Fort Good Hope – Separation Point
August 8- August 14

Our first day out of Fort Good Hope we enjoyed crossing paths and comparing notes with another canoeing duo. They reported seeing and hearing of several other crews, bringing our count to around 12 long distance paddlers on the Big River this season.

That evening, passing an abandoned airplane landing strip, there was an odd smell and unusually large, dark rocks on the bank. It took us a moment and then, pulling the binoculars from my Granite Gear Stowaway Pack, I realized we were looking at a herd of muskox!!! I never considered that I might get to meet this species until watching the short film, Together to the Tundra. I hadn’t been able to stop wondering about them since. Quietly, we drifted and watched.

The next day’s paddling serenity was interrupted by the shrieks and pleading of a songbird from a cliff on river right. That the small, bright being was held firmly in the talons of a Peregrine Falcon, who was frozen, staring directly back into the lens of the binoculars. In fact, there were three falcon’s heads turned our way, as I noticed two more perched on a downed log.

I came later to learn that we had interrupted a parental meal preparation lesson. I read somewhere that it was likely a father Peregrine teaching two juveniles, as he was not much bigger than they were. With two parents mating for life, only about 1 in 10 chicks will survive to maturity and they see a maximum expected lifespan of 15 years.

One evening we’d nosed out of the current to cruise shore, looking for a spot to camp. We were checking out paw prints in the mud amidst river rock but stopped to watch two covered speedboats roaring up the middle of the river at almost 10 pm. I trotted the binos out again as my avowed Bow duty to ‘Make Report’ to Neon. (‘Make Report’ is the phenomena of the human compulsion to announce unasked for information to others in the vicinity.)

Our curiosity was more than answered when a third boat skidded around the bend and quickly slowed, steering toward us. We couldn’t believe the excitement! When we did see folks motoring past, we might exchange waves, when close enough we’d trade shouted salutations, but no one had ever stopped their motor for us.
Yet, here came Jolene.

I stepped out to catch the rope as they pulled up and she slipped on a pair of sneakers tidily laid out on the steps to the bow. The driver too hopped out, remaining barefoot and comfortable, choosing to stand in the cold water and rocks, a fact I was in awe of throughout the entire exchange. 

They greeted us with gusto and once we’d exchanged stories of what we were doing out there Jolene effused, “Mad respect to you for canoeing The Big River. I’ve always wanted to but my granny told me not to. If you get to Tuk ask…”

She paused. Rewound.

“No, not IF you get to Tuk. WHEN you get to Tuk. Ask for Gramma. Joanne but people will know if you ask for Gramma.”

It was an animated fervor of story-swapping, laughter, and trading news from all the way back to Fort Chipewyan. Soon the other two boats circled back around and came ashore for a bathroom break but the guests had a flight to catch in Inuvik the next day, so were soon back on the move. The locals remained delightfully skeptical about the concept of ‘rush’ and ‘time’ so we chatted a bit longer about hunting camps, fishing adventures, and Tsiigechic.

“Say, would you like some steak?” Jolene said.
She had already wowed us by pressing cold Budweisers into our hands (worth their weight in gold up here. Or, at least, worth their weight in shipping costs to get up here) but this seemed impossible. Slabs of red meat are an expensive rarity all the way up here. Jolene shrugged, “I got them as a gift for the tourists but, they only eat noodles or something.”

We accepted as graciously as we could, considering I was already distracted, scoping the beach for good driftwood and pulling the grill out of the bottom of the boat. With final exchanges of jubilance, they roared away.

I quickly made a little birch bark cradle and kicked up a beach wood fire which settled into lapping tongues. I had the grill on it within minutes and journaled about how disproportionately many instances I could throw my name in the hat for “Happiest Human Alive.”

Tsiigechic, or as they call it ‘Hollywood’ (because of the city name sign) is a Gwich’in community. We dodged around the fishing lines and nets marked by plastic bottles to stop for an afternoon of watching life at the junction of the Red River and the Big River.

Several women kept coming down to check the nets and then head back up to the smoke hut. The ferry made its triangular voyage between town and both sides of the Dempster Highway. We were curious at the kind of traffic and vehicles the highway saw.

During our observations, we were joined by the father of the man who was driving the ferry. The elder (I believe he said he was called ‘Good Time George’) spoke nostalgically of being approached in the 1970s by the roadbuilders to help plot the road. “I walked every mile of it,” he smiled. Soon, more family began appearing as they prepared 6 of the crew, including 2 grand kids, to motor up to Fort Good Hope for a wedding.

Good Time George summoned each of the two kids over to his seat on the log to tell them the instant they wanted to come home, just call him and he’d have them on the next plane. He then called on the adults for his list of inquiries, information gathering, and planning.
He asked if they had life jackets.

As they did not, he shuffled over to his own boat, “here, I have two,” he sternly passed them over and watched as they were strapped on to his grand kids. He then gave the driver instructions on which side of the river to be on depending on the direction of the wind.

