"To the Cliffs":
I was twelve years old that spring, small for my age but eager to prove myself on the big canoe expedition. At St. John’s, everything was about endurance and grit — “building character,” as the headmaster liked to say — and this trip to the far north was supposed to be the ultimate test. We were going to paddle for weeks, tracing ancient fur trade routes, ending somewhere called Moosonee, where the land met the edge of Hudson Bay.
My parents dropped me off late that night outside the school gym, headlights cutting through the drizzle. Twenty-six boys stood in line with their gear, trying to look brave while their parents whispered last words. I remember Mom’s hug — tight, trembling — and Dad’s hand on my shoulder, saying, “Make us proud, son.” Then the bus doors clanged shut, and that was that.
We rode through the night, packed shoulder to shoulder, the smell of waxed canvas and wet wool thick in the air. No one slept much; the bumps in the road kept us awake, and so did the nervous excitement. The leaders sat near the front — Mr. Bird, the seasoned one, tall and sharp-eyed; Mr. Kaine, quiet but steady; Mr. Denny, strong and sunburned; and the new guy, Mr. Thompson, a young teacher from England who looked more like a bookworm than an outdoorsman. He laughed easily but gripped his thermos like he wasn’t quite sure what he’d signed up for.
By dawn, the bus rolled to a stop at the edge of Lake Timiskaming — a vast, slate-gray expanse that seemed to stretch into forever. Mist hovered over the surface, and the pines stood dark and still along the shore. We unloaded the four big canoes, each one modified to hold six or seven of us. They looked enormous and sturdy — wide-bellied wooden beasts, painted red and green, their hulls scuffed from past trips.
Breakfast was cold sandwiches eaten standing up, our breath showing in the chilly air. Then came the life jackets — heavy, awkward, smelling faintly of mildew. “These will keep you afloat,” Mr. Bird said, walking along the line. “As long as you keep your wits about you.” He smiled in that tight, confident way that made you believe nothing could go wrong.
We pushed off from shore around eight. “Stick together, boys,” he called out, voice echoing across the water. “Paddle steady, and we’ll make good time.”
I was in the second canoe with my bunkmate, Tom, and four others, with Mr. Denny steering from the stern. The paddles dipped in rhythm — shhh, clunk, shhh, clunk — and the world felt enormous and clean. The morning light shimmered on the ripples; the lake seemed alive but welcoming.
At first, it was all laughter and bravado. Tom grinned at me over his shoulder. “Bet I can outlast you,” he said.
“No chance,” I shot back. “You’ll be the first to quit.”
We joked and splashed, our voices carrying over the water. Even Mr. Denny smiled. Behind us, Mr. Thompson’s canoe lagged a little, his strokes uneven. He shouted something — a cheerful “All right back there?” — and Mr. Bird waved it off. “You’ll get the hang of it!” he yelled.
By midday, we’d covered miles. No boats, no cottages, no sign of people — just endless wilderness and the faint roar of wind off the hills. We stopped on a peninsula for lunch, cold sandwiches again. My hands throbbed from gripping the paddle, and my shoulders ached, but no one dared complain. At St. John’s, complaining was weakness.
When we launched again, the mood shifted. The sky had darkened a shade, clouds dragging low over the treetops. Mr. Bird pointed ahead. “Keep formation, boys. The lake widens here — wind picks up quick.”
He was right. Within an hour, the water grew restless. Waves slapped against the canoes, spraying cold mist into our faces. I tried to laugh it off, but my stomach tightened. Tom glanced at me. “Getting rough,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I said, forcing a grin. “We’re fine.”
But by two o’clock, the wind was howling. The waves rose like rolling hills, white-capped and furious. Mr. Thompson’s canoe, trailing behind, began to fall back. We heard him shouting something — but the wind tore his words away. Then, in the space of a heartbeat, his canoe vanished into a swell.
“Jesus!” someone cried.
Mr. Denny swung our canoe around. “They’re down! Paddle hard!”
