North of Hope (7 page)

Both Dad and Kathy had been in Alaska since the late 1960s. Today’s literature describes the experience of that decade with talk of protests, drugs, and sex, but Dad felt a sense of honor in entering the army on the draft after completing law school. He trained as an enlisted combat engineer before realizing that his law degree allowed him the opportunity for service as an army attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Though initially he was slated for Vietnam, the army sent him to Alaska, flying him around the state executing wills and powers of attorney and prosecuting the myriad drug cases defining military JAG at the time. When his military commitment ended, a year after I was born, he worked in Anchorage for the city attorney’s office and then opened a private practice. He fell in love with the land and, for as long as I can remember, pulled us along with him on backpacking trips in the Chugach Mountains, and even on a few easy river trips by canoe.

Kathy came to Alaska after a construction job in West Africa. Her adventurous spirit was unquenched by her sorority days at Depauw and a subsequent master’s in education at the University of Texas. She brought her bright blue eyes and full, sweet laugh to Denali National Park to work as a naturalist when the roads were still closed all winter and only a weekly train brought supplies or the opportunity to head into town. She was one of those women a lot of men are secretly in love with. Kathy taught at Tri-Valley Elementary School a few miles north of Denali fall through spring. She traveled with her first husband, a wildlife photographer, by foot and folding kayak around the interior of Alaska. After their divorce, she taught in Anchorage, settling into a city routine. She and Dad married with the agreement that he would learn to dance and she would learn to ski. They compromised by doing neither. Still, when Dad started turning more attention to the outdoors after years of office sequestration, it was not a new experience for her.

They began longer river trips in the late 1990s. Their river journal from 1999 begins with a recipe for raisin muffins, and then: “Banks of the Yukon. Just entering dozen islands.” One journal records trips on the Tanana in 1999, the Charley River in 2000, Harriman Fjord in 2000, and the Gulkana River in 2001. Dad’s enthusiasm was initially too much; on the trip down the Charley River in the interior of Alaska, Kathy’s kayak flipped, and her head—luckily helmeted—hit a rock. They pulled over. She was spooked and angry. One day into the trip, they made camp on a gravel bar, which was as far as they traveled. They contacted the one plane flying over their area each day with their VHF radio and arranged for an early pickup.

Dad learned from that experience. After a safe return, they took two trips to the weeklong Otter Bar Kayak School in California, spent evenings on rivers at home, and built back up to remote passages. Kathy was less interested in whitewater than she was in time with her husband, so Dad was happy to hike back and paddle her
boat through areas where she was uncomfortable. They kayaked the Canning River on the far west boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2004. The Hulahula River is the next navigable drainage to the east. I imagine Dad had in mind traveling each of the rivers in the refuge in the same way he had read his way chronologically through American literature, starting with the sermons of Cotton Mather. Once the magic of the Arctic worked its way under his skin, it became a part of him, that much I knew.

Now I embarked to find my father, to know him, having realized, once he was gone, how little I knew of him, unwilling to accept that what I knew of my father was all I would have a chance to know. I hoped for just a glimpse of some of the magic I knew he and Kathy had experienced on this trip. Throughout humankind’s long history, the idea of journey has carried with it expectations of adventure, of wildlife, of challenge, of conquest. I was scared to have any expectations, no longer knowing how to consider this thing called life after the past summer. I stared out of the Cessna’s windows. Farther upriver, thin blue and white lines of
aufeis
began to define the riverbanks of the river valley.

Aufeis was one thing I had been concerned about on the river. It forms in winter months, when water flowing in a deeper channel of the river is dammed by an ice jam downriver in a shallower channel. The water continues to flow beneath the dam, but also overflows it, spreads out over the banks, and freezes. This cycle of overflowing and freezing happens many times, until the ice forms up to three meters deep. Until the spring melt, this thick ice stretches across the river, but water still flows beneath it, and the current can sweep boats beneath the ice, resulting in capsizing and drowning. This year, the aufeis had melted from the channel. It didn’t look like we would have a problem.

