Читать книгу Arctic Daughter - Jean Aspen - Страница 14

CHAPTER 2

Before I was born, my parents had wintered in a small cabin on the Alatna River in the Brooks Range, much as Phil and I intended. The following year they dismantled their homemade canoe and hitched a ride in a plane across the Continental Divide. They floated down the Colville River to the Arctic Ocean where they met a truly wild people, Eskimos living much as their ancestors had for hundreds of years. Life on the tundra is very different from the forest. These people were nomadic, following the seasonal migrations of game, and wise to the land. Without their help, my parents would never have survived the winter.

My mother told me stories of the Eskimos she knew. There was an old man who had never owned a rifle. He caught seals in a handmade net under the ice. He was eaten by a polar bear. Another old man had only an ancient single-shot .22 rifle to hunt grizzly. He would lie on his stomach on the tundra in the path of the browsing bear and move his hands to imitate ground squirrels. He once told my mother that he had seen “many babies left in the snow.” These were good people who loved their children, but they were realists too. They knew that in a bad year the entire family would starve if there were too many of them.

Alaskan Indians were different from the Eskimos in many ways, but they shared a common heritage of recent primitive existence in this wild, northern land. Life close to nature can be a tough teacher.

Phil and I arrived in Fort Yukon early one bright morning. We nosed our canoe between a group of tethered flat-bottomed boats, and I jumped ashore with a line to stand ankle deep in mud, holding our bow.

“Is it okay to leave our outfit here?” Phil called to a small figure leaning against the general store and watching a fish wheel revolve in the current.

He was an older Indian, dressed in dark and dusty street clothes and beaded moose-hide moccasins. The visor of his blue baseball cap was flipped back to reveal a stubble of salt-and-pepper hair and obliquely observant eyes creased between wrinkles.

The man’s mouth twitched in what may have been a smile as he shook his head. “They steal everything here.”

The sun was already hot, reflecting off the string of Jon boats that rocked in a backwater of floating debris. The smell of the river mingled with a fishy odor. Not a hint of breeze stirred the muggy air. Behind us, the featureless blue sky was separated from its reflection by a ragged thread of green islands.

I tied the bow painter fast to the covey of boats and lumbered up the bank, pulling each foot free with an audible “sssssluck.” Running a self-conscious hand over my wispy braids, I grinned at the quiet little man.

“Is this your fish wheel?” I asked him. “Are you catching any? Could we buy some?” A fish wheel is a wonder of simple technology. Turned by the current, it scoops the migrating salmon into a basket.

He smiled down at his feet saying in a low voice, “No good for fish here.”

Why put a fish wheel where there were no fish? I wondered. From atop the bank I could see a clutter of wooden buildings and log cabins, some leaning at unusual angles.

“I think you’d better stay with the canoe while I try to buy a few things,” Phil said, coming up behind me.

I settled onto the grassy bank a few feet above the canoe just as a skiff loaded with shouting Indians zoomed past a hundred feet offshore. Mesmerized by their speed, I watched them skim over a bar, noting how they could raise their outboard vertically on a lift to avoid hitting ground. The square bow and shallow draft of the flat-bottomed boat formed a practical combination for river travel. I felt a twinge of envy, followed by alarm as their waves struck our canoe, causing it to wallow deeply in the heaving, muddy water.

“Where you going?” came the soft voice behind me. I turned in surprise and saw the old man watching the bucking canoe, his face carefully neutral. I hadn’t expected him to speak.

I explained our plans to him, feeling foolish. It was obvious, even to me, that we didn’t really know what we were doing. At length the old gentleman ventured tactfully, “It’s a very fast river. Many rocks.”

“How will we find it?” I asked, eager to meet someone who had actually been there. We had imagined ourselves drifting downstream until we spotted the tributary entering from the north, but were beginning to realize the complexity of the Yukon.

“That side,” he motioned with the flat of his hand. “You stay always that side.”

The boat shot by again and I stared at the rocking canoe in hypnotic fascination, afraid it would sink before the town.

“Abraham Christian,” he answered when I asked his name. He lived in a Native village in the mountains, and had come down the river to visit friends in Fort Yukon. Could we buy gas there? Yes.

“How far is it to your village?”

He shrugged. “One drum of gas.”