We dug in, blades biting the churning water. But before we reached them, a wave hit us broadside — hard. The canoe rocked, water pouring over the gunwales.
“Bail it out!” Mr. Denny yelled. We used our hats, our hands — anything. Another wave crashed, higher this time. The world flipped.
The shock of the cold was like being stabbed. I gasped, lungs seizing. The water was black and merciless, dragging everything down. I kicked to the surface, coughing, clinging to the overturned canoe. Around me, boys screamed. Tom bobbed up nearby, eyes wide, his lips already blue.
“I can’t feel my legs,” he gasped.
“Hold on!” I shouted, reaching for him. “Just hold on!”
Mr. Denny was already there, pulling one boy in close, shouting orders. “Link up! Link up!” We grabbed arms, forming a chain, but the waves broke over us again and again. My fingers were numb, slipping on the wet wood.
I saw Mr. Bird’s canoe turning back, but every rescue attempt failed — each load made their boat capsize. “Swim for it!” Mr. Bird bellowed. “Head to shore!”
But shore was a gray line miles away, guarded by cliffs.
Minutes stretched into forever. One by one, the boys weakened. Ten-year-old David started babbling nonsense — “Mom… cold…” — his eyes distant. Mr. Denny tried to keep him afloat, but the boy went limp, slipping beneath the waves. I screamed, but my own arms barely worked.
Another boy, Jerry, lost his grip and drifted off, shouting until the lake swallowed him. The sound of it tore through me — pure, animal panic.
We fought to stay together, clinging to Mr. Bird’s overturned canoe. Progress was agonizingly slow. The cold chewed at our bones. I bit my tongue, tasting blood, just to stay conscious.
When we finally reached the cliffs, I don’t know how long it had been — an hour, maybe more. Mr. Denny wasn’t moving. Mr. Bird checked him, then looked up, voice hollow. “He’s gone.”
We hauled his body with us, refusing to leave him behind.
Eighteen of us made it to the rocks. We crawled up, shaking uncontrollably, skin pale and raw. Tom leaned against me, teeth chattering. “Thought we were done,” he murmured.
“Me too,” I said.
Mr. Bird, trembling but composed, struck a match from a waterproof tin and coaxed a fire to life. “God will see us through,” he whispered. His face was drawn, eyes far away.
We pulled three more boys from the water — David, Jerry, and Paul. Their eyes were open but unseeing, their lips blue. We tried chest compressions the way we’d been taught, but it was useless. Mr. Kaine covered them with our spare jackets. “They’re with the Lord now,” he said softly.
None of us slept. We huddled close through the long, freezing night, listening to the lake hiss against the rocks. Every sound made me flinch, half expecting another wave to rise from the dark and drag us back. Mr. Thompson sat apart, shaking, whispering, “I shouldn’t have steered… I shouldn’t have—”
Mr. Bird just stared into the fire. “We all made mistakes,” he said.
At first light, a helicopter appeared through the mist — a red speck that grew until we could hear the blades thumping the air. Rescuers dropped down, wrapping us in blankets, leading us away from the dead.
Twelve boys and Mr. Denny were gone. Their bodies were found over the next few days, scattered along the shore like broken promises. The school called it a “tragic accident,” said no one could have predicted the storm. But we knew.
We knew they had pushed too far. Ignored the warnings. Trusted tradition over sense.
Tom and I barely spoke of it again, but sometimes, even now, I wake up gasping — hearing the slap of waves, the shouts swallowed by wind, the moment Tom’s fingers slipped from mine. That lake didn’t just take them. It took something from all of us that day. Something that never came back.
"Our Last Portage":
I had always loved the quiet pull of the Boundary Waters—the soft resistance of the paddle, the whisper of cedar and spruce, the low call of a loon echoing across still water. My brother Ben and I had been coming here since we were kids, tagging along behind our dad’s canoe until our own arms were strong enough to pull us across the lakes. This time, we’d brought old friends—Chris, David, and Frank. Back home, we were just regular guys: Ben and I worked construction, Chris ran a plumbing business, David helped out there, and Frank sold whatever needed selling. But out here, titles didn’t matter. It was just us, the canoes, and a stretch of wilderness so vast it made you feel both alive and small.
