Four Quarters of Light

by Brian Keenan

  There was only one other passenger travelling with me to Arctic Village and the pilot asked us to spread our baggage over the remaining seats of the six-seater Piper Cessna aircraft. By now I knew the reason for this and was steeling myself against the buffeting we were about to endure. ‘We don’t want to be blown halfway across Canada!’ the pilot joked. I smiled nervously at the woman passenger, who informed me that she had come from Canada. She asked if I was going to the Gathering and I confirmed that I was, adding that I had travelled from Ireland. She told me that I was a long way from home and that I would find the Arctic very different. ‘But,’ she continued, ‘the Gwich’in are very friendly and hospitable, just like the Irish, so you might not find it so very different.’

  We were about to carry on with our conversation when the pilot called out to us. He would need a co-pilot up front with him. My companion signalled with her eyes for me to go up to join him. I was too confused by the request to question it.

  As I buckled myself into the co-pilot’s seat the pilot handed me a set of headphones. ‘If it’s blowing hard this is the only way we’ll hear each other speak,’ he said. I blurted out that I was not a pilot and that I knew as much about flying airplanes as earthworms did about the solar system. He was unmoved by my obvious anxiety and explained that it was better for weight distribution to have two people behind the engine and that he needed someone up front just in case anything went wrong. At this point I was about to eject myself from the cockpit before he had even started the engine. ‘It’s just a safety precaution,’ he added, ‘in case I become unable to operate the bird.’ He looked at me and smiled. I was not reassured. He proceeded to give me a five-minute breakdown on the manual operations, and which instruments were what and how I should read them. ‘I’ll go over it quickly again once we’re airborne,’ he concluded. His words were going into my ears but were being engulfed amid paroxysms of panic. ‘I’ve just got to check on a few things in the office, then we’ll be off.’

  As he climbed out of the cockpit I turned to the woman behind and asked, ‘Is this guy serious?’ Like a good mother hen she quietly confirmed that it was merely a safety precaution and that it was a ten-million-to-one chance that he should become so ill that he would have to instruct me how to fly and land. ‘These pilots are very rigorously tested and have regular six-monthly health checks. If there was even the remotest chance that he was unfit he would be grounded until he was cleared again.’ I was relieved to hear this and thought the pilot should have told me instead. In any case, I would make a hopeless co-pilot. If anything were to go wrong and I was required to fly, everyone on board might just as well sprout wings then and there. I didn’t confide this to my companion.

  After a few minutes the pilot returned. He told us we would have to make one stop to unload supplies, then buckled himself in and checked his instruments, ticking off items on a checklist fastened to his knee; underneath this was a map with our proposed flightpath. The pilot pointed to the village of Fort Yukon where he said we would have to deliver some food supplies. Weather reports from the village were warning of extreme winds so we would fly at about fifteen thousand feet, under the cloud cover. If the winds are bad it is imperative to remain under the clouds or you can get blown so far off course that it can take hours to get a visual bearing and regain your flightpath.

  Our pilot was from somewhere in upstate New York and had only been flying in Alaska for a few weeks. He was still unfamiliar with the landscape and needed to keep referring to his map. I didn’t know which was more reassuring, the presence of the map or the young pilot’s honesty about his inexperience. The lady passenger behind us said that she had made this trip lots of times, and if we kept visual contact with land she would ensure we didn’t get too lost. And with that the pilot fired up the twin engines, blasted down the runway and leapt into the Alaskan airstream. Co-pilot Keenan clamped down on his back teeth and silently speculated about just what not getting ‘too lost’ really meant.

  Once we’d cleared Fairbanks the panorama was one of monotonous green and brown – the northern tundra; straight ahead loomed the steely-grey clouds, looking like big Brillo pads. I remembered how Jack had described the tundra during our flight to McCarthy as looking like broccoli. I was making a mental note of the broccoli/Brillo pad imagery when the pilot’s squeaky voice came through the headphones. ‘It’s going to get bumpy as we approach the Brooks Range. Winds blowing over the Arctic North Slope can be lethal to light aircraft. We might have to detour up a few valleys to avoid the storm that’s brewing up behind those clouds.’ That was all I needed to know from this rookie pilot! I nodded my head nervously, already redefining the meaning of ‘too lost’ as the first blasts of wind banged into the aircraft and flung us like a stone from a slingshot up into the first wisps of cloud. ‘Sooner than expected,’ crackled the pilot. I nodded again, while swearing to myself.

  As the clouds began to establish an icy mist on our windows, I was wondering just when we were going to make a move to get out of them. The pilot was obviously telepathic for with a descending leftward manoeuvre he cleared the cloud. For the next thirty minutes I watched him as he studied the ground below us, then the map a few feet from his face. I didn’t know how lost we were, but it was obvious that our pilot was opening up new routes to Fort Yukon and our final destination, Arctic Village.

  ‘It’s okay, I can see a way in,’ the pilot declared. ‘We’ll be a bit late but we’ll make it before night.’ Those last two words illustrated just how new the pilot was to Alaska. ‘What night?’ I thought to myself. Night doesn’t happen here at this time of the year. And then it struck me, like one of those gusts of wind that kept hammering us down lower and lower to the ground: what would he have done had we been flying through a winter night? He could not have cross-referenced from the ground and his flight map and that lady behind could not have prevented us from becoming ‘too lost’.

