Midnight light, p.24
Midnight Light, page 24
It was a calm morning on the river, cloudy and soft. The motor purred as we met the waves heading north, chugging past the low, ghostly Richardson Mountains and through weedy channels. Kylik told us to look out for a snowy owl he’d seen a few days earlier, and Barb announced, “Oh, seeing a snowy owl: that’s good luck.” We swivelled our heads and looked out both sides of the boat—there was cowling to protect us from getting wet and help us stay warm, but we unsnapped it for the journey—and, after a moment, Kylik shot out his arm and pointed: “There.” We all swivelled in the same direction and saw the enormous bird—plump, charcoal and white—its great swooping wings cruising the air. Barb and her friends skreed in delight. I might have skreed a little, too.
We purred on, passing old fuel barges anchored along the shore. The barges were still used because of the distance, and cost, of transporting goods by truck. The river was huge at certain points, then smaller as the weeds rose around us. It was a fascinating trip because of the ever-changing scale of the place and the way in which the boat had to swerve whenever the route winnowed through circuitous passageways. After about half an hour, Barb, whose day was turning out to be awesome, announced, “Time to get out the cookies!” tearing open a bag of Dad’s and passing them around. Together, we produced our respective foodstuffs. I’d overcompensated after my experience nearly starving in Nahanni, packing every ridiculous thing I could find in the snack racks of Inuvik’s only—and yet, twenty-four-hour—variety store, hugging to my chest a package of mini-Skor bars, some weird tasting BBQ-flavoured popcorn, a bag of small carrots, five Kit Kat bars, and a six pack of Five Alives. We ate and chatted and ooohed as the mountains sunk into the land, giving way to the occasional bald hill overlooking the river. Kylik, who proved more seaworthy than I’d suspected, told stories about his life on the water, an oration that was still new to him, although I appreciated him making the effort. Even though he didn’t dargh! a single time, Barb prompted him to tell the story of how he almost drowned a few months before. She did this by saying, “Hey, Ky. Tell Dave about the time you almost drowned.”
One fall day, our captain—his full name was Kylik Kisoun Taylor—found himself on Big Lake in his kayak (Kylik was in his kayak; say that five times fast). A freak wave sent his craft over, popping the skirt and sinking the boat. Because he was wearing a life jacket with a SPOT locator device and cellphone, he felt secure at the outset, but it wasn’t long before the cold water got the better of him. His hands started to swell and he had trouble moving his legs. “I got to the point where I was freaking out,” he said. “I thought I better just call the RCMP because I didn’t know how much longer I could swim. I tried to call but I was drowning, I was sinking.” Finally, Kylik touched the bottom of the lake, so he bounced up and down and made the call. But his mouth filled with water as he relayed his position, and, in his words, “I was starting to lose my mind. I was starting to lose function. I couldn’t think straight and was double-guessing myself: ‘Am I actually in Big Lake?’ ” A local man ended up hearing his call on the scanner and went to rescue him. Kylik was okay, but the event left its mark. I wasn’t sure whether being with a captain who’d cheated death on the water was lucky or not, but I supposed I would find out.
We made a few stops before our arrival in Tuk. We docked at a place called Reindeer Station, a hamlet that had been created because of a (failed) attempt by the federal government to reroute the migratory pattern of Santa’s caribou, bringing in Scandinavian Sami herders to care for the animals. The only things left in the riverside village were a few abandoned shacks and what looked like a welcome centre with a haggard REINDEER STATION banner still strung across the front porch. This is to say nothing of the bugs, which, as soon as we appeared, stormed us in great swirling crowds, their needle barbs sharpened for the occasion. I pulled my hoodie tight to my face, but knew this would fall short after seeing Kylik pop on a mosquito net while tromping through the tall grass. Kylik spoke for a moment about the history of the place before aborting his speech, realizing that “there once was something here and now there is not,” didn’t amount to the greatest narrative, especially with people waving their hands about like acid casualties. We folded our arms over our heads and ran to the floating dock.
