Drifting Home Read online

  The Sunday School lessons that winter had featured Eve’s fall from grace and Christ’s temptation in the wilderness and so we were well versed in the ways of Satan. He could appear in any guise in any place and on this warm June morning, in front of the fruit store, Satan took the earthly mask of Axel Nordling. He even looked like the devil, with his sharp features and his Scandinavian nose.

  “You got collection money?” Axel asked and we nodded, nervously.

  “Won’t be any collection today,” Axel reminded us.

  “Let’s go inside, look around,” Axel suggested. In we went, with the scent of fresh lemons and oranges in our nostrils and the sight of polished apples, Mackintoshes, Delicious, Spies and Gravensteins, dazzling our eyes. But more than anything there were the bananas, hanging in fat clusters from the ceiling.

  “Buy a banana,” Axel whispered.

  “Can’t.”

  “You got money.”

  “It’s for collection.”

  “There’s no collection. Say you gave it anyway. Buy a banana. Just one.”

  We bought just one; but one wasn’t enough. Then we bought another. Then we bought two apples and some grapes and, in an orgy of buying, spent the whole seventy-five cents. We were afraid to go home for lunch. Lunch was fruit, fresh from the Casca, fresh from the Outside world, which I could scarcely remember and my sister could not really remember at all. When we did go home for supper we were put to bed and left to contemplate our sins. Our weak excuses were not believed; no doubt we smelled of bananas and oranges. In the years that followed we continued to play with Axel Nordling, but sometimes when I looked at him I thought I could see horns protruding from his forehead and a forked tail at his rear.

  The hulk of the Casca retreats into the distance as we enter that stretch of the Yukon river system known as the Thirty-mile, that being the distance from the end of the lake to the Yukon’s first great tributary, the Teslin. To me, this is the most beautiful section of the river. Here the channel is narrow and winding, coiling under high banks and through flatland. The scenery changes constantly, each bend in the river bringing a surprise. The water is blue and so clear that you can often see the bottom, and in dark corners, the Arctic grayling lies waiting for the hook. The Thirtymile is also considered to be the most dangerous section of the river because of the hairpin turns. During the stampede many boats, from scows to sternwheelers, foundered here.

  In 1898 my father’s party almost lost one of their boats in the Thirtymile. It struck a rock and stove a hole in its bottom, causing a two-day delay. In that hectic summer, the river was alive with all manner of craft. I remember him telling me of a strange sight which he did not report in his diary. At one point, he said, he had looked into the clear waters of the Thirtymile and seen a scow with thirty dead bodies lying on the bottom. My eyes went as round as Peggy Anne’s when she listens to a ghost story and then, with a slow smile, my father explained that these were the bodies of beef cattle, drowned on their way to Dawson.

  We are not going to explore the Thirtymile today because the company is still wet and cold from the lake. A few miles down the river is the best campsite we have yet found and though we have to lug our kit and stores up a high bank, the view is worth the effort. We gaze down upon the ribbon of the Yukon, glittering in the evening sunlight and winding off between the wooded hills. Beneath our feet is a dense carpet of moss–a natural mattress on which to pitch the tents. Janet, who thinks of everything, has brought along several lengths of nylon clothesline for an emergency. It is needed: everything in Patsie’s pack, for instance, is sopping. She and the others huddle round the fire to dry and later on, with characteristic good cheer, Patsie draws that scene for the log.

  All the new boxes Janet has scrounged in Whitehorse have been reduced to mush and so we must make do with garbage bags for the rest of the trip. Fortunately she has brought dozens of them. She, Pamela and Penny find the package marked DAY FOUR and we have smoked country sausage, sizzling in the pan, with fresh cornbread made by Pamela, who has been planning that surprise all day. Pamela (whom Peter calls “Dorothy Domestic”) has determined upon a series of culinary coups–home baked beans, split pea soup, spaghetti Bolognese, curried chicken, cake and even bread. I think again of my parents taking the loaves to bed with them so that they could rise under the blankets, and the repeated references in my father’s 1898 diary to biscuits baked along the way.

