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ZONDERVAN North of Hope Copyright © 2013 by Shannon Huffman Polson This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks. This title is also available in a Zondervan audio edition. Visit www.zondervan.fm. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

ISBN 978-0-310-32876-6 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — ​ electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — ​ except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published in association with David Jacobsen of Rivendell Literary (www.rivendellliterary.com). The names and identifying characteristics of some p ­ eople in this narrative have been changed. All events happened as told. All references to indigenous beliefs came from primary and secondary source research. As these are subjects of great sensitivity, and more recent scholarship has expressed concern about the appropriateness of earlier research methodologies, my discussion is included in the narrative with the best of intentions and great respect to the ­ peoples referenced and their beliefs. Maps on pages 2 – 3 are from Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land © 2003 by Subhankar Banerjee. Used courtesy of Braided River. Cover design: Studio Gearbox Cover photography: Veer® Map artist: Rose Michelle Taverniti Interior design: Sarah Johnson Printed in the United States of America 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 /DCI/ 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 

c o nte nts

Acknowledgments................................................................................. 17 1. A Scarred Sky..........................................................................................19 2. Restless Waters.......................................................................................33 Requiem: Kyrie...............................................................................................43 3. The Valley of the Shadow......................................................................47 4. Damp Shadows........................................................................................55 5. The River within Us............................................................................... 61 6. Live Water................................................................................................ 73 Requiem: Tuba Mirum.................................................................................. 91 7. A Precarious Life.....................................................................................95 8. The Weight of Days.............................................................................. 119 9. A Ceaseless River.................................................................................. 131 Requiem: Offertorium.................................................................................. 149 10. A Unique Opportunity.......................................................................155 11. Bitter River...........................................................................................167 Requiem: Sanctus......................................................................................... 181 12. Desert Springs.....................................................................................183 13. Barren Sands of a Desolate Creek....................................................193 Requiem: Benedictus................................................................................... 207 14. Dies Irae................................................................................................ 211 Requiem: Lacrymosa................................................................................... 227 15. Slants of Light.....................................................................................231 16. An Intentional Design...................................................................... 243 Epilogue.............................................................................................. 251 Afterword............................................................................................ 253 Notes.................................................................................................. 255 

chapter

1

a sca r r e d s k y
Hold my hand in this rupture of the planet while the scar of a purple sky becomes a star.
 — ​Pablo Neruda, Canto General

‌T

he plane fell from the clouds toward the dirt airstrip in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik, Alaska. I braced myself against the seat in front of me. Windows aged and opaque blurred the borders of ice and land, sea and sky. The airstrip rushed upward with menacing inevitability. Kaktovik perched on Barter Island, a barrier island shaped like a bison’s skull just north of the Arctic Coastal Plain. Ice stretched from just offshore to the horizon. The Beech 1900 touched down with all the grace of a drunk, first one wheel and then the other staggering on the rough surface. Our bodies lurched forward and to the side. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels until the sound smoothed into a rhythmic bumping to the end of the runway. As I walked off the plane down the rickety stairs, the Arctic wind cut through my fleece. I stood on the boundary between land and sea, water and ice. It was the end of the world. The ultima Thule. As much as I pretended that courage motivated my trip, my arrival was a supplication born of a bewildering devastation I could not shake. I came on my knees, begging and desperate. Though I was reared in Alaska, this was my first trip to the Arctic. 19 

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But it was not the first day of this journey. This journey began a year ago, though I didn’t then understand it, when the call came. I was thirty-three years old, working in a new position in finance at a large company in Seattle. I didn’t like finance, though I enjoyed working with my colleagues. I was smitten with a man named Peter, whom I had met three years earlier in business school in the Northeast. He was the first person I had ever thought I might marry. And then, on June 23, 2005, sitting on the couch of my Seattle apartment on a chilly summer evening, we decided things weren’t working between us. I left early the next morning to drive to see my brother Sam and his wife in Portland, my dreams running down my face. That was Friday. On Sunday, Sam, his wife, and I headed to the open-air market in Portland. A warm breeze wafted through the artists’ stalls, and my sister-in-law and I strolled among the booths waiting for Sam to park and join us for lunch. My phone rang, muffled, inside my purse. We reached the end of one row of artists’ booths and turned the corner to walk down another. I fumbled around in my purse and silenced the ring, expecting to have plenty of time to talk on the three-hour drive home. From a distance, Sam ambled toward us, the same amble our dad had, all long strong legs. Walking among the artists’ offerings, the three of us decided on lunch and sat at a picnic table to eat. The late morning sun settled around our shoulders as gently as a blanket. Around us drifted the laughter of children, the smell of cinnamon sugar and honey on elephant ears, and friendly flashes of color from wandering jesters with balloons. As we returned to our cars, the pain of my breakup two days earlier suspended briefly in the cocoon of companionship, I said goodbye to Sam and his wife. I settled into my blue Jetta, turned the key, and smiled in the rearview mirror, holding my phone on my shoulder to listen to voicemail. I turned toward the highway, where I would leave my brother and his wife behind to head north. 20 

