Paddle ’Til Dark: A Yukon River Journey

By Raimonds Zvirbulis

This solo wilderness, kayaking journey began many years ago, years before I even knew anything about kayaks and paddling down remote, legendary rivers. Poring over maps of those places revealed very little. The blank spaces spread far and wide. At last, after decades of dreaming, I stood on the shore of Lake Atlin in British Columbia, where the headwaters of the Yukon River are. I stood there and thought about all those hope-filled years and was thrilled at the anticipation of leaving that morning in mid-June.

Crossing the expanse of Lake Atlin in a fine mist, I guided the kayak toward Graham Channel, which would take me to Tagish Lake. There I met Jim and Marion Brook at their cabin. After hot coffee and freshly baked cookies, they sent me on my way. They were the first of many people who helped me on my journey.

That evening, having found the “perfect” campsite, I inspected the area for bear tracks. Finding none, I started a large campfire before setting up the tent. Supper had been eaten at a previous stop, so there was no cooking where I stayed for the night. This was the procedure I followed every night. It kept animals bigger and hungrier than me from visiting my campsites.

As I paddled down the lakes, I stopped at villages such as Tagish, I paddled down Marsh Lake and down dangerous Lake Laberge, and I stopped in historic towns such as Whitehorse and Dawson City. I passed by wrecked and beached steamboats from the gold rush days and finally crossed the US/Canadian line into Alaska. I had paddled through a forest fire so immense that it took a day to pass the flames. The current carried me past Eagle, Circle City, though the Yukon flats (where the river was ten to twenty miles wide); and I crossed the Arctic Circle at Fort Yukon. Then came the small villages of Beaver, Stevens Village, and then the oil pipeline.

I paddled on to Rampart, where the fierce head wind nearly drove me back upstream. Next, I passed through Tanana, where I met Emmet Peter, who won the Iditarod long ago, then on to Ruby, Galena, Nulato, and Holy Cross, where Bergie Demientieff served me coffee and gave good advice.

Finally, I arrived at Russian Mission, where I ran out of time after fifty-one days and two thousand miles of paddling my kayak. There Harvey Pitka and his wife, Ester, fed me a wonderful dinner before I flew out. As the plane climbed and banked toward Bethel, I knew that I would return one day to finish my kayak trip to the Bering Sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490790794

Raimonds Zvirbulis

I was born on September 8, 1942 on a small farm in the south of small country called Latvia. Two years later, shortly after the birth of my younger brother, my parents hitched horses to a wagon, loaded a few possessions, my older brother, my younger brother and myself and fled their homeland, never to return, as the Russian troops descended on Latvia. For the next six years we were moved form one refugee camp to the next. It was at one such camp that my father died in a truck accident leaving my mother to care for the three of us. In 1951 we were sponsored by the members of the Methodist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska. It was in that little town that my older brother saved enough money to buy a small, white plastic radio; the very same one to which I pressed my ear late at night to listen to the adventures of Sgt. Preston and Yukon King, his dog. That is where the dream began, the dream to paddle the Yukon River. And it happened many years later, after I married and had three sons of my own. When they were grown, they couldn't take the trip with me and my wife refused to saying she had no intention of becoming bear bait. Working as a principal at a middle school in Mascoutah, Illinois, I had saved enough vacation days to finally take my kayak trip down the Yukon River. The superintendent agreed to cut me loose for the one summer. That was all I needed and I was on my way.

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Paddle ‘Til Dark

A Yukon River Journey

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Raimonds Zvirbulis

The photographs and illustrations are by Raimonds Zvirbulis.

©

Copyright 2018 Raimonds Zvirbulis.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9080-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9079-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910752

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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In Memory of

Velta Leititis Zvirbulis Jansons

July 7, 1913

—

October 2, 2004

My Mother, Velta:

The cause of my constant search

For new horizons:

Just to see what’s over the next rise of the road;

Just to walk to next turn of the trail;

Just to paddle to the next bend of the river.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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WITH much gratitude I wish to thank the many wonderful people who gave of their time to help cement random thoughts, and twice told tales of my trip, into this story of my Yukon River journey. What began as a hastily written, personal narrative laid on the blank pages of my journals during the trip, slowly evolved into a massive, handwritten account of the Yukon River kayak journey.

That massive, handwritten account was transcribed into a legible, typed, first draft manuscript by my dear friend Barbara Wetzler. She struggled through many evenings in her efforts to decipher my handwriting while working her day job.

Once the typed manuscript was revised several times, I felt I could ask other, unsuspecting friends and family to read the story. I want to thank Ellen Hanna and Joan Sanders for being the first to read the manuscript and for taking the time to offer several suggestions and ideas to improve my writing efforts.

