Disappointment River

by Brian Castner

  ————

  All morning, a capricious cold rain fell from black clouds that crisscrossed erratically overhead. Richards Island fell away behind us, leaving only reeds and marsh and rude tongues of mud. All headwind, no current, we gutted it out, sweating through layers. Fortunately, I was wearing so many clothes I couldn’t smell myself. We were in the Middle Channel, the river’s main effort and as wide as ever; no more sheltering possible for our final push to the launch point that night.

  Gray cranes squawked at us when we stopped to eat lunch on their nesting island. “They sound like a rusty swing set,” said Senny. The delta was running out, and we had entered the mucky Kendall Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary, the first designated park I had encountered. The Deh Cho, for the majority of its length, doesn’t need a legal designation to declare itself wilderness.

  That afternoon, the clouds broke briefly and, high in the sky, again nothing but mare’s tails and mackerel scales.

  As we struggled to the mouth of the Deh Cho—or one of many mouths, the river like a Hydra as so many channels found the sea—the view stretched again into incomprehensibility. No more of the delta’s human scale, it was as if we were back on Mills Lake at the start of the trip, the far shore a thin green line, and the horizon and sky merged into a slate nothingness.

  We hugged the shore; only a few miles left to our last camp. We expended so much effort struggling against the headwind we were down to our T-shirts, steam rising from Senny’s shoulders. Then the rain returned. The storm came from the south and chased us, as they had when Jeremy and I paddled the mountains. Invisible silt bars rose from the riverbed to suction at our boat. Lightning flashed in the distance, as if every plague was determined to strike one last time. Hot, then cold, then wind, tempest, alone on the vast river. Our pace was a crawl, buffeting wind in our faces, and the deluge soaked Senny and me through our gear and down to the skin.

  The delta was ever widening, the gaps between islands growing, and as the view opened, as river became ocean, that’s when I saw it, out in the bay, the natural summit of our river descent.

  There stands Garry Island tall on the horizon. It was enormous, a black mountain rising from the sea.

  — 25 —

  THE HIGHEST PART OF THE ISLAND, JULY 1789

  Alexander Mackenzie had no idea what to do. They were well above the Arctic Circle, approaching the Hyperborean Sea, not the Pacific. They were entering the land of Esquimaux with few men and minimal armament. And worst of all, they had no fresh food, and their pemmican was running out.

  “It is my Opinion, as well as my Mens, that…we would not be able to get to the Athabasca this Season by Water,” Mackenzie wrote. Not that they didn’t have the time before winter set in, but rather “our want of Provision would prevent us.”

  Their new Quarreller guide was “quite discouraged and tired of his Situation” and, anyway, had never been as far as the sea. He only knew the route to “Esquimaux lake,” an inland body of water where those people “pass the summer.” When it came to managing food stocks, Steinbruck could be petty, surly, mean-spirited; even when wintering over at fur-trading posts, in typical annual deprivation, he was vocally sarcastic in his complaints about food. Without sufficient stores or a knowledgeable guide, the Chipewyan hunters grew despondent as well; Mackenzie was “confident were it in their power they would leave me, as they are quite disgusted with the Voyage.”

  The hunters had been unsuccessful for days. They didn’t know where they were going. So continue into the unknown land of the Esquimaux, and hope to hunt supper? Or return to the meager country behind them, knowing they lacked the food to make it back to Fort Chipewyan? “Our pemmican has been mouldy this long time past, but in our Situation we must eat it & not loose a particle of it,” Mackenzie said.

  In the north, the voyageurs said it was the Windigo that came for desperate men. Yes, they could forage. They had all staved off hunger pangs with the root of the licorice plant, or boiled tripe de roche, moss scraped from rocks, to make bouillon and tea. But when even those measures failed, when their moccasins were roasted and tunic fringes chewed, the creature with a heart of ice would hunt them, and inhabit their bodies, and force them to commit unspeakable crimes.

