by Will Hobbs
I got going, with no choice but to cross slopes that fell steeply into the river. Sometimes I had to crab-walk across tongues of loose, sliding rock in order to continue. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to swim the river to get back to easier walking on the other side.
Midmorning the next day, the mountains finally pulled back from the river. I walked the falling spine of a ridge onto flat ground, a bright green tundra bench that sat just above the river. There was one just like it across the river from me. Here was that “first obvious place” for us to get back together.
There I waited, out in the open with my bright orange life jacket draped on top of a lone, spindly spruce. Maybe Ryan had already swum the river, like he said he was going to, to get back to “my side.” If so, he would easily spot the life jacket and me over here.
As the sun made its big circle around the sky, I gathered firewood, made a fire, and laid on lots of green branches. Might as well make sure he doesn’t miss me, I figured. My smoke signals didn’t reel him in. I thought of moving on but decided that would be a huge mistake. Without a doubt, this was the first obvious place.
You have to be patient, I could hear Jonah saying, and I remembered the time we went out on the sea ice together to hunt seals the way the ancestors had, and his father still did when Jonah was young. I was only nine, still a hyper kid, but I loved hunting. Jonah had been taking me out with him since I was five.
We didn’t have a dog team like my great-grandfather did to get us out onto the Beaufort Sea—we went on Jonah’s snowmobile—but we did make an igloo three nights in a row. Instead of netting the seals under the ice or stalking them with a rifle from behind a white blind like we do these days, Jonah was going to try to take one at close range like it used to be done.
When we finally found a breathing hole—small and glazed over, as difficult to locate as a needle in a haystack—Jonah brought a small feather out from under his parka. He stuck it into the side of the breathing hole, then took his position. He crouched with his father’s harpoon in hand, and he waited. And waited. I mean, for hours.
When the time finally came, and that feather vibrated slightly to signal the rising seal, Jonah had to be ready to strike in a split second, and he was. He struck with force and accuracy. I’ve always enjoyed seal meat, but that seal was the best ever.
In the times before our ancestors even had dogs, Jonah told me, and they pulled their heavy sleds under their own power, there were winters when the seals were hard to come by, and the people would starve. Sometimes they went weeks without food. They had to wait. They had to be patient.
Right now, I had to be patient and wait for my brother. If there’d been a mix-up, I was only going to make it worse by running around on the tundra looking for him.
Exhaustion pulled me down. I slept the rest of the day. Around ninety minutes after midnight I woke to the sun rising over a ridge, got my fire going again, made more smoke. I went to counting how many days it had been. I pieced it all together by how many midnights had gone by. The accident happened on Day 1. This was the beginning of Day 5. I took out my hunting knife and made five notches on its leather sheath.
I went back to sleep. By midmorning I had been waiting at “the first obvious place” for twenty-four hours. My stomach hurt from worry and hunger. I had remembered to keep drinking water but was getting weak and light-headed.
As for my brother, I was fearing the worst. He got mauled by a bear, he broke a leg, he fell off a cliff. He drowned. The mountains had swallowed him up.
Did it still make sense to stay put? No, it didn’t: too much time had passed. I decided to give him until noon.
Noon arrived. If I stayed, I was going to get weaker and weaker until I wouldn’t be strong enough to walk out. The coast was probably still forty or fifty miles away. Once I reached the coast, I had a chance of being spotted. Now and again, motorboats out of Shingle Point came this far west.
Once I got there, it wouldn’t be a good idea to sit and wait for a boat that might happen by. Chances would be poor, before I starved out. Better to keep walking. From the mouth of the Firth, if I headed east a few miles, I would be looking at Herschel Island. The island sat only a couple of miles offshore; I’d been there once with Jonah. The whole coast of the Yukon Territory was littered with driftwood … I could start a signal fire visible from the island’s historical park at the old whaling station.
Better get going, I told myself. I started downriver, keeping an eye out for the raft but with no real hope of coming across it.
