it could be used more efficiently in shallow water. I could also put out a little more effort with a double blade. But for normal rowing, I stuck with my single blade bent shaft paddle. When we stopped to camp, my first priority involved repairing my favorite paddle. Using epoxy glue, I put the shaft together and used duct tape to hold it until the glue dried. The repair seemed strong enough for ordinary use, but I had a little trouble trusting it in crucial situations.

What a view we had from our campsite! Everywhere we looked mountains rose above a cascading river winding through them. Only a few trees struggled to survive on the mountainsides, and most of the landscape was tundra—green and rolling except where it crested into the high peaks of the Richardson Mountains. I felt sorry for anyone who flies into Summit Lake to go down the Bell and Porcupine Rivers. The Rat River is the way to reach Summit Lake. It’s hard work, it’s a struggle, but it’s worth it. Putting effort into reaching a goal makes achieving that goal so sweet. Arriving at Summit Lake by canoe is an experience worth a hundred times flying into Summit Lake because we put at least a hundred times more effort getting there. That’s the way it is with life. The things you have to work hardest for are those you value most.

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?”