Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  “You know how cold it is?” Jimmy asked. “It’s 78 below right now!”

  Charlie gave me a cup of warm water to drink and made me rest on my bunk. Soon my cozy warm bearskin blanket and the heat inside the cabin made me drowsy, and I fell asleep. When I awoke a few hours later, I still felt exhausted. Charlie said he had felt the same fatigue from deep cold in the Dawson country of Canada when he was market hunting for moose in 1897. “Fighting the cold takes the energy out of you, fast,” he said.

  “Beware if nothing is moving in the woods” became ingrained in me after that memorable bone-chilling day. If animals aren’t moving, the weather isn’t likely to warm soon, and the absence of fresh tracks in the snow should have warned me to return home and stay indoors that day.

  The Koyukon old-timers I came to know later taught me not to fight the cold but to be cautious. They knew how to forecast the weather, which told them when to stay home. I have known of a few Koyukon Indians who died in the cold, but they were usually young fellows who had ignored the advice of the elders.

  For more than two weeks after that, temperatures of –60 degrees and colder continued. I’ve experienced only two deep cold spells that lasted longer—one in 1929 and one in 1930.

  In 1929, Charlie Irish from Wiseman, on the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River, took the census along a stretch of the Koyukuk River, interviewing each person in the district. When Charlie drove his dog team to our cabin on December 28, the temperature was –65. He and George Butler, his Indian guide, had set out thirteen days earlier, but –60 temperatures had delayed them from the time they had left Wiseman. Their runs were slow and short—not much more than ten to twenty miles a day. Travel in extreme cold is hard on dogs, so they had no choice.

  Charlie and George remained with us overnight, and the next morning they took off for the mouth of Hog River, fifteen miles away by trail. They were gone five days, during which time the temperature never climbed above 60 below. They had to keep moving, because they were running out of dog food. When they arrived back at our place, their dogs were near exhaustion, and some had bleeding feet.

  I’ll never forget that night. Our thermometer outside registered–67 degrees. When Charlie’s team was still miles away, our dogs barked a warning because sound carries great distances in cold dense air. Jimmy and I put on our parkas, mittens, and warm moccasins, and went outside with a lantern. We heard the sled runners squeaking across the snow and the jingling of dog harness, and as we held up the lantern, the dogs trotted around a bend in the trail and into the light. The team looked like a steam locomotive—the frosty breath from the eight animals and the two men formed a small cloud around their heads and swirled in their wake. Dogs and men were covered with sparkling ice crystals.

  Jimmy and I had grass beds ready for each of the dogs and firewood ready for cooking their food. We lit the fire, carried water already hot from the stove in our cabin to fill the cooking kettle, and quickly cooked food for the weary animals.

  “We can’t pull out for a while. The dogs need rest, and tomorrow will be real cold. This cold will last quite a while,” said Butler.

  “How do you know?” Dad asked.

  “Did you see the sun today?” he asked. “It was copper-colored and hazy, with a ring around it. That always foretells a long cold spell.”

  “We’ll see,” said Dad.

  See we did. Until the twenty-fifth of January not a single day was warmer than –72. Charlie eventually ran out of dog food and had to use some of ours. Since we were short ourselves, he promised to buy dog food for us at George Light’s store at Hughes, and he soon sent us a sledload of dog food with Little Sammy.

  Unfailingly, clear winter days in the Interior of Alaska are cold and cloudy days are warm or at least warmer. During that cold spell, the skies remained clear, and anytime I went outside I saw smoke rising straight up from our stovepipe into the still, frigid air, where it immediately lost its heat and settled slowly to the ground and spread out in a blue haze.

  January 26 warmed up to –60, if you can call that warm, and Charlie and George prepared for an early departure the next morning. When they left, the temperature was –58. They planned to make it to Little Sammy’s camp, twenty miles upriver. But if it grew colder, they might have to return to our cabin.

  Temperatures remained warmer for three days. We learned that Charlie had reached Hughes before the next cold wave hit. With temperatures in the –70s, they were stuck in Hughes for another eight days before they could leave for Wiseman.

