Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 6)

On day 113 of our journey I warned everyone to be careful since it might be an unlucky day. Far from unlucky, it turned out to be a marvelous day with the differences of the previous day forgotten as we moved down the river again to the lure of unknown places and something new around the corner. Robert Service said it just as I would were I a poet:

The Land of Beyond

Have you ever heard of the Land of Beyond,
That dreams at the gates of day?
Alluring it lies at the skirts of the skies,
And ever so frar away;
Alluring it falls; O ye whose yoke galls,
And ye of the trail over fond,
With saddle and pack, by paddle and track,
Let’s go to the land of beyond!
Have you ever stood where the silences brood,
And vast the horizons begin,
At the dawn of the day to behold far away,
The goal you would strive for and win?
Yet ah! In the night when you gain to the height,
With the vast pool of heaven star-spawned,
Afar and agleam, like a valley of dream,
Still mocks you a land of beyond.

Thank God! There is always a Land of Beyond,
For us who are true to the trail,
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A fairness that never will fail;
A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond.

We stopped at Galena the next day so Byron could visit the air force base there. Because Byron’s dad is an officer in the air force, he could go to the store on the base. I stayed with the canoes as rain fell, and I thought, “You know, we are really becoming experts on rain. We have seen and felt so much of so many varieties of rain that I am beginning to feel somewhat like an authority on the subject.”

The many types of rain include sunny sprinkles, misty drizzles, raging thunderstorms, windy drenchers, and we had had them all. My favorite rainy day is a rainbow day in which rainstorms are interspersed with sunny breaks. After each storm passes over, a marvelous shiny rainbow follows. The worst is the all day steady drizzle. While rain can be fascinating, I strongly advise against overdoses.

Byron returned empty-handed since they didn’t have the boots he wanted. A powerful storm hit only a few miles from Galena, so we found a cozy spot in the willows to shelter from the wind, lit a big fire, and the little nook soon felt like home. While we were busy cooking Doug said suddenly, “Hey, look who’s coming. It’s Tom and Steve. Quick, Mike, get out there and wave them in. I’ll put on the tea.”

I went to the beach, got their attention; soon they walked up to our fire. When we handed them tea, Steve said, “Boy, I’ll tell you, we sure worked hard for this cup of tea. We went by Lanny’s place the afternoon of the day you left, and we’ve been pushing hard to catch up.

Did you stop at Lanny’s and look at the fish wheel we helped build?”

“No, we were in the middle of the river, but Lanny came out in his boat and said, “You guys must be Tom and Steve.” He gave us a fish and said you were only three hours ahead so we stepped up the pace a bit.”

“How did we get three days ahead of you guys? I figured you moved along a little faster than us since you don’t stop for lunch,” said Doug.

Tom answered, “Well, we stayed at Canyon Village all day so you gained a few hours there, and we stopped for two days at Fort Yukon and another day at Tanana. But I doubt we travel any faster than you do.”

“It’s good to see y’all again after almost three weeks. We’re going to have to work some sort of system to keep track of each other. You will, of course, stop for the night here, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Tom, ”we didn’t spend all that energy to catch you and then pass you. We’ll find a place for our tents here somewhere.”

We had chosen a very shallow place to land, and it proved impossible next day to get the loaded canoes into the deeper water without a little wading. Seeing Tom and Steve sloshing around in the cold water sent shivers down my spine. Getting feet wet is not the worst; it’s having wet feet the rest of the day. I solved the problem by wading around barefoot and putting on shoes after I got into the canoe.

Later we stopped at a fish camp where a bunch of Indian kids cut fish to be driedfor dog food in a real production line with one kid busy bringing fish from the boat, two or three cutting them with lightning fast strokes of the knife, and one hanging the cut fish. Byron timed them, and the kids could cut and hang a fish in well under sixty seconds. I couldn’t resist playing tourist and getting them to pose for a picture.

I finally overcame my conscience and took a fish out of a fish wheel. The first box had no fish, but as I began pushing away, the wheel caught a good-sized female salmon and it came shooting into the box wildly. I grabbed it, flipped it into my canoe, and put my foot on it. I explained to the guys at lunch, “I figured it had to be an omen from above. There I was trying to decide whether or not to take a fish when all of a sudden there was a fish right in my hands.

