by Adam Shoalts
[ 8 ]
BACK TO THE COAST
Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899
IT TOOK only half the time—two days—to paddle the nameless river back to the Aquatuk. It was with a feeling of immense relief that I was able to sit in my canoe and paddle with the flow of the river rather than laboriously drag it behind me all day. The rain, however, continued unabated. My lonely progress downriver was sped along by an encounter with a northern goshawk. The powerful raptor had been perched high above the river in a spruce. When it spotted me, it instantly swooped down, shrieking angrily at me as I paddled along. Presumably, it had a nest somewhere in the trees. Renowned for its fierceness, this impressive bird of prey will fearlessly defend its nest from fishers, wolverines, bears, and any human that should happen to stray into its territory. It was no accident that Attila the Hun had an image of a goshawk engraved on his battle helmet.
I was amazed by how far the goshawk insisted on following me down the snaking course of the river, shrieking and circling high above the whole way. Its shrill cry piercing the silence of the wilderness was unnerving—as if the forest itself was warning me to leave. With the goshawk trailing me, I felt a bit like a trespasser fleeing a forbidden realm. The message seemed to be that my presence had been tolerated long enough and I was now overstaying my welcome.
In total, I had found some half-dozen islands along the river, including a nicely forested one, dozens of small rapids, various tributaries, picturesque pebble beaches, and plenty of wildlife, but no wendigos. However, I still had to come up with a name for the river. To be honest, I liked the romantic appeal of a river with no name, and I felt some reluctance to be the person who stripped that bit of mystery from the world. But once it was explored, it had to be named. If someone had to name it, it might as well be me.
An idea for a name presented itself when I saw a dark silhouette—an owl—flying against the grey sky at noon on my last day on the river. I managed to snap a photograph of the owl before it disappeared from view. Magnifying the picture on my digital camera, I saw that it was a northern hawk owl, which unlike most owls, hunts during the day. It had made such an auspicious appearance above the river that calling the waterway the “Owl River” seemed fitting. But since I knew an Owl River already existed, and that the Geographical Names Board discouraged name duplication, I figured “Little Owl River”—it was a small river, after all—was a better name. Henceforth, in my notes the “nameless river” became the “Little Owl River.”
After six days of exploring, I left the Little Owl River and returned to the Aquatuk. It seemed as spooky and eerie as it did when I last left it. Steady rain, dark skies, and cold temperatures—it was only a few degrees above freezing—left me shivering. I began to feel the onset of hypothermia again and was forced to make camp above a high bank overlooking the water. The ground was covered in white reindeer lichen and Labrador Tea shrubs, their leaves a glossy dark green with a rusty brown underside. Needing to warm up, I built myself a fire in the rain, made some hot soup, and boiled some Labrador Tea leaves for a hot drink. Fortunately, I was surrounded by numerous blueberries, so I feasted on them as well.
WHEN THE GREEK HERO Odysseus returned home disguised as a beggar after years of war, wandering, and many adventures, he was unrecognizable to all except his faithful dog, Argus, who, “lying there lifted up his head and pricked up his ears … he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer to his master.” The sight of his old dog brought tears to Odysseus’ eyes. Captain Meriwether Lewis, on his epic crossing of North America, was accompanied by his prized Newfoundland dog Seaman. Lewis named a creek the expedition explored in his dog’s honour, and after their triumphant return had inscribed on his collar: “The greatest traveller of my species. My name is SEAMAN, the dog of captain Meriwether Lewis, whom I accompanied to the Pacific ocean through the interior of the continent of North America.” The great Swedish explorer of central Asia, Sven Hedin, wrote of how bitterly he felt the loss of his dog, Dovlet, who perished while they were exploring the glacier-fed Yarkand River near the western border of China. Heartbroken, Hedin buried his dog beside the riverbank and had one of his companions, a priest, say a prayer over his grave.
