Dad bends over and starts pulling the kayak further out of the water just as I’m stepping out. I lose my balance and fall flat on my face in the mud.
I slap the mud, rise to my knees, and stand up.
“Thanks, Dad.” I swipe mud from my face and flick it into the water.
“Sorry, Aaron. My bad.”
“Don’t say ‘my bad!’ You sound like a moron!”
Dad ignores this, but now we’re even. After all, he made me fall in the mud. I know it was an accident, but still. . . .
Dad releases the bungee cords holding the portage cart and sets it up.
“We have to portage to Isaac Lake, Aaron. This isn’t a good place to camp. It’s way too marshy. Sure to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes.”
As if to make his point, a mosquito bites my neck. I slap it, leaving a smear of blood on my palm about the size of a quarter.
I’m in no mood for mosquitos. I feel a brief jolt of energy out of sheer anger. Anger about the unexpected portage and Dad making me fall in the mud.
What happened to the quiet magic with the beaver?
The portage is 1.6 kilometers. About a mile. I’m so beyond tired it’s like walking in a dream. A bad dream, plagued by mosquitoes.
By the time we set up camp, the drizzle has started and stopped again, and it’s almost full dark. Dad has lit a lantern. The clouds are breaking up and stars start popping out, one by one. The moon is low, shrouded by a cloud.
We make a fire, cook a freeze-dried chicken dinner, eat, and clean up, without saying a word. Then we sit back and watch the flames licking the night. You could cut the silence between us with a knife.
Sometimes I feel like we’re an old married couple.
I want a divorce!
I almost chuckle at that thought, but I don’t.
I look up at the descending moon, larger than yesterday’s, burning just above the peaks to the west.
Is Lisa looking at the same moon?
A chilly breeze with the smell of snow on it has chased away the mosquitoes. I scoot closer to the fire.
I realize I feel proud, in a way. We’ve completed our first full day of paddling. We’ve covered a lot of miles today, more than making up for yesterday.
It should be a night for drinking hot cocoa and roasting marshmallows. But Dad’s still not speaking, and the tension between us keeps building.
I’m starting to feel like a tea kettle about to blow when Dad finally breaks the silence. “Okay, Aaron. Got to get an early start tomorrow. We’re doing Isaac Lake. It’s twenty-three miles long, the longest lake in the circuit.”
“Tell me we’re not doing it in one day. We’re not, right?”
“Wrong. I want to do it in a day. It’ll be a good challenge. If you can make it tomorrow . . . well, that would be a great achievement, wouldn’t it?”
“Geez! What is this? A test?”
A small house of fire collapses, sending spark-filled smoke up to the stars.
“A challenge. Like I said, this is why we’re here, Aaron.”
“What? You think you’re building up my confidence by constantly whittling it away?”
“Only you can build your self-confidence, Aaron. Nobody can do it for you.”
“Ha!” I say and jump up. I stomp off toward our tent, but then I keep going. I march straight into the night.
I crash through brush and trees and low-hanging branches. The stars are bright but the forest is dark. All I know is that I’m climbing steadily up—up what the map called Wolverine Mountain.
I wonder if there’s a Grizzly Peak around here.
I pull my baseball cap down over my ears and pull up the hood of my hoodie, and walk hunched against a stiff, cold breeze flowing down the mountainside.
I trip. I fall. I get up.
I stumble over tree roots and small boulders and step into holes in the ground and keep going.
Suddenly I laugh for no reason and start to run wildly, uphill. Always uphill.
Before, I was exhausted, but now it’s like I’m flying on a tank of coffee, a ton of sugar. It’s a sugar high of insanity. I love it. I think I’ll never go back.
I’ll show him self-confidence. I’m almost drunk on it!
I jump up and swing from a branch and charge off through the night again. I can hear something crashing through the woods near me.
Probably just deer. But who knows? Maybe a wolverine? A grizzly?
Now I’m way up high above the star-freckled lake and I climb a huge boulder clinging to the steep slope of the mountain, and see the sharp claw of the moon as it plunges into darkness.
This is crazy mad fun, right?
It’s so fun I start to howl. I howl like I did on the lake today. I howl and do a little dance on the top of the boulder and almost fall off, and laugh like a loon, and howl again.
And this time I do hear wolves. I’m sure of it. I heard one on Vancouver Island last year, on our way home from Bella Bella.
And now, here I am, all alone, howling, and the wolves are howling back at me! Sounds like there’s a pack of them, off to the west, not far away. They make my blood sing, and I howl till my voice is as hoarse as a toad’s.
Then I sit down on the boulder top and just listen. All around me the night has grown quiet. The wolves are silent now. Maybe they’re watching me, yellow eyes lost among the trees. Maybe there are wolverines, too, watching, sniffing the night air.
Or grizzlies. Still as boulders, but for their fur, ruffled by the breeze.
I don’t know. But I jump back up and do that little dance again, on the boulder top, and for a moment I am king. I am king of all the wild things, and all the wild things are awed into silence.
And I am awed into silence with them.
It’s another epic moment, and I don’t want it to end.
But then I hear my name being called: “Aaaarrron! Aaaarrron!”
I take a step backward—
—and suddenly I’m falling.