Fifty-five gallons. How could we have forgotten that map? I chided myself. The one we had began in the mountains.

The Indians returned, swinging recklessly into the tethered boats that shied and bucked in ringing confusion. Abraham turned contemptuously to stare at the fish wheel as it creaked through endless cycles.

“Why do they keep a fish wheel here?” I inquired of his austere back, my mind still on food. “If this isn’t a good place?”

He glanced at me in amusement, then dropped his gaze. “Tourists.”

Before long Phil returned, surprising me with an expensive cola and a drooping chocolate bar. Then he took my seat on the grass while I set off to explore.

Fort Yukon was a shantytown of variety: sagging cabins, oil drums, and new pickup trucks—even though there were only a few miles of road. A horse-drawn road grader rusted beside the pieces of a modern one. A discarded bicycle lay in a heap of cans and bottles. Racks of moose antlers were nailed over doorways. And everywhere were playing children and chained dogs.

A flavor of leisure wafted from the dusty roads. It seemed an easy integration of life styles and cultures. There were a few modern government buildings including a Native Center where people could wash clothes or see a movie, but the rest of the town lacked indoor plumbing. The town’s electric generator supplied power to homes, however water was delivered by truck to white and Native alike.

Thoughtfully I circled back to Phil, the canoe, and the shimmering plain of river.

“You look as melted as the chocolate,” I said, coming up behind him.

“All done?” he asked, getting to his feet and brushing off his trousers. “Get some pictures?”

I nodded.

“Let’s get going.”

The Indians were still cavorting in the skittish boats. Standing there, I was inspired to sneak a photo of them. “Go ahead,” I heard my mother’s voice from somewhere in my past, “get the picture. You’ll never see these people again.” Covertly I aimed my telephoto in their direction only to confront a dark face scowling back up the lens at me. Unsteadily the men boiled from the boat and surged up the bank. A pockmarked face pushed close, raging, “God-damn, smart-ass tourists!”

The man was short and heavy with a mop of black hair overhanging muddy eyes, bleary with drink. I caught a look of helpless anger as his face withdrew.

This was our introduction to Albert and Jessie Williams of Venetie. My mother was wrong about not seeing them again. I was to find that you never really leave your past behind.

The following morning I lay quietly under damp folds of down listening to the soft music of rain on the tent fly and ignoring the demands of my bladder. Light coming through the nylon of our orange pup tent was subdued by a low overcast. With his back to me, Phil was propped on one elbow, leafing through our bird book.

“Well, it’s ten o’clock,” I said. “I suppose we ought to get up.”

We were clothed in the night things we would wear all summer—I in light pajamas, he in a T-shirt and underpants. The cramped tent was humid from our breathing; the waterproof floor, cold and slippery where it protruded from under the Ensolite pad. Phil stretched and slid his book into the journal box (an army ammunition case) and snapped the lid shut. Then he wriggled deep into our zipped-together sleeping bags and ran his cold hands up my back.

“Well, what do you want to do? Get wet or starve?” I asked.

He cocked his head and listened. “I really don’t think it’s raining that hard.”

“Maybe. But just think of the soggy bushes out there.” I rolled over and snuggled my behind into the curve of his stomach and legs. My back ached from lying down. “What say you volunteer to dig out the wool shirts?”

The day before we had entered a small slough that slithered for miles into the forest. Here we decided to try our gill net. After pitching camp, we chose a spot and (for want of a better idea) cut a pole, looped the net over it, and pushed it out from shore.

“Come on. Here’s your shirt,” Phil said as he slid back into the bags and plastered his wet feet on my calves. “Water’s up since yesterday. Don’t you want to see if we caught any fish? Maybe the net’s solid with them.”

The scratchy wool felt good as I dressed in the confined tent while Phil curled out of the way. I reached outside for my boots, which were upended under a corner of the rainfly, and crawled out of the tent. I emerged into a gray and scented world of bugs, where bird calls echoed between black-trunked trees. Clouds clung to the ground in tenuous trails, hiding even the direction of the sun. I sniffed deeply of dripping forest and poplar smoke as I knelt on the bit of sloping mudbank to start a fire. It was a good day to lie low, for out in the channel small whitecaps crowded before a blustering wind.