  When George Butler had been at our cabin, he’d told us he hadn’t felt well even before that trip. The deep cold took its toll; he died of tuberculosis before the ice ran that spring.

  Until 1989, the last truly deep cold spell that I remember came in 1939. I was at the old town of Cutoff, where it was –70 or colder for twenty-eight consecutive days. In January 1989, record low temperatures were set for dozens of official weather stations throughout Alaska’s Interior. Some temperatures along the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers repeatedly fell below –80 degrees for a week or so. We’ll never know exactly how cold that spell was, for the official government thermometers issued to weather stations in Alaska do not register colder than –80 degrees Fahrenheit.

  10

  MY FIRST BOAT

  It was March, and the increasing daylight hours and milder temperatures started me thinking of breakup, when ice on the rivers would leave and we could travel by boat again. If I had a boat, I could use Dad’s three-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor. I was nearly thirteen, had learned a lot that winter, and I saw no reason why I couldn’t build a boat. Dad encouraged me. “Don’t let anything stump you; you can do whatever you set your mind to,” he told us frequently, and his wise advice stayed with me.

  I had no lumber, no nails, and had never built a boat. The previous fall I had learned how to whipsaw lumber, so I knew that with hard work I could produce my own lumber. We hadn’t planned to build a boat, so we hadn’t brought enough nails. Undaunted, I pulled nails out of all our wooden cases, and I also pulled whatever nails could be spared from our cabin walls.

  Dad and Charlie told me how to build a boat, but insisted that they had no time to help. I would have to build it by myself, but that was fine with me.

  I went into the woods near our cabin and selected two straight spruce trees that were about twelve inches at the base. I sawed them down, and, with the help of Dad, Charlie, Jimmy, and our dogs, dragged them along the snowy trail to the whipsaw pit. Before rolling the logs up onto the sawing frame, I peeled the bark off with an axe and a drawknife.

  The previous fall I had worked the whipsaw standing under the log, with Charlie on top. Now, Charlie said, since this was my project I had to learn to lead the whipsaw from the top. Charlie and Dad worked beneath the log.

  Learning how to feed the saw from the top didn’t take long. I was physically strong, and in good shape from steady outdoor exercise. Charlie, working in the pit and manning the lower end of the long saw, usually tired after a while. Then he would have to have a smoke of his Old Westover Plug, which took some preparation. He would pull the aromatic plug of tobacco from his hip pocket, whittle a few shavings off, and grind the chips in the palm of his hand. These he poured into his pipe and tamped down with the fingers of the other hand. Only then would he light up. For a few moments his weathered face would be wreathed in smoke, and he resembled a chimney ablaze. When the blaze subsided, only the smoke and the good, strong smell marked Charlie’s location.

  The first two cuts on a log are slabbing cuts—a slab is removed from each side, leaving a log with two flat sides. When we had finished slabbing our first log, I had to figure out how many boards I could cut from the log and how thick each could be. With a pencil I marked lines on both sides of the now-flattened log and discovered that six cuts would give me seven boards—enough for the boat bottom. The other log would provide enough lumber to make the sides. I figured I should be able to make the ribs out of the slabs, after sa
wing the slabs into the proper thickness.

  I was in a hurry to finish sawing my lumber. One day while Charlie puffed on his pipe I tried a few impatient strokes of the saw by myself, but it was difficult. Then Dad helped with a dozen or so pulls.

  But Charlie warned Dad, “Better lay off, Jim. Trying to keep up with Sidney on the saw will kill you.”

  Dad had been half sick all winter. And because Jimmy had had tuberculosis at Eklutna, we wouldn’t let him work too hard. We sure didn’t want to lose him. Despite us, Jimmy was determined to be active.

  “How am I going to get tough if you don’t let me work?” he demanded one day, when Dad told him he couldn’t work on the whip-saw. “You let Sidney do anything he wants,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  I came to his defense. “You’re hurting Jimmy worse holding him back all the time. Let him at least try,” I urged Dad and Charlie.

