We eat our bannock and peanut butter standing up, stamping our feet to keep warm. There are blocks of ice along the beach, and we karate-kick them to increase the blood flow to our toes and to hear that metallic, splintering sound. Two Arctic wolves have been following us all day. They howl forlornly from the distant ridge.
In 1834, the Back River, or Thlew-ee-choh (Great Fish River) as it was then known, had an evil reputation among the inhabitants of the eastern Canadian Arctic. When Lieutenant George Back proposed to descend its bone-chilling waters, Yellowknife chief Akaitcho cautioned strongly against it. Back didn’t listen; he was determined to fill in the remaining blanks on the map of the Northwest Passage. His second goal was to search for Captain John Ross and his nephew James, who had gone looking for the channel. They had been missing for five years and were presumed dead, probably locked in the ominous Arctic ice.
After the last crumb of bannock has been demolished and the peanut butter jar thoroughly excavated, we’re back on the water to confront a long set of rapids, one of eighty-three along the route. The eddy line is sharp. Tim and I are the lead boat, and we paddle hard toward it. Our canoe teeters dangerously as we swing around, but we recover and pull in close to shore. Jenny and Drew are next. They paddle hard toward us — power is the key to stability in whitewater. Their position looks excellent, but when they hit the eddy they spin around on a dime. We watch, horrified, as the boat tips sideways and water begins to pour in over the gunwales. The whole thing happens in slow motion; a lengthy sideways lean that ends with Jenny and Drew bobbing in the foaming, boiling eddy, about to be swept downstream.
In a panic, we paddle toward them. Jenny is calling for help, her voice shrill and her arms flailing at the surface. When we get there — it takes only a minute but yes, truly, it feels like hours — they have enough strength to hook their legs over our bow and stern decks. Their heads are clear of the water, but their chests (and therefore their vulnerable internal organs) are submerged. Their core body temperatures plummeting, I paddle as hard as I can, trying to keep Drew talking while making sure not to whack his head with my paddle. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he repeats, his pupils as big as the pancakes we ate for breakfast.
With 300 extra pounds attached to us, it feels more like paddling the Titanic than a canoe. When we finally get to shore, Jenny is shivering violently. There are big drops of water on the tips of her eyelashes, and her lips are bluish-purple. She strips off her clothes, and when I get her dressed and hug her she begins to sob. Drew, deep in shock and refusing to take off his drenched clothes, is running back and forth along the rocky beach. He changes direction and heads up the hill toward a herd of grazing muskox. One of them raises its massive, woolly head. “Careful,” Jenny screams at Drew, “those things charge!”
Once we’re sure we won’t be attacked, we make camp at the river’s edge. It takes Drew and Jenny hours to warm up. They huddle next to each other in sleeping bags like kids around a campfire. After mushy lentil stew we all go to bed. By ten o’clock the tundra is drenched in twilight, the sun like a door that a ghost could step through. The Arctic wolves howl and howl. A month before the trip, Tim’s mother died unexpectedly, and we can’t help but think that she is here, checking up on her son.Outside of Baker Lake, the eastern Arctic interior is virtually unpopulated. This was not the case when George Back voyaged through the region. Then, there were three bands of Inuit (the word means “people”) living along the Great Fish River. Around Pelly, Garry, and Macdougall lakes lived the Ualiardlit, “the southwesterly ones,” and farther downstream were the “dwellers of that lying across,” the Haningajormiut. Near the mouth of the river lived the Utkuhigjalingmiut, or “dwellers of the soapstone place.” This final group helped Back portage his boat around the last rapids on his journey, between Franklin Lake and Chantrey Inlet on the Arctic coast — a generous gesture for which they were repaid with fishhooks and buttons.
While the descendants of the “people” now live primarily in coastal communities such as Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak, there are still signs of their ancestors along the river. We’ve seen many tent rings and pillars of rock embedded in clusters of smaller stones, formations about whose function we speculate endlessly. Primitive calendars? Messages for aliens? High on a ridge overlooking the tundra, we saw a cairn with several rocks rolled away. Inside, covered in lichen, was a pile of human bones.
July 10, night. We arrive at an island on Garry Lake. At the far end are the remains of an old cabin. It belonged to Father Joseph Buliard, a missionary who lived here in the 1950s and who was a friend of the Inuit. In October 1956, he hitched up his dogs and disappeared into a blizzard, never to be seen again. There are various theories as to his fate: most likely, he fell through the ice or got lost and froze to death.
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