by Adam Shoalts
× 21 ×
JOURNEY’S END
Come morning, the wind still wasn’t any better—indeed, it seemed worse. I’d been stranded for two days now on that rocky point, with no apparent escape. After hours of idleness, I decided to set out on another hike. Only a calm spell could help me now, but anything was better than sitting idle.
I promised my canoe and tent I’d be back in a few hours, then set off northeast to see whether I could spot where the Thelon River re-emerges from the lake. As I strode on I admired, in spite of the wind and desolate rocks, the beauty of the Arctic in fall. Across the water were alluring mountains composed of white sandstone, which reminded me of the quartzite mountains of Killarney on Lake Huron’s north shore.
Eventually, the rocks I was hiking across gave way to more soil, where tundra grasses, bearberries, and little clumps of dwarf birches reappeared, adding colour to the land. As I moved through the birches, flocks of rock ptarmigans would suddenly flutter up from their hiding places. In summer, these ptarmigans have brown plumages to camouflage with their surroundings; in winter, they turn white. All of the ones I startled were white, which I didn’t find at all comforting.
After I’d hiked about four kilometres, I spotted ahead, near where the lake narrowed back into a waterway with a perceptible current, a couple of small plywood cabins. They were perched overlooking a little cove and appeared deserted. As I neared I saw strewn outside each one considerable rubbish, with empty fuel cans, gasoline jerrycans, plastic bottles, and odd scraps of plywood. The only inhabitants were mice that had torn up the place. Evidently, though, canoeists in the past had stayed in these cabins, as they were dirty and full of garbage, with graffiti on the walls. One comment written in pen noted that the winds were fierce. No kidding, I thought.
A little farther along, opposite the cove from these dilapidated cabins, was a third structure made of plywood. I scrambled across some boulders to take a look at this smaller hut. Coming up to it, I noticed a pile of rocks with a crooked, weathered cross sticking out of them. The permafrost makes digging graves difficult, so, traditionally in the arctic regions of the world, bodies are piled over with rocks. This one had been disturbed, and the skeleton was plainly visible, with lichens growing on its skull. It looked old. The empty eye-sockets were left gazing straight up at the sky.
Suddenly, I felt a little lonely. I realized my canoe and tent were probably beginning to worry where I’d gone off to, so I decided to turn round and head back. As I retraced my steps, trying not to twist an ankle, I hoped for an evening calm that might allow me to paddle again. Back near my tent I spotted some little brown birds: Lapland longspurs. They fluttered off, but it felt nice to have some brief company.
* * *
September 4 dawned with winds that were slightly less fierce. That was all I needed. As fast as I could move I had my tent down, rolled up, and everything else hauled down to the rocky lakeshore. The waves might pick up at any time, so I intended to make a dash for it. Ahead were the closed-in waters of the Thelon’s final stretch—if I could get there, I’d be free of the big waters of the lake.
My canoe I packed quickly yet carefully, knowing we’d likely be running through waves or rapids before touching dry land again. With my waders on I pushed the canoe out into the water and then jumped in, paddling hard. The wind gusted, pushing me back toward shore, but I shoved off the shallows and drove on. Strong strokes brought me to where the current became perceptible; I raced along, passing ancient mountains as I went.
Several hours of steady paddling carried me down the river’s snaking course, through some rapids, then across a wide-open stretch where the winds were fierce. Once I’d crossed this windswept expanse I could hear the frightening roar of much bigger rapids. I paddled into a rocky cove above them and went ashore. I needed to go ahead on foot and take a good look at what this thundering stretch of river contained.
They were the dreaded Aleksektok Rapids, which extend for nearly a kilometre. As far back as the 1920s they’d been credited with drowning local hunters and trappers, and in more recent decades, when travel by motorboats from Baker Lake had become the norm, even those much larger boats had swamped in them with lives lost.