“More likely God looked down and saw you there and said, ‘I hope the devil doesn’t tempt him with a fish,” was Byron’s quick rejoinder.

By suppertime I was suffering for my crime. My stomach threatened a general strike after being forced to process about twice as much salmon as it should have. I had eaten half of a six or seven ounce salmon at lunch, and now I couldn’t bear to look at the other half, much less eat it, so I gave it to Doug and drank only a cup of tea, all my stomach could tolerate.

Tom and Steve had been in a hurry to reach Kaltag before the post office closed for the weekend so we made no effort to keep up with them. The golden day reminded me of days in northern Washington toward the end of the Pacific Crest Trail when we hiked through mountains with golden tamaracks shining on the high slopes and dazzling cottonwoods lining the river valleys. Now we were in another golden time with willows near shore turning a bright yellow and high on the hillsides the alders and birches showing tinges of color. After climbing a hill for a different perspective, I lazed into town after the others.

Tom and Steve talked to several people about traveling up the Rodo River and down the Unalakleet River to the Bering Sea. Tom told us, “First time I mentioned it, they said, “Impossible,” but when I explained how we had gone up the Rat River, they changed their minds.”

Steve quickly interjected, “These guys are trappers, remember, and they have probably never seen the upper parts except in winter.”

Tom continued, “One man recalled some people starting but having to come back. Then the story changed and they said that someone had gone over three or four years ago. To me it appears we could do it, but it would be a lot of work, and I think we could count on a five to ten mile portage across the top.”

Steve was reluctant to try, Byron was very unenthusiastic, and Doug noncommittal while Tom and I wanted to go for it but hated to press the issue. Later in the evening we met another group of canoers. Richard, Marietta, and Mike had started canoeing at Dawson on the Yukon River and hoped to reach Emmonak. Mike’s wife had started the trip but had flown home from Tanana. Now Richard’s wife, Marietta, planned to fly out from Kaltag.

We chatted round the fire late into the evening. Richard and Marietta soon slipped off to their tent, but Mike entertained us with tales of canoeing on the upper Yukon and the Mississippi River. It seemed good to talk to someone new because the conversations among our group had become shorter, and we seemed to have less and less to talk about.

Stars studded the sky and seemed to chill the earth with bright cold light and frost formed on the grass before we finally said “Good night.”

The next morning as rain poured down and the wind whipped it into my face, I paddled off singing loudly “Seasons in the Sun” and keeping myself cheerful with thoughts of finding a cozy cabin where we could hole up for a day. Since we were far ahead of schedule, I figured we deserved a day off somewhere warm and dry. I found a perfect cabin with a stove and oven; it had three beds and even a table. What more could we want? The raspberry patch behind the cabin was loaded with berries and thinking all the while about raspberry jam on a hot bannock, I went out to gather a few. Just as I started picking, I looked up and saw Doug and Byron on the opposite side of the river about to disappear behind an island, conveniently blocking them for getting across the river or seeing me.

I swore vehemently, put out the fire, grabbed my few raspberries, and headed off in the rain to catch up. I put all my anger and irritation into energy to drive the canoe forward through the waves, but it took over an hour to close the gap, and by then most of my displeasure had dissipated. “Why did you guys switch sides of the river on me?” I asked.

“You mean you missed a shortcut? We thought sure you would go down that slough on that last big bend. After all, your middle name is ‘shortcut’.”

“I missed that shortcut. Wasn’t looking at the map. But you guys made me leave a warm cabin and a big raspberry patch.”

“Of no, you’ve got to be kidding. That’s terrible! Oh well, we’re wet so we might as well make some miles now,” said Byron.

And that’s what we did, on and on through rainstorm after rainstorm. I got far behind and wondered why we didn’t stop. The sun had already set when I pulled my canoe onto a soggy beach, and darkness squeezed the light out of the air while we sat around a sputtering fire, cooking supper in the drizzly rain. I fumed silently. Then I remembered the rainbows that followed each storm all afternoon. That was what counted, what we would remember. Not the rain, but the rainbows. Not the wind, but the dancing, sparkling waves.