  Awgeenah and his wives knew that anyone who ate human flesh must be killed or his disease of the mind would spread. It was everyone’s duty, even the women’s, to use knives and hatchets to cut cannibals into small pieces, or to grind their bones to dust and burn their bodies with fire. This must be done immediately, even to one’s own family. Anything less and the cannibals would return to life in a reanimated form. Once, a whole clan of these undead Windigos removed their frozen hearts from their own bodies and hid them in a hole, and the monsters could not be killed until the organs were found and dashed apart.

  “I determined to go to the discharge of those Waters,” Mackenzie said; they had come this far and would try to confirm what lay ahead, leave no more white space on the map of this river. Still, Mackenzie knew that ultimately their stomachs must rule the day. In a concession to the doubters in his party, Mackenzie “satisfied them a little by telling them I would go on but 7 Days more, and that if I did not come to the Sea in that time I should return.” This quieted some grumbling, though Mackenzie readily admitted it was practicality, not compromise, that formed his mind. “My scarcity of Provisions will make me fulfil this promise, whether I will or not.”

  Awgeenah and the Indians nodded their grudging assent, but Barrieau and the voyageurs needed no encouragement and continued to lust for the journey. “They love to breathe a free air, they are early accustomed to a wandering life; it has charms for them, which make them forget past dangers and fatigues, and…leads them to undertake and execute what would appear impossible to others,” wrote Father Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix about the voyageurs of his flock in 1740. On this journey, few portages burdened Ducette and de Lorme, Landry had steered worse rapids, Barrieau had guided rockier streams. The fur trade life produced strength, endurance, and joviality. Happy warriors.

  Three roads lay before them. A smaller branch to the west, the biggest waterway at center, a narrow eastern corridor. Now that it was obvious he was stuck coming along, their Quarreller guide had an opinion of where to go. “Our Conductor was for taking the Eastmost, on account as he said that the Esquimaux were close by on that Road,” Mackenzie said. Their guide was scared of the Esquimaux and now wanted to seek them out? Was he trying to get them all killed? Ambushed and escape in the confusion?

  Mackenzie chose otherwise. “I determined upon taking the middle as it was a large piece of Water and running N & S.” If they were short on food and truly headed to the Hyperborean, they would do it on the shortest route possible.

  * * *

  ————

  They pushed north, the current still surprisingly strong in the twisting channel. The view was wider than any they had seen since the mouth at Slave Lake, the overcast sky and cold water merging in a single tableau. Ducks and cranes honked overhead and hid among the waterlogged reeds, though the hunters had no luck killing any. On a dry shelf, they found clear signs in the mud of three campments. “Our Conductor says they were Esquimaux,” Mackenzie wrote.

  The evidence of Esquimaux occupation grew. “We landed at a plain where we observed some of the Natives had been lately,” Mackenzie said. “I counted the places of upwards of 30 Fires and some of the Men went further where they saw many more.” Poles were stuck in the river to string nets for a fishery, and among the ashes lay pieces of whalebone and leather and scraps from the construction of small canoes, stone kettles and strips of bark plaited into thread. The place was marked with a lobstick, a spruce tree relieved of its branches except for the very crown, a signal visible from far away. They moved quickly on.

  The trees fell away, and then even the willow bushes as well. “On several Islands we saw the print of their Feet on the Sand, running after wild Fowls, and by appearance not 3 Days ago.” On a
nother they found three huts of driftwood and dried grass that sheltered strange holes dug in the ground, covered with willow and just large enough for a man. “I suppose serves for a Bed for all the Family,” Mackenzie guessed, without confidence. Nearby lay net buoys of poplar, and sledge runners for winter, and tree stumps to dry fish, and again they pressed on, before the occupants would return.

  “All day we expected that we should meet with some of the Natives,” Mackenzie wrote, but they never did.

  Cold rain forced them to shore that afternoon, “the Weather raw and very disagreeable,” which put the Chipewyan “in a very bad Humor.” They made camp and, despite the chill and damp, sat up and discussed the remainder of the journey. Their Quarreller guide said that “we will see the lake tomorrow” and that “it is not a small one.” His people knew nothing of that water, except that “the Esquimaux live about it, that they kill a large Fish in it which they eat.” In summer, the Esquimaux traveled to the east, to a place called Kitigaaryuit. Each hunter wielded his own harpoon, marked with his own symbol. They killed the giant beasts out in the bay and then, to haul them back to camp, drove a pipe into their bodies, blew air into the carcass so it would float, and then tied it off to their boats to drag in.