Next on my hit list were my three sons: Lukas, Ben, and Dan. They spent their valuable time reading my story and then taking even more time by jotting down encouraging comments. Two others who read the manuscript at about the same time were my younger brother, Albert and my mother, Velta. Both returned a page of comments that were most helpful. A few months before I left for the Yukon, my mother stated (several times) very emphatically and dramatically, that I was crazy (as in having no sense) to undertake such a trip by my self. But, after a short pause, to take a breath, she added, If I was ten years younger, I’d go with you! She was 85 years old at the time.

One of the others who offered sage advice was my paddling friend, Chuck Deters. He suggested I take a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon of mass destruction and IED’s to place around my campsites. Rose Moeller, another close friend from my years of working as a principal at Mascoutah Middle School in Mascoutah, Illinois, was next in line. She read the manuscript during the height of the football season at the High School where her husband, Terry, is the head coach. Because she was involved with my manuscript, Rose could not be as involved with the coaching. Alas. My good friend Patty Stone brought her fine-toothed comb to the task. She provided several pages of suggestions and criticisms, even pointing out where punctuation marks were required and where they should have been omitted. As a result of her suggestions, whole paragraphs were deleted and others expanded for clarification making the story flow more like the Yukon. In a couple of instances I left things as they were despite her insistence that I drop them from the manuscript. Sorry, Patty.

Although Sam McGowen, my school superintendent at the time, never had the chance to read the manuscript, he was instrumental in providing the opportunity and the time for me to paddle the Yukon River. Without his consent for me to take the extra time off in the summer of the trip, I would have had to do the trip in several installments over several years. Thanks, Sam.

Not even my neighbors were safe. Late one evening I enticed the whole Medina family to come to our house to help select the photographs for the book. Gilbert and Anna came over, dragging their son and daughter, Jesus and Sarah, with them. I armed each of them with paper and pencil and asked them to select the photos that they liked. Those photos were the ones that found their way into the book. If they are not up to snuff, it’s not my fault. But, I do thank all four of them for their time that evening.

The last person I would like to thank, but the person most important to the journey, is my dear wife of over forty years, Maija. I had wanted her to paddle the Yukon River with me and had tried to talk her into doing it for years. Finally, about one year before the trip, she said she would not go because such a trip would just be too difficult for her. But, she insisted that I go, knowing how important the journey was to me. For her loving understanding, my gratitude is unbounded. From the depths of my heart, thank you, Maija.

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Paddle ‘Til Dark

IN THE BEGINNING…

(Beatrice)

ICE BOUND

(The Kayak)

CPR

(Collect, Patch, Repair)

GETTING THERE

(St. Louis to Atlin)

STRING OF PEARLS

(The Lakes)

ROLLING ON THE RIVER

(Quest for Sgt. Preston—Lower Laberge to Dawson City)

FIRE AND WATER

(Dawson City to Eagle Village)

SHORT TRIP HOME

(Eagle, Circle, And The Pipeline)

INTO THE MAELSTROM

(Tanana Bound)

PEACE REGAINED

(Tanana to Holy Cross)

SUNSET AND SUNRISE

(Holy Cross To Russian Mission)

HARVEY

(The Good Samaritan As Beachcomber)

EPILOGUE

(Flight of Fancy)

Index

IN THE BEGINNING…  

(BEATRICE)

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IN THE BEGINNING…  

(Beatrice)

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Alaska and the Yukon!

Listening to Sgt. Preston and to his stout-hearted husky, Yukon King; listening to the radio as they fought the cold and fought the evil-hearted villains to make Dawson and the Yukon Territory safe for those brave men of the untamed north, who toiled and scrabbled to pry the precious yellow metal from the breast of the tundra and the belly of the permafrost; from the rivers and streams that flowed through that dark and ominous land (where only the fit survive); listening, I was transported from my lonely, little town of Beatrice, Nebraska to the Yukon and beyond. Listening, I desperately hoped that someday fantasy would fade into the fog of time and re-emerge as fact and tenuous fiction become rock-hard reality.

That’s when I, as a twelve-year old boy, led by my heart, plunged headlong into the allure of the unknown; into the nearly blank places and spaces on maps where the siren names of streams, rivers, and villages called, pleading to be known, to be recognized, intensifying my craving to fill the blank places of my mind. Seeking, seeking first with my mind, knowing that my body would follow someday.

Listening to Sgt. Preston.

Listening, lying on the floor late at night with my ear pressed to the white plastic radio, the wall behind it dimly illuminated by the light of the tubes’ faint glow leaking through the perforations of the cardboard back; the Yukon River flowed silently into my consciousness and remained there, dark and cold and far away, murmuring tales of mystery. Running through my mind, the tales flitted and drifted as if they were thoughts of my own creation. Those tales kindled a flame that fed my boyhood late night dreams and fantasies, becoming daydreams that lay dormant but alive. The tiny flame of hope flickered and burned through the storm-buffeted years of my adolescence and through my adulthood. The dormant images lay, waiting, like the spring breakup of the ice-bound Yukon River, until awakened twenty years later by a simple, short advertisement in the National Geographic for a folding kayak.

