Arctic Daughter. Jean Aspen

gray in the shimmering wind. The mud strand was carpeted with the rich velvet of joint grass and the elaborate print of bird tracks. At our approach, startled ducks flung themselves into the air from hidden reed beds. We caught sliding glimpses of open areas, ponds and marshes, through the shifting trees. Within the cozy safety of the slough we began to relax.

      We stopped for dinner at a confluence of waterways and built a fire atop a grassy cutbank. Nearby, stood three or four deserted cabins. Below us the chocolate channel plowed into a small river. It had a friendly look, this river, not unlike the slough, but where the two swept together, a slight color change persisted. My heart lightened at this brave promise from snowy peaks hundreds of miles away. Our river! We had picked it from the map and now here it was: a real wilderness river! My gaze lingered on it affectionately.

      We were waiting for the wind to drop, as it generally did at night, before trying our hand at upstream travel. Eventually we would need to “line” the canoe upstream, pulling it on foot, but hoped to put that off awhile. This was the beginning of a hard and often discouraging chapter in our new existence. Our days of floating were over.

      “Someone’s coming,” I said, cocking one ear into the wind. I emptied my plate of fish bones into the fire and lumbered to my feet.

      Behind us a boat suddenly materialized with Albert and Jessie Williams, two of my brief photographic acquaintances. With them was a proud and well-muscled young man, beaded headband holding back his shoulder-length, black hair. They sighted us and swung toward shore, almost swamping Lady Grayling. I clambered down the five-foot cutbank, which was flaking into the river, and jumped onto soggy tussocks of grass rooted in melting mud.

      “Would you like some tea?” I called in greeting as I reached for their bowline.

      “No, no. We gotta get back to Venetie tonight,” Jessie said. “We just stop to see are you okay.” She was a well-padded woman with short, dark hair, a round face, and intelligent eyes.

      “Oh, we’re fine!” I answered enthusiastically. “Sure you won’t stop for some tea?”

      Jessie shook her head resolutely. “No, we gotta get back to the village tonight.” She studied our overloaded canoe in open skepticism. “You like, we can take something for you. We got lotta room. Wouldn’t be no bother.”

      Albert seemed to be looking past me. He said nothing.

      Phil scanned our outfit with indecision. “Thanks for the offer,” he replied politely, “but we’ll do okay.” We were beginning to tire of skeptical looks.

      “You got plenty of food?” Jessie inquired with the same directness. We nodded. Albert pulled the starter rope and the young man shoved off with the butt of his rifle. I watched, intrigued as his new .30-30 sank into the ooze. Then the big engine caught with a rumble and the boat shot upstream and was gone.

      That first evening was deceptively easy. By midnight the wind stilled and we set out north, our five-horse outboard opening the wide bends before us. The water turned milky gray where our small bow wave broke the lavender reflection of sky and dark trees, beginning to take on the look of a healthy river. Sitting in the front seat, I gazed at it with a new sense of excitement. There was promise in the early morning air and purpose in the smooth bends when, for the first time, we caught sight of mountains clear and small ahead.

      Cold dawn was upon us when we stopped on a sandbar to build a large driftwood fire. In the arctic summer, the splendor of sunset-sunrise may take several hours—day bleeding back into day. This river wasn’t so bad after all, we concurred as we sipped steaming mugs of spice tea and watched the brilliant morning fade into sunrise. We had come quite a way and seen the mountains: the great Brooks Range! Mudbanks of the Yukon had given way to sand and gravel. We pitched our tent in that picture-book camp and headed for bed full of the happy miles we would make on the morrow.

      A few hours later we woke to flapping nylon and blasting grit. Cold sheets of wind-borne sand thundered down the beach, obscuring the far shore and forming dunes. The stinging particles sifted into everything, filling our eyes, ears, and sleeping bags. The tent billowed and strained at its moorings, frequently ripping free. Driven forth at last by hunger, we ate a gritty oatmeal breakfast, eyes squinted against the blast, and went back to bed.

      When we emerged into the still amber of evening, our calm beach had returned.

      For the next few days we traveled by night to avoid the wind. Every mile became tougher until each yard was a battle with the quickening river. We discontinued use of the motor except for occasional quieter stretches, and even then used it only at the loss of many shear pins, much gas, and the edges of our propeller. Our progress shrank to less than five miles a day as, on foot now, we hauled our stubborn canoe and her half ton of dreams up the rapids.

      We became discouraged as plans of starting our cabin early withered and the elusive mountains slipped ever backward at our plodding. The longest day of the year came and went, marking the annual descent back into winter, and we weren’t even to the village! “We have to get back tonight,” they had said. “Very fast river.” The memories lilted through my brain.

      But there were good signs too, as we never tired of pointing out to one another. The Yukon jungle lay behind us now, mud and all. This country had an open, healthy feel. The living water was inlaid in bars of tawny sand and colored stones. Although we saw no game, the shore was often marked with tracks of bear, beaver, wolf, and moose. Trees were smaller here and spaced with patches of wildflowers: lupine, wild pea, fireweed, prickly rose, and gentle gifts for which I had no names.

      By now it was late June and the steadily dropping water was becoming clearer every day. New sandbars surfaced, growing up through the swift, shallow river like young plants. We feared that the canoe might escape while we slept, so each night she was firmly grounded out of the current and well shackled. And every morning found her high and dry. It always took considerable effort to badger her back in, but the peace of mind was worth it. This was big empty country. Phil now wore the .22 Magnum pistol, not for protection, but as a hedge against starvation should we ever lose the canoe, and we both carried matches in waterproof containers, mosquito repellent, and our pocketknives.

      Energy, I was thinking. So that’s what it’s all about. Living in a land of bulldozers, I had never realized how fragile yet tenacious our little selves are. Think of what it means to own a mule! To travel downstream instead of up! All the work of life must be done by something: the hauling of wood and water, the building, the growing of food, the travel from place to place. And mostly it was done like this, by human muscles. No wonder people wanted to take the load off their backs and put it on machines, I thought, looking upstream. But then, I admitted, glancing back the way we had come, progress certainly means more to you this way.

      Early one morning found me immersed in icy water and chill dawn breeze, tired and discouraged. Minutes before we had broken a shear pin and, paddling furiously, found a foothold near the base of a crumbling gravel cutbank.

      “What’s taking you so long?” I snapped. I was holding to a sweeper with one hand and the canoe with the other. Beneath my numb feet, the relentless current sucked away the sand as I fought for balance, water to my waist.

      “I dropped the blasted shear pin!” Phil wailed. He disappeared from view and groped about blindly under water.

      I shifted my grip, fighting the restless canoe. “Let’s just camp. Maybe we can walk it over to that island.” We scanned the whorls of morning-streaked river, oblivious to the song of sleepless arctic summer. “I think we need to eat better,” I said dully. “A person can’t work like a mule on a handful of oatmeal.” Yet we had caught no more fish and seen no rabbits.

      We made camp on a flower-decked cutbank under shifting clouds. It was a young bank, composed of fine, brown sand. Clumps of Eskimo potato ladened with pink blossoms grew between pioneer balsam poplar and the tiny spruce trees that would eventually reforest the land. When the first hardy plants invade a new sandbar, they transform it into a place where insects, small animals, and slower growing trees