a scar r e d sky

Then the earth trembled. The earth erupted. “This is Officer Holschen from Kaktovik, Alaska, calling for Shannon Huffman. Please call me as soon as you get this message.” I didn’t know the voice. I could barely comprehend the words. I pulled over. I called Sam and told him to pull over behind me, that I had just had a strange call. He jumped from his truck and strode to the passenger’s side of my car. As he climbed into the his frame, almost as tall as Dad’s, filled it — ​ I passenger’s seat — ​ looked at my text messages and found a number with a 907 area code, indicating Alaska, and three additional numbers at the end: 911. My hand shook as I dialed. I couldn’t remember my hand ever having been shaky before, but I couldn’t stop the tremors. “North Slope Borough,” said the voice on the other end of the line. There is a time in each of our lives when we are hurled into the terrible understanding that bedrock can crumble in the blink of an eye. And still, I felt a quiet and surprising steadiness, something wrapping itself around me to shield me from things to come. The shock protects you from the horror for a while, a brief respite from the cutting pain to come, a padding of grace. Even when you think you are feeling the pain, it has yet to begin. “This is Shannon Huffman, returning Officer Holschen’s call.” “Are you related to Richard and Katherine Huffman?” the voice asked. “I’m Rich’s daughter.” “I’m sorry to tell you this,” said the voice, “but a bear came into their campsite last night . . .” Every part of what I thought I knew blazed like the brightest sun, extinguishing to blackness. The earth wobbled and spun out of orbit. Gravity no longer existed. A flash of calculation appeared in the chaos, a shard of clarity thin and brittle as a sliver of glass: I had talked to Dad and Kathy the 21 

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previous Sunday on Father’s Day when they called on the satellite phone from a riverbank on the Hulahula River. They were fine, laughing, loving their trip. I would take care of them. I would need to make arrangements to get them to a hospital. I would need to talk to the doctors. “. . . and they were both killed.” Exactly at that moment, Sam whispered, “Are they dead?” I nodded, all at once unbelieving, angry at the question, unable to breathe. In one prolonged instant, I vaguely felt the weight of Sam’s head on my shoulder. I heard from him something like a sob. My breath caught in my throat. For a moment, time stood People on the sidewalk halted midstep. still. Cars driving by froze. ­ Sounds hushed. I’m not sure how I closed the conversation, the first of many, with Officer Holschen, but it had something to do with having bodies sent to Anchorage. I remember asking him not to release their names until we had had a chance to inform Kathy’s family. I a nything I registered was registered a muted note of surprise — ​ muted, as though I were covered in a layer of foam — ​ that I knew what questions to ask. The questions that were harder to ask, and impossible to answer, came later.

Now, only a year later, I arrived in the Arctic to float the Hulahula River, wishing I’d had a chance to say goodbye. Wishing I had spent more time with Dad and Kathy on rivers. Wishing for a sense of deeper connection to them. I had hoped Sam might come on this trip too, but he declined. He had immersed himself in distance cycling and had a 1200-kilometer ride scheduled while I was away on the river. Our brother Max was tied up at work in D.C. I had come feeling hollow, scooped out, empty. I had come because I knew I had to, though I couldn’t articulate why. I’d chosen my two traveling companions for their willingness 22 

a scar r e d sky

to make the trip: my adopted brother, Ned, and his work colleague Sally. We stumbled down the shaky steps from the plane onto the frozen dirt runway in the island village of Kaktovik, the only settlement on the northern edge of Alaska between the Canadian border and Barrow. Our journey would start upriver along the Hulahula River on the mainland, just as Dad and Kathy’s trip had, requiring a flight south on a yet smaller plane. But first we had to pick up our raft and other supplies. The few other passengers from the flight to Kaktovik dispersed into the treeless landscape, and we stood alone under an overcast sky. Our loneliness was short-lived; within a few minutes of the plane’s landing, a man named Ed, wearing a large mustache and a down coat, picked us up in a school bus that had seen better days. We each took our own seat; we were the only passengers. Ned sat rigidly even as the bus bumped over one of the town’s handful of short dirt roads to the Waldo Arms Hotel, a group of derelict trailers and Quonset huts. Sally couldn’t sit still in the bus seat. She had surprised me at our first meeting. I had heard only that she also kayaked, yet she was so plump as to appear almost round, with red smiling cheeks and dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Wow! I can’t believe we’re finally here! Never thought I’d actually be in the Arctic!” Sally said. Her grin came easily, and I swallowed against how it chafed me. We were a motley crew, the three of us, I thought. To be embarking on a journey so personally significant with someone I didn’t know seemed questionable at best. Ned smiled something that looked more like a grimace, a second too late for spontaneity. “Amazing,” I said. Even to me my voice sounded flat. I figured Sally must be smart; she worked with Ned in a market research firm back East. Ned and I had never been close. Growing up, we wore on each other like grinding gears. I assumed that 23 

