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Chapter III

Drawing the Line

At one time or another we all adhere to boundaries, borders and lines in our lives. They help us establish our territories, define our relationships, set sight on our goals, or just bring some semblance of order to a world that all too often appears chaotic. Somehow, though, it’s not adhering to pre-existing boundaries but creating new ones, or defying established ones, that define us most. Heroes and fools, geniuses and social misfits know what it’s like to do so. A person’s actions can create a boundary just as their other actions can challenge and break a boundary down. My involvement with South Moresby and Rediscovery would soon put me at both ends of that spectrum, though it would confound me how I got there.

Arriving back in Skidegate in July 1973 after my kayak trip through South Moresby left me in a bit of a quandary and had me asking myself, “What exactly am I doing on the Queen Charlotte Islands?” I decided to press on back to my cabin in Alaska, my original goal when Stormy had detoured me with her cloud-busting trick back in Prince Rupert. I needn’t return to the mainland to do so, I reasoned; I could paddle back to Alaska across Dixon Entrance. If the Haida could make this sixty-kilometre crossing in their dugout canoes, surely I could do the same in my kayak, I thought with all the self-assurance and blissful ignorance of a twenty-three-year-old convinced of his immortality.

Rather than deal with the long, shelterless northeast shores of Graham Island, the largest of the 150 Haida Isles, and treacherous Rose Spit, I decided to head north through Masset Inlet from Port Clements, a small logging-based community in the heart of Graham Island. According to Haida legend, this passage was made possible by Taaw, the younger brother of a larger hill by the same name. These hills, it is said, once resided side by side in the centre of Graham Island until the two brothers had a dispute over who was eating too much of the food. One night the younger Taaw left his sibling in a rage and stomped out across the bogs in the dark. His aimless wanderings carved out what is now Masset Inlet, an unusual body of water that extends from a wide bay near Port Clements fifty kilometres down a long, narrow channel to Old Massett at the mouth of the inlet. When Taaw reached the shores of Dixon Entrance he continued wandering east along the beach until he came to the mouth of the Hiellen River. Taaw looked out over the twenty kilometres of glistening white sand that forms the Great North Beach and knew he’d found his new home. Here was food in abundance: razor clams, cockles, weathervane scallops and Dungeness crabs that washed in on the big storm tides and piled up like windrows along the beach.

From the top of Taaw (Tow Hill) today, one can look out from this ancient volcanic basalt plug and view Masset Inlet to the west and Rose Spit to the east. Naikoon, “the nose,” was the name the Haida gave this great sandspit that extends out into Dixon Entrance and marks the boundary with Hecate Strait. East coast erosion from the prevailing southeast winds is depositing sand at the tip of Rose Spit so fast that the land is growing two to three kilometres ahead of the colonizing vegetation.

The Great North Beach is noted for another reason—it is the sacred site of Haida creation. It was here, legend tells us, that a bored but ever curious Raven heard sounds emanating from a cockleshell on the beach. Prying open the strange bivalve, Raven inadvertently released the first humans—the Haida.

I was thankful to Taaw for the passage he had created as I raced out of Masset Inlet in my kayak on the strong ebb tide that midsummer morning. It seemed amusing that an early European explorer had once sailed to the head of this inlet thinking he had found the fabled passage to the Orient.

I stopped briefly at Yan, a lovely ancient village site opposite Old Massett at the mouth of Masset Inlet, and then proceeded out into the open waters of Dixon Entrance. I could see that a storm was beginning to brew but foolishly pressed on toward Langara Island. A pod of feeding killer whales surfaced from directly below me, giving me quite a start. The sea grew dark and threatening; steep breaking waves compounded the huge swells rolling in off the open Pacific and the wind built to gale force. There were no boats in sight and no apparent landing beaches; only kayak-crunching waves exploding on fortress-like rocky headlands. I needed to find shelter, fast. The orcas appeared again, nearer to shore, and one of them breached in a spectacular display, which couldn’t help but catch my eye even amid the storm. It was a good thing I looked, for directly behind the breaching whale I spotted a narrow opening into a small bight. Riding the breaking swell, I shot through the passage into a perfectly calm harbour where a dozen salmon trawlers were tied up at a floating dock. The place was called Seven Mile and it was a harbour day, with the entire fleet sitting out the storm. All eyes turned on me in astonishment as I paddled my seventeen-foot canvas kayak in out of the storm. “It’s a good thing the Lord looks after fools,” was the only comment I elicited from a fleet of fishermen looking down on their first kayak sighting in these waters.