There were indeed fish that morning: three scaly suckers. Flavorless, mushy creatures with numerous forked ribs, they nevertheless bolstered our spirits, for they were our first catch. Soon the rain returned, splattering cold drops into our tin plates. We ate and returned to bed. Lying fitfully within the sticky bags, we read aloud until nearly midnight.

The next day was not favorable for travel either. A high overcast chilled the drab sky from which a cold western wind descended to kick up waves. Still, we regretted every lost day. After another fishy breakfast we packed our outfit and set off.

Even on the slough, water slopped more than occasionally over the gunwale as we crept along. Although we had eaten some of our supplies, we were still riding dangerously low. When we reentered the main Yukon we motored quietly a few feet from shore. The sullen, rushing river, as faceless as the gray sky, now seemed malevolent as big waves built up over miles of open water. The river was peppered with large islands, some distinguishable from shoreline only at close range, where narrow channels were sucked off between trees. Here the relentless current smashed, piling up debris on the headlands in a deadly trap.

Again the shore opened ahead. Beset with indecision, we watched the crisis approaching. Which way? Should we risk a small channel that could meander for miles, perhaps losing itself in thickets and logjams, or stick with the main channel and chance missing our chosen river? We had almost decided to avoid this little offshoot when Phil spotted geese. By the time he had photographed the departing birds, we found ourselves dragged sideways into the channel.

Thus two accidents, a stiff breeze and a flock of geese, charted our course. The river we sought collides with the Yukon in a confusion of arms, most of which would have added greatly to our journey (had we found them at all). But nature had provided a way, a wandering, secret way, to enter miles above that tangle—and somehow we found it.

Our path snaked swiftly inland through fields of waving willows, green and 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 can get a foothold. Now the capricious river wanted it back. That is what cutbank means.

We had finished our starchy meal when we caught the distinct buzz of an outboard. Very soon a river boat leapt into view, spinning down current. They spotted us and careened rashly shoreward, cutting the motor at the last instant. To my astonishment, the big boat settled gently beside our canoe.

“Difference between planing and displacement hulls,” Phil answered my surprise. “Besides, he’s not loaded.”

It was Albert and Jessie out for an evening ride. They were bundled against the wind of travel, and they toiled stiffly up the bank while their handsome young friend fastened the boat. He was introduced to us as John “Sonny” Erick Jr. His long hair was tied back this time with a pink silk scarf. He grinned shyly as I handed him a cup of mint tea.

“We was a bit worried about you,” Jessie stated, holding her chapped hands out to the blaze of our fire. “Our chief, even, Abraham Christian, he come lookin’ for you last night.”

“Oh, it takes us awhile.” I smiled sheepishly. “Uh . . . how far is it from here?”

“I think maybe fifteen miles?” she turned to Sonny and he nodded.

Fifteen miles! That would take us days! I lifted our little blackened tea kettle from the fire and squatted near the cups, steam drifting back over my hand as I poured. I was embarrassed by our apparent helplessness. “Sugar?” I asked, handing Jessie a scalding mug.

She spooned it in. “I always like lotta sugar in my tea,” she grinned. “You?” she handed me the bottle.

“I prefer mine plain,” I lied, thinking about our diminishing supplies.

The clouds were again closing in. A fine spray of mist prickled my face and soon big drops were dancing in the dust around the fire.

“We can give you a ride,” Jessie offered, setting her empty cup on the lid of the grub box. “We got lotta room and we just put everything in, your little boat and all.”

This time we accepted with gratitude and relief. Adding three-quarters of a ton slowed their progress, but we sailed right over riffles and rapids at what seemed an incredible rate to me. I shouted a happy conversation with Jessie above the roar of the engine. Already I had quite forgotten the river. It slipped by with such ease that I was surprised I had ever taken it seriously.

Morning song of Venetie, the discordant howl of two hundred chained dogs, woke us in our graveyard camp overlooking the Gwich’in Indian village. Beginning like a distant wind, it swept upon us until all was drowned in a rush of voices.

Phil and I poked among the old grave markers for something to burn as the first guests began arriving, their trudge up the steep hill heralded by renewed howls. We had been assured that it was okay to camp here, for the actual cemetery had been moved because of the encroaching river. Still, there were nervous titters from our visitors about ghosts.