  From this description, Mackenzie guessed this fish must be a whale, but the Quarreller man also told stories of Esquimaux canoes so large they held five families, and of bears the color of snow, and of other monsters with tusks that defied translation by Awgeenah.

  “The toil of our navigation was incessant.” In only two days, they made a week’s worth of Quarreller travel. They were miserable with damp cold, had yet to kill fresh game, and the next day they would attempt to reach the ocean. Mackenzie decided to try to “cheer their fainting spirits.” He gave out presents, a warm moose skin to their guide, and one of his very own long hooded coats to Awgeenah.

  This gift to Awgeenah was not about comfort. It was a ceremonious act that forever bonded the two men. In stature, achievement, influence, Awgeenah had now surpassed all other Chipewyan traders, even his mentor Matonabbee. For as befitted his status and station, only the English Chief wore the coats of Samuel Hearne, Peter Pond, and Alexander Mackenzie.

  * * *

  ————

  It rained all night, and nothing broke the cold. The blowing wind scoured the land, which was “high and covered with short Grass and many Plants, which are in Blossom.” Mackenzie thought the whole country “has a beautiful appearance, tho’ an odd contrast, the Hills covered with Flowers and Verdure, and the Vallies full of Ice and Snow.” The skeletons of sea creatures were heaped on the banks, animals like Mackenzie had never seen, “part of two big Heads” that he determined to be “Sea Horses.”

  The current was “yet very strong” but branching between islands that grew ever more distant; no obvious path presented itself. “We embarked, tho’ we did not know what course to steer, our Guide being as ignorant in this Country as any of ourselves.” It was a frozen empty place. “The Earth is not thawed above 4 Inches from the Surface, below is a solid Body of Ice,” Mackenzie wrote. The skies opened, and he took a reading with his quadrant and calculated they were past 69 degrees latitude. The waves and water felt to him as “to be the Entrance of the Lake,” and they pushed farther on, with the unremitting flow of the river, making for “a high point about 8 Miles distant,” and then for the next mound, and the next.

  The brown water was so wide as to become the bay, and the bare mud banks dissolved to an archipelago of drowned hulks, like the prone bodies of leviathans rotting for the ages. For forty days, they had worked their way ever north and west, nearly five hundred leagues, and now beyond lay only Hyperborea.

  For ahead they saw a single “high Island and the most Western land in sight distant 15 Miles.” They had finally run out of river.

  This was the last push. The trees had failed, and in the plain hills on the sea Mackenzie could see something of the Isle of Lewis, his childhood home. There, the grasslands. There, the moors. There, between him and the last island, the Minch.

  * * *

  ————

  Awgeenah once told Mackenzie the story of his people. This is what he said:

  At the first, the globe was one vast and entire ocean, inhabited by no living creature, except a mighty bird, whose eyes were fire, whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings were thunder. On his descent to the ocean, and touching it, the earth instantly arose, and remained on the surface of the waters.

  The great bird, having finished his world, made an arrow, which was to be preserved with great care, and to remain untouched; but that [we] were so devoid of understanding, as to carry it away; and the sacrilege so enraged the great bird, that he has never since appeared.

  Immediately after [our] death, [we] pass into another world, where [we] arrive at a large river, on which [we] embark in a stone canoe, and that a gentle current bears [us] on to an extensive lake, in the centre of which is a most beautiful island.

  In the view of this delightful abode, [we] receive that judgement for [our] conduct during life, which terminates [our] final state and unalterable allotment. If [our] good actions are declared to predominate, [we] are landed upon the island, where there is to be no end to [our] happiness.

  But if [our] bad actions weigh down the balance, the stone canoe sinks at once, and leaves [us] up to our chins in the water, to behold and regret the rewards enjoyed by the good, and eternally struggling, but with unavailing endeavors, to reach the blissful island from which [we] are excluded for ever.

