Arctic Daughter. Jean Aspen

and clipped it up with a large barrette.

      Phil was already unloading our canoe and half a ton of equipment from the truck when I joined him. He looked up at my approach and paused to fold a red bandanna, slipping it over his chestnut hair as a sweatband. He was handsome in his way: heavy bones framing wide green eyes, square jaw beginning to disappear under a dark beard. The mouth was small for his face, overshadowed by a craggy nose—victim of high school sports. Phil was of average height, with a body well built and graceful, though his personal inclination was to bull his way through rather than use finesse. Perhaps his most striking feature was his eyebrows (or rather, eyebrow) for it spanned both eyes in a single, dramatic sweep.

      It was hard for me to see his features objectively. Through the years of friendship, they had become as familiar as my own. We had been close since high school, hiking, rock climbing, dating. We met in the Southern Arizona Rescue Association when I was sixteen. Our friends had referred to us as “Phil-and-Jeanie” ever since, as if we had somehow joined to form a third organism. And to me, in a way we had. I wanted it to be that way. He had given me an engagement ring just before we started our journey, and the little diamond winked at me as I began unloading duffel.

      We worked quietly together unpacking mounds of gear and piling it on the grass. The canoe and supplies that had crowded the front room of the little house we rented together that last semester in school now seemed to shrink before miles of open water.

      My attention was interrupted as a shadow fell across me. I looked up at an older man in a dirty T-shirt and whiskers. Although his remaining hair was gray, the blistered, red face and cracked lips were those of a fair-haired person with too many seasons in the weather. From a flat, metal can he took a fresh chew of tobacco and tucked it thoughtfully under his lower lip.

      “Whar ya goin’?” It came out more like a demand than a question.

      I straightened slowly, wiping a sleeve over my forehead.

      “Up into the Brooks Range.”

      “In that?” He spat toward the Lady Grayling, our nineteen-foot aluminum canoe, lying out of her element among the dandelions.

      She did look small beside the Yukon.

      “I fly up in that country sometimes in the winter and hunt wolves,” he wheezed, watching me. “My neighbor, he gets lots of ’em buggers from the air, but I don’t believe in it,” he continued. “Mainly ’cause I ain’t got no plane.”

      I glanced up in surprise, half expecting a grin. His face was impassive but for the slow rumination of the jaws and the shrewd china blue eyes. His self-assurance intimidated me: the solid way he planted his boots on the dandelions.

      Go away, I thought. I bent over and went back to packing clothes. Choosing equipment and supplies had been no small task and this last day of organizing was important. There would be no one to help if we forgot something.

      “They say we shouldn’t poison these here bugs,” he stated, still searching for something we could disagree upon. He shifted his weight, watching me work.

      I nodded. “They’re a big part of the food chain,” I told him, fresh from my biology classes. Absently I scratched a welt-speckled arm.

      He spit again, a stream of juice aimed expertly between stained teeth. “Shit.” He studied me a moment. “I been pilotin’ the River ’fore you was born, huntin’ and trappin’ this country.”

      I followed his gaze northward over the glittering water.

      “’Course I ain’t trapped now in years—not that I couldn’t still do it.” He seemed to have forgotten me, his eyes lingering on the river. “Jest ain’t the game thar was. Wolves is mostly to blame. Wolves and Indians. I could teach you young pups a thing or two about trappin’.” His attention came back to me defiantly.

      “I imagine you could,” I answered in a gentler note. Then I retreated into myself until he had gone.

      Soon another man appeared, slowly treading the beach with a cane. He looked to be over seventy, a tiny prune of an Indian, dark and wrinkled. He was dressed in dark cotton clothing of indeterminate color, short rubber over-shoes, and a purple baseball cap.

      “You want whitefish? I give you big whitefish.” His voice was soft and difficult to catch. He glanced up at me and then politely away.

      He came only to my shoulder as I ambled beside him along the beach, asking questions about the river we hoped to ascend, a tributary of the Yukon that I had chosen from a map. The only maps available were four miles to the inch with two-hundred-foot contour intervals. The river appeared to have no major waterfalls, be fairly well timbered, and to cut deeply into an uninhabited area of the Brooks Range—a mass of seven mountain ranges that extend east to west across the entire northern third of Alaska. No one we knew had ever heard of this river; few even knew of the Brooks Range. The old man beside me knew this land, but he understood very little English and merely bobbed and smiled at most of what I said.

      “I catch too many fish. Only me and my wife and no dogs anymore. Every day I come ask white people if they want fish. But they say no,” he grinned, showing worn teeth. “That there my wife.” He pointed toward a tiny, fat prune just disappearing into a small cabin of unpeeled logs. “I build that one her own house. Fifty-two year we married now. Church married! But I can’t live with her.”

      He shook his head stubbornly. We halted beside his leaning cache and he reached into a slimy pail to hand me a fish. Then he stooped and wiped his hands in the grass. I thanked him and returned to the beach to clean the fish.

      As I scraped the large scales, my eyes were drawn back to the Yukon. I had calculated that we had perhaps a 75 percent chance of surviving, green as we were. Neither of us had even hunted big game before. I wondered if I had misjudged the odds.

      By late afternoon I was dizzy with fatigue. I crawled into the truck cab and curled up on the seat to nap, rolling the windows tight against the mosquitoes. Phil was still loading and reloading the canoe, a job he wished to do alone. He was inexperienced with canoes, but had a natural ability with equipment and a tendency to take charge.

      When Phil woke me it was nearly midnight and the sun was setting into the Yukon. He looked very tired. I shivered slightly in the big breath of the river, rubbing the seat print from my cheek. Time to go. We would find our own place to camp away from the curious eyes of the village. I checked around the pickup a last time for overlooked items and sleepily headed down the bank to the canoe.

      “It looks awfully full . . .” I protested.

      Phil nodded toward the grassy bank where, even at this hour, the total population of ten had come down to watch us sink. “Pretend you know what you’re doing,” he intoned under his breath.

      Together we shoved the grounded craft and I felt the heavy gauge aluminum give under my weight before she slid free into the water. The little ship wallowed deeply but remained afloat. Gingerly I climbed into the bow. My initial alarm increased when I turned to see Phil settling into the stern. We were inches from the river.

      “We’re crazy, Phil,” I declared. “We’re dangerously overloaded and we’re just going to have to get rid of some of this junk!” I had forgotten the spectators and started to get out.

      But we were already underway. Quickly the current snatched our little tub and spun it from shore, sweeping us into the orange and purple sunset. As the truck dwindled into the evening, we waved good-bye. Pursued by a cloud of mosquitoes, we set forth upon the Yukon.

      I glanced back at the sound when Phil started our little outboard motor. The canoe gave a sluggish lurch. As he cut back on the power with a gentle curse, we watched a wave ride easily up and over the stern. Lady Grayling settled deeper while Phil motored quietly with one hand and bailed with the other.

      “Got to watch that,” he said shakily, staring in fascination at the two inches of freeboard that separated us from the river. The glossy, orange water betrayed no hint of its depth. Our little engine purred as we wove through the sky-dappled river for the