The morning clouds had dissipated, leaving the skies blue and the sun glaring off the torrent of rushing water. Despite my polarized sunglasses the glare made scouting difficult, it was hard to read the rocks and currents. I could certainly see that these were dangerous rapids, with a stretch of massive waves in their centre perhaps ten or more feet high. Nevertheless, it seemed that I could safely paddle through them if I stuck close to shore and avoided the violent water in the centre.
I returned to the canoe and informed it of my decision. I explained that the gouged-up, threadbare hull need only last us through this final rapid and then another eighty kilometres more of easy paddling and our journey would be at an end.
I’d run more challenging rapids before, but this was the Arctic in September, with steady winds and a bad noonday glare. Still, having come so far, it’d seem a shame for things to end badly here. So I left nothing to chance. I fetched my helmet, which I hadn’t worn on the journey aside from during the arctic terns’ air raid, and now buckled it up. It was actually an old skateboarding helmet, which I recommend over any other kind of helmet for this sort of thing.
With my worn, chipped paddle I shoved off from shore, paddling a short way toward the sound of thunder. Then I let the rip-roaring current suck us in.
“Here we go!” I shouted to the canoe, angling us as I did toward the right shore.
The fearsome waves roaring in the centre made my palms sweaty, or else that was merely from the thick rawhide winter gloves I was wearing. Some turbulent water smacked the canoe, but I kept us going steady downstream.
Then boom—a rock smashed the canoe’s hull on the right while my eyes were foolishly transfixed looking left at the danger in the centre, quite oblivious to the swift shallows near shore. This rock tipped my canoe vertically on its side—cold water splashed in, soaking my right glove that grasped that gunwale to balance it. A centimetre more and I’d be swimming, but I leaned to the opposite side, righting the canoe just in the nick of time. Not for nothing do I practise that kind of balancing stuff on little ponds.
The plummet through this long, roaring rapid was like a blur; we flew through more swifts, passing by low cliffs. There was some water in the canoe from my near spill—at least I thought it was from the near spill. But maybe that rock I’d struck had actually punctured the bottom—a final straw that broke the canoe’s hull. If so, then my canoe was actually sinking.
I raced ahead paddling through the remaining rapid, in order to ascertain whether my canoe was in fact taking on water. A half-kilometre on there didn’t seem to be any appreciable increase in water levels within the canoe, so I judged it undamaged (relatively speaking). A few hundred metres more and we were through the final stretch of the rapid, leaving its thunder and fury safely behind.
I steered into the rocky shore and halted on the bank. There was only one way to tell if my canoe had actually punctured: I emptied all my gear, flipped the vessel over to dump out the water, then repacked everything and set off once more. Paddling along, there didn’t seem to be any more water coming in. Finally I was satisfied that the canoe hadn’t punctured.
From there it was easy. I paddled on all day, zooming along on the swift current. On shore I passed flocks of white snow geese flying over blood-red hills and herds of muskox beneath rocks as old as time. Elsewhere caribou grazed on ridges that were brilliant tapestries of white, red, orange, green, and grey. In the distance loomed big and majestic hills. On and on I paddled, knowing but not really believing that my journey was nearly over.
By late evening I’d paddled down through the last of the Thelon and into the blue immensity of Baker Lake, an inland arm of Hudson Bay that three centuries ago had been mistaken by explorers for the Northwest Passage. The lake is freshwater, but the occasional seal
and even beluga whale swims up into it from Hudson Bay—as well as the odd polar bear, which eats the seals (and hopefully nothing else). Three years earlier local hunters from the community of Baker Lake had killed a beluga whale in the lake, and I’d heard stories of wandering polar bears coming near town where they’d had to be shot. But such things were rare.
I pulled into shore on the tundra beyond the river’s mouth and made camp for the last time. The town of Baker Lake, population about two thousand, was still another eight kilometres farther on, but it was getting late.
