Read Coming into the Country Online
Authors: John McPhee
Coming into the Country (10 page)
Before us now, lying on the tundra that stretched away toward the river we saw numerous caribou antlers. The Arctic herd cyclically chooses various passes and valleys in making its way south across the range, and of late has been favoring, among other places, the Salmon and Hunt River drainages. Bleached white, the antlers protruded from the tundra like the dead branches of buried trees. When the forest Eskimo of old went to stalk the grizzly bear, he carried in his hand a spear, the tip of which was made from bear bone or, more often, from the antler of the caribou. A bearskin was the door of an Eskimo's home if the occupant had ever killed a bear, for it symbolized the extraordinary valor of the hunter within. When the man drew close and the bear stood on its hind legs, the man ran under this eave of flesh and set the shaft of the spear firmly on the ground, then ducked out from under the swinging, explosive paws. The bear lunged forward onto the spear and died.
Eskimo knife handles were also made from caribou antlers, and icepicks to penetrate the surface of the river, and sinkers for the bottoms of willow-bark seines, and wood-splitting wedges, and arrowheads. All caribou, male and female, grow antlers. The horns of sheep, cattle, buffalo consist of extremely dense, compactly matted hair. The antler of the caribou is calcareous. It is hard bone, with the strength of wrought iron. Moving downhill and south across the tundra, we passed through groves of antlers. It was as if the long filing lines of the spring migration had for some reason paused here for shedding to occur. The antlers, like the bear, implied the country. Most were white, gaunt, chalky. I picked up a younger one, though, that was recently shed and was dark, like polished brown marble. It was about four feet along the beam and perfect in form. Hession found one like it. We set them on our shoulders and moved on down the hill, intent to take them home.
We headed for the next of the riverine mountains, where we planned to descend andâif our calculations were accurateâ
meet the river at the campsite. The river, far below us, now and again came into view as we walked abreast over open tundra. Fedeler, even more alert than usual, now stopped and, as before, touched my arm. He pointed toward the river. If a spruce needle had been floating on the water there, Fedeler would have seen it. We saw in an instant that we had miscalculated and were heading some miles beyond the campsite and would have come eventually to the river not knowingâupstream or downstreamâwhich way to go. Fedeler was pointing toward a gravel bar, a thin column of smoke, minute human figures near the smoke, and the podlike whiteness of the metal canoe.
meet the river at the campsite. The river, far below us, now and again came into view as we walked abreast over open tundra. Fedeler, even more alert than usual, now stopped and, as before, touched my arm. He pointed toward the river. If a spruce needle had been floating on the water there, Fedeler would have seen it. We saw in an instant that we had miscalculated and were heading some miles beyond the campsite and would have come eventually to the river not knowingâupstream or downstreamâwhich way to go. Fedeler was pointing toward a gravel bar, a thin column of smoke, minute human figures near the smoke, and the podlike whiteness of the metal canoe.
Another two miles, descending, and we were barefoot in the river, with pink hot feet turning anesthetically cold. We crossed slowly. The three others were by the campfire. On the grill were grayling and a filleted Arctic char. The air was cool now, nearing fifty, and we ate the fish, and beef stew, and strawberries, and drank hot chocolate. After a time, Hession said, “That was a good walk. That was some of the easiest hiking you will ever find in Alaska.”
We drew our route on the map and figured the distance at fourteen miles. John Kauffmann, tapping his pipe on a stone, said, “That's a lot for Alaska.”
We sat around the campfire for at least another hour. We talked of rain and kestrels, oil and antlers, the height and the headwaters of the river. Neither Hession nor Fedeler once mentioned the bear.
When I got into my sleeping bag, though, and closed my eyes, there he was, in color, on the side of the hill. The vision was indelible, but fear was not what put it there. More, it was a sense of sheer luck at having chosen in the first place to follow Fedeler and Hession up the river and into the hillsâa memento not so much of one moment as of the entire circuit of the long afternoon. It was a vision of a whole land, with an animal in it. This was his country, clearly enough. To be there was to be incorporated, in however small a measure, into its
substanceâhis country, and if you wanted to visit it you had better knock.
substanceâhis country, and if you wanted to visit it you had better knock.
His association with other animals is a mixture of enterprising action, almost magnanimous acceptance, and just plain willingness to ignore. There is great strength and pride combined with a strong mixture of inquisitive curiosity in the make-up of grizzly character. This curiosity is what makes trouble when men penetrate into country where they are not known to the bear. The grizzly can be brave and sometimes downright brash. He can be secretive and very retiring. He can be extremely cunning and also powerfully aggressive. Whatever he does, his actions match his surroundings and the circumstance of the moment No wonder that meeting him on his mountain is a momentous event, imprinted on one's mind for life.