Our first adult visitor was the ancient patriarch of the prolific Frank family. Slowly he topped the bluff, leaning on a walking stick. He had dressed to greet us in a rumpled, white shirt, black tie, and shiny black suit. He wore glasses and smoked a pipe. Atop his head was a quilted cap with a visor.

“Hi. I’m Jeanie and this is Phil,” I said. I stuck out my hand and grinned. He touched it politely, smiled, and glanced away.

“I’m Johnny Frank,” announced the bandy-legged little man. He pointed to the cabin where he lived with his wife, Sarah. Accepting the cup of sugary tea, he sat cross-legged in the dust by our fire. In broken English, Johnny Frank answered questions and told us stories while children shrilled and giggled in waves about us. He said that few in the village had been far up the river, saying, “Nobody walk no more.”

“Tell us about the river,” I persisted.

“Many year now I have not go there.” He brushed mosquitoes from his leathery neck with a small, dark hand and smiled winningly. His worn suit seemed in keeping with his personal dignity as he sat amicably in the dirt by our breakfast fire. “Too many rock, I tell you. Too fast that river.” He shook his wrinkled head at some memory. “You can’t take no boat there, I tell you that. Why you want to go?”

“We like the woods,” I answered.

He nodded eagerly in agreement. “Trapline. Lotta fur sometime. Sometime no good. That lynx, you catch him, maybe he plenty good sometime. Two year ago, rabbit everywhere,” he extended his small arms to encompass the village. “Oh, plenty lynx that time,” he beamed. “But nobody trap too much now. They just wait for Native checks. No good, them people now days,” he declared, clamping his jaw shut. “Drink, all the time drink! This a dry village. You know what that mean? Nobody supposed to drink here. But they go down to Fort Yukon and bring it back, then everybody drink. Drink and fight! Drink and fight. No good. God as my witness, I never drink, not one time, and now I ninety-one years old. I work when I was young and I know what my life was for. What they live for? To drink and then shoot each other!”

“Gran’pa present,” a child tugged at his sleeve. Old Johnny Frank smiled angelically. “All my gran’kids love me and my great-gran’kids,” he proclaimed. From his pocket he fished out a crisp dollar. A rush ensued, and soon the kids were off down the hill to buy candy and tobacco at the village store. “My gran’son, you know him? He get lotta moose last winter with the snow-go. In the village, everybody eats lotta moose then. In Fort Yukon, they got freezers so they just keep their own moose, just hide it, put it away.”

By our third day in the village we knew almost every adult on sight and a good many by name. There were perhaps 120 people and they were friendly and curious about us. We met Jessie returning from the airstrip and the daily mail plane. Phil was carrying boxes of welfare food for one of the larger Frank families. There were no vehicles, or even roads, in town. Followed by skipping children, we dropped off the groceries and trailed after Jessie back to her cabin, each chewing on an apple.

As we passed the last cabin, an ancient woman, bent double and nearly blind with the seasons, hailed us from her yard. “You want come in for white-fish? I just got good whitefish.” Her cabin was large and well-tended with wood stacked before her door by neighbors. The small village retained its sense of community: sometimes petty and gossipy perhaps, like any group of people living together, but still a unit that cared about its members. Remarkably, we were included and had been given food and support, though we had little to offer in return.

“No thank you, Grandmother,” I called to her. “I will come visit you this evening.”

The path wound among broken and discarded equipment and the inevitable skinny dogs. Here was a culture that for years had been supported by the government. People who once lived happily with few possessions had discovered the toys of civilization. It seemed to me that by comparing themselves with others, they had also discovered poverty. I knew that it was not a simple problem. The land, which once supported migratory bands of Indians who starved when game was scarce, could not sustain a growing population. They couldn’t go back, any more than we could return to the days of covered wagons, yet moving to cities meant giving up village support and their way of life.

My eyes lingered covetously on the Jon boats tied along shore. How would we make it into the mountains before winter? We had offered to buy the needed fifty-five gallons of gas for anyone who would transport us upstream to the abandoned gold town beyond the first fork of the river, but no one stepped forward and daily the river level dropped, making upstream travel more difficult.

