Chapter 4
I kept Audacity well out to sea, having no wish to be thrown around as I had been at Cape York. Wales sits at the northwestern foot of the more than 600-metre-high cape that bears its name. The williwaws off that sheer cliff were rumoured to be unpredictable and of murderous intent. I had no desire to play with them.
Wales is the most westerly point on the North American mainland. Only 80 kilometres separate it from the Siberian land mass; it is only half that distance from Big Diomede, a Siberian island, and its neighbour, Little Diomede, which belongs to Alaska. In between runs the International Date Line.
Although it sits on a flattened rise, with a row of single-storey buildings atop the dunes, Wales has a long, gently shelving beach that stretches a few hundred metres offshore at low tide. Such beaches are difficult to land on at any time. With a rolling swell and waves breaking on the beach from far out, it offered an interesting prospect. I cruised back and forth outside the breakers for a while, trying to make up my mind where the surf diminished enough to warrant an attempt.
Two figures on the beach gestured for me to aim directly for them. Having little alternative, I selected an inbound roller and rode up its back. Constantly adjusting the throttle, I rode ashore with the wave. At the last possible moment, before the propeller could bite into the sea bed, I turned off the motor, tilted it to raise the propeller and became a surfer. We got swamped by the next wave as soon as the bow hit, but I was already overboard and dragging at Audacity to pull her ashore. The two men, both Inupiat, waded in up to their knees and gave me some considerable help. As I thanked them, a crowd of small boys raced down the beach, shouting excitedly. They were mesmerized by Audacity. None of them had seen a boat quite like her before.
“Can you help me find Albert Mazzona?” I asked the kids.
“Come on,” a chorus of young voices rang out. Together we trooped up the beach to the village. Outside a wooden shed, one of the boys pointed. “There. He’s in there.”
I introduced myself to Albert, who had been expecting me to arrive sometime that week, and told him how much fuel I needed. I had phoned Albert from Nome after a local gas station owner gave me his name. It was a quick and easy task to fill the two empty tanks, but lugging them back to Audacity was a major chore—they each weighed roughly half as much as me. Albert was no slouch. He took hold of one side; I took the other. Grunting with the effort, we carried them one at a time down the slope, across the beach, and repositioned them in the boat. The tank I had repaired in Port Clarence was still leaking. I gummed the crack with another thick layer of silicone but left the fuel level just over halfway.
That afternoon, soon after my arrival, an open boat came ashore from Diomede. I noted with interest that as soon as the crew of four had pulled their craft up the beach out of reach of the waves, they took a compass bearing on their home.
“If that fog comes back in, we want to know which way to go,” one of the Inupiat crew told me.
The people of Wales claim that when Diomede Island (they don’t distinguish between the two) is visible it will be a good day. Both islands could be clearly seen. Perhaps, I reasoned, the current visibility augured well for the next day.
My plan to call Penny fell through. The village telephone system was out of order. Albert suggested I could use one of the military’s phones at Tin City. Armed with his supposedly up-to-date knowledge, I decided to hike over the cape to make my call. With the ebbing tide so far out and Audacity temporarily stranded nearly 60 metres up the beach, I had little to do for a few hours. A strenuous walk in the hills could only be beneficial to my leg muscles. Out where the waves and land met, an onshore wind, blowing solidly off the Siberian wilderness, forced the surf ashore in a constant crashing of foam.
Cape Prince of Wales is big and its slopes are steep. It’s a stiff climb from the settlement to the summit. Once off the dunes I found a vague pathway up the talus to a narrow but obvious trail. Bordered by tufts of coarse grass, it was easy enough to follow. By the time I had scrambled to the top, my breathing was laboured and my legs felt like lead.
Looking south, the Bering Sea, northernmost part of the Pacific Ocean, narrowed itself to the strait. North, the Chukchi Sea, a substantial portion of the Arctic Ocean, reached to meet the Bering. There are only a few remote places on earth where one can see two major oceans at the same time. Cape Prince of Wales is one of them.
The view across the Bering Strait to the Diomede Islands and beyond to the Siberian mainland—I was looking at distant Cape Dezhnev—was stupendous. It made my exertion worthwhile. Thinking back to the weather reports I had received in Nome, I tried to imagine what 65-knot winds could do to the narrow, relatively shallow, Bering Strait. The image of gigantic waves hurling themselves at the settlements on either side was disturbing.
Wales, lying far below, straggled along a rise of land among coastal sand dunes. The wooden houses, a store and a church looked like children’s toys from so far above. I doubted that the settlement had changed much since the day, a century earlier, when Lieutenant Jarvis arrived there to meet resident missionary and reindeer herd owner Thomas Lopp, his wife Ellen and their four children. Perhaps the quality of construction had improved, but not much more.
When the Trans-Siberian railroad was completed in 1901, there was considerable interest in connecting it to a proposed Alaskan Railroad. Over half a century earlier, William Gilpin—the first territorial governor of Colorado—envisaged a rail link between east and west. He dreamed of a train ferry to bridge the gap over the Bering Strait. Later there was talk of a tunnel, or a bridge, to span the strait. Harry De Windt, an Englishman, travelled from Paris to New York, via Siberia, by rail and by sleigh. He crossed the Bering Strait to Wales on a U.S. Revenue cutter and continued overland to the east coast. On arrival in New York, he concluded that the cost to tunnel or build a bridge would be prohibitive.
There was once a land bridge. Somewhere between 26,000 BC and 9,000 BC, the link between two continents was formed by some as-yet-unknown force of nature. Around 8,600 BC the first people migrated from Asia to the Americas. Almost certainly the early arrivals passed through the site of present-day Wales. No one knows how many individuals, or ethnic groups, made the crossing, or even why they came. Perhaps they were searching for food. Perhaps they made the journey to avoid more dominant tribes. Perhaps they were simply curious as to what lay on the other side. Archaeological evidence has shown that they roamed far and wide across the new continent, so the urge to discover new lands was definitely part of their motivation.
Somewhere around 2,500 BC, the land bridge was severed. Where once people hunted on land, icy waters flowed as they had aeons before. Once again the two vast continents became separated. Scientists have still not determined whether the land bridge disappeared as a result of glacial action, continental drift or some form of dramatic geological activity beneath the surface.
During the long winters the recently formed—in geological time—Bering Strait is a confusion of rafted hummocks of ice. In summer it is plagued by fog, high winds and violent storms. To cross it, or be on it, during either season is an undertaking not to be attempted lightly. When the tide returned, bringing high water with it, I would enter the Bering Strait.
For now, I turned from the view and resumed my trek to Tin City. Albert Mazzona, and his brother Frank, had warned me of a polar bear’s den up on top of the cape. I carried my shotgun with me on the hike in case it was necessary to fire a warning shot to deter an interested bear. Polar bears exist to hunt for food. To eat they have to kill. A walking, living, breathing polar bear is Death camouflaged in a yellowish white fur coat. The shotgun was a necessity. Although I had no desire to pull the trigger, I was looking forward to a glimpse of a white bear in the wild. It wasn’t to be. The weather ruined any possibility of a sighting by sending in thick rolling waves of sea fog from the south soon after I reached the top. Cold and clammy, it wrapped itself over and around the cape and enveloped me in its dampness. Within minutes my view was completely obliterated in all directions.
Rather than risk falling off the sheer cliff, or coming face to face with a hungry bear, I decided to retrace my steps to sea level. It was, as it turned out, a wise decision. The fog was still heavy over the cape and smothering Wales at midnight.
Tired from my exertions, I pitched my tent on the beach beside Audacity. For dinner I heated a can of chicken stew. Soaked up with fresh bread, it was delicious. In the evening I walked for a while close to the sea, watching its mood and preparing myself for the next challenge. That night was bitterly cold, with rain, strong winds and bone-chilling damp creeping up from the shingle beach, but after the strenuous exercise of scaling the cape, and with a full belly, I slept reasonably soundly in spite of the weather.