The next day dawned bright and cheery, and if the sea wasn’t exactly calm, neither was it life-threatening. I set out at dawn and paddled westward along with the trawlers. Virago Sound acts like a great funnel, drawing boats into Naden Harbour, another important Haida heritage site. Sitting on the western point of land that constricts the passage to Naden Harbour is the strategically positioned but serene setting of Kung. The ancient village site of Kung gave me the feeling of coming in out of the storm; it probably gave its ancient inhabitants the same sense of security.

The following day I pressed westward and camped at Pillar Bay, where a stunning conglomerate of rock pillar stands proud of the water a hundred metres offshore at high tide. Some say a shaman’s bones rest atop the thirty-five-metre pillar. It would certainly take superhuman powers to place a corpse or the bones of the deceased there.

Working my way up the east coast of Langara Island, I kept a close eye on the weather and the southernmost of the Alaskan islands, barely visible across the sixty-kilometre expanse of Dixon Entrance. A lighthouse stood on Langara Point and another across the entrance at Cape Muzon, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. My plan, which seems absurd in retrospect, was to depart Langara Point at first light, paddle all day and through the night using both light stations as beacons to guide me in the dark. I had calculated that I could paddle thirty kilometres a day, meaning I should be able to reach Alaskan shores by dawn the next morning. What I had not accounted for was fog that, more often than not, obscures both light beacons, currents running east and west through the passage—which can pull a kayak completely off course—and the prevailing southeasterly wind. The wind in particular would prove my nemesis.

The Haida, I learned later, never set off for Alaska from Langara Island, but from Tow Hill on North Beach so that if the prevailing wind, a southeaster, came up, they still had a chance of reaching Dall Island in Alaska before being blown out into the open Pacific. My route would likely have put me in Korea.

I felt a bit anxious about my uncertain adventure when I pushed off from a beach on Langara in my kayak, but I was well rested and well stocked with bannock, dried fruit, nuts and adequate fresh water. The swells rolling in off the Pacific were on average two to three metres, but the surface waters were calm, at least until midday. Langara Island was growing distant behind me when the wind came up on the turn of the tide. The eastwardly flooding tide now encountered strong resistance from the southeast wind and the seas built up alarmingly fast. Learmonth Bank, a submerged shoal that would be a substantial-sized island if sea levels dropped a few metres, was directly on my course and the tide was ripping dangerously over it. With the wind stiffening, I had to make a decision as if my life depended upon it—and it did! After a blast of wind and a breaking wave spun my kayak around, I got the message. Years later, Haida elders would tell me that 180-degree kayak spin had nothing to do with weather. “You were sent back to us,” they insisted.

It was well after dark when I found myself wearily trying to work my way through huge breakers rolling over the reefs on the west side of Langara Island. At least I was in the lee of the southeasterly storm, and I could smell the reassuring aroma of land. The flood tide drew me into Parry Passage, where I searched the dark shores in vain for somewhere to land my craft. It was well past midnight when a glowing white beach of crushed clamshells appeared like a ghostly apparition in the dark and I was finally able to pull ashore. I had been cramped in the kayak for eighteen hours, using a bailer for a toilet and drawing my strength from adrenalin more than food. Now my body wanted to collapse, and it did. Too exhausted to pitch my tent, I cuddled up in a dry spot under an old cedar log lying under a grove of young spruce trees. All night long I wrestled with demonic dreams, sea monsters in wild waves and wrens singing for lost souls beneath weathered totem poles.

