Kangiqsualujjuaq, Nunavik — Bob and I approached the last drop of a long rapid with the usual mixture of excitement and trepidation. It didn’t look any more challenging than a lot of stuff we’d already run. We could spot a few big hidden boulders humping up the water around themselves, and several rows of white breaking waves most of the way across the river. We were last in line, and the other three canoes had bobbed through them safely, so I was perhaps a little careless.
I should have followed Earl and John; they were the ones just ahead of us, and had done fine. But I got a little left of their line, headed for a white, curling wave perhaps twelve feet wide. No problem. But suddenly Bob’s head shot up into the air. His paddle waved in space. Then he plummeted downward, and I went up. There was a huge souse hole below the wave, the size of a Ford Explorer, with an ugly yellow boulder just awash at the bottom. We couldn’t miss it.
I’ve wondered ever since that moment whether what I said was a heartfelt plea for help from the Almighty, or just blasphemy. My various theological pals would come down on it in various places. Whichever it was — and whether or not there was a response — we missed the rock somehow, and our beautiful folding canoe, which rides big waves with the motion of a caterpillar, shot rocketlike out the far side of the hole, with hardly a drop of water coming over the side.
Somewhat giddy with success, we spotted a potential campsite in an eddy on our right where a tributary stream came in. As we swung in to investigate, a black bear appeared on the shore. The other boats paddled gently toward it, and I could see the video camera going. “Come on,” I said to Bob. “We’ll look at the campsite while they look at the bear.”
We paddled gently into the quiet little bay, and slid just as gently up onto a submerged rock. It was a keeper; we couldn’t get off. “Just a second,” I said. “I’ll get out.”
“Don’t get out,” said Bob. He knows how nimble I am.
“No, I’m okay,” I said. “I can do it all right.”
“Don’t get out,” he repeated. I got out. My hind foot hooked the gunwale, and I spilled both of us out of the canoe into the water on our backs, soaked to the armpits.
Bob looked pretty disgusted — like that famous Life photograph of the baboon up to his chest in the water. “Why don’t we just, ah, walk it ashore,” he suggested.
Not for nothing is this river called the Mighty George. It’s huge, compared to what we’re used to, and it never really lets up for more than a few stolen minutes. If the wind doesn’t grind you to a back-aching halt, the rain runs down the front of your parka and drips through the fly of your rain pants. If the hidden boulders lurking along the banks of the rapids don’t grab you, the big standing waves farther out can sink you. But the exhilaration of each day’s travel is intense. Earl turned toward me a couple of nights ago in camp, as we stood listening to the roar. “You know,” he said, “this river has an aura of its own. I’ve never seen so much raw energy before.”
If I dream of this place in years to come, the dreams will occur in a deep, rain-misted valley of black granite, sloping down toward the center of the earth like the gates of Mordor. Where the horizon is trees instead of basalt, they are black spruce and tamarack — the spruces standing straight and stiff as wooden soldiers, the tamaracks waving lacy and crooked against a gray sky.
The valley obviously has been glaciated. The tributary streams fall from hanging valleys, as they do, for example, in Yosemite. Away up high on some of the biggest bluffs we spotted two distinct horizontal lines. What could have put them there? At first we thought lateral moraines of extinct glaciers. But instead they’re strand lines, the locations of ancient beaches formed when, just after the retreat of the ice sheet, there were two different vast ice-dammed lakes here for a while.
One major concern was the tide at the river mouth. Ungava Bay has the world’s highest tides; they’d stymied us once before on another river. We were startled one day when, while we simmered our soup for lunch thirty miles from the bay, the canoes on the beach were
suddenly afloat. That afternoon we were blown off the river by wind, rain, and whitecaps. We found an empty cabin in a little inlet, and were able to get out of the weather for the night. But clearly, we had to plan our next move carefully. Kangiqsualujjuaq’s harbor dries out completely at low tide. We decided to go for it — seventeen miles, with one last rapid to run two miles down. We would set off about two hours before high tide, get through the rapid, and try to make the village before low tide.
It was a long day. The rapid disappeared from the bottom up as we worked our way through it. We paddled against a strong tide for a couple of hours and ate a quick cold lunch while it shifted. It began to look possible; but as we rounded the last point and the village came into view about two miles away, the wind and tide hit us right in the face one last time. “Let’s go for it, Bobby!” I cried; and we did, seventy-year-old sinews straining against the wind. The town’s features very slowly became more distinct, and finally our bow scratched lightly on the gravel of the town boat landing. The others were right with us. Ten minutes later the bay was empty. Half an hour after that we were taking turns in the only hot shower in the Iluliliq Hotel. Ahh…!