  Patsie has found a separate place on the fire for her vegetable stew. All the cooking utensils are in use, tainted with meat juices, but she has foraged in the woods and found a small aluminum pot, complete with handle, lying among the mosses. It is an eerie discovery. Here on the bank we can look out on the empty river and on the endless hills drifting off to the north, ridge upon ridge, all the way to the Arctic. There is no hint of man–no boat upon the swift waters, golden now in the rays of the late evening sun, no smudge of smoke staining the far horizon where the spiky spruces meet the pale sky, not even a clearing in the forest or an old blaze on a tree. But there is the little aluminum pot, and a serviceable one, too, lying in the moss. At one of our last camping spots the children came upon a wooden rocking horse in the woods. How did it get there? We can only know that others have passed this way and left these tantalizing hints of their presence.

  We sit around the fire, reviewing the events of the day when, out of nowhere, the rain hits us. We leave our mugs of coffee and scramble for the clothesline. Just as suddenly the downpour subsides and there, arching across the river, is a rainbow. It sets the mood for the evening. We add a little rum to the coffee and begin to sing–Scout songs from my day and from Peter’s and Paul’s, and old army songs and school songs and crazy songs.

  Peter leads the assembly in a nonsense song, for which everybody has to supply a verse:

  PETER: I know a guy whose name is Skip!

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  PETER: Boy, is he an awful drip!

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy!

  Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy!

  Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  Enormous glee from the smaller children at this insult!

  PATSIE: I know a gal whose name is Penny!

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  PATSIE: When it comes to brains she ain’t got any!

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  Pandemonium from the little girls at this scurrilous attack on brainy Penny! And so the doggerel continues, lampooning Ross (hair like moss), Scotty (very naughty), Cheri (they claim she’s smart but she’s not very) and all the others until little Perri, her black face glowing in the firelight and her curly mop standing out from her head in a dark halo, pipes up:

  PERRI: I know a lady name is Jan!

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  PERRI: I keep hearing her say: ‘Goddam!’

  CHORUS: Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!

  It breaks us up and Perri, who is a bit of a ham, grins at the attention. Suddenly, through the adversity of the rain, and the danger on the lake, we have become a tightly knit company, knowing each other intimately enough to trade insults in song. Nicknames are being coined, slogans developed, legends established. Years from now, if Perri or Peter should happen to encounter Scotty or Ross, it will be necessary only to whisper: “Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!” to bring this night on the river crowding back, the night of the rainbow and Pamela’s cornbread and the sing-song round the campfire.

  DAY FIVE

  Skip has come up with a system for getting away earlier. As soon as he shouts “rise and shine,” each of us will immediately pack up our kit and take it down to the boats. Then the empty tents can be struck by one work party while another prepares breakfast.

  “Rise and shine!” Skip cries. It is seven and the sun is out. There are groans from the boys’ tent but almost immediately the small figure of Perri appears. She is dollar bright and fully dressed, right down to her life belt. Off she goes
, dragging her kitbag down the bank, following Skip’s plan to the letter. She cannot lift the bag so she half pushes and half pulls it through the moss.

  “Perri, what makes that bag of yours so heavy?”

  “It’s the cheese, Dad.”

  My God, the cheese! We have forgotten about the extra cheesel Janet packed some perishables, including two great wheels of cheddar, in the children’s bags rather than send them weeks ahead to Bennett. One cheese has been retrieved and partly eaten but we have forgotten the other and Perri has been packing it around for four days without complaint.

  “I’ll take the cheese, Perri.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Now, for the first time, she is able to lift her own kitbag.

  “Everything I wear smells of cheese,” she says as she trots off. It is a statement of fact, not a complaint.

  The others are slowly rising and shining and thanks to the new system we cut forty minutes off our departure time. This morning we will not use the motors. We will lie lazily in the boats and let the current take us down the Thirtymile.

