Phil was still loading and reloading the canoe, a job he wished to do alone. He was inexperienced with canoes, but had a natural ability with equipment and a tendency to take charge.
When Phil woke me it was nearly midnight and the sun was setting into the Yukon. He looked very tired. I shivered slightly in the big breath of the river, rubbing the seat print from my cheek. Time to go. We would find our own place to camp away from the curious eyes of the village. I checked around the pickup a last time for overlooked items and sleepily headed down the bank to the canoe.
“It looks awfully full . . .” I protested.
Phil nodded toward the grassy bank where, even at this hour, the total population of ten had come down to watch us sink. “Pretend you know what you’re doing,” he intoned under his breath.
Together we shoved the grounded craft and I felt the heavy gauge aluminum give under my weight before she slid free into the water. The little ship wallowed deeply but remained afloat. Gingerly I climbed into the bow. My initial alarm increased when I turned to see Phil settling into the stern. We were inches from the river.
“We’re crazy, Phil,” I declared. “We’re dangerously overloaded and we’re just going to have to get rid of some of this junk!” I had forgotten the spectators and started to get out.
But we were already underway. Quickly the current snatched our little tub and spun it from shore, sweeping us into the orange and purple sunset. As the truck dwindled into the evening, we waved good-bye. Pursued by a cloud of mosquitoes, we set forth upon the Yukon.
I glanced back at the sound when Phil started our little outboard motor. The canoe gave a sluggish lurch. As he cut back on the power with a gentle curse, we watched a wave ride easily up and over the stern. Lady Grayling settled deeper while Phil motored quietly with one hand and bailed with the other.
“Got to watch that,” he said shakily, staring in fascination at the two inches of freeboard that separated us from the river. The glossy, orange water betrayed no hint of its depth. Our little engine purred as we wove through the sky-dappled river for the fringe of faraway shore, that finely drawn ribbon of black reality that divided our world from the clouds and gave it order. The mosquitoes were reluctant to give up the chase, but one by one they stowed away or were left behind.
“We’re off at last!” I called back cheerfully. I smiled, feeling the thrill of an irrevocable choice.
Phil had finished bailing and was peering toward that phantom shore. Absently he swatted at a lingering bug.
“I just knocked my glasses overboard.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, knowing that he wasn’t. “Your new ones?”
“Yes.”
I studied the flawless surface that had swallowed Phil’s new glasses. “Let’s camp at the first spot.”
He nodded wearily.
Very soon the sun was gone, sliding into the spruce forest, and a diffused pink glow of boundless sky softened the summer. The shore we finally reached shelved gently from a willow bar into a quiet stretch of river. There we beached the canoe, making her fast to a sunken log. We snapped a fitted nylon tarp over the load and pitched our camp among the supple bushes. Without bothering with dinner, we crawled into our small, orange tent and zipped it tight against the bugs. Soon I had drifted into a sound sleep, lulled by the lap of wavelets against the canoe and the shrill cries of arctic terns as they darted for insects in the cool dawn sky.
Early day burned bright and hot when we deserted the stuffy tent for the smell of open water. I knelt in the sand, feeding sticks to a young fire and enjoying the stir of wind on my face. A gossamer mist of mosquitoes swirled in the eddy of my body, attracted by the warm animal smell.
The beach was a story of river moods, gathered from countless other shores. Along it wavered a series of parallel lines marking recent water levels in trails of twigs. Small plants were forcing their first two leaves upward through the mud. Because the Arctic receives most of its sunlight in an intense burst, plants and animals grow rapidly during the brief summer. However, environments with low productivity, such as deserts and the Arctic, are delicate, each niche being filled with a single species.
Here one could see the progression of life. Hardy, young willows formed a living net of fluttering green that locked down the sand with tough, red roots. Behind these stood older willows and the fast-growing balsam poplar, and sheltered by the poplar from the careless river, a two-foot forest of young spruce pushed through to claim the future.
I leaned contentedly back on my ankles and buttoned the throat of my denim shirt against the bugs. We were finally underway. This trip had started in my head, and we had taken one step after another to find ourselves here. That is what it takes, I thought: imagination and tenacity.
Phil dropped an armload of firewood and grinned down at me. It was the first smile I’d seen in days. “I want to repack the canoe after breakfast,” he said. “It’s poorly balanced. I think less weight in the stern would help.” He had found his spare glasses—climbing goggles with dark prescription lenses. To save space, he had a set of clear lenses that could be inserted. Phil often forgot to wear glasses, as his driving record attested.
“I’ll make us some breakfast, if you want to get started,” I offered.
All our bulk staples—like cornmeal, flour, and sugar—were packed in square, five-gallon cans. We had designed a grub box, already dubbed “Wonderbox,” with racks of plastic bottles to be refilled at intervals for easy access in camp. Freeze-dried camper foods were just coming onto the market and were far too expensive for our budget. I had also reasoned that we could pack more actual food as bulk staples. We hoped to supplement our supplies with rabbits and fish during the summer, and would of course need big game before winter. My mother had told me that an active person consumes his weight in prepared food each month, but a canoe’s capacity is small—even ours with its eleven-hundred-pound limit.
Into a bucket of boiling water I dumped a handful of dried and salted horse meat, an animal we had bought and butchered for the trip. At forty-seven dollars it was protein we could afford and had furnished our first butchering experience. We had oven-dried the meat with much salt and then broken it into chips, which I planned to use in cooking until we found game. I was inexperienced in cooking with staples, and Phil was useless. To the boiling horse meat I added flour, lard, salt, and pepper to make a kind of horse-chip gravy. I stirred the pot and bedded it in the coals to simmer. Then I stripped off my clothes and dashed for the river. Phil was still repacking.
“Come and have a bath,” I called, safely submerged. “You’ll feel much better.”
“When I’m done,” came the voice from the duffel.
I upended with a splash, driving the mosquitoes from my scalp. “Come on, you’ll enjoy it.” I could imagine the specter of my disembodied head floating on a swirling sea of cocoa amid its own little, black cloud.
Reluctantly Phil undressed in the smoke of the fire (mosquitoes avoid smoke) and proffered one toe to the river. “It’s cold!” he accused me. He wasn’t big on water under any circumstances.
“Just rush in and get it over,” I advised him. The cloud of bugs was settling contentedly onto his naked skin. With a grimace, he splashed through the water to join me.
Later
