Nowhere Wild (4 page)

Izzy's internal clock warned her that afternoon was already well under way even before they emerged from the forest on the southern shore of the lake. Obscured by an impenetrable layer of clouds, the sun barely brightened the sky. A vast expanse of flat, featureless ice stood between Rick and Izzy and their goal—a cabin Rick promised was tucked into a protected bay on the northern shore.

Above them, the clouds threated to dump another squall. Every muscle in Izzy's starved body protested further exertion. It had been four days since they'd eaten anything substantial. As soon as she saw the wind-ripped frozen lake before her, Izzy knew that they should make camp and wait until morning to cross it.

And yet Rick barely paused to check his bearings before sliding down the berg of ice pushed up against the shore, and out onto the lake proper. Izzy mustered a brief objection, but it was lost to the wind.

On the ice, there were no branches to duck under or deadfalls to step over. There were no hills to climb or deep snow to push through. On the ice, the skis ran fast across the compacted snow. A single push on her poles allowed Izzy to glide the length of a tennis court.

Here, there were also no trees to block the incessant wind and no landmarks to measure their progress against, especially when the snow squalls dropped out of the sky like curtains. There was nowhere to stop if the weather got even worse. On the ice, the
constant headwind pushed them in an eastward arc, requiring frequent checks of the compass to fix their direction.

They had scooted along the edges of dozens of lakes on the way up, staying in the shelter of the shoreline as much as they possibly could. Compared to the bushwhacking required on land, that was almost pleasant. On this last lake, however, they had no choice but to cross the center.

Ahead of her, Rick tipped his head into the wind. Izzy raced to keep up. If she could stay close enough to him, he would break some of the wind for her. Rick's pace quickened. The farther they went, the longer his strides grew, the harder his arms pumped on the poles. Her short legs could not keep up the pace. She hollered for him to slow down. The wind tore the words from her mouth. A ski slid sideways beneath her. She screamed again as she fell down hard onto the ice. By the time she pulled herself back to her feet, Rick had disappeared into the blizzard. His thin tracks vanished like letters wiped from a chalkboard.

Izzy screamed again. The wind whistled back at her, mocking her panic, driving her backward. She spiked the tip of her pole into the ice to stop sliding and leaned on it. The sky had darkened. If night arrived before she found her way off this lake, she wouldn't be alive come morning. She pulled the plastic emergency whistle from the clip on her jacket and blew into it as hard as she could. The chirp of the frozen plastic barely resonated above the howl of the storm.

She fought back the panic threatening to overwhelm her. Rick had their only compass. But the wind had been steady from the north-northwest all day. If she could keep it on her left cheek, maybe she could find her way to the other shore. Once back in the protection of the trees, she might be able to see Rick . . . or find his tracks. Perhaps he had realized she had fallen off the pace, and was waiting just ahead. She held the whistle between her cracked lips and blew
it every few seconds, hoping that sooner or later it would pierce the rattling din of the snow on the ice.

How far had they come? How big was this damn lake? Was the wind really as steady as she thought it was? Her heart raced. It had been like this the first time she and her mother ran a half marathon. Her mother had taught her to set smaller goals—to break the run into manageable fragments and focus on the progress of each segment, not on the entirety of what lay ahead. On the run, she had picked visible landmarks and worked on reaching them. Each telephone pole was a battle won, each mile marker a victory unto itself.

But here, every bit of ice looked the same, the horizon bleak and white, so instead of choosing landmarks, she counted her ski strides. Twenty, then thirty, checking after each milestone, both for the wind direction and for what lay ahead. Five meters per stride on the ice where her skis ran fast, a little less on the packed snow, she calculated. She guessed they had been perhaps halfway across when she lost sight of Rick. How much farther? Fifteen hundred meters, give or take, maybe, to the shore. Three hundred more strides. She ducked her head to cut into the wind and jammed the tips of her poles into the ice with each push. Two hundred. The gusts shifted slightly. She adjusted her heading to compensate. One hundred. Ninety. The numbers wound down. At sixty, the wind began to slacken. At forty, a dark shadow emerged from the white. A triumphant smile crept onto her face. The snow began to deepen, dumped by the wind before it traversed the lake. A few meters to her right, the snowbank looked disturbed.
Tracks!
She altered her path and blew her whistle again. The faint chirp grew louder with her hope.