ICE BOUND  

(THE KAYAK)

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ICE BOUND  

(The Kayak)

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CURIOSITY, and the sudden crunching sound of thought-bound river-ice breakup, impelled me to grab a pen and send off the completed coupon just to satisfy my curiosity about the kayak. Nothing more you understand; nothing more.

A couple of weeks later, the mailman brought a packet of the most awfully written literature with the goofiest photos I had seen in a long time. One photo that is still etched sharply in my memory showed a ruggedly handsome man carrying two large bags containing the dismantled kayak. He had a grin on his face that looked a lot like a grimace. Slightly in front of him was a girl, prancing along, on the portage or at the put-in, with a real grin on her face. The guy probably had a hernia and a collapsed spinal column by the end of the photo session. The girl was probably still grinning with a sense of relief that she had sustained no bodily damage.

Anyway, I plowed on, through the awful rhetoric and the goofy photos. I plowed on because here was the missing link between the boyhood dreams of my past and the unfulfilled Yukon River dreams of my future. Here at last was a way to get to the many roadless, blank places on the maps. Places to fill in and claim as my own.

Near the end of the pamphlet I finally found the price for the double kayak. The cost, including two double paddles, was about $400 and way beyond what we could afford at that time. But in the short time that it took me to read the pamphlets, I had resolved to make the kayak mine and only needed to figure out a way to save that amount of money as quickly as possible.

Realizing that my wife would frown upon selling one or both of our boys, I hit upon the idea of saving all my spare quarters until I had $400. Saving quarters would not break us, and I would eventually be able to buy the kayak.

I started stashing the quarters and kept at it for almost three years, filling little film canisters with them. When I hit the magic number one day, I hauled them all to the bank and dumped buckets of quarters on the cashier’s counter. I traded in those little silver critters for a cashier’s check, headed for home and filled out the order form for the kayak.

The color of the kayak?

Why, what else but red? Passion Red to turn the water to steam as I churned down rivers and lakes, sucking up fish and debris in the vortex of the kayak’s wake.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I sent both the check and the order form on their way to buy my long awaited passage to a dream.

After an infinitely long wait, probably about three weeks as measured by the marks on my calendar, I received a phone call from a trucking company that my long awaited kayak had finally arrived and that I could pick it up.

It was a hot and humid day in July when I wrestled the two body bag shaped boxes into our van. No time was wasted in getting them home. Since it was too hot to assemble the kayak outside in the blazing sun, I manhandled the boxes out of the van, down the stairs and into the basement where it was much cooler.

The directions said easy assembly…thirty minutes from box to boat. Right! After about two hours of sweating, struggling, grunting, and directing unpleasant thoughts at the kayak, the manufacturer, and the author of the simple directions, the kayak was finally assembled. I wanted to try it out right away but my wife, Maija, refused to let me open the faucets to flood the basement. I even offered to let her try out the kayak first. For a while I thought that she had lost her hearing. There was just no response to my suggestions and offers. One of my sons proffered the observation that perhaps I was being ignored. Some people can be so obstinate at times!

Shortly after putting my kayak together, the menfolk of the family prepared to drive to the Park Forest library just to see if there were any books about kayaking and places to kayak.

While at the curb, I shouted to Maija to barricade the basement door and stand guard at the top of the stairs with Dan and Ben’s bow and arrow; to protect the kayak. As we pulled away from the curb, Maija was left standing in the front doorway with an incredulous look on her face. I assumed that it meant she took her duties seriously.

Onward!

In the library, along with my two sons—the third one not being born yet—I came upon several books about paddling sports—canoeing, kayaking, and rafting.

Some were about the Everglades, some about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and one was about paddling the Yukon River. That was Yukon Summer by Eugene Cantin. Being fully armed with books, the three of us staggered out to the van and loaded them in, causing the shocks to groan as the van’s body descended toward the tires.

Great was my disappointment when we arrived home to find Maija in the garden. Not only did she fail to see the importance of protecting the kayak, she had also failed to barricade the door. What good does it do to repeat those solemn marriage vows about, ….till death do us part and Thou shalt guard the kayak, and then ignore them when the need arises?

After checking the kayak to make sure all was well, that no threads had been cut and no glue had been removed from the seams, I settled in to read my books—leaving Yukon Summer for last, like a delicate dessert, confident that it would be the best of the stack.

When I finally got through that book I was ready to paddle and play in the water with my kayak and kids and Maija. The great adventure was about to begin. I read that book and re-read it and talked about it and the trip with Maija until she had reduced her responses to, Uh huh, uh huh. But unfortunately for her, I never noticed.

