“Jesus H. Christ!” he announced to the stream, and the sky, and the wilderness in general. “Had to shift the whole damned load from truck to plane all by myself! That goddamned tent has got to weigh a hundred pounds! And the cooler is a backbreaker! I can tell you it was a real joy getting that damned thing aboard – awkward bastard – if it wasn’t full of beer I would have left it in the truck! I’m stiffer ‘n a weddin’ dick!” A colorful phrase he brought with him from his colorful Missouri childhood, and used whenever the opportunity presented itself.
As always, I laughed. You couldn’t help but laugh with Haywood.
When he had completed his stretching exercises he added, “By-the-way, nice job on that runway extension. Had enough room to land a seven-forty-seven!”
“It was nothing,” I said. “Nevertheless, nothing can sometimes be thirsty work. Since you won’t be flying anymore today, why don’t we lighten the load in that cooler a bit? A cold beer would taste pretty good after all our efforts. Besides, you need to give your back a little rest before we begin shifting all these bundles downstream.”
“Excellent plan!” he responded “But the damned thing’s buried. Never fear, however…” He produced his pewter hip flask with a flourish.
We had given it to him, Sylvia and I, several years before. We bought it at Purdey’s of South Audley Street, London, during our first expatriate assignment in the U.K. Purdey and Sons were the premier gun makers in all of England and had their own line of upscale shooting accessories. Anything you bought at their shop bore their world recognized crest – and a very high price tag as well. Haywood loved the flask. He cherished it. It had accompanied us on several adventures, and had been the cause of more than a few misadventures. I’d considered buying one for myself, but I already had the one my father had left me.
I eyed it approvingly as he unscrewed the cap. “Dew?”
“None other!” he affirmed. “Nothing but The Legendary for this flask!”
He sniffed delicately at the bouquet, and offered me the first sip.
“After you.” He said, with a deeply exaggerated bow.
I accepted, took a long pull from the flask, and handed it back to Haywood. While he tippled, I lit my pipe and savored the aromatic smoke as it coiled out of the bowl into the crisp, clear air. Haywood returned the flask to his pocket, then fired up one of his disreputable cigars. The ever-present flying insects retreated to a safer distance. I suppose even toxic fumes have their good points.
Before offloading the newly arrived cargo, we each shouldered a river bag from Load One, and I led Haywood up the overland trail to the cabin site. He was surprised it took so little time; fifteen minutes, even burdened with the weight of a river bag and debilitated by the poisonous smoke from his cigar.
We deposited the bags near the old chimney and I showed Haywood the layout.
“Nice little piece of land,” he observed thoughtfully. “Solid, high ground, sand-and-gravel base for good drainage, excellent view of the creek in both directions, lots of firewood. Not bad.”
I agreed. “Cache is back in the trees over there,” I said, pointing off in its general direction. “Plenty of spruce back in there big enough for cabin logs, but I don’t know how I’m going to get them all dragged out here. That’ll take some doing.”
Haywood thought for a moment.
“You know,” he said speculatively, “I flew over an old burn about a half-mile upstream of the landing strip, on the other side of the creek.
Looked like there was a lot of timber still standing. It comes right down close to the creek. You might find enough seasoned logs up there to build the whole cabin. You could drag them to the creek and raft them right down to your doorstep.”
I thought about this for a moment. It would certainly be easier than dragging fresh-cut green trunks out of the woods. The dry stuff would be a lot lighter and already cured. I could cut them to length up there and not have a lot of green brush to deal with. I’d also get a lot less shrinkage out of them once the cabin was up.
“Good idea.” I said. “Let’s walk up there and have a look tomorrow.”
Then we went back for another load.
It took us the better part of four hours to transport all the cargo from the landing strip to the cabin site. First, we tried carrying the boxes and river bags one at a time, but after three round trips, we were getting a bit tired. It was shaping up to be a long, long day. We discussed putting the canoe to use. It was collapsible, and weighed only thirty-four pounds. The manufacturer claimed it was capable of handling a payload of six hundred and fifty pounds. We knew, from past experience, it could carry the two of us, all our gear, and the boned out meat of two fair sized deer. We decided to give it a go.
