Never Say Die (8 page)

Duh
, I thought. I fought the urge to go sarcastic on him. That wouldn't help a thing. “GOT IT,” I yelled back. “WHAT NOW?”

“I'M GOING TO TRY TO FIND THE RAFT. YOU STAY WHERE YOU ARE. MAYBE IT DIDN'T GO FAR.”

“WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?”

“TOMORROW AT THE LATEST! IF I DON'T FIND IT, I'LL SWIM ACROSS TOMORROW. WE WILL GO FARTHER, LOOK FOR IT TOGETHER.”

“GOT IT!”

Suddenly there came a huge cracking sound, then a second crack. I'd heard that sound my whole life—ice breaking up.

We both looked upriver, seeing nothing at first. Half a minute later, around a bend, here came the ice, hundreds and thousands of chunks of it, some small, some as big as refrigerators and pickup trucks. The shore-to-shore ice jam that had flipped our raft was soon passing us by in bits and pieces, grinding and scraping and hissing and jostling as it headed for the sea.

Ten minutes later the river was running clear. Every last trace of the ice had gone out. No doubt we were both thinking the same thing. Too bad we didn't camp where Red let us off, and launch the next day.

“I BETTER GET GOING!” Ryan hollered. “GOTTA CHASE THE RAFT!” He waved and started hiking downriver at a brisk pace.

It crossed my mind I might never see him again. The Arctic has a way of swallowing people up. You make a big mistake, most likely you pay for it.

“GOOD LUCK!” I shouted after him. Angry and annoyed and irritated as I was, I was depending on him to come through.

W
atchful for that grizzly we had seen swimming the river, I climbed over the top of the riverbank. My fear was rising. I shouldn't have let Ryan split us up.

The wind was buffeting my little spruce grove on the knoll. Dark clouds were spitting rain as I came to the clearing among the trees. The fire was out, and I had used up all the dead wood within reach. I crawled into the trees and found a spot to wait out the weather under the dense, sheltering branches.

Sitting there with zero bear protection, my back against a spruce trunk, I was spooked nearly to puking. Barren-ground grizzlies—tundra grizzlies, Arctic grizzlies, whatever you want to call them—are more aggressive than grizzlies below the Arctic Circle. They have a shorter food-gathering season, which means they have to eat mostly meat. And to get enough meat—mainly caribou, dead or alive—they have to fight each other for it. Only the fierce survive.

The rain broke loose just before midnight. The layers of live spruce branches above me did a good enough job as a roof. My life jacket shed the drips that found their way through, and the grove knocked the wind down. Lacking rain gear, I was thankful for my thermal underwear, my tight-weave trousers, and my long-sleeved, long-tailed shirt of synthetic fleece.

I kept thinking about Ryan, wondering how he was doing. Was he taking shelter or still searching for the raft? He'd better watch his step. Break a leg, and we would be even worse off. What about his pepper spray and bear bangers? I couldn't remember seeing them on his hip. Had he lost them under the ice?

I slept in fits. Morning came dark and dreary. During a break in the weather I went to the river. It was running huge, nothing like the river we had started on. I wasn't surprised. Our ground can't absorb much rain. A few feet below the surface it's permafrost, frozen year-round.

Ryan had talked about swimming across to my side, but that wouldn't be possible anytime soon. The rain was moving in again. I hustled back to the trees.

Twelve hours after it had started, the deluge stopped for good. The sun came out, and so did the mosquitoes. I went to the river and caked my face and neck with mud.

To my surprise, Ryan emerged from the trees on the other side. He looked awful, all scratched up. As for bear protection, he didn't have any. Both of us had lost our pepper spray off our belts when we went under the ice. He'd also been stripped of his bear banger pouch. Mine was packed away on the boat.

“DIDN'T FIND THE RAFT,” my brother roared over the raging river.

“WHAT IF IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE OCEAN?” I hollered.

