River of Dreams

By Tom Cohen

On the eighth day in one of the most remote places on Earth, I sang to the river.

Sitting on a gravel bar in the Alaskan Arctic, bathed in sunshine and buffeted by a crisp breeze, I watched the gray-green Noatak current rush past granite ridges high above. The churning waters swirled and splashed their song, and the wind whistled its tune. I wanted my own.

“In the attics of my life, full of cloudy dreams unreal,” I began, choosing the Grateful Dead’s ballad of personal grace. “Full of tastes no tongue can know, and light no eye can see.”

Emboldened by the solitude, my voice rose to give thanks: “When there was no ear to hear, you sang to me.”

I have canoed all my life, from the spring-fed streams of Missouri and Arkansas to the endless freshwater routes of Minnesota and Wisconsin and Ontario to the mighty Zambezi of Southern Africa. On the banks of the Noatak in northwest Alaska’s Brooks Range, I realized the countless miles and strokes of those previous journeys had delivered me to the perfect place of worship for my pantheistic spirituality.

I’d experienced that satisfaction once before, at age 16 on a five-week canoe trip on the Berens River of western Ontario. It was hard work, paddling in the hot sun and cold rain, portaging heavy packs and canoes through knee-high bog, with soul-nourishing rewards of quiet sunsets on rocky shores, handmade bread baked on an open fire, catching and grilling the freshest walleye imaginable, waking with the dawn and sleeping with the stars. I felt then like I belonged in the wilderness, a part of nature, and as my life proceeded, I always wanted to again experience that archetypal bond.

It never came, despite numerous adventures in Canada, Africa and elsewhere. I studied, worked, married, divorced, married again, and moved around the world, learning the truth of John Lennon’s advice that “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Then a heart attack in early 2011 at age 54 left me considering the plaintive possibility that my long-dreamed return to the wilderness might never happen.  

A 2017 New York Times article on the most remote place on Earth changed everything. In describing the Alaskan Arctic, it depicted the last truly wild frontier, and I knew my time had come. I was 60 years old. It was now or never.

Almost two years later, well before dawn on an August morning, I awakened to begin the journey of my lifetime.

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It is far. You fly to Fairbanks in northeast Alaska, then take a small plane to Bettles, a filling station of a village from where you enter the Gates of the Arctic National Park. Two kinds of people live there — bush pilots, and those who want to be bush pilots. 

Anticipation slowed everything, making the time crawl until finally, we were hauling gear to the six-seat DeHavilland Beaver float plane and a pilot less than half my age. Eying a bag of 12 canisters of aerosol bear spray, he asked who would hold it and added: “If something happens, throw it out first.” 

With ear guards on, harness and seatbelt fastened and the lone propeller whirring, we headed to one end of the lake where the tiny plane turned around, intensified its drone and, after a long pause, accelerated through the chop for what seemed much too long before slowly rising off the water and into the sky. Our shadow followed below, shrinking as we gained altitude. 

From above, the Yukon River braided its way through mountains and forests, and narrow valleys offered close-up views of glaciers and snow-capped peaks. Endless wilderness spread before us.

Then without any perceptible change, the ground seemed closer. Through the windscreen, a river valley beckoned. The plane flew over a small lake and circled widely, reducing altitude through the turn. It descended toward the water and glided, the motor’s drone now softer as if sneaking in quietly. I hardly felt the floats touch down.

Nothing could prepare me for the wonder of that first step on the shore of Pingo Lake. It was late afternoon, with thick clouds punctured by streams of sunlight. Mountains rose around us, and the floodplain was thick with wild grasses and flowers turning yellow and red in the brief Arctic autumn. The air was moist and cool, with a constant wind blowing. Arctic terns soared above. 

I was home.

On the first morning in the wilderness, after a night of putting together the collapsible canoes and erecting tents and huddling for dinner in the pale summer light that never fades from sunset to sunrise, I awoke before the others to fish on my own. I hooked a small pike on the first cast, throwing it back after a quick photo. Five minutes later, I caught it again.

Later, as breakfast was cooking, I saw something moving in the tall grass of a peninsula about 100 yards away. My first thought was a dog rolling on its back, but it was too big, and this was Alaska. Binoculars confirmed the young grizzly cavorting on its own, and we watched for several minutes until it leaped up, looked around and then galloped away along the shore. Bear nip, we joked.

We hit the water for the first time that afternoon, first portaging the packs and gear over the maddeningly uneven tussocks of tundra brush and grass to the river about 300 yards away. The frigid Noatak requires the utmost care any time you are in or near the water, as swamping a canoe can mean death. So on this initial day of paddling, we strapped in the gear with extra caution.

