Since the minute I decided to go down the Mackenzie my life took a different slant. In the beginning I asked everyone I thought would like to, to take the trip with me. Well, excuses you wouldn't believe it. These were able bodied people. It didn't take long for me to give up on that idea. Solo became the operative word.
Solo! That's nuts. I'm crippled. I'm not disabled. I'm crippled! I walk a bit now but I was 60 lbs over weight. I sat around watching TV and feeling sorry for myself for 4 years. Add to that the fact that I'm old. I've got as much business going 1,000 miles down the longest river in Canada through a real wilderness to the Arctic Ocean as I do buying a Corvette, moving to LA and trying to become a movie star.. And yet I'm going to do it, the river that is. I'm not really sure why. I've wanted to this ever since I was a kid. The north and especially the Arctic has always held a special place in my soul. But Solo! I've never really spent much time alone in the bush - a week at the most. Usually I always talked someone into going with me. I think we are all like that. The fear of being alone in the wilderness is more than most of us can handle. The funny thing about being alone like that is that you are no longer disabled. Being disabled is a relative term. Imagine if you will a journey of 1000 miles - roughly the distance from LA to Seattle by canoe. Imagine you are going by canoe. Imagine if you will being alone for the entire trip. If something goes wrong what do you do?
My wife, Linda insisted on driving me to Ft Simpson. I didn't drive real well before - couldn't understand why people were so hung up on which side of the road I drove on. Well, I was still dependent on someone else for my mobility. I had been making plans for this trip for a year, and yet when I got to Ft Simpson and push came to shove I admit I had a tendency to stall - a bit. Even the last three days before finally really doing it I found excuses to stall. But then time was up. No more excuses. If I hadn't shot off my big mouth about this whole thing I probably could have backed out and lived a quiet and safe life.
At 12:15 pm - that's morning for me- I shoved off into the current. The current was about 4 miles an hour and within minutes the die had been cast. The next feasible stop was 42 miles downstream at the ferry crossing on the road to Wrigley. The road had been upgraded to year round status just a few years before. I camped there. God it was beautiful. A full moon sat over the landing, the river calm but swift. The date was June 29 and the sun was up 24 hours a day. My rig - a 16 ft chipewyan style fiberglass canoe and a 10 ft Old Town kayak an "Otter" - pontooned together. I took a Nissan 3.5 horse power kicker, a sail, and a brand new Grey Owl, basswood/cherry bent shaft paddle. It was a perfect system for one person. It was untipable , unsinkable and as comfortable as anything you could imagine. Almost all the equipment that been donated and the cash from my friends and family had made this trip possible for me. The money from donors was the greatest gift a man can get. With gas at $5.00 a gallon and 7000 miles of road from the US Canada border and back it would not have been possible without their help. But that was getting there. Now I had cast off and would be alone through unknown country - to me, in the northern region of Northwest Territories of Canada known as the Arctic.
It was the most beautiful and exciting trip I've ever done. It was hard - at first. It would take 4 hrs to set up camp a night and 3 hours in the morning to pack and leave. That's almost a full day without even going anywhere. Obviously my system had to be refined. Each day I would make improvements. I talk about the changes in the log. But bottom line is next year I will be as efficient as a space shot at Canaveral, I swear. Efficiency can be the difference between success and failure, re: the swamped canoes and the drifting episode. Any mistake can be disastrous. When you travel solo you can not afford any mistakes.
Being crippled I was under even more pressure to be mistake free. My solution was to go very slow, literally putting one foot in front of the other. I still fell down. Every minute I was faced with the danger of it all. Being crippled and solo, a broken bone could have been fatal owing to the ramifications of it all. I would have no help. If I couldn't break down camp and load the boats I would not make it.
Pain, too made this a different trip. I have been in constant pain ever since the accident, four and a half years ago. It was a constant companion. In that respect I wasn't alone. Pain was always with me. I was never without it. But there were times when it hid from me. Those were the glorious times, the magical times. Those were the times I knew I had made the right decision in going - for it was those few hours when I knew heaven.
The Midnight Sun is a euphemism. 24 hour daylight does not even fully describe the situation. The real significance is that there is no darkness! You can't run out of daylight. This allows you take all the time in the world to go safely. Because of that, being solo, and crippled becomes a matter of time not physical ability. Psychically I felt I could do anything a well person could. I just couldn't do it as fast as a well person could. In retrospect this might have been a blessing. Rushing almost always leads to mistakes. Mistakes almost always lead to problems. Problems almost always lead to disaster in a wilderness situation. This was all avoided because of the lack of darkness. That's what the Midnight Sun really means.
After the first night's semi-encounter with the bear I had no real contact with wildlife except for a wolf. Originally I had wanted to bring one of my St Bernards - "Stella." There was no room for her so she stayed. I have never done a trip without a dog, mostly lots of them. Those were my dog sledding days. Even on this trip I felt a presence all the time. It was a dog like presence. In the mornings I would see wolf track along the beaches where I camped, a spirit dog, an entity traveling with me and looking after me. There would be no tracks at night when I went to bed, but in the morning after getting up I saw them. The tracks were just around. They were around me. They were around camp. This happened every day for a week or so. At first I thought it was my imagination. Upon closer scrutiny I noticed the tracks were special. On the right front foot the wolf had six toes. Every night for a week the same print! I felt it's presence! It wasn't stalking me. It was looking after me! When I mentioned this to my new friend Lexie whom I met at Norman Wells. He smiled and said that "Yes, that happens sometimes, especially with sick people. A wolf will follow a person and instead of looking at them as prey, they will protect them." Now, I'm a regular kind of guy, but that's all pretty strange.
After the swamping, and the trip with Cooper Barge to Norman Wells - I felt unsolo, for awhile. But then after leaving and heading out alone again I was back into to the solo thing. "Solo to the Arctic - a trip from Paraplegia" took on a new meaning. Solo became half the trip. It was as significant as the journey itself. I loved being Solo. I traveled with my new best friend - me! I had no one to look after, no one to worry about, and no one to listen to complain. I love my wife and friends but.... When I met the Pitt's and Don and Donna at Arctic Red River and we discussed me being Solo they understood the dichotomy. While there was no one to help - there was no one to hinder.
I became lucky! Things - good things, happened to me. That was a real switch for me. After so much bad luck, and I won't dwell - it was incredible that suddenly things were working out. Even more than working out. Miracles were happening - to me - right and left. I felt more at home and more at peace than ever in my life. When your physical life becomes what your imagination has envisioned, a strange feeling overcomes you. It's a feeling of timelessness - a sense of "other worldly ness." I knew I'd been there before, lived there before and loved there before. If you believe in reincarnation you realize that "life is not linear." There is no such thing as going Solo.