Arctic Barren Beauty Wildlife And Wild Lands Make Canoe Trip North Once-In-Lifetime Experience

We are hiking up a hill of boulders, looking for the best way to canoe the Kazan River rapids below without capsizing. It is the 13th day without seeing another human on the tundra.

We don’t want to take any chances on this arctic river that has fooled us once before. In a timeless, unpopulated landscape where trees can’t grow, daily events nevertheless unfold with heart-jolting speed. Dangerous boulders suddenly materialize in rapids. A wolf emerges from the willows, then disappears. A ptarmigan explodes at your feet.

It is good to be, as they say, on your toes in the arctic, especially because our only contact with civilization is floatplane pilot Craig Church, still three days from our rendezvous point on Yathkyed Lake.

As we reach the crest of a hill, the verdant arctic plains that could be the Serengeti in springtime spread out before us. The treeless tundra is breathtaking enough, except something large and black has caught my eye. Then many black objects emerge.

“Musk ox!” I whisper excitedly to my three companions. “A whole herd of musk oxen.”

They are bedded down in a hillside of willows, 27 in all, many of them calves nestled against their parents. A lone guard bull grazes along the shoreline. Their shaggy black coats, touched with a shade of gold along the mane, contrast starkly with the green sedges and willows. They are serious but peaceful-looking animals, like bison, though related genetically to the Rocky Mountain goat and the Tibetan takin.

We scramble down the hill and paddle around the rapids to a hill on the musk oxen’s side of the river. Downwind, we are now 100 yards away. Several animals rise to their feet when they spot our brightly colored life jackets. They regard us with marked ambivalence. We move closer, knowing that eventually we will canoe within 30 yards of the herd to negotiate the rapids.

Musk oxen are perfectly adapted to the tundra, using both a stout bulwark of horns and defensive herd formations to defend against predators. When alarmed, musk oxen press together in a line or semicircle, drawing the calves in between the adults. The closer the danger, the tighter the animals wedge together, with the dominant bulls in the front.

As we drew nearer, snapping pictures, the adult musk oxen gradually rose to their feet, the youngsters close to their flanks. The lead bull stood steadfast, shaking his head, watching intently.

Once gathered, the musk oxen finally trotted across the tundra, flank to flank, stopping often to check our progress. We apparently didn’t warrant a full-fledged defense formation, just a few insolent stares. a few insolent stares.

“We are incredibly lucky to have seen this,” said Pat Sweeney, my canoeing partner from St. Paul, Minn.

That the musk oxen regarded us only slightly, perhaps as inconvenience rather than danger, was oddly familiar. During 15 days and 260 miles of canoeing the Kazan River, which lies 1,300 miles north of the Twin Cities in the arctic wildlands known as the Barrens, our position in evolutionary hierarchy was put in doubt. We were interlopers on the tundra, unsuited as year-round inhabitants, vulnerable. Even insignificant.

One day, I encountered an arctic ground squirrel patrolling his granite lair. He stood up and scolded me. I smiled and walked closer. He dropped to all fours and brazenly rushed me, stopping just short of my boot to scold more. I backed off. Even the ground squirrels were tough.

The river, one of the mightiest in the Northwest Territories, awed us with a vast splendor and strength that could not be underestimated. Three spectacular waterfalls, known as the Three Cascades, lie between Angikuni and Yathkyed lakes, falls of such beauty that they would be national parks in the United States. But as one guidebook succinctly warned canoeists, “misjudging the outtake before the portage will be fatal.”

Soaking up the grandeur and power reflected by hundreds of thousands of gallons of water surging over a precipice less than 100 yards wide, it occurred to us that fewer than 20 white people a year see the Three Cascades, and perhaps no more than 500 have stood on this spot in the last several decades.

Each cascade is separated by three-fourths of a mile of river. After portaging the first waterfall, our group of four canoeists gathered on the tundra to discuss running the river between the second and third cascades, thus avoiding a mile-long portage.

“It’s runable on the right,” Kirk Lyttle said, prompting a nod of agreement from me. “You hug the shore, then exit river right just above the falls. It’s a short portage after that.”

“I’m too tired to canoe it, so Sweeney and I will portage,” I said. “Then we’ll meet at the bottom and look for a campsite.”

Three hours later, we met wearing grim, sullen looks. Lyttle and his wife, Jil Franke, had swamped midway down the river, auguring into a 6-foot wave that we didn’t see during the scouting trip. With their canoe languishing, they reached the beach just above the third cascade.

Lyttle brooded over the “mistake,” but we each felt responsible for the group’s well-being. In a slap-in-the-face manner, the river was reminding us of the rules: Stay together, don’t take risks.

We scouted rapids more carefully afterward, mulling every possible option and using ropes to move the canoes through more difficult passages. A 20-mile section of nearly continuous rapids was conquered in a single day, muted by unseasonally high water.

The river tugged at our imaginations. After long afternoon naps on the tundra, we swapped an array of bizarre dreams, then watched in amazement as a lone white wolf loped through the river shallows, sending up sheets of glistening spray.

Moments later, the invisible pack began yipping and howling, anxious to be reunited with its member stranded on the other shore by our intrusion. It was the middle of the afternoon, the arctic sun reflecting off the crystalline water so intensively that it hurt your eyes to look down.

Sandhill cranes croaked in the bogs, families of tundra swans swam ahead of our canoes and an occasional musk oxen grazed intently along shore.

In those waning days, the Kazan River widened and slowed, drawing us ever so gently toward Yathkyed Lake. Arctic nights were now perceptible, lengthening daily, signaling winter’s approach. It was mid-August, but the crisp mornings felt more like early October.

A blue-and-white floatplane dropped out of the sky one morning at 11 o’clock, right on schedule. Most of us had scarcely spoken that morning, attending to last-minute chores, perhaps lingering longer than normal at the routine of cleaning the coffee pot or disassembling the tent.

When the plane ground to a halt on the rubbly beach, Church emerged, smiling. He tossed me a rope, then waded the last few yards to shore. We shook hands.

“You’re the first person we’ve seen in 15 days,” I said.

“Well, I’m not sure if that sounds like a good thing or a bad thing,” he replied.

I just shrugged.

Like an arctic summer afternoon, the answer was a long one.

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = ON THE KAZAN RIVER, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES