Coming into the Country (37 page)
Read Coming into the Country Online
Authors: John McPhee
By the fire, Donna sews a patch on a pair of Dick's trousers, and remarks to me that for an Easterner I seem to be surprisingly dressed, in that my boots and vest and general gear are the sorts of things she associates with Alaska. I explain to her about the Wild East, and how I like to go out when I can, and
that I always have. “But I'll tell you the difference, Donna. The difference is that pile of bear sign back there, and the absence of trails, and ⦔ My thoughts race ahead of what I am trying to say. The difference is also in the winter silence, a silence that can be as wide as the country, and the dreamy, sifting slowness of the descent of the dry snow. If there were only twenty-five people in the state of New Jersey, they would then sense the paramount difference, which is in the unpeopled reach of this country. I may have liked places that are wild and been quickened all my days just by the sound of the word, but I see now I never knew what it could mean. I can see why people who come to Alaska are unprepared. In four decades of times beyond some sort of road, I never set foot in a place like this. It is in no way an extension of what I've known before. The constructions I have lived by ought not, and do not, apply here. Left on my own here, I would have to change in a hurry, and learn in a hurry, or I'd never last a year.
that I always have. “But I'll tell you the difference, Donna. The difference is that pile of bear sign back there, and the absence of trails, and ⦔ My thoughts race ahead of what I am trying to say. The difference is also in the winter silence, a silence that can be as wide as the country, and the dreamy, sifting slowness of the descent of the dry snow. If there were only twenty-five people in the state of New Jersey, they would then sense the paramount difference, which is in the unpeopled reach of this country. I may have liked places that are wild and been quickened all my days just by the sound of the word, but I see now I never knew what it could mean. I can see why people who come to Alaska are unprepared. In four decades of times beyond some sort of road, I never set foot in a place like this. It is in no way an extension of what I've known before. The constructions I have lived by ought not, and do not, apply here. Left on my own here, I would have to change in a hurry, and learn in a hurry, or I'd never last a year.
For a time, the only sound is the fire. The dogs are asleep. There's no wind. The forest is as quiet as it was, a month before, under snow. Donna tightens the thread. She says, finally, “I know what you mean. When I first came out here, I felt the same way. I saw what it was like and I thought, I'll never survive.”
What would she do in a medical emergency, like a simple case of appendicitis?
“I hope this doesn't sound corny,” she answers, “but things are living and dying out here all the time. If I got appendicitis, I would just die.”
Cook, in half an hour's absence, fires one shot. When he comes back, he drops a muskrat on the ground with a hole above its ear. Donna says, “They're hard to skin when they've been shot in the head.” She skins it out neatly, and covers the pelt with salt. The inner rat goes into the pot.
We roll out our sleeping bags side by side, remove our boots, settle in. I have before now lacked the courage to reach into my pack and take out a thing for which I feel a great need.
Antithetical forces are in strife within me. What I want is my pillow. Its capacity to soften the coming sleep is perhaps not as great as its capacity to humiliate me before these rugged pioneers. Shame at last loses out to comfort. My hand goes into the pack. The pillow is small and white. The slip is homemade, with snaps at one end, so that it can contain a down jacket, which it does. I mumble an explanation of this, saying that nonetheless I feel a touch ridiculousâin their company, in this countryâreaching into my gear for a pillow.
Antithetical forces are in strife within me. What I want is my pillow. Its capacity to soften the coming sleep is perhaps not as great as its capacity to humiliate me before these rugged pioneers. Shame at last loses out to comfort. My hand goes into the pack. The pillow is small and white. The slip is homemade, with snaps at one end, so that it can contain a down jacket, which it does. I mumble an explanation of this, saying that nonetheless I feel a touch ridiculousâin their company, in this countryâreaching into my gear for a pillow.
“Don't apologize,” says Cook, getting up on one elbow to admire the pillow. “As Nessmuk said, we're not out here to rough it. We're here to smooth it. Things are rough enough in town.”