We put in off the Echo Trail and paddled hard to our first camp on Nina Moose Lake. The sky burned gold that night, and we sat around the fire trading stories, laughing about old trips and bigger fish. Tomorrow, we said, would be the day—the big walleyes waiting for us somewhere up on Crooked Lake.
Morning came fast and cold. We loaded the canoes—Ben and I in one, Chris and David in the other. Frank stayed behind at camp to mind the gear. The air smelled like pine sap and wet rock. We portaged around Curtain Falls, muscles aching under the weight, and slipped into the pool above it. The water was flat as glass, perfectly still except for the faint shimmer where the current started to move toward the edge.
We spread out and started casting. The silence was easy, broken only by the whir of reels and the distant rush of falling water.
“Nice one, Alex!” Ben called when I hauled in a fat walleye, scales glinting in the sun.
“Your turn to top it, little brother,” I said, grinning.
Chris and David drifted closer to where the current began to pull toward the falls. At first, it didn’t seem dangerous—just a slow spin of water around their canoe. But then the bow turned sideways.
“Hey, you’re getting close!” I shouted.
David looked up, smiling faintly. “We’re good—just adjusting.”
But they weren’t. The water had them. The bow swung again, the current tugging harder. Chris’s voice cracked through the air. “Paddle back! Hard!”
Too late. The canoe rocked once, twice—then flipped. I saw it roll over cleanly, then upright again as it slid toward the lip of the falls. David’s arms clung to the sides, his face twisted in panic. Then he was gone. Chris appeared for a heartbeat, standing chest-deep on a submerged rock, water thrashing around him.
“Help!” he yelled.
Ben and I locked eyes. “We have to go,” he said, and before I could answer, he was paddling straight toward the pull.
The current hit us fast. We fought it, but every stroke felt like shoving against a wall of liquid muscle.
“Grab on, Chris!” I shouted, leaning forward, paddle stretched toward him.
He lunged. His hand missed by inches.
The river took us all.
The canoe slammed broadside against the rock and split like a matchstick. The world exploded into white water and sound. I went under—spun, crushed, dragged. Rocks slammed into my ribs. My head hit something hard. I came up once, gasping, then went under again. Cold filled every space in my body. In the flashes of green light beneath the surface, I saw Ben’s arm reaching, Chris’s face twisting in the current—and then nothing but the roar.
When I surfaced at last, it was below the falls. The water had spat me out onto the calmer eddy along the Canadian shore. My hip screamed with pain. My shoes were gone. I crawled up the bank, every breath like fire, calling their names into the mist.
“Ben! Chris! David!”
Only the river answered, endless and indifferent.
I stumbled along the shoreline, barefoot, cutting my feet on rock and thorn. The sound of the falls faded behind me, replaced by the hush of the forest. Fifteen minutes passed—maybe more—before I saw a flicker of color across the water: the stern of a canoe wedged among reeds on a small island.
And then a voice. “Over here…”
It was David.
“I’m coming!” I shouted. But between us lay fifty feet of raging current—too fast, too deep to swim. I stood there, shaking, trying to figure if I could risk it. That’s when I saw another canoe sliding out of the fog upstream—a solo paddler, moving like he’d appeared from nowhere.
His name was Nick, I learned later. He was out with a friend on their own trip.
“You okay?” he called.
“No,” I said, voice breaking. “My friends went over the falls. Two missing. One’s hurt—on that island.”
Nick’s face hardened. “Let’s get you in.”
He steadied the canoe while I crawled aboard, pain tearing through my leg. Together, we fought the current across to the island. David was there, pale and shaking, his leg bent at an impossible angle.
“Broke it bad,” he muttered. “Chris and Ben... I didn’t see them after.”
Nick and his buddy worked fast, setting up a tarp shelter and pulling out a satellite communicator. “Distress sent,” he said. “They’ll come.”
