Dad! Dad! There’s a grizzly outside!”
Immediately, Dad snaps to attention, sitting up like a jack-in-the-box. He pokes his head out of the tent for a second, then grabs a can beside his sleeping bag and starts shaking it—hard! It sounds like there are coins in the can. It’s like a metallic rattle.
I start clapping my hands together and yelling, “Go away, Bear! There’s no food in here!”
Unless, of course, it decides we’re food.
The grizzly swings its massive head toward us, chuffs—steam blowing out of its huge nostrils—then swings away, slowly, and slowly sways off into the greater darkness of the forest.
I stop yelling and clapping. And Dad stops shaking the can full of coins—which I hadn’t seen before.
We look at each other.
And breathe.
Dad puts down the can. Then he puts a hand on my shoulder, and says, “Good job, Aaron. You kept your cool. I should’ve brought a whistle. Some people blow them to keep away bears. But they scare away all the other wildlife, too. But last night, I dropped some coins into this empty bean can before I went to sleep. Just in case.”
Before I can say anything, he slides back down into his sleeping bag and says, “If you hear the bear again, shake the can. And wake me up.”
I close the tent flap and try to sleep, but I’m too excited. Nothing like a grizzly to give you that jolt of caffeine!
Wish I had my iPod. Music would help me calm down. I miss my music.
I try to slow my breathing, and after awhile, for the first time, I hear the distant roar of the Chute. It’s been there all along, but I didn’t notice it above the sounds of the forest. A deep, rushing roar, muffled by trees. Like the wind through the forest. A dark wind.
In the morning we inspect the grizzly’s tracks. They circle the bear locker, come near our tent, then lead back up toward the mountains.
I’m glad I cached the food. I’m in no mood to go hungry for the rest of the trip. And I’m in no mood to be a meal for a grizzly, drawn to our tent because of the smell of food.
I tell Dad about my dreams: the beast, the grizzly chasing me, and then the grizzly crashing into our tent. It seemed so real.
“Some dreams become real,” he says. “They become who you are. They reflect your fears, your wishes.”
While Dad starts a fire, I write the grizzly dreams in my journal. No way are they about my wishes, that’s for sure! Then I write about the real grizzly and the tracks it left behind.
We eat breakfast and break camp, speaking only when necessary, the grizzly always in the back of my mind. Now we stow our gear in the cargo holds and get ready for the Chute. I tell Dad that I want to sit in the aft cockpit again, in back. I want to control the kayak through the rapids.
“Not a good idea, Aaron. Your shoulder’s hurt and with the high, fast, snowmelt water this could be dangerous.”
“My shoulder’s fine!” That’s a lie. It’s still crazy sore, but I’ve been banged up worse from spills at local skate parks.
“We’ve got to be able to turn on a dime,” Dad says. “I really don’t think this is the right time for you.”
“Survival, Dad. Self-confidence. Remember? That’s what you’ve been harping about. How am I supposed to build up my self-confidence if you never give me a chance? Last night you said, ‘Good job!’ Now we’re back to you always being boss. You just don’t trust me. I can do this!”
“There’s too much at risk here, Aaron. If we wreck the kayak on the rocks. . . . We don’t know when the next boat’s coming along. And we could lose all our gear and food. I don’t know, Aaron. Maybe on the Cariboo River. That’s supposed to be a real challenge too, but maybe not quite as dangerous as this.”
“I’m sitting in the back! If you don’t trust me with this you can hike around the Chute and meet me at the other end. I’ll run it myself!”
Dad takes a deep breath, then is quiet for a moment. “Okay, okay,” he says after awhile. “You win! You did keep your cool last night. You didn’t panic. Now this is against my better judgment, but—”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad!” But I smile a bit when I say it, because he gave in, after all.
We climb into the kayak—me in back—and push off. A family of harlequin ducks scatters among the reeds. The colorful papa duck makes a racket of quacks. I wonder if he’s squawking at his son.
Now that we’re out on the water I can hear the roar of the rapids loud and clear. The Chute starts right at the exit of Lake Isaac. I’m totally psyched! Stoked!
Normally the Chute’s not supposed to be all that hard to run, but the moment we eddy out to take a look, I can see we’re in for a wild ride. The volume from the spring snowmelt has pushed it up to the level of a real torrent, with treacherous obstacles still poking up above the water. Broken trees and huge boulders, like the slippery backs of hippos.
Remember, we’re not in a river kayak, which you can turn on a dime. We’re in a big, heavy lake kayak. I pull up the rudder so at least I can steer with my paddle.
Dad looks back at me, a most serious look on his face. Then he turns and faces forward.
We pull out of the eddy and back-paddle at the top of the Chute for a moment to check it out one more time.
Then I say, “Let’s roll!” and we take off like a rocket, plunging through the first hole, and burst through a tall standing wave.
“Yee-haw!” I shout, like me and Cassidy did back in Desolation Canyon. “Bucking bronco!”
The current grips our kayak and I think Dad’s yelling something at me, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the rapids. I open my mouth to yell back but my mouth fills with water.
It’s freezing! We’re thrashing and bouncing down the rapids. Water explodes in our faces.
I’ve learned enough from sea kayaking to keep the nose pointed into the waves. I dig in and swerve us around a boulder. In the boulder’s eddy on the down-river side, we see something that sends a chill through me deeper than any cold.
Half of a canoe.
It’s wedged into the river bottom, the stern sloping up and out of the river.
I wonder where the other half is. And the people who were in it. I think about the Boy Scout who lost his life.
And now I remember what Dad had called the Chute:
A boat graveyard.
Are we next?