Alone in the wilderness my thoughts drifted, but what often occupied my mind was the memory of my dog, Riley, and the adventures that we had shared. I was still not over the shock of his sudden death. To all appearances he had remained in his prime—a lovable, good-natured dog with a curiosity to explore that mirrored my own. For eight years he had prowled the woods at my side, following wherever I might lead. Right to the end, he could chase down rabbits with ease. But in truth he was a gentle-hearted animal who seldom hurt anything. He loved nothing better than to sit at my feet and have me stroke his glossy black fur or else nuzzle up against me as we sat round a campfire, sharing a meal. When I thought of him, I remembered a passage from one of my favourite children’s books, Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows, when the hero’s dog, Old Dan, saves him from a mountain lion: “He wouldn’t leave the tree, for in his veins flowed the breeded blood of a hunting hound. In his fighting heart, there was no fear.” I would silently repeat the line, “In his fighting heart, there was no fear,” whenever I faced any challenge, as a sort of epitaph for Riley and as a means to steel myself. They were words I would soon have much need of.
The rain lasted all night, soaking my tattered tent. Morning brought no respite—the day dawned with unfriendly grey skies threatening more rain. A fierce wind blew against me, so that at times it felt like I was actually still paddling against the current. On the bright side, I was no longer being tormented by any insects—it was too windy and rainy for them. I ran the river’s whitewater rapids without much difficulty, though the canoe grazed a few rocks here and there.
When the weather finally cleared the following day, terns, sandpipers, ducks, and bald eagles were everywhere. In the distance, flying low over the grassy shoreline was a long-tailed jaeger, a dark-grey seabird with streamers on its tail like a child’s kite, and long, elegant wings. It was hunting for fish, or perhaps small mammals, as jaegers are a predatory species that will feed on mice, lemmings, and even other birds. Little was known about the jaeger’s presence in the Lowlands—the ornithology field guide I was carrying noted: “This jaeger may be a regular migrant along the coast of Hudson and James bays, but its presence there is not easily confirmed owing to the region’s inaccessibility to human observers.” Quietly watching a jaeger soaring over the landscape was one of the privileges of exploring the isolated Lowlands.
Wading through some river grass was an unmistakable shorebird with a long, curved bill like a new moon—a whimbrel. Not far from the whimbrel was another specimen, a Hudsonian godwit, a medium-sized shorebird that nests in the Lowlands. Little is known about the nature of their nests—the ornithology field guide noted: “breeding areas are so remote that we have only a vague idea of how many nest … and where.” Such nebulous descriptions are common for birdlife in the Lowlands, which like much of the local plants, remains enigmatic. As I watched the Hudsonian godwit stalk through the water with its long, skinny legs, I felt a strange kinship with it, as it migrates annually all the way to the tropical rainforest of South America—where I might have crossed paths with it only months earlier. In fair weather, the godwit makes the over seven-thousand-kilometre migration in a single nonstop flight. When I had mentioned this fact to Brent, he had sighed and muttered, “just thinking about it makes me tired.”
Hopping along the shoals and pebble shorelines were a variety of sandpipers—spotted sandpipers, pectoral sandpipers, semi-palmated sandpipers, least sandpipers, as well as both greater and lesser yellowlegs. Most of these birds nest out in the impassable muskeg and come t
o the rivers to hunt small fish, insects, and crustaceans. The greater yellowlegs, acting as sentinels for a flock of birds, would bob their heads and cry out to warn the others of approaching danger whenever they spotted me in the canoe. The little least sandpipers would then echo the warning with their high-pitched “peep, peep” calls. The spotted sandpipers, looking rather striking with their white chests and dark spots, exhibit an unusual reversal of the animal kingdom’s gender norms. The females defend the territory, mate with multiple males in a single breeding season, and leave the males to look after the eggs. Such inverted behaviour is observed in less than one percent of the earth’s estimated ten thousand bird species.