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Rich Corazza came into the country in 1974. In Wyoming and Colorado, he had worked in the open, and the attraction held for him by the upper Yukon was unarguably succinct: “There ain't no barbed wire up here.” Trapping in winter, gold-mining in summerâhe would try whatever the country might offer, but not to take and go. He did not seek a living so much as a life. He was twenty-three, and he was in love with a woman named Sara, but she was thousands of miles awayâoutsideâand, while he fervently hoped she would join him, she was, for the time being, less appealing than the Yukon. In the fall of 1975, he learned of a cabin where he might spend the approaching winter. It had been built by Sarge Waller, who had used it one winter and decided not to do so again. Waller's cabin is just upstream of where the Kandik River, coming in from Canada, gives itself up to the Yukon. Corazza would be alone there, but he would not be entirely without neighbors. There were three occupied cabins within a quarter of a million surrounding acres.After hitching a boat ride or two, he finished his journey on
foot. Walking upriver, he came to the Kandik on the seventh of October, late in the day. The Kandik surprised himâtoo big and fast to ford. So he slept where he was, his dog, Molly, beside him. When he woke, his bag was covered with an inch of snow. He built a raft and crossed the river.
foot. Walking upriver, he came to the Kandik on the seventh of October, late in the day. The Kandik surprised himâtoo big and fast to ford. So he slept where he was, his dog, Molly, beside him. When he woke, his bag was covered with an inch of snow. He built a raft and crossed the river.
For several months, he kept company with a journal, written on loose sheets of ruled yellow paper.
Thursday, Oct 9 ⦠Seen a white weazel right outside the cabin, his nest is in the dog house. Plan to cut wood tomorrow, seems like Molly and I are just waiting for winter. Things are pretty well straightened up at the cabin and damn it sure feels like home. Wish we had a moose! Good night, Sara.
The writing atrophied when perhaps he felt even more at home. The seasons changed, and he went elsewhere in the country to mine gold. Behind him he left only two signs of his occupancy: beaver castors hanging from a beam, and, up on one wall, the record of his novice days.
Friday, Oct 10 ⦠I have 3 Swede saws here and the biggest works the best, it is a 5 footer. After a hardy breakfast, I will now attempt to secure the winter's wood
One day in June, I stopped in at the cabin, on my way by canoe downriver. The mouth of the Kandik is roughly halfway between Eagle and Circle, the upper and lower gateways of the country. The mountainous land between them comes to an end with a final bluff near Circle. Beyond that bluff is another world, an almost oceanic peneplain known as the Yukon Flats. Brad Snow had never been near this natural boundary, and was interested in expanding his knowledge of the river. He had the canoe. For my part, I was on my way to a lengthy visit with Ed and Virginia Gelvin, in Central, and with miners of the Birch Creek district, and was only too pleased to be able to
make the journey in Snow's nineteen-toot Grumman freighter. We left Eagle in what was locally termed a heat waveâseventy degrees. Steve Casto, standing on the high bank watching us go, said it was too hot a day to drink coffee.
make the journey in Snow's nineteen-toot Grumman freighter. We left Eagle in what was locally termed a heat waveâseventy degrees. Steve Casto, standing on the high bank watching us go, said it was too hot a day to drink coffee.
..
. Sure is nice to come into a warm cabin. As Sally once wrote, “It's never too cold to cut wood when you're out of fire.
”
. Sure is nice to come into a warm cabin. As Sally once wrote, “It's never too cold to cut wood when you're out of fire.
”
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Saturday, Oct 11 ⦠Just a skiff of snow on the ground, the Yukon isn't flowing ice yet, but I think maybe she will shortly. Driftwood really burns good and there is a load of it about 100 yards from the cabin. It's rough cutting but I'll get after it today. Good morning, Sara!
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Sunday, Oct 12. Cut wood & hauled it for 5 hours yesterday, good thing too on account that the ground is white this morning and still snowing, good day to set by the stove. 37° and windy on the Yukon.
Didn't get much accomplished today. It snowed off and on again, dropped to about 30° and is hanging there. I went hunting near a lake about a mile from here. No sign of anything except squirrel, of which I shot one and boiled it up for Molly, she's looking awful thin. It would be nice to throw her a moose bone (me too).
Just as the country ends with an isolated bluff, it was thought once to begin with oneâhigh, mansarded prominence that looms above Eagle. When Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U.S. Army, was sent to look over the area in 1883, he was instructed to determine, roughly, where the Yukon came into Alaska. Rafting hundreds of miles through Canadian mountains down the giant bending river, he noted shifts in its direction, guessed distances, guessed current velocities, ran the data through his mind, and what is now named Eagle Bluff he called Boundary Butte. It was some guessâlike a sailor's fixing his position by the feel of itâfor the hundred-and-forty-first
(boundary) meridian was scarcely twelve miles upstream, and, by air line, six miles away. William Ogilvie, sent by Ottawa, surveyed the border four years later. Eagle, Alaska, looking east from a bend in the river, has all before it a sweep of boundary ridgelines, and behind them rise the Ogilvie Mountains, Yukon Territory. The international boundary is now absurdly shaved. Trees are levelled and brush kept cut in a thirty-foot swath.