The following morning I crawled out of my tent to see the sun beaming welcoming rays at the Diomede Islands. I stretched and yawned, a smile spreading over my face. A perfect day lay ahead from the look of it.
To get rid of the aches and pains and loosen my muscles, I walked briskly to the far end of the village and another view of the sea. Taking off my fur boots and thick woollen socks, I stood with my bare feet in the cold water. I was paddling in the Bering Strait! It was no warmer than the sea had been off Port Clarence a few days before, but I enjoyed it considerably more. At that moment I was farther west than any other person on continental North America.
That childish activity out of the way, I dried my feet, replaced my footwear and went in search of help to launch Audacity—still well out of reach of the waves. The tide, of course, had come in and ebbed again while the coast was fogbound.
On the way back to the beach, taking a detour behind the village, I found the weather-worn frame of a large skin umiak. Part of its tattered covering of walrus hide remained, flapping raggedly in the breeze. The boat obviously hadn’t been used for a long time. I wondered how much work would be involved to re-cover the frame and get the umiak ready for sea again, ready for the annual walrus hunt.
Each year as the ice breaks up, scattered floes drift through the Bering Strait. Many support large populations of slumbering walruses. As many as a quarter of a million of the ungainly tuskers are said to spend the winters on the edge of the Bering Sea pack ice. From the time the ice breaks up until about the end of June, the Inupiat hunt them from umiaks powered by outboard motors, shooting them with rifles while the walruses rest on the ice. Traditionally walrus were hunted for food and for hides. The latter could be stretched and used to cover the wooden framework of umiaks. In more recent years the ivory tusks, like the vertebrae of whales, have been carved and sold for additional revenue.
Everywhere I visited on my voyage I was offered carvings, some artistically good, some extremely poor. An occasional exceptional carving was tempting, but I had no intention of adding to my load, and reducing my fuel money, with such trivialities.
Some years back many Inupiat hunters began to resemble their East African counterparts. Simply put, they went trophy hunting. Rather than hunt and kill a walrus for its hefty blubber-lined hide and its tonne of meat, which could sustain a number of families for many days or weeks, the hunters went out only for ivory. They didn’t need the blubber: oil for their lamps was readily available. The meat was no longer so important. A wide variety of foodstuffs were sold in the local store. And the once ubiquitous sled dogs, which always enjoyed a feast of raw walrus, had, in many villages, been replaced by snowmobiles. The situation reached a point where, in one month during 1981, a reported half-million dollars worth of uncarved walrus ivory was for sale on the black market.
By the time I got to the region, in early August, the walrus herds were scattered all over the Bering and Chukchi seas. Nowhere on my voyage did I encounter a single walrus. Seals and sea lions I saw in abundance; no walruses. Only a few remains came to light—some carved ivory and a few polished souvenirs.
A loud buzzing overhead broke into my reverie, announcing the approach of a small plane. A short while later, Arnie and Clara Johanssen walked down the beach to greet me with warm hugs and big smiles. Clara told me they were only stopping for an hour, then flying on to Shishmaref and Kotzebue. Arnie proudly announced that he had piloted the plane from Brevig Mission and performed a perfect touchdown on the sand at Wales. I asked them to let Steve Dahl at Shishmaref know that I was on my way to his parish. A short time later, with Clara at the controls, they flew low overhead, banked away from the cape and set course for the northeast. The next time I saw them was in Vancouver, about three years later.
Soon after they left, Albert came to the boat to tell me the phones were working again. I managed a quick call to Penny to update her on my progress.
“Where have you been?” she asked as soon as she heard my voice. “I’ve been waiting for this call for days. You promised to call from Teller.”
I explained the problems and warned her not to rely on my calls. The farther north I went, the greater the potential for communications breakdown would become. It’s an interesting paradox that my expedition was a wilderness voyage, yet I was able to remain in reasonably regular contact by telephone, courtesy of the unevenly spaced Inupiat villages. For much of the time, Penny was my only link with the media and with the rest of my family. All reports went through her. It was an onerous and often unsettling task, especially when I didn’t call on schedule—usually due to inoperable systems. Somehow she managed to balance her concern for me with a professional approach to getting my ongoing story told. Without her efforts, we would have received much less publicity for my sponsors.
After the call I had a mug of coffee with Albert and asked if he could get a few extra hands to help me launch the boat. While he rounded up men from various parts of the settlement, I returned to the beach. It was mid-morning and the sky was clearing, the wind well down, and the sea much calmer than it had been for days. The breakers still pounded the shoreline about ten metres from Audacity, but I decided there was limited danger from their attacks. Albert joined me with a team of helpers, all of whom appeared eager to see me back on the sea. One of the men suggested it might be better to put Audacity on the back of a truck and drive her through Wales to nearby Lopp Lagoon—named for the same Thomas Lopp who helped drive the large reindeer herd north to feed trapped whalers near Point Barrow early in 1898.
“From there it’s an easy run, with only a short distance on the sea before the next lagoon. Then you come to Shishmaref,” he explained. “There’s lots of polar bears up toward Shishmaref,” he added, as an apparent afterthought.
There was no decision for me to make. I wasn’t in Alaska to shirk the tougher parts of the journey. There was no way on earth I could be persuaded to bypass the Bering Strait; for me, it was one of the most important stages of the expedition. I could almost hear Glen’s envious voice from a few weeks before: “Man, I can’t believe you’re actually going through the Bering Strait.”
“No thanks,” I replied to the offer of a lift. “It’s the Bering Strait for me.”
And so we bent to the task at hand. With a mighty effort we lifted the fully loaded Audacity and turned her in her own length. Four men took up station on each side. The kids held on where they could—hindering more than helping, but I couldn’t fault their enthusiasm—while I took hold of the bow.
“Okay, everyone,” I called, “HEAVE!” Audacity moved a length closer to the sea. “And again. HEAVE!”
This time she got her forward section into the water. I moved to the stern and lifted as everyone put all their strength into the next push. Audacity raised her bow to the incoming waves and floated free. With a cry of thanks I jumped aboard as willing hands pushed me farther out. I dug my paddle in hard to get Audacity moving, and we surged over the first few waves. A couple more hard strokes put me in deep enough water to use the engine. It started, as usual, on the first pull. I waved farewell to my launch party and steered southwest.
To avoid the constant rough water off Prince of Wales shoals, which extend into the Bering Strait from the last point of land, I deliberately charted a semicircular course that took me south at first—well out to sea. Once there I picked up the icy-cold northbound current, an added form of natural power to assist my passage. Once clear of the shoals, I turned due north and entered the Bering Strait: the western gateway to the Arctic.
The strait has a wicked reputation for being evil-tempered. Its renowned inclemency had always loomed as a huge obstacle in my mind. More often than not, storms thrash both Siberian and Alaskan shores. I had anticipated an extraordinarily rough ride from the Bering Strait to the Chukchi Sea. I was, as it happened, severely disappointed—and just a little relieved.
As I went through the strait, escorted by harbour porpoises on each side, the water was beginning to reflect the inviting blue of a rapidly clearing sky. The strait was calm with only a gentle swell. Nowhere was there a hint of rushing wind, of power- hungry waves. It was a perfect day to be on the sea. Amused by my early fears, I opened Audacity’s throttle wide. Together we created our own bubbling trail of whitecaps as we raced northeast to our next landfall. The porpoises stayed with us for a while, their dark dorsal fins knifing through the water, almost within reach of my hands. They left without any apparent signal. There were four. Then there were none.
