We hike over to the other camp. The site has been abandoned. There are no tents or personal gear. Three food packs have been sloppily closed. The two canoes have the girls’ camp name written across them in bold black letters. Where is the third canoe? A single boot sits in the middle of the beach.
No Arctic explorer has achieved such mythic status as John Franklin. In 1820, George Back was a midshipman on Franklin’s first Arctic land expedition. The crew suffered in a year when the caribou were scant and the winter fierce. Akaitcho, the Yellowknife chief, said to Franklin and Back, “The world goes badly. All are poor. You are poor. The traders appear to be poor. I and my party are poor likewise . . . I do not regret having supplied you with provisions, [however], for a Copper Indian can never permit a White man to suffer want on his lands without flying to his aid.” Magnanimous. Statesmanlike. But fourteen years later, as George Back’s own party pushed out into the headwaters of the Thlew-ee-choh, Akaitcho said that he would not risk his men’s lives to help the expedition. The Great Fish River was too dangerous, its waters too wild, its shores characterized by bands of unpredictable “Esquimaux” and a vicious Arctic winter that could arrive by the middle of August. “I have known the chief [Back] for a long time,” Akaitcho lamented, “and I am afraid I shall never see him again.”
What has become of the girls’ expedition? They began their trip with three boats, and now there are just two. The third, clearly, has tipped at the top of the deadly rapids. If the remaining girls are wandering across the tundra, missing half of their gear, they will be in serious distress. That is, if any of them are still alive.
We have a satellite phone reserved for emergencies and decide to call the rcmp in Yellowknife to report what we’ve found. We can’t get a connection; the telephone won’t work, we realize, because we’ve travelled too far north and are out of range. Panic starts to set in.
We spend the rest of the day slowly making our way downstream. Back’s description of the foaming and boiling water is accurate. With all the portaging, we manage only a few kilometres before making camp again. It’s terribly cold. I’m wearing two pairs of long underwear, fleece pants and jacket, a fleece vest, Gore-Tex pants and jacket, a down vest, a toque, and mitts.
We decide to search for the missing girls. There’s a discussion about who should head in which direction. Tim has been grieving his mother’s death, and Jenny asks if he’s prepared to find a body. He hesitates but then says that he is. I take the shoreline and Tim the ridge. “Hello!” we yell. “Hey-oh!” The shore is lined with rocks and boulders, with deep crevices between them. We look down into each one, hoping not to find bodies. Tim scans the edge of a wide bay with his binoculars. We see something at the same time: a piece of green material floating in the shallows. It could be a shirt, or . . . We run toward it, scrambling awkwardly over big slippery rocks. We are relieved to find it’s only a canoe pack, soaked through and heavy. There is a small stuffed moose clipped to the outside — the camp’s mascot, we think. We look at each other and don’t say anything. Tim throws the pack up over his shoulder, and we head back upstream.
Later, we pull each item out of the drenched pack. Makeup, romance novels, too many pairs of shoes: these girls were clearly not prepared for the Arctic. There’s also a wallet, a collection of rocks, and a diary that we skim through to help determine the group’s location. It is filled with lengthy reminiscences of boys back home, followed by a description of the missionary island in Garry Lake where we found their copy of The Man Who Mapped the Arctic. Is the child who owns this gear huddled together with her friends, freezing cold, somewhere out on the tundra, or is she dead? The last entry is dated July 22, four days ago. It ends with the words “Life is great.”
Franklin’s ill-fated expedition got stuck in the ice off the west side of Victoria Strait, northwest of King William Island. Eventually, his men departed from the ship in every direction, searching for the mouth of the Thlew-ee-choh. We know now that the river wouldn’t have helped them, given their scanty provisions, but as we search the tundra for the girls we imagine the men of so many different historic expeditions, eating “tripe de roche” (lichen scraped off rocks), and sucking at the leather of their boots for nourishment.
What is it that draws us here, that has drawn others before? “There is something exciting in the first start even upon an ordinary journey,” the prolific Back wrote in his 1834 journal. “The bustle of preparation, the act of departing, which seems like a decided step taken, the prospect of change, and consequent stretching out of the imagination, have at all times the effect of stirring the blood, and giving a quicker motion to the spirits. It may be conceived then with what sensations I set forth on my journey into the Arctic wilderness.”
Several days pass. We awake to a shrieking wind inside the tent vestibule. It’s too windy to portage, and the water is too frenzied to paddle, so we stay put, shivering in our sleeping bags, playing euchre and dreaming of warm baths and coffee shops. Also, alcohol. Cooking is an ordeal that requires all three boats being propped up as windscreens. We eat as much soulless lentil stew as we can manage, then cut a quick retreat back to bed. At night we hear the wolves, howling at each other from the far ridge.