Same time the next day, I put a sixth notch on my knife sheath. I hadn’t eaten a thing since that one char I caught. I was making a poor showing as an aboriginal hunter.
Just ahead, the river ran fast and white as it dropped between walls of stone rising along the shore. I remembered Ryan saying that after the “mountain reach” of the Firth, the “canyon reach” began at Mile 40. That was where we would run the first major rapid, about halfway to the ocean.
At least I knew where I was, for what good it would do me.
Broad shelves of stone flanked the entrance of the canyon. I climbed the shelves on my side to their high point. Thirty feet below me, the Firth cascaded with a roar over slabs of rock heaving out of the river like whales.
I looked downriver to the tail end of the rapid and beyond. A speck of color and a bit of movement on the other side of the river caught my eye—something bright orange atop the shallow canyon. I squinted and made out a man wearing a life jacket, walking north toward the ocean. My heart leaped.
It was amazing what seeing Ryan did for my legs. Strength surged back into them, and I broke into a trot on the tundra. What was he doing on what had been “my side” of the river? Hadn’t he planned to wait for me on this side? He said he was going to swim over to the east side, but wasn’t that after we met up again?
I gradually closed the gap, but by the time I drew even with him across the river, he was angling away from the canyon rim. Ryan was moving slow, and he stumbled. I hollered and hollered, but over the sound of the river he didn’t hear me. He disappeared behind a huge mound of rock that rose above the river.
I couldn’t lose him again. One of us was going to have to swim the river—and it might as well be me.
There were breaks here and there in the walls of the shallow canyon. Not very far ahead, a slot between the cliffs would make it easy for me to get down to the water. Directly across, fifty-foot high cliffs rose from the river, but those cliffs ended in fewer than a hundred yards. The riverbank was grassy there, easy to climb out on.
What about the river—was it swimmable? Its deep, dark green water was more roily than I would have liked, stirred up from falling through the rapid, but the Firth wasn’t very wide here, less than a hundred feet across. The day was warm and sunny. If I swam arm over arm, I wouldn’t be in the water very long.
This is crazy, I told myself. Not really, I answered back, not if you swim it fast enough. It’s the amount of time you’re in the water that makes it deadly. It’s not that far across, and the river is running as low as it’s going to get. The day is hot and sunny.
Fish or cut bait, I told myself. After studying the water one more time, I tightened the cinches of my life jacket and dove in.
13
SWAPPING STORIES
Expecting the shock of the freezing water and the numbness that followed within seconds, I wasn’t as frightened this time. Crossing the seam between the slower water and the fast, I swam hard to maintain a forty-five-degree angle to the current.
It turned into more of a battle than I thought I was in for. A boil of water got hold of me and I lost my angle. I found myself headed directly downstream.
Now I was frightened. No turning back, I told myself. I got my bearings, got my angle back again, and swam harder than before, across the major current and across the seam into the slower water along the eastern shore.
I could still work my fingers when I got out at the foot of the grassy s
lope. I’d only been in the water a couple of minutes and I wasn’t hypothermic, not that I wasn’t feeling the chill. My heart was hammering as I climbed that grassy slope, sucking wind as I came over the top.
No more than fifty feet away, my brother was about to pass by. I barely had the breath left to call his name. “Ryan,” I panted.
His head jerked in my direction. At first my brother was startled, like he was seeing a ghost. The emotions flooding his face, in his eyes, defy description. Disbelief and joy were battling it out, and joy was winning.
Then he broke up, really lost it. Broke down and cried. The grief he’d been feeling, I guess, was finding its way out.
We met in a bear hug, bumping our bulky life jackets, me dripping wet. He looked haggard as could be. I’m sure I didn’t look so good myself—sunburned, bug-bitten, half-starved.
Ryan’s sunburn was worse than mine, but his lips were okay and he didn’t have very many bites. “Why are you all wet, little brother?”
