by Brian Keenan
I don’t remember being so suddenly terrified in my life. ‘You mean we are on the lake already?’ My voice was beginning to quake with incredulity.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Dan. ‘In the summer there will be thirty feet or more of water below where you are standing.’
Somewhere, an inner voice was screaming that summer was almost here. Suddenly I was remembering all that I had heard about how summer arrives almost instantaneously in Alaska. Dread spilled into my head faster than I could control it. I couldn’t swim. What if I went through the ice with the sleigh and the dogs? I could already envisage the scene in horrifying slow motion: dogs splashing and howling, me hopelessly flaying around for a firm ice hold, the weight of my layers of clothes and the freezing water seeping into my skin, numbing me, the dogs strangling in their struggle and then everything drifting away like an old echo. What if Dan’s team went down too? How would anyone know what had happened to us? What would Audrey and the kids do? That thought sent another terrifying shard through me. I thought of the spooked dogs. Were they feeling the animal equivalent of what I was going through?
‘Stick close now,’ Dan demanded as we moved off.
Contrary to my rising anxiety, the teams moved easily. Their demeanour was one of relaxed enthusiasm, and I was glad of it. My attention was focused on Dan and his team. If anything were to go wrong they would be first to encounter it. Another part of me was telling me that this was foolish. Ice breaks when you are on top of it. There are no prior warnings. Yet another part of me chastised such foolishness. Dan was a dog musher of long experience. He had been living in the wilds of Alaska, and much of that time in the company of dogs. His laconic attitude to my naive questions confirmed him as a man who knew what he was about, and he was certainly not about drowning me, himself or his dog team on a whim. ‘Anyway,’ I kept telling myself, ‘this is something special. Here you are, Brian, driving your own dog team across a frozen lake in the Alaskan outback on a night that’s glowing like a million candles under the snow.’ The thought warmed me.
The basin of the frozen lake seemed to enclose the silence and draw everything into itself. Only the noise of the dogs padding across the dry white snow and their panting could be heard. It was comforting. My fears of drowning were subliminally being replaced by something softer, something childlike. I was thinking of a warm soapy bath and hot milk; I was thinking also that I didn’t care how long it took. The pleasure was intoxicating.
Suddenly Dan shouted and waved both his arms in the air in front of me. ‘Look up, look up!’ he was calling as his team came to a slow stop. So I looked up, like a man who has just woken up in a strange room, not sure where he is or how he got there. Above me the heavens were opening up in a luscious harmony of colour and form, like a sensuous curtain blowing in the breeze; I could almost feel the texture of it on my face. At first it was a distant glow on the horizon that ringed the lake bowl. It was like being out at sea and seeing the echo of light from three or four different lighthouses fusing in the sky. Greens, blues, yellows, ambers, oranges and purples, like a rainbow in a melting pot before it has been stretched into its glorious arc.
Quietly, my team came to a halt and laid themselves on the snow. They seemed to know instinctively how to worship and receive what I could only stand and gape at, half afraid and half amazed. The aurora got bigger as I watched, transfixed. It seemed to come towards us with inconceivable momentum. I stood helpless, half expecting to be swept away to God knows where. Yet there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide on the white expanse of this frozen lake. It was as if it had waited for us. Now it was swooping down on us with monstrous magnificence.
To me, it was as if the universe were a mass of coloured cells merging and differentiating, growing and multiplying. My ears were whirring, and a quote from W. B. Yeats was in my mouth before my brain could articulate its own thoughts, something about ‘The heavens’ embroidered cloth, inwrought with gold and silver light, of the night, and the light and the half light’. But the poet’s eloquence could not contain the Elysian orchestra that was now hovering and enclosing me in the fantastical dome.
I got off my sleigh and walked the few feet to where Dan stood, drinking in the wonder. I didn’t want to speak to him, nor him to me, but I wanted the comfort of another human being to share and be witness to this seduction.
‘I told you you might enjoy it, but I didn’t expect this. She’s big-mouthed and brazen tonight!’