As we slipped off to bed, an almost full moon suddenly broke through the clouds and cast a silver stream of light on the river. The soft light flooded our camp imparting a far-away ethereal look to the surroundings. The far shore appeared to be another world. Our tents seemed more like strange geodesic shapes from another planet than the familiar shelters we slept in every night. When a mother moose and calf wandered into our camp, they snorted with alarm and thundered up the shoreline, more in the water than on the beach. We listened with contentment to the ow] hooting a lonesome sound into the cold night.

Had the clouds not covered most of the sky, the temperature would have dropped well below freezing during the night. As it was, the air was pretty nippy. I pulled on my wool mitts for the first time since Great Slave Lake and prepared to go out on the river bundled in a thick wool shirt and windbreaker. After Doug pushed his canoe into the water, he turned and asked, “Byron told me yesterday that he wants to paddle till sunset every night. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t really like it too much. I’d rather camp while it’s still light. Besides, what’s the rush?”

“Yeah, I know, but I was talking to Byron yesterday, and I think he’s ready for the trip to be over. He’d just as soon keep going fifty miles a day, close our eyes for a couple of weeks, and go for the ocean.

That didn’t sound like Byron, but I said, “I’m still having a ball and have no desire to rush to the ocean. The journey will end soon, and I’ll be happy when we get to the end, but in the meantime, I’d just as soon have fun too.”

“You know, Byron might be feeling like me on the Mackenzie. I wasn’t having fun then, and I just had to get off that river. I figured you guys weren’t too concerned about finishing the trip so I considered going on by myself. Now it looks like we’re going to make it in plenty of time, and I don’t feel any rush now.

We caught up to Byron but neither Doug or I mentioned that we thought it might be better to slack up a bit. We went hunting for Horner Hot Springs where we hoped for a warm bath. After we trudged through the dense brush and couldn’t locate it, we returned to the canoe, and Byron got in his canoe without a word and paddled away. I looked at Doug, and he said, “I thought we were going to camp right here.”

“I figured that too, but Byron obviously didn’t.”

“Maybe we ought to say something to him and see if we can get him to slow down.”

When the clouds lifted in late afternoon, we saw fresh snow on the Kokrines Mountains and the first tinges of color in the leaves. Doug and I chased Byron till sunset once more. Camp was more enjoyable without raining, but I had put off washing my clothes for so long that my jeans stood up by themselves, and I had hoped to wash them in the afternoon warmth.

Next morning I mentioned to Byron, “Why don’t we stop a little before sunset. It would make a little more comfortable camp.”

“We’ve been getting up so late that we have to paddle till sundown to get any miles in. We haven’t been putting in much time on the river, you know,” Byron replied, a little upset at my questioning his judgment. He jumped in his canoe and took off with a little extra snap in his strokes. After only a mile we stopped at a fish camp. A young man Lanny came out of his canvas tent, and we chatted a bit. He gave us a big salmon, and as we turned to leave he mentioned, “If I had enough money, I’d hire you guys to – help me put my fish wheel together. I’m two weeks behind schedule, and I really need to start fishing a soon as possible.”

We put our heads together and, deciding it would be an interesting experience, offered to stay and help. He had all the logs for the raft that the wheel would sit on and all the other parts for the wheel itself. We figured it would take about a day to put it together, but we stayed three days before we got it turning. Lanny had come to Alaska six years earlier to do some backpacking and had liked the land so much that he stayed. He first turned to trading to keep him in money and for the last couple of years had lived at Kokrines, an abandoned town about 25 miles upstream. He was the sole inhabitant of the deserted town where he had tried fishing the previous year but hadn’t caught enough fish. He figured he needed about 2000 fish for his eight dogs over the winter, and he hoped to catch a few more and sell them.

We got the raft built and the axle in place the first day. Lanny was quite pleased with the progress, and we decided to stay another day. In the evening he showed us how he kept his knives sharp and how to fillet a salmon with two quick strokes of the knife. A pretty good cook, he cooked a salmon dish every night.

