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INTO THE SWAMP
The farther up the river I went, the wilder it became. Each bend I rounded, each rapid I waded through took me farther from the haunts of humans and deeper into a land of wolverines and muskox. The shallow, rocky rapids along the river’s winding course ensured that no motorboats could reach up it, leaving it as an oasis for wildlife. There were bald eagles perched in spruce thrones and in the waters swam green winged teals, mergansers, and goldeneyes. Sandpipers hopped along the pebbly banks while robins and yellow warblers provided music, the robins singing cheerily, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up and the warblers chiming in with their whistling sweet-see-see-swee. Beavers loudly slapped their tales in the water as I passed by, and muskrats were also about. In one spot I heard a moaning cry—a little baby beaver, lost among some reeds, searching for its parents. I hoped it found them; if not it might provide lunch for a fox or passing eagle. There were signs of moose along the banks, as well as caribou. Meanwhile wolves stalked along, hunting the numerous muskox.
On my third day poling upriver I saw a total of four muskox, each of whom stared curiously at me. One was barely ten feet away, concealed on the riverbank as I poled by; neither of us noticed the other until we were directly opposite each other. The muskox snorted, apparently shocked to see me, and then glared with its enormous eyes, seemingly mystified by my presence. I apologized for the intrusion and poled hurriedly away.
More interesting perhaps was what I couldn’t see from the river—inland, I knew, stalking like phantoms amid the shadowy gloom of the black spruces, were lynx. These living ghosts are the North’s most elusive creature: beautiful big cats with sphinx-like faces, thick grey coats to endure the harsh winters, and giant, oversized paws that act as snowshoes so that they can move soundlessly, spectre-like, across deep snows.
The farther up that twisting, windy river I ventured, the more I began to wonder about that old 1970s government canoe report. It had described the river as lined with willows along its entire course and flowing through a “subdued and gentle rolling landscape.” But I kept seeing things that didn’t match that description. In the first place, the willows weren’t as numerous as the report suggested. Perhaps that kind of change might have happened through natural processes like regeneration after a forest fire, though the evidence on hand didn’t seem to support such a theory. But when I started to encounter towering tabletop mountains with sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high, it became hard to reconcile such cliffs and rocky uplands with the report’s description of “subdued and gentle” terrain. I wondered whether the authors had actually explored the river, or if perhaps they’d lost their field notes and couldn’t remember what they’d seen. I found it a landscape to give free reign to the imagination—a place where one could daydream for hours while poling to the point of numbness against the current.
It was in the midst of one such daydream, of dinosaurs stalking amid the towering limestone crags overlooking the winding river, while poling near the bank that I noticed an odious stench wafting on the wind. Something was dead—very dead, judging by the smell—somewhere nearby. Another pole thrust and I saw what was giving off the stench: a dead muskox lying on shore, half-concealed by willow shrubs. A rapid analysis of the fly-covered carcass suggested that it had most likely been ambushed by a grizzly that had ripped open its neck. Large as they are, muskox are occasionally killed by grizzlies when they’re caught unawares. In this case, the grizzly had apparently eaten its fill, leaving the remains to be picked over by ravens and other scavengers. I doubled my pace, poling hard to get back to pure northern air.
That night I made camp within sight of a big sandstone outcrop crowned with little spruces. What wood there was I gathered for a fire to make spruce tea. In the last four days I’d made it some hundred kilometres up this mysterious river, the waterway becoming narrower and the trees thinning steadily. Though diminutive in size many of these spruces, I knew, were quite ancient. The harsh conditions and short growing season meant that, despite their size, some were centuries old. Soon they’d disappear entirely and I’d be back on the windswept tundra. In the meantime I enjoyed their shelter, reminding me as they did of a childhood spent wandering woods.
I slept peacefully that night, until branches snapping around twelve-thirty jolted me awake. I grabbed my bear spray and unzipped the tent’s screen door. Under the midnight sun I could see all too clearly a bear’s face staring right at me. The bear’s body was hidden in willows, with just its head visible, about twenty feet away.