In the night, the air and the river balanced out, and both were forty-six at seven in the morning. Walking in the water promised to be cold, and, given the depth of the river at the riffles, that was apparently what we were going to do. We took a long time packing, as anyone would who apparently had twenty per cent more cargo than there was capacity in the boats. Duffel was all over the gravel bar. I had brought my gear in a Duluth sackâa frameless canvas pack in every way outsized. It had a tumpline and shoulder straps, all leather, and, stuffed to the bulge point, it suggested Santa Claus on his way south. My boat for the day was one of the single kayaks. I spread out the gear on the gravel beside it, turned the empty Duluth sack inside out and rolled and trussed it so that it was about the size of a two-pound loaf of bread. This went into thebow of the kayak. I poked it up there with a stick. Anyone with a five-foot arm could easily pack a Klepper. The openings in the rib frames were less than the breadth of two spread hands. Stowing gear fore and aft was like stuffing a couple of penholders, but an amazing amount went in. All excess was taken by the canoe, and it was piled highâour aluminum mule. I tied the caribou antler across the stern deck of the kayak, and we moved out into the river. The current was going about four miles an hour, but we travelled a great deal more slowly than that, because we walked almost as far as we floated. If we had a foot of water, we felt luxuriously cushioned. Often enough, we had an inch or two. Pool to riffle, pool to riffle, we rode a little and then got out and walked, painters in our hands. The boats beside us were like hounds on leashes, which now and then stopped and had to be dragged. Getting into a kayak just once is awkward enough, let alone dozens of times a day. You put your hands behind you on the coaming, then lower yourself into place, all in the same act removing your legs from the river and shaking off water. Hession, at the start, showed me how to do this, and then he sat down lightly in his own kayak and floated away. I flopped backward into mine and nearly rolled it over; but the day would hold, if nothing else, practice in getting in and out of a kayak. When the boats scraped bottom at the tops of riffles, we got out, sought the channel of maximum depth, moved the boats through, and then got back into them where the water was fast and deepening in the lower parts of the rips. The problem of getting in was therefore complicated by generally doing so in the middle of rapids. In the first such situation, I lost all coordination, lurched backward onto the boat, nearly sat in the river, and snapped a toe, ripping the ligaments off the second joint. By noon, however, I was more or less competent, and further damage seemed unlikely.
I was not disappointed that the Salmon was low. In a lifetime of descending rivers, this was the clearest and the wildest
river. Walking it in places made it come slow, and that was a dividend in itself. A glance at the gravel bars, ledges, and cut banks told where the river at times would beâhigh, tumbling, full of silt, and washing down. I would prefer to walk in water so clear it seemed to be polished rather than to ride like a rocket down a stream in flood. For all of that, another two inches would have helped the day.
river. Walking it in places made it come slow, and that was a dividend in itself. A glance at the gravel bars, ledges, and cut banks told where the river at times would beâhigh, tumbling, full of silt, and washing down. I would prefer to walk in water so clear it seemed to be polished rather than to ride like a rocket down a stream in flood. For all of that, another two inches would have helped the day.
The water was cold by anyone's standards, for had it been much colder it would not have been water. Pourchot and Hession were wearing sneakers, and I did not envy them. Fedeler and Newman wore hip boots. Kauffmann and I had wet-suit bootsâfoam-rubber socks, more or less, that keep wet feet completely warm. The water that is arrested in the foam takes on the temperature of blood. I had on thick wool socks as well, and my feet were never cold. The sun was circling a cloudless sky, and needles of light came flashing off the river. The air went into the seventies. We walked along in T-shirts âfeet warm, legs cool in soaking trousers, shoulders hot in the Arctic sun.
A couple of tributaries came into the river, the first from the east, the second from the west, and they deepened the pools and improved the rips. Somewhere up the easterly stream, said Pourchot, nineteen placer gold claims had been filed in 1968. The claims had not been kept up with yearly “assessment work,” however. No mining had begun, and now would not begin as long as the claims were in national-interest land. This was not important gold country. Perhaps the most unusual event in the experience of the forest Eskimos was the arrival in 1898 of more than a thousand prospectors who had heard glistering rumors about the Kobuk valley. They looked around, did not find much, and lasted, for the most part, a single winter. About ten years later, gold of modest but sufficient assay was discovered on a creek near Kiana. Claims there were worked by placer miningâsluicing gravels, flushing out the gold. Where gold is mined in Alaska now, bulldozers, for the
most part, move the gravels. The clear water that comes in from the upstream side goes on its wayâbrown and turbidâwith a heavy load of fresh debris. Early in Fedeler's time with the Habitat Section of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, he was shifted from pipeline surveillance to gold-mining surveillanceâgoing from one site to another to check effluent standards in placer operations. He might better have waltzed with grizzlies than approach some of the miners, who told him to pack up his permit applications and get the hell off their claims. So what if some fish got a gutful of silt? Fedeler was only a few short years from his family's farm in Iowa, his master's thesis on the life cycle of pheasants, but he was quickly learning the folkways of Alaska. “Get out!” the miners suggested. “We've always done things when we want to, where we want to, how we want to, and that is what we're going to do now.”