  That convinced them, so they let Jimmy help me whipsaw my boat lumber. First Charlie instructed him to stand to the side and watch how he handled the saw from the bottom. He carefully explained how to avoid jamming the saw in the narrow cut, how to keep the saw directly in the cut, and how to follow the line.

  Then Charlie rested. Dad took over for a few strokes but he tired, so Jimmy grabbed the handle. I pulled up for a stroke, but he immediately jammed the saw when it was at its highest point. I lost my balance and flew off the log down into the sawpit with Jimmy.

  Then Charlie showed Jimmy where he had made the mistake. He had overfed the saw on the downstroke, and Charlie explained that the man on the bottom must feed the first half of the saw, while the top man feeds the last half of each downswing.

  Jimmy and Charlie took turns working with me, but Dad quit. It was my own fault. One day while he was helping me saw, I called down, “Dad, take off your boots, will you?”

  “Why?”

  “So I don’t have to lift them too when I pull you and the saw up!” I answered.

  He exploded. “Saw it by yourself, smartass,” he said and stalked off. I apologized, explaining that I was trying to be funny. At my age I wasn’t really aware of the aging process. I had no way of understanding how difficult it is when a once-strong man loses his strength to ill health and the passing years. About then I started to learn to keep some of my thoughts to myself.

  We finished sawing up the first log in about two and a half days. With Jimmy in the pit, each stroke of the saw cut from three-eighths to half an inch of lumber. Jimmy improved as he learned how to handle the saw, and he gained strength from the exercise. We completed the second log in two days, even though it was bigger. It yielded eight boards, plus some gunwale pieces. I made a drying rack for the lumber and placed thick sticks between the boards about every four feet so air would pass between them.

  Planing and jointing the boards didn’t take me long. Then I had to select another log on which to build the boat, a lofting platform—a solid floor on which I could draw the lines of the boat, and which I could nail to. I found a dry, light log that was easy to work and hand-hewed it with my axe to flatten it.

  Next, marking out the boat bottom took quite a little doing. Charlie, who had built double-ender boats, watched without a word as I planned and marked. Finally he said, “Mind if I show you something? We worked hard sawing that lumber. Be a shame if you spoiled the bottom—that’s the critical part of any boat.”

  I had been hardheaded about that boat. I was building it, and I wanted to build it all my way. “OK,” I agreed, reluctantly. My lines did look rather strange, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

  After he showed me what he had in mind I erased my many lines. My boat was to have a twenty-foot-long bottom. Charlie told me to divide that by three and then use that figure plus eight inches. “That’s where you should start the bend, the curve to the bow stem,” he said.

  That was a big change from my drawing. After that I asked for his advice and Dad’s too on other aspects of the boat. They advised, but neither would work on the boat. I didn’t realize then just how determined Dad was that Jimmy and I learn to take care of ourselves while he was still around. The way to learn to build a boat, of course, is to build a boat.

  Once the lumber was reasonably dry and I had marked my lofting log, my boat progressed quickly. Jimmy helped me all the way and, of course, he learned too. The boat was clinker-built, meaning that we put the bottom sideboard on and lapped the next board over that about an inch and a quarter and so on up the side. Lapboard construction of this type is easy because there is no caulking. Many clinker-built boats are riveted, but I had no rivets, so I clinched the nails and they held.

  I made a few mistakes. The sides of the boat were too thin, for in planning for the thickness of the boards, I hadn’t allowed enough for the saw cut and for shrinkage in drying, so the completed boards were only three-eighths of an inch thick. That’s enough for a boat on the Koyukuk River, but it is a little thin for the rough waters of the Yukon.

  We had two gallons of linseed oil left over from building two canvas canoes, so I painted it on as waterproofing and as a preservative, and it did a nice job of sealing the wood. I wanted to turn the boat over almost before the oil dried, I was so eager to add the gunwales, floorboards, and the two seats.

  I built the stern square to accept Dad’s outboard. But I hadn’t allowed enough pitch in the stern, and when the outboard started, it caused the stern to squat too much. I corrected the problem later. I also learned that the old outboard was too heavy for the width of my boat.

  I finished my boat just three days before breakup. I have never been prouder of anything I have accomplished than I was of that boat.