The wait was agony. David groaned with every breath. The air grew colder, the lake turning to glass as the light faded. I sat beside him, staring across the dark water toward the falls, listening for anything.
“Think they’re out there?” he asked quietly.
“They have to be,” I said. But deep down, I felt the truth pressing in—the wilderness doesn’t always give back what it takes.
Hours passed. Then, faint and far above, a plane circled, its light blinking once, twice, then gone. We stared up, barely breathing.
“They’re looking,” I whispered.
It was past midnight when the helicopter came. The sound built from a low hum to a shattering thunder as it descended over the island, whipping the trees sideways. The pilot—Grace, she told us later—jumped out, calm and precise. She checked David first. “You’re in rough shape,” she said. “We’re getting you out.”
They lifted him away, his face pale under the floodlight.
“See you soon, Alex,” he called, before disappearing into the black sky.
A rescuer stayed with me until the next flight. We sat in silence beside the dying fire, the roar of the falls echoing through the night.
“They’re searching,” he said softly.
But his eyes told me what his words wouldn’t.
When they finally airlifted me out, the wilderness fell away beneath the helicopter—miles of silver lakes and black forest under the moon. In Ely, medics rushed me to an ambulance, then to Duluth. Pelvic fractures, bruised ribs, deep lacerations. Pain meant I was still alive.
Frank had made it out safe from camp, but Ben and Chris never did.
The search lasted seventeen days. Boats, divers, drones, dogs—the whole grid combed again and again below Curtain Falls. The water there is wild, twisting through boulders and whirlpools like it’s alive.
On the thirteenth day, they found Chris. Two days later, Ben. Both pinned by the current, too deep to surface.
When they told me, it felt like going under again—lungs full of water, the sound of the falls roaring in my head.
We held services back home. Chris’s family, Ben’s, ours—all standing there with the same stunned look, like we were still trying to wake from a dream we couldn’t stop. People spoke of how they lived, but all I could think of was how they went—together, fighting the current to the end.
Even now, I wake up at night to that sound—the endless rush of falling water, the moment everything changed. We thought we knew the wilderness. We thought respect was enough. But it has its own rules.
One wrong drift. One reach too far. And it takes what it wants.
Ben and Chris—they were the best of us. And sometimes, when I’m back out there, alone in a canoe on a still morning, I swear I can hear them—the echo of our voices carried across the glassy lake, fading into the trees.
"The Trapline":
I needed to get away from the city—the noise, the traffic, the constant hum that never let me think straight. So when my two good friends, Tom and Lisa, suggested a trip up north, I didn’t hesitate. We’d been talking about it for months—a canoe journey through the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, that sprawling maze of lakes and forests where you can paddle for days without hearing another human voice. Tom had been before, a few shorter trips, and he talked about it like it was sacred ground. Lisa was excited, but I could tell she was nervous; it was her first time that far out. For me, it was about the quiet—the kind you can feel pressing in from all sides, reminding you how small you really are.
We left before dawn, the car packed tight with gear: tents, sleeping bags, food, a small camp stove, and the old aluminum canoe strapped on top. The drive north took most of the day, trees crowding closer to the highway until the towns disappeared and only lakes reflected the sky. When we finally reached the entry point—a small gravel lot beside a still, glassy lake—the air felt clean, cold, alive.
The first pull of the paddle sent a chill of satisfaction through me. Tom steered from the stern, solid and confident, each stroke deliberate. Lisa sat in the middle, her paddle hesitating at first but soon finding rhythm with mine.
“This,” Tom said with a grin, “is going to be perfect.”
Lisa smiled, squinting at the sun. “As long as we don’t flip over, sure.”
The first day was easy—open water, light breeze, the smell of pine and damp earth thick around us. We portaged once, hauling the canoe over a short, root-laced trail to the next lake, and laughed when Lisa almost slipped in the mud. By late afternoon, we found a campsite on a small island—a rocky shore with just enough flat space for a tent and a fire ring blackened from old coals.
