The red canoe
rocked gently on the gravel beach. Six feet of stern floated in the ripples of
the swiftly moving river. The boat was half full of gear; dry bags with tent,
sleeping bag, food, clothing, and first aid supplies were all strapped into the
bottom of the canoe. Spare paddles were wedged under the webbing holding the
floatation bags in place. A few maps, a couple of books, bug spray, all in water
proof containers, and water bottles were all secured by Velcro, close to hand.
There was even a shotgun in its own water proof case, also within close reach.
Like all of Alaska this was bear country. The rest of the boat, save for a spot
in the middle where the tall, broad shouldered man would sit and kneel to
paddle, was filled by the floatation bags whose purpose was to displace splash
from standing waves in the rapids downstream.
The man
unrolled a piece of plastic, a deck cover to keep water off the gear and
hopefully out of the boat. He spread this over the canoe and snapped the caps on the sides
down to studs placed every few inches just under the gunwales on the outside
of the canoe. After securing the cover he stood upright, stretched his sore
lower back and turned his bearded face to the morning sun. He walked down the
rock beach running fingers through his long gray hair, picked up an old Filson
hat from the boulder where he'd lain it while he washed his hair in the calm
pool behind some rocks.
He walked
back up the trail, a full half mile to his old four wheel drive truck. He took
three envelopes from the pocket of his down vest and placed them on the front
seat of the truck, locked the doors, turned, and strolled back down to the
river, alternately eating a peanut butter sandwich and whistling part of
Beethoven's Ninth.
A waterproof
paddling jacket went over his fleece jacket, then the life vest. He pushed the
canoe into shallow water and shook the sand and rocks from his boots as he
stepped gingerly to the center of the craft. A quick swig of water from a
bottle hanging by his seat, a straightening of the broad brimmed hat and he was
ready.
He leaned out
into the river and with his muscular arms pulled the hand carved wood paddle through the water toward
himself in a strong and steady draw stroke. The boat awkwardly slid sideways in
the water, then, in response to his powerful stroke, turned upstream into the river. The paddle gracefully parted the water beside the canoe propelling it
further from shore and angled it into the rushing water.
Ten quick
strokes pushed the canoe through a cross-stream ferry that sliced the eddy line
behind a boulder in mid stream. As the back flow of the eddy held the boat
upstream behind the rock the man turned in his seat and looked down stream
toward the frothing, boulder strewn, wave filled, cold water. This first rapid
was only two hundred yards away and it had eaten many a canoe over the years.
It was a long rapid, nearly half a mile in length, not too difficult if you
knew what you were doing, but with the water high like today the waves could
swamp an open canoe.
The man
grinned to think of the first time he'd brought his daughters here. His oldest, Jan, had just about panicked, digging frantically at the water with her paddle and
her 12 year old strength. He'd called out strokes to her, then guided the boat
through the rocks, holes, and waves. By the end of the five day trip, when they took out
above Hell's Canyon, she was a confident determined young
paddler. That was twenty years ago and she still paddled once or twice a
summer, but only on lakes or slow streams now, with her own children.
His younger
child, Liz's reaction had been completely different. A year later on her
first big water trip, when she was also twelve, she had squealed and laughed
with delight from the first rapid to the last. Not as gifted athletically as
her older sister she made up for it with enthusiasm and fearlessness. Each
rapid was a mini adventure for her. Each bend of the river hid a new wonder of
moving water, rocks, swaying trees, and the occasional moose or bear.
That trip had
done it. She became an avid paddler of both canoes and kayaks. Every spare
moment of her teen years and young adult
life was devoted to paddling. When she wasn't on the river she was lifting
weights, shopping for gear, ordering maps for future trips, and practicing
rolls in the community pool during the winter months. In high school she guided
for a couple of wilderness companies, taking eco tourists with lots of money
into the Alaskan wilds, working enough to pay her bills and finance her own
next paddling adventure.