The second day we put the baskets on the axle and built a fence called a lead, which forces the fish to swim into the baskets. Because the day was cold and windy, I was glad not to be on the river, but then Lanny asked me to take his boat and go upriver a few miles to another camp and borrow an auger. So there I was, out on the river again.

I was getting a little anxious to be back on the river by the afternoon of the third day. We had pushed the fish wheel into the river and had it ready to start turning, but many things remained to finish before it would catch fish. I suggested, “Why don’t we be on our way? It’s going to be a couple more days before it will be catching fish, and I’d just as soon be on the river.”

“I’d just as soon stay at least another night,” replied Doug. I thought we were in no rush.”

“No, I’m not in a rush, but if we stay here much longer than we will have to rush. After all, if I had suggested a three-day layover while we were on the Mackenzie, you would have had a fit.”

About then we ran out of wire and the question of whether to stay longer was resolved, but we stayed the night anyway. Doug needed to fix the hinge on his canoe because the aluminum hinge had almost broken off just as Byron’s had back on the Mackenzie. Byron had bought a drill at Inuvik, drilled three holes in his canoe and attached a new hinge. But he had sent the drill home at Fort Yukon. Doug managed to jury-rig one by clamping a pair of vise grips onto the shaft of a drill bit. Then he turned the drill bit while Byron pushed down on the top of it with a piece of wood. A very long, slow process, but it did the job.

While Doug and Byron worked on their canoes, I wandered up the high bank into a birch forest where mushrooms dotted the dark forest floor. Rain had done one good thing for us; it provided a large quantity of mushrooms to eat and admire. Several large specimens of the handsome but deadly Fly Amanita grew near the sunnier edges of the forest. I had brought my camera and enjoyed a few minutes crawling around taking pictures of the colorful mushrooms.

I wandered into the quiet depths of the forest where trees crowded together shutting out sunlight. Nothing moved and dense foliage and thick undergrowth muffled every sound. I stood silently, holding my breath, waiting for something I did not know. I only knew something empty at the bottom of each breath cried out to be filled.

A big black bear ambled across the hillside, a study in the science of lovely laziness. He poked with one big paw at a rotten log, tossed a few slivers of decaying wood into the air and then, with a sigh of pleasure, rolled in the debris. He didn’t have a care in the world, and as long as he had plenty of food and solitude, he was happy.

I contrasted him to us humans; we are always hurrying here and there, trying to do so much, and in reality doing so little. We had just passed under the Alaska Pipeline and seen the tourists in their motor homes and cars parked by the shore. One of the motor homes had a big sticker plastered across its back bumper, “We drove the Haul Road.”

Not impressed with the hustle and bustle, I continued down the river, pleased to stop and do as I pleased. We had stuck together in the Yukon Flats but now had resumed our loose but efficient method of staying together while paddling miles apart. We had an unspoken agreement to stay on one side of the river unless it was obviously advantageous to cross. After traveling together for so long, we were pretty much attuned to the other’s preferences and could usually unerringly follow each other.

The fast current pushed us along rapidly, and even with the wind against us we still covered over fifty miles. Although beautiful, the size of the surrounding country seemed most impressive. Massive mountains, the huge river, the whole land had an aura of spaciousness.

Finding clear water to drink had been difficult in the flats so we appreciated the good, cold water of the pretty little stream we camped by. After supper I walked through the woods admiring the flowers and leaves covered with sparkling water drops from the shower that had just passed over. When the sun broke through, it illuminated the droplets, clothing each tiny flower and leaf with a bracelet of diamonds. The shining orbs danced everywhere, so as I picked my way through the forest, I showered diamonds heedlessly.

Next day I watched Doug paddle ahead of me, a lone canoe on a silver path. The sunlight shone and danced on the river, lighting the river’s path beneath the towering black mountains topped with dark clouds. My paddle moved automatically as my canoe forged a path through the waves, and every stroke made a note in a perfect symphony.

Later Doug asked, “Mike, are you sure you ought to baking those brownies?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“When I paddled here, I could smell them baking for about a mile. And look across the river. I don’t see why that bear over there couldn’t smell them too.”

I looked and sure enough, there stood a bear. I laughed and said, “Ah, he wouldn’t swim all the way across the …” My laughter stopped short when the bear plunged into the river.

