Noise

~Torngat Mountains, Labrador Peninsula, Canada~

~Open Road~

Well the clock says its time to go,

going to the sun, on the open road, give me one try, 

and spin sweet wild wind over my hands the steering wheel dead arrrow

north into the night the snow flies hard and the shadow of the earth curves,

warped around huge mountains and endless promises, the highway withers 

beneath the momentous sky, impulsive, medians and mile markers, forever onward,

no particular path or destination, just forward, some things last forever, I hope this 

lasts for never, fade into a shimmering reflection in the rear view mirror, stranger,

we've met before, but on different terms, myself just a passenger spun on the endless,

narrow, asphalt strip of reality, that which separates us, the adventurer's, the wayward 

dreamers, the romantically detached fools, from them , the heavy, trodding masses, 

us delayed, just a rest stop or two.

~Numbers~

So much for numbers, the night has slid,

you said you'd call me, and never did.

I see you searching, don't know what for,

you say your different, but life's a bore.

regret the morning, that comes to fast

for your obsessions, already passed.

I see you searching, don't know what for,

you said your different, no,

your the bore.

So I stumbled on this old enrtry from July of 2005 two summers ago which I wrote while I was whitewater canoeing and hiking for 6 weeks in Northern Quebec on the De Pas and George Rivers with ten friends. I think the part about actually hearing the wold might have been wishful thinking on my part (or did we?... in any case I forget), but I think this sums some of my feeling for being in the wilderness for long periods of time.

55 Degrees 49' North, 65 Degrees 13' West. July 21st, 2005: "Though sometimes it seems in my memory the hours and days of the last few weeks blur together in an indecipherable haze of experience and sensory overload, this past day has been a particularly amazing and memorable experience, and as I haven’t had the chance to write for a few days I’m taking the time now to jot down a few remembrances. It seems that it’s been months since our group of twelve first met on the morning of July 4th way back in Wiscasset, Maine, but in fact this is only our seventeenth day together in the wilderness. Yesterday evening we paddled into our campsite for the night as the sun started to dip below the barren hills in the distance, and brought a satisfying end to both a long, hard day as well as a chapter of our trip, our time on the De Pas River. In the distance, the confluence of the De Pas and George rivers converge together, and ahead lies the massive expanse of sixty-five mile long Indian House Lake, home to the ancestral “barren land people” or the Naskapi Indians as they are called today, before the last of them were driven onto reservations in the 40’s by the government. As we approached last night’s campsite, suppressed weariness and fatigue of both the body and soul from the day’s long miles of paddling were relieved by what might be called a veritable arctic oasis by our campsite standards; here was a massive sandbar forming an island in the middle of the river than had been exposed by low water levels this year; it wasn’t even shown on our maps. A good thirty acres of flat, barren sand stretched out before us, akin to a gorgeous tropical beach at 56 degrees north in Arctic Quebec.

 I felt distinctly unearthly setting up our ultra-modern looking, bright yellow modular “North Face” tents in this arctic desert, and it is true we’ve begun to refer to this odd locale as “the mars campsite” over the last day. After setting up tents, unpacking, getting the boats put away, and doing dinner chores, I savored one of my favorite parts of our daily routine, our time as a group together around the fire, savoring both the delicious wilderness cuisine as well as both the wilderness and each other’s company. The thought of how lucky we were to be travelers through this vast, magnificent territory played through my mind as it often does in times of quiet contemplation. Perhaps fewer than a hundred people in the history of mankind, both Indian and white, had ever seen or stepped foot on my land, and this served as a continual reminder to leave only footsteps and take only pictures. A pleasant light breeze kept the normally vicious bugs to a tolerable low, and a typically spectacular arctic summer sunset played out across the interface between barren ridgelines and sky. In such latitudes as this, the day is sufficiently long, that the sun never really dips all the way below the horizon in midsummer, instead, rays of fiery hues of amber and gold play out for hours on end, ambient light for reflecting on things around the fires earthly glow. 