“The wind always used to come out of the north and sometimes the east but in the last 5 or 10 years they have been confused,” a cousin speculated. We corroborated, most days seeing predominant wind direction but feeling it come from all different directions over the course of a day. 

With our hope often for south winds, I thought about how, as we thread the needle on so many fronts, sometimes the dramatic shifts in the last 5 and 20 years work to our advantage and other times, not so much. The cousin mused about our timing, “honestly, you guys nailed it.”

I went down to stand by the water with the kids and grandma as she pinched tobacco out of a pouch into their hands, instructing them to give it to the river and ask for safe passage. As grandma returned to the other adults the little girl, (maybe 7-9 yo) looked up at me and with a furrowed brow demanded, “does anyone even actually do this?”

I reflected on my own queries into the practice. We had been told that giving tobacco was a traditional way of offering prayer to the river. But hadn’t white people brought tobacco to the region? We certainly hadn’t seen it growing anywhere near this latitude. I had also read an excerpt from Mackenzie’s diaries describing pressuring and foisting tobacco upon hesitant local indigenous folks.
I have now found this article simply title ‘01-105: Tobacco’ by Dorthea H. Calverley instructive.

“I’ve seen your adults do it, and in other places in the world, I have met people who leave different kinds of herbs, leaves, and gifts to their mountain and river guardians. So, I guess it depends on what you decide to do but saying thank you, is rarely the wrong thing to do,” I offered, letting my own pinch drift into the eddy.

Heaving a skeptical sigh, she tilted her extended palm and was soon bundled and loaded up before being firmly buried under the huge brim of a sun hat. Riding far too low in Good Time George’s assessment and covered in blessings, they motored away.

We then re-positioned up to the porch of the Northern Store, to juice up our technology and see if there was anything different to eat. Anything not out of a barrel. We scored some ice cream and chips and sat in the sun. Another elder came to stand against the rail, chatting for a bit.

I concluded the summary of our travails with, “…if we get to make it to Tuk.”

Milky eyes on the horizon, he replied,
“Oh, you’ll make it.”

Their collective faith and assurance of our success seeped into me with each reiteration. I stood beside him to share his view. Across town, around the white wooden steeple, through the cemetery, past the busy ferry, beyond chance, into memories just beyond the horizon.

Returning to the beach, Randy ‘Itchy’ Niditchie came to tell stories of teasing oil field bosses, his great grandfather signing Treaty 11, and when he learned we were here with the friendship of Clara Hughes he immediately got really excited and recounted watching her Olympic triumphs.

I felt a peculiar resonance, a sort of thrill, to have a connection and that people believed in what we could accomplish. I could only imagine the amplification of that sense when one does actually belong. I also wondered at having heard again and again stories from indigenous women of their own ambitions to paddle or explore and how that was discouraged or forbidden, most often by the Grannys; while also, if you or anyone in your family ever need somewhere solid and safe to land, it is most often with Granny.

I felt like I did as a missionary kid, a gifted interloper. Between roles and worlds, a bridge just doing my best to remain anchored. I also thought about it every time I heard a Loon’s anatomy creaking to keep them aloft in flight. We, the creatures designed to navigate disparate realms. Some design limitations but able to fly up to 9,000 feet in elevation and dive over 200 feet under water. (the loons, not me. Also, I heard somewhere they’ve been tracked down to 600 ft below water.) 

Itchy amusingly wove together recounts of attending the Papal Visit and an AC/DC concert and concluded his history with, “Us Guitchin folks aren’t shy, we’re loud and proud.” In camp that evening, Neon recognized him in a photo with the guidebook author, Michelle Swallow, on her paddling trips some years ago.

Another Gwich’in who is writing a different kind of story is Quannah Chasinghorse, bridging the space between running dog teams and protesting pipelines in AK wilderness and the supermodel runways of the US.

Weather was starting to move through in 2 and 3 day patterns and we pulled the Dark Sky forecast on our inReach every evening. As it stayed largely calm, we pressed on for the Delta. Once above the Arctic Circle, we saw Grizzly nearly every day. I can think of no better way to enjoy their company than from the distance and safety of a canoe.

We regularly camped, and on wet days took mid day breaks to boil something hot, at human established sites. These ranged from beautiful log cabins, to torn up camps littered with beer cans. We sat out day-long spats of weather both due to the increasing wear and tear of sustained travel and knowing that the end was coming.

Over a series of conversations we intentionally did not to sprint for this finish line. I’d long fought both the internal impetus and external messaging to make this into a race. I wanted to savour it and go with the opportunity.

If this was the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we’d be paddling into white lilies. Instead, it was marshland and we were greeted by a young mother grizzly and two cubs at the channel junction and an arctic tundra swan who tripped head first off the bank into the thick brown water.

Evening sun peeped through the clouds for one shining moment as we turned into the East Channel toward Inuvik, before sealing us into the Delta.