Doug said, “What did I tell you? He’s coming for those brownies.” But then the bear reappeared, and we relaxed. The silly bear continued to dive into the river and scramble back out. We wondered if it might be fishing, but he couldn’t possibly see fish in the muddy water.

Long before we could see anything, the unmistakable roar of a huge mass of rapidly moving water reached our ears. We stopped just above the place marked on the map simply as “The Rapids” and looked it over. The large mound of rocks in the middle of the river created all the noise as the river cascaded around them. The rest of the river swirled and boiled through a narrow channel. We whizzed through it and stopped for lunch on a huge rock by the shore.

With little wind we cruised rapidly, zipping by the town of Ramparts on the other side of the river. Late in the afternoon we were so far apart that the other canoes were just tiny white specks on the dark river ahead. When we stopped, we got out the map measurer to check our day’s progress. “Would you believe it,” announced Byron, “We just did a 66-mile day.”

Doug was in high spirits for another reason. He had stopped to talk to two guys at a cabin and ask questions about Alaska. He said, “The guys invited me in, gave me a cup of coffee, and started asking questions. They were interested in my canoe, and one of them offered to buy it for four hundred dollars if I put it on the barge and sent it to Fairbanks. Then he offered to pay for shipping as well. I got his phone number in Fairbanks; he was just out here for a visit to one of his friends.”

Byron said, “Well, that’s good. Maybe if it works out we can put both canoes on the barge. Selling these boats will sure help if we stay in Alaska.”

We stopped in Tanana to mail letters and buy a few odds and ends. We had been pronouncing “Tanana” to rhyme with banana and soon discovered the correct pronunciation: “ta-na-naw.” Soon we were pronouncing banana to rhyme with Tanana. Doug wanted to go to the store and ask if they had any ba-na-naws for sale.

As we continued leisurely to the Torzitna River, clouds drifted overhead and periodically dampened our conversation. Byron and Doug were discussing where and what they would go and do after the journey. I went a little way up the Tozitna River and, as I moved along, I thought of the passage I had just read in Walden. “Let us settle ourselves and work and wedge our feet downward through the slush and mud of opinion and prejudice and tradition and delusion and appearance, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion until we come to a hard bottom and rocks in a place which we can call reality, and say, this is and no mistake” (Thoreau).

“How do you guys want to go to Fort Yukon?” asked Byron as we sat around our breakfast fire. “Portage in from the Porcupine onto Hospital Lake or try going up the Yukon?”

“It’s hard to say,” Doug mused. That trip report said it was impossible to paddle up the Yukon, but I can hardly believe that. Why don’t we look at the portage and then decide?”

“Okay,” I replied, “Let’s meet on that island just about a mile above the portage trail.”

Fort Yukon, located on the Yukon River about two miles upstream from the mouth of the Porcupine, also adjoins a slough known as Hospital Lake. The portage trail leads from the Porcupine to Hospital Lake. The trail, if taken, would spare us from paddling upstream. But when Doug and I arrived at the island, Byron wasn’t there. “Wasn’t he ahead of you,” I asked?

“I’m sure he was but maybe he missed this place or maybe he’s at the portage trail.“

“Well, then let’s go down to the portage trail.”

We checked the trail and not seeing Byron anywhere, left a note saying, “Portage trail too long. We’ll do the impossible and paddle up the Yukon. Meet at Post Office.

Although the Yukon was big and muddy with a very strong current, we had little difficulty reaching Fort Yukon. As we moved upstream, one beer can after another floated by. When we neared town, I saw where they were coming from. A group of Indians sitting on the bank drinking beer threw the empty cans into the river. We waved but they just glared back. When we reached the beach and asked for the post office, we were met mostly with frowns and curt, unfriendly answers. I got the distinct impression that the people were looking over my gear to see what might be worth stealing.

At the post office a note from Byron said he was at the far end of town. “What the hell does he think we are? Mind readers or something? How are we supposed to know which is the far end,” grumbled Doug.