most part, move the gravels. The clear water that comes in from the upstream side goes on its wayâbrown and turbidâwith a heavy load of fresh debris. Early in Fedeler's time with the Habitat Section of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, he was shifted from pipeline surveillance to gold-mining surveillanceâgoing from one site to another to check effluent standards in placer operations. He might better have waltzed with grizzlies than approach some of the miners, who told him to pack up his permit applications and get the hell off their claims. So what if some fish got a gutful of silt? Fedeler was only a few short years from his family's farm in Iowa, his master's thesis on the life cycle of pheasants, but he was quickly learning the folkways of Alaska. “Get out!” the miners suggested. “We've always done things when we want to, where we want to, how we want to, and that is what we're going to do now.”
The forest around us, to the extent that it could be called forest, consisted of bands of spruce and cottonwood. Occasionally, it made sallies up the hillsides onto protected slopes or into dry ravines, but mainly it pointed north like an arrow, and gradually it widened as we moved downstream. Close to the river edge, much of the way, were clumps of willow and alder, backed by the taller trees, which in turn had bands of alder backing them, before the woods gave way altogether to open, rising groundâto the lichens, the sedges, and mosses of the high tundra. The leaves of alder, chewed to break out the sap, relieve itching when rubbed on mosquito bites. The forest Eskimos make red dyes from alder barkâAmerican green alder, the only species that grows so far north. Willow, as a genus, is hardier. The Sitka spruce is the state tree, in recognition of its commercial distinction, for Sitka spruce is the most negotiable thing that grows from roots in Alaska. It grows only in the south, however, and while the Sitka spruce goes off to the sawmill, the willow vegetates the state. There are only a hundred and thirty-three species of trees and shrubs in all
Alaska, and thirty-three of those are willows. Before the importation of nylon, fishnets were made from willowâfrom long pliant strips of the bark, braided with the split roots of spruce. Rope, dog collars, and hunters' bows were made from willow, and snares for small game and birds. Willow still goes into snowshoe frames, and fish traps, and wicker baskets. Young leaves, buds, and shoots of willow are edible and nourishing. The inner bark, chewed like cane, is full of sugar. Willow sap, scraped together with a knife, is sweet and delicious. At least twelve kinds of willow were growing along the Salmonâamong them little-tree willow, halberd willow, netleaf, skeleton-leaf, and diamond-leaf willow, Arctic willow, barren-ground willow, Alaska bog willow. Oranges are easier to tell apart. We called all willows willows. The wood was agreeable in fires, and became almost as hot as the coals of alder.
Alaska, and thirty-three of those are willows. Before the importation of nylon, fishnets were made from willowâfrom long pliant strips of the bark, braided with the split roots of spruce. Rope, dog collars, and hunters' bows were made from willow, and snares for small game and birds. Willow still goes into snowshoe frames, and fish traps, and wicker baskets. Young leaves, buds, and shoots of willow are edible and nourishing. The inner bark, chewed like cane, is full of sugar. Willow sap, scraped together with a knife, is sweet and delicious. At least twelve kinds of willow were growing along the Salmonâamong them little-tree willow, halberd willow, netleaf, skeleton-leaf, and diamond-leaf willow, Arctic willow, barren-ground willow, Alaska bog willow. Oranges are easier to tell apart. We called all willows willows. The wood was agreeable in fires, and became almost as hot as the coals of alder.
On a broad acreage of gravel, we stopped now for lunch, and built a fire of willow and alder. The sun was hot to the point of headache, but there was a factor of chill in the day. Gradually the kayaks were acquiring water, dripping from us as we got out and in. One's buttocks, after several hours in cold kayak bilge, began to feel like defrosting meat. However warm one's head and shoulders might have been, a shiver went into the bones. The fire was piled high with wood that had bleached on the gravel in the sun, and a light breeze tilted the flame. Standing in the downwind heat was like standing in the Grand Canyon on a summer day. In a few minutes, our clothes had dried.
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