The Bering Strait is named after a valiant 18th-century Danish explorer. Vitus Bering was a Dane, but he is best remembered as the leader of Russian explorations into the Arctic seas off Siberia’s east coast. Having apparently forsaken his homeland, Bering earned an exemplary record as a Russian naval officer. In early January 1725, Peter the Great, czar of the Russian Empire, appointed him leader of an expedition to determine, once and for all, accurate details of the Siberian coast north of Kamchatka. One of Bering’s orders was to ascertain whether Russia and the North American mainland were in fact joined by land. If they were, he was to mark such details on a map and return home.
The vanguard of the expedition left St. Petersburg in late January 1725. Ahead of them stretched thousands of kilometres of wild terrain, much of it unexplored. The harsh Siberian winters took such a toll on horses, men and equipment that it was not until April 1728, three years later, that Vitus Bering finally laid the keel of his expedition flagship on the east coast. On June 8 of that year the 20-metre-long St. Gabriel was christened. One month later, with 44 officers and crew aboard, St. Gabriel set sail from Okhotsk for the north. By mid-August Bering had reached his farthest point north, at latitude 67° 18', longitude 193° 7' east of Greenwich—a position roughly 130 nautical miles (240 kilometres) due west of Cape Krusenstern, close to the current International Date Line. Due to the fog, Bering never did see the Alaskan coast. He did, however, achieve considerable results.
With an incredible effort from his crew, he forced a route across the Kamchatka Peninsula—up the Bystraya River and down the Kamchatka River to its mouth. He was the first known European to sight St. Lawrence Island. Without being aware of it, thanks to the fog, he cruised through the strait that now bears his name and discovered and named the Diomede Islands. Although he didn’t see the North American mainland, he did navigate large parts of the Chukchi Sea before returning south. In the spring of 1729, Bering again ventured away from Kamchatka, convinced land lay to the east. Once again he was frustrated in his efforts to reach the American coast. A storm blew his ship south, causing him to inadvertently discover and explore the most southerly point of the Kamchatka Peninsula. He continued to Okhotsk and returned safely to Moscow to tell of his discoveries. He had not, however, fulfilled his commission. He had not discovered at which point, if any, Asia and the Americas were joined.
The year 1741 saw Bering once again sailing out of Okhotsk on another major expedition. On board Bering’s ship, St. Peter, was the German scientist Georg Steller, who lent his name to many wildlife and plant species in the region. The voyage was not a great success in terms of geographical exploration, although the sailors did meet their first North American Aleuts and sighted America at last. Steller’s botanical and zoological discoveries, however, were of immense importance, particularly—in a commercial sense—his reports of vast numbers of whales, huge herds of walrus and thousands of fur seals. Such news had a considerable impact back in Moscow. Vitus Bering, however, never returned to Moscow or to Denmark. He died of scurvy on December 8, 1741, on Bering Island. Nearly half of his crew was already dead from the same malady. Steller survived to continue his scientific observations.
Wales and Shishmaref, the next village on my route, were once important whaling communities. Because the villages are located on the main migration route, where two continents funnel the sea between them, their Inupiat residents rarely had to travel far from land to hunt the leviathans. Now, with whale hunts little more than memories, the people of both communities concentrate their hunting energies on depleting the walrus herds from April to June each year. In addition they take moose and polar bear, waterfowl and fish.
I hadn’t expected to hear of polar bears quite so far south in Alaska. I knew the females preferred to travel inland to make a den, once the ice was gone, while the males tended to patrol the coasts. However, I expected them to be much farther north. Suddenly I had received two warnings of polar bears from the same community. Thinking about the reindeer herds I knew to be in the area, I wondered how many individual animals were lost to the ferocious carnivorous bears each year. With one eye on the sea ahead and one scanning the land, I stayed as close to the shore as I dared, hoping to surprise a big white bear.
There are nine species of bears, and many subspecies, on this earth. For the most part they are confined to the northern hemisphere. Alaska is home to the redoubtable grizzly—largest of the land-based bears—the Kodiak, the black bear and the extremely nomadic polar bear. Thalarctos maritimus, the white bear of the Arctic, is 100 percent carnivore. Completely disinterested in vegetable matter of all kinds, apart from the occasional snack of wild berries when young, the polar bear enjoys seal meat more than anything.
With a potential life span of up to 40 years, polar bears have ample time to perfect their hunting skills. In winter, a bear waits patiently near a seal’s breathing hole in the ice. As the seal surfaces for a lung-full of air, the bear lashes out with one massive, partially webbed forepaw. The wicked claws crash through the thin ice and flip the victim out for dinner. Powerful swimmers, polar bears have been sighted on ice floes more than three hundred kilometres from land. They have also been known to stroll arrogantly, with their rocking shambling gait, down the main streets of small northern towns.
———
It was a glorious day at first. The sky stayed clear and the sea remained calm, though the air was cool. Only a gentle rolling swell reminded me that I was cruising through the famous Bering Strait. A V-formation of ducks, heading south for the winter and flying low to the water, broke ranks and climbed to steer well clear of me. Once they had passed overhead, they took their stations behind the leader again. I looked back, watching them as they flew swiftly out of sight. If they were already heading out of the Arctic, summer had to be nearly over. The winter ice could not be far away.
Not long after the dolphins left me, an ill-defined shape, underwater and close to shore, picked up the cavitation from my propeller. Speeding toward me, it looked like a stocky yellowish torpedo. Unlike a torpedo, it dived at the last possible second and surfaced momentarily on my port side. “Beluga,” I told myself as it rolled on the surface, flicked its creamy white tail at the sky and retreated to the depths. Instinctively I looked around for others, expecting to see a pod of a dozen or more examining me. Nothing. One lone beluga checked me out, without lingering.
The Seward Peninsula is protected along this shore by a string of long narrow islands with shallow lagoons behind them. On one windswept finger of land, a large herd of reindeer kept their muzzles to the ground as we passed. I had been expecting to see such herds, which are privately owned and usually left to forage on the low-lying islands. Apart from the deer, each of the small land masses appeared to be devoid of life. Not a polar bear in sight.
Halfway between Wales and Shishmaref, tucked behind the islands, is Arctic Lagoon. Theoretically, as was suggested in Wales, it should be possible to take a small boat through Lopp Lagoon, then on through the next inland passage and Arctic Lagoon, to avoid many long hours on the rolling sea. Idly I considered the possibility of entering Arctic Lagoon, mainly for the sightseeing value. The need to press on while good weather held deterred me. Later I learned that to travel on water in the lee of the islands required two important factors: high tide and an intimate knowledge of the marshy tundra-lined channels. My well-meaning advisor in Wales had neglected to tell me the full story.
A few kilometres inland, 883-metre-high Brooks Mountain watched in broody silence over the tundra at its feet. I had passed closer to the mountain en route to Wales from Port Clarence, but on that occasion, with the low clouds, the weather was not conducive to studying inland scenery.
Wales and Shishmaref are separated by 67 miles (122 kilometres), an estimated four and a half hours at sea. The Arctic Circle is roughly the same distance due north of Wales. For me, running within sight of the coast at an angle of 45 degrees east of true north, the Arctic Circle was roughly 44 miles (80 kilometres) beyond Shishmaref, bisecting the land near Cape Espenberg. I was getting close.
Thoroughly enjoying the day and being on the sea in excellent weather, I was able to sit back and reflect on the expedition. On good days I smiled to myself, sang sometimes, waved to birds, talked to dolphins and seals, called out greetings to reindeer on shore. I felt in tune with the sea and with the nearby land. My earlier fears had receded—gone, but not forgotten. They would quickly return as soon as the weather closed in and the ceiling of cloud descended to within touching distance, and I would again question my reasons for being there, for living the dream.