It was nearly noon before I awoke the next day and wiped the sleep from my eyes, only to wonder if I wasn’t still dreaming. The huge ovoid eyes, flared nostrils and thick lips of a Haida totem pole stared back at me from my place of slumber. Later, I would learn I had inadvertently landed at Yaku, another abandoned Haida village site, and had unknowingly slept under a collapsed totem pole.

I was famished and almost instinctively headed for the tidal zone for food. Thousands of tiny clam geysers spouting from the tidal flats suggested at least one good reason why this village was located here. I was so absorbed in digging for butter clams and littlenecks that I failed to notice a dozen kids sneaking up behind me. Suddenly I was surrounded by the twenty-four muddy gumboots and wet sneakers of a gaggle of Haida teenagers. “What are you doing?” they asked as they looked down at me.

“Digging clams,” I answered matter-of-factly. “What are you guys up to?”

“Watching you,” came the cheeky but very Haida reply.

The Haida youth were all from Old Massett and were working on an archaeological dig at nearby Kiusta Village, another ancient Haida habitation site. One of the boys, Lawrence Jones, in the spirit of Haida hospitality, invited me over to their camp for lunch. I jumped at the invitation; the clams could wait. It was a simple meal of soup and salmon sandwiches, but it seemed like a feast to my famished body. I was so delighted to be safe and in the company of people again that I offered to wash all of the camp dishes. This made me instantly popular with the kids on chore duty and provided a casual opportunity to visit with Nick and Trisha Gessler, the archaeologists overseeing the excavation.

When Nick learned that I had studied anthropology at Michigan State University, he told me they were short staffed and could employ me temporarily while I awaited calmer weather to make the crossing to Alaska. In retrospect, I think he was merely trying to save my life from another foolish attempt at crossing Dixon Entrance. I accepted the generous offer, moved my kayak and camp to Kiusta, and started working on the dig. Kiusta had been the site of the earliest contact with Europeans and the first foreign trade on Haida Gwaii; it offered great promise of significant archaeological finds and insights into that era.

Nearly every day after work hours, Nick and Trisha would encourage me to hike the Kiusta trail that led to a beach on the west coast. I had seen and camped on so many beautiful beaches from Alaska to Honduras over the past eight months that I was in no rush to do so. It was more than a week before I followed their advice.

The kilometre-long trail through pristine rainforest was enchanting, but Lepas Bay itself was more breathtaking than any bay I had ever beheld. A crescent-moon-shaped bay of fine ivory sand framed two lovely offshore islands, one a grassy seabird colony, the other cloaked in old-growth forest. A creek divided the beach and bordered a great rocky outcrop that cut off the northwestern edge of the bay at high tide. For some inexplicable reason I found myself drawn in that more difficult direction.

After climbing the cliffs above the crashing waves, I headed to the far western end of the bay. Dramatic sea stacks adorned in bonsai-like conifers, lush salal, ferns, red columbine, bluebells and yellow cinquefoils rose from the white sands as bold and beautiful as the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The waters on this end of the bay reflected the jade green of the surrounding forest with sky blue in the shallows gradually deepening to the dark cobalt of the open sea. Eagles nested on the westernmost point, deer grazed peacefully in a meadow of beach grass and a family of otters frolicked over the rocks. All my childhood drawings suddenly came alive in this place. I was home.

A strange compulsion had come over me; I had to do something here. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but hours later when I returned to Kiusta I found myself as bewildered as the Gesslers with my words: “I don’t think I’m going to work on the archaeological dig anymore, but could I please borrow a hammer, a saw and a handful of nails? I’m going to build a log cabin on Lepas Bay.”

Towering above the beach, this is one of several dramatic sea stacks at Lepas Bay, a place I came to love like no other.

Several weeks later, when the octagonal cabin made of beach logs was already three rounds of logs high, the utter absurdity of what I was doing finally sank in. I already had a cabin in Alaska. Why was I building another one in a country where I couldn’t legally live or work to support myself? I was discussing this dilemma with the Project Kiusta youth around their dinner fire one evening in late August when Clarence, the Tsimshian skipper of a salmon packer named the Ogden, dropped by the camp to say goodbye. “I’m making the last run of the season to Prince Rupert,” he announced. “Anyone need a ride?”

