NORTHERN ENCOUNTERS
By Doug Doremus
June 1974
Twilight approached as I stood on the
edge of the water. This river has been my home for the last five
hundred miles and twenty-two days. I will be glad to be free of its
grip, its narrow boundaries, which have sped me downstream day after
day.
I entered this adventure with hopes
of excitement, an entrance into manhood, and a proving point to
myself as an individual. Instead I found myself, the adolescent I
was, whining about when the trip would end. I was weary of
freeze-dried food, frozen clothes in the frost-covered morning,
delicately brittle yet abrasive and intruding to my barely warm skin.
I was weary of the rain running in rivulets down my body, moistening
every belonging, hindering our every effort to dry out before a tier
of burning logs. Weary of the winds ceaseless caress, drying out yet
cracking my skin, my fingertips, and my lips creating miniature
crevices which bled with every smile or movement. The bloods warmth
welcome only until the winds cooled it.
We were one hundred miles from trips
end. I looked out onto what lay ahead in those last miles and I felt
my heart sink. The James Bay lay there before me at the rivers end.
It swelled and moved like a living being. It was nine hundred miles
to the Eastern shore but that was a journey we would not take. We
would be heading south down it's western shore, a shoreline littered
with mudflats. At high tide four feet of water flowed to the shore
but at low tide it as completely dry-docked for as far as the eye
could see. These mudflats create havoc with the winds and currents.
It was an entity all of its own, existing as a bay within a bay.
Twilight came and the waters finally
met the sky, turning the horizon into a black tapestry extending from
the beach I stood on to the heavens above my head. We stood up,
entered our canoes and pushed off from the sanctuary of our river
leaving our home behind and paddled into the vast unknown of the
James Bay.
Stars began to make their appearance
in the blackness, pinpoints of dim wavering light shining through the
clear Canadian night. As the darkness increased, the stars offered us
their show, thousands upon thousands of them, like a parade of tiny
torches in the crystalline night sky. We joined our crafts together
as one. Maps were broken out and under the flickering light of
matches we tried to consult them. Rising and falling, the waves make
it hard for us to find a heading. We continue paddling.
My internal clock had been twisted
and turned, my day was now night and my night was day. My body cried
out for sleep and as my chin hit my chest I heard my name being
called. I snapped upright and started to paddle only to find my
paddle gone, my hands gripped nothing but empty air. I turned to the
stern and my partner handed me my paddle and barked his command to
stay awake. He was twenty years my senior and a seasoned outdoorsman.
His order was not one to be ignored. There was nothing to do but dip
the paddle, pull, muscles strained, sleep continued to taunt me. We
made headway slowly. I splashed the cold salty water of the bay on my
face, hoping to keep me awake. I reached into the dry bag and pulled
out the map and compass and laid them on my knees. Searching for my
matches I suddenly realized that I could see my hand, my fingernails.
I looked to my left, then my right. Puzzled I looked up. A shimmering
veil of light was above me, a bluish hue wavering back and forth
resembling Christmas ribbon candy in the black overhead.
It started on the eastern edge of the
sky and extended until it met the western horizon. Before my eyes
another one began to race across the sky, quickly making its way
through the blackness, following its companion in blue, only this one
was red. The next to follow was yellow and the last to streak out was
green. They all joined us on the bay, the Aurora Borealis, the
Northern Lights, offering us their light.
Under their glow we consulted our
maps and turned our canoes to our heading, but instead of paddling we
sat and stared upward at the spectacle above us. Each band was solid
at the top of its arc across the sky, the colors fading as they
reached down to the waters we sat on. They had life in them, moving
and fading in and out, pulsing not unlike a heartbeat, the heartbeat
of our earth I thought. Time seemed to lose meaning to me as we sat
and watched this resplendent display of nature. Fatigue left me as if
I drew new energy from this cosmic wonder. I realized the hardship of
the pasty twenty odd days seemed trivial. Above was one of our
earth's most magnificent demonstrations. They stayed with us, for
what seemed like hours lighting our way as we drifted down the bay.
Slowly, they began to fade off, the bottoms of their shimmering and
pulsating curtains dissipated leaving only the band of their crowns
to glow in the sky and then even they began to fade. Finally, they
where gone.
I was saddened, yet exhilarated. I
wanted to see more of my night companions. I grew in the warmth of
their fragile glow, knowing that all of the burdens of this adventure
had reached a climax with their appearance. I put the bitter feelings
behind me. I knew I had witnessed a pageant of beauty that few others
had seen, worth every dip of the paddle, every hardship, every cold,
shivering moment in this unforgiving land. There is a price to pay
for rewards and this reward was worth it, for I felt contentment
flush through me, my soul feeling complete and intact.
The darkness overtook us as the
Northern Lights left us to continue their journey across the vast
emptiness of the heavens. We sat in our canoes, bobbing in the waves,
speechless. There was nothing to say. Close enough to see each others
faces in the night, we picked up our paddles, and with new
determination began our journey south to trips end.
No comments:
Post a Comment