Camped alone in the wilderness, many miles from any other human, with a bear outside my tent—I thought to myself that’s the very stuff of childhood dreams (if your dreams at all resembled mine). It wasn’t a grizzly or polar bear at least—merely a black bear. It’s not that I dismissed black bears as of no particular concern, but they’re familiar animals, and though still big (say about 300 pounds), they don’t have quite the intimidating dimensions of grizzlies and polar bears.
Still, there was something in this black bear’s face—staring as it was at me—that I found unsettling. It looked uncomfortably like it was sizing me up. I tried talking to it, telling it gruffly to not even think about it. In the meantime I fished out my bear banger and stepped outside the tent. Fortunately, my canoe was lying overturned between the bear and me, forming a psychological barrier separating us, if not an actual one.
“All right,” I said. “I’ve asked you to leave and you haven’t, so now I’m going to fire a banger and give you the scare of your life.” I pointed the banger toward the sky, then pulled on its end, unleashing a flare that shot up high and exploded with a bang. It was so abrupt and loud, echoing across untold miles of wild, silent country, that it startled even me.
The bear barely flinched. He remained exactly where he was, staring straight at me with an icy look in his dark eyes. Apparently, bears don’t find bear bangers as frightening as muskox do. So I grabbed my paddle—it was lying beside the tent—and started shouting to scare off the bear. After all, such tactics had worked with the charging grizzly. As I did so I spun the paddle round in my hands, then swung it violently against the overturned canoe, banging against it like a giant drum to add to my intimidating display. Surely, this would work.
The bear, however, responded by growling in a low, guttural way, his gaze still fixed on me. Apparently, he wasn’t easily frightened. I thought of my bear spray nearby, but I didn’t want to use it if I could help it. So I mustered up an even louder barrage of shouts, deeper and more menacing, and really swung the paddle now, threatening the bear should he try anything. This finally seemed to work: the bear, huffing and puffing, now edged back, and slowly, very slowly, started walking away. He shuffled off along the river, remaining partly concealed in the willows. I kept my eyes on him, gripping my paddle as I did so, until he moved out of sight.
Then I kindled up a blazing fire nearby on the rock-strewn bank. The fire, I hoped, would keep the bear from returning. I waited a while for any sign of it, but it seemed to have gone. So I crawled back inside my tent and forced myself to fall back to sleep. Difficult as sleeping alone in bear territory might be, particularly after you’ve just had a bear growl at you, I knew that without sleep I wouldn’t have the energy needed to continue. Sleep was a necessity, plain and simple. And thus I slept—with my bear spray handy.
As the days went by, each one taking me farther from the world of emails, phones, screens, laptops, and incessant news cycles, I felt as if I were poling back in time. It felt relaxing to turn my back on those things, even in spite of bears interrupting my sleep. Personally, I think the more we can step away from our society’s deepening addiction to digital screens, to 24/7 connectivity, to unnecessary clutter, the healthier we’ll be. Immersed in nature, one feels alive. Shut up indoors all day, staring transfixed at a screen, one loses something.
But to return to the peace and tranquillity of nature: as the temperatures warmed, immense, suffocating hordes of blood-sucking insects filled the air. My throat was soon pockmarked with blackfly bites, my beard smeared with bloodstains, and my wrists, waistline, and anywhere else the flies could get at covered in itchy sores. Prior to mid-June, the weather had been cold enough to keep away the bugs, but now they were out with a vengeance. I didn’t suffer alone: thick clouds of insects hovered around the muskox, caribou, and moose, feasting on them mercilessly. One moose I spotted must have had a million mosquitoes and blackflies on it—the poor animal took to the water to escape them, but above the waterline the bugs still swarmed its head and ears. Having grown up on the edge of a swamp I had a particularly high tolerance for mosquitoes, though blackflies are a torment for everyone. I told myself now, as I fetched my mesh bug net out of my backpack to get some relief, to take heart that these storms of bugs were merely temporary—if I could just put up with them for the next two and a half months, the return of cold weather would take care of the matter.