Tom built the fire while Lisa and I gathered wood, the two of us working quietly as the sun sank low. When the flames caught, their reflection danced on the water like a second fire burning beneath the surface. We ate dehydrated meals and watched twilight settle. The loons called, their mournful cries echoing across the glassy water, and for a while, no one spoke.
“Feels like we’re the last people in the world,” Lisa whispered.
Tom smiled into the firelight. “That’s kind of the point.”
Later that night, I woke to a sound—distant howls rolling across the lakes. Wolves. The sound was eerie, lonely, primal.
Lisa stirred beside me. “You hear that?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
Tom mumbled, half-asleep, “They’re miles away. Go back to sleep.”
But I couldn’t. Something about the calls lingered, circling in my thoughts long after the night went still again.
The next morning, mist hung over the water like breath. We broke camp and paddled deeper into the maze—through narrow channels hemmed in by birch and cedar, past sheer cliffs streaked with moss. The portages grew rougher, the trails slick and tangled with roots. Tom led the way, calling out warnings over his shoulder.
“Watch your footing—these rocks are killers.”
Lisa laughed, brushing at the cloud of mosquitoes around her. “Why didn’t anyone warn me about these monsters?”
By noon, the sun burned off the haze, and we found ourselves in a long, twisting chain of lakes. The sense of isolation was total—no planes, no distant boats, just the dip of paddles and the quiet sigh of water.
That was when I noticed something along the shore. A scrap of blue cloth, torn and caught on a branch. Then another piece, farther down—faded, weathered.
“Hey,” I said, pointing. “You see that?”
Tom glanced over. “Probably just old gear. People lose stuff out here all the time.”
Lisa frowned. “It looks… deliberate. Like someone was in a hurry.”
We didn’t dwell on it, but after that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the woods were too still—like they were holding their breath.
We stopped for lunch on a narrow strip of rock, pulling the canoe ashore. Tom stretched, said he was going to check out a game trail that led uphill. “Be right back.”
Lisa and I unwrapped our food and spread the map between us. “How much farther to the next site?” she asked.
“Maybe three hours if we keep pace,” I said. “We’ll get there before dark.”
Minutes passed. Then ten. No sign of Tom.
“Tom?” I called. Nothing.
Lisa stood. “Tom! Where are you?”
The scream came a second later—sharp, raw, and unmistakably his. We dropped everything and ran. The brush tore at our legs as we followed the sound.
He was on the ground when we found him, his face twisted in pain, one leg caught in a rusted metal trap. Blood soaked his boot, pooling in the dirt.
“Get it off!” he gasped, clawing at the steel jaws.
Lisa knelt beside him, shaking. “Oh God, oh God—hold still, Tom!”
The trap was ancient, half-buried under leaves, the chain bolted to a stake sunk deep in the earth. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades—but it worked just fine.
“Who the hell leaves this out here?” I muttered, my hands trembling as I searched for the release. Tom’s breathing was ragged, every exhale a pained grunt. I found a lever buried in the dirt and pressed down with all my strength. The jaws creaked, then released with a metallic snap.
Tom screamed as his leg came free. The wound was bad—deep, jagged, bone glinting through torn flesh. Lisa wrapped it as best she could, her hands slick with blood.
“We have to get him out,” she said.
I nodded, swallowing hard. “Now.”
We half-carried, half-dragged him back toward the canoe. His weight felt heavier with every step. Then a crack split the air—a gunshot. The bullet hit a tree trunk inches from Lisa’s head, splintering bark.
“Down!” I shouted, shoving her behind the canoe. Another shot followed, this one hitting the water with a sharp hiss.
Lisa screamed. “Who’s shooting at us?”
“I don’t know—just move!”
We shoved off the shore, the canoe rocking dangerously as Tom lay flat in the bottom, groaning. Bullets struck the water around us, sending up sprays. My arms burned as I paddled, muscles screaming. Lisa kept low, pulling hard, tears streaking her face.
The shots followed us, echoing through the trees, bouncing off the cliffs so we couldn’t tell where they came from. Then—silence. Just the slap of paddles, the ragged sound of breathing.