Bringing an end to three months of solitude, a friend unexpectedly arrived on Lepas Bay and shot this photo of me in 1973 erecting the final round of logs on the Navajo hogan–styled roof of my cabin.

Before I was fully aware of the move I was making I had my kayak disassembled and stowed back into the two storage bags, my tent dropped, and all my gear aboard the departing Ogden. The entire Project Kiusta team gave me a rousing send-off from the shore where countless guests had been welcomed and seen off for thousands of years. I sat out on the open deck watching the shores of Haida Gwaii fade away in the dark. I was finally returning to my home and friends in Alaska after a nine-month odyssey. I had come to the Queen Charlotte Islands on a whim and I was leaving on a whim; this was just another stopover on a grander journey. So why was I fighting back tears all the way to Prince Rupert?

A few days later, kayaking west of Ketchikan, Alaska, I really began to think I’d made the wrong move. A storm came up so suddenly that I had to make an emergency landing on a barren rock island with an automated light beacon. I swamped the kayak in a breaking wave near shore, and while I struggled to save my craft and myself, the storm devoured my tent, sleeping bag and most of my food provisions. I had to spend the most miserable night of my life cold, wet and hungry, seeking refuge from the wind behind the only shelter this island had to offer—a steel sign that read, “US Government Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.” I wished I’d stayed on Haida Gwaii.

When the storm abated nearly thirty hours later, I limped back to Ketchikan in my damaged kayak and set out to re-equip myself with a second-hand tent, sleeping bag, a cooking pot and some grub, all purchased with the small earnings I’d made working at Project Kiusta. In Ketchikan, quite by accident I bumped into a logger I’d met at the Gildersleeve Logging Camp back in December. He had bought a boat and was working as a salmon trawler now, and he offered to drop me off at Cape Muzon. Nearly a month after my aborted attempt to cross Dixon Entrance, I found myself at the beachhead I was striving toward.

The paddle up the west coast of Prince of Wales Island was marred only by the clear-cut scars on the slopes, some of which I’d contributed to in El Capitan Pass. I could see and feel the presence of Haida and Tlingit peoples in this region everywhere, from the intertidal zones where I discovered a beautifully carved stone net weight to the shell middens along shore where the wives of loggers were sometimes seen passing their idle hours by digging (illegally) for glass beads and other artifacts at old village sites. There were living communities too, like Hydaburg, where I enjoyed the local restaurant’s specialty, a Hydaburger, and the Tlingit village of Kate on Kuiu Island, where no one spoke a word to me for two days until it was time for my departure. What I mistook for the rude cold shoulder turned out to be cultural protocol. Strangers had to be observed carefully, often for several days, before being approached in greeting.

One of the most harrowing days of my Southeast Alaska adventure was crossing Frederick Sound, a thirty-kilometre expanse of open water connecting three major inside water passageways where tidal currents ran strong and winds could whip up the waters in minutes. As on my ill-fated attempt at crossing Dixon Entrance, I required a long period of good weather to complete the fifteen-hour crossing of Frederick Sound. This sound also had cross-currents compounding kayak navigation difficulties, so once again I set off at dawn and once again I encountered rough weather midway across. My destination that day was Admiralty Island. Tlingit elders back in Kate had cautioned me again and again, “Whatever you do, don’t camp at Tyee.” Tyee is the name for the southern end of Admiralty Island where three rivers converge to meet the sea. It was late August, prime salmon-spawning season, and huge brown bears were converging here to put on winter fat. Admiralty Island boasts the world’s highest concentrations of Alaska brown bears; they outnumber people living on the island three to one. The Tlingit’s name for the island is Kutznahoo (Fortress of the Bears), and one requires but a single encounter with these eight- to twelve-hundred-pound carnivores to understand the local reverence.