After a long search we gave up and camped where the Yukon River and Hospital Lake met, figuring that he’d have to pass that point no matter where he was. Soon Byron showed up on foot with a long tale of misadventure. “I missed the island and the portage trail, “he said, “so when I got here I left a note at the post office. Then I figured you must have taken the portage trail and were waiting for me in Hospital Lake. Sol paddled over there and dragged my canoe through a bunch of weeds into the lake and, of course, you weren’t there. And now I’ve dragged my canoe back and here I am.”

“Well,” Doug said, “We were mad at you for fouling up our plan, but it looks as if you got the worst end of the deal. It’s too bad. I guess we’ll go to the post office first thing next morning.”

The mosquitoes that had earlier plagued us had mostly disappeared, but a new plague arrived. No-see-ums clouded the air at times, particularly at dusk in still, moist air. After spending most of the next day organizing our food and making the usual calls home to let the family know we were still alive, we pushed our canoes away from Fort Yukon with a great sense of relief. The clamor of the town and unfriendliness of the natives grated on our nerves, and the big, wide river looked mighty good to us.

Byron had rolled his map measurer over all the maps of the Yukon River a few days earlier and announced, “It’s about 1020 miles by my calculations to the ocean. We’re on our way, boys. That big ocean is waiting for us.”

Elated as usual when finishing a major portion of the trip or successfully meeting some challenge, we felt a feeling of triumph. Our mood was made merry by our accomplishment. Experiences like that lead me to believe that the perfect state of being called heaven is not a place where everything is done for you at the snap of a finger. No, it is more a discovery of strength and ability within us to master any situation.

Not bothering with a tent that night, we just rolled our bags on the beach. Awakening four hours later, I saw the northern horizon seemed much lighter than the southern one and had a faint orange glow along it. In the southern sky, much darker, many stars shone brightly. When a shooting star fell across the sky, I made a quick wish for strong current and sunshine before falling asleep again.

The Yukon Flats is a tremendous maze of islands and channels up to four or five miles wide, with powerful currents that swept us along at a rapid pace. For three days we stuck close together to avoid being separated in the countless different channels although there wasn’t any danger of getting lost. It’s pretty hard to lose a river as big as the Yukon.

At this point we still hadn’t decided where to end the trip. We had planned to end it at the mouth of the Yukon River, but as we looked at the maps, we became aware of two other fascinating possibilities. We could leave the Yukon near the town of Paimut and travel by portaging between lakes and streams across the Paimut Portage to Kuwoskwim River. Then we could go down the Kuwoskwim to the Bering Sea. In the other option we could leave the Yukon about three miles south of Kaltag, travel up the Rodo River, and then down the Unalakleet River to the town of Unalakleet on the Bering Sea. All of the routes had advantages, but we knew so little about them it was hard to make a decision.

We stopped to talk to an old Indian man at one of the many fish camps we passed. “Never in my life have I seen so much rain,” he said. “I’ve usually got two fish wheels running, but this rain has got the river so high that one of them got torn up.”

The fish wheels were big baskets on an axle that spun in the current. When salmon came up the river and swam into the baskets, they would be lifted out of the water. Then they slid down a trough into a box beside the wheel. I was surprised that he didn’t offer us one of the salmon lying in a big pile on the shore, but we had heard that the Indians in this part of the country had no love for white men, so maybe that explained his reaction to us.

Hills rose on the horizon telling us we were almost out of the flats. Late in the evening a big flock of geese paraded back and forth on the sand bar looking like ghosts in the shadowy soft twilight. Then the geese lifted off and flew into the night— gray and spectral as they soared like the smoke from a fire into the darkness.

Next morning a strong wind did its best to push our tent into the bushes. In spite of it we set out and found Tom and Steve camped on a windy gravel bar. Tom waved us over for a cup of tea, and Doug asked, “Are you guys too intelligent to get out in wind like this, or have you just not started yet?”

Tom replied, “Oh no, we have no intelligence. We’ll be out in a bit.”

As the wind increased, waves began splashing over our canoes bringing our progress almost to a standstill. I asked my partners, “What to you think? Shall we hole up until the damn wind lets up a bit?”

“Yeah, but there isn’t any shelter here. Do you think we could make it to that grove of trees there?” asked Doug.

