North of Hope (14 page)

The water ran cold over my hands, and my fingers started to feel numb. I brought the dishes back to the kitchen. Sally and Ned were over at the sleeping tents.

The wind shifted and the temperature dropped. I added a layer of clothing and pulled on my wool hat, one that Peter’s sister had given me two years ago for Christmas. Despite the chill, I was
thankful for the fewer mosquitoes. The song and three-note trill of birds floated on the breeze, a melody of ABCA, and I recalled that ancient Jewish tradition says you can hear God in the songs of birds. If I could sit still enough to listen, maybe I could hear God too. Or at least take comfort in knowing that God was there, in that song, even if I didn’t know how to understand. That part I believed.

After dinner, we walked down to say hello to the group downriver. Longtime Alaska guide Karen Jettmar and her assistant guide, Jamie, who was in his midtwenties, guided the group. Karen’s pretty face, short hair, and cheerful but strict sense of order reminded me of Kathy. Dad and Kathy would have enjoyed talking with her. Ten clients clustered in a mosquito-netted eating tent. Jamie walked down to the bank of the river with us, and I compared my notes on flowers against his naturalist training.

I pulled out my journal and pointed out flowers on the tundra. “I have this as Eskimo potato,” indicating a small sprig of purple flowers, “and this as mountain avens,” indicating a small, white-petaled flower, “and this as woolly lousewort.”

“Sure, mountain avens, shy maiden, Arctic lousewort, and elegant paintbrush for sure. That one is wild sweet pea, though, not Eskimo potato. They look similar, but you can see the difference in the leaves there.”

“Right. I see. It’s everywhere!” The focus on beauty salved my scorched soul. But could he tell? I grasped at meaning when I could find none. The flowers gave me something to look for, something to draw and make notes about, something to identify in a book with pictures.

“It is. Beautiful time of year for wildflowers.”

“I can’t believe how many there are! In some ways the limestone looks so plain, but then you come across these amazing flowers in the middle of it all.”

“It’s true, the Arctic is pretty special that way.”

Kathy had identified the flowers on their river trips, and Dad had painted them on notecards when they returned. I loved Dad and Kathy more learning the same landscape they had loved, its wonders large and small. But despite, or perhaps because of, my determination, my connection to them felt shaky at best, and my attempts to find that connection awkward. It was the gossamer strand of the smallest spider’s web, the final fragment of mist in a valley, a fragile dream of one-time meaning.

“How’s your trip so far?” Jamie asked, his question intended for all three of us.

“Fine, fine,” said Ned, not making eye contact.

“Just beautiful,” I said. “We can’t believe how warm it is!” Did I seem brave?

“I can’t believe we’re here without any beer!” Sally exclaimed cheerfully. “First time I’ve done something like
that
!”

“I’m tired enough, I’d be asleep halfway though one beer,” I said. Sally’s buoyant enthusiasm struck me as foreign as a Disney character in a cemetery, but I was happy to have it, countering the gravity of the trip and the tension with Ned.

We shared a bit of our story with Jamie. The guides knew, of course, about the attack last year.

“You’re on a sacred journey,” he said. “When tragedy comes into your life, the most beautiful thing you can do is to keep moving forward.”

I smiled at him, grateful for his recognition of the importance of this odyssey. In my determination to get on the river, I hadn’t realized how much I needed this validation.

It was a sacred journey. A pilgrimage. But surely it was not only about a river. The river flowed by, running, always running. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it to flow in reverse. I wanted there to be a dam in the river somewhere far back in the mountains, a lake to catch the water and keep it safe for swimming, for drinking, for watching sunlight dancing on the surface of still waters.
But the water flowed mercilessly north. There was healing in the tyranny, and tyranny in the healing.

I pulled out the plastic map case and extracted the maps carefully from the velcroed top.

“It looks like the first couple of days here are pretty straightforward. That’s Kokotuk Creek across from us now.” I pointed to the valley across the river from us and the corresponding line on the map. “And then we get to Esetuk Creek and the canyon on the third or fourth day—right here.” I pointed to the place on one of the map sheets where the contour lines bunched together. “Those are the only serious rapids—we think. Is that right?” I felt pretty confident of our route, but it seemed worthwhile to talk it through with a guide.