I decided that one day soon (I guess twenty-two years is soon in a cosmic context) my family and I would paddle the length of the Yukon River, from its source in the glaciated mountains to the Bering Sea. For many years the plan was that Maija, the boys (three of them now), and I would paddle the river together in two kayaks. Then, as time passed and Maija excused herself from the Yukon Trip, I thought surely at least one or more of my sons would make the trip with me. Finally, in 1998 the realization dawned that I would probably be doing the trip by myself if I did it at all. Work and lack of interest on their part at that time kept them from enlisting. On the other hand maybe they shuddered inwardly at the thought of spending the better part of a whole summer confined to extremely close quarters with their old man.

Maija refused to go because she stated quite emphatically (the words still echo in my ears) that she had no interest in becoming a source of protein for bears or a tender feeding station for mosquitoes.

Dan was working desperately on two or three jobs to keep his family intact and above the flood line.

Ben was working his full weeks; seven days of labor where rest was considered the time spent driving to and from work. The perpetual motion kept him just ahead of the people who try to slide their hands into his rather shallow pockets, which certainly don’t clink and crinkle with the sound of money.

And Lukas. Lukas was gainfully employed in a full-time, all-consuming search for himself, trying to discover where he lives. Looking for the time and the place and the space where his heart waits with an open door.

Because all three were so intently engrossed with their life’s occupations, I came to realize that this trip would be my own continuing journey through life and hopefully, my further spiritual unfoldment. Not only was I going to have to clear the smog of daily life from my eyes and the relentless cacophony of city sounds from my ears. I was going to have to listen for the message; the spiritual message underlying my physical passage down the Yukon River.

CPR  

(COLLECT, PATCH, REPAIR)

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CPR  

(Collect, Patch, Repair)

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THE Yukon River! What a mighty river! What a mighty dream! The confluence of the two was drawing ever nearer.

Twenty years later, dreams of the Yukon could not be held back and they spilled furiously over the banks of logic and reason; eroding those banks and bearing them away in bits and pieces of broken debris in the foaming flood.

In late February of 1998, my dear, long-suffering wife and I were talking about places to visit and explore. I once more suggested that we paddle our kayak down the Yukon River. But she was concerned; no, worried, about bears—black bears, brown bears, grizzlies and any other kinds of bears that lay in between. As we talked, Maija did say, in all sincerity, that she was afraid but that I should go, that she did not want to keep me from my Grand Adventure, from tracking and perhaps finding Sgt. Preston, that elusive ghost of my boyhood past who probably still rode the ethereal radio waves of another reality, of a parallel Yukon Wilderness.

As we looked at each other both of us knew that it would mean being separated for nearly two months but neither of us was willing at that time to breach that unpleasant subject for fear of shedding streams of tears. So, we let that pass for the moment and talked instead about equipment, gear, clothing, food and getting there (wherever that might be). My hope was to start where the Yukon River started and end where the river ended.

From the source to the sea.

The shining Bering Sea.

Even though the mouth of the Yukon is a braided delta, it was easy to locate on any map. The source of the river was somewhat more problematic since it was based on scholarly opinion; but, opinion nonetheless.

After reading Eugene Cantin’s Yukon Summer, I decided to start my trip from Lake Bennett as he had. But along the way, and only a week or so before leaving on my trip, National Geographic published an issue that featured an article about the Yukon River. In that article, the author declared that the source of the Yukon was a glacier that fed Lake Atlin, in British Columbia. Looking at the map I saw that by starting in Lake Atlin my trip would be much longer, so I immediately decided to start there rather than from Lake Bennett. If bigger is better, then longer, most certainly, must also be better.

Distance was an important factor in determining time, that is, the number of days needed to complete the trip from Lake Atlin to the Bering Sea. Working as a middle school principal (when people found out what I did for a living, they usually thought they understood why I planned such a trip) I had accumulated many days of vacation over several years. I had a total of 51 days for the whole trip. Taking from that three travel days still left me with 48 days on the river. That in turn meant I would have to paddle an average of 46 miles each day to cover all of the 2,300 National Geographic miles.

Logistics, logistics, logistics.

Talking about longer, as I began to pull my head out of the clouds and started to look at the practical needs of actually pulling off the trip, I discovered that the Yukon River is like a giant rubber band. Its length varied from 1,800 to over 2,300 miles depending on the source of information. That’s a difference of 500 miles! Now, in the global scheme of things 500 miles is of no consequence, but when that distance is superimposed on a map of the continental United States, it is almost equal to the distance between St. Louis and Atlanta. What a margin of error! That distance becomes quite significant when it involves paddling a kayak loaded with camping gear, food, water and a soft, citified body.