“IT'LL GET CAUGHT ON A ROCK! LET'S GO FIND IT! TRY TO STAY IN SIGHT OF EACH OTHER!”

“GOT IT!” I yelled back. He was right, there was nothing to be gained from staying put—everything we needed was on the raft. But what were our chances of catching up with it?

The mosquitoes were bad. Ryan took his bug juice out of his pocket and dabbed some on. I took my gloves off and knelt to rub more mud on my face, neck, and scalp.

We started walking. On my side of the river—the eastern side, the right-hand side as we headed north to the sea—the going was fairly easy for the time being. The terrain was much rougher on Ryan's side, with steep slopes crowding the shore. With no trails it was slow going, especially for him.

The mosquitoes were getting to my eyelids, where I had no mud. Their high-pitched whine was making me crazy. In Aklavik we spend most of June indoors. Then we head for the windy coast, as much to get away from bugs as for the fishing and whaling.

Here and now, the coast was eighty miles away.

Come midnight, the low-hanging sun was blocked by a mountain but gave plenty of daylight. When it rose over a ridge around 2:00 a.m. we were still trudging downriver. The Firth wasn't brimful like before but was running way too high and fast for Ryan to swim across.

Less than forty-eight hours since we'd eaten, I already felt like I was starving. I thought of my ancestors—their legendary endurance during times of starvation—but couldn't convince my stomach to stop whining. I thought about throwing rocks at the ground squirrels standing sentry at their burrows.
Sik-sik
, we call them, after the sound they make. From experience I knew that my chances of nailing one were worse than poor.

I came upon the site of a bear dig where a grizzly had bulldozed the ground-hugging tundra vegetation with its enormous claws and massive forelimbs. The excavation was eight feet across and a couple deep. That grizzly was a picky eater. The bear had left behind the heads of five ground squirrels, eyes open with terror. The sight made me lose my appetite for
sik-sik
.

Some places I came to, the valley floor was riddled with clumps of tussock grass. Afraid I'd break an ankle, I picked my way carefully among the hummocks. As much as possible, I walked the riverbank so my brother and I could keep an eye on each other. Whenever I lost track of him, I stayed put. Soon as he located me, it was time to start walking again.

Around 8:00 a.m. I came to a side stream with a pool deep as my chest. It was holding a few char, five-pounders or so. Too bad I had no way to fish them out.

I needed to find a shallow place to wade this creek. I turned upstream and immediately ran into grizzly tracks in a mud patch among the man-high willows. My hackles went up and I backed away from the bushes, keeping to the tundra. Across the river, Ryan had caught sight of my detour and was waiting for me to ford the creek.

Twenty yards upstream, the creek ran in two channels around a gravel island. The narrow channel on my side of the island was the shallower of the two. I was about to start wading when I spotted a big char holding in shin-deep water under the bank. At the head of the channel, the water ran only ankle deep. I got an idea.

With a rush, I jumped into the channel just below the fish. The char darted upstream and I gave chase. Where the water got too shallow, the big fish turned and darted back in my direction. It was going to run past me or between my legs unless I did something fast. I threw my body down, flat out across the channel. The fish headed back upstream.

I got up and ran after it. This time the char tried to force its way through the ankle-deep water at the head of the channel. I leaped on it and pinned it with my forearm, then bashed its head with a rock.

I held up that silvery char for my brother to see. Ryan got all excited and yelled, “BRAVO, LITTLE BROTHER!” from across the river. I kind of liked him calling me that.

I took out my hunting knife and cut a filet from either side of the backbone. The red flesh was absolutely delicious. It was a shame big brother missed out.

We kept going. I felt stronger even though I was still bleary from exhaustion. By noon the upper valley of the Firth was pinching to a close with mountain slopes crowding both sides of the river.

After a bit we reached a spot where it got rougher yet. On Ryan's side, a cliff rose hundreds of feet out of the river. Ryan yelled that he was going to have to climb above and around. It was up to me to search this stretch of the river for the raft. I should wait for him at the first place where it looked like he could get back to the river.

