Haunting The Arctic

"Let's go on a few days. We'll think about it."

We carried out of the Yellowknife gorge into a pair of connected lakes, the Carps. The weather cleared, calmed and warmed. That afternoon we came to a flat, parklike island set with small clumps of birch and spruce, arranged as if they had been placed in an ornamental design. There was a landing cove on the sheltered side of the island. We could not pass this place.

Coming out of the brutal Nine Lakes, Franklin also had stopped on the Carps for much the same reason and in much the same mood: "We determined on halting for a day or two to recruit our men of whom three were lame and several others had swelling legs."

On Carp Island we slept late, splurged a little on food, sunbathed on a rock deck, puttered away at small, easy chores—washing clothes, mending boots and a leaky canoe, splicing ropes. We built an artful fireplace, fished for fun, went off in empty canoes to sight-see in the adjacent country, spent an afternoon lying on a sandy ridge watching a moose cow and calf feeding in a pond below, came upon a grizzly and her cub in the berry bushes and a pair of courting martens.

In the course of things Terry, our camp man, cataloged our remaining provisions. We had food left for 2� weeks. (We had then been out three weeks. Franklin had covered the same 120 miles in 10 days.) Seven days to the north, at Franklin's pace, were the remains of Fort Enterprise, the collection of cabins the Franklin party had built and in which it had spent the winter of 1820-21. From Fort Enterprise Franklin had taken another 34 days to reach the polar sea. The distance was 334 miles, of which 117 were portage miles. Clearly we had neither the provisions nor time to reach the ocean before the freeze. By pushing on as we had been, we could get to Fort Enterprise and duplicate in the summer of 1973 Franklin's travels in the summer of 1820. However, on Carp Island we did not think very seriously about going on to Enterprise. Sam had spoken the truth. We had not come to discover the polar sea, extend the limits of geographical knowledge or the realm of the king. Those heavy things had been done at the proper time by the proper men. We had come for light reasons, sensual ones, to see and enjoy an unusual place. Somehow we had lost our way and been caught up in an obsession, which was steadily drying up our sense and senses. In trying to travel with ghosts we had fallen into bad company.

The three easy days on Carp Island were like waking on a sunny morning after a frightening dream. There we parted with John Franklin. He and his lame and starving men drove on to the north. We turned and drifted south.

"We have plenty of food now. We know the portages. We're not going to rush back so you people can eat cheeseburgers in Yellowknife. We'll mosey along, stop when we want, look around."

"That's good, but we are not going back through the Nine Lakes. We'll walk out or live here but there is no way we are going back in there. What about running the gorge?"

"We don't know anything about it. Maybe we can run it, but maybe if it narrows down we'll come to a place where we can't go ahead because of the water and where the walls are too steep to climb. We'd have to drag the canoes back upstream and then still do the Nine Lakes."

"Let's take the chance."