Silence
When the plane leaves, the silence drifts in like a tide, or a cat stretching. There is only one other silence more profound (I can share this, as it’s not part of the blog, if you write me at: [email protected]). I wave to the pilot as he roars overhead back to Yellowknife. He joggles the plane’s wings. Then he’s gone. I stand still and roll my shoulders back; take a deep breath, listening. There’s no sound, but what occurs inside me. My canoe and gear lie in the willows by the river. A half hour ago I was among the clouds, looking down, and now I stand by the Baillie river, 110 miles of intimacy that flows into the larger Back river, or as I prefer to call it: The Great Fish River, its traditional name.
I go to the water, bend on a knee, and take my first sip, then stand and pivot to each cardinal direction, silently asking their blessing. I take my first steps to look for good ground to put up the tent. I feel strange, as though I am at the bottom of an ocean, and I am: an ocean of air. This brings the vast sky lower, and heightens the land’s flat edge. For as far as I can see, there is nothing taller than myself. We don’t often think about the immensity above us, or about the earth below. I collaborated with James Merrill in The Written Image, where poets gave me a poem to illustrate. In his, James included a symbol to work with, one I remembered by the river’s edge:
Man/woman:
Stands on the earth:
what is above is below
And in their hands they hold time:
The mosquitos take a minute to realize there’s new blood nearby. It’s early in the season, July 4th, and they’re lazy. There’s a breeze that welcomes me at my face. Ahead are five weeks of travel. I said I’d reach the abandoned Buliard cabin on Gary Lake, but I don’t need to. I’ll see where five weeks gets me.
Darrel Calkins sent me off with three envelopes. I open the first, “What followed you here?” Ah, the answer is an impossible creature, always going in opposite directions: memories. They have followed me here and they lead me. I’ve traveled the river before, more recently on my honeymoon with Claire, but I’ve come to this watershed since 1976 when Bernie Peyton and I traveled the length of the Great Fish River. I’ve made two PBS films here: Into The Great Solitude and Talking to Angels. I’m seventy-three. As much as they follow me, memories lie ahead, always in a restless tug of war.
I won’t move for a few days, but let my soul catch up. I’ll go over my food and equipment, unpack and repack everything, fruitlessly hoping I’ll remember what’s in what bag. I carry a hundred and fifty pounds of equipment and an equal amount of food. This season, for protein, I brought a leg of prosciutto. It won’t go bad. It’s worth the expense. I don’t eat freeze dried food, and carry sharp cheddar cheese in waxed three pound wheels. The wax keeps the cheese from drying out. Granola, Cream of Wheat, raisins, tins of tuna, smoked mussels, and sardines, rice and almonds, popcorn, ghee, brown sugar, peanut butter, three plastic bears of honey, Trident gum and 20 Skor candy bars, salt and pepper, Tabasco sauce, other spices, and premixed pancake mix. I will fish. I bring an extra week of food, just in case. That’s 3 x 35 or 105 meals, plus the safety week. I live in Utah near Zion National Park where people ‘hike,’ which is another word for a certain circle in hell. You have to carry in water, and everything else, on your back. I let the canoe carry everything. If I portage, I have to hump my canoe, food and gear, but not often.
My tent is made by Moss, sadly no longer in business. Thanks to a request by Jim Abel, an ardent tundra canoeist, Moss adjusted their Stardome tent to create a second vestibule, allowing more space to cover more gear, and two exits. It stands up to the worst tundra weather. I use extra long guy lines that a bear would trip, giving me an extra three seconds warning. I usually bring a pink flamingo, but went for a Dutch touch this year.