  Before I myself became too lost in my morbid speculations, I heard the words ‘Fort Yukon’ followed by ‘ten minutes to landing, maybe another fifteen minutes to unload, then we’re off again’. I nodded and began removing the headphones, then felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to face the woman, who had moved up a few seats to say to me, ‘You could get all of Ireland into the Yukon plains maybe a couple of times!’

  I looked out on the landscape below. Nothing but an infinity of emptiness, the green serge of tundra as inviting as a bowl of cold, greasy soup, the murky Yukon River sullenly making its way towards the horizon before us and out of the horizon behind us.

  At 2,300 miles in length, this was one of the world’s great rivers. It ranked with the Amazon and the Ganges. It had spawned fabulous stories, not least from my mentor Jack London. It had been here before men could write, before they even arrived here. But to me it looked utterly desolate, coming out of nowhere and going into nowhere.

  The runway at Fort Yukon was nothing more than a narrow gravel strip. I could still see nothing but emptiness. Where was the habitation? Who were the food supplies for? Then, out of nowhere, trails of dust blew up and maybe eight to ten quad motorcycles and their riders descended on us. The young men helped unload the several boxes of foodstuffs, distributed them among the motorbikes, and then they were off again, waving and smiling. It was obvious they had come for more than the few boxes; they wanted to see if any new faces had arrived, and to pick up on any news. That we were two strangers going to the Gathering met with their approval, and they wished us well.

  Forty minutes later we touched down at Arctic Village, the most northerly native settlement in the Arctic. I clambered back from my co-pilot’s seat and heaved my luggage onto the stony runway. I had come prepared for the wilderness, but as the Cessna turned and disappeared I began to feel a lot less prepared than I thought I was. I had been literally dropped here, a bewildered outsider. I stood in the middle of nowhere feeling the burden of my strangeness. I had decided to come here, but my desire to participate in the Gathering had had to be approved
in advance. Courtesy was paramount with these people, and my stay with the Gwich’in was to teach me anew about the meaning of courtesy and respect, and about how the life of a community built around such values can function.

  An old broken-down Mazda half truck took me and my companion from the airfield to the village. I sat bundled up on the back among baggage, food cartons and sealed cardboard boxes with family names etched on them in heavy felt-tip. I was just another piece of cargo being carried into the wilderness, into the heartland of the Gwich’in. I tried to get my bearings. Here I was somewhere between 145° longitude and 68° latitude, south of the Brooks Range and east of the Romanzof mountains. I was at a mid-point several hundred miles east of the haul road and west of the demarcation line that separates Arctic Canada and Arctic Alaska. But all that did was place me in the middle of nowhere with immense wilderness surrounding me.

  After some fifteen minutes, the truck trundled into the village. It was little more than a few dozen wood cabins in various states of disrepair scattered across several acres of bush. My Indian driver and his son put me down near the centre of the encampment. I unloaded my rucksack and then some of the tribe helped unload the supplies. A few of them smiled, and some even welcomed me to their village. But there was much to be done in preparation for the Gathering and I was left to my own devices.

  I had wanted to experience the wilderness, and here I was right in the heart of it. Yet I had never felt so alien in any place before. Everywhere, the tiny settlement busied itself while I stood undecided as to what to do until something inside me commanded me to move, and I walked off in search of a site to pitch my ‘boot sale’ tent. Having found somewhere close to a large pile of caribou antlers, I flung my pack to the ground and began unpacking.

  Inside a separate bag I kept my notebook, camera and reading material, and if Ray Bane’s contention was correct, then I should be writing down this first experience of the Arctic wilderness. I looked at the books I had brought with me. Young Chris McCandless had brought books, but he had also brought imaginary friends, the same people I had admired and befriended in my youth – authors, poets and philosophers. I wrote in my notebook, ‘Why did Chris not listen when his friends told him to go home? Had Chris coveted more than he could carry psychologically and spiritually? He was only another young man who was overwhelmed by romantic imagining and who had the courage to pursue it. But the wilderness had closed in on him. Like Icarus, his fall to earth must have been the most excruciatingly terrifying ordeal. In his last moments, did the wilderness receive him benignly? Did Chris refuse to go because he was already home? Home is where you return to, not where you go to.’ I re-read the last desperate query in my notebook. I knew immediately I didn’t want to know the answer. I looked at the village people hovering about the building I’d learned was the community hall. A few yards from it tables were being set out, and beside them a rough field kitchen was in operation. It was time to set up my own accommodation. For better or for worse, this was my home too.

  With my tent erected, I had declared my intention to stay. As I knocked in the last peg a voice behind me called, ‘Come, you must eat with us.’ I turned to see a family wave to me as they passed on their way to the ‘potluck’, an informal gathering and sharing of food and gifts, and my heart lifted. Sometimes we really don’t know what we are hungry for! Far out in this isolated wasteland, company was more important to me than the grumbling of my stomach.

