Far North

by Will Hobbs

  “I’m sure Johnny made a lot of drums in his life,” Raymond said a little louder. “This was his last drum. A wolverine got after it and tore the skin.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Raymond was surprised. He didn’t know they were going to laugh. He relaxed. “So I made a new one for it.”

  I thought he would open Johnny’s letter right away. It was in the envelope that was sticking out of his shirt pocket. Instead he began to talk about Johnny, how he never really knew his great-uncle. Then he said that he was lucky to get to know him in the last two months of his life. He said he was going to tell about Johnny’s last two months so everybody would know what he did.

  Everyone in the hall listened intently as Raymond told his story, pausing to let the elder translate into Slavey. When he told of the airplane going over the falls, there was a gasp. He told what happened as we ran out of patience waiting for a search plane, how the two of us decided to build the raft and escape. He told of Johnny thinking it wasn’t such a good idea, and his sorrow over leaving most of the moose meat behind. The old people around the hall were nodding their heads, understanding perfectly.

  In every face in that room, I could see them imagining it all happening way back there in the mountains. I could feel Raymond’s confidence growing.

  Raymond told how we were stranded in Deadmen Valley. He told how Johnny kept hunting even when he knew all the moose had probably left. He told of Johnny building the snowshoes. I could see Raymond’s parents hanging on every word, my father too. My dad was sitting up to his full height, solemn and respectful as if he was at church, sneaking glances at me as if still trying to convince himself that I was indeed alive. I smiled thinking how it turned out I was right when I guessed he was in that airplane we’d heard flying above the clouds when we were down in the canyon on the raft.

  Raymond told of Johnny leading us to the frozen beaver pond after our hope was all but gone. The people were hushed, listening intently. When Raymond told of pulling the beavers out onto the ice, a cry of joy and triumph went up from an old woman down by the kitchen, and applause began from the kids down on the other end of the hall. The applause grew and grew until it sounded like thunder.

  When at last the applause had died down, Raymond said, “Johnny died soon after that.”

  Raymond took the envelope from his shirt pocket, took out Johnny’s letter, gave a brief explanation of how we came by it, and began to read.

  Raymond read it simply, humbly. I thought how it wasn’t Raymond reading; to me it sounded just like Johnny talking, Johnny telling of his love for the land and his hopes for the young people. At the end, when Johnny said, “I miss the taste of moose tongue and beaver tail,” there were smiles and laughter all around the hall. Then Raymond finished with Johnny’s last words: “And so I say to you: take care of the land, take care of yourself, take care of each other.”

  The hall was profoundly quiet in the wake of Johnny’s last words. Raymond turned and made his way on the crutches to the fireplace, clutching the hand drum with a couple of fingers. One of the elders brought up a TV tray with big straps of bear fat heaped on it. Raymond beckoned me over with a wave of his head. I took the drum so he could free his right hand. With a little toss, he threw a big strap of fat into the fire, and it started sizzling. He looked at it intently, and then he turned to me and said, “You too, Gabe.”

  I placed another strap of fat in the fire. Raymond’s head was bowed. I was remembering Johnny’s gentle face in the firelight as he told the old stories, sang the old songs. I could see him peeling back the flakes of pine bark and showing us where the camprobbers hid their blueberries. He was looking at the two of us, and he was smiling. “Thank you, Johnny,” I whispered. The silence in the room held another few minutes, and then everybody was streaming toward the tables filled with food.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the summer of 1993 my wife, Jean, and I, along with a friend, waved good-bye to the bush pilot who had dropped us off, and started down the South Nahanni River in a raft and a canoe. The seed idea for Far North came to mind as I was standing on the cliffs above the awesome spectacle of Virginia Falls.

  Evenings in camp I was reading Dangerous River, a book by R. M. Patterson describing his experiences on the Nahanni in the 1920s. I was falling under the spell of the river and its lore. I went on to read many other books and journals about the people, the land, and the history of the Northwest Territories, but Patterson’s book, with its firsthand account of winter in Deadmen Valley and along the Nahanni, provided me with the weather- and calendar-related detail I would need to write a winter survival story in this setting.