After what felt like forever, we reached the next portage. Tom couldn’t walk.
“Leave me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“No chance,” I told him. Lisa and I carried him between us, stumbling down the rocky trail. His face was pale, his leg bleeding through the bandage.
Halfway through, I heard something in the trees beside us—branches cracking, footsteps keeping pace. I froze.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
Lisa nodded, eyes wide. “Keep going,” she mouthed.
We didn’t stop until we reached the next lake, practically throwing the canoe into the water. I could feel eyes on us as we paddled, something moving in the shadows, always just out of sight.
The sun was sinking when we finally saw the road—a gravel access point, our car waiting like salvation. We hauled Tom out, barely conscious now, and wrapped his leg tighter before speeding off. I managed to get a signal long enough to reach the rangers.
Tom survived. Barely. Weeks of surgery and rehab. The rangers found the trap but no sign of anyone nearby. No camps, no tools, no footprints. Just empty woods and rusted metal. They said it might’ve been an old poacher’s trap, or maybe someone living off-grid who didn’t want company.
We never went back.
Sometimes, late at night, when the world goes quiet, I still hear that sound—the sharp snap of metal, echoing somewhere out beyond the trees. And I wonder if whoever was out there that day is still waiting for the next canoe to come down that same lonely stretch of water.
"To the Edge":
The trip began with that electric pulse of adventure that pulls strangers into brothers. I was fresh out of college, restless for the wild unknown, when Art invited me to join his expedition down the Dubawnt River—a remote northern artery few ever see. We were six in total, young and hungry for the kind of journey that tests what a person’s made of. Our route would follow the old Tyrrell trail from Black Lake to Baker Lake, through tundra and silence, tracing the path of explorers long gone.
Art was our leader, a thoughtful man with the quiet focus of someone who truly saw the world. His camera was never far from reach, and he spoke of capturing “the North before it disappears.” Peter, wiry and sun-browned, could steer a canoe through whitewater with his eyes closed. George, older than the rest of us, grumbled about everything—our pace, our pauses—but when it came time to haul gear or face rapids, he was the first to step forward. Bruce and Joe were rookies, eager but green, their paddles clumsy at first but steadying fast. As for me, I was somewhere between student and explorer, more useful with a compass and a topographic map than I’d expected to be.
We loaded our canoes with the essentials of life on the land—flour, lard, sugar, tea, tents, rifles, film reels, and the weight of our own ambitions—and pushed off from the rocky shore of Black Lake one clear morning in late June. The water was glass-smooth, clouds mirrored perfectly across its surface. The call of loons echoed through the stillness as we dipped our paddles in unison. Ahead stretched a world unscarred by roads, signs, or noise—just wild water and sky.
The first weeks were full of motion and discovery. We crossed the great sweep of Wholdaia Lake, dragging our canoes across portages that oozed with mud and clouds of blackflies. “Keep moving, or they’ll eat you alive,” Peter laughed one evening as we swatted at our necks around the campfire. Each night the land felt larger, the sky closer. Art would set up his tripod and film the long light spilling across the tundra, caribou herds grazing in the distance. “This is what Tyrrell saw,” he said more than once, reverence in his voice. “We’re walking in history.”
Those early days felt eternal. We baked bannock over the fire, watched the sun drift low but never fully set, and told stories that blurred the line between truth and myth. But even among friends, the edges began to fray. George muttered often about our pace, saying we wasted too much time on filming. “We’re not here to make a movie—we’re here to get through,” he said one evening, staring into the fire. Art just smiled and replied softly, “Why not both? The film is our journey.” I nodded, though I felt the same tension—between the urge to move and the pull to linger.
By late July, the land changed. The trees thinned, the sky widened, and the winds off Dubawnt Lake turned fierce. The water grew colder, the weather moodier. Days of gales pinned us to the shore while the waves pounded endlessly. Our supplies ran thin, and every meal became a calculation. Art assured us we’d hunt more, but the tundra had gone quiet—game scarce, trails empty. We rationed flour and lard, stirring them into thick porridge, each spoonful smaller than the last. We built a stone cairn and left a note for whoever might come after, marking the point where optimism began to slip into endurance.