We cruised for another twenty minutes—more food, more stories—and, at one point, the boat followed a bald eagle as it arrowed down one of the channels. “Seeing an eagle: that’s good luck!” said Barb. This led us to one of the bird’s nesting grounds on a hill, where we docked the boat and climbed the sandy slope overlooking a narrow band in the river, which, Kylik said, was a swimming ground for caribou. Clouds of yellow swallows greeted us as we came over the hill—“Oh, seeing yellow birds is good luck, too!” said Barb—and, at one point, I looked down to find a huge eagle feather at my feet. “Oh my God,” said Barb. “An eagle feather…”
“Lemme guess,” I said. “Good luck?”
“Oh, really, really good luck.”
I picked up the feather and handed it to Barb.
“Happy birthday.”
“Getting an eagle feather on your birthday. That’s the best luck of all,” she said, holding the feather to her chest.
“Let’s head out before it gets too late,” said Kylik, looking at his watch. “Everybody ready to hit the ocean?” We cheered that we were. Our captain headed down the hill and we followed, filling Indigo for the last leg of our trip and bound for the edge of the continent.
Because of the relative closeness of the Delta shores and the intimacy in which the river narrowed—it was almost like a northern everglade—I was jarred once we found ourselves expelled into open waters at the top of the Deh Cho. The river disappeared and we were taken by the vastness of the sea. The brown-green silt was replaced by the ocean’s cold blue-grey and, if the river had offered a strong enough current, here the waves swelled and the mist rose and the boat fought to stay on course. I checked my stomach, fearing the worst, but I was okay. Barb packed away the cookies and the rest of us stood snapping the cowling into place. The wind howled and it grew very cold. We pulled up our hoodies and tightened our scarves. Soon, fog appeared and we were swallowed into the mouth of the ocean.
It happened in an instant. It wasn’t like city fog, the kind that announces itself in rolls of wet smoke. Rather, it was like a descending dark veil, taking away everything around us. I could see only what was in front of me: my companions, a few empty gas tanks, and the boat’s cowling flapping as the wind raged harder. We were now driving forward into one translucent thing, a single tiny vessel alone in the Arctic Ocean. We shivered in our jackets and fleece.
We hung on as the storm—at least I think it was a storm; I couldn’t be sure if it was like this all the time—pushed at the waves, conjuring them to grow even higher. We had reached a northern place where I felt truly lost, a place where, if we’d disappeared, nobody would have known where or when it had happened. I imagined the boat going over and someone finding our Dad’s cookies in the wreckage. He or she would pick up the sad soaking bag and tell another member of their search and rescue team what they’d found.
“Well, at least they had cookies.”
The rain kept coming. Kylik worked the wipers hard. I trained my eyes on him and saw that he wasn’t squinting or peering or probing ahead with his eyes, or even chewing a lip or scratching a chin wondering where we were headed or how. Instead, he bore a hole through the intensity of the fog, shoulders and jaw squared, legs and arms taut. Because he was strong and young and had the form of a former MMA fighter, he was able to steel himself against the nature of the ride, and, for the first time, I was grateful that he wasn’t old or grey bearded and had never had scurvy. He checked the GPS and I saw him nod to himself. The boat rocked through the waves. No one said anything. No one had to.
Suddenly, there was a tear in the veil. Kylik pointed ahead: “See!” We lifted our heads and spotted a crooked finger of land. This was Tuktoyaktuk, a sliver of shacks reaching into the sea. I’d never felt so far away from my country while continuing to be in my country. I was distant from everyone—my family, my friends, my city—and Canada stood at my back. Beyond the grey waves, showers of mist, and a thinning wall of fog, we approached the village at the edge of the land. The waves settled and the sun knocked against the sky. I felt a tap on my shoulder. Barb was holding out the cookies but I stared ahead, sobbing in the rain.