I watched Ryan climb up the edge of a rockslide until he disappeared in the trees up above the cliff. Queasy with him gone again, I headed downriver, keeping my eye out for the raft. The terrain on my side of the Firth was getting rough, and I had to struggle to get a visual on every stretch of water. The stakes were life-and-death. There was food on the boat, not to mention the satellite phone and bear protection.

It was maddening to try to figure out where Ryan could get back to the river. It continued to be way rough and steep on his side. I kept going on mine. At two in the afternoon the sun was blazing. I was overheating but didn't shed my life jacket, tempted as I was to carry it in my hand. It would help protect my vitals if I got mauled by a bear.

I was falling-down weary but kept putting one foot in front of the other. My throat was so dry I could barely muster saliva. I realized I was getting dehydrated, which was stupid with water so close at hand. I worked my way down to the river, looking upstream and down for the easiest place to drink. Upstream the bank was choked with chest-high willows. Downstream the willows thinned out.

I turned downstream toward an open spot on the shore where a rock slab angled gently into the water—a perfect place to get a drink and even to lie down and get a little rest.

As I approached the slab, I caught the scent of decay. That wasn't good. I froze in my tracks and looked down the shore. Not thirty feet away, a massive, humped bear was lying asleep beside the bloody, half-eaten carcass of a bull caribou.

In a heartbeat, I knew I was in a deadly predicament. Without taking a breath, I looked over my left shoulder to make certain of my escape route.

Before I made my move, I looked back at the bear.

Too late
. The grizzly was awake and staring right at me. The bear erupted in a full-throated roar. In an instant, it was on its feet, charging me with terrifying speed.

You don't run from a charging grizzly, but this was no bluff charge. This bear was protecting a carcass and out of its mind with rage. I took one, two steps. Another instant and the bear would be on me. I had only one chance, one way of escape. I leaped into the river.

O
nce more I found myself in the ice-cold river. The shock hit me like ten thousand volts. Floating on my back, I swept with my arms to get away from the shore. Over my shoulder I saw the bear rushing into the river after me. I got on my belly and swam hard, arm over arm.

When I reached the main current, and was taken by its power and speed, I flipped onto my back again with my legs pointed downstream. The bear had given up the chase. It was already climbing ashore next to the carcass.

I knew I should try to haul out on the opposite shore, but the river was too swift along the west bank, the shoreline too rugged.

I let myself get swept farther away from that bear. Ahead, the river was dividing into two channels around an island of gravel. The tip of that island might be my last chance to escape the cold that was squeezing the life out of me.

The current was fast, and the island was nearing. I let the life jacket buoy me along, saving what strength the cold hadn't already sapped. Halfway to the head of the island I saw antlers and carcasses in the shallows there—two more bull caribou. There were ravens on them, but no bears as far as I could tell.

I couldn't afford to miss my chance at the island. I swam with everything I had left to break out of the current. I managed to escape it—just barely—and struggled into the shallows on my hands and knees. The dead caribou, I noticed dully, were bloated. Then I smelled them. The ravens took a few hops and flew away.

Try as I might, I couldn't muster the strength to stand up. I crawled out of the shallows and onto the dry gravel, heaving for breath. When I sat up, motion on the eastern shore caught my eye: a grizzly feeding on a bull caribou. I was all confused. Was this the same grizzly that charged me before?

No, the answer came finally. Same side of the river, different caribou, different grizzly.

Suddenly the bear became aware of me and stood up tall to get a better look. Its ears went erect. The big brown bear huffed at me two, three times, then swayed back and forth and clacked its jaws. I stayed down in hopes I wouldn't appear as a threat.

With a ferocious growl, the grizzly went back onto all fours. It was no more than a hundred feet away, and could swim the channel between us in no time. Froze up as I was, I should have been running up and down that island, trying to get my circulation going, but that would provoke a charge. I should have been taking off my clothes and wringing them out. I couldn't chance that either.