Jessie and Albert’s cabin was constructed of unpeeled, green-cut logs and papered inside with stained cardboard and pictures cut from magazines. Because Jessie held the dual positions of village health aid and post mistress, the cabin was a hub of activity throughout the day. The main room was divided by a high, linoleum-topped counter. Behind the counter were a propane stove, cupboard, dish drainer, various pans, and an open five-gallon slop bucket for dog feed. Across the room stood an oil heater, a sofa, several chairs, and a gas-powered wringer washer. Over the heater, rows of wires were strung for drying socks and mittens. Only the village school had electricity, and the people hauled water from the river in buckets.

While Phil and I chatted with Jessie around the counter, Albert brooded in a corner of the dark cabin. Like most of the villagers, his days seemed a tedium of inactivity. For hours he would sit beside his cache, staring at the ground. He seemed a sad and lonely man and in poor health. I found the silences between us too great to span, but in truth I never tried. Albert Williams, I thought, watching him covertly while I talked with Jessie, the early missionaries were wrong. A man should keep his own name. I wondered what else had been taken from him.

“You want some fish?” Jessie asked, turning from the propane stove with a skillet of fried grayling. She had been generous, often feeding us meals or snacks of dried caribou, pilot bread, and jam. Although they seemed at a loss to understand us, the whole village treated us with kindness. The three of us ate in silence, each wondering what to say. Although her English was good, our backgrounds were so different that we often misunderstood one another.

“We caught some fish too,” I boasted, “only they were suckers.”

“Oh, we don’t eat those,” she told me seriously. “Too many bones.”

My attention was drawn to something bubbling mysteriously on the back burner.

“Whitefish guts,” Jessie said, following my gaze. “Very good.” She seemed defensive. “You try some?” So far she had fed us muskrats (boiled in their skins) and boiled geese, heads and all.

“Sure. . . .” I forked out a bit and gingerly tasted them. The guts were much like oysters.

“Is there anyone else we could ask to take us upriver?” I finally asked.

“Maybe Robert Frank takes you when he get back from drinkin’ in Fort Yukon,” Jessie replied irritably. “I worry about you,” she said after a minute. “Maybe you get into lotta trouble. Two years back, this white man, he went and live by himself. We never see him again until the Trooper, he go back there in the wintertime, lookin’ for him. That man, he builded himself a little house, so small he couldn’t even stand up and with no real door, just canvas. And he didn’t have no food. He eat up everything and then he shoot himself.”

She got up and placed tea before us on the counter. “Even good Native boys, sometime they get killed. Last winter a Native boy (he know what he was doing too!) die when his snow-go break down not too far from the village either.” Jessie watched us, chin in hand, from her stool on the other side of the counter.

I guessed that others were wondering too as they studied our little canoe or talked quietly with us. Some of the young men had borrowed Lady Grayling for a frolic near the shore, for none had ever been in a canoe before. “We’ll be okay,” I smiled reassuringly. “Next spring we’ll be fat as beavers. Just call us the upstream Indians.”

She looked uncomfortable for a minute and then declared, “You aren’t Indians.”

The door of the cabin stood open and drugged mosquitoes drifted in and out of the punk smoke. The smell of the slowly burning insecticide coil tinged my thoughts, reminding me of the Mackenzie River and other people who had entered my life briefly along those faraway banks. Outside in the hot sunlight, flies buzzed about the dogs. Often sadly neglected, they were kept as status symbols, a cultural hangover from the days before snowmobiles. I remembered Great Slave Lake in Canada where the dogs were abandoned on small islands to survive the summer or die. In the fall, they would be gathered and fattened for winter work.

A dog was probably the last thing we needed, but watching them from Jessie’s cabin, I decided I wanted one. Phil and I both loved dogs, and I missed that relationship. Seeing the ratio of dogs to humans, I assumed we were in the ideal location to acquire a pet. We set off, following one lead after another around the village. People were friendly and proud, bragging about their dogs—which were all shapes, colors, and sizes—but no one wished to part with a single animal.

It was evening when our quest brought us to young Sonny Eric Jr.’s place.

“Just woke up,” he said, swinging open the door of the small cabin reputed by old Johnny Frank to be a haunt of the undesirable.

“We’re trying to buy a puppy,” I began. “One to take up the river with us. Somebody told us you had some.”