  At the communal supper of moose, caribou meat, chicken, beans, corn and salad, I realized I was not the only stranger here. Some photographers on assignment for National Geographic introduced themselves, along with some people from an Australian TV crew who wanted to get some shots of the Gathering before moving on to film the caribou migration. I immediately took advantage of the situation and stated that I would love to tag along, if that was okay with them. ‘No problems, mate. As long as you can get yourself back it’s okay with us. You might even be able to give us a line or two for the commentary.’

  That evening as I was walking through the spread-out hamlet I found it hard to work up the energy or the enthusiasm for the days ahead. The village comprised approximately two dozen chipboard cabins strung out over a few acres. They were shoddy and unkempt and had little in the way of personal adornment. They looked more like shelters than homes. I kept reminding myself that I was living in a subsistence community and that was precisely what these structures were. A shelter in which one lived might translate in the developed world as home, but to these people ‘home’ was the shared community in which they lived. The home place was primarily the experience of tribal belonging. The honour and shared experience of being a tribal member was deep-rooted, psychologically and spiritually, with these people. And this belief in shared belonging was not exclusive to the tribe: it expanded itself out into the natural world. Every rock, plant, animal, fish and bird was a respected part of this shared home world. A part of me was deeply attracted to this philosophy. It was not romantic attraction, it had more to do with the inherent sense of well-being and harmony that such a life experience must impart.

  But these people were on the very edge of survival. The issues were enormous. How could fewer than one hundred people in the Arctic outback take on the global problems of human rights, climate change and alternative energy proposals, and at the same time take on an oil industry which would create wars to have its way. It was a David and Goliath stand-off, and the Gwich’in had hardly a shot in their sling. Even if they were morally, ethically, culturally and spiritually superior to the enemy, that enemy could still crush them out of existence under the weight of its powerful lobby.

  But who were these people who stood like the Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae attempting to hold back the voracious forces of global capitalism?

  I resolved that as I was here among the Gwich’in I should let them speak for themselves.

  Going Native

  My second day in the Arctic Village began after a most uncomfortable night. It had rained heavily and my two-dollar tent was obviously not made for Arctic extremes. Although I had picked the highest piece of ground it was still tundra, and tundra is synonymous with boggy conditions. The unevenness of the earth and the accumulating wetness underneath me had made my first night in the wilderness seem more like a night on the ocean. By morning my groundsheet had several puddles in it and my sleeping bag felt as if it had just been washed in from the Beaufort Sea. I was tired and soaked to the skin, and I resolved to get myself dried out before another downpour washed me out completely.

  My efforts to dry my equipment revealed me as a complete greenhorn. First I dried out my tent and left the entrance flaps wide open to allow the bright morning sun to complete the task. Then I draped my saturated sleeping bag on the pile of caribou horns behind me, and changed out of my wet clothes and hung them over the dwarf alder and birch bushes around me. For the first time I noticed a few other tents pitched some thirty or forty yards from mine on much lower ground. They were well-made tents suited to the harsh conditions, but I was puzzled as to why their occupants had chosen to shun the area of high ground I was camped on.

  There was no possibility of my coping with another rough night in my tent. The walls at each side had collapsed under the force of the rain. In any case, I had not sufficient metal pins to stretch the canvas enough to hold the walls taut and ensure the water kept running off instead of through the material. The waterproofing had long since vanished from the material. The tent was really a children’s back-garden plaything, and here was Grizzly Adams Keenan trying to fend off the forces of the Arctic in it. As I struggled with my predicament I noticed some people pointing at my ridiculous efforts and making whispered remarks. I thought they might be laughing at my antics, but their faces were not laughing. They displayed something between sympathy and scorn.

  I remembered from my walk around the village having seen some unwanted heavy blue plastic sheeting. I assumed that the prefabricated plywood boards the cabins were const
ructed from had been delivered encased in this material. I asked myself why the villagers had not used it as additional waterproofing for their homes. Whatever the reason, I was happy they had no use for it. I certainly did. Also, not far from the community hall I had discovered the shell of what had been an old caravan, circa 1950. The interior fittings had been gutted and the rear wall was hanging from it, but the inside was full of polystyrene sheeting. I suspected it was left over from some building project and had been lying exposed for some considerable time. My needs were great and urgent. I was living among a community that existed by and upheld the tradition of subsistence, so I was convinced they would not mind me taking one of the sheets.

  Within less than an hour the breeze and increasing heat had dried my tent and I spread the plastic sheeting across it. I cut the polystyrene to the exact length and height of the tent walls and inserted them alongside the inner walls. The rest of the sheet I cut into a large triangle which I propped against the rear section of the tent. With the plastic outer skin weighted down with boulders, I stood back and admired my inventive handiwork. I was sure I had redeemed myself, in some measure, in the eyes of my hosts. But the response to my efforts by some of the villagers was not what I was expecting. Some simply stared at my improvised home, others whispered in their native tongue, but no-one showed any signs of admiration or approval. Anyway, it was finished and it would be dry for the remainder of my stay, so I walked off and headed for the long community hall where the events of the Gathering were to take place.