Three weeks since setting off on my journey, and now fully eight days of travelling up the Hare Indian River, my body was feeling the ache and wear of continual travel. My legs were bruised from stumbling into unseen rocks beneath the water’s surface. The tendons in my fingers were sore from poling for long hours each day. (At night I’d stretch them out gingerly, but I knew there wasn’t much I could do—I was at the mercy of the elements, and so to take any time off was out of the question.) My feet were blistered from the waders, and my big toenail on my left foot had fallen off. But otherwise, I felt fine.
The river was getting smaller, little more than a creek now. The water continued to alternate between calmer sections I could paddle up and faster, swifter sections that could only be navigated by painstaking wading and dragging the canoe behind me, often for hours on end. This wading, given the rocky bottom, took a toll on my toes, but I made light of it—toenails, after all, grow back.
The shallow sections were full of arctic graylings, a beautiful fish with a vibrant rainbow hue to their big dorsal fins. I’d happily eaten graylings in the past, but alas on this journey, if I were to reach my goal, there was no time for fishing—food was mere fuel, to be consumed as I marched and trudged along. Even my customary morning oatmeal I’d forsaken in order not to lose time setting off early. To stay healthy though, I did occasionally make spruce tea—since spruce is high in vitamin C, something my dried rations lacked.
Caribou, wolves, eagles, muskox, and bears were all plentiful in the wild upper reaches of the twisting river. One beautiful arctic wolf, his white coat streaked with black and grey, was particularly curious about me. He was a big, lanky animal, and followed me along the riverbank for over a kilometre as I paddled along, so drawn by curiosity that he almost seemed to wish to speak with me. He’d cock his head to the side, eyeing me up and down. There wasn’t any hint of malice in his look. Indeed, the wolf—a true symbol of wildness in a world with ever less of it—was shy and skittish. The slightest noise by me, such as a simple “hi there,” or my paddle bumping against the canoe, caused him to jump back, startled. But then, as I quietly continued on, he would follow. Finally he vanished into the spruces. Never in my life had I ever seen anything so perfect, so magical, as that great arctic wolf—it filled me with awe and wonder.
It was a rainy morning when I crawled out of my tent at five a.m. on June 22 to get a start on the day. The sound of a caribou swimming across the river had stirred me from a pleasant dream. I’d camped on a sandbank within sight of some cliffs. In the rain I soon had my tent down and rolled up, my barrels carefully loaded into the canoe, and my day’s rations set out so I could grab them as need be from the bottom of the canoe. I was eager to be underway, as I sensed I’d was at last nearing the end of the Hare Indian River. Soon I’d be facing the prospect of travelling on foot across trackless and unknown terrain, transporting in stages my canoe and barrels, in order to reach the coastline of Great Bear Lake.
Before it came to that though, I knew from my maps that the Hare Indian River flowed through two long lakes, connected by what was left of the river. These lakes I referred to as the Headwater Lakes, since they were the river’s source. Beyond them was one more long narrow lake, after which lay terrain of uncertain character blocking the way to Great Bear’s coastline. Whether it’d be possible to make it all the way to each of the lakes by water, or whether the interconnecting river would dry up before then into a tiny trickle or become clogged with natural debris, I didn’t know. The satellite imagery I’d examined beforehand was insufficient to determine such details, and I’d lost all faith in the reliability of that old 1970s canoe report. At any rate, those authors were canoeing downriver, not up, and they’d only started at the first of the Headwater Lakes (supposedly), whereas I’d have to go well beyond that to reach Great Bear Lake.
Poling, wading, and paddling saw me advance another twenty-four kilometres that day. Things were getting much harder, though. The river’s upper section wasn’t much more than a beaver creek now, and increasingly unnavigable. The first hints of change came the next day, when I hit a long, marshy lowland. The grassy marshes were quite unexpected, and reminded me of the tidal marshes along coastal rivers in New Brunswick. The water here was too shallow for poling as the heavily-loaded canoe hit bottom. So I had to get out and wade, listening to shorebirds calling in the marsh as I hauled the canoe with rope behind me.