Reluctantly, he led us around the corner of the cabin to a makeshift wire pen enclosing a dozen colorful balls of fur. “I had to put ’em in jail.” He pointed to the tumbling puppies. “They broke into Abraham Christian’s cache and ate up all his dry salmon. And he wanted that fish for himself.”

I laughed and Sonny looked up in surprise from tying on a blue head-band. I suddenly was aware that humor takes more than a common language: it takes shared assumptions.

“I’m gonna race these dogs,” he finally stated, obviously embarrassed at the request. The spring intervillage dog races were a big social occasion. “I don’t want to sell none of ’em.”

That evening Robert Frank returned from Fort Yukon, his boat ladened with a cow moose he had shot along the river. After we spoke with him, he agreed to take us up to the old abandoned gold town, which was probably as far as his boat could go in the rapid-strewn river.

It was sprinkling fitfully the next morning as Phil and I trudged up and down the hill behind town, lugging gasoline on the footpath from the airstrip. As we broke camp, Sonny Eric Jr. appeared unexpectedly with the runty mongrel I liked. He told us that he had dreamed he would be killed in a boat accident. To prevent this, he said, we should take the puppy.

So for five dollars we acquired a bundle of problems that we named Net-Chet-Siil, or “Little Girl” in the Gwich’in dialect of Athabascan. She was a pretty little thing, just weaned—all honey and cream with strawberry tongue and licorice-drop nose. Her coat was thick and soft, her tummy bald and freckled, fuzzy ears flopped over her puppy-blue eyes, and her voice carried for miles.

As we loaded our outfit aboard the Jon boat everyone in the village came down to see us off. With a wave of farewell we shoved into the current.

Go! Go! Go! Pleeeease! I pleaded silently as we crept up the tumbling river.

Robert Frank seemed surprised by our sluggish pace. He shouted a conversation with Phil above the roar of the outboard, and I caught the words, “One time I got four moose in this boat! I chartered a plane on floats and just fly around and look for ’em!”

He was a handsome, cheerful man of medium stature, about thirty and already head of a large family. Like many of his generation, tawny eyes, bronze skin, and big bones spoke of better nutrition and perhaps a mixing of genetics. He motioned to Ken, a slender youth of seventeen, and turned the motor over to him. Then settling his back to the wind, Robert Frank cupped his hands about a cigarette and opened a can of soda. Ken drove the powerful engine, standing proudly in the stern, young legs apart, eyes scanning the water, and long hair streaming.

I held our new puppy in my arms. Net-Chet-Siil burrowed under my red woolen coat, soft and wriggly next to my body, as I craned forward, urging the boat. We plowed toward the foothills as rainbows and showers played over a landscape bathed in nameless shades of velvet green. I saw Robert shake his head as Ken again swung the motor up to avoid sudden shelves of gravel.

“I think I go back to the village and get more gas tonight,” Robert shouted to Phil, flipping the empty soda can overboard. “We sure use it up this way.” Phil reached into his pocket and drew out our remaining cash, handing it to him. It was the last money we had in the world. Finally, I crawled under the overturned canoe to get out of the cold drizzle.

Then we were stopping. I stuck my head out as Phil ran nimbly forward and leapt ashore with the bowline. A pair of tiny old men greeted us cheerfully as we climbed the bank to arrange ourselves about their smoldering fire. Like other places we had noticed along the river, this was a well-used camping spot for the Indians. It was situated on a small cutbank in the protection of mature spruce trees, many of which had been stripped of bark. The bark, which comes away easily in large sheets in the spring, was used like plywood to cover lean-tos.

After a brief conference in their own language, one of the old men, Ambrose Williams, turned to Phil with a big smile and said, “This my lucky day! I see moose over there. I shoot ’em and he swim across and die on this side. I didn’t have no boat. I was just gonna eat those little fishes and I don’t like ’em.” He pointed to a can of sardines.

The three young men unloaded the boat and set off to retrieve the skinned and disjointed carcass of a yearling bull. This they heaved onto a bed of willows in the shade near camp. No one seemed concerned about the flies, which will lay their eggs on meat, converting it to maggots in a short while. The two old men stood quietly by as the quarters were hefted ashore. I thought of the skill that lay in those small, veiny hands. Butchering a moose is no small chore.