Gliding up the river were a pair of arctic terns, beautiful birds with black-capped heads, bright orange beaks, grey wings, V-shaped tails, and a graceful flight. The arctic tern is the greatest migrant of all, travelling from the Arctic to the Antarctic annually—one study estimated some terns cover over ninety thousand kilometres in a single year—far greater than any other species. They are also remarkable for their longevity; their average lifespan is about twenty years, but some have lived to over thirty. The terns’ harsh, raspy cries rang out over the river, then faded away as the birds disappeared around a bend.
I saw more familiar species too. A pair of Canada geese swam near the riverbank with about a dozen goslings in tow. Unlike the spotted sandpipers, Canada geese mate for life. The geese fled the water at my approach and scurried up a steep embankment into some trembling aspens. I wished I could have told them there was no reason to run—all I was after was some fresh fish. That evening, I caught a northern pike and ate it for supper along with some freshwater clams that I had gathered.
IN ANOTHER TWO days’ time I had made it back to the windswept plains of the tundra and nearly completed the descent of the Sutton. It was late afternoon, sunny and fairly warm. My adventure was almost over, my thumb was starting to heal, and the cold I had picked up from Brent had passed. As for the pinched nerve in my back, it had not given me any trouble—in fact, I had forgotten about it. It seemed my difficulties were a thing of the past. I expected to arrive at the mouth of the river, near the old goose hunting shack, within an hour or so. The following day, weather permitting, the pilot would arrive to meet me. The sandpipers hopping around on the rocky shorelines and the terns soaring overhead raised my spirits. I had successfully explored the river, and I could bask in the satisfaction of a journey that was almost finished.
Then, in the distance, I spotted what looked like several white boulders on the shore of an island. When I paddled closer, I realized that the boulders were in fact a polar bear. The bear was stretched out and lying in the sun, apparently half asleep—beautiful to behold, magnificent, and utterly lethal. As I took another stroke of my paddle, it suddenly sprang to its feet—seemingly surprised to see me—and ran off into some alder bushes on the island. The bear didn’t appear to be terribly threatening, given that it ran off at the first sight of me. I felt more excited than scared to see it. Still, just to be cautious, before paddling any farther, I loaded the shotgun and set it near my feet in the bottom of the canoe. What happened next is something I will never forget.
After I’d paddled onward for some minutes more, the bear appeared to have vanished. That is, until I came around a bend and laid eyes on another peculiar white boulder looming out of the river in the distance like an iceberg. By this point, I would have assumed that any white boulders were polar bears—but this one was clearly too massive to be anything other than an enormous rock. However, in my experience, rocks generally don’t move on their own accord. When this boulder began to migrate across the river, it dawned on me with awful certainty that it was a colossal male polar bear. Whether it was the same bear I had spotted in the distance on the island I couldn’t tell—that bear had vanished before I was close enough to get a good look. But this one was a monster—it must have easily weighed over a thousand pounds. Probably it was the same animal I had seen earlier, which had likely circled unseen through the maze of alders cloaking the island to plunge into the river downstream of me. It was still a fair way off, several hundred metres at least, and seemed to be swimming across the river.
Glancing down at the loaded shotgun, I remembered my earlier resolution never to fire on a bear unless it was a matter of life and death. I continued paddling, cautiously keeping my eyes on the bear in the distance. I assumed that it would reach the shore and run off—but it didn’t. Instead the bear, originally with its back facing me, turned around and started swimming upriver in my direction. This was rather alarming; unlike the black bears I had met with, it was clear that shouting was not going to intimidate this giant. The river here was about twenty metres wide between the left bank and a long island. The bear was closer to the left bank, so I decided, prudently, to give the bear the right-of-way and head toward the island. The island’s jungle of alder bushes concealed anything lurking onshore, so I was wary not to paddle too near the island. After all, another bear could be prowling only metres from the bank, unseen in the thicket.