I hardly heard Dan’s words. If I had been initially a little frightened by our escapade on the ice I was immune to such fear now, though the hair was standing on the back of my neck for different reasons. Had the ice opened up beneath me that very moment I would have felt nothing for I had already been lifted up into that mysterious, ineffable miracle that was happening in the skies around us.
Dan tore me from my rapture by elbowing me with one arm and holding out the whiskey in the other hand.
‘No thanks, Dan, there’s more than enough stimulation for me up there,’ I said, darting my eyes from the bottle to the sky.
‘You never know when she’s going to show up,’ he said. ‘You can sit and wait for weeks and weeks, watching and waiting, and you never see even a distant glimmer. There are lots of Japanese who come here just to see what you are seeing tonight, Brian. They believe that the lights increase fertility.’
I laughed at the image of thousands of naked or semi-naked couples sitting in pre-coital readiness for the first signs of the aurora rushing out of the horizon.
‘What do you think about it, Dan?’
‘Haven’t really figured that out yet, though I’ve seen lots of nights like tonight and some much, much better than tonight. But if you take the time to watch it – not study it, I mean just sit and watch it, like letting yourself drift into it – you come out of it after it’s gone like you’ve been kind of cleaned out or something. It’s like it cleans out all the garbage and nonsense and all the old worries that have been getting up inside you, unknown to yourself. You feel easy and relaxed and I suppose sort of happy with the world for a while. I don’t rightly know what to make of it. It’s an omen of some kind, that’s for sure. But it means different things to different people. The people of the Tlingt tribe believe that the lights are dancing human spirits. They are dancing in celebration of some event or coming event directly related to the tribe’s people. But the Inuit peoples spread out on the Bering Sea coast believe they’re walrus spirits playing with human skulls. I don’t really know what that is supposed to mean. An old Finnish musher friend of mine told me that the Lapland natives call them foxfires and said that it had something to do with an arctic fox starting fires or spraying up the snow with its tail.’ Dan looked at me and added quietly, ‘But like all good omens it can mean many things or anything you want.’
Dan handed me the bottle again, and this time I took it, drinking down the burning whiskey in long, slow sips, and at the same time drinking in the blazing heavens.
‘Maybe it’s come here just for you,’ said Dan as he stashed the whiskey back into his sleigh holder and gestured for us to head back. ‘A kind of omen for your travels.’
I’m not exactly sure how long the journey back to the cabin took. I know that I braked in and out of turns and rolled up and down gullies and crevasses with the luxurious ease of Rudolf Nureyev. I really don’t know how, for my eyes were fixed on the skies. Above me the celestial orchestra continued to play, and I danced all the way home. I could do nothing else, for the whole world was enchanted and had wrapped me in its spell.
Back at the cabin, I helped Dan unhitch the dogs, return them to their boxes and chain them for the night. Dan patted each and every one as if to thank them, and I followed suit. The dogs accepted the affection without much fuss, and settled down. I asked Dan why his lead dog had such a weird name. It was a way of returning myself to reality. ‘Cou-caisse means “broken tail” in French. A French-Canadian musher gave her to me as a pup. Don’t know how she broke her tail, but
there it is.’ I looked at the distinct kink in the animal’s tail. I hadn’t noticed it before. ‘The Frenchman had some crazy idea that she would not make a good working dog. But she is one of the best lead dogs I have had.’
Without further prompting, Dan introduced me to the rest of the pack. The names were as varied as the ancestry in their bloodlines. Some were simple, like Ben my lead dog; some were elaborate, like Cou-caisse; others were humorous, like Big Foot and Professor, because the animal had curious ring marks on his eyes as if he was wearing spectacles. These animals were Dan’s heroes and he spoke of them with real devotion. I ventured to suggest to him that he loved the creatures more than he showed. Dan’s answer was as honest as it was simple. ‘There ain’t no medicine like a dog for cabin fever. Keeps away the crazies better than any medicine, though some of them can get a bit crazy themselves, especially this one,’ he said, wrestling with Cou-caisse.
