Читать книгу Canoeing with Jose - Jon Lurie - Страница 17

PARADISE LOST

We traveled the 77 river miles between Abercrombie and Fargo over two punishing days. A northerly headwind eliminated any advantage provided by the current, and we struggled to make headway. With temperatures hovering in the mid-forties and a near-constant downpour, my bared arms turned to frigid slabs. Kocher settled into the sloshing puddle at the center of the canoe, sacrificing his body to the chills that inevitably resulted from inactivity. In the bow, José cowered beneath a rain hood, muttering obscenities and dipping his paddle weakly.

After what felt like dozens of hours of relentless pummeling, we began scouting the grey riverbanks for a campsite. We were just 30 miles north of Abercrombie, and it was challenging to identify a spot that would support a tent on the swampy banks looming up steeply from the water.

Several miles beyond the point where our search for a campsite began, Kocher spotted a farm field atop a 30-foot precipice. “My ass cannot get any soggier,” he explained, having soaked in the mire for at least 10 hours. “We’re stopping here.”

We struggled up the slippery pitch, hauling only the tent, sleeping bags, a water jug, and trail mix. We left the rest of the gear behind in the canoe, which was tied off for the night on a logjam.

We pitched our tent on a truck-wide swath of uncultivated soil, between a meadow planted with soybeans and the edge of the soggy promontory. We spread our sleeping bags, crawled inside the tent, and ate a quick dinner of trail mix and water. By sunset we were asleep, our muddy bodies filling the dome’s dead air with unpleasant aromas.

The following morning, we descended through the mud and tiptoed across floating tree trunks to the waiting canoe. Kocher came down the jam last, heaving a pack before him. He stood at the edge of the canoe, considering how to get into the boat. Then, in one hasty move, he manhandled the weighty pack and dropped his body, ass first, into the boat. The canoe’s crew and contents would have been upset and submerged in thick, smelly muskeg had I not made a split decision to rebalance the load, splashing overboard into the stagnant pool. When I emerged, neck deep in the shit, I saw that José felt badly. “That’s rough, bro,” he said, sympathy in his voice.

I pulled myself up over the gunwales, silently relishing the opportunity to show José how tough I was. When I met Kocher’s glare I recognized immediately that his flop had been motivated by the fact that this was the lousiest three-day adventure imaginable. José and I had weeks of paddling ahead of us, and at least a vague sense that this miserable beginning would be repaid with warm tailwinds, magnificent campsites, and redemption in the rapids. But this was as good as it would get for Kocher. This was the most time he had taken off in years, and he was spending it in the mud of the Red River Valley.

Thirty miles south of Fargo, the skies opened. Animated by the force of Kocher’s awesome temper, we pounded through the showers for several hours.

As cold hard rain turned to drizzle, bloody effluent streamed down the banks, turning the river red. The air smelled of sour flesh, and we saw the grey walls of a meat processing plant rising in the distance. Armies of carnivorous flies descended, turning the white canoe black. José pulled his hands into his rain jacket, covered his head with a grimy T-shirt, and swatted his back and shoulders after each vicious bite, shouting repeatedly, “Jesus fucking fuck.”

Finally we arrived, weary and humbled, at the docks of Fargo’s Lindenwood Park and Campground. We had paddled 40 hard river miles that day, 100 altogether over the first three days of the trip, and we weren’t going an inch farther. We paid their cursed camping fee and began unloading the canoe.

The gum-snapping teen at the campground’s headquarters was incredulous when we told her what we had done. “That’s not even possible. You can’t paddle a canoe from Wahpeton to here. Even if you could, that’s like 70 miles—it would take weeks.”

The recognition that we had done something that was unheard of in these parts gave us no small sense of satisfaction.

“We ain’t no little bitches,” José said, puffing up with pride.

“Hell no we ain’t,” Kocher agreed, snickering conspiratorially.

We pitched our tent on a campsite beside a young couple with a baby. Their vintage VW van sparked Kocher’s curiosity, and he walked over to strike up a conversation with them.

