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.