When we were abeam of Arctic Lagoon, the wind gambolled in out of the northwest. Around me the seas became playful. Audacity began to roll again. For the next hour and a half the waves continued to increase. I throttled back, cutting our speed by a third. Waves hitting the port pontoon almost beam-on required my absolute attention and careful use of the controls. By the time I came in sight of Shishmaref, the blue sky had faded to grey; my placid ride had become wet and wild. The rising wind stung my eyes and attacked the warmth of my body, trying to draw the comfort from me.
Shishmaref is situated on Sarichef Island. It is flat, only marginally above sea level, and most of the time it is exceptionally windy. The Chukchi Sea has a monotonous habit of pulveriz- ing the flat, featureless shoreline. With the weather closing in, the houses were vague suggestions rather than obvious sturdy structures.
The Inupiat called their island settlement Kigitaq. In 1816, Lieutenant Otto Von Kotzebue of the Russian Navy dubbed the inlet Shishmaref, after Captain Lieutenant Glieb Semenovich Shishmaref—another officer on the same expedition. Archaeological excavations have found evidence that suggests the settlement was inhabited a few centuries before the Russians arrived. As so often happened when explorers “discovered” a new place, little notice was taken of the indigenous inhabitants’ original choice of name.
In Wales, Albert Mazzona had cautioned me to pass Shishmaref and turn in to the inlet, or bay, at the far end. It was safer, calmer and easier, he said, to land in the lagoon behind the village.
Following what I hoped was accurate local advice, I turned Audacity away from the waves and entered the passage between two islands. The tide was on the ebb and my prop hit loose mud a few times, sending rich brown particles revolving through the cold water. At one point I hit hard, the skeg biting deep and the propeller catching on the bottom. The motor raced, out of control, until I shut it right down. On shore a polar bear skin, stretched across a wooden frame, was drying in the wind. Behind it a Cessna light plane stood facing the small village.
Where to land was simply a question of which spot looked most convenient. No point of land was more than half a metre above high-water level. I chose an indentation that appeared to be tailor-made for Audacity. Two boat-lengths out, we struck another mud bank. I tried reverse without success. We were stuck. There was no alternative but to go overboard and tow Audacity the rest of the way.
The slippery mud and the gently sloping shoreline made it hard to walk in the knee-deep water, but easy to get Audacity on land once we got there. Her hull filled the selected tiny natural harbour perfectly. I anchored her to the reasonably hard tundra and added stern lines to two long pegs. Satisfied she was safe for a few hours, I wandered around for a while on soggy grass to find the most comfortable spot to pitch my tent. The red and white Cessna, I discovered, was tied down and unlikely to go anywhere for some time. Its wing and fuselage made a welcome shelter for my flimsy abode.
While I worked, a trio of small boys kicked a football around not far away. Strangely, they showed no interest in me whatsoever, unlike the children at Wales. An adult who was closer to me and seated on a three-wheel motorcycle watched every move I made.
“Do you know where the church is?” I asked him.
“We don’t have a church,” he answered. “It burned down.”
“Where does the minister, Steve Dahl, hold his services then?”
“In the school. He does them in the gym. I can show you where he lives if you want. You’d better get on.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
We introduced ourselves and Warren started his engine.
“Where are you going in that boat?” he asked over his shoulder.
“To Kotzebue first, then on to Barrow. I’ve come up from Nome.”
“That’s a long way. You been travelling long?”
I wanted to say, “All my life.” Instead I shouted, “A couple of weeks.”
Bouncing every inch of the way, I rode pillion along wide metal tracks into the village. When two or three of these metal tracks, originally used to pave military airfields, are placed close together, they make excellent roads on the tundra.
Outside a house that was slightly larger than the others, yet hardly distinguishable from them, we stopped.
“He lives in there.”
I thanked Warren for the lift and squelched to the door. In an alcove on the porch I knocked loudly on the door and bent to pull off my boots.
“Hello, won’t you come in?” The voice was soft and assured. I looked up at Candace Dahl as the door opened. She smiled brightly at me. “Would you like some hot tea?”
“Hi, yes please. I’m Anthony Dalton. I met Steve in Nome last week. He told me to drop by when I got to Shishmaref so—here I am.”
“Oh, I know who you are. Steve told me all about you. And two other friends of yours were here earlier.”
“Arnie and Clara. The daredevil pilots,” I laughed.
Candace thrust a steaming mug of tea into my cold hands. Then, to tempt me further, she held out a plate of freshly baked cornbread, layered with honey. I accepted willingly. My Mustang suit, which had got quite wet while I waded ashore from the lagoon, dripped steadily on the floor.
“If you take that wet suit off, I’ll hang it over the wood stove. It will be dry by morning. You are staying for church tomorrow, aren’t you?”
The next day was Sunday. I had no intention of missing such an opportunity.
Steve was gone from the village for a few hours. I think Candace said he was hunting in the hills beyond the inlet. Once I told her where I was camped, she agreed to send him to find me when he returned. Thanking her for the bread and tea, and for drying my suit, I walked back through the village clad in corduroy trousers, shirt, a thick wool sweater and wolfskin boots. I enjoyed the walk, although my hairy black boots collected a considerable amount of mud on the way.
I spent an hour, late that afternoon, tinkering with Audacity’s engine and rearranging my supplies. It occurred to me that if I went to church the next day I would probably have to launch Audacity at low tide again. Not a comforting thought. As a precaution, I slid her back into the lagoon and moored her securely, leaving enough scope for her to rise or fall half a metre. Satisfied that my boat was as safe as I could make her for the night, I turned my thoughts to a hot meal.
The wind, which often drops in the evening, continued to blow hard from the northwest. I sheltered my stove behind the aircraft fuselage and cooked up a packet of thick vegetable stew.
The buzzing of a motorbike and a loud voice broke into my work. “Hello. You made it. Well done.”
Steve got off his bike and strolled over to shake my hand. We chatted for a few moments and then, as I was about to eat, he offered to pick me up for church in the morning. I had a quiet dinner alone and settled down out of the wind to write my journal. The wind increased in velocity. Twice I went to check on Audacity. I needn’t have bothered. She was well shielded by a hummock of land. The water immediately around her showed hardly a ripple.
I was surprised that the villagers left me alone, expressing little interest in me or my boat. The people of Wales had also kept their distance. I hoped Warren might come back in the evening for a chat, but was disappointed. No one else came close. I went for a walk through the settlement without encountering any adults. Only a few children stared at me, curiosity written on their healthy round faces. I assumed the natural shyness of the Inupiat people made them appear aloof. With my stops in the small scattered settlements necessarily restricted by the urgency of my journey, there was no time to linger and get to know anyone.
Throughout most of the night the wind howled across the island. The dogs, chained outside, joined in, adding their high-pitched cries to the noise as they called their loneliness to an unsympathetic world. I felt like howling with them. For a while I taped the mournful sounds on my recorder so I could take home a vivid audible memory of one aspect of Alaskan coastal village life.
My tent flapped and fluttered. Cold seeped in. I spent an uncomfortable few hours wondering why I felt the need to attend church when I still had so far to go. The fact that organized religion and I were strangers, and had been for a decade or two, did not enter my deliberations. I enjoyed attending unusual church services. The hymns sounded so much more reasonable and believable when sung in foreign languages. I had sat in the back pews of churches in a dozen distant lands—not to pray, but simply to hear the voices raised in song.
I got up about 7:30, cold and damp. To warm myself I made hot oatmeal porridge for breakfast, washed down with a steaming mug of sweet black tea. Audacity was right where I had left her, but no longer afloat. She sat two lengths from the lagoon, surrounded by mud. A new rip in her tarpaulin was evidence of the wind that had tugged at her since the evening before. Quickly I repacked and stowed all gear. When the service was over I planned to get under way immediately.