The wind felt like a solid wall with sand whipping off the bars and spray blowing off the waves, and it took us almost thirty minutes to go half a mile. We spent the rest of the day loafing in the shelter of the trees. Since Byron had purchased some flour at Old Crow, we all tried to make some good bannock. Amazingly, our first attempts turned out edible, good in fact.

Late in the evening the wind died so we continued down the increasingly narrow river toward the Upper ramparts of the Porcupine River. At sunset we watched the light become soft and shadowy, the lacy clouds turned red and purple as the sun slowly sank below the jagged horizon, and night came to the Yukon Territories.

Time is like a river flowing to the sea—sometimes it flows fast and violent, sometimes slow and serene, but irresistibly it moves to the eternal sea where time is no more. We all search for that sea although we may call it different names.

Banging noises on the shore wakened me making me think the water had risen enough to float the canoes, but instead I saw our friends, Tom and Steve, building a fire. They had risen very early after sitting out the wind the day before and had just stopped for breakfast. We wondered whether we, in our solo canoes, went faster than they in their big seventeen-foot tandem canoe. I figured they would be faster, after all they had two paddlers, but I was wrong. We kept up to them easily.

Just before crossing the border into Alaska, we stopped to explore Rampart House, an old Hudson’s Bay trading post standing empty and lonesome on a plateau above the river. The original post had been located at Fort Yukon, but the US government forced them to move upriver just across the border.

On the 94^th day of our travels, July 28, we crossed into Alaska, a true milestone. The multi-colored Upper Ramparts canyon rushed us across the border. Eroded into white spires and towers of yellow and red rock, the walls rose above swiftly flowing water.

About a mile above the Salmon Trout River, a young trapped named Lester waved us over. Hungry for someone to talk to, he answered our questions in great length. Doug asked, “Why did you come to Alaska?”

“I came into the country about six years ago. I had about 11,000 bucks in debts and couldn’t pay it, so I ran up here. They can’t get me here, you know.”

“Why not?” Isn’t there some kind of law or something?”

“Hell, no, if anybody came up here after me, I’d just shoot the bastard, that’s all. I got a little cabin up there on my trap line, enough caribou and fish to eat, and I make a little money each year trapping. I sure as hell ain’t going to let some fat ass of a banker take nothing from me.”

I soon tired of the conversation and the little bugs eating us alive, so I suggested, “Why don’t we camp down by Salmon Trout? I’ll go down now, and you guys come when you feel like it.”

When they agreed, I pushed away and drifted down to find several cabins in a large clearing, and I pitched the tent by the best one. Both Doug and I became sick in the night, me with stomach cramps while Doug, much sicker, had diarrhea and vomiting. When a wild wind and rainstorm swept through the camp in the early morning, we decided to take the day off. Byron made the best of it by stringing all his gear on a clothesline inside the cabin. Because several of his packs had developed holes, much of his clothing and other items were wet.

Tom and Steve breezed by around noon so we quickly put on a pot of tea as soon as we saw them round the bend. Tea had become a ritual when they came to our camp and vice versa. They were surprised to see us still in camp, but Doug said, “This is just a sick camp. We’ll be on the river tomorrow and see you in Fort Yukon if not sooner.” I fished, gathered mushrooms, raspberries, and blueberries, and lay on my back watching the clouds drift and thinking about building cabins and enduring deep snow and long, lonely winter nights. Slowly I came to the conclusion that I would rather return home to family and friends. The decision gave me a great sense of relief as worrying about the future detracted from the very real beauty of the present. But now free again, I could travel with no concerns except to take each moment and live it fully.

We pushed off next morning into a cold, windy, nasty day canoeing through Howling Canyon while Doug made the canyon walls ring with his howling. Next we reached Canyon Village with three buildings and Tom and Steve in one. Tom handed us cups of tea as we dripped into the cabin saying, “Welcome to Canyon Village.” Since he was baking bread, we had to stay to sample it.

“This is about the nicest unused cabin I’ve seen yet,” I remarked.

“Steve looked up from patching a pack and said, “What do you mean, unused? We’re here, aren’t we?”