Finally we were pushing off and taking the first strokes, feeling the resistance of the water and the canoe’s response. I had made it to Alaska, I thought, a choking sob in my throat. And it was exactly what I wanted.

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Everywhere we went, grizzly tracks abounded along the river’s edge. For that reason, we strapped on the pepper-based bear spray whenever outside our tents — even for quick dashes to pee in the night. 

At a lunch stop on a gravel bar, a giant head and shoulders suddenly rose from the brush about 70 yards away. The bear sniffed the air, then spotted us and froze for a second before dropping down and running off. It turned once to stand up for another look, then ambled away for good. 

Another day, on a winding stretch with a tall bank on one side, someone in a trailing canoe called, “Bear!” I turned the boat around to see a grizzly mother with two cubs walking along the top of the embankment. The cubs vanished, signaled by the mother to head inland, while she continued downstream along the bank ridge.

When we drifted beyond a small point that blocked our view of her, I told the bow man to get his camera ready, then maneuvered to face upstream while staying in place, hoping she’d appear again. She emerged a few seconds later, standing her ground with front legs braced as we looked up from the water.

Afterward, the guides warned we had been in potential danger. If the cubs came back and the mother saw they were in our line of sight, she might have charged down the embankment — so fast to leave no chance for escape, they said. I responded without pause: “That’s okay. I was in the stern.”

One morning, we came to a tributary — a salmon-spawning stream — where the gravelly sand and mud of the confluence was full of grizzly tracks. Most of the group walked up the valley to try to spot some bears, while I stayed back with one of the guides to fish. Within minutes, he caught two grayling and I reeled in another. All were released, and then I hooked something bigger that fought with stubborn resolve, running out again each time I got it close to the bank. Eventually we saw I’d hooked a plump chum salmon, which I managed to secure for a photo before its release.

On another afternoon, we dragged a canoe over the tundra brush for a few hundred yards to a surprisingly large and deep lake nestled in higher land above the river. Casting out a large spoon, I started to troll across and quickly felt a familiar tug on the line. It was a robust lake trout, well-hooked and easy to pull into the boat. Another cast brought in another one, almost a twin of the first, and we filleted and fried both that night.

Every day brought natural spectacles. Shortly after crawling out of my tent one clear morning, a full moon was setting just over a mountain to the West as the sun first breached the horizon in the East. The panoramic image on my iPhone framed the vibrancy of the colors — deep blue night sky and bright golden sun — on either side of the gravel bar campsite, river and surrounding mountains.

A lesson of the wilderness came on a gravel bar where we stopped for lunch on the seventh day. The rushing water of the tributary mostly covered the small gravel point formed by the merging streams, and I grabbed my fishing gear to try a few casts. 

I had to cross the tributary to get to where the currents actually combined, and I chose a spot full of small stones in the gray, sandy mud. I faced upstream, as taught by the guides, and crossed one step at a time, like a sideways wedding march. 

The fishing proved useless, as the current was too strong and I lacked the proper tackle. Walking back, I decided without thinking to cross just below the patch of small stones I had used before. Again facing upstream, I stepped first with my left foot and instantly felt the entire leg sink into the ooze all the way to the upper hip. My right foot remained on the gravel bar, rendering me completely immobile with one leg on land bent sharply at the knee and the other submerged almost to the waist.

If alone, I probably would have died slowly in my personal version of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” I might have been able to pull my sunken foot out of the knee-high boot now encased in sandy mud, but that seemed unlikely. Hypothermia from the frigid water, combined with exhaustion due to my distorted position, eventually would combine to cause my drowning or freezing. 

The rest of the group was huddled on the far side of the gravel bar, paying no attention to my predicament. Then one member slowly came walking up the shore, looking at rocks. I called her name, but the rushing water drowned me out. I called again, louder, but no luck. Then I shouted and she looked up quizzically to see me twisted into the bank. Immediately, she grabbed the whistle on her life vest and blew three short blasts to signal the others. All I could think was: “Whistle on the life vest. Right.”

Hearing the alert, the two guides looked up, cocking their heads in a questioning way when they saw my predicament, then loped across the gravel bar and tributary. Each grabbed an arm and shoulder, and after much tugging and huffing and puffing, they managed to pull me out, my boot miraculously still on my left foot. I laughed about my predicament, describing my efforts to get attention in Monty Python style: “I say, old chap, I seem to be in a bit of pickle.” But alone in my tent that night, the danger I had faced felt more tangible. You got lucky that time, I thought.