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adulthood had tempered his youthful angst, though we had not spent any significant time together in the years intervening. I had not wanted to come alone, and yet I hoped that neither Ned nor Sally would require me to engage with them. I wanted to have my own trip. Outside of the dirty bus windows, the tiny houses of the village decayed into the landscape, brutalized by the harsh weather. They reminded me of old ice cubes left too long in the tray, withered in the subfreezing temperatures. No trees grew this far north, so the whole of the tiny village was visible. Old snowmobiles and broken dogsleds hunched in dirt yards, protected by mangy dogs straining at their chains outside the small homes. Other dogs slunk through the streets. The bus bumped to a halt in front of Waldo Arms, which was barely distinguishable from the buildings around it. A moose skull and antlers and a Dall sheep skull, scoured white by wind and snow, sat outside the hotel doors. Clouds clustered about the mountains to the south when we arrived, threatening our afternoon departure plans, but there was still a lot to do. We would be renting a raft from Walt Audi, who ran Waldo Arms with his wife, Merilyn. Walt had been stationed in Kaktovik years ago as part of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line set up by Eisenhower in the late 1940s as the nation’s primary air defense in case of a Russian invasion through Alaska. After that, he flew for years as one of Alaska’s original bush pilots. A pile of bent propellers next to a shed by the airstrip attested to Walt’s mythic indestructibility. Ed worked with Walt and Merilyn. He took us through the drill of inflating the fourteen-foot blue rubber raft, checking the pressure and learning the pumps, practicing loading the raft with our enormous pile of coated nylon and rubber dry bags. As Ed gathered equipment, an Inupiat woman came to stand in the doorway and told stories of going far out onto the ice to hunt walrus. Ed pulled out a scale, and we weighed the gear, including the raft: 24 

a scar r e d sky

440 pounds. The pilot needed to know this so he could decide how many trips to make to ferry us and our gear to our put-in point. We bought white fuel for our camp stoves from Ed, disassembled the raft, and loaded the truck with our gear to go back to the airfield. Our preparation was complete, but clouds still hung heavily over the mountains. The last weather call grounded us until the next day. Even if one could find shelter from the elements in this tiny village teetering on the edge of the world, there was never any question that nature ruled. We were forced to slow down, to take nature on her own terms. The start of our trip on the Hulahula would have to wait. We were in Kaktovik for the night. Waldo Arms had a monopoly on lodging, and a room ran a couple of hundred dollars a night, well beyond our trip budget. We ­ opted for the bunkhouse at forty dollars a night. Bunkhouse was a euphemistic term: behind the Quonset hut of the hotel was an uninsulated and unlit plywood shed with filthy mattresses piled on top of each other on rudimentary bunks. A narrow gangplank connected the bunkhouse to the rest of the Waldo Arms trailers. Ragged Visqueen covering the broken glass of a window let in some light. “Well, it’s probably too cold for bugs,” I said to no one in particular. “Hope so,” said Sally, maintaining what I thought was remarkable composure for an East Coast city girl in a remote Alaskan village. She began arranging her gear. Dropping my backpack and sleeping bag on one of the bare mattresses, I walked up the gangplank and headed into the common area of Waldo Arms. Inside, I sank into an ancient gold floral velvet couch and took in the room around me. The couch sat on a rust-colored carpet well scuffed by boots over the years. A large piece of scrimshawed baleen hung on the wall above a notice of the musk ox hunt, warnings about polar bears roaming the village, 25 

N ORTH OF H O PE

maps of Alaska, and assorted articles and calendars about Alaska and the Arctic from past decades. Static and the occasional voice scratched an uneven staccato over the radio in the office at the far end of the room. A small window into the kitchen with a laminated couple of picnic menu beside it offered expensive greasy food, and a ­ tables covered in red-and-white-checkered vinyl tablecloths sat in the dining area. In the kitchen, the gentle cacophony of clanging pans was strangely soothing in its familiarity. As my body relaxed into the couch, all of the details that had insulated me for so long — ​ the decision to come, organizing the trip, the preparation before departure which had filled the time and the crevices of evaporated like the Arctic coastal fog in the summer my mind — ​ midnight sun. Now my mind focused with a clarity that, while not welcome, was inevitable. On June 14, 2005, a little over a year ago, I had received the last email I would ever see from Dad:
Hi all. I know you don’t need all this but here it is: we leave on the 15th on Frontier Flying ser­ v ice to Barter Island. If the weather is good, we fly the same day to Grasser’s on the Hulahula River. We have a good orange tent, two inflatables (red and yellow), extra paddles, food for 17 days, first aid stuff, dry suits, helmets, pfds, sat phone, gps and vhf radio. We plan to take two weeks goofing off and paddling down river for a pickup at the coast on the 29th and fly back to Fairbanks that night. Then to cabin for a­ couple of days. We fly from the village of Kaktovik on Barter Island with Alaska Flyers. Their phone is 907-640-6324 — ​ owner is Walt and pilot is Tom. The satellite phone is with Iridium through Surveyor’s exchange at 561-6501. You guys be safe and well. I love you and I am very proud of each of you! Kathy sends her best! love, Dad