We ringed their smudge fire, sipping coffee while the Indians exchanged news. Finally Robert turned to us in English saying, “Jim Christian, Abraham is his brother. He don’t speak English good. His gran’son, Jimmy Christian, he was supposed to take ’em up the East Fork to their cabin, but he run out of gas and went down to Fort Yukon to drink and just leave ’em here.”

Old Jim Christian grinned and nodded, perhaps not understanding a word. There was something gentle about him. Like his companion, he was of slight build, coming only to my shoulder, dark and weathered. His almost beardless face was carved by history, as were his small, gnarled hands. In the near blindness of age he wore thick glasses. He was dressed in baggy slacks, red-checked flannel shirt, and beaded moose-hide moccasins. His short-brim cap secured a flutter of gauzy material to protect his neck from bugs.

Ambrose Williams offered us the interesting animal matter that was gurgling in a thick, green soup over the fire. The others were already at work with their pocketknives stabbing long strings out of a five-gallon can.

“Moose guts,” Robert said, glancing over his knife as he chewed. “The old people, they really like this stuff. They eat it when they was young.” Ambrose nodded and smiled.

Phil and I looked timidly at one another and dug out our knives. When in Rome, I thought. Phil leaned over and whispered, “They still have the shit in them!” I nodded and smiled. Rubbery, but not bad.

Next came boiled tenderloin. The backbone was severed with a knife at each vertebra and plunked into our large kettle. Most Native cooking seems designed to reduce preparation of the food, not a bad idea for people living outdoors. We finished the meal with the usual sugar-laced tea and the budding antlers of the young bull. Jim Christian singed the velvety skin by roasting them in the fire.

We camped with them that night. After breakfast of boiled moose the next morning, I squatted on the bank, scraping impervious moose tallow from Mightypot with sand. Ambrose had a tape recorder playing Native chants sewn together with his fiddling. I listened, feeling across the cultural chasm that separated my world of science from this ancient heritage. I was intrigued and would have stayed to listen, but Robert, who had taken most of the moose to the village and returned during the night with extra gasoline, considered the old folk dull company and was impatient to be off. I hurriedly packed up our camp gear and loaded the riverboat while the recorder fiddled on and Ambrose danced.

“You know,” I said to Phil as we shoved off and the waving old men dwindled into arctic vastness, “in our culture we’d lock those two up someplace safe where they couldn’t hurt themselves. Did you hear that old Ambrose spends every winter alone up on the Wind River? As blind as he is too. I suppose someday he’ll die out there and people will wonder why somebody didn’t stop him. But he’s alive now.”

We hadn’t been long underway when a major fork veered off taking most of the water with it. Because of the shallows, I and half of the gear remained at the junction while Phil and the other half continued on up the diminished river.

As the noise of the engine melted into the river, I looked around. We were now in hilly country, able to glimpse mountains through breaks in the green. Underfoot was a springy, six-inch carpet of multicolored sphagnum moss, lacy white reindeer lichen, and dainty sprigs of lingonberry, also known as lowbush or mountain cranberry. This was woven with minute flowers and inconspicuous plants of many varieties. The scattered trees, spindly and often draped in threads of pale green moss, contrasted somberly with the bright ground cover. The land seemed brilliant and fresh after the dank Yukon Flats and the dusty village.

This new country pleased me, evoking some forgotten childhood memory. Its very openness should enhance our ability to see animals, I decided. As if to prove me right, I caught the cautious hippity-hop of a feeding snowshoe hare, brown now in its summer attire. I unsheathed my old .22 rifle and soon was cleaning the luckless rabbit—our first game. A flash drew my attention to a hole in a tree where a pair of yellow flickers tended a brood of demanding young. Everybody is busy this time of year. I rinsed the hare, very unimpressive now, and was saddened that it was a nursing mother. Guiltily, I tasted the milk on my bloody fingers, then washed the fluids from my hands in the river.

When the boat returned to shuttle me upstream, I was ready. Phil had set up camp by the time we arrived, and a short while later I was preparing rabbit and dumplings. The Indians seemed tired of our slow travel and we did our best to make them comfortable. As we sat gnawing diminutive bones and glancing at one another, Robert announced that he could take his boat no further. Tomorrow they would leave us and head happily downstream hunting.

As for us, we would be left entirely to our own strength and imagination. These were the last people we would see in almost a year.