In the distance a blue ridge rose high against the clear sky; somewhere beyond that I figured were the Headwater Lakes. I pressed on, sloshing through shallow stretches, forcing the canoe over them. Then I saw something glinting along the marshy stream banks—something that made a shiver go down my spine. It was the remains of river ice, clustered on the shore and melting in the June sun, a reminder of how recently these waterways were still frozen. The remnant ice boded ill for what I might find on Great Bear Lake: if it was still ice-covered, I’d be faced with a delay that might spell the end of my journey’s hope of success. I pushed on to find out.
The first of the Headwater Lakes, fortunately, I found free of ice. I paddled straight across its five-kilometre expanse in forty minutes—seeing how in nearly eight hundred kilometres of travelling it was the first water I’d paddled on without an opposing current. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to paddle a canoe normally, without battling wind and current—and that such things could be peaceful and pleasant. Alas, it was but a brief respite from the increasingly punishing nature of my journey, now that I’d quite run out of anything resembling a navigable water route. On the far side of the lake the river continued. It widened into a swamp filled with dead spruces and tamaracks protruding from the water at odd angles, after which the remains of the river rapidly diverted into several channels, each thickly grown over with spruces and willows. The day was warm, sunny, and windless, making the clouds of mosquitoes and blackflies extreme.
The tangled jungle of alders, willows, spruces, and tamaracks gave the creek a claustrophobic feel as I followed its snaking course. The thick clouds of biting insects didn’t improve things much. Dead trees across the waterway forced me to climb carefully onto them and then haul my canoe up and over so that I could resume paddling on the opposite side. It was hard work, given that the heavily loaded canoe weighed more than I did.
Soon I arrived at a place where the swampy creek forked in two: it wasn’t immediately clear which fork I should take. My maps and GPS were no help—neither had the kind of detail needed to accurately discern swampy channels. It was clear they weren’t terribly precise, as my plotted position on the GPS showed me on dry land somewhere, which wasn’t the case. I was smack in the middle of the remaining waterway.
So I set aside the maps and GPS and instead read the landscape. Neither fork looked promising—both led straight into logjams. The bushes and fallen trees had become so thick that I couldn’t see much beyond twenty feet in any direction. But examining the current I detected a stronger flow from the left fork, so I resolved to follow it. I was still heading upriver, and sooner or later it seemed, this waterway was going to dry up and disappear. There was barely room to swing a paddle inside the thickets, but I jabbed and pushed along as well as I could.
I’d gone only a short distance before a logjam formed of dead spruces barred the way forward. There was nothing for it but to get out of the canoe and into the water. Carefully, knowing how easily I could slip and cut open my leg on one of the logs’ sharp, snapped-off branches, I began the backbreaking labour of clearing a passage—first shoving, heaving, and pushing with the weight of my body to get the logs out of the way, then lifting, hauling, and ramming my canoe to get it through.
The jam continued as far as I could see. The sight of such a nightmarish string of obstacles before me, combined with the relentless hordes of blackflies, made me briefly wonder if on balance it might not be wiser to quit now, point my canoe downstream, and paddle with the current back to the Mackenzie. Fortunately, this was but a passing delusion, and saner heads prevailed: I banished such thoughts and instead plunged into the river up to my waist, heaving with renewed force to batter the canoe over the logjam. I smashed branches aside, and forced the canoe through like a medieval battering ram against a fortress gate. Then, to squeeze under the next jam, I had to get down into dark water that rose above my waist, flooding my hip waders and drenching me. There wasn’t anything to be done but to keep going.
I was in the zone now—you know that zone you get into when you’ve been canoeing up rivers alone in the wilderness for a month? That was the exact zone I was now in. With renewed vigour I shoved, heaved, and twisted my way up and under successive logjams. One fallen spruce formed a kind of bridge across the narrow creek; to get around it I scampered up its trunk, balanced on my chest on top of it, and threaded the canoe underneath with my legs dangling in the air. But this triumph was short-lived. Around the next bend lay a logjam that made a mockery of all others. It was massive, impenetrable, and utterly demoralizing—a colossal pile of dead trees that looked as though a beaver the size of Godzilla had heaped them up. To hack through it with my hatchet would take months. I had no other option but to portage around it through the swamps of alders and black spruces.