I hadn’t noticed the detail they’d given. Details we would need to look for them, to identify a campsite. Last year they had been in 26 

a scar r e d sky

this same place, excited, preparing, checking equipment. Perhaps they had sat on the same couch. The possibilities and wonderings pressed in, soft and firm like chloroform; I needed to move. Ned and Sally stayed behind to read, but I needed the feel of ground beneath my boots. I zipped up my coat and headed through the set of double doors. Outside, a barbed wind scratched at my face and penetrated my fleece. I welcomed the distraction. I headed toward the police station. Though most of the scattered buildings of the village cowered from the ferocity of Arctic weather, the government buildings, funded by oil companies, stood solidly. At the police station, I walked into the welcome of a well-lit room, entering the concrete edge of the story I had been sketching for a year. Officer Holschen, the policeman who had first called me, had fielded my calls many times in the intervening months, rehashing details and events. “Where exactly were they on the beach?” “How do you know how long they had been dead?” “Have you seen bears act this way with other ­ people?” “Can you tell exactly what killed them?” “Where was the emergency locater beacon? Had they tried to use it?” A thousand other questions had burped rudely into my mind, never at opportune moments. Each time, I called Officer Holschen, and each time, he answered patiently, talked through my questions, never impatient, never annoyed. His life and line of work had taught him to understand the survivor’s need to pick up each rock and turn it over again and again and again. He understood the human delusion that believes that if we can answer questions, fill in the story, somehow we might turn back the clock. Officer Holschen was strangely real. The mental character sketch I had engaged with in the story of Dad’s and Kathy’s 27 

N ORTH OF H O PE

deaths deepened suddenly into a real person. He greeted me with a big hug. His first name was Richard, the same as Dad’s. I had expected him to be a native man, because Kaktovik is a native village. Instead, he was Caucasian, about my height with light brown hair and an easy smile, his uniform neatly pressed and tucked. Looking at him, a real man instead of only a voice with a name, I was astonished to think of myself as dimensional too, another character walking through the same story from a different angle. I had become accustomed to considering myself an empty shell, chasing ghosts and shadows. “I came to raft the Hulahula,” I said, feeling my face f lush. Speaking the words underscored the audacity of undertaking a trip of such immensity. I was suddenly embarrassed, as though I’d been caught playing dress-up as a child. My words to Officer Holschen that day made me fully aware, for the first time, of the journey ahead. So much about the past year was so unreal, so intangible, that I had ceased to understand context. “Just thought I’d come by and say hello, and thank you in person for all the help you were to me over the past year.” We confirmed my coordinates with his from the police report. “Has anyone had any more ideas on the bear last year?” I asked. Officer Holschen shook his head. “But you know, I don’t know people. There are ­ people out there that bears are so different from ­ who are crazy, and who’s to say there aren’t animals with the same problem? If I were to give it my best guess, I would say that this was just a rogue bear.” “We brought along the 45-70 and a shotgun with slugs,” I said. “What do you recommend if a bear approaches?” “They rarely take notice of you. But if they do approach aggressively, ninety-nine percent of the time they’ll run away if you fire at the ground so it sprays up in front of them.” “What if they don’t?” I asked. “If they keep coming after the first shot, aim for anything brown,” he said. “But I’ve never seen that happen.” 28 

a scar r e d sky

We said our goodbyes. “It’s great to meet you,” he said with a big smile. “Have a wonderful trip!” Outside, I realized that I had reached the end of the dirt road. I headed back toward the beach, where the Inupiat villagers were holding their June whaling festival, Nalukataq, a thanksgiving celebration following their spring whaling season. Along a makeshift wall of Visqueen and plywood, villagers hunkered down out of the frigid Arctic wind blowing off of the polar ice. Weathered brown hands offered passersby bits of pinkish-white blubber attached to thick black whale skin cut into pieces one or two inches long, a delicacy called muktuk. couple staying at Waldo Arms was roaming the party as A­ well. “It’s an acquired taste,” they said with a smile as I looked a moment too long at the cold gelatinous mass, “but it’s not bad with plenty of ketchup!” A smiling Inupiat woman in a colorful and ornately stitched parka held out a piece of muktuk on a white paper plate. There was kindness in her deep-set eyes, the creases in her face holding years of weather and wisdom. I took the paper plate with the gift of whale and added a liberal dose of ketchup, popping a piece in my mouth before letting myself think about it. The muktuk was disconcertingly rubbery. I suppressed a gag and chewed until it was gone, not quite able to disguise my distaste. couple of his children walked by with Officer Holschen and a ­ plates of muktuk, which they clearly were enjoying. “They say it’s a kind of fat that keeps you warm if you eat enough of it,” he said, smiling. “They love this stuff here. We’ve really grown to like it, especially the kids!” I smiled back at the happy family. I was an intruder here. These ­ people living in a remote village with traditions so vastly different from any I had known made up the only culture that could understand the land I presumed to visit with my unarticulated plea for peace. They lived the connections among ­ people and animals, earth and sea. The Inupiat were the 29 

