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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Can You Hear Me Now? (Cont.)

ON DAY TEN, the river slides into a canyon, a phantasmagoric, watery cavern of dripping red-and-gray walls. A peregrine falcon and a merlin swoop overhead, and the canyon soon curves to the left. To the right stands a headland of black rock, carved smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Shaped like an amphitheater, it echoes the roar of water. Just above this rapid, a green canoe is pulled onto the left bank, with a hodgepodge of gear piled alongside it on the rocky beach. The canoe's a rental, the name of an Inuvik air-taxi service written on its bow and stern.

It's obvious that the owners of the canoe are portaging, so we park nearby and walk along the shore to see if the rapid warrants our carrying as well. A single tongue of river, smooth as moving oil, flows between boiling waves and holes. The bottom of the tongue is blocked by a flat, dark rock the size of a banquet table. Crashing whitewater lies to its left; directly to its right, the same. If we can dart the canoe to the right, at the bottom of the oily tongue, there's a slim passage.

When my uncle died, I missed one of the elemental passages of any family. Now we can have it both ways: be gone and be attached.

Len and I stare at this crucial move for a long time: down, feint right, not too much, straighten, and escape. It looks doable—not barely doable but very doable. It's within the limits of the canoe, and our skill, and it'll be a challenging run. After all, we came here to run as much of the river as possible. Neither of us wants to be influenced too much by the decision of the other paddlers, whom we spy coming back from their portage: a heavyset man and, much slower and far behind him, a heavyset woman, crossing several hundred yards of boulders.

They both smell of wood smoke, and Mr. Dunn—he gives us only his last name when we greet them—tells us that they capsized in a rapid two days upstream and had to spend a day building a fire to dry their clothing and gear. Taking a swim has "frightened the missus considerably," he says. He looks at the ground and adds, "This is a much harder river than I thought."

"We're really flatwater canoers," his wife offers, "and we were told that the river was flat mostly."

She looks scared, and her husband seems morose. Both are obviously weary. They've gotten themselves in over their heads, and more-difficult rapids lie ahead. In some ways, they represent that older spirit of adventure; I doubt they have a sat phone or GPS. Unlike us, they are truly on their own if things go wrong.

The Dunns pick up their next load of gear, say goodbye, and start walking painfully over the rocks. We eat some energy bars and Len says, "I wish we could do something for them."

Feeling at a loss, we get into our canoe and shove off, and then any thoughts of the Dunns' welfare vanishes as we think of our own. We ferry upstream and eddy out into the current, and I line us up. We sit the canoe, roaring white waves before us, split by a slick green tongue of water. We put in only a stroke or two to keep us pointed downstream. A moment later, spray erupts around us as we slip over the edge—the table of rock, with its Scylla and Charybdis of breaking waves, looming off the bow. Even as I shout for his draw, Len leans right and sinks his paddle. Braced against the thwart, I hang my paddle far over the left gunwale and suck the stern toward it, and the edge of the table rock whisks by our port side. We straighten the heeled canoe and race downstream on the tail of the rapid, passing the Dunns, who sit on the shore, watching us. We raise our paddles; they wave back, looking as sad as two people can be.

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