“I was on the other side of the river—just swam across. Man, it’s good to see you! I was worried out of my skull!”
“Same here! What a mix-up! I swam to your side much sooner than I expected I’d be able to, and you swam to my side. All this time I’ve been looking for you on this side. I was afraid you’d been mauled by a bear, killed by a bear!”
I was so pumped up with adrenaline and so relieved, I felt giddy. “Did you see a bear?” I asked with a straight face, like Jonah would do.
“See a bear … there’s a stretch back there that’s lousy with bears—huge grizzlies!”
“Lousy with bears? You sure?”
“You didn’t see them?”
I broke out in a smile. “Just kidding. I saw lots of bears, and the dead caribou they were gorging on.”
“Why’d you cross over?”
“It wasn’t on purpose. I made the mistake of surprising a grizzly on a carcass, real close-up. When he charged, it wasn’t a bluff. The river was my only chance to get away.”
“Good grief. And I told you there’s never been a mauling on the Firth River. You would’ve been the first.”
“For sure. How ’bout you, Ryan? Did you get charged?”
“Twice, from about a hundred feet. Both times the grizzly pulled up right in front of me. Stood up, roared at me, then hustled back to the carcass it had staked out.”
“Was it scary, big brother?”
“Scary? On the one-to-ten pucker scale, it was a nineteen. Even if I had my pepper spray, it would’ve been a nineteen. But you don’t sound like you were scared.”
“I wasn’t scared. Terrified, was more like it. I counted eleven bears. How about you?”
“Fourteen! Thank God we’re both alive and intact!”
I couldn’t resist. “If you’d had my rifle, would you have used it?”
“No, but the whole time I was wishing I had let you bring it—for your own protection.”
“That’s okay. I wouldn’t have fired it anyway.”
“Really?”
“It would have been on the raft.”
“Hmmm, you’re right about that.”
Ryan had me tell the rest of my story, then he told me more of his. Shortly after swimming to “my side” of the river, he heard the awful sound of bears in combat. When he worked his way close enough to get a look, he saw a mother grizzly battling to protect her cubs from a big male. The boar had already driven her off a carcass, and now he was after her cubs. She gave more than she got, and was able to escape with both cubs.
After seeing those first four bears, Ryan took a detour away from the river. He was afraid to stick close to the river, where he might run into more grizzlies on more drowned caribou. When he returned to the river a couple of hours downstream, he searched half a day without even finding a footprint. “By then,” Ryan said, “I’d gotten to thinking you were back upstream in that lousy-with-bears stretch, and had gotten mauled or killed or worse.”
“Worse?” I asked with a grin.
“Eaten, maybe?”
“I guess that would be worse. Then what did you do?”
“Went back upriver and searched that whole section. That’s when I discovered that dozens and dozens of bull caribou had drowned.”
“Let me get this straight … every time you spotted a grizzly, you had to get close enough to see what it was eating on—that it wasn’t me?”
“Soon as I saw the carcass had antlers, I was out of there.”
“Still, that was crazy to keep looking.”
“Hey, you’re my brother.”
I didn’t know what to say about that, but I took it in, and it went deep. Would I have done the same?
“The pictures I could have taken, Nick! I could run this river a hundred times—or walk it—and never see the like.”
I told Ryan that the mother grizzly with first-year cubs I had seen on a carcass was probably the same one he’d seen in battle with that big male later on. How much later, we would never know. On our separate sides of the river, both of us had slowed down for a couple of days trying to figure out where the other was. Then both of us, around the same time, decided to give it up and head for the coast.
Ryan said, “Have you found anything to eat since that char?”
“Not a thing.”
“The way you caught it … was that something you learned from your grandfather?”
“No, from an episode of Man vs. Wild.”