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only ones equipped to understand any answers. I was a stranger, an outsider. I had accepted their gift of hospitality, participated in village tradition, and had nothing to offer in return. I didn’t know then to accept it as grace. Before embarking on this journey, I had considered my impending intrusion into the wilderness. But only after visiting the village celebration was I aware of my double trespass. I hoped that people so close to the land possessed a deeper understanding a­ than I about animals, about animals killing loved ones, about how to navigate this primal and unforgiving world. I hoped I might learn at least some of that understanding from them. Perhaps it could mitigate the pain. Perhaps it would help me honor even more those I had lost. Walking back to Waldo Arms, I realized I had a piece of whale skin stuck in my teeth and worked on getting it out. It was persistent. It took my mind off the wind. Back inside, I curled into an overstuffed blue plaid chair and pulled out the five map sheets Dad and Kathy had used to float the river. The paper was soft as worn felt. The maps led from North Slope Borough, Grasser’s Airstrip to the coast. Alaska — ​ Mt. Michelson Quadrangle, 1:63,360 series, topographic. United States Department of the Interior Geological Survey. Maps indicate, among many things, a declination angle showing the variance from true north to magnetic north; earth’s magnetic fields skew a compass reading from true north as indicated on maps. Without taking this variance into account, a person could end up far from her destination. Our best understanding of direction is far removed from earth’s reality. On maps I had used before, the declination angle might be five or even seven degrees. This far north, the maps indicated an astonishing mean declination of thirty-five degrees from true north. Reconciling the different realities, the different “norths,” would require huge adjustments. My fingers traced a tear in one of the maps. A rip from regular 30 

a scar r e d sky

use, or from the bear rampaging through the campsite? I had asked that the police destroy anything from the campsite that was mauled by the bear, terrified of opening a box containing blood-soaked shreds of nylon. But in the box of what remained from the campsite sent by the police, several things arrived intact. I used the map case Dad and Kathy had used to hold maps, their book of Alaska’s wildflowers, and a waterproof REI journal. Now I flipped through Dad and Kathy’s journal, as I had so many times before. They had alternated entries, in Kathy’s smooth hand and Dad’s almost unintelligible scrawl. Since they measured their progress by how far north they had traveled on the river, the latitude and date began each entry, the longitude determined by the course of the river. I marked each of their camps along the river and numbered the maps in order of use. I was glad for my extensive experience in map reading during years of flying helicopters in the army. This was the first opportunity I had had to mark a route on a map since my last flight, six years earlier. As I sat with the contents of the map case, the present intruded uncomfortably on the past. What was I doing here? How did I think I was in any way qualified for this trip? I had never been to the Arctic. And the physical risks were the least of my concerns. I’d become good at taking those risks over the years. But as much as I had sought adventure, I had avoided emotional connection, a protective mechanism I had perfected rapidly after my mom left the family when I was twelve. Perpetual motion excused avoiding emotional engagement. This expedition, though, was taking me to one of the most remote areas of the world, and also to the darkest recesses of my pain. I didn’t have nearly enough experience in that landscape. My resolve flickered like a flame in a gusty wind. I willed the wick to hold on to that tiny flame. It was all I had.

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chapter

2

res t l e s s wat er s
The landscape and the language are the same. And we ourselves are landscape and are land.
 — ​ Conrad Aiken, “A Letter from Li Po”

W ‌

aldo Arms housed a varied crowd. We crossed paths at the picnic tables in the dining area. A researcher, a ­ couple of photographers, someone who recorded bird sounds. Some were interested in the native culture, and others did not try to hide their disapproval of native practices. All expressed strong opinions on the wilderness, Alaskan wilderness guides, and animal biology. Several suggested far from subtle agendas. Though I was not overt about the reason for our trip, the extended conversations we had during the weather delay, characterized by rare and probing honesty made possible only in times and places marked by remoteness, rapidly unveiled everyone’s circumstances, including my own. Each meal came with a serving of unsolicited opinion about the bear last year. “He must have been a garbage bear,” one naturalist confided with wrinkled brow. “Prudhoe Bay gets bears accustomed to ­ people with all of their trash.” A ­ couple of birders peered at me intently. “It’s the native fish camps,” they said, as though confiding a deep secret. “They leave trash all over the tundra, and the bears are used to ­ people having food.” Each suggestion validated someone’s agenda; none were verifiable. Certainly none of them changed the outcome. 33 