  11

  THE FLOOD

  Usual breakup time for the Koyukuk is mid-May, but in 1928 it was late May when at last the ice began to move slowly down the river. But it jammed and stopped moving almost immediately. Those huge, thick, rough blocks of ice, many weighing dozens of tons, were simply too big to float easily downstream. The extremely cold winter had frozen the ice to an unusual thickness and it piled up in a shifting, grinding mass.

  Next day the ice moved again, but downstream from our cabin the blocks formed a dam, causing the frigid, rushing water to flow over the bank. “Getting dangerous, Jim,” Charlie said, anxiously watching the rising water.

  “Sure is,” said Dad. “Let’s get everything out of the cabin. Put what we can on the roof, the rest in the cache.” We scurried, and in an hour the cabin was empty.

  Our bearproof cache was a platform fourteen feet above ground in a large spruce tree that had a trunk about two and a half feet in diameter. We always kept some food, and usually a few furs in this cache. When the flood threatened, we stored more food, winter clothing, caribou-skin sleeping bags, an extra stove, traps, tools, and guns there. We knew these valuables would be safe, for that tree had to have been growing there for a century or more.

  Our cabin perched on a point of high, gravelly ground, well above any flood level within memory. With the huge ice jam, we figured water might reach the cabin door, maybe even flood the floor. In case the water rose high enough to force us to leave, we put emergency supplies in my new boat and chained the dogs nearby. We had cut a trail to the lakes behind our cabin. That trail could provide an escape route to a hill three-quarters of a mile away, beyond the lakes.

  The ice dam shifted. For about three hours, a whole river of ice rushed past our log home. The sight was spectacular. Thick chunks as big as a house tumbled by, rolling, grinding against one another and against the river bottom. Geysers of water spurted high. Ice chunks, forced onto the bank, sheared trees like matchsticks. The sharp edges of ice and the force of the current plowed the bank away. Some giant pieces of ice ran as far as ten feet up on the bank. The noise was a continuous rolling thunder. Jimmy’s eyes were as big as egg yolks and mine must have been too.

  Again the ice jammed downriver. The rising water soon floated huge hunks of ice and spread them out along the riverbanks. Trees snapped
like toothpicks and crashed into the jumble of ice and flooding water. As the water reached our cabin, we boosted the dogs ahead of us and climbed onto the roof.

  Before our astonished eyes the water rose swiftly to the level of the roof. Hastily, we piled everything we could, including the whining dogs, a .22 rifle, some clothes, and a little food, into my new boat, the fishnet skiff, and into a canoe. We could scarcely believe that the river could rise so rapidly; it had come up the last four feet in less than two hours. As we paddled toward the hills, we knew that our cabin would soon float. We didn’t worry about our cache, for that big tree had survived many a flood.

  Upon reaching the hill, we unloaded the supplies we had hastily gathered and waited for a few hours. Then we tried to paddle back to the cabin, but the current, even in the lake, was too swift for us. Muskrats rode swirling ice chunks along the shoreline. They too had been washed out of their houses.

  Returning to the hill, we spent two days and a night listening to the destruction. It sounded as if Hell had broken loose along the Koyukuk. Trees crashed to the ground as they were struck by the ice. Great chunks of ice collided and scraped against one another, creating a never-ending roar. Ice rubbing against ice produced high-pitched screeches and low growls.

  Suddenly ice downstream broke free and the water dropped swiftly. The level fell so fast—six feet in a few hours—that we wondered whether there would be enough water to float my boat (the heaviest of the three) back through the portage. We loaded up and headed back, reaching the portage without difficulty. I went first, paddling the canoe, but a tangle of fallen trees and huge ice chunks blocked the way.

  We went back to another short portage and a creek that flowed into the river half a mile above our cabin. That route was clear, so we followed the openings. Flood water was just emptying from the creek when we arrived at the river. Ice chunks, some as big as our cabin, were stranded high along the banks among the scrubby streamside willows. As we waited on the wet, sloppy shore, our boat nearly went aground. As the water dropped we had to keep moving it into deeper water.