Heading downstream… and back upstream
(Post #3 from the Western Arctic trip. More posts coming over the next few days.)
It was time to get on the river. Wolves woke us again that morning with their howls, and we were reluctant to leave our wide embrace of gentle mountains and treeless tundra, where our eyes so easily roamed the slopes around us and an air of enchantment seemed to float on the breezes.
“We have to come back here some time to base camp,” I said to Peter as we set-up the Klepper folding, canvas-skinned kayak we planned to take downriver. “It’s just beautiful!”
We climbed into the kayak and pushed off into the current with some sadness, leaving our perfect setting in soft Arctic late afternoon light. The beach slipped away behind us and disappeared as the river turned a corner.
After a hot and dry summer, the water was exceptionally low. The v-hull of our kayak, over-loaded with a pregnant woman, a six-and-a-half-foot tall man and gear for eleven days, was too heavy for the upper river. After fifty yards of a concentrated paddle, avoiding the myriad rocks seeming to clutch at our boat, we bottomed out. We clambered out of the cockpit. With difficulty, we pulled and carried the heavy boat over the rocky shoal. Water trickled in tantalizing sunlit threads over the gravel bottom of the river, not deep enough to cover our neoprene boots. We repeated this for five hours. We had only traveled five miles.
Our campsite for the night was determined by a rock. Large and smooth, hidden in a shallow wave train, it snatched the rubber bottom of the kayak. The kayak stopped immediately. The front pitched forward. Before I knew what happened, water was up to my waist. It was 10 PM.
We pulled the kayak and the gear to shore and began to dry what had succumbed to the water. Another 106 miles of river flowed in front of us yet to come. Plans to explore along the way could never be realized at the pace we were forced to take with the low water.
As the sun skittered across the horizon in the cool midnight air, we decided that our primary purpose of coming to the Western Arctic was to spend time together in the most remote wilderness on the continent, not to accomplish a river trip. The river would be here later. Wilderness reminded us of flexibility, and just how small we were. We would go back upriver to our perfect beach. Our hope for a week of base camping would be realized.
After one grueling cross-tundra ferry of supplies the next day, we pulled and lined the boat back upstream, walking in the river while guiding the kayak with ropes on the bow and stern. Tellingly, what had taken five hours to descend took only three hours to line back upstream. As if to confirm our decision, less two people and some gear, the Klepper glided easily through the water against the current. The same hull that had reached for the bottom earlier now cut through the river like soft butter. We were back at our beach at 11 PM.
Exhausted and happy, we bundled into warm clothes. My rain-coat no longer would zip over my expanding belly when I had on my fleece, but still worked as some wind protection unzipped. We settled into our original kitchen site and made a quick meal – Mexican black beans, cheese, and salsa in tortillas. We leaned back into our Crazy Creek camp chairs on the beach, the peaceful small river flowing quietly, talking and laughing in gratitude and relief for the trip upriver and our arrival.
I happened to look up as we ate. As we sat on the beach, just across the twenty-foot wide river sitting on the tundra bank was a silver-white wolf. Her calm wild eyes watched us steadily. We barely breathed, as though our breath might whisk her away. Then, as silently as she had arrived, she stood up and disappeared in the willows. She appeared again on our side of the river, trotting easily on the spongy tundra up the bluff behind us to inspect our tent. And then she was gone. We sat on the beach without moving, not wanting an errant move to somehow displace the magic. Even if this night were our only experience in this place, it was enough. Even if this night were our last on earth, it was enough.
This place, this faraway and ancient Arctic wilderness, had shown us yet again her beauty and her mystery, revealed so much so unexpectedly, when we were willing to just sit and wait. If only we could all understand how intrinsically important preserving our last great wilderness was, and protect it. If only we could know that this place would always be here. If only we could be assured our children and grandchildren could come to this place, and see these mysteries.
After securing our kitchen on the beach, we headed to the tent under the soft Arctic light of a midnight sky. Snuggling into our sleeping bag that night, nearby howls climbed through the soft night air, shivering along the breezes.
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