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Our pilot, Tom, who had flown Dad and Kathy into Grasser’s Airstrip, came into the dining room after dinner. His graying hair and beard framed the weathered eyes of someone who has peered long into Alaska’s unknown. “Anyone up for a polar bear swim?” he asked with a chuckle. “A German photographer did it last year!” “Sounds cold,” I said. “You sure you don’t want to go?” Not only was I reluctant to submerse myself in an ice bath with polar bears, I wasn’t particularly interested in goofing off. This was not how I wanted to begin a trip fraught with so much meaning, even meaning I couldn’t quite define. the photographer did it! I recorded it! Watch this!” “Come on — ​ Merilyn came into the room and leaned against the wall with a smile. “I think Tom was a little sweet on her,” she said. Tom inserted a videotape into an ancient VCR, and the unlikely image of a pretty, laughing woman rushing into the icy ocean appeared on the old TV. She sprinted out as soon as she was in, and someone wrapped her in a towel. Laughter came from behind the camera, and the picture gave way to static. “Brave,” I said, feeling a little inadequate. “You sure you don’t want to swim?” The footage grayed out. “I think I’m okay. I need to stay healthy for the river!” I smiled weakly, hoping my excuse would hold. The fuzzy picture on the TV took form again with the faraway sound of rotor blades. We glanced back at the TV. “Oh,” Tom said, and then he stiffened suddenly. His reaction, even fleeting, ricocheted throughout the room like a warning shot. We were not supposed to see what followed. The tape showed a helicopter landing in fog so thick it seemed to muffle the sound of the rotor blades as they swung slowly to a stop, making a noise like a low bass chord on a piano. On the screen, the door of the helicopter opened and the pilot stepped out. 34 

r e s t l e s s w at e r s

Though details were obscured by the low light and fog, his every physical aspect manifested solemnity. “This is last year, the day they found your folks,” Tom said slowly. His confirmation of the obvious entered me like a cutting and consuming cold. I was exposed again to the elements, to the formidable forces threatening to subsume me. I was vaguely aware people make during uncomfortof a terror of the dark jokes that ­ able circumstances — ​ or an unseemly filming of all aspects of an event, no matter how gruesome or disturbing. But the pilot’s voice was barely audible on the videotape, deeply somber. And respectful. The tape jumped to the next morning: an aerial view of the coastal plain, early morning sunshine deepening the rich greens of the tundra. I sucked my cheeks against my teeth. The tape showed a final view of the parked helicopter, shining white in the low-angle light, and then reverted to static. I relaxed. The few recorded scenes displayed a quiet respect for the circumstances and for Dad and Kathy. This community had a deep and elemental experience of tragedy. Natives and non-natives alike, Alaskans have a respect for the wilderness and for their own who venture into it, responding with an appropriate sense of gravity, and yet acceptance, when their adventurers do not return. “Well, I think that’s about it,” Tom said. “Do you think we could get a copy of that?” I asked. “Sure thing,” Tom said. As part of Nalukataq, the villagers had planned a dance for the evening. I headed again into the cold toward the community center, taking a seat with the few other non-natives in metal folding chairs against the far wall. Smiling children in tiny mukluks — ​embroidered pranced across the floor, dancing with the boots made of skins — ​ happy abandon available only to small children, immersed in the joy of the moment and innocent of life’s losses. In the first row of chairs across the room, several men struck qilaut, large flat drums, 35 

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with sticks, the stretched skin surfaces responding with an intense resonance to the varied rhythms and force. Heavy vowel sounds People flowed in and out emanated from deep in the men’s throats. ­ of the center of the room with exaggerated steps, reaching for the sky, gesturing to the ground. The music, the singing, the dancing seemed to invoke centuries of tradition and storytelling, prayer and incantation. I sat awash in the energy of the room. The throaty vowels of the singers rode on the drumbeats, pulsing in the air. Somehow it seemed that these rhythms might connect dots in the picture I was trying to understand, that they might unlock a door into part of the mystery. It is said that Native American drums are the heartbeat of the world. I had forgotten my own heartbeat, but suddenly there was a fluttering at my throat. peoples of which the Inupiat are In the Inuit (the circumpolar ­ a part) dualistic metaphysical understanding, each person has a breath soul and a free soul. The breath soul gives life to a person, and after death becomes a name soul to protect later generations. The free soul might be located in the body or follow like a shadow. The individual breath soul is part of the cosmic breath soul, or Sila, also thought of as a creative life force.1 Words, spoken and especially sung, are expressions of this breath soul. From breath to song, the soul emerges. The cosmos speaks. If I could learn to hear it. Every fall, the Inuit must find new songs as they prepare for feasts honoring the whale. Men go into the festival house, where no lamps can be lit. They sit in darkness and stillness and something called qarrtsiluni , meaning that one waits for something to happen. All men are involved, from the youngest able to speak to the oldest. They sit in this darkness and this stillness thinking only of beautiful things. As they do this, songs rise like bubbles in the sea seeking the surface, where they explode into air.2 Everything is connected. In trying to understand an event so seemingly inexplicable and yet so much of the wilderness itself, 36 

