Alone Against the North by Adam Shoalts Read Free Book Online Page A

of a temporary building erected on the site, watching television. I met most of them as well as the man in charge. Only a few dozen people were at the mine because it wasn’t yet fully operational. I was a little concerned, irrationally so, that one of the workers would recognize me as the explorer who penned articles arguing against mining in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. Yet they seemed to regard me as just some sort of eccentric who liked canoeing rivers no one had heard of. I chatted with them and asked if any of them knew of the Again River. None of them had ever heard of it.
    My escort in, the aboriginal trapper, with whom I talked the most, had likewise never heard of the river. A thoroughly modern trapper, he was eager to fetch his laptop and have me show him the river on Google Earth. I did so, pointing out to him the blurrylittle black ribbon that snaked through emerald green forest on the low-resolution images. He nodded and affirmed he knew nothing of that river. As we talked, I learned that he was originally from Moosonee, a Cree community on the mouth of the large Moose River, near James Bay, and the northern terminus of the government-owned Polar Bear Express railroad. He had grown up fishing, hunting, and trapping there, before drifting south to Cochrane. He didn’t much care for Moosonee anymore and told me he wouldn’t move back.
    Since he had proved helpful, and I had both enjoyed our conversation and was grateful that Wes and I had not been killed on the ride he generously provided—I decided to pay him as best as I could for the ride. I had little money, but offered him my old canoe, telling him it needed repairs but was his if he wanted it. He happily accepted my offer.
    It was getting on near midnight, and all the workers and the trapper soon disappeared off to bed for the night. I had been given a room of my own to sleep in while I waited for Wes to return, as well as a dry pair of wool socks to replace my soaking wet ones. It wasn’t until 3:00 a.m. that Wes finally arrived. I met him outside the makeshift buildings erected on the site.
    â€œWhat took you so long?” I asked, half asleep.
    â€œI drove slow. It’s pitch dark and there’s moose and bears crossing the road. I was terrified I’d hit one.”
    We decided not to stay at the mine—though we had been offered the room for the night—and instead drove back to where we had stowed our canoe and gear beside the creek. We spent the night there; then departed in the late morning for our drive home, so that Wes could make it to his sister’s wedding. Beforewe left, we hauled the canoe out beside the road, leaving it there for the trapper to pick up.
    â€œWell, we didn’t get to explore your river,” remarked Wes as he drove us south.
    â€œNo, but that’s all right,” I said a little ruefully, “the river will still be there next summer.”

[ 2 ]
    PLANS AND PREPARATIONS

    Geographers … crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.
    â€”Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives, first century AD
    M UCH OF THE HISTORY of exploration is the story of failures. Christopher Columbus, after all, wasn’t looking for North America when he made landfall in the Bahamas in 1492. He was attempting to sail around the world to Asia—more precisely, the East Indies—hence the Italian mariner’s mistaken belief that the people he met with were “Indians.” Sir Alexander Mackenzie, perhaps the greatest of North America’s land explorers, had the misfortune to journey over two thousand kilometres in the wrong direction in his attempt to reach the Pacific Ocean. The eccentric genius Sir Richard Burton, among the most celebrated of African explorers, failed in his famous quest to find the source of the