To improve my chances of having a safe and successful trip, I settled on the longest estimated distance thinking that it would be better to have stuff, such as money and supplies, left over at the end of the trip, rather than running out of things and being forced to end the trip early. I settled on the 2,300 mile distance because it was closest to the Geographic distance, thinking that if anyone knew the correct distance, surely they would.

In the early part of January, I began to prepare in earnest for the Yukon River trip. One of the first things that I did was write down everything that I thought I would need for the trip—my list of essentials. Once the list was well on its way, I looked for and bought a few necessary items of clothing.

My next concern was the kayak. By the time I got to it, March had arrived. My day job was just taking up too much of my time.

The kayak had been stored in its bags for two years. Big mistake. I should have stored the kayak in its assembled form. The kayak is made of a wood and aluminum frame that fits into a rubberized fabric skin, and all three had deteriorated with use and time. I wondered how the fabric stitching had held up over the years.

I knew that the skin had probably shrunk somewhat, so I was prepared to spend some time forcing the wooden framework into the kayak skin. When I got to the point of actually putting the frame into the skin, I discovered that the shrinkage had been much greater than I had expected. It was extreme.

The foot-wide wooden floor would not unfold flat, but rose above the sides of the kayak opening like the top of a triangle. To force it down gradually and stretch the skin slowly, I placed weights on the pyramided floor.

Slowly, over a period of about a week, the weight caused the floor to lie flat, thus gradually stretching the skin enough to force the frame into the skin without tearing or breaking anything. The stitching held firmly. Next, I waterproofed the stitches and made a few more minor repairs.

Pulling the skin tightly to the crosspieces took a couple of weeks because the skin refused to stretch easily from the sides toward the center of the cockpit. I let the kayak sit in the garage as I gradually tightened the screws. The kayak screamed in protest. I laughed insanely in the dark recesses of the garage.

At the end of about three weeks, everything was repaired, the seams sealed, and the scrapes and cuts on the skin were filled in with waterproof caulk. The kayak remained fully assembled until June 16, two days before I left for Juneau.

One of the other items I knew that I would need was a sprayskirt for the kayak. The cockpit was quite large since it was a two-person kayak. Without a sprayskirt, a great deal of water would collect in the kayak if it rained (was there any doubt about rain?) or if the water became too rough on the lakes and on the river.

So, I turned to the resident, expert seamstress, Maija, knowing that if I were able to explain to her what was needed; she would be able to sew the sprayskirt to my specifications. Maija gladly agreed to sew the sprayskirt because she apparently wanted me to return to her without mishap and without the weather and water turning the kayak into a red submarine.

I told Maija I would do the hard part in the construction of the sprayskirt. I would go to the local hardware store and buy the waterproof tarp. In addition to the tarp, I would buy a roll of Velcro to use as a fastener to hold the sprayskirt to the kayak.

Continuing my hard labors, I cut a cardboard template to fit the size of the kayak’s cockpit opening. I even cut the holes in the cardboard where the paddlers would sit. Using the cardboard cutout as a template for the cockpit opening, Maija cut out a pattern from the waterproof tarp. As I explained the purpose of the sprayskirt, Maija simply cut out the parts and sewed all of the pieces together. That included the body tube, complete with a drawstring, which extended up my chest to my armpits.

When it was all done, the sprayskirt looked quite professional but it was even better because it was custom fitted to the kayak and to my body. Placing the sprayskirt on the kayak, I found that it fit perfectly. Maija had even sewn the adhesive-backed Velcro ribbon to the sprayskirt to make sure that it would not come unglued while in the river and the rain. However, she couldn’t think of any alterations or adjustment to keep me from coming unglued.

The other steps I had taken to waterproof myself, as much as I could, were to buy a lightweight Gore-Tex parka that reached almost to my knees, and Gore-Tex pants which nearly reached to my armpits. Both were lightweight so that I could layer my clothing as the outside temperature and my paddling effort fluctuated. I bought rubber boots that reached to my knobby knees to keep my feet dry.

By the end of April, the kayak was as ready as it ever was going to be, and I was certainly ready to start. I had collected my gear, checked and cleaned equipment, and tested the camp stove and water pump/purifier to be sure that everything worked.

After collecting my mountain of gear, when I had everything I wanted to take, I disassembled the kayak and proceeded to try and pack everything into three bags. Two of them would hold the kayak and most of my camping gear. The third bag, my waterproof, blue, Bill’s Bag from NRS, would hold my clothing, sleeping bag, some food—such as a two-pound loaf of Latvian sourdough rye bread—and anything else that I could not fit into either of the two kayak bags. I would carry the blue bag onto the planes as my carry-on luggage.

After I had stuffed everything that I possibly could into the three bags, there were only a few items left on the garage floor. Anything that did not fit was placed in the stay-at-home pile.