As we sit in a circle around the fires last dying embers on the shores of a great river in the midst of the greatest untapped wilderness in eastern North America, the conversation dwindles on its own as we sense the unspoken bond of the wilderness; one that binds all men subconsciously and might very well be the sinew of our being; what makes us both uniquely human as well as a member of the global earth community. As I savor the last bits of grilled salmon and trout, caught scarcely six hours ago, I feel that sense of overwhelming well-being that keeps me coming back to the wilderness summer after summer and binds me to the outdoors so strongly. No where else and at no other time have I felt so purely alive. Why is it that sometimes when the line between life and death is felt close enough almost to reach out and touch it, that we feel most alive ourselves? I have not seen a person outside of our group nor looked in a mirror and seen myself for over two weeks, and the closest inhabited settlement in several hundred miles away. Occasionally while paddling or doing dishes I catch my reflection on glassy surface of the water from the corner of my eye, and it almost makes me jump. One takes these things for granted in our modern civilization, and I wonder if our ancestors felt the same bond with the land I think we are compelled on a daily basis to stand in awe of. Overhead, the night sky looks as if a flashlight is being shone through a piece of black construction paper with pencil holes punched in it; I wonder if the ancient Romans, lying in the open fields after a day of battle or conquest, saw this same sky when they came up with the constellations. All of a sudden, a rolling wave of green and blue light morphs itself across the horizon and up through the sky, and reflect on one of my favorite images of the north, the aurora borealis. 

The ancient Inuit were afraid of the northern lights and made sacrifices to appease them, but somehow I sense this ghostly phenomenon to be my friend. We end our night with our usual ritual of sorts before retiring to a well-earned sleep in preparation for 5:00 AM wake-up and uncharted waters the next day. We join arms in a circle around the fire and share thoughts on the success of the day, what lies ahead, and the value of living in the present. Already I feel, along with the others, as if this group represents some of the closest people I have ever worked with, after having met some as strangers less than three weeks ago. Finally, we do our sort of goodnight signal, at the request of wildlife enthusiast and head trip leader Pieter Ingram, that we started a few weeks ago sort of to humor Pieter and also because it doesn’t really matter what you do when your 500 miles from civilization as we call it. On the count of three, we all gave our best wolf-call, howling for a good minute or so, all twelve of us, with sounds ranging from a baritone growl to what you might here if you accidentally stepped on a Chihuahua. To date we hadn’t gotten a response, but, wolves being intelligent, social creatures, we had heard from local native people we had encountered at the Indian village at the start of our trip, they will often respond if a pack is in hearing-range. Pieter gave the cut-off signal and we brought the cacophony of noise to an abrupt halt. 

What filled the air was the most startling silence I have ever heard, the sound of both absolute nothingness and everything sucking a vacuum into the air at the same time. The faint sounds of running water and wind rustling in the pines could be heard, but not a man-made sound in the slightest. As we prepared to end our own silence and admit defeat by calling in a night and hitting the hay, I felt the hairs bristle on my neck as the unmistakable howl of a wolf swept itself across the barren tundra in our direction. Far away across the river on a rocky knoll, the faint silhouettes of several dog-like creatures stood for a moment in the glow of the northern lights, and then disappeared. As I returned to my tent for a few precious hours asleep, I felt perhaps more keenly than I ever have or ever will the weariness of the body but the soundness of the soul."

The lower George River, Northern Quebec, Nunavik Territory, Canada.

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."

- Edward Abbey. 

" Once we were becalmed off the Four Peaks, the highest coastal mass between Baffin Land and the strait of Magellan; they were dark and purplish, and patches of snow clung to them; the silence was of such a quality that it deafeaned, even as certain sensations of cold are so violent that they simulate in charecter and feeling a burn. It was my watch during this calm, and just after four in the morning. By the steely light I observed the angles between certain of the peaks, searching for a sign that we were being carried inshore. And the loneliness, the aloof chill of the jagged peaks and gray sea, was so great that once I nearly called the others to demand they help bear it. When the impusle was nearly irresistable, however, a breeze sprang up and the schooner, that unfit-for-sea, half-equipped, wholly botched version of a yacht, moved forward again carrying us still further into the north and the lands where we were to be discoverers and explorers, since trading and prospecting were no go. Once I saw deep into a secret and icy fjord and the notion of living in it, between the somber rock and cold, green water, came to me; periodically it recurs even today; there must have been some dark enchantment, in the sterile magnificence of the place."
Pg. 124, "Northern Lights", by Desmond Holridge.