Tom also made oatmeal cookies, but we finally gathered our courage and started out again. Without question it became the rainiest day yet. Byron said, “Look, this isn’t too much fun. Why don’t we just go for that cabin marked on the map at Burnt Paw? As I ate bannock and jam, rain cascaded off the brim of my hat and dripped past my eyes, so we finished the shortest lunch break on record and went as fast as we could for the cabin.

Although ramshackle, the old building had only a few drips here and there. Welcome heat from a fire in the stove drove the dampness from our bodies and souls. After we pitched our tent inside the cabin, we went to sleep praying for a sunny day.

I knew the day would be special as soon as I poked my head out of the cabin door and saw a tailwind ruffling the water and clouds breaking and disappearing. Eagerly we pushed onto the river and almost immediately the sun burst through, lighting the freshly laundered landscape. The Lower Ramparts went by in a blur and sunshine added energy to my shoulder muscles. I climbed a cliff and watched Doug and Byron swish by on the opposite sides of the river.

Awakened from an after lunch nap by Byron shouting, “Hey, Lookee there. A black bear!” I sat up quickly.

“Where?” :

“Right behind you.”

Sure enough. I went for my camera while Doug started beating on a pot and Byron yelled, “Get out of here you little black thief.” The cub ran but soon returned. We scared it off again, but when it came right back, Byron said, “I guess we’d better leave this beach for the bears.”

On entering the Yukon flats we discovered they are exactly as their name indicates: low and flat. The river meanders wildly and splits into many channels. We had a hard time choosing which channel would be shortest and quickest. Often the shortest channel in terms of miles turned out to be the longest in terms of time because the strength of the current varied between channels. The afternoon’s crispness indicated fall might be just around the corner even in early August. Rose hips were getting red and soft, and the blueberries were ripe. The sky had a thin clarity unlike the loose blueness of the spring skies.

That night we camped at Shuman House in one very cozy cabin with all the conveniences — beds, tables, a stove, and a lantern. A note on the door read, “This cabin is for everyone. Please don’t use it for a doghouse, and before you leave use the broom. Put out the fire and close the door.” After supper Doug wrote letters on the table while Byron and I sat on the riverbank and discussed our journey and how it would affect our future.

“I wonder why we go ata certain pace,” Byron asked, “If we aren’t out to see how far we can go, why not just go three miles a day rather than forty?”

“I don’t know, really, but I figure the whole experience is a blend of paddling and camping, of moving and resting, and the magic of it all comes when the blend is just right.”

“I guess we’ll never forget a trip like this. I know that when I finished the Pacific Crest Trail, I just knew that I could do anything,” reminisced Byron.

“Yeah, it gave me a lot more self-confidence. I did things that I would have been scared to try before. This trip is going to be even better; I can feel it in my bones.”

I felt a little lonesome to see a star, but I slept in the cabin since it seemed to have rained every night for as long as we could remember. Of course it remained perfectly clear all night, and we woke to a frosty, clear morning.

Next afternoon as I passed the clear waters of the Shennjek River, I spotted a lynx sitting calmly on a big cottonwood log, chewing and munching on something he held down with his paw. I drifted closer but only the upright ears and wide-open eyes gave any indication that he saw me. Then I came too close, and he exploded off the log, a tawny flash through the green willows.

We went far enough to be within an easy day’s travel of Fort Yukon, our fifth and final food drop. A tiny sandbar beside a channel, about 36 miles from Fort Yukon, was home for the night. We had easily been traveling about fifty miles a day thanks to the high fast river. If the water were to rise about two feet, we would have been flooded off the sandbar, and if it had dropped two feet, the side channel would have dried up, and we would have had to portage to the main current. Both the Porcupine and Bell Rivers are known for their rapid fluctuations in water level, as much as three feet overnight. So while camping on the bar probably might not be the wisest plan, we wanted to sleep in the open and watch the stars for the first time in very many days.

As I sat by the fire watching the sunset turning the few lacy clouds pink and purple, I just plain felt good. Life is such a marvel. I had little in the way of luxuries and yet felt as happy as I had ever been. It seemed a mystery. How do we reconcile the fact that we can be so happy with so little with the idea that amassing possessions will make us happy?

The stars slowly came out one by one as the darkness settled over the earth like a huge blanket. Each star seemed to shine for me as I slipped off to sleep.