Church was a moving experience, as it had been in Nome with Penny and Glen. I sat on the upper level of a terrace of wooden benches, rather like bleachers, looking down over dozens of attentive heads to the highly polished gymnasium floor. In Shishmaref the services are conducted in English and in Inupiaq. Steve told his flock about my voyage, about the hardships behind me and still to come. He asked the congregation, all native Alaskans except Candace and me, to join him in a prayer for my safety. Near the end of the service he had them sing an Inupiaq version of a well-known hymn, “For Those in Peril on the Sea.” The strong voices singing a familiar tune in a language I could not understand brought tears to my eyes.
Outside, after the service, some of the men came over for a talk. Without my knowledge, many of them had been out to the lagoon to take a look at Audacity. Again I wondered why they hadn’t stopped by my tent to talk with me. Certainly that morning, among their own kind, they showed no shyness whatsoever. Many were friendly and talkative.
“That’s a good boat,” one said. “And that Johnson’s a strong motor.”
“Keep close in to shore all the way to Cape Espenberg,” another warned me. “There’s rocks a little ways out.”
Knowing the tide was out, Steve drove me back to help me get under way. Three boat-lengths separated Audacity from water. Up to our knees in soft mud, we worked hard for more than hour to manoeuvre her over the ooze to where she could again float as intended. The wet mud created a vacuum between itself and the smooth hull. Breaking that grip each time we tried to lift took strength and determination. We both refused to accept failure, although we both fell full-length in the mud time and again. Steve muttered something that sounded distinctly like a curse as he got up from one fall and wiped mud off his pants.
Once Audacity was well and truly afloat, I shook Steve’s hand, thanking him for his help and his kindness. Before leaving I sat on the seat and pulled on my Mustang suit to keep me warm on the voyage. Thanks to Candace, it was dry and comforting. Steve waded back to shore as I started the motor and began to thread my way carefully through the underwater mounds to the lagoon’s entrance.
He was no sooner out of sight, on his way back home, when Audacity hit hard. I rocked the boat from side to side and backwards and forwards. Putting the engine in reverse, I cranked the throttle open. The water boiled mud and weed. Audacity was stuck. Nothing I did helped.
With no alternative, I stopped the motor and slipped over the side in my dry Mustang suit. I should have gone over the bow. I dropped until the water reached halfway up my thighs. Swearing at the tide, I splashed round the boat, checking for other problems. The water was deep everywhere except where Audacity sat on a rounded pinnacle of submerged muck.
I took hold of the port side and rocked her. She moved without effort. Moving to the bow, I pulled hard, lifting her as I did so. Without my weight on board, Audacity slid free, almost knocking me over and into the lagoon in the process. She was off one problem, but I could see many more obstructions between us and the passage between the islands.
To avoid getting stuck again, I slung the painter over my shoulder, leaned forward and began to walk—slip and slide would be more accurate—toward the sea. It took two hours of hard pulling and stumbling around in the icy water, which varied in depth from a few centimetres to waist deep, before we were clear. Whenever I thought we were in relatively deep water, another projection reared in our path. By the time Audacity was truly afloat and clear of all underwater obstructions, I was wishing I had not stopped in Shishmaref. We could have been in Kotzebue already, refuelled and ready to roll. Instead I was soaked, my legs and lower body were cold and I was filthy dirty again. Finally free of the cloying mud, we returned to the sea.
Heeding the warning about rocks, I ran in fairly deep water (7 fathoms), about 15 metres offshore—which I considered close in. It was either too close or not close enough. I almost ran up on a rock within a mile or so of Shishmaref. I spotted the projection just in time and managed to avoid it with an immediate 90-degree turn to port. Audacity skidded sideways a bit, caught the new course and missed the rocks by a hair.
For much of the rest of the run to Cape Espenberg, I sat on the back of my seat, the additional elevation giving me greater forward vision and more time to avoid subsequent rocks. The lack of a windshield no longer bothered me. The skin of my face had been toughened by the wind and salt spray. Wisps of fog drifted on the sea to port. The sky, refusing to smile, remained grey and forbidding.
A little west and south of Cape Espenberg, the Arctic Circle crosses the land. Estimating the position, based on geographical features and my chart, I went ashore for a few moments to stand with one foot on either side of the invisible line. It was a pointless exercise, but it amused me and gave me a chance to stretch my cramped legs; more important, it let me answer a call of nature.
Back on the sea, a thick fog rolled over Kotzebue Sound toward me from the direction of Kotzebue town. I considered turning due north for Cape Krusenstern and going directly on to Kivalina, effectively bypassing Kotzebue. Such a northerly crossing of the entrance to Kotzebue Sound would take two, maybe two and a half hours, no more. I could save a couple of days and a tank of fuel and cut out a long coastal cruise. That was the route taken by Thomas Lopp with his reindeer herd early in 1898—when the sea was frozen, of course.
As the fog thickened, I debated my next move, unwilling to be caught too far from shore in a pea-souper. In spite of the fog, a chop built up, causing Audacity to lurch from end to end. The propeller kept slipping, making the engine’s revolutions erratic. I assumed hitting the mud banks and sandbars had created that problem. I rejected the northern route, for mechanical reasons in addition to the weather.
For three-quarters of an hour I ploughed due east through short sharp waves. The propeller slipped more and more frequently, causing the engine to race. Knowing the approach to Kotzebue was littered with sandbars, which I did not want to encounter in a fog—especially with a sporadic power problem—I considered the alternatives.
In the direction of the village of Deering (some 40 miles or 74 kilometres south of me), at the southern edge of Kotzebue Sound, a range of hills was clearly visible between Good Hope Bay and Eschscholtz Bay. I could easily cross Eschscholtz Bay and cruise in a semicircle round the south side of the sound, following the curving coast to Cape Blossom, fog or no fog. Or I could go back to Cape Espenberg and haul out on the beach under the shadow of the high cliffs. There I could make camp and wait for the weather to improve, which might take days. I opted for another crossing of the Arctic Circle.
The thick blanket persisted over the sea off the Baldwin Peninsula to port. Devil Mountain stared silently over the tundra to starboard. Occasionally it too disappeared beneath a wispy veil, as if in imitation of the fog embracing the sound. The sea continued to be choppy. Visibility decreased, the swirling clouds surrounding me with a shroud of white. My world shrank alarmingly. It no longer included land. Apart from Audacity and the comforting purr of her motor, there was nothing. No other sounds; no suggestion of civilization. There was just me: a minute focal point in a circle that extended no farther than my own limited horizons.
The fog thickened. Without recourse to modern navigational aids, such as radar, I was supremely aware of the need for vigilance. One sharp-edged, uncharted rock, appearing without warning out of the all-encompassing grey, could rip the air chambers open and sink us in seconds. Survival in those waters, so much farther north than where I’d been knocked overboard off Port Clarence, would once again be conditional on my own efforts and my ability to reach shore quickly—unless fate, the least dependable of all pseudo-deities, was prepared to lend a hand.
My cold, tired eyes flicked back and forth across the bow, straining to see through the murk. With grim humour, I thought of a wonderful quote from an old Arctic prospector: “I can’t say I’ve ever been lost, but once I sure was puzzled for a couple of weeks.”
I wasn’t lost either. I knew I was on Kotzebue Sound in a fog. I just didn’t know exactly where.
Occasionally, still keeping my eyes focused ahead, I shifted in my seat to ease the cramp in my legs, feet and rear end. Although I was well covered in layers of protective clothing, the treacherous cold was still able to creep mercilessly through the fibres, through skin and flesh, to penetrate my bones.