The date was September 4. It had taken me only twenty days to get here from Sifton Lake. My concerns about being unable to match the pace of the paddlers who’d done that stretch back in the 1970s over forty days, had proven unfounded. Likewise the more recent speedy duo from the late 1990s, who’d been dropped by a floatplane near where my last resupply was and had taken thirty-three days for their mid-summer run to get to this point. I’d relied on some unorthodox methods—wading, hauling, and dragging rather than sitting out the bad winds, making thirteen-hour days of travelling when conditions dictated. But really, above all, I’d simply tried to be like a tortoise, with the mindset of “slow and steady” beats the hare. As for my overall route from north of Eagle Plains in the Yukon, I wasn’t sure how that stacked up, since no one else had thought to attempt such an unnatural route.
But I was getting ahead of myself. The journey wasn’t quite over yet, and a lot can happen paddling eight kilometres alone on an arctic lake. I reminded myself that the dawn could still bring some crazy weather, a bear could still maul me in the night, a muskox could still plow into the side of my tent, or lightning could still strike me down. There was still eight kilometres to go.
It was with a strange pang of sadness that I set up my tent on the tundra for the last time. I’d come so far and, despite the hardships, had so loved the journey—the routine, the wildlife, the plants and rocks, the landscapes, the wildness, the glorious skies, even the storms a little (at least when I was warm and snug in some sheltered nook)—that a part of me didn’t want it to end. No stormy, icy lake I’d ever crossed, roaring massive river I’d poled up, ice floes I’d pushed on through, or pathless portage over chaotic rocks seemed half so daunting and demoralizing as the thought of what my email inbox might look like upon my return.
I lingered that night, looking over the silent tundra and the glassy lake—it seemed ironic that it should be calm now when I least needed it to be, almost as if nature itself was willing me to stay. A nearly full moon rose above the placid lake, casting an enchanting glow across the water. A good hour I sat there in silence, soaking in the feel and atmosphere of it all.
* * *
No bear came in the night and ate me. No lightning struck my tent. No storm whipped the lake into an unnavigable frenzy. Not even a muskox bothered to come trample me. Instead a peaceful night gave way to a tranquil dawn.
Still, my heart wouldn’t let me leave yet. For so long I’d wanted to get to this point—the end in sight at last—and now I somehow didn’t entirely want to get there. For a second or two (well, maybe an hour or two) a mad idea passed through my mind of avoiding that human settlement, and going on still farther, down the vastness of the lake and into the saltwater of Hudson Bay itself, the very heart of the domain of polar bears. But the gales wouldn’t allow it: winter would be here in weeks and snow and ice would bury everything.
But after months alone, you might well ask, didn’t I crave real food? A hot meal? A shower? A real bed to sleep in? Maybe a couch to watch a movie on? Or even to know what had “happened” in the world since I’d been away? Sure, some part of me did, but the other part didn’t.
I decided not to paddle into town that day after all, but instead spend one last day and night alone on the tundra, lingering where I’d camped. So I stretched out comfortably on the lichens beside some rocks, writing in my journal and enjoying some tea. I even made a little campfire with some dried-up willows.
It wasn’t long before a playful arctic fox came along, staring curiously at me and then running and dashing around between boulders. This fox still had his summer coat, as if to tell me that winter really wasn’t so close after all. Three tundra swans flew overhead, making their trumpet calls as they passed, as if to say goodbye. Some snow geese also flew in close, landing by the shore.
An arctic ground squirrel scurried about among the willows and rocks a few feet away from me. The curious fellow climbed up on a rock, standing on its hind legs to look right at me. The squirrel then chattered cheerfully, as if to speak with me. All the wildlife, it seemed, had come to say goodbye. Even a lone muskox wandered by on the tundra, though he was nice enough to say goodbye from a distance and not give me a heart attack with a deafening bellow.
The following morning, September 6, marked the end. I slowly packed up my camp for the final time, folding everything with more than usual care. My canoe, scarred and gouged but never punctured, I packed quietly on the water’s edge. Then I bid goodbye of my own and set off paddling, though not terribly hard.