TIME AMONG THE HOSERS
The boat landed at Tuk and I wiped away the tears. We moored at the foot of the isthmus beside a fishing boat filled with guns, gas cans, and life jackets. Sitting in the stern were two large, cement-faced men with dark beards wearing toques and Sudbury dinner jackets, cast by whatever spirit conjures this kind of broadly Canadian welcome. Not that the men were especially welcoming—this may have made them more Canadian still—and, for a moment, I wondered if they could see the print of tears and red of my face before realizing that I didn’t care. If you’re concerned about pride or appearance while on the ragged hem of the Arctic Ocean, you probably aren’t here in the first place, although these men looked tough enough to suggest that sentimentality or a tender examination of self was low on their list of feelings, somewhere below hunter’s remorse, or growing melancholy at having to jackhammer a grave out of the permafrost, which is how they did it here. In the past, I’ve waxed on about how we’re all wound into the scrappy and resilient identity by which our country is defined, but the presence of these two sea-bitten Northerners made me feel as if I were a giant ambulatory latte—foam mascot torso, bow tie, tights—holding a moleskin in which lurked the beginnings of a terrible novel about a yoga instructor who falls for a macrobiotic Pilates blogger. Not even my greasy Jays cap—okay, it wasn’t exactly greasy; maybe soiled; okay, maybe not soiled—affected the way I must have appeared to them. The wind-carved lines of their faces and broad rucksack shoulders pointed to my precious southerness and how, if self-preservation for them was about slaying enough wild meat to carry their family through the winter’s darkness, for me it was about making sure my car was filled with high-test unleaded gasoline, because, you know, regular unleaded gasoline, well, that’ll be the downfall of us all.
“Not too cold out there today. Pretty foggy, though,” I said to them, pretending to know something about anything.
“How’d ja come in?”
“With Kylik.”
“Oh, Kylik.”
“Yeah, Kylik.”
And we ended there. I stepped along the creaking dock to the land—it was wreathed in a low mist, making it seem even more like a watery dream—and hauled my bags along the side of a dark muddy road, waiting for someone to pick me up and bring me to my lodging. It was around 12 degrees Celsius—late-fall Ontario temperatures—but the salty bite of the Arctic wind made it seem as if the sky might erupt with snow. The rest of Kylik’s group—they were only staying for a moment before heading back—climbed the road to visit the Northern Store beyond the wharf, Tuk’s one-stop supply for dry goods, electronics, vacuum cleaners, tires, and everything else under the sun.
After a small moment in which I felt adrift, and slightly abandoned, in a new place (when travelling, this experience is partly euphoric, partly terrifying, and partly lonely), a red truck with Jackson Pollock mud splattered across its flanks pulled up and bleated its horn, even though I was the only person around. The driver was a young woman in sunglasses and hunting jacket: Rebecca Pokiak, the daughter of James Pokiak, whom people called the “polar bear hunter.” Rebecca rolled down her window.
“Are you the guy I’m supposed to take into town?” she asked, with an impressive and pronounced uptick.
“I’m Dave,” I said, waving.
“Oh,” she said, looking into her lap. “I think that’s the name,” she said, flipping through some papers.
“You’re from Inuvik?” she asked.
“Well, not from Inuvik. But I came from Inuvik,” I said.
“You come from Inuvik?”
“No, I come from Toronto.”
“Toronto? I’m not sure.”
“I am,” I said.
“You’re what?” she said, in a perplexed uptick.
“I’m from Toronto.”
“And what’s your name?” she said.
This went on for a while. I realized that I didn’t know any more than Rebecca, having been brought to the top of the world without any instruction beyond that.
“You wanna get in?” she asked, leaning over and opening the door of her idling truck.
I said that I did, and so I climbed up, the running boards and height of the vehicle making me feel like a small child scaling the top bunk. Along with her pronounced uptick, Rebecca had the most Canadian of all inflections—her “lows” sounded like “loe” and you would have phonetically written her “hellos” with three l’s and four o’s. It was like hanging out with the McKenzie brothers’ sister: “Okay noe, I think there’s suppoe-sed to be anoether felloe later too and that’s why I’m confused, eh.” After a moment, she decided that I was, in fact, the right person before telling me that the timing of my visit was awkward: Rebecca’s mum, Maureen, the facilitator of the trip, was abroad working, and my responsibility had been left to her daughter. Rebecca pointed to the door and said, “Okay, so Eileen will be here soon. She’ll get you. Then I’ll see you later, okay?” I climbed down from the truck.
“Who’s Eileen?” I shouted as the vehicle pulled away.
Rebecca sounded the horn, which I took as a kind of answer, although which kind, I wasn’t sure.