The greatest danger I felt then, and sometimes still feel, is of losing the memories.

When Dad and Kathy had flown in last year, it had been colder, with aufeis choking the river. They were excited to be heading
back into the wilderness. Later, Tom told reporters that Kathy had questioned him thoroughly about emergency procedures. I remembered reading the newspaper article. I remembered walking into the silent house. I remembered dinner at Sostanza in Seattle with them both, the fireplace warming the room. I remembered so much, and so little. Time’s linearity evaporated as we flew against the river’s current below. Was I trespassing too much among the bones of the dead? Qarrtsiluni. Have mercy.

Foothills drawn in the muted browns, greens, and ochre of sandstone and limestone grew into the heights of the Romanzof Mountains, and the glacial peaks of Michelson and Chamberlin soared to either side. Valleys leading back into mountains beckoned me. Farther south, the river spread out again as the valley widened, no longer confined to the canyons. The sweep of land appeared more desolate than life-giving.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
What was I thinking? This couldn’t be a good idea.

A tundra airstrip came into focus on the west side of the river—Grasser’s, one of the more established landing areas in the Arctic, named for Marlin Grasser, who spent time on the Hulahula River in the mid- and late-twentieth century, guiding sheep hunters. Tom flew over, banked for a steep approach, and landed the airplane. He killed the engine. We jumped out. Ned and Sally had been standing at the edge of the airstrip; now they joined us, and the four of us rapidly unloaded the remaining bags from the back of the plane.

There is a saying in Alaska that three things kill small-plane pilots: weather, weather, and weather. With clouds likely to close in, Tom wasn’t taking any chances. By the time we pulled the gear to the side of the landing strip, he had cranked the propeller and maneuvered the 206 for takeoff. With a burst of noise, the Cessna rolled down the strip on fat tundra tires, and wings grabbed air. The buzz of the plane dissolved to the north. Except for a light breeze, it was quiet.

Live water heals memories.

—Annie Dillard,
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

N
ed and Sally had already sorted the gear and inflated the large blue raft by the time I arrived. Mountains of limestone, sandstone, and shale framed our embarkation point, ancient rocks deposited by ancient seas forced upward by the pressure of the Pacific Plate far to the south. These mountains were the second range pushed up by tectonic forces; the first range had eroded away, and the newer mountains continue to reach skyward even today. The sprawling scape was a picture of the oldest forces of creation, a valley carved by glacier, water, and wind, the rise and fall of oceans, the shaping of a world long before our time.

Relative to the geologic context, the pile of gear that had seemed so immense as we loaded the Cessna shrank, along with us, to insignificance. We had departed with much, but it was contained for river travel in bear-proof food canisters and waterproof dry bags we had packed before leaving for the airplane. Before the trip, the food we needed for ten days had spread out to cover the floor and furniture of the living room in the Denali cabin from which we had launched our expedition. I had counted out packets of oatmeal, candy bars, energy bars, dehydrated food. With permanent marker and duct tape, we had labeled the bear canisters with the number of days worth of meals they contained.

We didn’t talk about the other load, the one there was no manual for securing. Memories, fear, horror, determination, unworthiness, emptiness. I didn’t begin to know how to secure these things, or how to let them go.

“You guys ready for this?” Sally asked.

“Sure.” I smiled.

How would I survive this?

Ned started cinching down straps on each side of the boat. He seemed to measure the strap tension with his eyes, repositioning dry bags as needed, yanking on the ends of the straps until they were tight enough to strain against the rough rope running around the top of the raft.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Heck yeah!” Sally said. “This is going to be great!”

“We got a nice day to start, at least,” I said, trying to swallow my unease.

The two guns were also in dry bags. I was uncomfortable with their positioning. Eight years of military training had drilled into me the importance of safety; barrels of loaded weapons are always pointed up and away from people, but cramming them in a raft didn’t permit the same level of discipline. Despite our best efforts, our discipline was far from military.

