Alone Against the North (9 page)

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INTO THE WILD

Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon,
but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

—Samuel Butler,
Erewhon,
1872

F
ROM THE CO-PILOT'S SEAT
of a bush plane, I peered through cloud and rain at a reddish and green patchwork of bog, sphagnum moss, and isolated clusters of stunted spruce and tamarack trees. It was about as gloomy and forbidding a landscape as I could imagine.

The night before, Brent and I had arrived in the small frontier logging town of Hearst, Ontario, which is nestled on the fringes of the great northern wilderness. The thirteen-hour drive north had been complicated by my injured back, which caused me considerable pain to the point where I was literally choking from back spasms as I drove. But the car didn't let us down, despite my mechanic's grave prognosis, and we arrived without much difficulty.

Bright and early the next morning, we met our pilot on a lake outside of town. His plane was a 1960s-era single-engine DHC-2 Beaver, the standard bush plane of Canada's North.
We weighed our gear to ensure it was under the limit for the long flight to the Hudson Bay Lowlands: it measured in at 165 pounds. Our canoe, which weighed 52 pounds, we strapped onto one of the plane's aluminum pontoons.

We would have to fly more than five hundred kilometres due north across vast wilderness to reach our expedition's starting point, an isolated lake situated some seventy kilometres south as the crow flies from the shore of Hudson Bay. The roar and vibration of the plane's engine rattled us inside the cockpit; talking was only possible through the headsets. Brent, who was sitting behind me, complained that the noise of the engine was giving him a headache and kept his head down and ears covered for the duration of the flight.

From the co-pilot's seat, I was taking in the vast wilderness below us. Immense boreal forest, interspersed with meandering black rivers and island-studded blue lakes, dominated the first stretch of the flight. Gradually, as we flew farther north, the landscape began to change: trees became sparser and smaller as the boreal forest thinned out into the open muskeg and innumerable ponds and beaver meadows of the Hudson Bay Lowlands. I knew all too well that every one of those waterways made excellent breeding ground for mosquitoes. Sandy eskers, an elevated ridge of gravel and sand left by retreating glaciers thousands of years ago, occasionally snaked across the landscape. But mostly it was a dreary swampland of stunted trees and countless small ponds, lakes, and rock-strewn creeks. The rainy weather we were flying through served to make the swampland below appear even drearier.

We were headed to Hawley Lake, named after explorer and geologist James Edwin Hawley. From there, Brent and I would
veer off into unexplored territory. I had read Hawley's dry report from the 1920s on the geology of the area, as well as reports by the handful of other Geological Survey explorers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who had been active in the Lowlands. Those explorers had come here in search of mineral wealth. But, until recently, virtually no mineral extraction had been undertaken anywhere in the Lowlands, leaving it a nearly untouched wilderness. That changed in 2006 when De Beers, a South African diamond conglomerate, began mining for diamonds near the Attawapiskat River. The controversial project was vehemently opposed by the few environmentalists who knew of the plans. They argued that it was a travesty to put an open-pit mine in the middle of pristine wilderness. But the project was approved, ostensibly on the grounds that it would generate prosperity for the province and particularly for the community of Attawapiskat, a small, impoverished Cree reserve situated some ninety kilometres downriver from the mine site.

“We're going to pass near the diamond mine on the Attawapiskat River soon,” mumbled the pilot into his headset a few hours into the flight.

We didn't pass near enough to see the mine; the thick cloud cover and rain prevented us from spotting it in the distance. That was fine by me: I had no real desire to see another environmental tragedy inflicted on Canada's wilderness for limited short-term material gain—especially on a river I had once paddled. Wes and I had canoed together on this very river as teenagers after high school. Despite the mine, the vast majority of the Lowlands remained untouched and unexplored by the modern world—a fact amply illustrated by the countless acres
of wilderness passing beneath us. The mine, though a travesty for the Attawapiskat area, was but a pinprick in what remained an immense wilderness.

The landscape below us was as flat as a pancake—a poorly drained lowland that seemed more water than land. At times it was impossible to spot a single patch of solid ground. When R.M. Ballantyne, a fur trade clerk, first laid eyes on the desolate Hudson Bay Lowlands from the decks of a nineteenth-century ship, he noted, “Though only at the distance of two miles, so low and flat was the land, that it appeared ten miles off, and scarcely a tree was to be seen.” While almost all of the Lowlands is marshy, like what Ballantyne saw from his ship, near its northern fringe lies a series of spectacular ridges that tower several hundred metres above the surrounding swamp forest. Known as the Sutton Ridges, I had selected this unique area as the drop point for our expedition. One of these towering rock escarpments runs across Hawley Lake, forming a large canyon, or gorge. We would land near there to begin our journey.

To my surprise, the pilot had never previously flown to Hawley Lake and while in mid-air had to cautiously check his fold-out maps on several occasions. He was new, he explained, to the bush pilot business. After about four hours of flying, the grey outlines of the distant Sutton Ridges suddenly loomed into view, rising above the swamps like small mountains. The pilot circled the plane around in a wide arc to land on the long shimmer of navy blue water that was Hawley Lake, just north of the tabletop ridges. From the air, the surrounding country through which we would have to portage appeared fairly promising: it seemed relatively well-drained and elevated, and at places there
were sandy hummocks left by glaciers and what looked like ancient beaches from long-vanished shorelines. Beyond the waterways, the country was sparsely treed—forest fires had charred some stretches. On Hawley Lake itself, I could see near its northwestern shore several small cabins, a dock, and some overturned boats on the grassy banks. The pilot brought the small plane down steeply toward the lake, which for a moment made us feel like we were on a roller coaster. We bounced along the water on the pontoons as the plane gradually coasted to a halt near the wooden dock.