“Isabelle!” Rick's voice boomed across the snow.

“Here!” Izzy screamed.

“Over here! Follow my tracks!” Izzy pushed through the snow.
Ahead, by the very edge of the ice, Rick waved his arms. Izzy powered through the last few strides.

“I thought you were right behind me!” Rick grabbed her as she slid beside him and wrapped her in a bear hug.

Izzy shook her head, gasping for air. “Couldn't keep up.” Rick released his hold. Izzy dropped to one knee, still panting. Rick beamed from ear to ear.

“I'm so sorry, Isabelle. I thought you were right behind me. But look! We made it! We're here!”

Izzy lifted her head. At first she couldn't see anything but trees, snow, and more trees. Then a shape emerged, tucked into the forest a short walk from the shore: an impossibly small, perfectly square cabin built of cut logs and lifted off of the ground on short stilts. Rick turned on his skis and headed for it. Izzy caught her breath, then followed him.

It wasn't much to look at from outside or in. Plywood covered the floor—thick enough to stop most rodents from chewing through it, but soft and rotted in a half dozen places by water that percolated through the tin roof. Drooping moss and mud caulking filled the gaps between the logs in the walls. Animal scat clustered in small piles in every corner. A year ago, Izzy would never even have set foot in such a place. At that moment, however, after all the nights in the cramped, unheated tent, this cabin felt like a palace.

“There should be wood around back, Isabelle.”

Rick dropped his pack in the middle of the floor, pulled a stubby candle from a pocket, lit it, and held it up for a better view. Izzy set her pack down next to his and retreated out the door. She kept one hand on the cabin, working her way around the rough-walled structure. The woodpile wasn't large, but it would last for a few days. She picked up an armful of sticks and trooped back to the door.

The inside was brighter now. A rusted kerosene lamp flickered and glowed on a small table in the center of the room.

“This was my grandpa's lamp. He used to come up here to trap beavers, way back, when there was still a market for them.” Rick turned down the brightness as the wick sucked more fuel from the canister below.

“Oh? Really?” Izzy feigned interest in the history lesson. A single cot sat in one corner, a solid wood frame with no mattress. In Thompson, she and Angie had shared a soft, comfortable, queen-sized bed. This bed presented no such luxury. All they had brought with them were their two sleeping bags and two spare blankets.

Izzy dropped the load of sticks by the hearth, marched over to her pack, and pulled her sleeping bag out of its protective pocket. Rick fed twigs into the kettle stove while watching her.

“You take the bed, Rick. I'll sleep by the stove.” She unfurled her bag close enough to the stove to be warm, and far enough from the cot to be out of his way. Satisfied that her spot was claimed, she ducked back out the door for additional wood for the fire. The night would be as hard as the floor, but as long as the stove generated heat, she'd be fine.

“Sure you don't want the bed?” he asked when she returned. He pulled a few sticks from her grasp and slid them into the stove. The snow on the wood hissed and sputtered in the new flames.

“No, I'll be fine.”

“We'll make up another bed for you in the morning.”

“Whatever. I've slept in worse places.” In the tent, they had slept side by side because there was no other choice. At least here she had a little space to herself.

She looked around the cabin. Two plastic five-gallon pails stood by the door. “Are those water pails?”

“Yeah. Clean 'em out good first. Who knows what's been living in them the last few months.”

“Yep.” She disappeared back out the door, wiped her brow with her sleeve, and stretched her shoulders as she walked. She scrubbed the pails with snow from a deep bank to the south. As she worked, she gazed out over the lake they had just crossed. Luck, she decided, had been on her side those last few kilometers. And now they were . . . where? How far had they come? Seventy kilometers? A hundred? A hundred and fifty? Which direction? North, mainly, but Rick had the compass, and as good as she had become in the outdoors, navigating this land required more than a vague sense of direction.

