I relaxed next morning while Doug and Byron climbed Roche qui Tempre L’eau and later pushed my canoe into the strong current. I had told Doug and Byron I would meet them at the Ochre River which, we had read, turned bright red in the early summer, but it was crystal clear when I arrived. I improved my time by doing some fishing and had a big northern pike when they showed up. With the strong current through the mountains, we took less than three hours to go twenty miles.
I had been amusing myself by writing a parody of Robert Service’s poem, “The Man Who Won’t Fit In.” Service is my favorite poet, but I didn’t like some of his lines. This is my version.
The Man Who Wouldn’t Fit In
There is a race of men who won’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still,
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rover the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest,
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
Now they don’t go straight, they just go far,
They are strong and brave and true,
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new. They say,
“When I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I will score.”
So they chop and change and each fresh move
Is always a search for more.
And each forgets as he strips and runs,
With brilliant and fitful pace,
That it’s the steady quiet plodding ones,
Who win in the human rat race.
And each forgets as the days pass by,
Forgets the ways of the past,
Till he stands one day with a hope that’s high,
In the light of the truth at last.
He has tried, he has conquered, he has taken the chance,
He has always done his best,
Life’s been a marvelous tie for him,
And now he has passed the test,
And yes, he is one of the few,
He was always meant to win,
He’s a rolling stone and it’s bred in his bone,
He’s a man who won’t fit in.
June 21, the longest day of the year, and we were still about 275 miles south of the Arctic Circle, which we had hoped to cross in time to see the midnight sun, but the ice on Great Slave Lake had slowed us down.
Late in the afternoon we decided to lash the three canoes together and drift in the fast current until sundown. Since we had two decked canoes and one open canoe sitting at various heights above the water, we chose to put two birch poles under the canoes. We lashed each canoe securely to the poles, reloaded our gear, and pushed off. This stable craft allowed us to stand and move around, but having the poles underneath made the raft very hard to paddle. We drifted on through rain and wind, pin-wheeling slowly in the current. Every couple of hours we had to man the paddles to move the raft away from the shore.
I put three of my packs in the back of the canoe, unrolled my foam pad on the floor, put the spray cover on, and lay down with only my head sticking out. Byron said, “You look like a canoe with a hat.” Even though I was under the spray cover and out of the wind, I felt very cold by the time we stopped on a gravel bar and lit a fire.
Doug and Byron seemed in an uncommon hurry next morning, but I caught them at a creek where they were fishing with no success. We parted company agreeing they would stop at the Little Birch River about twenty miles farther. They didn’t stop, and as I turned to leave, I surprised a beaver on a high bank. He was so startled he whirled around, stumbled, and fell about six feet down the bank landing with a great splash.
I had a hunch Doug and Byron would stop on an island a couple of miles away mostly across the river, but the wind did its best to see that I didn’t get there before the current swept me past. Their canoes with light blue tops and bottoms were very hard to spot, and I was almost there before seeing them pulled up on the exposed gravel bar on the tip of the island. The wind blew so hard we used nylon cord to tie the tent, a four-man dome that stood up pretty well. Late in the night sheets of water lashed at the tent, hard gusts of wind threatened to blow us off the island, but we hunkered in the tent, snug and dry, and didn’t consider leaving our shelter until the rain stopped late in the afternoon.
By that time we were bordering on starvation. Nobody had been brave enough to venture out in the storm. The wind continued to howl and rain discouraged us from going anywhere. Waves marched up the river, continuously waving row after row of whitecaps leaving us no choice but to sit tight and wait. Byron dug out a needle and attempted to patch the badly torn knees on his Army surplus pants while Doug read a book. I dutifully recorded the day’s activities in my journal with one word, “Stormbound.”
Next morning in spite of a windy drizzle I was ready to move on, but when we put our canoes in the water, the powerful wind and soaking rain returned. We plowed off anyway into what looked like a hurricane. The wind drove rain into our faces, and even with my hat pulled low over my eyes, my glasses were soon so spattered with rain that I could hardly see. We paddled hard for over two hours before the wind overpowered us, and we stopped only five miles downstream, built a fire, and hunkered down.