The river’s swift current was pushing me downriver in the canoe, while the bear was steadily coming upriver. It was now only twenty metres away. At this point, I hastily set down my camera and unsheathed my belt knife, resting it on the barrel in front of me in the canoe. As I did so the bear reached a shallow pool and rose out of the clear waters to stand on all fours, revealing its impossibly huge size. Fixing its black eyes on me, the bear moved closer in my direction and snarled. With shaking hands, I took up the shotgun and pressed the walnut butt to my shoulder, peering down the barrel at the finest specimen of the world’s largest land carnivore—a bear that kills and eats other bears, and evidently had no fear of me. The bear snarled and growled, displaying fearsome teeth that could crush a man’s skull like a goose egg. It was now within thirteen metres and gaining on me.
My trembling index finger switched the safety off on the gun.
The bear inched closer, growling menacingly in the river, staring straight at me. I swallowed hard, trying to calm my nerves, gripping the gun tighter and resting my finger on the trigger. The bear was in my sights, but my aim was unsteady.
With no one to steer, the canoe was drifting aimlessly in the current. My heart was pounding. If the bear were to charge across the shallow river, no more than knee deep, it would be on me in a blink of an eye. If I missed, I wouldn’t have a chance to reload. And one shot would not stop this bear. It looked like the king of bears, the king of all the North. The bear growled and glared at me—it was so close that I could see the breath from its nostrils, but still I wouldn’t fire. The standoff continued; seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours. The canoe continued to drift downriver; when I had drifted about thirty metres away from the bear, I set the shotgun down and grabbed a paddle. I cautiously paddled away while the bear watched me unflinchingly for a while, then slowly moved off in the other direction.
A few minutes paddling brought me to the island with the old goose hunting shack. I had originally planned to pitch my tent onshore, but after my encounter with such a large and aggressive polar bear, I resolved at once to fortify myself inside the shack for the night. Of course, I knew that the bear could plow through any obstacles I could erect without the slightest difficulty. But I at least wanted to create a psychological barrier. I hauled my gear up from the river to the shack, made a quick fire, then climbed onto the cabin’s roof to scout out the surrounding area. In the distance, a lone caribou was wandering across the tundra. With my binoculars I could see whitecaps on stormy Hudson Bay. Scanning in all directions, I saw no sign of the bear—but clusters of spruce and willow on the tundra were ideal hiding places.
That night, expecting as I did to find that the shaggy, white-haired giant had come for me, there would be no sleep. In the dark, I sat perfectly silent in the centre of the cabin with my gun in hand, straining my ears to hear the sound of anything stalking up to the missing door of the shack, which I had barred the bes
t I could with one of the metal mattress frames. I could hear the wind rustling through the alder bushes, the ripples of the current in the river, and a red squirrel scurrying along the cabin roof. These noises grew familiar until they were interrupted by sounds of a struggle in the river—a frantic honking of geese, beating wings, wild splashing, then silence.
Around midnight, a storm struck; lashing rain, screaming winds, and violent bursts of thunder now made it impossible to hear any movement outside the cabin’s thin walls. If a bear were to sneak up, I would never hear it. My lonely vigil lasted all night—I dared not sleep knowing such a formidable and fearless bear was in the vicinity, and with no door on the cabin, how easily it could burst upon me should I drift off. Exhausted, I would sometimes momentarily nod off, only to have visions of a snarling bear charging through the door snap me awake. A flicker of lightning illuminated the inside of the cabin—I caught a glimpse of Brent’s carving on the wall, “By endurance we conquer.” The morning could not come fast enough.
WITH RELIEF, I welcomed the dawn, though the sky remained filled with dark storm clouds. I had contacted the pilot with the satellite phone the day before, and he was due to arrive by noon. In the rain, I packed up my gear and paddled downriver to meet him. Waiting onshore with my gun, I kept an eye out for polar bears. Finally, after waiting several hours, I heard the drone of a distant engine. The float plane soon sliced through the dark clouds and landed in the middle of the river. The bearded pilot in the cockpit was the same old-timer who had flown Brent back to civilization. He steered the plane over to where I stood on the bank and brought it to a halt. Opening his door, the first thing he said was, “There’s a huge polar bear just upriver! I saw it as I flew in.”