It was nearly dark before I reached the shores of Admiralty; the tide was ebbing south down Chatham Strait and I didn’t have enough strength left in my arms to buck the current. Against my better judgment, and the more than ample warning from others, I found myself landing on the beach of my worst nightmare, Tyee. Half a dozen brown bears were fishing for salmon in the shallow channels spreading out across the broad, muddy tidal flat. I had to haul my kayak and all my gear through ankle-deep mud to get above the tide line, all the while trying to not attract the attention of or provoke the extremely territorial bears. I was utterly exhausted and long past any boost adrenalin could give, having battled threatening seas all day. An old abandoned trapper’s cabin perched on the edge of the forest became my all-consuming goal. If I could make it inside I’d be safe, I reassured myself. A huge bruin caught my movement and started to follow me across the tidal flats at a slow but determined pace. I rushed for the cabin, threw my gear inside and bolted the door. I was famished and exhausted and just about to pull out some trail mix and spread my bedroll when I heard clawing and biting on the wooden door. I must have passed out, because I awoke the next morning beside my backpack fully dressed and wearing muddy gumboots. Fear, exhaustion, or both, had taken their toll.

Paddling the west coast of Admiralty over the next week was exhilarating and more than a little unnerving. The snow-capped mountains of Baranof and Chichagof Islands across Chatham Strait glistened in the sun, but they also created williwaws—strong blasts of wind that rebounded off the high mountainsides and struck the strait with a vengeance. Tidal currents were especially pronounced and it just wasn’t worth the effort to buck tide. Pulling ashore to wait out the tidal change or to make camp for the night usually involved a brown bear encounter. You feel very small indeed when both of your feet fit easily into an Alaska brown bear footprint on the beach where you pull ashore, or when one of these beasts rises up from its grazing in tall shore grass and lets you know with teeth-chomping certainty that it was there first.

Angoon, the only community on Admiralty Island, is an ancient Tlingit site and a delightful living community today. I enjoyed many hours during a rest layover there listening to the elders’ tales over bannock and Labrador tea.

I happened upon another opportunity for income when I arrived by kayak in Hoonah, a small Tlingit village on the north end of Chichagof Island where I was offered a job aboard a salmon packer operating in Icy Strait. My job was simple: to weigh and determine the species of salmon being sold to the packer boat, then to poke ice into the body cavities as I packed the fish into ice bins, belly side up, in the ship’s hold. It was not a bad job; the pay was good and the scenery in Icy Strait was sublime with humpback whales breaching, eagles circling the fleet and sea otters bobbing in the kelp beds. Still, I longed to continue my journey.

It was already mid-September when I finished the packer job and set off again in my kayak for Glacier Bay. Not long after departing Hoonah, I stopped to wait out the tide on a small island at the entrance of Icy Strait that was overgrown in berry bushes. While working my way inland through the thick salal, munching ripe berries by the mouthful, I suddenly came face to face with Kushtaka, the legendary Tlingit Land Otter Man who can transform himself from animal to human and back again. I remembered having seen a photo of him in a book somewhere. The Haida recognize this same animal/spirit being, whom they call Slugu, and it is always an uncertain encounter. I was completely taken aback to suddenly come upon this lifelike face carved in stone and standing at my height in the bushes. It was a mortuary carving on a gravesite island, I came to realize, and quickly departed the isle.

I camped on the south side of Icy Strait the night before the long crossing to guarantee an early start. Shortly after I pushed off from the small beach a heavy fog rolled in, and I spent the entire day trying to navigate the strait without a compass. It was evening before I spotted land again and, as luck would have it, a perfect little landing beach appeared before me through the parting fog. I was thrilled. I had made it safely across the strait—or so I thought. Something was strangely familiar about this beach, and my morning footprints in the sand, crossed over by land otter tracks, confirmed it. I had paddled all day through the dense fog in a huge circle and arrived right back where I’d set off twelve hours earlier. Somewhere there was a lesson in that, or Kushtaka just has a mischievous streak.