“Sounds right,” said Jamie. He took the next map sheet from me and ran his finger north along the braids of river. “Then you’re into the foothills, and pretty soon after that the coastal plain. Once you hit the plain, the river really starts braiding.”

“We’d heard that,” I said. Ned nodded and Sally looked on.

“You should be fine. Just try to stay in the main current. We always end up walking the rafts over gravel bars there, no matter which way we go. You will too.”

“How many times have you been down this river?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know, probably five or six,” Jamie said. “I’ve been guiding with Karen a few years now.”

“It seems from our dad’s journal that the water was a lot lower last year,” I said.

“It was,” Jamie concurred. “A lot more work this time last year.”

I looked down the line of the river from one map sheet to the next, following the marks I’d made indicating all of the campsites from Dad and Kathy’s trip. One more day, and we would be close to where Dad and Kathy had called me on Father’s Day, the last time I heard his voice. How could I have known that their brief visit to Seattle, in February last year, would be the last time I
would see his face? February 10th at 7:30, according to Peter’s calendar, Peter and I had dinner with Dad and Kathy at Sostanza, a northern Italian restaurant in Madison Park. I remember Dad holding Kathy’s hand on the table, the low and intimate light. I remember friends of Peter’s parents at the table behind us, and a fire in the fireplace. I remember ordering halibut cheeks with a light lemon sauce and capers. February 10. Four months and sixteen days before I heard that they were gone.

Dad had thought about coming down for my concert with a local choral group in May.

“Mom’s coming for that one,” I said awkwardly.

“Oh, well, that’s great!” said Dad quickly. “I’ll come to another one.” Of course he wouldn’t be able to, but how could we have known?

I remember in Dad’s embrace I could feel the softness of his aging skin, something I’d noticed with increasing concern. And his voice. In moments of panic, I wondered how long I would be able to remember his face, his voice. I loved that voice. I missed that voice. Kathy’s laugh. Her smile. How could I not look back?

“I don’t want to die in some hospital somewhere,” he’d declared once with eyes sparkling, standing in the living room at the cabin as the river flowed at the base of the bluff outside the log walls. “If I start getting old or sick, I’m just going to walk out into the mountains, fall into a crevasse, maybe let a bear get me, be out in nature.”

“Dad!” I’d said, horrified. I could not have invented that conversation if I’d tried. We hadn’t talked much about death. It hadn’t been time. It was too early. But what did we know about timing?

For most of my life, not only Dad’s statements but his admonitions carried an urgency, a kind of veiled but panicked perception of the perils and shortness of life. In later years that urgency seemed to ebb, because of either the slow wane of age or, maybe, a satisfaction that his children were making their own ways, combined
with a softening and opening of his spirit appreciating the pleasures and beauty of his faith, his marriage and family, and of the natural world around him. I like to know that this opening had already begun in him, this tendency of the soul toward things beyond this life.

We left the group with a dinner invitation for the following evening and headed back to our tiny campsite upriver. We had decided to forego bear watch, given our proximity to the guided group. I crawled into my sleeping bag happy for the full night of sleep ahead, even in continuous daylight. Ned and I were each in our own tents, and Sally was in her bivvy sack, all surrounded by the wire of the bear fence. I pulled a T-shirt over my eyes to keep out the light and let the quiet
beep, beep
lull me out of consciousness.

The flow of a river is ceaseless and its water is never the same.

—Kamo no Chomei,
Hojoki

W
e planned to stay at the same campsite for another day and night, allowing time to hike up the rising terrain east of camp. A gentle valley cut into the mountains, allowing a slow climb of about a thousand feet, according to the maps, at which point we could hike through the mountains to Esetuk Glacier. The opportunity to head up the side of a mountain in the Arctic put me back into my element. We spread out across the hillside for better visibility, to avoid damaging the fragile tundra, and because walking on the tussocks made it hard to get into a rhythm, so we each enjoyed having plenty of space around us. My thoughts settled into the slow movement of my legs up the mountain.