Though time was against me, the short Arctic summer already far advanced, my instincts kept me from behaving rashly. Rather than press on through the fog at speed, I slowed Audacity to a crawl. The compass needle roamed incessantly, apparently unsure where to direct its point. But a straight line drawn from directly below my chin, across the deck and through the middle of the bow, when lined up with my wake, would shepherd me to the base of the red-rimed cliffs west of Deering, whether the compass agreed or not. At times I stood, leaning forward over the dashboard and the strip of rubber where the windshield had been to gain a clearer view. Rarely could I see more than a metre or two in front of the boat.
I detest fog. It represents loneliness to me, and if I’m not focused it affects my judgement. If there really is an all-powerful deity, one who can be everywhere at once, I see no valid reason for such a being to have created fog. The odourless miasma has no discernible uses in the Arctic. Alaska’s plant life has access to plenty of moisture without the droplets dispensed by the fog. It is cold, damp, uncomfortable and, at times, downright frightening. Accidents happen in fog, on land and on the sea.
I kept Audacity to a slow steady rhythm. Ten times a minute I checked my wake to make sure of my direction. Between checks I tried to see under the clammy blanket, constantly worried about unmarked rocks, sandbars, the unknown. I talked to myself much of the time, aware I was making a habit of doing so. Idly I wondered if there was any truth to the commonly held opinion that people who talk to themselves on a regular basis have mental problems. In view of my whereabouts and the job I was doing, I accepted that many people would consider me crazy whether I talked to myself or not. Holding one-sided conversations and checking the compass kept me busy. It took another three hours to talk my way through the fog to a safe haven.
I made my landfall to the west of Deering as the fog lifted. We ran parallel to shore under the imposing shadow of a steep cliff, the face of which was streaked with red. It looked like rust, and I assumed it was from iron deposits in the soil. Deering, like so many of the coastal villages, was tiny. On the beach, two young Inupiat men signalled me to pass the village and pull in to a creek on the east side. After six and a half hours of almost non-stop cruising, with soaking wet feet, I was tired and getting desperately cold again.
“Hello,” Laban Iyatunguk greeted me as I stepped ashore. He introduced himself and added, “This is my cousin, Bobby. You want a hot coffee?”
“Hi, Laban. I’m Tony. Yeah, a mug of coffee would be a blessing right now.”
“Come on in,” Laban invited. “We’ve got a good fire going.”
A few minutes later, minus boots and socks, I stretched my cold feet toward a smoking pot-bellied stove. The fire embraced me with its pungent musky smell of burning wood. The world started to look rosy again.
“It’s getting late,” Laban announced as he handed me a chipped mug of steaming instant coffee. “You can stay here tonight if you want.”
“You can sleep in the house next door,” Bobby added. “It’s empty. There’s no one there.”
“How far you going in that boat?” Laban asked, and then, before I could answer, he surprised me with, “We saw you on television once.”
“Well.” I sipped cautiously at the coffee. It didn’t taste like the coffee I was used to, but it was hot enough to scald. “I started from Nome and I’ve been to Port Clarence, Wales and Shishmaref. Now I’m heading for Kotzebue, then on up the coast to Barrow.”
“Maybe we can help you, Tony,” Laban offered. “We’ve both been up the coast a ways.”
“Help? In what way?” I asked.
Laban stroked his thin black moustache and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “We know this area real well. You got a map there?”
“Sure, I have charts of the coast from here to the North Shore.” I pulled the relevant navigational chart from my bag and spread it on the table. “Okay, this one covers Kotzebue Sound and a long way north. Look, I’ll accept your invitation to stay the night and you can give me some advice. Let me cook you dinner and I’ll tell about my journey as I work.”
With so much more enticing natural fare available on land and in the sea, I doubt that the two had ever eaten reconstituted freeze-dried food before. They seemed to enjoy the unappetizing mixture of goulash, stodgy rice and green peas anyway. After dinner we took a walk round the village and I told them the story of my voyage.
Inupiat boys were fascinated by Audacity at Deering, on the southern shore of Kotzebue Sound.
Anthony Dalton
Few people were about—only a handful of children, and they took no notice of us. By the time we returned to the house, the sun had dropped behind the western hills, leaving the village and the beach bathed in soft amber light. It was peaceful, with no other voices, no people in sight. The fog continued to drift across the sound.
Laban, no more than 25 years old, was the local representative for Alaska Airlines. Bobby, some years younger, made no comment about his own employment. Laban admitted he didn’t have much to do as the flights were infrequent. A visitor in town, especially one arriving from the sea in a small boat, offered an evening of rare entertainment. Both men had obviously travelled much of the coast to the immediate north. They each warned of potential dangers. Of especial benefit, I thought, was a series of crosses they marked on my charts to indicate where there were wilderness cabins, open for use by anyone. The first one was less than two hours away.
“You can get fuel here, with no problem. And here.” Laban tapped his finger on Point Lay and then on Icy Cape. I hoped he was right.
With their help I moved my bags into the spare house. It was empty, as Bobby had said, except for an old single bed, a table and two chairs, and another pot-bellied stove. A pile of wood stood in the corner. Bobby lit the stove while I spread my sleeping bag out on the bed.
When they left, late at night, Laban loaned me his transistor radio so I would have something to listen to other than the dogs. As I lay in my sleeping bag in a room warmed by a wood fire, I listened to the first news I had heard since leaving Nome. An announcer told me that the actor Richard Burton had died. Arguably the most resonant voice in the theatrical world, I was sure he would be missed. That was the only item I retained from the broadcast. Not knowing what was happening outside my own boundaries didn’t concern me. The rest of the world could roll along and do as it wished. I would catch up eventually, when I was ready.
I went to sleep with my garments steaming and drying. Whatever the next day sent, I would greet it wearing dry clothes. With a little care on my part, they would, I hoped, stay that way for a change.
The morning dawned clear over Deering. The Baldwin Peninsula, to the northeast, looked to be still under a cloud—but nothing ominous. I stood outside, studying the weather, until Laban and Bobby joined me for a coffee.
“That fog will clear soon,” Laban predicted. “The sun’s getting warmer already.” He pointed into the distance. “Chamisso Island is over there,” he said. “It’s about 30 miles [55 kilometres]. That’s where that first cabin is.”
I took a compass bearing and checked it against the chart. He was spot on. Both the direction and his estimate of the distance agreed with the facts before me. I changed the slipping propeller for a new one, thanked my latest friends for their hospitality and set off for Kotzebue.
Halfway across the sound I ran into thick fog. I kept to the course Laban had dictated and came abreast of Chamisso Island about an hour and a half from Deering as the murk lifted. Once out of the fog I enjoyed a beautiful day. There was no need to stop on Chamisso. I passed it with little more than a glance.
The new propeller worked perfectly, which made me realize the bushing had gone on the old one. I would keep it in my kit as a spare.
For a while I had nothing to worry about. There’s a deep channel close to the southern edge of the Baldwin Peninsula, so I was able to stay within a few boat-lengths of shore. On the cliffs, among the stunted bushes and congregated on the beach, a large herd of reindeer foraged for food. Later I saw an even bigger herd and wondered if any were descendents of the long-dead reindeer driven north in 1897–98.
Off Cape Blossom, a pod of harbour porpoises frolicked over to greet the intruder in their domain. For a few minutes they played off the port bow, occasionally leaping completely clear of the water. I wondered whether that was due to exuberance or curiosity. Each time they jumped I had the impression I was being carefully inspected.
The coastline varied between rocky headlands and shelving beaches. Out to sea the fog clung tenaciously to the surface. When I was two-thirds of the way to Kotzebue, I crossed the Arctic Circle for the third time in Audacity. I hoped it was the last time until I flew south from somewhere far to the north and east.
Approaching Kotzebue near five o’clock, I slowed to a sea-snail’s pace, having no wish to run aground. An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 flew noisily across the sound in front of me as Kotzebue came in sight. The beach was crowded with small boats. Across the road was a pub. And there on the road, a few paces up from the beach, was a fuel pump. I pulled in and nosed Audacity between two other boats, getting her up the beach as close as I could to the pump, which I quickly discovered was locked. There was no attendant.