Since it wasn’t possible to carry everything at once, it’d have to be done in stages. My easiest load was my backpack, which held my tent, spare clothing, tripod, hatchet, and other survival essentials. I strapped it on and plunged off into the green alders. They were almost as tall as me, making seeing ahead difficult, but they didn’t last long, as the vegetation abruptly gave way to a foul bog.
I picked my way elf-like across it, trying not to step in the wrong place, seeking out the mossy patches of firmer ground wherever they existed. Next the ground sloped up, revealing more fallen spruces to climb over and alders to push through. Once through these obstacles, having managed to bypass the giant logjam, I could see where the creek resumed. It wasn’t exactly clear sailing—there were more jams ahead, but they weren’t so bad as to rule out relaunching the canoe.
But first I had to retrace my steps back to where I’d left the rest of my gear. So far I’d only completed the easiest load, my backpack. Next I’d have to transport my two barrels across the swamp. These would have to be taken across one at a time, as any more weight would just cause me to sink into the muck. The bugs in the midst of the swamp were dreadful, swarming me as I laboured back and forth across it, transporting each load successively. The bug net I was wearing overtop my broad-brimmed hat didn’t make much difference—blackflies always seem to find a way to squeeze through eventually. Finally I went back for my canoe, dragging it behind me through the alders and across the morass. When I came to the ground that sloped upward, I lifted the canoe over my head and carried it in order to get around the toppled dead spruces. At last, panting and sweating, I reached the spot where my backpack and barrels were waiting.
No sooner had I repacked the canoe and launched it back into the swampy creek than I arrived at another logjam. Wearily I climbed back out of the vessel, summoning up whatever strength I had left. Grabbing hold of the canoe’s bow I hoisted it up onto the first of the fallen spruces. Then I began heaving it across the barricade of dead trees. The jam continued for some ways. Luckily, though, I was able to slip back down into the water where a spot opened a bit, crouch down, and then wade under the fallen trees as I dragged the floating canoe behind me. The water once more rose above my waist and flooded my hip waders. Soaking wet, I kept edging under the dead spruces by kneeling in the water, forcing the canoe to scrape beneath their claw-like branches.
At last I emerged from the swampy logjams to a welcome sight before me—the blue waters of the second of the two Headwaters Lakes. Like the first, it was long and narrow and enclosed by towering, spruce-clad ridges that in places had vertical rock outcrops amid heaps of tumbled boulders. There were caves visible on the rocky slopes, making me wonder whether grizzlies or windigos might inhabit them.
A Pacific loon cried hauntingly from somewhere across the water. Despite their name, Pacific loons are found in the Arctic, and are cousins of the common loons farther south. I made camp on the lake’s north shore, knowing I was now getting close to the mighty, frightening expanse of Great Bear Lake.
In the meantime, I enjoyed the soul-filling splendour of a wild, lonely lake I had all to myself. My soaked clothes I left drying in the branches of a dead spruce. Then I found a pleasant place on some soft moss and lichens, and I stretched out and slept.
Hard as the previous day had been, harder challenges yet awaited me. After paddling across the lake in the early morning I headed down a short swampy stream that promptly dried up, meaning yet another portage. Back and forth I went through the willow swamps, transporting each of my four loads—the two barrels, backpack, and canoe, mosquitoes and blackflies swarming horrendously. The incessant biting of the flies and mosquitoes was almost maddening, since my hands were full and unable to swat them away. A high rocky ridge remained in sight to the east; I used it as a guide so that I wouldn’t lose my way amid the willows and suffocating clouds of swarming insects.