As I paddled over that last stretch I reflected on how my journey had actually gone remarkably smoothly. I hadn’t suffered any injury worth mentioning—just bruises, scrapes, a few lost toenails, and muscle soreness of the kind any contact sports athlete is accustomed to. I’d had no illness of any kind, as untreated water hadn’t bothered me at all; I’d never once so much as used my bear spray; my canoe hadn’t tipped or swamped (though maybe it came close a few times); I was never really lost or turned around for any significant stretch of time; and I didn’t lose a single piece of equipment. I’d completed my journey ahead of schedule, or rather ahead of what I had been prepared to do if need be; and somehow I even managed to come in slightly under budget. Reflecting on it all like that, I wondered if I’d set the bar too low, and if my adventures would seem merely dull to everyone else.
Two hours later I crossed the final bay and glided toward a place that loomed on the horizon like a sort of mirage—concrete and metal buildings, trucks, motorboats, and, hovering offshore, a gigantic steel-hulled freighter ship. Beyond the ship towered eight or nine enormous steel vats for holding oil or diesel. Floatplanes were anchored nearby and a helicopter passed overhead, likely flying to the massive open-pit gold mine that had recently opened north of town and that had brought heavy machinery, transport trucks, regular flights, and hundreds of employees with it.
I paddled into shore, gliding into a gravelly beach beneath a hotel and some other modern buildings. It all looked very alien, very strange; I hadn’t seen a town since Fort Good Hope nearly three months before. It seemed incredibly dense, closed in, and noisy, as transport trucks rumbled through the streets and pickup trucks and four-wheelers raced about. I stood up in the beached canoe, balanced with my paddle off the bottom, looked around, then stepped over my gear and onto dry land. My journey was over.
* * *
I lingered in town for several days. No one took much notice of me—it was a bustling place, with lots of people from all over coming and going on account of the booming gold mine north of town. I maybe looked a little thinner and more ragged than the average miner, but there was nothing about my beard or long hair to separate me from anyone else.
I did take a few hikes outside town with some locals, and even went on a motorboat up the lake some ways. I heard there was talk of opening a uranium mine nearby.
My most interesting conversations, however, were with an old-timer I met at the hotel restaurant. (If you’re curious about what I ate, that was principally just yogurt, which I craved mainly.) He was old enough to remember the old days—when Baker Lake had been a trading post and he’d been in the fur trade. He even showed me some black-and-white photographs from his youth and of some adventures he’d had travelling the land. Chatting with him was like talking with a history book come to life. I asked what he thought of the extraordinary changes that had taken place over his lifetime, and whether he missed the old days at
all. He did, it seemed, but he surprised me by saying he hoped to retire to Edmonton—at least for the winters.
Conversing with this wise personage reminded me of Betty, and her dogs, Winston and Vicki. I wondered how they’d been. She’d asked me to let her know how my journey went, so I figured I’d call her and tell her.
With my journey over, for the first time in a long time I wasn’t sure where to go next. I didn’t really have a home to go back to: the only place I ever thought of as home was the woods, particularly the ones that surrounded my parents’ home. Those were the woods I’d fallen in love with as a child, where I’d first learned about plants, animals, and the wild—the place where I’d slept under the trees nights beyond counting. But that wasn’t my home anymore; it hadn’t been for years. Since I’d left I’d drifted, renting temporary places in seven different towns in as many years, trying to find a place I could feel at home in. My current address was Sudbury, another mining town, and that’s where I’d be heading back to, after a stop in Rankin Inlet then Yellowknife.
I wasn’t looking forward to the long flights on my way back. I’d never much liked flying; it makes me a little nervous (I’m not much of a risk-taker). Worse yet, my canoe and I were to be separated, as I couldn’t afford to ship it home. It’d be a very sad goodbye. But then the airline people, after hearing of my journey, offered to ship my canoe at no cost to Winnipeg, where, they said, I could make arrangements to retrieve it.
And that settled things. Four months since I’d met Betty in Old Crow and nearly four thousand kilometres of trekking and paddling later, my adventures were over.