The animal, as I recalled, had been the soul of discretion throughout our trip, never yelping, never barking, never getting excited, always performing with sure-footed determination like the thoroughbred bitch its mongrel features declared it was not. It had sensitive ears that hung down from its head, eyes that looked at you with bright intelligence, and legs that seemed madly disproportionate to its body. Altogether a queer character, odd, conceited, fiercely independent, a quiet creature who could do crazy things.
‘You know, Dan, I think you are a lot like that dog,’ I said as I walked into the cabin.
‘Howzat?’
‘Well, a little bit bent maybe, but not quite broken.’
Dan smiled uncomprehendingly, not quite interested enough to pursue the matter. I should have known better. Dan, like Cou-caisse, gave nothing away.
As I changed out of my trail gear, Dan spoke animatedly about his dogs – buying and selling them, the cost of feeding them, how dogs probably had saved more lives than doctors in Alaska, and how sometimes the best-trained dogs could do inexplicable things totally out of character, never to be repeated again. I asked Dan why he thought the team had got a little spooked at the lake. Was it the ice, I wondered? Dan just shrugged his shoulders; no, he didn’t think it was the ice. ‘Maybe they just knew Old Aurora was coming up!’ I looked directly at Dan to see if he was sending me up, but I could see he wasn’t. He was telling me something I already knew from Jack London. Dogs represented the spirit of the place. They were an incredible part of the folklore of Alaska. They were the ultimate survivors, the link between humans and the wilderness. Jack London had first introduced that to me some forty years ago, Dan had shown me the reality of it on the trail, and that night I had tasted some of it hands on.
There was little time for more chat. Dan knew I had to be back and offered me a lift in his truck.
‘Which one?’ I said, looking at the three vehicles outside.
‘The only one that runs!’ came the answer.
It was a quick and uneventful trip back to Fairbanks, and I spent most of the time pondering over Dan’s image of the aurora as a kind whore. Though it did not leave that kind of impression on me, I could see how Dan, who had had many encounters over the years, would look on it like some old seductress with whom you consort out of affection not desire. Old Aurora had the capacity to awake and stir up powerful emotions, as I had found out myself and as Dan had testified to when he had told me of the Japanese belief in the association of the aurora with fertility. But whatever the nature of the powerful emotions, Aurora still made you feel warm and safe like a lover does and a whore cannot. But still she came and went at her own whim. She gave herself to you only when she wanted to, and left you breathless and panting for more.
At the end of the track leading up to our cabin, I bade Dan a grateful farewell and casually promised to meet up for a beer.
‘Sure thing,’ he said as he drove off.
As I walked up to the cabin I knew it didn’t matter whether or not we ever had that beer. There are chance encounters you should never attempt to repeat. It puts a veneer on things and dulls the power of the moment. For a split second I wondered once more what Dan’s surname was, then just as quickly decided I never wanted to know.
Everyone was asleep when I entered. I was glad. I could not have begun to explain the events of the last few hours. I had only been away six or seven hours in all, yet on coming home I felt I had been away for years. On the lake I had been snapped up out of time and had entered another world outside time; how could I explain this to my family when I could hardly explain it to myself ? I was too restless to sleep. I thought I should make some notes by focusing my mind on the temporal reality I had come home to. In preparation, I took up a book on the phenomenon of Old Aurora.
I have not a scientific turn of mind, but I sometimes find the explanation of scientific fact as wonderful as, if less momentous than, the event itself. Auroras, it seems, are caused by electrically charged particles blown from the sun and attracted to the earth’s magnetic poles – hence the presence of the aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere and over Australia, as the aurora australis, in the southern hemisphere. The dancing lights and the extraordinary shapes in the night sky are due to the bending of the earth’s magnetic field by gusts of these electrically charged particles. As I was digesting all these facts and simultaneously trying to replay in my imagination the sights I had experienced, I kept thinking of some of the fabulous seascapes by Turner. He too would have loved the magical interaction and fusion of colour I had witnessed. The colours in the auroras, however, are from a palette of gases rather than paint: the green and red come from oxygen in the ionosphere, while the blue and violet come from nitrogen. The green, it seems, is a result of oxygen glowing about sixty miles above the earth; the red glow, on the other hand, is caused by oxygen reacting to the sun’s particles at an altitude of about two hundred miles. They appear along ring channels known as auroral ovals, which hang particularly over Alaska and Antarctica in the south.