Eventually I came to a small, nameless pond amid the willows. This little pond, I realized, was the true headwaters of the Hare Indian River, that’s to say, its farthest source, lying beyond even the two lakes. The little pond was barely more than two hundred metres across, but I decided to spare myself what little portaging I could by transporting my loads to its muddy edge, then paddling across, before resuming my struggles on its far side. It seemed probable that I was the first person ever to drag a canoe all the way from the river’s mouth to its swampy, inaccessible headwaters—if only because under any normal circumstances to do so would be utterly impractical, if not completely mad. When it came time to transport the canoe, I simply dragged it behind me through the willows, mosses, and grasses. The dragging was made more difficult than it ought to have been owing to the fact that inside the canoe, adding to its weight, were my hiking boots (I’d kept my waders on for the portage), as well as the beaver pole (which I knew I’d still need), fishing rod (my emergency food plan), and the wheeled cart (a dubious idea). Why did I have a wheeled cart? It was the cart I’d bought in advance in case I needed to wheel my canoe along the gravel of the Dempster Highway. That hadn’t been necessary, but I kept the cart in spite of its bulk and extra weight, because of a report I’d read of an Arctic canoe trip done a few decades ago by two paddlers. They’d reported using a wheeled cart to great effect to lessen their loads on portages, and I’d hoped to do the same. So far the willows and uneven ground had precluded any hope of using it—and thus it became more dead weight for me to haul in the canoe. I consoled myself with the thought that I might yet meet with some favourable terrain where it could be of use.
Once across the small pond I portaged on, not entirely sure which way to head. Again my maps and GPS weren’t of much use here. I hoped to find a stream flowing in the other direction, out to the last of the three long lakes, since this would mean I’d reached the Great Bear Lake watershed. The willows gave way to sparse woods of tamaracks and black spruce, the uneven ground cloaked with caribou lichens and aromatic shrubs of Labrador tea. As the name suggests, the leaves of that plant have long been used to make tea, and in springtime their pretty white flowers add a touch of beauty to sombre subarctic forests.
I navigated intuitively, rounding some swamps and trudging through alternating terrain, until I happened upon a welcome sight—a tiny creek not more than a ditch, where the water flowed the opposite direction, east. That could mean only one thing—I’d crossed a watershed divide (or else become hopelessly lost). A few steps behind me, all the water was draining west, down into the Hare Indian River and onto the Mackenzie, and from there out to the Beaufort Sea. A couple of steps the other way the water flowed east, through tiny creeks and lakes to the vast waters of Great Bear Lake itself.
The little stream, less than a foot wide and ankle-deep, was too small to paddle. But the sight of it cheered me all the same, as I at least now had something to follow. Several hundred metres farther on it widened into a shallow creek that twisted around through an open sort of meadow before disappearing behind a willow thicket. The water here looked as though it might be deep enough to at least pole my canoe, so I dropped my backpack by the bank and returned for the other three loads, swatting hordes of mosquitoes as I went.
Transporting each of my four loads individually meant that to advance just one kilometre I had to travel seven times that distance on foot, as not only did I have to carry the four loads separately, I had to retrace my steps back to the start each time to get the next load. This depressing arithmetic made me especially eager to find any watercourse that would allow me to resume travel by canoe. The little creek flowing east offered that hope, so I pushed myself hard in order to get everything to its muddy banks.
But I’d met with too many creeks in my life to pin my hopes on one. They often come across as charming at first, but then, once you’ve gotten to know them a bit, they dash your hopes. Such was the case with this little stream. After I’d poled along for just a few hundred metres it led right into a willow thicket that blocked any passage forward. The bugs here were among the most intense I’d ever seen. Unable to press forward in the canoe, I reluctantly stepped out into the mud, sinking to my knees as I staggered toward firmer ground.
The willows were impossibly thick; portaging through them wasn’t an option. I had no choice but to unload my gear from the canoe and struggle across the deep mud with it to more solid ground, outside the willow swamp. Here the ground sloped upward, with black spruces and a few tamaracks. Scanning ahead, I couldn’t make out any clear water, just a tangled mass of willows that seemed to suffocate the little creek I’d hoped to follow. I sighed, realizing that my longest and likely most difficult portage yet now lay before me.
With my backpack and a paddle as a walking stick, I set off to seek the end of the willows and the return of navigable water. The ground was uneven, rising and declining into small gullies. In some places I had to claw through thick clusters of black spruce; in others I plunged through willow thickets taller than me, making me apprehensive grizzlies or muskox might be lurking about. I tried to do the polite thing and announce my presence by talking out loud so as not to startle them. Hopefully they’d do the same for me.
