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.