Another flurry settled in over the lake, turning it even whiter than it had been just a moment before. The features disappeared till all that remained were the few trees between her and the shore.

A vague sense of direction had nearly gotten her killed.

By the time she returned, the air in the cabin had warmed enough that she could barely see her breath. She placed the pails, filled with clean snow, between the stove and the back of the hearth. By morning there would be water to drink and to wash with. She took a long look at Rick as he prepared his bed. His clothes were rank, as were hers, but his . . . his she could smell from across the room. She would have to scrub them soon. That wasn't even a question. If she didn't do it, it wouldn't be done. Eventually, he would notice she hadn't been doing her part and then he would grow surly. Once, Izzy had accidentally hit a rock with the ax while chopping wood. Rick had ripped into both sisters that day. The ax, he said, was vital to their survival, and they couldn't afford to lose it. After that, Angie had taught her to avoid doing things that would set him off.

Tomorrow, Rick would go out hunting for food and Izzy would be left in the cabin. It would be up to her to make it habitable. Cooking and cleaning, that was her role now. Angie had played
that part a short two weeks before. Izzy had been there to help Angie. Angie helped Rick. Now there was no buffer between her and Rick—no one to tell her what needed to be done. It was her responsibility to figure it out, and to do it without being asked.

A year ago, she had still been the baby of the family. Her mother, always busy at the hospital with one emergency or another, had leaned heavily on Angie and on their father. No one ever expected much out of Izzy. Only in the few months after her thirteenth birthday had her parents' expectations changed, and she had been given more responsibility for getting herself organized and ready on a daily basis. At the time, she had resented that. Now, she longed for those simpler days. This was a whole new level of responsibility and it weighed heavy on her shoulders.

“What's wrong?” Rick asked. His bed was made, such as it was, and he stood by it, watching her intently.

“Um, nothing.” She wondered how long she had been standing there, drifting. “Just thinking about how much cleaning this place needs.”

“Plenty of time for that tomorrow. Get some sleep, darling.”

He crawled into his sleeping bag, testing the strength of the cot with one knee, then the other. The frame creaked, but did not splinter or crack. A few months ago, Rick might have weighed double what he weighed now. It would never have held
that
Rick.

“Good night, Rick.”

She ducked into her bag, zipping it up tight. Her pack was her pillow, and the edge of the hearth was her headboard. She waited until he was snoring before she dozed off. She filled the time with memories of Angie and her parents, and thoughts of a life that was now far behind.

As the sun slid across the horizon, Jake searched for a place to spend the night. He chose a clearing on the eastern shore of the lake near its southern tip, and pulled the canoe up onto the grass. A splash of cold water on the mosquito bites covering his face did little to calm the intense desire to scratch.

He emptied the canoe, inspecting the bottom for any fresh gouges or cracks; only a single new scratch from the fall marred the surface. Jake gave the hull an appreciative tap for getting him through the day.

Next, he turned his attention to setting up camp. He removed a pair of worn sneakers from a strap on the outside of his pack to save his bare feet while his sodden boots dried on top of the canoe. He re-rinsed his socks and draped them over the bow. Debris from the marsh stuck to the fabric, and no amount of washing would remove the smell. Regardless of how bad they looked or smelled, he wasn't carrying enough extra clothes to discard anything. At some point, these would become the cleanest, and the driest, socks he would have.

Other travelers had used this clearing in the past. A small stack of leftover wood remained next to a fire pit dug into the gravel near the water. An area picked clean of large rocks made an ideal place for a tent. Jake wondered if his father had used this site on his trip
through, the previous fall.
Unlikely
, he thought. His dad was a much stronger paddler and in much more of a hurry. He had probably made many more kilometers that first day out and had surely, at the very least, waited until the end of the next portage to stop and rest.

