“They must be paddling down to Wapahk,” Jack said. That was the village they were headed for: the plan was to paddle this last lake that emptied into the river, then the river for a couple of weeks, then take out at the little settlement at the mouth of Hudson Bay.
“Or they’re just paddling the lakes up here and they’ll get picked up. Them and the drunks.”
They thought about that. It occurred to them, though neither of them spoke it, that with the fire coming the safest thing would be to catch a flight out of Blueberries Lake. They’d flown in to the first lake on floats and they could take off on them, too. Because this evening or tomorrow morning this most northerly lake would pour into a river. And when they left the lake behind and paddled into the tongue of current that became the Maskwa there would be no going back. They would ride the swift V of moving water into the channel and they would be committed to paddling all the way to Hudson Bay. There would be nowhere on the large but constricted river to land a floatplane until they were near the mouth in two weeks. But. They could not stay up on the lake because they had no radio or sat phone to contact the airfield in Pickle Lake for a pickup—or any airfield. Or anyone, if they needed a rescue. They’d talked about it in planning the trip and decided that modern communications had made true adventure a thing of the past. Plus, they couldn’t afford a sat phone.
They drifted in the fog. The lightest breeze from the northwest carried the sharp scent that was different from the smell of the woodstoves, which was so familiar in the valleys where they had grown up. It was heavier with char and smelled darker somehow.
“Maybe they have a phone,” Wynn ventured. They drifted.
Jack said, “You think we should abort?”
Wynn shrugged.
They had paddled many rivers together in the two years they’d known each other, and climbed a lot of peaks. Sometimes one had more appetite for danger, sometimes the other. There was a delicate but strong balance of risk versus caution in their team thinking, with the roles often fluid, and it’s what made them such good partners. Jack would not disrespect his friend by belittling his concern. He said, “We’ve made a lot of effort to get here, huh?”
“Yep.”
“But nobody wants to get overrun by a megafire.”
“Nope.”
“Want a chocolate bar?” Jack said.
“Sure.”
They could barely feel the breeze on their left ears and cheeks and it moved the fog over the water with a timeless languor as if there never had been a time without fog and there would never be one again. It seemed to be lightening.
“If they aren’t getting picked up and they are planning to head downriver, we should tell the couple about the fire,” Wynn said. He handed his wrapper to Jack, who crumpled it and tucked it into a mesh pocket slung on one of the barrels. They’d burn the wrappers tonight. “Everyone going downriver is going to want to hustle.”
Jack blew through his cheeks. “We’ll lose half a day, huh?” He picked up his paddle from where he’d slid it into the pocket of the bow.
“Yep.”
“Well, let’s lose it then.”
They spun the canoe against the light resistance of the false keel, spun it on the smooth water as if on a spindle, and straightened out and dug in. Back the way they had come. Without the wind and waves to provide the angle of a heading, Jack used the compass and held a course of 170 degrees and they paddled back into the mist to warn the other party.
* * *
The fog did lift. It seemed to lighten and clear within minutes, vanishing into the crisp morning as if it had never existed, and the sky was cloudless and an autumn blue. The clarity of the air was like putting on magnifying glasses: every trunk of every birch tree seemed to stand out against the backdrop of tamarack, of spruce, and there were touches of yellow at the edges of the limbs, and some of the tamarack needles were the faded colors of fall grass. The pink fireweed along the shore beneath the trees popped as in a painting. Overnight it seemed summer had surrendered to fall. It was beautiful and it scared them both. All the whitewater was ahead of them, and it would be much safer if the warmer days of late summer persisted. They had brought wetsuits, but they’d heard about expeditions getting overrun by early snow or cold and men dying. It had happened on a now-famous canoe trip of six Dartmouth men in 1955 up on the Dubawnt when the leader, named Art Moffatt, had died after a long swim through a rapid in freezing weather. Up here there was no predicting the timing of the seasons and they had picked their window for the chance of lowest water and warmest days; also, it was when their jobs had ended.
They paddled. Jack hummed. He usually hummed when he paddled, bars of old cowboy songs his father had sung to him like “Streets of Laredo” and “Little Joe the Wrangler” and “Barbara Allen.” Also Sky Ferreira and Drake and Solange; Wynn appreciated the range.
A few days back they had been paddling between two islands on Lake Sorrow and Wynn in the stern had seen something in the water. It was big and it was cutting a wake like a small boat. He stared. Whatever it was, it was traveling toward the same island on which they’d planned to make camp. Jack was humming and partly singing in snatches Wyclef Jean’s “Guantanamera”: “I’m standing at the bar smoking a Cuban cigar…Hey yo I think she’s eyein’ me from afar…” Wynn squinted in the stern and made out the rack of a moose. Huge. It must have been, it looked big even from that distance. Two miles from the nearest shore. Great. They’d be sharing a little island with a comfortably amphibious bull moose. At least it wasn’t rut season yet. “Hey, hey Jack, look at that. Damn.” He didn’t know why he was whispering. Jack kept humming, lost in some reverie. “Hey.” Hum, murmur, a snatch of rap. “Hey! Dude!” Jack had turned, startled.
“Do you know you hum all day?”
“I do?”
“Yep. And we’re gonna have company.” Wynn pointed with his paddle.
“Crap, is that a moose?” Jack laughed. “Too bad we can’t harness the fucker like a reindeer. Look at him haul the mail. Must be going four knots.”
They had decided to camp on the island anyway and had no problem coexisting that night. The south shore had a cove full of duckweed and they’d walked around quietly and watched him feed. Just before full dark they’d been sitting at the fire drinking late coffee and Jack had whistled soundless and Wynn had turned and they saw the moose standing at the edge of the woods watching, and he seemed forlorn, as if he wanted to join them. He had clearly never seen a human before.
Now, with the fog lifted and the air lens-clear and cold, they thought they’d have no problem spotting the couple’s camp, but they couldn’t. It occurred to them that maybe there’d been more than two. Two people. Maybe it had been an entire expedition camped on the east shore and all they’d heard was the shouting of the couple down on the beach. Maybe the man and the woman had walked away from the group to argue. But then it would have been even easier to spot the colorful tents of this other party, or to see the string of canoes making their way north to the lake’s outlet and the true river, but they didn’t. They didn’t see a thing.