He thought that was really funny. Seeing him laugh, I did too. Laughter was such a relief. Ryan said he wasn’t sure I had heard him when he was shouting across the river just after the accident. He was trying to say how sorry he was about what happened. “I can’t explain it,” he said. “You heard Red Wiley, and I heard the same thing back at the park office: June fifteenth has always been the starting date for rafting on the Firth River. The winter ice is always gone by then. Maybe it had to do with extreme weather brought about by climate change. More snow than usual in that location, then a cooler spring?”
He noticed I was studying him closely.
“Don’t get me wrong, Nick—that’s no excuse. A boatman should never assume what’s around the bend, even if he knows the river like the back of his hand. In the Grand Canyon, a debris flow down a side canyon can create a major rapid overnight. In forested country, trees might be blocking the river. This was driver error—all my fault. I could have got to shore in time if I hadn’t turned my back to the river for the sake of a few photos of a swimming grizzly. Stupid, stupid, stupid—I won’t call it an accident.”
He’s honest, I thought. That counts for a lot.
“I could’ve got us both killed.”
“Close call, for sure.”
“If only one of us had lived, and it was me, I would’ve never forgiven myself. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Done, Brother.”
He reached out and clapped my shoulder. “Thanks—that’s huge.”
14
LIKE JONAH AND ME
“Let’s go find our groceries,” my brother said, and we headed downriver in search of the raft. Even if we didn’t find it, I wasn’t alone anymore, and not nearly as scared.
The walking would have been easy here, on the flats between the river and the foot of the mountains, if I wasn’t so weak. Hunger was gnawing at my insides, and I was starting to go light-headed.
I was watching for animals. With trees so scarce this close to the ocean, they had no place to hide. Open up your eyes, I told myself. You’re a hunter, bred to the bone, and you’re in the middle of that “hunter’s paradise” of Jonah’s. Find the caribou first, then worry how you’re going to get one.
The only animals I managed to spot were Dall sheep, so high up and so far away, they looked like tiny white dots.
Another day done. With the midnight sun low in the valley ahead, Ryan said, “Let’s rest for a while.” I got down on the tundra, and it was lights-out within seconds. Four hours later I woke to Ryan chewing on a stem of cot
ton grass. I thought about asking if that did anything for his hunger, but I already knew the answer. Instead I asked if he’d gotten any sleep. He shook his head. I notched Day 7 on my knife sheath. We started out again.
Around nine in the morning I noticed a golden eagle flying a big circle above our side of the river. A short while later I spied a caribou with a calf on the flats about a quarter of a mile ahead of us.
As we got a little closer I noticed that the calf wasn’t eating any grass, just nursing. Most calves are born right around June 1. This calf should be grazing by now, and it looked small, much too small, for June 21. This one was still wearing its reddish-brown birth coat. It might only be one week old.
This calf must have been born here in the Firth River country. The calf’s mother was a straggler who hadn’t been able to keep up with the other cows as they migrated north to the calving grounds on the coastal plain. Jonah always said that without “safety in numbers” going for them, stragglers don’t stand much of a chance.
All these things were going through my mind as I watched the caribou and her calf and the golden eagle. That eagle was circling a little lower. It wouldn’t be long before the eagle made its move.
I was preparing to make mine. I told Ryan to hang back, that I was going to pick up the pace and try to get closer to the caribou. He looked quizzical but said, “Go for it.”
I hurried forward, then slowed down as the eagle swung around. It flew another circle and I had time to get closer yet, to the cover of a lone spruce tree, without the caribou getting on to me. I kept my eye on the eagle.
The eagle descended into its strafing run. Like Red Wiley coming in for a landing, the great bird had its flaps down.
That golden eagle raked the back of the calf before the mother ever saw it coming. In the moment the calf cried out, I was tempted to start my own run but held off.
The calf was still on its feet, blood streaming from the open wounds along its back. The eagle beat its wings, gaining altitude for another pass.
At a week old, the calf was too big for the eagle to lift. The eagle was about to circle around and make another strike that would bring the calf down. I figured I should keep still. If I ran from cover now, it would be a mistake. Despite the loss of blood, the calf would probably outrun me.