It took Jake only a few minutes to set up and stake down the tent. He added the fly as an extra layer of protection, just in case. The sky showed no signs of bad weather, but it was prone to changing in a hurry in the middle of the night.
No more mistakes
, he reminded himself.

His father's survival checklist ran through Jake's head:
Shelter. Fire. Water. Food
. In that order. Those were the essentials. He had the first. His stomach tried to convince him to jump forward to number four. His father's warning trumped his desire. He needed a fire and he hadn't consumed enough water during the day. Dehydration was as much of a killer as starvation, even this far north. He gathered some kindling, lit a fire in the pit, and hung a pot of water over it to boil.

The exertion of the past twenty-four hours had his stomach growling. A look at the dried meat in his canister made him pause. The menu had been a constant conversation during the previous winter, when the fresh food had long run out and all that remained was what they had killed and preserved before the weather turned. Jake had never been a picky eater, but there were days when Amos had been less than patient with Jake's grumbling.

“Just eat it, son,” Amos said as he dropped a small piece of cold venison onto Jake's plate. A three-day-long storm roiled outside. Their traplines were hidden under deep, windblown snow. Jake's frozen fingers fumbled with his utensils. Wet gloves steamed by the stove from a trip to the lake to force a hole open in the ice to retrieve a bucket of water. There had been no time to fish. The fresh meat of the last hunt had been rationed a week before.

“I'd kill for some pizza.”

“Boy, there's no use talking of such nonsense.” Amos placed a portion of dried meat, no bigger than the size of his palm, on his own plate. He cut it into tiny pieces and pushed a morsel into his mouth. His teeth—never that good to begin with and long in need of a good dentist—couldn't chew large pieces of the tough jerky. His jaw stopped and started as he tested each tooth. He winced in discomfort twice on the first piece.

“How about pasta? With some of Mom's sauce. Or scrambled eggs? With salt and pepper.” Visions of a table set with orange juice and bacon made Jake swallow.

“Enough. Eat.” Amos shook his head. “Cripes, boy, it's the same thing every night. It's not like I don't have the same thoughts. Talking about it just makes it worse.”

Jake looked at the shelf that had once contained their flown-in supplies. The few resealable bags they had, had been used and reused multiple times. A dozen lengths of clear plastic wrap were constantly recycled as well. A large tub of dried meat, broken into pieces like the ones they now ate, represented the only food remaining.

“Don't you miss it, Grandpa?”

“Of course I do. Don't be daft.” Amos placed another piece of meat into his mouth, mashed it with two of his good teeth, and swallowed. “But there's nothing we can do about it. Not right now. If the weather breaks, maybe we go out and get another deer, or a moose or another bear. Then we can shish kebab it, fry it, stew it, whatever you want. Right now, this here is what we got.”

“I'm just so tired of meat. I want something green. Some beans. Peas. Lettuce. Tomatoes. Carrots. Corn on the cob.”

Amos stopped his chewing. “This from the boy your mother practically had to beg to eat the broccoli off his plate.”

“I didn't say I wanted broccoli,” Jake said, straight-faced. Amos shook his head in frustration and chuckled.

There were only a few days when they didn't laugh at least a little during the long, hard winter. The memory evoked a pang of loneliness that Jake swallowed now with a small piece of the venison. It added a bitter seasoning.

Amos made it through the winter and the first half of the spring but struggled to even drink weak tea those last few days and hours. He hadn't been able to eat any meat the last week, and because of that, Jake's pack was slightly fuller than it might have been.

Every extra ounce weighed heavy on his heart.

Jake slowed his rhythm with the paddle as he set out the next morning. His arms and back ached from the exertions of the previous day. It took a while for his muscles to loosen up and even longer for the pain to subside.

To the east, beyond a ridge, thin clouds danced as a breeze swept in from Hudson Bay. Cool air from the north usually met warm air from the south where the prairies ended and made even odds that the day would have some rain. On this day, the dice rolled in Jake's favor and he reveled in the warm sun.