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as were Dad and Kathy’s deaths, I had to believe this, even if I did not feel it. I had to believe in some sort of an order so that chaos would not overwhelm me. But I didn’t understand it. Not at all. The party showed no signs of slowing, so at nine o’clock I quietly headed back to the bunkhouse to rest for the next day, walking on the frozen dirt roads under skies dimmed to an early twilight. I maneuvered down the gangplank into the bunkhouse, where Ned and Sally were already asleep, and wiggled into my sleeping bag atop the dingy mattress, closing my eyes against the filtered light. Sleep was not to last long. An hour later, I blinked awake to banging on the makeshift door. “There’s a polar bear at the bone pile!” a voice I quickly identified as belonging to our pilot, Tom, yelled. “We’re leaving in three minutes to take a look!” “You guys going to go?” I asked quietly, unzipping my sleeping bag. “Nope,” mumbled Sally, not moving. “Yeah, of course!” said Ned. Even in the middle of the night, a dawn-like light filtered through the cracks in the walls and broken windows, allowing just enough vision to quickly throw on polypropylene and hiking boots, which I did in about forty-five seconds. Despite the light, the air was frigid, as though the brightness lost from the day had stolen along with it all semblance of warmth, and the light breeze off the polar ice clawed at our bare faces. Along with six other intrepid tourists, Ned and I piled into an old Suburban. Tom sped down the gravel road, around the gravel airstrip, and past the aircraft hangars, bumping toward the pile of whale bones on the far edge of the village. Ice extended to the horizon from just offshore, and but for the thin strip of water that separated the island from the ice, glistening black in the low light, the ice might have been a continuation of the land. Here were two worlds apart, yet one. The bone pile, a 37 

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record of successful autumn whaling expeditions, stood terrible against the white background. Countless bones, many larger than the Suburban, were silhouetted eerily in the soft light. And then we saw the bear. At first it was only a movement behind the bone pile, a shift in the landscape. And then his form emerged. His head was sleek as a seal, his Brobdingnagian body shaped smooth as a river-worn rock, all slopes and soft edges. He wore his sovereignty easily. Paws the size of dinner platters meant for swimming Arctic seas rummaged through hunks of whale fat among the bones, the same whale fat we had eaten as muktuk earlier that day. The bear looked toward the Suburban only briefly, more interested in finding his meal. We kept a reverent distance, each of us prickling with awareness and cold. Bodies hung out of every car window; freezing fingers pressed camera shutters. The bear lumbered toward us, swaying gently, then moved away again. He bore with surety the incongruity of ultimate power and a dancer’s lissome grace. I envied him his perfect design, his complete confidence in his body, his surroundings, his world. He was as elegant, as fluid, as water as he scavenged for sustenance among the remains of the dead. Inuits believe that the bear is special. Every animal species has a collective breath soul, except for the bear, the whale, and the dog, which have individual breath souls. While most ceremonies related to animals are devoted to the entire species, those that celebrate the bear are devoted to the soul of the individual bear. The polar bear spirit Torngarsuk can be, as with grizzlies, part of a ritual for shamanic initiation involving the initiate’s reduction to a skeleton and then reconstitution as a shaman. Death, and resurrection into sacred life. Inuit in other parts of the world have considered the bear spirit the ruler of the afterlife, and other northern cultures have considered it a guide for souls. Reduction. Reconstitution. How does one in the midst of reduction maintain faith in reconstitution? Quarrtsiluni. Waiting. Three times the bear moved toward the front of the bone pile and in our direction. Soon he lost interest in the remains and, 38 

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thankfully, in us. He slipped smoothly into the dark water, gliding up onto a piece of ice, back into the water, and up onto another ice f loe. And then, in the ethereal glow of Arctic midnight, he disappeared. Our proximity to this creature awakened something in me ancient and deep and wild. It did not rouse in me any acute feelings of fear; instead it validated my reason for coming to this edge of the world, this margin of place and time. It served as both warning and welcome. I had arrived in the wilderness.

Morning came with clear skies for travel. Because of the combined weight of our gear and bodies, the Cessna made two trips. The first load with Sally, Ned, and our raft took off for Grasser’s Airstrip. Sitting alone in the tattered surrounds of Waldo Arms, I waited for the crackling voice from the radio to announce that the Cessna had returned for me — ​ a lone, where only a year ago Dad had sat in khaki river pants and black fleece coat, next to Kathy in her matching khaki pants and light-blue fleece, the same fleece I wore on this trip, though it was a size too big. I held their yellow journal in my hands, the same one I’d read through so many times in the past year. I opened it:
June 2005 Hulahula River Pilot # 907.640.6513 Walt VHF Channel 10 Freq 122.9 St Troopers 1.800.478.9112 Tundra Strip Coor: N 69 58.906 W 144 01 306 Tom’s Sat phone 8816 3157 1763 6-15-05 4:50 AM Bags: Ak Air Flight

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K’s net bag R’s net bag 2 blue float bags 1 orange float bag 1 ski bag 1 red kayak 1 yellow kayak 1 yellow cargo bag 1 red cargo bag Gun case Ammo? Med Bag? looks like 23 – 24 June 15, 2005 At Grassers +2400 Ev 69 05 N — ​ miles in mountains then all coastal plains to coast . . . Flew down the Hulahula drainage. All around Barter and the delta is wet!!! Reshuffle then onto 206 and Tom Johnson for Audi. Really nice g reat pilot. Beautiful day — ​ lots of wind. A great treat plane — ​ to be here with Kathy. Rich (P.S. saw musk ox, big wolf and a bunch of sheep and lambs).