We unpacked and assembled it. That took only twenty minutes. Then we loaded it up with the heavy stuff in the bottom, and the lightest bags and boxes on top. Haywood insisted he wasn’t carrying the cooler another step, so that went in first. I had the presence of mind to take out two bottles of beer before the lid got buried under the top layer. We slid the canoe into deeper water as the load became progressively heavier. We had learned this trick the hard way on our first float trip. We had loaded everything aboard the raft while it was beached and then tried to drag it into the water. It wouldn’t budge. Since then, we always made sure to keep the canoe floating while taking on cargo.
We managed to get all but four river bags aboard. Haywood’s back was giving him trouble from all the lifting and toting, so I suggested he attach a tag line to the bow and walk the canoe downstream in the shallows, while I took the last of the bags via the overland route. We took a short break and drank the beer I’d pulled out of the cooler, then went back to work.
“See you at the other end,” Haywood said as he stepped into the stream and took up the canoe’s tow line.
“I’ll probably take a little nap while I await your arrival,” I told him.
He muttered something unintelligible as he swung the bow of the canoe out into the current.
It took Haywood a little less than an hour to wade the canoe down the creek. During that time I managed to move only two of the bags. The second one contained the wall tent, and I regretted not having the foresight to have loaded it in the canoe. It was one of Cabela’s Outfitter series, and was made of heavy cotton duck, and included a separate rain fly, as well as a stove jack. All in, the bag weighed ninety-two pounds. It took me a half hour of grunting, cursing, and sweating to get it to the cabin site. Those two little rises were a lot steeper than I’d thought. When Haywood came wading into view with the canoe I was sprawled on my back on the bank, trying to catch my wind. He looked fresh and relaxed.
“The tent?” He asked, clearly enjoying my suffering.
I didn’t yet have enough wind to answer, so I just nodded. Haywood beached the canoe and began tossing boxes and bags up onto the shore.
“I thought about that when we were loading the canoe, but we already had too much in. Guess we could have taken out a couple of these lighter ones to make room, but I didn’t want to deprive you of an opportunity to come up with one of your amazing engineering solutions.”
I was scowling at him now, but still didn’t want to waste precious breath cussing him.
He smiled sweetly and went on unloading the canoe. “Of course, you being a traditionalist and all, I can understand why you insisted on the old back-breaking-labor approach. Much more fitting…”
I finally had sufficient wind to respond. “Well, there’re still two more bags up at the landing strip waiting to be moved. Perhaps you’d like to partake in tradition?”
He pursed his lips as if in deep thought. “I shouldn’t,” he observed, “having just freshened up and all. But, I suppose I could manage a light one. I could avoid getting all sweaty and disheveled if there were a light one.”
By now I had, more-or-less, recovered. Haywood saw I was getting ready to launch a verbal broadside in his direction, so he quickly popped open the cooler, extracted two ice-cold bottles of beer, and held one out in my direction.
“No, no…” he said, magnanimously. “No need to express your gratitude. I see you struggling to find the words. Think nothing of it. Here, let’s have a beer before we go get the last bags. That lazy wading in cool, shallow water wears a man down.”
One hour and three rest breaks later, the canoe had been emptied and pulled up on shore, and the last two bags had been fetched down from the landing strip. There was no rain in the forecast so we decided to forego pitching the tent, and just cook dinner and sleep in the open. It was nearly ten o’clock when we finished eating our Chunky Beef Stew and bread. The sun was still surprisingly high in the sky and showed no intention of setting until after midnight. Tired as we were, we decided to have a nightcap and a last smoke before turning in.
I settled back against one of the river bags with my drink in hand.
“What time does the sun come up this far north of Fairbanks?” I asked idly.
Haywood sipped his whiskey. “Hardly goes down this time of year. You can figure on twenty-four hours of daylight for the next three weeks or so. The sun will drop below the horizon for a couple of hours, but it never really gets dark. Sunrise will probably be about three-thirty.”