SWALLOWED BY A BIGGER THING
Moments after Rebecca left, a van pulled up driven by a dark-haired, fortyish Inuvialuit woman in red fleece and sealskin gloves: Eileen Jacobson. She called me into the truck, looked straight ahead, and said: “We’re going to the airport. Gotta pick up a group, then we go on tour. So, welcome to Tuk. Okay?”
Eileen worked in league with the Pokiaks as tour operators, hosting anywhere from three hundred to a thousand (mostly day) visitors a year. She also drove a taxi and had once run a big-game caribou hunting business with her husband, Billy, until caribou harvesting restrictions forced a change. She had a way like an arrow moving forward, her thoughts always trained on the next thing. At the beginning of our ride, she reached over and tapped one of my lapel buttons—a Blondie Parallel Lines pin I’d bought at a record store in Toronto—and said, “These. Like little girls wear.” I stared self-consciously down at the button long enough that I almost missed my first view of town: wide, dirt-packed roads that undulated across the flung-noodle peninsula where elevated rows of small homes and shacks were Popsickle-sticked to the ground, their crooked railings draped with drying animal pelts—caribou, muskox, and polar bear—and roofs crowned with antlers, bones, and various grey skeletal matter. Every manner of snow machine, toy bike, barrel, the occasional stove, set of tools, and more pelts were scattered about in front and back lots. Because of the proximity to the roaring northern ocean, some of the homes had boarded-up windows, “partly because kids won’t break windows; partly because of the weather; and partly because families move out and live in the bush in the winter,” said Eileen, who spent much of the year on the land in Lac Rendezvous, east of the Anderson River. Tuk wasn’t a dirty place, but it was impossible for it to be well-kept with winter booting its rib cage eight months out of the year. Some stretches of it appeared the way Toronto does after a spring thaw: fists of cigarette butts, piles of cans, juice boxes and other garbage tossed as if caught in one of those “Ah, no one will see it under the snow” lapses. Last year, record winds of 127 kilometres per hour had nearly blown two structures down, one of which—a large blue shed where the CAT used to clear the dump was housed—was bashed in at a 45-degree angle. When I asked about the town dump, Eileen nodded her head. “We call this our Walmart,” she said, although whether she was being funny or not, I wasn’t sure.
Since there were no trees to frame the ocean—or frame anything—Tuk had a sense of openness and space, and because the buildings were squat and the population small—just over eight hundred in 2017—you could see the whole of the town wherever you were standing, peering into it like a child at a diorama. The air was redolent with the salty perfume of the sea mixed with bug dope, tobacco, diesel, and drip coffee, pots of which were brewed most hours of the day, partly because Tuk was a dry town, and partly because coffee is a perpetual warming agent. There was another smell I couldn’t quite identify. It was smoky, but not quite forest-fire smoky; more like a summer BBQ grill after being used, even though I saw no BBQs and there were no restaurants in town.
Tuk was surrounded in all directions by the sea. It flooded every view, and sometimes just flooded, the edges of the shore soaked in great pools that would have produced impressive marshland were anything allowed to grow (flooding was the reason Tuk didn’t sustain a larger, more active airport). Sandhill cranes stood like little white toothpicks along the edges of the water, which shimmered a little when the sun was out, but was slate grey when it was not, darkened further by the silt expunged from the Mackenzie River.
Unlike the Maritimes with its high-cliffed Atlantic grandeur, or northwestern British Columbia, with its verdant Pacificana, Tuk’s geography possessed its own drama in that its size and proximity against the vastness of the ocean made it seem as if it might be swallowed at any minute (this year, they’d lost eight feet of beachfront during a three-day storm). With the peninsula stretching out like the long sleeve of a sweater holed by moths, you wondered whether another gap would be enough to irrevocably weaken the land mass, a condition accelerated by sea levels that were increased because of melting ice floes and severe global warming. Local government had enforced some areas as no-build zones and there had been plans discussed about moving the settlement farther inland.
Eileen pointed out that “at one point, it was thought that the place would just erode and erode until nothing was left, being so close to the sea and all. But, as you can see, this hasn’t happened. Yet.” Knowing this, it was hard not to see Tuk as yet another disappearing thing swallowed by a bigger thing whose condition had changed because of what we’d done to it.