While I waited, I checked my load and chatted with Dan Reagan, one of the many young men who work in Alaska to build a nest egg for the future. Dan had watched me arrive and came over to see what I was doing. He told me he was en route to Cominco Mines, his workplace, and was taking a break in Kotzebue before returning to the camp.
With everything properly stowed, I covered the boat tightly with the tarpaulin. The fuel pump was still locked and the owner nowhere in sight. Although I stayed near the pump, the custodian did not return that evening. Later Dan introduced me to a bush pilot who promised to look out for me any time he flew the coast. With my bright yellow boat and yellow flotation suit, it would not be difficult to see me from the air.
Rather than cook a meal on the boat and gather an unwanted audience, I went for a hamburger with Dan. He told me of his work at the mines and kindly insisted on paying for the meal. Even though it was late by the time I returned to Audacity, it was still relatively light. The midnight sun shed its glow on the tops of clouds thickening over Kotzebue. It was, however, invisible to my eyes. Tired, I stretched out on top of the tarpaulin and tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. There was too much noise from the pub. At one point a group of drunks staggered out the door, probably helped by the bartender, and had a rather ineffective scuffle on the road. After getting each other well and truly muddy, inflicting a bloodied nose on one and the beginnings of a black eye on another, the erstwhile combatants shook hands and helped each other limp away. I didn’t get much sleep that night.
In the early morning hours, as the town grew quiet, the wind picked up and the rain started. I untied a couple of knots and crawled under the tarpaulin. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was dry. After sleeping intermittently for a few hours, I awoke to find the rain was still pattering on my cover, one corner of which crackled annoyingly in time to the wind. At 42 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, I had not expected Kotzebue to be warm. I just wanted the wind to drop and the rain to slacken off so I could see where I was going. I drifted in and out of sleep without truly resting. When I crawled out to meet the day, I found visibility was close to zero again.
“How long do you think this mess will last?” I asked an old Inupiat sitting in the boat next to mine.
“Few days maybe. You’d better stay where you are for today,” he answered. “It’s gonna get real rough this morning.”
“I’m in a hurry. I need to cross over there,” I pointed north, “and go on to Kivalina. How far is it to the opposite shore?”
“That strait’s 10 miles [18 kilometres] across,” he warned. “It’s too dangerous in these conditions. Nobody goes out there when the wind is over 15 knots.”
At that time, based on the Beaufort scale, there was a moderate gale lashing Kotzebue and the sound.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“There’s a hunting camp over there, near the mouth of the Noatak River. I’m going over there when the weather clears.”
Satisfied there was nothing I could do, I took his sage advice and waited with him. We talked about boats, mine and his. I asked what he knew about the supply of gasoline at the next few settlements.
“There’s always gas at Kivalina, and at Point Hope,” he assured me.
The guardian of the gasoline pump arrived and I refuelled in the rain. The wind picked up some more, blowing harder across Kotzebue Sound from the west. The waves tumbled over each other in their enthusiasm to wash the sound clean. Rather than sit out the weather on the beach, I wrapped my parka around myself and went for a walk.
There wasn’t much to see in Kotzebue. It didn’t have the romantic appeal of Nome, not having experienced a real gold rush. There was a rather fine little museum though, with a good display of Alaskan wildlife. I stayed there in the dry for as long as I could, making notes on the habits of the indigenous land and marine creatures and talking with the resident conservationist.
The day dragged on with no perceptible change. When I went back to Audacity, the Inupiat was gone. His boat was still there beside mine, as were dozens of others. The wind, gusting to over 40 knots, pushed big waves ashore. All the boats bobbed up and down, straining at their moorings. The opposite side of the strait remained invisible. In fact, anything outside a 50-metre radius was out of sight.
The rain mixed with mud and gravel to turn the unpaved road into a quagmire. A mixture of rain and seawater had settled ankle-deep in my boat. I bailed it out, using a coffee mug for a scoop. There was a strong smell of gasoline—stronger than there should have been. I tasted a few drops of bilge water. Salty gasoline. The cracked fuel tank was still leaking.
Thinking of my equipment suppliers, and wanting something more interesting to occupy my mind, I found a public telephone and called Bob Spence at radio station CJOR in Vancouver to give him a live interview. Then I phoned Penny.
“Hi, I’m in Kotzebue.”
“How’s the weather?”
“Terrible. It’s blowing a gale, raining hard and, as usual, it’s really misty.”
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m okay. Just a bit lonely and frustrated. Once the rain stops and the wind takes a break I’ll get under way again. Then I’ll be fine.”
“Just don’t take too many risks,” Penny ordered.
“We’ll see. I’m going fairly well so far, but I’m way behind schedule and there’s a hell of a long way to go before Barrow. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be careful.”
That afternoon, huddled down on Audacity, waiting for the rain to stop and the wind to change, I had the good fortune to meet Ron Adams, an Inupiat from Kivalina. He was flying home as soon as the weather allowed.
“If you make it up there, you come and have a coffee with us,” he invited. I accepted willingly. He and his family would be my first call on arrival in Kivalina.
Later, studying the charts by flashlight under the tarpaulin, I wondered about the possibility of bypassing Kivalina and Point Hope. I was sure I had enough fuel to get me all the way to Cape Lisburne. If the weather proved kind, I could probably make the voyage in one very long day, though heavy seas would change the picture drastically.
“What if there isn’t any fuel at Lisburne?” I asked myself, playing devil’s advocate.
“In that case I’ll be in trouble.” I decided to let events and the weather dictate my progress.
As day advanced to evening, with no let-up in the wind and rain, I abandoned my vigil. The noise from the pub, the constant downpour and the incessant wind grated on my nerves. There was no way I could camp anywhere in Kotzebue. Equally, thanks to the weather, I couldn’t take Audacity from her mooring. Frustrated, I stowed my gear and made Audacity as secure as I could. Taking my soaking wet clothes with me, I checked in to the Nullaqvik Hotel a short walk away. A hot shower, the chance to dry my gear, and a quiet night were worth the cost of the room.
I got everything except the quiet night. From the time I checked in until I left, there was constant coming and going along corridors, banging doors and loud voices. Sleep was apparently not so important to the other guests. Before bed I taped interviews, by telephone, with Radio KOTZ in Kotzebue and KICY in Nome. In the morning I talked to a newspaper reporter in Ottawa. Before I left the hotel I taped another short telephone interview with CBC-Radio in Tuktoyaktuk and phoned Penny again to tell her I expected to be moving soon.
Outside, the weather was far from perfect. The opposite shore was invisible. Over the sandbars to the west, whitecaps were breaking. The westerly wind continued to blow. A heavy swell rolled past Kotzebue into Hotham Inlet. Feeling utterly discouraged, I walked out to the weather station to get the latest report. It wasn’t great, but it showed a vague promise of improvement later in the day.
On Alaska’s far northern shore, the report stated, from Barrow east, big shore leads were opening in the ice. The passage was beckoning mischievously. In Kotzebue, the wind and rain continued to attack the town. The whitecaps powered past, bent on their own destruction. I spent another miserable day waiting for a break in the weather, and another virtually sleepless night on the boat under my tarpaulin.
The next day, under a light rain and lessening wind, I decided the conditions were marginally good enough for me to get under way. I decided to leave at once. I only had 18 kilometres to cross and then, if the weather continued to play foul, I could hide from the wind and rain some way up the Noatak, a big river that flows from the snowy heights of Mount Igipak in the Endicott Mountains of the Brooks Range. At its mouth there are a series of low-lying islands. They would not afford much shelter, but enough for me to pull Audacity ashore and put up my tent until the weather broke.