That didn’t surprise me. I’d spent enough time in Fairbanks that the “midnight sun” was not new to me. Even down in Anchorage, I had always marveled at the length of their midsummer days. The Matanuska Valley, just outside of Anchorage, is famous for its enormous vegetables that grow in the long days of the short summer. Lots of water and sunlight – that’s the secret. I wondered if it was too late for me to start some kind of crop. Then I thought of the permafrost, a foot or so below the surface, and wondered if you could even farm this land. Not that it mattered; the caribou and moose would get into anything I planted, and I’d end up eating canned stuff anyway.
Haywood puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. “You call Sylvia before we left?”
I shook my head. “No. No point really. I told her I’d be spending the summer up here. No need to go into detail. I did call Uncle Jack. Told him to contact you if anything important came up.”
He nodded and puffed and sipped his drink. We were silent for a long spell.
Finally he said, “This is going to be one hell of an adventure, my friend. I envy you. Make sure you keep that journal up to date. Don’t leave anything out. I’ll want to read the full account.”
I said that I would. I’d have plenty of time to think, and read, and write. I’d get it all down on paper.
We sat smoking a while after we finished our drinks and then, with the sun a little lower in the sky, we called it a night. However, because it really wasn’t night, I found I couldn’t sleep. Haywood, on the other hand, began snoring softly as soon as he’d zipped himself into his sleeping bag. Perhaps it was the midnight sun, or maybe just the excitement of being on the threshold of my great adventure, but whatever the reason, sleep came to me slowly. As I lay there, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the creek and the rustle of the breeze in the willows, I felt the tension of the past few weeks slowly ebb from my being. The lost job seemed unimportant out here. I didn’t need a job anymore, and I realized I didn’t want one. The loss of my wife, were I honest with myself, troubled me no more than the job. I thought I wanted both while I had them. But, having lost them I was free. And here in the wilderness freedom seemed the sweetest thing a man could have.
I woke up that first morning on the Moose Jaw a different man. I hadn’t slept well or long, but I felt fresh and full of energy. Even the stiffness that comes with sleeping on the ground seemed a profound pleasure. Haywood was still snoring quietly in his sleeping bag when I crawled out of mine into the cool morning air. It occurred to me that perhaps our roles had reversed out here in the bush. I went back into the willows to attend my morning devotions and then down to the creek to wash my face in its cold water. It was a baptism, emerging from which, I felt renewed. I stood in the shallows for a long time listening to the rush of the water against my boots and the trilling of the birds that darted among the willows. I marveled that the sun could be so high so early in the day, and the sky so blue. And I wondered if anything truly existed beyond the rim of the hills that defined the valley that bounded the river in which I now stood. Was there really a Europe? Had there ever been a woman named Sylvia that had been my wife? They seemed part of a dream that I’d had in the night – a dream that was fading to feathery wisps of vapor in the cold, bright light of morning.
When I finished my ablutions I went back up to camp, put on a pot of coffee and began cooking breakfast. All the banging and clanking of pots and pans finally penetrated Haywood’s blissful netherworld. His voice came muffled through the fabric and insulation of his sleeping bag.
“I have a gun, you know.”
He sounded quite miserable. I was delighted.
“Sorry,” I said, as I clanged the lid down on the skillet. “Most inconsiderate of me.”
Haywood had taken Thursday and Friday off to give himself a four-day weekend so he could help me set up camp and squeeze in a little fishing while he was at it. We spent the better part of Friday morning clearing a pad for the wall tent and then cutting poles for the support frame. You can buy snap-together aluminum frames for any size wall tent, but six years ago, when we’d bought it, we had planned on setting it up just once a year and leaving it. Cutting poles once a year presented no problem, so we saved our pole money for more important supplies – alcohol, for example, and tobacco and ammunition. One might dismiss our tastes as somewhat “redneck”. But the alcohol to which I refer is top shelf Irish or Scotch whiskey, not corn liquor – and we don’t chew our tobacco or shoot our ammunition at road signs.