Kocher returned with the van’s owner, a man named Noah Suby. Noah offered us a ride across town to retrieve Kocher’s vehicle, and José volunteered to stay behind and watch the camp.

As we drove, searching for the parking ramp where we’d stashed Kocher’s van, we swapped stories with Noah. He was crisscrossing the continent with his family, filing quirky human-interest stories for Radio Free Bisbee, a station in Bisbee, Arizona. He had been attracted to Fargo by the region’s geology.

Growing up in the desert Southwest, Noah explained, he’d become interested in the Red River primarily because of its status as the only river in the country apart from the San Pedro (which runs within 15 miles of Bisbee) to flow north. As he talked, I was struck by how much more Noah knew about the natural history of the northern plains than we did. Noah told us about Lake Agassiz, and how the Red River was a remnant of an inland sea that covered parts of what are now Minnesota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Manitoba. Covering an area 700 miles long by 200 miles wide, Agassiz covered more surface area than the present-day Great Lakes combined. This was news to me and Kocher.

Noah asked if we remembered the flood that devastated Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1997. I recalled images of frantic residents erecting sandbag dikes in the pouring rain, but Noah explained that officials had evacuated some 50,000 people from the valley that year. Apparently Grand Forks, which was located some 160 river miles north of Fargo, had been built on the bed of Lake Agassiz—land so flat, he said, “you can stand on your tiptoes and see a hundred miles.” He went on to explain that many scientists now believe Lake Agassiz melted and drained due to a rapidly warming climate around 7000 BC, causing sea levels to rise around the world, and possibly touching off the Biblical flood.

We found Kocher’s van, and Noah and I returned to Lindenwood Campground to find José where we’d left him, seated at the picnic table. I told José that Noah had decided to do a story about our journey for his radio station. Then I asked Noah to tell José about Lake Agassiz and the great flood that created this flat region.

“That’s some shit,” José replied. “People in Grand Forks is stupid if they built their shit on a lake, then act all surprised when they get wet.”

Noah nodded, then took out his digital recorder and sat down at our picnic table with José and me. Wary of the long arm of the law, José agreed to be interviewed only if Noah would call him Joe. It was a policy we maintained as we approached the border, where traveling as José would only increase the likelihood of trouble.

Noah later mailed me a CD of the conversation, and I was struck by how, with the recorder switched on, José mutated into “Joe,” a reticent silhouette of his former self.

“This is Noah and I’m here on the banks of the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota, with Jon Lurie and Joe Perez, who are camping for the night before continuing their journey northward. These two gentlemen are paddling from the border between South and North Dakota to the Hudson Bay.”

“Joe, how did you get involved in this trip?”

“Well, my friend here, Jon Lurie, just suggested it one day. When he asked what I was doing this summer, I had no idea. So he just laid it all out for me, and I agreed.”

“I heard there was a little mishap on the first day. Do you want to tell us about that, Joe?”

“About an hour into the trip we tried to run a dam and went into the river. What else is there to say?”

The clouds dissolved as we talked with Noah, and for the first time since being sucked into the river we had a dry patch of earth on which to air out our dank gear. The books I’d brought—A Field Guide to the Edible Plants of North America, Song of the Paddle: An Illustrated Guide to Wilderness Camping, Guide to Backcountry Survival Techniques, Wilderness Rivers of Manitoba, Canoeing with the Cree—were all sopping bricks, as was my hardcover journal. I placed the volumes on a picnic table to dry, the first step in a process that would ultimately take a month.

Our electronics were in hopeless condition. My cell phone, iPod, and digital camera were dead, as was José’s CD player. I was shocked to see José take the loss in stride.

“Ain’t no thing,” he said. “I can fix it.”

Apparently he had picked up some tricks for reviving electronics at the pawn shop. Customers often came into the store trying to hock gadgets that had been waterlogged. José convinced many of them to leave their iPods and cell phones for “recycling.” After applying “ghetto repair techniques,” José would make a few bucks pawning the functional devices.