We finished packing the raft. Each dry bag had its place, and canvas compression straps secured the load onto the fourteen-foot blue rubber craft. Ned tightened each strap one final time with easy confidence and a force approaching viciousness. The side of the raft read NRS, the brand; I thought for this journey she should have a name.
Hope
, perhaps. Or
Desperation. Longing
, maybe.
Prayer
, even better. Or
Stupidity
. I tried to put these thoughts out of my mind. I clipped my daypack close to me with a carabiner on a compression strap, being careful not to let my most precious cargo—the small plastic bottle and the plastic bag I had transported carefully from Seattle, along with a tiny silver amulet from Father Jack in Healy—be crushed by other gear or the boat.

Kathy’s journal entry on their first day was this:

“Let’s get this in the water,” Ned said. “Can you each grab a side?” Sally and I took positions on either side and grabbed the rope. “One, two, pull!” Ned said. The raft followed us reluctantly to rest on the water.

Dad and Kathy had pitched a tent at Grasser’s and stayed to relax and hike for a day, but we wanted to get some water under us, to accept the river’s invitation, to move forward. The sun glanced off the surface of the water, and a light breeze cooled our skin. I inhaled deeply, and exhaled, slowly. We were doing it. After the frigidity of the coast, I relaxed into the warmth of the sun.

I sat on the port side of the raft, feigning confidence, worried that our steed would feel my inexperience, sense my trepidation. But if she did, she didn’t show it. My seat felt secure, and my paddle strokes against the water smooth. It occurred to me I wanted too much from this trip. For those of us who spend less time in wild places than we do in cities, it’s easy to arrive with urban expectations, with checklists of hopes and desires. This is the wrong way to come into a wilderness bigger than any of the demands that can be made of it. Lessons and healing come only through an open spirit and uncluttered mind. I felt poorly positioned for success.

Though VHF and UHF radios and a satellite phone stayed handy in waterproof bags, we couldn’t have been farther from any reality outside of wilderness. With the exception of a handful of other adventurers making their way on this or other Arctic rivers and the three hundred people in the village of Kaktovik, there
were no other people within hundreds of square miles. Despite the relative explosion in adventure travel and ecotourism, not to mention continued hunting in the Arctic, only a few hundred people visit the Arctic Refuge each year.

The freezing-cold glacial water moved beneath us. I watched the etchings of currents hinting at complexity beneath the otherwise smooth surface. It was secret water, shadow water, dream water. And it was wild water, birthed in the mountains, running to the sea. It lived. It breathed. “Live water heals memories,” says Annie Dillard. It seemed to me that this water threatened to open them back up.

“Sheep in the mountains,” Ned commented.

Far to the east, thirty or more Dall sheep drifted slowly across the mountainside. I smiled slightly, almost against my will. I craved beauty; I wasn’t ready for beauty. Were they the same flock Dad and Kathy had seen last year on arriving at Grasser’s?

The river flowed here between limestone mountains on both sides, austere rock with wide valleys and steep cuts. Utter wildness and immensity surrounded me. But a sticky web of determination, horror, fear, exhilaration, and desperation held me fast, even as the river ran freely. I considered that we safeguard our fears more closely than our joy. I came here city-soft, and flabby, in spirit and body.

The summer sun was unexpectedly warm, but the weather shifted fluidly. I wore an old dry suit on loan from Sally. It was made of a heavy nylon incapable of breathing and had thick rubber funnels at the neck and wrists to keep out icy water. I alternately sweated and froze.

The mountains soared on either side. The river was open here, though not deep. Each paddle stroke loosened my joints and my mind, and at some point I didn’t recognize, I felt the rhythm of my paddle and the rhythm of the land. Our journey moved forward as smoothly as the river’s surface, but we were an alien presence
in this wild, open space burdened and freed by the emptiness that stretched and settled with threat and promise. Although I’d hoped that Dad and Kathy’s journal, their exploration, would guide me on this trip, hoped that if my body traversed similar paths, perhaps my spirit would find them still here somehow, so far it seemed I saw only shadow.