As soon as the white crest disappeared from the waves, we pushed on, almost into a disaster. Where the river went around a point, the current and wind combined to pile up waves four feet high. I headed for shore but not soon enough. The bow of my canoe plowed into the first wave and rose up through it. Water showered everywhere as I crashed through the waves. The spray cover kept out most of the water as it washed over my canoe, and I made it to shore to bail out. But we didn’t learn our lesson and returned to the river.
About three miles upstream of Fort Norman sit the famed Smoking Hills noted by Alexander Mackenzie in 1789. But the heavy rains of the last two days must have dampened the permanently burning coal seam because when we went by only a few wisps of steam or smoke were visible.
Passing Fort Norman and the Great Bear River, we camped beneath Bear Rock, a striking tower of limestone rearing 1500 feet above the river. Jutting from the river below Bear Rock is an enormous petrified spruce trunk explained by the following legend:
Many years ago a giant who had suffered through a winter of severe cold and hunger on Great Bear Lake went to the source of the Great Bear River looking for food. Spotting three beaver he followed them downriver and killed them. He got the last at the river’s outlet, throwing his spear with such force that he could not pull it out and it remains there to this day. The giant then skinned his beaver, made a great fire, and roasted them. They were so fat that when the grease dripped into the ground and caught fire, it never stopped burning. After his meal, the giant went to Bear Rock where he stretched the skins which explains the three distinct red patches on Bear Rock.
I climbed the steep slopes of Bear Rock and was rewarded with a magnificent view of the clear waters of the Great Bear River still flowing unmingled with the muddy Mackenzie. Across the river a big island swam in the river with several sandbars huddled around it like ducklings around their mother. Rimming the horizon, snowy mountains rose majestically from the valley.
Frustrated by having our speed cut in half by the strong wind, we all felt a little angry and discouraged. We needed a party to liven up the evening, and that’s what we had. A whole boatload of Indians stopped with a couple cases of beer, and we had a little beach party on the shores of the wild Mackenzie. A couple of them were hungry so they ate the rest of the fish we had cooked for supper. One of them commented in a straightforward manner, “This fish is way overcooked.”
“Where do you folks live?” asked Doug
Charlie, who did most of the talking, answered, “We live in oe Norman. Just went up to Wells to visit some friends.”
“What do you do for a living?” continued Doug.
“Well, we mostly just sit around and drink beer. Not much happens in Fort Norman, you know.” He didn’t seem in a hurry to get home even though it was late. With virtually 24 hours of daylight, there is very little pressure to get back before dark.
When Byron pulled his canoe farther on shore to tie it for the night, its rudder broke because the soft aluminum hinge couldn’t take the strain. Using considerable ingenuity, he cut a strip about four inches wide from his wet suit and used it for a hinge. He used wood screws to fasten the rubber wet suit material to the rubber and then taped it to the hull. Sawyer Canoe had promised to send new rudders to Inuvik, and Byron hoped his makeshift repairs would last till then. Doug’s canoe also had an ailing rudder, which had fallen off back on Great Slave Lake when a rivet had broken. Bailing wire now held it together.
Morning came blue and calm, and the river flowed smoothly north. With such a great contrast to yesterday’s rough water, I couldn’t wait to cruise down the mirror-like surface, but the calm lasted about 45 minutes before the wind came up again. We stopped to buy some salt at Norman Wells, the site of the only oil refinery in the Northwest Territories. Alexander Mackenzie noticed the oil seeps in the area in 1789, but not until 1919 did Imperial Oil drill its first well. If the projected pipeline is built, rapid development of the area is almost certain.
The price of salt astounded us as usual. Prices in the little northern communities are always high and are reflected most in heavy items like salt. After lunch the increased wind made progress slow and disheartening, and in three hours we covered only five miles. I pulled to shore and shouted, “To hell with it.” Doug and Byron came paddling up, discouragement written on their faces, and Byron remarked, “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? We are really suffering.”