  The dirt-floored cabin that sheltered Gabe and Raymond in Far North can still be found in Deadmen Valley today. It was built in several weeks’ time by Patterson and his partner, Gordon Matthews, in the fall of 1927, and sits along Wheatsheaf Creek a short walk up from the Nahanni. In mid-December, Matthews attempted to trek out for supplies after the pair realized “the complete exodus of game from the valley.” Turned back by pockets of open water in the canyons of the Nahanni, Matthews set out again on Christmas Eve.

  Reduced to “tea, salt, beans, and rolled oats,” Patterson waited until early February for his partner’s return, then tried the canyons himself. Each survived to tell their tales of extreme winter conditions, open water, and collapsing ice bridges.

  Far North

  by WILL HOBBS

  READER’S GUIDE

  Interview Questions for Will Hobbs

  1. In your Author’s Note, you mention that the initial idea for Far North came to you on the cliffs above Virginia Falls. What was it you were seeing in your imagination?

  I was seeing two characters on the pontoons of a floatplane, paddling for their lives as the current drew them ever closer to the brink. The image didn’t come from thin air. Earlier that day, while portaging the falls, I met a park ranger who told me about an incident from the previous summer involving a bush pilot who landed his floatplane above the falls, only to have the motor stall and the battery die. His passengers were able to paddle the airplane to shore, barely in time. Within hours of hearing this story, I was already thinking about writing a novel. What if the passengers were able to reach the shore, but lost the airplane over the falls? I knew that if this were to happen only days before freeze-up, I’d have a winter survival story on my hands.

  2. Did you begin writing as soon as you got home?

  Months of reading came first. I wanted to learn things that might factor into the story and give it a ring of authenticity, especially about the native people and their lives in winter.

  3. Winter is certainly the ruling factor in the story. Have you ever camped out in those kinds of conditions?

  Twice, in early January, I snowshoed about ten miles into the mountains of southwestern Colorado, near where I live. I wanted to see some of my favorite summer spots transformed by winter. The nights at 10,000 feet went down to around twenty below. When I was writing about minus fifty in Far North, I had at least an inkling.

  4. After your own rafting trip down the Nahanni in 1993, did your memories of the falls and the canyons give you ideas for the story, and did things that happened on your trip come into play in the novel?

  I got the idea for the log raft that the boys built from the driftpiles we saw below the falls. When the log raft is swept under the overhang and Johnny Raven is knocked into the river, I was closely describing Figure of Eight rapid, which was a wild ride. Clint, the young bush pilot in the story, was inspired by the bush pilot who met our plane when we flew into Fort Nelson, British Columbia, to begin our trip. Gabe’s experiences in the first chapter are drawn closely from ours. “Clint” met us in a mud-encrusted Suburban and drove to Fort Liard at speeds of up to eighty-four miles per hour—on gravel, while showing me fishing lures! That was truly the riskiest part of our Nahanni adventure.

  5. Where does Gabe Rogers, the narrator, come from?

  In my teaching days, I
had a student who was quite a running back, wrestler, and reader. He was my inspiration for Gabe. I had him hail from Texas so that the North would be completely alien to him. Gabe’s memories of the hill country and San Antonio are mine, from my high school years.

  6. Raymond Providence is from Nahanni Butte, the village at the foot of the Nahanni River. How did you form your impressions of what life would be like as a teenager there?

  I’ll always remember the heavy metal music blasting from the rec center when we stopped and visited Nahanni Butte on our trip. The village has a diesel generator, and a big satellite TV dish. Seeing the kids, I was trying to imagine what it must be like to grow up in such a tiny, remote village with no roads, no cars. Back home, I researched the experience of teenagers from far-flung villages who attend the boarding school in Yellowknife.

  7. From the start, did you plan on having the boys stranded with an elder?

  Not at all. It was only when I found materials written by Dene elders lamenting their young people’s lack of a “bush education” that I realized it wouldn’t be plausible for the boys to survive midwinter on their own, no matter that they were sturdy, sixteen, and courageous. The knowledge required is just too profound. The boys needed an elder along, at least for a while.