After about a kilometre I finally reached a point where the stream looked navigable. I set down my backpack on the bank, then returned to fetch my next load. It was a warm, sunny day, the temperature climbing to the mid-teens. All the portaging, perhaps combined with the bugs that were incessantly draining my blood, gave me a terrible thirst. I’d filled my water bottle before leaving the lake that morning, but it was empty now. Nearly three weeks had passed since my water purifier had broken, and so far, drinking untreated water had no apparent ill effects on me. But I drew the line at drinking from a beaver swamp. Thus, I pushed on without water, continuing the long, gruelling portaging.
Yet the painstaking effort required to carry each of the loads over rough, uneven terrain became increasingly difficult to maintain without water. By this time I was sweating and nearly exhausted. I slouched down to rest and thought the matter over: it seemed on balance that the odds were greater that I’d pass out from dehydration than get sick from drinking untreated water. So upon such logic, I filled my bottle from the little creek. Before drinking I held the bottle up to the sunlight, making out tiny organisms in it. “That’s just extra protein,” I told myself, before taking a gulp.
It may have been that I was badly dehydrated, but the water seemed to taste especially delightful. At first, I thought, I’d only drink a small amount, enough to keep me going. But then I drank a little more, again reassuring myself that the odds of anything bad coming of it (based on that science paper I’d read) were minimal.
By late afternoon I’d finished the portage and was able to relaunch my canoe in the creek. The narrow creek was still tightly hemmed in by willow bushes, but it was deep enough to float a canoe in. But despite the depth, the narrow banks made it impossible to paddle in the water. So to make progress I had to stand upright in the canoe and jab with my paddle at the banks, propelling myself onward. Still, I kept hitting bottlenecks, where I couldn’t squeeze through. Here, I’d have to climb out and struggle among the willows and clouds of biting insects to haul the canoe and my gear around, until the stream widened again. In a few places I found that I could stand on the bank, wedge the canoe sideways, and with hard effort heave it through the bottleneck. This spared me from unloading and reloading, the trick being not to turn the canoe too far on its side and spill everything out.
Gradually the twisting little stream led me onward through the willow jungles and sedges until it widened out and tamaracks and spruces reappeared. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but then I saw some goldeneye ducks, a cheering sign, as it surely meant there must be larger water nearby. Sure enough, a few more strokes and the creek emptied into a beautiful lake set amid low hills. After the swamps it seemed almost seemed like a mirage. I paddled out onto the narrow lake after the goldeneyes, filling my water bottle over the side of the canoe. Then I made camp happily on the lakeshore amid clusters of Labrador tea, sphagnum moss, caribou lichen, and black spruce—familiar things that always made me feel at home.
That evening, recuperating with a freeze-dried meal, I listened to distant thunder. A storm was on its way, probably gathering strength over Great Bear Lake, which I hoped to finally reach the next day. I took shelter in my tent, drifting off to sleep while the storm passed away to the west.
The morning dawned with a fierce wind blowing from the northeast under grey skies. The wind brought relief from the bugs, but made me somewhat apprehensive about paddling to the end of the lake I’d camped on. It was about six kilometres long, and I needed to reach its far end before I could begin the final phase of my quest to reach Great Bear’s coast. My maps indicated a small stream draining from this nameless lake, twisting and snaking southward eventually into Great Bear Lake. I doubted it’d be large enough to paddle, but with luck, I might at least be able to wade through it and drag the canoe behind me, thus sparing me a difficult portage over rough terrain that, with all my loads, would total over eleven kilometres to reach Great Bear.
But first I had to somehow overcome the headwinds that were sweeping across the lake. I lingered taking down my tent and packing things up in the hopes that the wind might slacken a bit, but it seemed only to grow stronger. “Well,” I thought to myself, “there’s nothing for it but to give it my all.” That’s my general approach to things.
