The environmentalists working for the oil company were a Godsend. Waiting for their return, J kept on rowing into the wind and I insisted we stop for lunch in a sheltered spot. He would row all day and he had begun to look gaunt. I feel overwhelmed. Seeing the fast red speedboat coming towards us brought great relief. They handed over the gas tanks and oil and two (!) bottles of wine. They told us that the restaurant at Payton was also a registry office, an insurance office and a liquor store. Later we joked that one could get married, drunk, divorced all in the same place on the same day. After they leave J hooks up the gas and the little Johnson motor and we come to Payton Ferry. J says we need to take the mast down. I climb to the front of the boat—everything I do on this little boat I do super slowly because it is so tiny and a misstep means falling, slipping, or losing things overboard—to date J has lost an anchor, a pot lid (recovered), a piece of our fishing rod (recovered), and several items of my clothing. I unsnap the snap shackle and come back to take the motor and tiller to steer them through the narrows while the ferry crosses. J doesn’t realise that I have never used an outboard motor in my life. I have lived beside the ocean and never on it. I don’t understand his instructions and think I have to hang on to both the rudder and the motor and so my arms are crossed over one another and I can’t see where I’m going. I yell at J to tell me where the boat is headed but he can’t understand why I’m having such difficulty. He can’t imagine not knowing how to run a boat. I purposefully circle the boat on the river trying to figure out how to steer it and I head towards the ferry — towards the ferry. Only then does J understand that I think I need to have a hand on both the tiller and motor and he tells me to steer with the tiller alone and to straighten the motor out. For a few horrible seconds I think I’m going to crash the boat either into the ferry or into the side of the riverbank, but I clear the ferry passing over a cable in the water and kill the motor. This allows the boat to float gently into a sand bank. I climb to the front of the boat and undo the snap shackle as J pushes the mast back up and into place. My hands shake as I clip the snap open and closed. I cry. He doesn’t understand, he cannot understand or imagine how this simple task is so hard for me. He is kind, but I know he just doesn’t understand. I write him a letter.
Day 29-31
North Battleford
The naturalists returned with gas, mix oil and wine. We tied up together, drifted towards an island and talked for about 15 minutes about the river and what they are doing. They said the river is pretty clean and that they are eating the fish from it. 5 Happily under power again with 30 litres of mixed gas on board, I felt like Mr. Toad rolling down the road in his automobile, change jingling in his pockets. We come to the Payton ferry. A cable ferry across a narrow, maybe 80 metres across and quite busy. As we approach there was never a time when there wasn’t a car or truck waiting to cross, the crossing took less than 5 minutes. It has some very low overhead cables, so we had to lower the mast. S undid the head stay and I held the mast on my shoulder as S had to go back and steer the boat. J had slowed the motor to about ½ speed, previously, but S, having never steered the boat under power, thought that she was supposed to steer using the outboard, so when I told her to steer with the tiller, she became confused. J couldn’t see behind him as he was facing forwards with the mast hinged back and resting on his shoulder so he didn’t realise that S was holding the motor position, and couldn’t see where the boat was going. This was a very stressful situation, as there was very little room between the ferry which was going across the narrows and the shore. Eventually they came to an understanding and S successfully navigated Miss Moose behind the ferry, and through the narrows and then J pushed the mast back up and fastened the forestay back in place. The rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful and the channels down river from the ferry became deep and very well defined with the islands having nice, steep banks. We pulled up to a place where there was a nice meadow leading all the way to the top of the valley so that we could easily walk up to the rim for the view. The beach shows very heavy cattle traffic and smells of cattle. Later we find a dead steer, bloated and lying on the side of the river just upstream from us. Steele: I found the constant wind very unnerving and demoralising — the sun shone and the wind was cold and J needed me on deck to help steer — daunting given the head winds that blew the little boat hither thither. Sometimes I think her tiller is going to break and I can barely hold on to it. 5 The next year the pipeline under the river broke and several thousands of litres of oil escaped into the river.
N 52° 45’ 52” W 108° 18’ 41” Steele:
Grounded. Three days off Miss Moose and we are miserable. I have a concussion after the boom fell on my head. For the first time in 30 years one of J’s knots on a topping left has failed. Hospital. J threw the anchor overboard without a rope. Gone. Moorage: Somewhere dirty and disgusting and unprotected. We stay at the Hitching Post Hotel. The cleaner is a wonderful woman. Pushing 70 she says we are doing something that she would dream of doing except that her husband ‘was wild when he was young, couldn’t keep him home, now he’s old he won’t do anything. I’d do something like that only on horseback’ she says. Dinner: I can’t remember. J is gone to hitchhike to our truck. Gone for two nights. The bed is strange and big. Clean and needs to have crumbs and dried flowers in it. Miss Moose is alone, hidden on the river. There’s nowhere safe to moor her. This is the story of the river, with everyone telling us that it’s dangerous to leave her alone. That kids will muck with her. Wreck her. Maybe even steal her.
Day 35
Cumberland House
N 53° 57’ 14” W 102° 15’ 58” Steele:
Begin to head towards the river delta— multiple deep channels and J is thankful for Google maps (downloaded ahead of time whenever he finds Wi-Fi) as the river has become a maze of islands and false channels. The day is bright and clear and J says, Now that’s a big sky. He motors all day, and we enjoy relaxing as the river opens to Cumberland Lake, open grasslands, wild rice and tall reeds on either side of the river. Pleasant, very pleasant, a rare day without vigilance against dangerous rocks. I say to him, You haven’t had to use the oars a single time today! And this is good because one oar has cracked in half and a second is cracking, leaving us only with one good oar. As we motor, we see hunting camps, learning only too late belonging to the Carriere family, a famous Métis guiding and hunting family, one of whom was an Olympic paddler. A final bend of the river around 1330 hrs when suddenly we come upon a curtain of water, huge rapids and rocks strung
54 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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