Free Drifting Home by Pierre Berton

way to Dawson.
    We are not going to explore the Thirtymile today because the company is still wet and cold from the lake. A few miles down the river is the best campsite we have yet found and though we have to lug our kit and stores up a high bank, the view is worth the effort. We gaze down upon the ribbon of the Yukon, glittering in the evening sunlight and winding off between the wooded hills. Beneath our feet is a dense carpet of moss–a natural mattress on which to pitch the tents. Janet, who thinks of everything, has brought along several lengths of nylon clothesline for an emergency. It is needed: everything in Patsie’s pack, for instance, is sopping. She and the others huddle round the fire to dry and later on, with characteristic good cheer, Patsie draws that scene for the log.
    All the new boxes Janet has scrounged in Whitehorse have been reduced to mush and so we must make do with garbage bags for the rest of the trip. Fortunately she has brought dozens of them. She, Pamela and Penny find the package marked DAY FOUR and we have smoked country sausage, sizzling in the pan, with fresh cornbread made by Pamela, who has been planning that surprise all day. Pamela (whom Peter calls “Dorothy Domestic”) has determined upon a series of culinary coups–home baked beans, split pea soup, spaghetti Bolognese, curried chicken, cake and even bread. I think again of my parents taking the loaves to bed with them so that they could rise under the blankets, and the repeated references in my father’s 1898 diary to biscuits baked along the way.
    Patsie has found a separate place on the fire for her vegetable stew. All the cooking utensils are in use, tainted with meat juices, but she has foraged in the woods and found a small aluminum pot, complete with handle, lying among the mosses. It is an eerie discovery. Here on the bank we can look out on the empty river and on the endless hills drifting off to the north, ridge upon ridge, all the way to the Arctic. There is no hint of man–no boat upon the swift waters, golden now in the rays of the late evening sun, no smudge of smoke staining the far horizon where the spiky spruces meet the pale sky, not even a clearing in the forest or an old blaze on a tree. But there is the little aluminum pot, and a serviceable one, too, lying in the moss. At one of our last camping spots the children came upon a wooden rocking horse in the woods. How did it get there? We can only know that others have passed this way and left these tantalizing hints of their presence.
    We sit around the fire, reviewing the events of the day when, out of nowhere, the rain hits us. We leave our mugs of coffee and scramble for the clothesline. Just as suddenly the downpour subsides and there, arching across the river, is a rainbow. It sets the mood for the evening. We add a little rum to the coffee and begin to sing–Scout songs from my day and from Peter’s and Paul’s, and old army songs and school songs and crazy songs.
    Peter leads the assembly in a nonsense song, for which everybody has to supply a verse:
PETER :
I know a guy whose name is Skip!
CHORUS :
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
PETER :
Boy, is he an awful drip!
CHORUS :
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
 
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy!
 
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
 
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy!
 
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
    Enormous glee from the smaller children at this insult!
PATSIE :
I know a gal whose name is Penny!
CHORUS :
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
PATSIE :
When it comes to brains she ain’t got any!
CHORUS :
Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy-oh!
    Pandemonium from the little girls at this scurrilous attack on brainy Penny! And so the doggerel continues, lampooning Ross (hair like moss), Scotty (very naughty), Cheri (they claim she’s smart but she’s not very) and all the others until little Perri, her black face glowing in the firelight and her curly mop standing out from her head in a dark halo, pipes up:
PERRI :
I know a lady name is