As the vision of his daughters' young
faces vanished before his mind's eye the man dug his paddle into the water,
shot his canoe across the eddy line and peeled out into the mainstream of the
big river. The water jerked at his boat straightening it into a down stream
trajectory. He held the paddle lightly using it to steer like a side rudder. A
flick of the wrists and he lined the bow up with a strong V between two under
water rocks. A sudden lean to the side and a powerful draw stroke shifted the boat
from its collision path with a couch sized boulder. Around the boulder he cut
across the eddy line to rest in the upstream flow behind the rock and scout the
river ahead.
Downstream
the river narrowed from over a hundred yards to less then thirty as it squeezed between massive outcroppings of
quartzite on either side of the channel. A six foot standing wave guarded the
entrance of a short drop. Thank goodness for the spray cover he thought.
A twist of
the body, a glance down stream and he was back in the current, cresting the
wave, dropping from a four foot ledge into a frothy hole of aerated water
with large boulders on either side. Upon hitting the hole he dug
through the foam, found the water underneath and stoked mightily. Once, twice,
three times his mighty back, shoulders, and arms commanded the canoe to move,
but the power of the hole at this high water level kept him. Quickly he shifted
his weight far forward, leaned almost parallel to the covered deck and dug
once more at the water alongside the canoe. The exaggerated stroke worked,
prying the boat from the keeper hole.
The remainder
of the rapid was easy. A few small ledges to drop over, a couple of eddy turns
to line up narrow chutes, and then he picked his way through the rock garden at
the end of the rapid as the river widened back out.
The rest of
the morning he spent joyfully paddling down the river, working his way through
small rapids and occasionally stopping to look at some interesting rocks or
animal tracks on the shore. Once he rounded a bend and saw a small grizzly
sunning himself on a grassy piece of the river bank. The bear glanced at him
and was gone with a "woof" into a dense thicket of alders and
willows.
At lunch he
pulled up on some large rocks in mid stream -- the dense brush on the shore
looked too much like bear habitat for him to be comfortable eating and resting
there. He stripped the sweaty clothes from his body spread them on the rocks to
dry and lay naked in the warm sun for an hour. It had been cool and rainy for
days before this trip. Last night was clear and cold. He'd slept rolled in his sleeping bag in the open beside his truck, and woke that morning with frost in his beard; so the
warm sun on his old, heavily muscled body felt good.
He thought of
his wife, of the times they'd paddled this river. They'd stopped for lunch here
too and of course ended up making love on this very rock, with a ground pad
beneath them. Just after the climactic moment they were startled to hear voices
and the sounds of paddles in the water. Partially screened from view by the
steep upstream side of the rock, they looked over the edge to see two raft loads of
floaters not thirty yards from their rock. The rafts were heading straight for
their large rock and would likely swing around to it's lower side. The lovers
had left their clothes on their canoe tied up to a rock across a shallow pool
from the trysting rock. Their was no way to get their clothing without being
seen by the rafters who were almost to the rock. In a few seconds they would
spy the couple.
He looked at
his wife. She gave him a sly grin, shrugged her shoulders and with complete
aplomb stood up, stretched her fit, just loved body for all to see and
calmly walked across the shallow pool, past the gawking rafters to the canoe
where she began to dress. Smiling and red faced he quickly waded to their boat, put
on his life vest, threw his clothing in the bottom of the boat, stepped in and
away they paddled.
He and his
mate laughed about the incident the rest of that trip. For years to come every
time they paddled the river they had stopped at "Lovers' Rock" for
another tryst and a laugh. Now alone, he felt a deepening sadness mixed with
long neglected desire.
"Time to go," he muttered to
himself.
He only
paddled another hour that afternoon. A good camping spot presented itself on a
small bluff above the river; so he built a fire there, set up his tent against
the probability of rain from the thickening clouds, ate some jerky, drank some
whiskey, went for a walk up a hill, with the shotgun over his shoulder, and was
back at the fire playing his harmonica when the moon crawled up into the
southeast sky.
It wasn't completely dark, "Won't get much dark in late July, even in the middle of the
state," he said aloud. "Not like on the North Slope, where the sun
stays up all night."
After reading
in the twilight for half an hour he turned in for a good night's sleep.
Part Two will follow.
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