Four on a Canoemaran

Day 8, July 2, 3019

We woke to our low marshy camp on a narrow island. It was a hot night. The smoke rolled in just before bedtime choking the clear woodsy air making visibility and breathing difficult. The morning was clear. Time was seamless without dark skies.

Just ahead, up the bluff, lay Fort Selkirk. We land our canoe, the art of which should be graceful by now but isn’t. We are next to a kayak and a wooden canoe attached to a red canoe by something that looks like a table. We climb up the hill and find a camp with many identical tents neatly organized. Fresh faced, fabulously fit young teens are attending some kind of camp.

A man about our age wearing a button-down shirt with a homemade neckerchief ring introduces himself and his buddy to us. They and two grown kids and their spouses are the owners of the boats on the beach. The daughter in her 40s said they slept late and now they have to make up time to make a connection. She was clearly not happy. We wondered if they had spent too much time gathered around the table between the canoes. The older men were much impressed with the restored village and encouraged us to spend some time there. We felt compelled by them to do so.

Fort Selkirk is a former trading post. There was a lot of convoluted history involving the Selkirk First Nations and the Hudson Bay Trading Company. The Klondike Highway passed the village by, leaving them frozen in time by isolation. The buildings from the mid 19th century were cared for with lots of love. It was sweet. After twenty minutes we had our fill.

The family was gone when we got back on the water. We liked the solitude, but hoped to see Jennifer and our British friends before day’s end.

After a short stop to stretch, we see boats nearing us. It’s a strange sight. Something appeared off. My binoculars revealed that one vessel was a kayak darting around this strange platform of a boat. As it neared we realized it was the two bound canoes. We thought the binding was for land use only. But here we had a canoemaran. This is used for stability. We surmised that the not-too-happy daughter and her husband were inexperienced and the dad and his friend devised this plan for the comfort of the couple. The other couple seemed to be accomplished kayakers. The graceful perfectly symmetrical canoes were now an embarrassed looking barge. When pointed straight down the current, they moved well. But with a wrong adjustment, the vessel ended up stalled out pathetically wishing to be untwined

They yelled to us that they were behind schedule and had to make up time. I’m late. I’m late for a very important date. Mad as a hatter and twice as twisted.

Have you ever played leap frog with mad hatter? Back and forth. Sideways and around. Until we broke free. Pulling our paddles furiously. They were never to be seen again. In fact this was the last time we’d see another paddler until Dawson.We paddled with strength and wisdom, if I may. The first twenty minutes of morning paddling is painful. We call out “switch” to each other for a change of sides, usually opposite sides. This mitigates some of the pain. Then we fall into our rhythm. We make tens of thousands of strokes a day. The paddles were heavy. Arms, muscles, joints and tendons scream, but the rhythm puts you in a daze of perpetual motion. It become you. Sounds are of flowing water, eagles high in trees, the call “switch.” There are no conversations nothing mechanical. When the one, of four barges in total, came up the river, we heard it for miles.

I looked closely at the map it had become hard for me to identify landmarks because we try to hug the shore to view animals. Close to the vegetation I got whiffs of something sweet waves of it passed. Then a large bull moose waded straight ahead. We slowed and lingered in the peace, grace and power. Close in like this we viewed the spotted sandpiper our ubiquitous dipper protecting its young by flying ahead. She exclaimed to us ” come my young are here and here and here not there” as it moved forward.

As it got late, we scoured the basalt cliffs for a good campsite that remained illusive. But a good site on gravel and sand worked out fine. Fifty-three miles. We basked in the pain and energy of a hard, hard day.

The site was packed silt, fine as talc. Terry poked around in the rock piles for jade. Tonight there were no bugs of any kind. Weird!!