“I guess this must be the place,” said the pilot.

“Yes, it is,” I replied, recognizing it from my research.

“It's cold,” complained Brent.

The three of us sprang from the plane onto the bobbing dock. Brent and I wasted little time in unstrapping the canoe from the pontoon and unloading our assorted gear: two bulky expedition backpacks, a plastic canoe barrel, two watertight buckets placed inside old worn packs, two fishing rods, three wood paddles, and the shotgun. The pilot, meanwhile, was busy refuelling the plane from a steel oil drum and half a dozen red plastic jerry cans—the low fuel light had flashed on as we were flying in.

“Good luck,” mumbled the pilot. He waved a hand, leapt back onto the pontoon, and hopped into the cockpit.

“Hmm, he seems eager to leave,” Brent observed. “I wonder why … Fuck!” Brent slapped at his ears and waved his arms furiously. “Fuck! I'm getting eaten alive!”

“Put your bug net on,” I said, as I swiftly donned my own. Unlike Brent, I had grown up in swampy forests, so I never much minded mosquitoes, though blackflies are a torment to anyone.

“This is horrible,” groaned Brent as he pulled the mesh net over his short black hair.

“Don't worry, once we get paddling out on the lake, the breeze should keep the bugs away,” I said. “Let's quickly check out the cabins, then head out.”

The lake appeared much the same as it had a hundred years earlier when D.B. Dowling of the Geological Survey had arrived in the area. Dowling had explored the lakes—then known as the Sutton Mills Lakes, since renamed Sutton and Hawley Lakes—in 1901. However, unlike in Dowling's day, the log cabins were now mostly used by wealthy fishermen who came here to catch brook trout. The more adventurous sorts would occasionally paddle down the Sutton River, where near its mouth they would be airlifted out by float planes. The camp was maintained by a Cree family, the Chookomolins. The closest community, Peawanuck, a tiny Cree reserve of some 237 people, was situated nearly a hundred kilometres to the northeast on the large Winisk River. These northern Cree, or
Omushkego
as they call themselves, were the descendants of the hunter-trappers of the fur trade, and a few still engaged in trapping. No one was at the cabins, so we returned to the dock and the delicate business of packing our canoe.

I had hoped to acquire a new canoe for the expedition—ideally, one made of either strong, lightweight Kevlar or heavier but virtually indestructible Royalex ABS. But the price tag for such a vessel was beyond our budget, and I was forced to find something for less than eight hundred dollars, second-hand. After weeks of searching, I despaired of ever finding anything adequate and thought we might have to paddle one of the cedar-strip canoes my father and I had crafted. But at last I found an
acceptable, though far from perfect, canoe within our limited price range. It was only thirteen feet long and very shallow, which would limit its utility and safety in whitewater or when facing big waves. But, crucially, given the portages we would face, it weighed only fifty-two pounds. While this wasn't light by the standards of expensive Kevlar canoes, which weigh as little as thirty pounds, it was an improvement over my other canoes.

It had been necessary to make some modifications to the vessel. I replaced the seats with lighter ones that I made myself and fastened nylon rope for lining to both ends. My father carved an ash centre yoke to replace the existing steel one, which would enable us to carry the canoe on our shoulders. I didn't think much of the oak gunwales the previous owner had added and wished to replace them, but time constraints made it impossible to do so. The canoe's small size, while an asset for the gruelling overland travel through forest and muskeg, was a drawback on the water. But such compromises were necessary; if explorers insisted on perfect gear, not much would have been explored.

Brent and I set off and began paddling up the lake. Meanwhile, the bush plane droned off into the distance, disappearing from view into cumulus clouds. As the sound of the engine faded away, we were left in the profound silence of the northern wilderness. Hawley Lake was beautiful; its clear blue waters were surrounded by a rocky shoreline and mature forests of cedar, poplar, spruce, and tamarack. Low hills sloped gently up from the lake. If not for the bugs, it seemed like an oasis in a wilderness of swamp.

The great size of the lake, however, made paddling in our heavily laden little canoe rather risky. As it was, the oak gunwales
were riding only a few inches above the waterline, and as we paddled toward the distant south end of the lake, the wind whipped up four-foot swells. I steered the canoe from the stern delicately into each wave, riding over them without much difficulty. But eventually some of the bigger waves lapped over the bow, splashing Brent.

“Whoa! These are big waves,” Brent said as he drew a stroke of his paddle.

“At least the wind has taken care of the bugs.”

The situation was actually quite dangerous. If we swamped in the lake, it would be a long and difficult swim to shore. My heart leapt as another big wave plowed into us and increased the water accumulating in the bottom of the canoe. There was no way around it. We had to head to shore and wait for the waves to die down. I cautiously steered the canoe toward the eastern shore.

While we waited onshore for the wind to die down, I taught Brent how to load and fire the twelve-gauge shotgun, which wild edibles were around us, and how to make a fire. The wind, meanwhile, showed little sign of slackening, so we ate a simple lunch and I next showed Brent how to operate our hand-held water purifier. Several hours passed while the waves remained as fierce as ever. Brent, never patient, was growing fidgety and restless to press on. He had the intense look in his dark eyes that I had seen years before when we were hockey teammates. He was “in the zone” and primed for a challenge. Buoyed by his enthusiasm, I agreed to his suggestion that we risk battle with the waves.

“All right,” I said. “I think we can manage it if we can get away from the shore, out of the breaking surf where the waves are the worst.”

Brent nodded, took a moment to tighten the grey bandana wrapped around his head, and then grasped his ash paddle, much as he would his hockey stick before some on-ice heroics. The waves were noisily pounding against the pebble beach we were standing on and a light rain was falling—a reminder of how quickly the weather could change here.