I was beginning the same trip they had started a year before. But while the geography and mode of travel were identical, nothing else about this trip was similar. This was not simply a trip into the wilderness, though that would be challenge and adventure enough. This was a journey over the jagged edge of loss. Despite the maps I had carefully marked and folded and stored in plastic cases, it was a trip into uncharted territory. The emptiness of the Quonset hut enveloped me, and I could not escape the awareness of much bigger voids. The radio crackled again. Merilyn came out of the office. “Okay, you’re up!” she said. “He’ll be here in a minute.” “Thanks!” She paused. “I still feel them here, you know.” 40 

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“You do?” “Sure. My mother stayed around for several years after she died. I think sometimes they’ll do that until they’re ready to go to the next place.” “That makes sense,” I said, willing to believe it. Nothing else made sense to me anymore, and I wanted to feel Dad and Kathy too. I put their journal into the waterproof map case with my empty journal, the maps, and the book on Alaskan wildflowers, stood up and collected my bags, and walked out into the wind.

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Requiem Kyrie
Lord, suffer me to sing these wounds by which I am made and marred
 — ​ Chris­ tian Wiman, “Lord Is Not a Word”

‌I

do not know if song came before prayer, or prayer before song, but I do know that together they are magnified and soar as they cannot do alone. Hebrew and Greek have no separate word for music, nor does the language of the Inupiat; the boundary between singing and speech wavers like a mirage. 3 I come to song to help me pray, and I come to prayer to help me sing. Sitting in a rehearsal room in a hard metal folding chair every Monday in Seattle after Dad and Kathy’s funeral, I start to sing. I start to pray. I do not know yet that music will lead me to a river. The chorale director stands in front of plate glass windows overlooking Lake Union and the headlights of I-5, slicing through the dark night. Rehearsal is a torrent of voices, each part channeling and eddying, rising to a frenzied pitch. The words are not hard. There are only three: “Kyrie eleison. 43 

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Christe eleison.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. The music carries the words. The words carry the music. My score of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor is well used. I wonder if the singers who wore the pages to this petal softness held it with as much hope as I do, opened it with such expectation laced with trepidation and desire. It is a holy book, this score, this pathway to prayer. I sit and I sing and I feel lucky to be here, doing the only new thing I’ve been able to take on since I came back from Alaska after the funeral and selling my childhood home; it’s the thing I needed to do, though I could not have said that myself. It had happened in a slow, quiet way, my getting to that hard metal folding chair. In the midst of grief ’s restlessness and languor, I’d opened a flyer that came in the mail from the Seattle Symphony, advertising a performance of the Mozart Requiem conducted by Itzhak Perlman five months hence. I pulled up the Symphony Chorale page online and looked at audition schedules. They were two weeks away. I signed up. The word requiem comes from the Latin, meaning “to rest,” vice for the dead in the Chris­ tian and the Requiem Mass is a ser­ tradition. It is a structure of prayers that has varied over the ages, depending on the history of the church and the intention of the composer, and it has been set to music many times, perhaps most famously by Mozart. A gentle introduction and the Kyrie begin the Requiem Mass: “Lord have mercy upon us.” From there it moves into the terror of the Dies Irae, or Day of Wrath. This part of the Requiem departs from the standard Mass sequence and was first added in the fourteenth century because of its vivid imagery, a nod to the inability of our daily prayers to fully express our grief. The Domine Jesu asks God to bless those we have lost. The Sanctus and Benedictus praise God, and the Agnus Dei begs God’s mercy. The Lux Aeterna pleads for everlasting light to shine on the dead. Singing the Requiem for Dad and Kathy could be the ritual I 44 

Requiem: Kyrie

thought I was missing. If I could get into the Symphony Chorale. The thing was, I had a hard time concentrating on much. My mind floated listlessly, as though in a mountain fog. How could I start something new when I could barely put one foot in front of the other? Perhaps it had not been slow and quiet after all. Perhaps it happened fiercely, a propulsion of pain. Who’s to say how these things happen? But the flyer I received, and the audition that followed, lined up as though orchestrated from another place, by a bigger hand, in the careful way that even when you do not feel him, God moves gently in your life. The conductor rehearses the men through a section. I sit and people, most of listen. The folding chairs around me are full of ­ whom I don’t know, some of whom might consider the words they are singing, some of whose only interest in the words is their proper pronunciation, the intonation of vowels. Some are Chris­tian, some Jewish, some atheist, and, I imagine, others are of different beliefs yet. Some are here for the music, and some are here for prayer. I am here for both. I need the music to pierce me, the prayer to bleed me. I am here because I don’t know what to say, how to ask, how to address this God I’ve known for so long when parts of me are dead. I know only that I need to pray. And I need the music to do it for me. I need the music to pull me into the time called kairos, unbound by clocks and calendars, to give me courage to stay with the pain and help me pray this ancient prayer. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.

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