The lake flew by in less than two hours. Jake crossed a small bay, and let the canoe drift just beyond the grasp of the current pulling water down the next river as he worked out his position with his compass. Reckoning wasn't as good as GPS, but in his hands, it was close.

The river that flowed out of this lake turned northward, drained northeast into Hudson Bay through the Knife River—four hundred kilometers from where he needed to be. To the south, a chain of lakes and small rivers would eventually dump him into the Churchill River, his next goal.

To get to the Churchill, though, he first had to endure twenty kilometers of pine forest, swamp, and smaller lakes.

Heading south, Jake traced the path he and his grandfather had worked out the previous winter. The next lake lay a short distance ahead, on the other side of a steep-faced ridge. The topographical map showed a navigable path to the west that wasn't too much longer. Jake backtracked the canoe to a small creek, paddling upstream until the flow reduced to a trickle of water over jagged rock.

His boots, still damp from the previous day's fight with the bog, felt heavy and stiff. He tightened the straps on his pack and started up the streambed with the canoe balanced precariously on his shoulders.

A few times on the climb he wondered if it wouldn't be faster just to leave the canoe and hike the whole way, but he knew better. In good weather, a paddler in a canoe could make two or three times the distance of a hiker on flat land. A paddler could go around kilometers of tangled underbrush. A hiker would be forced to ford rivers and circumnavigate large lakes. A paddler used them for additional speed. No hiker could keep up to the pace of a canoe in the hands of an experienced paddler on a downriver run. Saving a day or two on the rivers could mean the difference between starvation and salvation.

The streambed disappeared into a cluster of bushes and vines. A thin line of blue sky hovered over the top of the ridge. Prickly bushes carpeted the remaining climb. He set the canoe down and, with machete in hand, began hacking his way up the hill. By the time he arrived at the top, sweat soaked his shirt.

The top of the ridgeline provided a grand view of the lake he had just paddled, and a view of the next valley and next lake. The shallow lake grew tight with grass, reeds, and lily pads, leaving only a narrow channel of open water glistening as it wound its way through the cattails. After that, another ridge, much like this one, blocked his view. Beyond that, more ridges, and more small lakes.
Amos had called the area the Land of a Million Aches. Every step would be painful.

Once through that, however, he would return to an area of larger lakes, fewer portages, more navigable rivers moving in the correct direction, and a greater chance of discovering humanity. If the trip had consisted of a hundred and fifty kilometers of downriver runs, Jake could have completed it in a week of hard paddling. But paddling one klick, then portaging one or two or more, was a much, much slower way to go—a much more difficult way to go. These portages—and these climbs in particular—had prevented the elderly Amos and the ill Emily from making the trip with Jake's father.

The climb up the ridge was easier the second time. He gave himself a break at the top by setting the canoe on a log. Then he grabbed his pack so as not to chance losing it and used the machete to slice a path clear down the back side of the hill. It took half an hour to reach the water. Then he went back up to the ridge to retrieve the canoe. It took fifteen minutes to drag the canoe down the cleared path to the water. An hour later, he arrived at the southernmost point on the next lake and began chopping his way up the next ridge. By midmorning, he stopped taking inventory of what hurt and began searching for something that didn't.

He ate lunch stretched out on a rock halfway up another ridge while the canoe rested on a tree branch just below him. Shiny red abrasions marked the spots on his hands where the handle of the machete had rubbed the skin raw. The beginnings of a blister arched the webbing between his thumb and index finger. His hands had long ago developed thick calluses where they came into contact with the paddle or the ax during the time at the cabin, but the machete was a different tool, abrading different parts of his hands. He gently rubbed them together, willing the skin not to blister.

From the rock, he watched an eagle work its way upward into
the sky on a hidden thermal. The rising warm air pushed it higher and higher with seemingly no effort from the raptor. Jake wished, as he had many times before, for a plane to spot him, to rescue him, and to take him home.

Despite his wishes and his prayers, the sky remained as empty as it had been for the past eleven months, except for that one regal bird. A few minutes later, the bird, too, disappeared from sight, leaving Jake once again alone with his thoughts.