August brought the rapids—fast, wild, and dangerous. The river narrowed, twisted, and roared. We scouted on foot when we could, carrying gear around the worst sets. But as the days shortened and frost crept in, patience wore thin. “We’re running out of time,” George warned, his voice low beside the fire. “If we don’t make Baker Lake soon, winter will make sure we don’t make it at all.” Joe nodded grimly. “The cold’s already here.” I felt it too—the morning frost edging our tents, the way our fingers stiffened on the paddles, the subtle sense that the land itself was closing in.
Then September came, and the North revealed its true nature. On the ninth, the storm hit—sudden, violent, merciless. Winds screamed across the tundra, flattening our tents and snapping a pole clean in two. We huddled beneath overturned canoes, water streaming down our backs, shouting to hear one another over the gale. “Hold on, boys!” Art yelled. “It’ll pass!” But it didn’t—not for hours. When it finally eased, everything was soaked—sleeping bags, food, clothes, film—all heavy and cold. We lit fires with trembling hands, the smoke thick and desperate. The river waited for us, black and swollen, and we pressed on, because stopping meant death.
The fourteenth was the day everything broke. The rapids near Marjorie Lake looked fierce, but Art decided to scout them from the canoes—time was our enemy now. “Stay close,” he called, voice half-lost in the roar. “Watch for rocks!” We slipped into the current, the water foaming white around us. Then, ahead, Peter’s canoe struck a hidden ledge. It reared, tipped, and in a heartbeat he and George were gone—flung into the torrent.
“Man overboard!” Joe shouted. We paddled hard, hearts hammering, but the current had us too. Our canoe slammed broadside, water crashing in like ice knives. I went under—the shock of it stole my breath, the cold burning through every nerve. I clawed to the surface, gasping, grabbing the overturned canoe. Art’s boat flipped next, film cans and packs scattering downstream like lost memories.
The river was chaos. The current dragged us through the spray, rocks slamming against our shins. “Swim for shore!” Art yelled, but his voice was weak, swallowed by the noise. Somehow, Peter and George found a boulder and clung tight. Bruce and Joe fought their way to the shallows. I reached a gravel bar and crawled up, gasping, the air so cold it hurt to breathe. Art was still in the water, his lips blue, his strokes slowing. We waded out, dragging him in, shouting his name.
He was shaking violently, skin pale as bone. “I’m… all right,” he whispered, but the words slurred, wrong. We stripped him, rubbed his limbs, wrapped him in what dry clothes we had left. “Stay with us, Art,” Peter begged. But as the hours passed, his eyes drifted unfocused, breaths slowing until there were no more. The silence that followed was heavier than any storm.
We buried him as best we could, beneath an overturned canoe and a cairn of stones, the tundra wind howling over us. None of us spoke for a long time. There was only the ache of loss and the hard truth that we had to keep going. Two canoes remained—patched, half-leaking, but they floated. So we pushed onward, starving, hollow, haunted.
The land was endless and indifferent. Each night, frost crept deeper into our tents. We hunted what little we could—ptarmigan, the occasional hare—and when that failed, we boiled moss and lichen to fill the emptiness in our bellies. Our faces were gaunt, our hands raw and split. Sometimes, in the edge of exhaustion, I’d see caribou shapes moving in the mist that vanished when I blinked. Voices whispered in the wind, or maybe it was just the river, mocking us.
By the time we stumbled into Baker Lake, we were half ghosts. The villagers took us in, wrapped us in warmth and fed us broth until the trembling stopped. We had made it—but at a cost none of us could measure.
Art’s dream ended in that cold, relentless water, but his vision stayed with me—the belief that the North is not conquered, only endured. I went home changed, quieter, carrying the weight of what we’d seen and lost. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still hear the Dubawnt—its roar, its silence, its cruel and beautiful truth.