Sitting at the picnic table, José used my Leatherman to disassemble his CD player. When he finished prying apart the case, removing the screws, pulling out the circuit boards, and unplugging the candy-striped diodes, parts were scattered everywhere—on the bench, in his lap, and in the grass at his bare toes. I was certain this effort would be futile.

I was wrong.

After dabbing the electronic guts with the corner of a bandanna, José reached into his pack and produced an “all-purpose hood utility kit”—a pack of Kool Menthols. He was trying to quit smoking, but he had brought them along in case of emergency. He promptly lit up two cigarettes and dragged them down while holding the components close to his lips, saturating them in a stream of smoke.

“This is how you do it, bro. The smoke dries that shit out.”

Less than an hour later, José swaggered around the campground, gesturing wildly with his hands and vocalizing at maximum volume, seemingly oblivious to the frightened families looking on.

Later that evening, after José had been passed out in the tent for several hours, Kocher and I sat in the back of his van, conversing in hushed tones. On the eve of his planned departure, I was trying in vain to think of an angle that would convince him to continue paddling with us.

Kocher could hear the turmoil raging in my brain. To avoid being confronted with it, he inventoried the food he had accumulated for us, some of which had been stored in the van for the past few days. “A half pound of gouda cheese,” he reported in a monotone. “Three dozen garlicflavored crostinis; two sacks of salted and shelled pistachios; three half-pound pouches of teriyaki beef jerky; one large sack of organic dried fruit; two packages of Fig Newmans.”

This went on until the eastern skies glowed faintly amber, and culminated in one final exhausted exchange.

“Are you sure you’re not coming?”

“I wish I could, brother.”

By the time the sun rose over the prairie on the Minnesota side of the river I had organized everything into two piles. Gear that was already damaged (camera) or deemed superfluous (screen tent) was stacked to my left. Gear deemed vital (GPS unit, water purifiers, maps, clothing, food) was stacked to my right.

I passed out in the back seat of the van for a couple hours, then awoke to the sound of Kocher slamming open the van’s side door, nearly scalping me. He yanked the Duluth packs past my face and onto the grass. “Time to get up,” he commanded. “I gotta get home to the dogs, and I got a ton of work around the house before I go back to work.” I could tell Kocher was feeling bad about leaving us, and perhaps a bit envious.

I managed to slow him down somewhat. We ate breakfast in Fargo, then drove to a sporting goods store to score a new rain jacket for me.

Upon returning to the campground, Kocher remained in the van. He refused to snap photos and declined to help carry gear to the river’s edge. He didn’t even wave farewell after we loaded the canoe. He simply drove off before we paddled away.

The canoe was strikingly lighter without Kocher, but it would take some time for us to get used to the new balance. José rode high in the bow, and had to reach to get his paddle in the water.

It took two hours to paddle five miles into a warm wet headwind. When we reached Fargo North Dam, we portaged around the low-head, stepping precariously across a field of white retaining stones that slipped like basketballs beneath our boots. José carried a pack and the paddles. I carried the canoe overhead, the yoke burrowing into my shoulders.

Some 200 yards downstream, I set the canoe down at the end of a frothing churn. And as I did so, I said hello to a Native man fishing with his two little boys, their bobbers swirling in the fizz.

When José heard the guy was Anishinaabe from the nearby White Earth Reservation, he shifted into high gear, eager to demonstrate what Lakota people can do. Leaping from rock to rock, José bounded past the dam, hefted the food barrel and equipment pack onto his shoulders, and started back on trembling knees. Watching him trip and twist under the burden, it was easy to imagine José popping a fibula. But he eventually disgorged his load in a heap beside the canoe, sniffed at the fisherman and his boys, and shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

The little boys, with matching buzz cuts, begged for a canoe ride. We told them it wasn’t safe to paddle in the rapids without a life jacket. The man asked lots of questions, then said that what we were doing sounded “pretty cool.”

Finally, we shoved off.

“They got Indians!” José whispered back over his shoulder. “I thought it was going to be all rednecks up here.” I could hear the pride in his voice, and knew he thought he had impressed them.

“Hey,” yelled the older boy from shore, “where are you going?”

José turned back to him and smiled. “Hudson Bay, my nigga!”