_____

The river provided constant wonder and challenge. Swelled by the numerous tributaries, it got wider and stronger as we paddled downstream, and the current required close attention. Riffles at almost every bend brought excitement in finding the best line and cruising through the small waves, but any lapse could mean turning sideways to the flow and potentially flipping. In my dreams, the perfect river always was such endless fast water.

We encountered only two real rapids, both on a day when a fierce wind brought low, thick clouds and a driving rain. As we scouted them, walking gingerly along the rocky bank, pelted by the wind-propelled rain drops that felt like ice pellets on the face, engulfed in the roar of the rushing water, energized by the adrenaline of the situation, I thought to myself: “I’ve never felt so alive.” 

On the second-to-last night, as we finished dinner and the sun lowered toward the rocky horizon, I saw something dark on the ridge above the far side of the river. Just a spot at first, it moved in an uneven, jerky manner that suggested a bear, but binoculars showed it to be a muskox that appeared sick or injured. As it descended slowly toward the river, a few of us quickly walked along the uneven tundra to try to get a better view when it eventually reached the water. 

The muskox was old, with dark, shaggy hair except for a smooth patch atop its haunch. It walked irregularly, with kind of a tilted gait as it moved steadily downhill. We stood at the river’s edge and waited for it to approach the water on the far side, but before reaching the bottom, it turned to head downriver. Above it on the ridge stood two grazing caribou with their magnificent antlers, gleaming in the golden light of the setting sun. 

A surreal dance ensued. The muskox made its way down to the gravely river bank and continued heading downstream. I walked along the tundra bank on the opposite side, trying to avoid kicking rocks or crashing through thicket that would make too much noise. I failed, though, and the muskox would stop and look my way with a glare to say, “I know you’re there.” After a few moments’ pause, it would continue walking, and so would I in what felt like a primitive hide-and-seek.

This went on for several hundred yards, until we reached the landing for our campsite on my side. The rest of the group, having watched the muskox’s progress from afar, had gathered there with binoculars and cameras. We knelt in the brush as the muskox stepped onto a small gravel bar on the far side and approached a rock the size of a small refrigerator. When passing it by, the muskox suddenly snorted, then lowered its head and lurched forward to ram the rock. Stepping back, it did it again and then a third time, hard enough that we could hear the smack of horn on stone. Then it continued on its way downriver.

The next day, our last on the water, we saw the muskox again a few miles downstream, still ambling along unevenly. We also saw our first humans in more than two weeks — hunters who flew in on tiny planes that landed on gravel bars.

That night, our last in the wilderness, we made a fire and sat up for hours to watch the sun set and the waning moon eventually rise. It never got completely dark, and our hopes for a show of  Northern Lights went unfulfilled. But that didn’t matter in the overwhelming stillness of the moment, sitting on a rocky shore by dancing flames in the dense chill of an Arctic autumn.

__________

Looking back, the trip of my lifetime — 17 days on the Noatak in August 2019 — exceeded even my extraordinary expectations. 

The rigors of the Alaskan Arctic proved challenging, as did my accumulated needs over the years. I packed very heavy, with extra gear such as an inflatable mattress pad and a mini-CPAP machine for my sleep apnea that ran on lithium batteries kept charged with a foldable solar panel.

The canoeing also proved demanding, with launching and landing on gravel bars and rocky banks requiring full attention and care. On some days, mighty headwinds or sidewinds stalled our progress even though we were moving with the current. By the end, my right shoulder stiffened and ached from the strain, requiring me to paddle exclusively on the left side, and my hands had crater-like scabs on two knuckles. Both of my big toes were numb and took weeks to regain full sensation.

None of that mattered. What I remember is the joy of reconnecting with the wilderness: the thrill of stepping out of the tent each morning, sometimes to a frost-covered tundra; the exhilaration of bouncing through the standing waves of fast water; the adrenaline of hearing a wolf call in the descending dusk, or walking across the river from a muskox, or seeing a bear roll in the grass, or catching trout from a mountain lake; the peace and quiet of the still, Arctic night.

Months later, what resonates most, and always will, is the afternoon when the others went hiking and I sat alone by the river, singing my thanks for the natural splendor.

In that blissful moment, I belted out my song to no one but the rocks and water and sky and wind. And at the final line, my voice cracked with the words I had dedicated a few years earlier to my late mother.

“When there was no dream of mine,” I sang to the miracle of nature, “you dreamed of me.”

Tom Cohen is a recovering journalist who constantly dreams of wilderness. After a two-decade career with The Associated Press, he has worked for Conservation International, CNN and the World Bank, and currently lives in Simon’s Town, South Africa, 20 minute’s walk from the penguins of Boulders Beach.