As I completed my notes, part of me mused on the fact that though science can explain the facts of something it can never explain its effect. The isolation on the lake no doubt added to the drama, just as my initial fears heightened the unreality of the moment. But the marriage of science and psychology was still not enough for me. The essence and effect are only partly revealed by them; the backwash takes longer to work out. The naturalist John Muir, an explorer who travelled through the Alaskan wilderness in the 1880s, wrote, ‘I have been one thousand feet down in the crevices, with matchless snow and sculptured figures and carved ice work all about me. Solomon’s marble and ivory palaces were nothing to it. Such purity, such colour, such delicate beauty! I was tempted to stay there and feast my soul and softly freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What a good death that would be!’ For me, Muir is nearer the mark. I too, in a moment, had sensed a similar feeling. The lure of wanting to stay, to remain, to become one with the earth and the inspiring heavens – it’s a profound seduction. It enfolds you completely. But it is dangerous, because you cannot remain. Dan was right to befriend it like a comfortable old whore, not to let himself become utterly beguiled by it.
Maiden Voyage
The Pequod, as I had chosen to call our twenty-six-foot RV (recreational vehicle), had arrived. The name Herman Melville gave to his tragic ship in Moby-Dick seemed somehow appropriate to our own vehicle of exploration. It was, after all, going to help me find my own white whale in this massive expanse of Alaska. Initially I loved its compactness, but as soon as we began to load it with all the gear we had brought or bought in Fairbanks it became unattractive. But we made several day trips out into the bush to get the hang of the vehicle.
So when Mary and her husband Pat, a retired lecturer at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, asked me to go canoeing on the Chena with them, I agreed readily. I remembered both of them from my visit a few years back when I was a guest speaker at the university. Mary was then married to a history professor and Pat was single and a science teacher. I was happy to mee
t up with them again and plan a short trip down the Chena into Fairbanks.
Mary had advised me over the phone that long outback trips took lots of planning and preparation and you were ill advised to undertake such a trip unless you were well versed in survival skills; Pat had concluded that survival skills were fine, but you had to be fit enough to apply them in the first place. I presumed Pat’s remark was a way of reminding us that he was now retired and not up to the rigours of a trip like an enthusiastic younger man or even a curious writer. I was happy to comply with Pat’s thinking. Both he and I were about the same age and trials were not something I was looking for. Trials, at my age, were situations that unfortunately happened to you, and were to be avoided at all costs. With this unspoken agreement we loaded what little kit we had, strapped the aluminium canoe to our roof and drove off beyond the city’s reach.
During our journey Pat explained to me that it was a good time to take to the river as the glacial meltdown had already begun, though it was much earlier than in previous years. He insisted that just because it was mild outside I shouldn’t be fooled; the rivers were always cold when they were swollen with glacier melt. ‘If you fall in and are not hauled out within four minutes, you’re gone,’ he said. ‘You’ve a four-minute life expectancy in the water.’
It sounded drastic. ‘That’s like a three-minute warning before a nuclear holocaust,’ I said.
‘Yes, except there are two differences: one, you’ve got a minute longer in the river, and two, you are the only one who is going to die.’
I looked at both Mary and Pat. Their faces were noncommittal, as if they had just explained to me the recipe for a blueberry pie.
‘Well, four minutes will be more than enough for me. I can’t swim,’ I said equally noncommittally.
They both smiled, and replied, ‘That’s okay, then.’
In the Athabascan language, the suffix ‘na’ simply means ‘water’ or ‘river’, and my frequent studies of Alaska maps revealed that practically all the named rivers carried this suffix – Chena, Tanana, Nowitna, Susitna, Lake Minchumina, and hundreds more. This was the land of water, yet curiously the native mind had not invested it with any elaborate religious or spiritual significance to anything like the same degree they had the other elements of earth, air and sky, and every species of plant and animal life. I was beginning to understand. Water was God here; it needed no explanation, only to be respected and feared.
