Free North of Hope by Shannon Polson

Tough and enduring. I didn’t feel tough. I would need to find a way to endure.
    Save for the Arctic tern, the day was full of bouncy wave trains and “rock gardens,” mazes of exposed rocks in shallow sections of the river. I acknowledged my pleasure with reluctance, but I couldn’t help laughing at the bounce of the boat, smiling—even, for just a while, grinning.
    Halfway through the day, after we pulled over for a quick snack, Sally said, “Why don’t you try the captain’s position?”
    “Really?” I asked. “I haven’t done this river stuff as much as you guys.”
    “You’ll do fine,” she said. “Don’t you think, Ned?”
    “You’ll do fine. Try it and see if you like it,” he said.
    I took the captain’s seat at the stern. Despite my inexperience, our new arrangement worked well, as Ned and Sally could anticipate the requirements of the river from the bow. I liked having the back of the raft to myself with space and time and quiet to think.
    “How’s that look to the right for a campsite?” I asked, as evening approached with only the slightest dimming of daylight. I did a strong back-paddle on the right side. The raft swung toward the bank. I looked for the eddy, where the current curled back on itself after a small protrusion of land, resting on its journey. “Paddle forward!” Ned and Sally pulled with their paddles, and when the water was shallow enough, Sally jumped out and grabbed the rope to pull the raft onto the shore. The three of us hauled the raft well up and out of the water. It moved easily with the water’s support.
    On their first day on the river, Dad wrote in his journal that it had been windy and cold, and they’d had to go a long way to find their first campsite because of the aufeis. Still, in his entries, the excitement of the journey is palpable. I found myself reading and rereading his simple notes, just so I could look for a connection, so I could imagine their joy, so I could imagine them alive.
    6/17/05 Wind continued all night & fog to the ground after 2:00 AM. By 7:30 it lifted and signs of blue sky but cold strong wind from the north…. It’s nice to be on the water—a pretty little river with a lot of bounce! Shallow and braided in many areas. We saw many sheep and groups of 35! Stopped at Potok…. The wind made going very slow & cold in the face. We camped at a bar at 4:00 and had a really nice dinner … to bed by 8:30. A really nice day for us both. Rich
    Kathy spotted a pure white wolf—huge about 1/4 mile away running on the slope. He would lope, then stop and look at us—really something … Some rock faces started appearing and then the wind really came back in force. (I forgot to mention we got out earlier at East Potuk Creek—another landing area—pretty neat.) At Koloktuk Creek there was an extended rock garden. We both got high ended and Kathy couldn’t get off so I threw a ropeand pulled her off. This led to a pretty neat rapids with a lot of rocks to dodge and then a right turn and a drop at the end. Kathy decided not to paddle so I paddled both boats. The boats with the load and the wind don’t maneuver so well. We began looking for camp spots and were immediately in aufeis on both sides and no campsites for a long way. The excitement of the day was a very big collapse of an ice shelf adjacent to me—it created a sudden large wave which flipped me over. Kind of fun but a big surprise. We always try to keep our distance but the wind was driving us into the ice much closer than normal—maybe 30’. Kathy saw it all … she said a 3’ wave. The rest of the day was tough. The clouds kept building, wind I would guess was 40 MPH in our face. Water kept whipping up all over us. It was tough to stay in any channel. We wound up lining boats a fair distance. Finally we found a sand bar that would work and we set up camp about 5:00. We think we may start leaving earlier to avoid the inevitable and unrelenting cold north wind that picks up later