Memories flowed more freely as blood coursed through my veins with increasing power and speed, thought lubricated by movement. Some were thoughts I’d rather have avoided. For example, this one: no one who knew Dad and Kathy had actually seen them dead. Why had I not asked that family be able to see Dad at the funeral home when his body was delivered? Since the bear had been at the site for at least ten hours after their deaths, I figured their bodies weren’t in very good shape.

I had failed. I had allowed fear to take over, and missed not only my chance but my responsibility to see them. Other cultures
prepare a body with meticulous care. In the Jewish tradition, the foundation for the Christian faith, a family carefully washes a body in a prescribed order, ending with the face and hands in tandem. Those parts of a person that identify them: faces, hands.

After the body is washed, someone stays with it until it is buried.

My faith tradition has done a terrible thing in losing these rituals surrounding death, which tell us so much about what we believe about the body and the soul. Without the guidance of such traditions, and with only terror at my inability to handle what I might see in those massacred bodies, I’d allowed the saccharine funeral home representative to do all the work.

I hadn’t even thought to bring clothes to the funeral home until they called and asked; I had tried not to think about what might be in those caskets. I’d assumed clothes wouldn’t be helpful. And then I picked out Kathy’s khaki-colored suit and shoes and Dad’s khaki pants and houndstooth blazer, along with his cranberry-colored tie with the little squares on it that I loved. They would have looked nice together dressed like that. I also brought an undershirt for Dad, and boxer shorts and brown shoes and brown socks. I brought hose for Kathy. I wished later I’d polished Dad’s shoes.

The next day at the funeral home someone said, “Mr. Huffman looked very handsome.” I felt my throat closing again. Why hadn’t I seen Dad, at least? Why hadn’t I stayed with their bodies, kept vigil? That was the last time; there would be no other opportunities. How had life so suddenly stolen my last chance?

A watery cloud bridging earth and heaven hung in the valleys a thousand feet above the river on either side. Just outside of camp, a caribou trotted seemingly from out of nowhere, skirting us by a safe distance. It seemed to have a place to go, moving steadily toward the northwest. I wondered where the rest of its herd was; it was exposed, in danger on its own. Even so, it had a perky optimism to its gait, power in those thin legs, head held high. Then it
stopped, looking directly at me. His heart, a heart the Gwich’in believe is part human, because they believe their own hearts share his, pounded under quivering flanks. I smiled broadly at him. He looked back with eyes brown and wide. His eyes held the collective consciousness of his species, like a messenger from another world or perhaps from the wisdom of our shared world.

The caribou pranced out of sight on the tundra, seeming to melt into the rarefied air from which he had appeared, and we headed up the mountainside toward the cloud. A razor-sharp awareness of the topography and vegetation directed my eyes to any place where our presence might surprise an animal. The little draw just there, the rise in the small stand of willows—each prompted a minor diversion in one direction or another just to be sure we didn’t surprise
ursa arctos horribilis
.

With a conflicted mix of anger and reverence, I had embarked on this trip believing that if we did come across a bear, it would know that it owed me one; it would leave us alone out of respect. Losing Dad and Kathy had sliced me to my core. Understanding that I had lost them because of the violent action of another being twisted the knife. Even so, I did not wish to harm any bear with the weapons we’d brought.

Wait. That isn’t true. A part of me wanted to find that bear, or its progeny, hold up the shotgun, pull the trigger, feel the recoil, watch the bear crumple, thick brown fur matted with red, watch its eyes glaze and dull. A part of me wanted that, but it was a weak, thin part of me, afraid like a small child. And
that
bear was as dead as my dad, as dead as Kathy, killed as quickly and with as much intent.

The rest of me needed to know the bear, to understand it, as deeply as its animal act had cut me. I imagined an encounter with a bear, close, human face to bear face, in which his small eyes considered me with wisdom and compassion, and then he turned his muscled body and moved back into the wild. But this was lunacy. The wilderness and the bear would show me no sympathy.