That very small pile consisted of my ancient Boy Scout hatchet (I took a folding saw instead) and a camp chair/sleeping pad. Actually, I don’t think that two items can be considered even as a very small pile. The only piece of equipment that I was reluctant to leave behind was the hatchet. That could be used in an emergency situation to build a long-term shelter. But, try as I might, I could not get it into either of the kayak bags and still close the zippers. Putting it into the carry-on bag did not seem to be such a good idea. And so, I left my trusty Boy Scout hatchet at home, in a dark, lonely corner of the garage.

And that’s how natural selection takes place sometimes.

When I finished packing, I had only those items that were absolutely essential for the trip. No spare gear and no luxury items.

Each of the two kayak bags weighed close to sixty pounds and the blue bag weighed about thirty-five pounds after everything was crammed and jammed into them. The blue bag would be stowed in the overhead compartments of the airplanes. The other two bags would go as luggage and would have to fly less comfortably. The airline allowed one carry-on bag and two luggage bags at no extra charge. There was an extra charge for items that exceeded sixty-five pounds, and that’s why I whacked and hacked mercilessly to stay under the weight restrictions. I was home free as long as I could stuff the blue bag into the overhead compartments.

After I had gone through the natural selection process, I removed everything from the two kayak bags and re-assembled the kayak to keep the skin from shrinking again. It remained fully assembled until I left on my Yukon River trip.

In early May I finally began to look for maps of British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and Alaska, maps that should have shown the Yukon River. I had waited that long because I thought maps of those three regions would be easy to find. I also thought that the maps would show the Yukon River with a fair degree of accuracy.

A book of topographical maps of Alaska provided everything that I needed for that part of the Yukon River. The scale was great, with one inch equaling 4.8 miles. That provided enough detail without making the maps so large or so numerous that I could not take them along.

All that I could finally locate at that time for British Columbia and the Yukon Territory were road maps with much information about towns, villages, and tourist attractions but hardly more than a wayward, thin, blue line indicating the approximate location of the Yukon River. Some maps did not even show the Yukon River beyond Whitehorse. There was a break on the map with the river finally re-appearing as if from an underground cave, some distance south of Dawson City.

After checking several encyclopedias, going to many bookstores, camping stores, and other outdoor supply places—and even the Internet—I finally hit upon the idea of calling the National Geographic. Surely they would have the maps I needed. After all, the Geographic was synonymous with exploration and there can be no exploration without maps, at least in my mind. After several phone calls, I found a person who was able to tell me emphatically and with total conviction that Geographic did not have the kind of maps that I was searching for.

I was devastated; I was distraught. The National Geographic not have a map? That seemed inconceivable. And yet, it was true. The Geographic without a map was like a car without wheels, or a kayak without a paddle (in this case). Even though I was not going up the river, I felt like I was up the proverbial creek without my double-bladed, aluminum and polycarbonate paddle. (It was early June now.)

Anyway, the Geographic man was able to provide me with the name and phone number of a map source in California.

When I did reach The Source in California, he said they had a map of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. He put me on hold, went to look for the maps and unfolded them as we took up our conversation. He told me that both maps showed the Yukon River, flowing in one long, unbroken line from Lake Atlin, through British Columbia, through the Yukon Territory and stopping dead at the Alaskan border. But I knew, I just knew in the heart of my heart, that the river continued to flow through Alaska and on to the shining Bering Sea. And so, I bought the two maps and asked that he overnight them, which he did cheerfully—for a price.

The maps arrived the next day. They did show the river, but in the area north of Whitehorse it was hard to follow where the river actually flowed. These also were, clearly, roadmaps with the river placed on them as an afterthought. But, it was there. And, reasoning that I could not possibly lose my way drifting downstream with the current, I didn’t worry too much about not having good maps for the upper Yukon River. (Or, would it be more correct to call it the lower Yukon River since I was heading north, downstream?)

Once I had collected all the maps and cut out the map book pages of the Yukon River that I needed, I numbered them (using a waterproof laundry marking pen) sequentially, then laminated and wrapped the pages around a paddle shaft to keep them from being crushed in the bags. About the middle of March I made flight arrangements from St. Louis to the town of Atlin on Lake Atlin. It was not going to be much of a problem to get from St. Louis to Juneau, Alaska. I would be going from St. Louis, to St. Paul, to Seattle, and finally to Juneau. In the process I would gain three hours of clock time. Then I reserved a connecting flight with Summit Air from Juneau to Atlin in a five-passenger bush plane. My flight to Juneau was to land at 3:59 p.m. and my flight to Atlin was to leave at 4:00 p.m. I had one minute to disembark, collect my bags, find a way to get to the next plane, load my gear, load myself, and take off. Being either supremely confident or supremely ignorant, it never occurred to me that I could not make the connecting flight.