  Every river has a personality of its own, but the Yukon has more than most because its character changes as it grows, broadening and maturing on its long journey to the sea. The Mackenzie is a majestic river but a monotonous one. It flows directly to the Arctic, almost in a straight line, with scarcely a curve and rarely a twist, moving resolutely on beside the long line of the accompanying mountains. It is much the same with the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan. But the Yukon is more human. It has many moments of uncertainty and some of frivolity. It skitters back and forth, hesitates, changes its mind, charges forward, then retreats. On the Yukon there is rarely a dull moment: new vistas and fresh terrains open up behind every curve. This is because the river has embarked on a long and wearying quest. The Mackenzie rises in the hinterland and sets out in a direct line for the Arctic, sensing exactly where its goal must be, but the Yukon does not appear to know. It rises within fifteen miles of the Pacific but its search for that same ocean takes it in the opposite direction. Like a prospector seeking hidden gold it explores the land, swinging this way and that, pushing its way through obstacles, circumnavigating others, following false scents and lost trails, growing from infancy to youth to maturity to old age. Here, between Laberge and the Teslin, it is like a child, the water crystal clear, pure to drink and blue as Peggy Anne’s eyes. It wriggles about like a child in delight. Later, when the first of the great tributaries pours in, it will begin to broaden and then, with the alluvial muds of the Pelly and the White joining it, will lose the colour of its youth, and become wider, almost fleshy, the great islands and sandbars giving it texture. By the time it reaches Dawson it is in the first flush of its early maturity, a noble river, flowing confidently past the town, giving only passing notice to the little Klondike, which foams out of the hills to greet it. But it has a long way to go yet. On its huge arc through Alaska it must force a narrow passage through the Ramparts and then spread out, miles wide, over the Yukon flats. Here the Arctic beckons and the river noses north across the Circle, only to discover that its instincts are wrong and that it must retreat south and west, growing broader as others join it, until at Norton Sound it divides into numberless, nameless channels to mingle at last with the cold sea.

  It is a new sensation to drift with the current. After the cough and sputter of the engines, this soft and leisurely progress down the river is utterly relaxing. There is no sound except our voices and the hissing of the water. We can converse easily and call from boat to boat. In the wider parts of the river we can hear our echo against the high banks. As we drift, the boats describe great circles so that we see the river and the scenery from various angles.

  Craggy rocks, plumed with evergreens, rise from the water. Around the next corner, the river passes under clay banks, three hundred feet high. Mixed in with the dark spruces are the bleached trunks of birches and the olive greens of aspen poplars, many of them notched by the teeth of beaver. At times we seem to be plunging directly through the dark forest, the river no more than sixty feet wide and shaded by the trees; at others the channel broadens into flat meadows; then again, the high, eroded banks return, pocked by swallows’ nests and marked by mud slides. We will come upon these clay cliffs again and again as we drift north.

  Beneath our boats we can hear the water seething and hissing. Peggy Anne says that it looks like water boiling in a kettle. Somewhere below, the grayling are lurking but the boys, who have several rods out, have had no luck yet. Peter is casting expertly from Miss Bardahl and now he feels a tug on his line. Enormous excitement! A moment later he lands a fat, foot-long grayling, detaches it neatly from the hook and waves it aloft for the others to see.

  It is not surprising that Peter should catch the first fish for he understands and enjoys mechanical techniques. At home he has a workbench and a set of tools. Like my father, but unlike me, he can do anything with his hands. My father had once been a carpenter’s apprentice and I can remember him patiently trying to teach me how to make a mortice-and-tenon joint and how to dovetail drawers with a chisel but I was no good at that. If he was disappointed, he did not show it. He was forever building things. Once, when we camped at Rock Creek in the Klondike valley, he built a scale model of a Roman catapult, for my sister and me, explaining, of course, the history and uses of the weapon. After the D.A.A.A. theatre showed Douglas Fairbanks in The Three Musketeers, and every kid in town became a duellist, he made me a beautiful wooden sword with a guard fashioned from a Hills Brothers coffee tin. When we children grew too old to occupy cribs in our parents’ bedroom, he added an extra room to our house. I can still see him working away with plane and chisel and finishing off the porch railing with a little fretwork.