As he watched me prepare for departure, a local fisherman pointed behind him, then across the strait. “Keep this building directly at your back until you can see the other side. Then go straight ahead for the land,” he counselled. “That way you’ll miss the shoals.”
I thanked him and pushed away from Kotzebue. Taking his advice, I set Audacity’s stern to face the pub and took a bearing. Confident that, if I were careful I could cross without trouble, I drove into the light rain.
The crossing took well over an hour. At first I was cruising over a steady parade of shallow incoming swells. The increasing beam seas made it hard to keep on an even keel. I tried cutting across them at a sharp diagonal—too sharp at times—in order to maintain a straight course. In spite of my efforts, the wind blew us gradually east. As soon as I was close enough to make out details on the approaching shore and see the mouth of the Noatak, I spun the wheel to port, on a westerly bearing, to counteract the drift.
Long swells continued to stream past as Audacity’s bow sliced through and over them. We drove up one side and down the other. They were getting bigger. The weather was deteriorating again. I calculated the swells to be about two to three metres in height and far enough apart to avoid burying Audacity’s bow in the trough. It was unpleasant and dangerous. Filled with trepidation, I thought about running back to the river or hiding behind a little promontory where the Inupiat have a summer fishing camp. I did neither. Determined not to lose any more ground, I forged on.
Progress was slow. Audacity did her best to go forward, but the wind and waves held her back. At times it seemed I was sitting still relative to a point of land, with no apparent movement other than the waves streaming past. If I closed my eyes it felt as though we were cruising backwards, farther into the inlet. We were burning fuel with little or no progress in compensation. Once again I considered taking shelter and waiting for the wind to drop. Impatience urged me to resist the temptation and press on.
The land I was trying to pass contained important prehistoric archaeological sites, said to be the most significant in the Arctic. A series of more than a hundred beach ridges bore evidence of four thousand years of Native use. The low ridges were created by the constant action of ocean currents and the movements of sea ice. The Inupiat used each successive ridge as prime land for their hunting camps. I had been told at the museum in Kotzebue that many of the locals still hunt seals from the beaches of Cape Krusenstern, and I had read in a brochure that the region is a veritable open-air zoo of Alaska’s native creatures. At various times of the year it is possible to see grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou, Dall sheep, wolves, red foxes and other small predators. The bird life is also prolific, and in the sea, within sight of land, there are many types of fish, walrus and occasionally whales.
The earliest inhabitants of Cape Krusenstern were indigenous whalers. Thousands of years before white faces entered the region, whales were plentiful throughout the Arctic Ocean. As the ice of Kotzebue Sound and the Chukchi Sea began to break up each spring, the men waited on the long gravel beaches. Always one or more were on watch, their brows furrowed and dark eyes screwed to slits against the reflective glare of ice and shining water, willing the whales to return. The first sign of a living breathing whale poured warmth and hope into all members of the tribe. A whale represented a season of plenty in a harsh land.
The belugas came first most years, followed by the gigantic bowheads. As soon as a telltale spout of mist and water shot skywards, the men dragged their boats to the water. Paddling with rhythmic precision, the harpooner always keeping the whale in sight, they threaded their way expertly between floes of broken drifting ice. Not for them the great swells and foaming crests of windblown seas. Perhaps, I argued with myself, I should have started a month earlier. Perhaps I should have already been on this coast, waiting, like the men of old, for the ice to break.
In the early 1980s, researchers, using unspecified scientific counting procedures, estimated there were close to four thousand whales feeding in and roaming the Bering and Beaufort seas. How many more were there before the whalers came in the mid-19th century? How many more were there before the wholesale slaughter began? What a sight it must have been, before the Arctic seas were ravaged by so-called civilized man, when hundreds of bowheads and grey whales could be seen at a time.
Bowheads traditionally arrived in the Chukchi Sea in the spring, after the ice began to break. They stayed there, roaming far to the north beyond the Arctic Circle, until the advancing ice sent them south to safety as winter approached. When the bowheads eluded them, the marine hunters settled for the grey whale—“clam-diggers” they called them. As a last resort, some whalers, desperate for a cargo of oil, harvested walrus. Five hundred walruses would produce about three hundred barrels of oil. Not a bounty, but a saleable cargo nonetheless. In contrast, a single adult bowhead yielded anywhere from one hundred to over two hundred barrels of oil.
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For close to four hours I rode the roller coaster toward Cape Krusenstern. In an attempt to gain ground and speed up, I opened Audacity’s throttle wide. In spite of my promise to Penny, I took unnecessary risks in my desire to advance. I charged at each approaching roller shouting manly challenges. Standing with my legs braced apart, the backs of my shins pressed against the seat, both hands on the wheel, body erect, I rode Audacity due west like a marine cowboy at a watery rodeo.
Around Cape Krusenstern the sea was a mess created, again, by sandbars and the howling wind blasting out of the northwest. Waves climbed over each other from all directions. As the crests collided, the waves reared higher until they dwarfed us. For 45 min- utes, Audacity and I fought for control. Keeping upright and moving forward continued to be a challenge. Audacity crept onwards at less than eight knots. I yelled at her to get a move on, urging her to find that little extra power, that additional knot or two of speed.
Holding on with one hand, I pulled out my microcassette recorder and shouted this report into it: “I’m just over halfway from Kotzebue to Kivalina, running in two-and-a-half-metre swells. The wind is blowing steadily from the northwest. I’m running about one kilometre offshore at the moment. This is probably the roughest day since the first day. At least we are getting along. The sky behind me, looking southeast toward Kotzebue, is very black. Up ahead there’s a lot of thundery-looking cumulonimbus, with some patches of blue in the direction of Kivalina. Hopefully I can get there before the mess behind me catches up and hits me in the back of the neck.”
I interrupted myself with a loud oath as a wave broke beside me.
“There’s a few big ones out here,” I explained. “Big waves that is. Some are breaking and some just scare the shit out of me.”
When I finally came in sight of Kivalina after riding over 85 miles (160 kilometres) from Kotzebue head-on into the incoming swells, I had been at sea for nine hours non-stop. For eight of those hours Audacity had punched into headwinds and fought lumpy, uneven waves. In doing so, she had burned far more fuel than expected, and the damaged tank had continued to leak, wasting yet more fuel.
Unbeknownst to me, another boat, with two Inupiat hunters aboard, was following my course—though closer to shore—half a day behind. When I met the two later in Kivalina, they asked if I had seen the big grizzly standing on the shore near Kotlik Lagoon. I hadn’t. I was probably too far out at sea. I now had reports of grizzlies and polar bears on the same coast. I would have to be extra careful where I camped from Kivalina onwards.
The village of Kivalina sits on the southern end of a spit of gravel 13 kilometres long. On one side, where I was, is the Chukchi Sea. On the other is a calm lagoon fed by the waters of the Wulik and Kivalina rivers. As always, the approach to land gave me cause for concern. Usually I had to navigate through white water without being sure of the safest course to follow. Kivalina was no exception.
Knowing that sandbars move and marine charts and local experts do not often agree on their exact positions, I patrolled up and down a few times, watching the entrance to the lagoon. Whitecaps spluttered all around me. The sea close to shore piled up about a metre in height. My information showed a direct approach from the sea to be the best policy.
Slowly, with waves hitting me beam-on, I aimed for the lagoon. Standing on the seat for better vision, I held the wheel in one hand.
Suddenly I could see I was in the wrong place. There was a big sandbar directly in front of me. As the spindrift from two waves cleared, I saw sand in the trough. I wrenched Audacity’s motor to idle and spun her wheel to take me downwind. Her bow struck lightly before being lifted high over the obstruction. A few waves broke over us and the transom was nearly under water as we slid off, but we got away without incident. Gunning the motor, I went back out to sea for another look.