Actually, what kept me from worrying about the situation was the conviction that there would be a solution to the apparent problem. My job was to understand there would be a solution, step back from the situation, and watch everything unfold harmoniously.

Along with collecting gear, maps, equipment, and preparing the kayak, I also prepared myself physically for the Yukon Trip. I sat for hours soaking in a bathtub filled with cold water wearing my Gore-Tex clothing and knee high rubber boots, weaving my arms back and forth in a simulated paddling motion. That did not do much for me and did create a sense of anxiety and urgency in Maija to get me out of the house and onto the river before the neighbors learned of my peculiar behavior.

What actually did work and did help was a series of exercises to strengthen my arms and upper body. I happened to find the exercises in a kayaking magazine in an article about maintaining strength during the winter months. I started the workouts in October, 1998 and increased the repetitions and sets over a period of a couple of months, doing them at least six times per week through April. Then, for some inexplicable reason I quit doing the exercises. The folly of that decision would be visited upon my unwitting body with a vengeance during the first seven days of the trip. Because the spirit was not willing, the flesh became weak.

Anyway, I thought I was ready. My preparations were as complete as they could be, given the meager amount of knowledge that I had about the river and the country that it flowed through. As I had planned and checked and packed my gear, the idea of doing the trip from the source of the Yukon River to the mouth(where it pours into the Bering Sea) had grown and expanded from a simple point-to-point trip, to include seeing the country and meeting the people along the river. The trip had become a journey more important than the destination.

June 17 was my last day at school and everything was packed into the three bags and placed by the door of the garage, waiting to be loaded into the van for the drive to the airport. All that I had to do that evening was to try and fall asleep as quickly as possible because the next day, June 18, was going to be a long one.

I closed my eyes only to have scenes of mountains of gear flash by, followed by racing waters, whitecaps, wind and wide, wide skies above a red kayak drifting down the Yukon River of my dreams and imagination.

To sleep.

To dream.

Perchance to sleep….

GETTING THERE  

(ST. LOUIS TO ATLIN)

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GETTING THERE  

(St. Louis to Atlin)

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IT was early in the morning; still dark outside and I was wide awake. It was June 18, a Friday, and I was supposed to be well-rested and ready to start the first leg of my wilderness trip down the Yukon River. The trip would begin in the wilderness of many airports with redeye night riders pushing and shoving through throngs of vacant-eyed airport natives in the last stages of terminal weariness.

All of that flashed through my mind as my wife slept peacefully beside me. When I finally rolled out of bed, my head was full of excitement, my gut full of tension and my heart pumping apprehension laced with a mild dose of sadness. That day was the day I had thought about, planned for, and talked about for twenty-two years.

As I went about the house quietly, making sure nothing had been forgotten, I thought about the different places that could best be seen from a kayak. Like the Everglades, which Dan and I paddled through, five years ago, thinking that the 110 miles from Everglades City to Flamingo was an impressive distance.

Then I thought about Eugene Cantin, whom I never met except through his book Yukon Summer, which had inspired me so, connecting my Sgt. Preston of the past to the present. I thought about the trip and being in a kayak on the mighty Yukon of my dreams. I imagined myself, in my red kayak, as a tiny red cell flowing along the ever-larger arteries of the sleeping giant, Alaska, flowing through the heart of the land.

Maija drove me to the airport and while she parked the van, I wrestled and lugged the bagged kayak and my other luggage to the skycap who looked quizzically at my two kayak bags and then at me. He finally said, Because of the unusual shape and size of the two bags, sir, particularly the long bag, I need to know what is inside. I was going to tell him it was my dear old mother, but for once thought better of it, curbed my tongue, and told him that is was only a folding kayak. I did not want Maija to come back from parking the van to find me spread-eagled and up against the wall in my jockey shorts. That would definitely have been a bad beginning.

The bags. My worry was that the two kayak bags would exceed the luggage weight and size limit. That would have meant an additional cost of fifty dollars for each bag. But, the sky-cap simply tagged them and passed them through. In my unbridled euphoria, I tipped him a whole dollar, even though I had been the one to struggle with the bags. He looked at the dollar. Then he looked at me, then at the two bags and finally back at me with his face glowing. When Maija came up she asked me why the guy was looking at me with disgust. I figured Maija was talking about the other skycap, the one who did not get the tip.

Having taken care of the baggage bags, both of us went in search of a place to get some coffee and to sit and talk before Maija had to leave for work. After a few minutes she took out an envelope and said that it was a letter to me but that I was to open it only after the plane was well on its way to Minneapolis. Maija also took out a narrow, plaited leather bracelet. One strand was black and the other was brown. She said that the bracelet symbolized both of us and our lives, which had been so tightly intertwined for those thirty-three years. As she tied it around my wrist, Maija asked that I wear it until I returned from my trip.