  The most magnificent and satisfying thing he built was a boat. It was a proper boat–not a scow of the kind constructed on the lakes in 1898, but a handsome twenty-six foot motor-boat, with a round bottom and a forward storage cuddy. He rented an abandoned hotel on Front Street and every weekend and most evenings for about a year he laboured in this makeshift workshop on his boat. We children would bring him down his lunch and sit around watching him bend each rib to the required curvature by soaking it in water and forcing it into a pattern between two confining rows of nails. When it was finished, he called it The Bluenose, after the famous schooner, and painted the prow a bright blue.

  The four or five summers that followed must have been the happiest in my parents’ life. We lived on the river. Almost every day, when he finished work, we would pack a picnic and set out for one of the Yukon’s many islands. In July we would pitch a permanent tent on one of these islands and camp there, my father commuting to work by boat. Thus I came to know the river in all its moods. As the water dropped in the summer, divided islands would be joined by spits of sand in which warm ponds would be left behind for bathing. Between the larger islands were sloughs, some of them shallow enough to wade across, so that you could sometimes move from island to island, wading and walking. There were fish in some of the smaller tributaries, in Swede creek, for instance, and in the famous Indian river–dark, beautiful streams near whose mouths one could find limpid pools.

  Drifting down the Thirtymile it all comes back to me: the familiar Yukon hills, their erosion creases choked with evergreens; the little pup creeks gurgling down through the thick forests; the bank swallows pouring from their cliffside caves and filling the air with chatter; the great bluffs around which the river courses and eddies, so that the water, in some places, is going in two directions at once. This is the river of my childhood and of my dreams, for it has often returned, grotesquely distorted, to haunt my adult sleep.

  The temperature has risen to 75, the sun is baking our skin, and the fishermen are busy. By lunchtime we have four grayling. By the time lunch is over, we have eight, caught near the bank between bites of sandwiches. In the afternoon, there are other excitements. The lead boat spies four cow moose, grazing in the swampy mouth of a small creek. The
y look up from their foraging, their shovel snouts dripping weeds, inspect us curiously with their great, soft eyes and then lope leisurely away as the river sweeps us past. Then, in the space of a few minutes, we spot no fewer than three bald eagles in the sky. On the eroding left bank stands a lone cabin, tottering on the very lip, about to plunge into the river; a former steamboat refuelling station. After that we sweep around the great U.S. Bend, where the river forms a tight “S” between high, brooding cliffs.

  An hour later we come upon an Indian camp and smoke rack. We beach the boats and walk up to greet a family of four. Long strips of moosemeat hang from the outer rack, drying in the sun, while on the inner rack halves of salmon are turning dark red over a wood fire. We buy a smoked salmon for two dollars and continue on our way. Behind us, we can see the blue smoke drifting out of the forest and mingling with the blue of the sky–the only evidence of human life we have seen all day.

  In mid-afternoon we reach the end of the Thirtymile and the mouth of the Teslin, or Hootalinqua. Here, in 1898, the boats that were built by the men who crossed the White and Chilkoot passes joined the boats of the men who came up the Spectral Trail from Ashcroft or up the Stikine or Skeena rivers and trekked overland to Teslin lake. Opposite the Teslin’s mouth, clinging to the left bank of the Yukon, are the old buildings of Hootalinqua Station, one of more than a dozen ghost settlements that dot the river between White-horse and Dawson, all of them tenantless since the highway put the steamboats out of business. We pull up the boats and explore the empty community. The old Mounted Police post is half hidden by the Yukon’s official flower, the crimson fireweed. The blooms reach up to the empty windows, almost touching the grasses that hang down from the crumbling roof.