(boundary) meridian was scarcely twelve miles upstream, and, by air line, six miles away. William Ogilvie, sent by Ottawa, surveyed the border four years later. Eagle, Alaska, looking east from a bend in the river, has all before it a sweep of boundary ridgelines, and behind them rise the Ogilvie Mountains, Yukon Territory. The international boundary is now absurdly shaved. Trees are levelled and brush kept cut in a thirty-foot swath.
Monday, Oct 13. 28° and wintery at 8 this morning. My wood supply looks meager for the weeks of cold weather ahead (So does my meat supply.) Keeps me on the ball.
When Brad Snow's canoe went out past Eagle Bluff, the buildings of the town diminished behind until the white ones looked like dentils against the pale green of birch and aspen that were just coming into their leaves. There were blocks of shelf ice still along the shore. Belle Isle, in the river at Eagle, was a dark loaf of spruce. American Summit, the southern backdrop, and the Ogilvies, to the east, were dusted white. I was wearing a T-shirt in the bright June sun, but I soon put on a sweater. The temperature of the river was forty-six, and the air close above it was cool. Six miles downstream, I had added a down vest, a 60/40 windbreaker, and a rain suit, hood to heel. Brad Snow was in a rain suit, too. We were driving into a head-on squall, and there were whitecaps on the river. Another bend and there was sun again; another bend, more rain.
â¦
Met Harold today, he is Fred's partner. They're pretty much “hippies” it seems to me but real nice fellas. Found out he is the one who came down on the raft with all the supplies for he and his new found gal from Kentucky. Strange world, but I remember the time I resorted to offering a gal life in the woods. How can an adventurous young thing resist?
Met Harold today, he is Fred's partner. They're pretty much “hippies” it seems to me but real nice fellas. Found out he is the one who came down on the raft with all the supplies for he and his new found gal from Kentucky. Strange world, but I remember the time I resorted to offering a gal life in the woods. How can an adventurous young thing resist?
Some of the people who live together in remote settings along the river refer to themselves not as couples but as units. It happens at times that two half-its will decide to form a new unit. Or one might go out to Fairbanks and come back with someone new. The country is not without its citadels of righteousness, wherein certain burghers seem to look with disdain upon what they refer to as “river people's morals.” They have possibly forgotten that this river is not the St. Mary, the Ste. Anne, the St. Croix, and does not flow uphill or in any sense suggest detachment from the functions of the earth. In their disdain, they overlook tradition. Beside the Yukon, a young woman of indisputable appeal once presented herself to a saloonful of miners and auctioned herself to the highest bidder. She offered fair terms. If she were to back out at any time within six months, he would get a complete refund. If he backed out, she would keep the money. All right, now, get up your pokes, boys. Who's the first bidder? There were bidders enough, and she brought down the gavel for a pretty sum. So far as is known, she stayed with the winner forever.
When people seeking gold first came across the high southeastern passes to the headwater lakes of the river, they hewed boats out of the forest and took them down the Yukon in small, inexperienced navies. One young wife fell out of a boat and appeared on her way to drowning. She thrashed and bobbed and went under at least twice, while her husband anxiously watched. At length, another man in another boat saved her. When her husband rowed over to pick her up, she demanded instead her duffel. Then and there, she formed a new unit.
Tuesday, Oct 14. 21° ⦠Walked through the spruce and hit the Kandik about 1 1/2 miles up. It's pretty well froze in places. A guy couldn't even line a canoe up for the ice ⦠. Still no ice on the Yukon ⦠I only been wearing longhandles and a wool shirt and I've been sweating at times.
Wednesday, Oct 15. 28°. Sunny. Prettyful.
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Thursday, October 16. Fred came down yesterday, left a dog here overnight, and said that some people on the river will be meeting for the spring equinox at Nation (the old Taylor place).
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Sun. Oct 19 ⦠Beaver is one of the best tasting meats I've ever hadâfatty and kinda naturally sweet. I got the castors and am soaking the oil glands in water for scent.
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Sun Oct 26. 20°. Windy. Still snowing. About 6â8 inches on the level. This morning big sheets of ice were flowing on the sides of the river, and by now (11.45 A.M.) there is ICE all the way ACROST. BIG sheets 40â50 ft long and they just keep packin' together, fusing to the sides (banks) or just keep flowing downstream, quite a site.
Brad Snow said that if the canoe were to tip over, it would have to be abandoned, because the river, even now, in June, was too cold to allow the usual procedure of staying with the boat and kicking it to shore. “Keep your clothes on in the river. They provide some insulation, and you will need them later on. It's a good idea to have some matches tucked away in a dry container. We would need a drying fire.” With luck, and fair probability, the canoe would go into an eddy, he said, and might be recovered there.
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