I packed up the canoe, took up my bent-shaft paddle for the extra power, and shoved off into the wind. All my effort and energy I threw into paddling, fighting the wind with every stroke. Progress was painstakingly slow, but gradually, stroke by stroke, my canoe edged forward. What motivated me was the thought that if I couldn’t succeed in overcoming these gusts, I’d have no chance at all on the vastness of Great Bear Lake—and thus by such logic I paddled on. An hour later I reached the lake’s end.
The small stream that drained from the lake I located without difficulty. It was shallow, with rocks protruding from its rippling waters. There wasn’t any chance of paddling it, but I was at least able to heave and drag the canoe over the rocks while sloshing through the water. This went on for some ways, but my hopes that the stream would deepen after a few kilometres were dashed. Instead, it became shallower, to the point where dragging the canoe any farther seemed unwise.
My canoe had been designed to be extra strong and tough for me by Nova Craft Canoe. They’d manufactured its hull from a cutting-edge composite material made of basalt fibres, melted down from basalt rock, and Innegra, a flexible polypropylene fibre. The two materials were then woven together and infused with a high-impact, waterproof resin. The result was an ultra-strong canoe sturdy enough to withstand all kinds of abuse from rocks and ice that would puncture and destroy a traditional canoe.
They’d demonstrated this to me when I visited their factory in London, Ontario, by showing me a video of the canoe prototype being pounded repeatedly with sledgehammers and emerging unharmed. Then, for good measure, they’d thrown the canoe off the roof of a six-storey building to the asphalt parking lot below. My own early experiences with canoe construction had been somewhat more traditional. My father and I had built canoes from cedar and birchbark sewn together with spruce roots, along with other materials found in the woods surrounding our home. I had a great fondness for those traditional canoes, but they weren’t designed to withstand constant gouging by rocks and ice (or being tossed off buildings).
Yet, as remarkably strong as Nova Craft’s canoe was, I noticed with some alarm that the rocks were beginning to tell on it. The frequent pounding and grinding it had undergone as I’d hauled it upriver had begun to wear away some of the fabric. There were no leaks yet, but if the canoe punctured, I’d be in serious trouble. I could improvise a field repair to keep me afloat, but any patch I devised wouldn’t be remotely strong enough to withstand the thousands of kilometres of harsh terrain that still lay ahead of me. It’d require delicate handling and daily repair—things that were simply impossible given the difficulties of the route and the time constraints imposed by the arctic seasons.
Thus, after a kilometre of dragging the heavily-loaded canoe over the rocks, and listening with some consternation to the sound of it scraping against them like nails on a chalkboard, I decided I hadn’t any choice but to go back to portaging. There wasn’t any sign of the stream deepening, and I didn’t want to risk puncturing my boat with further dragging.
I’d come to a vast, open rocky plain stretching off into the distance. It was a strange, barren sight, devoid of plant life aside from a little moss and some scattered clumps of sedges and dwarf willows. This rocky plain, it seemed, was an old riverbed that had drained into Great Bear Lake; all that was left of it now was the tiny stream. The stream, from what I could see, wound around it—meaning I could cut across the rocks on a diagonal, meeting up with the stream on the far side.
The better part of the day was taken up with this wearisome portage. The stream on the far side was just deep enough to paddle, and there I reloaded the canoe. Alas, it was but a short paddle before it narrowed too much to squeeze through amid willows and high banks. I once more had to empty the canoe, carry my gear ahead, then delicately turn the canoe on its side, squeezing it through the narrow creek that was in places only a foot wide, though surprisingly deep. Eventually, the creek widened out into a waterway I could paddle.
By evening I could see ahead of me something in sharp contrast to the demoralizing swamps I’d been passing through: high sand dunes, with arctic terns and gulls soaring above them. I paddled on with anticipation, realizing that Great Bear Lake must be near at hand. The temperature had dropped considerably in the face of an icy wind that was no doubt blowing across hundreds of miles of Great Bear’s frigid, arctic waters.
With gloved hands I paddled on, passing by sand dunes until a surreal sight suddenly revealed itself to me—like an ocean, the vast, seemingly limitless expanse of Great Bear stretching beyond the horizon. I’d reached it at last.