  * * *

  ————

  Island in sight, they launched their canoes into the choppy near sea. The way was open, though beyond “we could see the Lake covered with Ice at about 2 Leagues distance and no land ahead.”

  The last crossing to the last island passed easily. The water grew ever more shallow, voyageurs’ paddles struck bottom, and then they were out of the boats and wading ashore. Gulls circled overhead. It was five o’clock, and Mackenzie immediately ordered the hungry men to put out fishery nets to catch their supper. As Steinbruck pitched his tent, Mackenzie explored the hummocks, blown by a ceaseless wind. He found nests of ptarmigan eggs, and white owls, and the graves of an Esquimaux marked by the man’s harpoon and double-bladed paddle, and his Chipewyan hunters reported caches of boiled whale blubber and the bleached bones of massive bears.

  A few old Esquimaux huts crumbled away on the eastern point, but otherwise the island was abandoned, and they were the only souls upon it. Mackenzie named the place Whale Island, and despite the exotic and completely novel nature of their destination he could not help feeling discouragement. “My Men express much sorrow that they are obliged to return without seeing the Sea,” he said of their desire to reach the Pacific. In this, “I believe them sincere for we marched exceeding hard coming down the River, and I never heard them grumble; but on the contrary in good Sprits, and in hopes every day that the next would bring them to the mer d’Ouest, and declare themselves now and at any time ready to go with me wherever I choose to lead them.”

  But where was that? Where had they ended up? Mackenzie called to Awgeenah, and the men began to hike.

  “I went with the English Chief to the highest part of the Island from which we could see the Ice in a whole Body extending from S.W. by Compass to the Eastward as far as we could see.”

  This was surely the girdle of impenetrable ice that encircled the North Pole. All learned geographers agreed that the warm and open Hyperborean Sea was guarded by this pack of floes. If that ice extended even to the mouth of this river in the warmth of July, then the way was perpetually blocked. This was no highway to Russia and China. It was a taunting dead-end road, a cruel plug in the mouth of all of his commercial aspirations.

  Mackenzie had failed. This northwest passage would be forever encased in ice.

  “We were stopped by the Ice ahead,” he concluded, “and we landed at the limit of our Travels.”

&nbs
p; And that is the story of how Alexander Mackenzie traveled the river that would bear his name, and how Awgeenah, the English Chief, his Chipewyan partner in all things, the heir to Matonabbee who became the greatest of “the great travelers of the known world,” stood on the shore of the Arctic Ocean for a second time.

  — 26 —

  A SEA OF ICE, FROZEN NO MORE, JULY 2016

  Mackenzie had named it Whale Island. Modern geographers call it Garry, though for many years both islands appeared on maps; World War II–era aerial photography finally proved them one and the same. Whatever the name, it was finally in sight, though still eight miles ahead. Niglintgak Island, our planned staging point, lay immediately to our left. It looked perfect on the map, but now that we had arrived, Niglintgak was revealed to be swampy and reed choked, nowhere to stop at all. So we crossed the river, against the whitecaps, and tried the opposite shore, a flat mud shelf three feet above the river. Pitching in the surf, I held the canoe against the permafrost wall while Senny crawled up.

  “It’s a prairie. It looks like Mongolia!” he yelled back through the rain.

  I tied the boat off, poked my head over the lip of the island, and saw Senny was right. The island was a thatch-colored grassland stretching to the horizon, not a single geographic feature to break the gusting north wind. Nearby, though, lay a hefty driftwood log, a star-shaped root ball with a burned trunk that resembled the stub of a cigar. No tree grew to such a size for hundreds of miles; I realized that it must have floated down the river all the way from a forest fire in the mountains of British Columbia. We set up camp on the leeward side of that lone trunk, tying off the tent to the splayed roots to keep us from blowing away.

  Everything soaked, we were too tired to cook, and so we ate a cold dinner from the remaining sundries: soggy tortillas, bruised apples, dried apricots, trail mix, chocolate, candy peach rings, venison jerky, pemmican. Senny read that last package intently. “Oh, good, it’s gluten-free,” he said.