  8. Far North wouldn’t be remotely the same without Johnny Raven.

  He’s the heart of the story. Without him, Far North would have been merely about physical survival. With him, it’s about the survival of an entire way of life.

  9. You’re very active: you’ve backpacked, run rivers, done sea kayaking. Is it the desire to continue writing adventure novels that inspires you to keep pursuing your own adventures?

  I’ve always enjoyed being in wild places, and would be doing all these same things even if I wasn’t a writer. I don’t go to new places in search of a story, but I do keep my eye out. I often find myself thinking, “I wish my readers could see this.” When I’m lucky enough to find a character and a premise to go with the setting, I set to work in the hopes of journeying back, this time with my readers along.

  10. What is the most physically challenging experience you have had in nature?

  On the first of my ten trips rowing my own raft through the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River was at flood stage—about six times the normal amount of water. What a challenge, and what a thrill. Some of the rapids were on a scale I’ve never seen since.

  11. How do you shift gears from being physically active as you travel to being mentally focused as you write? What is your writing process like?

  The hard things I’ve done in the outdoors help with the mental stamina necessary to pull me through the long days at my desk. Sometimes I get nowhere; other times the words come in a flood. I’m like a rat in a maze, hitting lots of dead ends on my way to the prize. I do outline, but invariably my best ideas come subconsciously as I’m imagining being the character in the situation. I take breaks to stretch or to see if anything new has appeared in the refrigerator. I revise a lot; there are usually four or five drafts. I’ve learned that each story has its own rules, which I’ll discover if I’m patient enough to hang in there. Writing fiction is mysterious, somewhat magical, and hugely gratifying.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. What was it that enabled two boys like Gabe and Raymond to survive several winter months in a remote wilderness in the Northwest Territories, despite the odds they were up against?

  2. If you had been stranded along with Gabe, Raymond, and Johnny Raven, would you have survived the winter? How might you have helped them survive? How might you have held them back?

  3. What do Raymond and Gabe fear the most? What would you have been most afraid of if you’d accompanied them on their adventure?

  4. Raymond and Gabe’s relationship seems to grow stronger as their situation becomes life threatening. Why do they become closer friends as their adventure gets more dangerous?

  5. Johnny says, “…the life that we lived on the land was much more interesting.” Based on Gabe and Raymond’s experiences, would you say that a life lived in the wilderness would be more interesting than a life filled with modern conveniences?

  6. Will Hobbs is a master storyteller who uses suspense to keep his readers on the edge of their seats. How does the writing in Far North bring Canada’s Northwest Territories alive? What were your favorite scenes in the book?

  7. Johnny Raven’s last words are “Take care of the land, take care of yourself, take care of each other.” How do Raymond and Gabe apply his words to their struggle for survival? How might his words apply to all of us in our own lives?

  8. Through their ordeal in the wilderness, Gabe and Raymond develop a deep respect for Johnny Raven and his wisdom. What does this element of the story suggest about the way we should view and treat the “elders” of our families and our communities?

  9. How do you think Gabe and Raymond’s adventures will change them? Imagine a future for each of them.

  About the Author

  WILL HOBBS is the award-winning author of many novels for young readers, including JASON’S GOLD, DOWN THE YUKON, WILD MAN ISLAND, JACKIE’S WILD SEATTLE, and LEAVING PROTECTION. Seven of his books have been chosen by the American Library Association as Best Books for Young Adults.

  A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives in Durango, Colorado, with his wife, Jean.

  For more information about the author and his books, please visit Will’s website at www.WillHobbsAuthor.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Books by Will Hobbs

  CHANGES IN LATITUDES

  BEARSTONE

  DOWNRIVER

  THE BIG WANDER

  BEARDANCE

  KOKOPELLI’S FLUTE

  GHOST CANOE

  BEARDREAM

  RIVER THUNDER

  HOWLING HILL

  THE MAZE

  JASON’S GOLD

  DOWN THE YUKON

  WILD MAN ISLAND

  JACKIE’S WILD SEATTLE

  LEAVING PROTECTION

  Copyright

  FAR NORTH. Copyright © 1996 by Will Hobbs. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-196364-3

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