“Yep, we deserve it. We worked hard to be out here in the pouring rain watching the whitecaps on the river,” added Doug.
Although we had been working hard, the weather had been holding us back and even stopping us. We had been expecting to travel fifty miles a day easily on the Mackenzie, and so far our longest day had been only 48 miles. This progress kept us on schedule but just barely.
Doug still wanted to push on rapidly as he had the notion we would see the midnight sun if we reached the Arctic Circle by July 1. Any attempt to dissuade him elicited a very angry reception. He suggested, “Why don’t we start paddling at night?”
“I don’t think it would work, “replied Byron. “We’d be paddling at weird times and get all messed up. Besides, a lot of the nights have been windy.”
“Well, I don’t object to traveling at night, but I’d just as soon maintain some sort of schedule,” I said. This seemingly insignificant disagreement mounted ever bigger as time passed, but now the storm had passed over, and we thought about going a little farther. Although it was late in the evening, I didn’t want to object since Doug obviously wanted to go on. Byron settled the matter by saying, “I think tonight is for sleeping; we can paddle tomorrow.”
The next morning was calm, and we paddled steadily, never once stopping to look at anything. When we finally did stop, Doug wanted to keep moving even though we had come forty miles. We ate supper huddled around a sputtering fire in the cold misty wind, the air charged with tension, and a real rift threatened over Doug’s displeasure with the pace.
When I started to question my motives and goals, a gentle peace enveloped my mind like the fog on the river, and I thought of a passage I had written in my journal just the other night.
“When all is said and done, what do we have of worth to spend but time? A thing costs precisely the amount of time we must put into it. Now, we can either exchange our time for money through a treacherous institution known as a job and use the money to buy things that will make us happy, or we can spend our time directly with no exchange doing things that make us happy. This is how I regard the time spent canoeing. I wish to learn of happiness, to experience deeply the peace of the wilderness, to become part of that peace. J want to revel in the joyfulness of the cascading stream and to drink fully of that joyful water. I want to watch the dignity and grandeur of the mountains and improve my soul by traveling through them. Yes, my time is being well spent. I have invested many an hour in this journey, and so far they have all been worth it.”
A headwind next morning grew stronger as the morning went on, but my attitude surprised me. They seemed more a challenge than a hardship. I rose above them just as my little canoe rose over the mountainous waves. As I plowed along through the waves that threatened to stop us, and as the rain beat steadily on my felt hat and dripped off the brim, I tried to accept the wind and rain as part of an experience to be enjoyed. I laughed at the rain and admired the waterfalls cascading from little canyons still filled with ice and falling over the sheer cliffs into the river.
We stopped about two miles above the San Sault Rapids, the most dangerous place on the entire Mackenzie. We climbed the bank to a memorial for a man who had died in the rapids and read the inscription:
Hugh Lockhart Donald, born August 21, 1940, who made his last camp near this site. He was drowned in the San Sault Rapids August 10, 1961. This memorial is a grateful tribute for help given at that time by the people of the area with the hope that it may give shelter to those who travel the Mackenzie River.
Inside the monument were a Bible, a pencil and a notebook. I opened the book to see a picture of Hugh Lockhart Donald. Under the picture were the words, “He lived through all the singing years.”
People had been leaving their names and destinations for years in the notebook, and we checked with particular interest to see if anybody had traveled the same route as we were. There didn’t seem to be anyone so we left our names and destination and set off to face the mighty San Sault Rapids.
A rocky limestone ledge extending midway across the river from the east bank forms these rapids. Wave are said to approach ten feet in height at low water, and we had been warned repeatedly to stay near the west bank because the east side was a maelstrom of waves and rocks. Staying near the west bank and crossing our fingers, we went for it. The fast water boiled and swirled violently; however we had no difficulty as we sped down the rapids.
When we stopped for lunch just below the rapids, Doug seemed very unhappy, refused to eat with us, and instead went downstream and ate alone. Something was seriously wrong.