The leave-taking was quickly becoming the hardest part of the trip, revealing that perhaps below my knees were feet of clay. And those feet were about to be washed away by a stream of tears barely held in check by rapidly blinking eyelids—rather flimsy and insubstantial dams for the floodtides backed up behind them.

For once I did not glance around furtively to see if others were watching us as we hugged and held each other tightly. It seemed that only the two of us stood in that terminal. Other sights, sounds, and people disappeared as we shared a kiss that would bind us together for the next eight weeks. Then, she was off to work and I was the one left to watch her disappear through the doors and into the shadowed darkness of the parking garage.

Soon my flight was announced and I boarded the plane trying to look casual as my carry-on bag stretched my arm to the floor and the camera strap dug into my neck. Stowing the bag in the luggage compartment and the camera bag under the seat, I pulled out the letter from my shirt pocket, but I didn’t read it. I waited and waited until the plane had taxied down the runway, left the tarmac far below, climbed to cruising altitude, and banked toward Minneapolis.

So there I was, on my way to Minneapolis from St. Louis, flying from the frenzy of a major city to a place so far removed that it seemed to belong not only in a different place but also to a different time. I was flying at three hundred miles per hour toward glacial fields where movement is measured in inches per century. What a fantastic juxtaposition. Slowing down metaphorically, from three hundred miles per hour to inches per century, I would be like a test pilot on a rocket sled braking from three hundred to zero miles per hour in a matter of seconds. I fully expected to have two bulging, blackened eyes as I stepped from the plane to the ground at Lake Atlin.

Carefully, taking the letter from the envelope, I unfolded it and read Maija’s thoughts. The first reading brought tears to my eyes and the dam nearly burst. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me as I hyper-blinked and dabbed at my eyes, hoping that my sniffling nose would not give me away. Reading it a second time, while writing in my journal, there was a repeat performance—a weepy re-run. As I thought about the letter and Maija, the words of a song, popular long ago, came to mind. The few words I recalled were, ….what a lucky man he was.

The first part of the trip, which was starting to look like a wildly skipping stone bouncing across the water, was to take one hour and fifteen minutes. After forty-five minutes the captain announced that we would be there in one hour because the plane was able to leave St. Louis so quickly. He continued to throw out other bits of information that didn’t seem to interest anyone but me. For instance, the temperature was 66 degrees, only slightly cooler than in St. Louis. That was very unusual, for at that time of the year St. Louis is hot and humid, so hot and humid that a person can squeeze water out of the air to quench one’s thirst.

After landing in St. Paul-Minneapolis, I hiked all the way to the other end of the terminal to catch the connecting flight to Seattle. The blue bag had straps which allowed it to be carried much like a backpack—once it was on my back. When hoisting it on to my shoulders, I became fearful of losing my balance, falling backwards and ending up on my back on the floor. I pictured myself flailing my arms and legs around wildly like some flipped over tortoise and slowly dying of thirst under the blazing fluorescent lights of the terminal, my lips parched and cracked. So, to protect myself from such a tragic end, I leaned forward at the hips and hunchbacked down the concourse, grunting and straining, eyes bulging and bloodshot, leaving crying children and frightened mothers in my wake.

I shuffled and hunched up to the check-in counter with several minutes to spare and even had time to take off the blue bag and sit down in one of the chairs. Looking out the windows, I noticed that this plane was much larger than the one from St. Louis. Having lived all of my life with a last name that starts with Zv…. I just knew I’d have to squeeze sideways down that narrow aisle all the way to the tail section with the blue bag stuck out in front of me like a battering ram. This plane was big and it was long. It was a flying behemoth. There were nine seats in each row and about fifty rows of seats. Was all of Minneapolis moving to Seattle? There should have been moving walkways from one end of the plane to the other.

While sitting and waiting in the waiting area, I began to listen to the public announcements. After a while I began to catch some words that seemed to be spoken in English and eventually, as I grasped the basics, whole phrases started to become intelligible. But what I was hearing was starting to make me a little nervous. The clerk kept asking for volunteers to be bumped to a later flight. They had overbooked and everyone showed up. I began to wish that my last name started with the letter A. The clerk continued to crackle and drone and slur through the message trying to entice passengers to drop out with a three hundred dollar credit for anywhere that the airline flew if they would only allow the airline to bump them. I kept pointing to other people but could not catch the clerk’s eye so I ducked my head and kept it down, looking intently at the cracks and lint on the floor, a trick I had learned in the early years of my schooling, until the crisis had passed. I certainly could not afford to be bumped since there already was only one minute to transfer from the Juneau flight to the Atlin flight.

Well, I got busy working to understand that harmony must prevail and that control of time and schedules was not in the clerk’s hands, nor in