Grizzly Peak Read online

  “Where’s the coffee, Aaron? We can’t forget the coffee.”

  I just shrug. He can’t live without his coffee.

  Actually I like caffeine too. Who doesn’t? But he gets so hyper just talking about it.

  Finally, he finds the coffee and we give our station wagon a once over and decide that we haven’t forgotten anything.

  He locks the car and then claps his hands together and says, “Okay, Aaron. Let’s boogaloo down Broadway!”

  “Geez! Do you always have to talk like a moron? It’s embarrassing!”

  “So who’s to hear it?” He makes a mock search, left and right.

  “I am! I wish I wasn’t!”

  “Okay, then. Let’s roll, fool! Is that better, dawg?”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re such a loser,” I say under my breath.

  “So lift, Aaron. I got this end, you got that end. We have a mile and a half portage to Kibbee Lake. That’s where we put in.”

  “Whaaat? You’re trippin’ if you think I’m carrying this loaded kayak to the next lake! It must weigh like two hundred pounds! Didn’t you see the sign back there to rent portage carts? You know, those carts with wheels? You put the kayak on it and roll. Dude!”

  “I’m not renting one of those, Aaron! We have arms and legs. We don’t need a portage cart.” He pronounces it the French way, pour-tahzh, which gets an eye roll from me.

  “Now I said ‘lift!’ So lift!”

  “We have arms and legs so why do we drive a car, Dad? This is the twenty-first century. They have wheels now. Wheels roll. They’re cool.”

  “Actually,” comes a woman’s voice off to the side, “Aaron’s probably right.” It’s the gorgeous park ranger. She’s got a ranger’s jacket on now and she’s standing next to a gravel-dinged Ford pickup.

  “Without a cart, if one of you gets injured you’re just plain stuck. And you don’t want to be stuck out there, especially this time of year. This is grizzly country. Few people, but a whole lot of hungry grizzlies. And moose with calves. Mama moose. They’re even more dangerous. And with the rivers up right now, it’s tricky. We had lots of accidents last year. Lots of canoes lost. And an eleven-year-old Boy Scout lost his life.”

  Geez! I want to ask her how but Dad cuts me off.

  “In the old days trappers portaged without the help of carts,” he says. All of a sudden he’s Macho Man. And he hates macho men. Go figure.

  “But I guess you’re right, Miss . . . uh . . . Ms. . . .”

  “Just call me Pam.” She beams and reaches out and shakes his hand.

  Then she bumps my fist with her freckled fist. “You keep your daddy in line, Aaron!”

  We both laugh. It’s my first laugh in a long time. She’s pretty chill. Pretty and chill.

  “Tell ya what,” she says. “Just take that portage cart over there. You can fold it and secure it to your kayak for when you need it. No rental fee required, okay? But you’d better bring it back. It’s my hide if you don’t!”

  “It’s probably ours too,” Dad says, without smiling.

  But for once he’s probably right

  How did that Boy Scout die? I wonder.

  Drowned?

  Clawed by a grizzly?

  Mauled by a moose?

  Attacked by a mountain lion?

  Fell off a cliff and broke his neck?

  I think of all the ways to die in the wilderness.

  It makes me shiver.

  And as we slide the kayak onto the two-wheeled cart and wave good-bye, I feel, for the first time, the sharp talons of anxiety.

  DAY ONE

  THE DAY A GRIZZLY

  ATE MY DAD

  We take turns pulling the portage cart. When one pulls the other pushes. I don’t know which I hate more. It’s harder to pull but you have to walk bent over when you push. It makes me feel like an old man. But either way, it beats carrying the kayak—packed with all our gear—on our shoulders.

  One good thing is there are no mosquitoes. Maybe because it’s too early in the season, or because of the wind. Or maybe just because it’s midday and sunny, and they’re going to pour out and swarm us and eat us alive at dusk.

  Even though the wind’s blowing down off the snowy peaks, it’s getting warm and I’m sweating. I just want to be on the lake, gliding along.

  Or up in that snow, on one of those mountains.

  I look up. I wonder if one of them is actually called Grizzly Peak.

  I almost stumble. I look back at the ground to watch where I’m going.

  It’s bumpy but pretty flat. The tree branches—mostly red cedar like we’d seen island-hopping last year—reach out and scratch our arms at times, but otherwise (I have to admit) it’s an awesome stretch.

  I look up now and then and there’s always these beautiful mountains in the distance. Still, I keep my eyes open for grizzly bears and moose.

  But all I see is a golden marmot bumbling through the scrub, a red squirrel, and a few northern jays darting from tree to tree, jabbering like pirates.

  But I do see the deep tracks of what’s got to be a moose alongside the gravel path. Huge cleft hoofprints, like giant deer tracks, in the mud. When my dad points them out I just shrug, but they’re really pretty cool. There’s signs of life out there. Something bigger than us, and far from our everyday lives.

  Suddenly dark clouds start rolling in, burying the sun. At least that gives us a little break from the growing heat, but not much.

  When we finally get to Kibbee Lake I want to strip down and jump in and swim. But I don’t. The water’s too cold. I kneel down and splash the glacial melt onto my face. It’s like being slapped by hands of ice.

  I stand up and breathe in. If I could breathe in the whole lake and not drown, I would.

  We’re here! I want to shout. We’re finally HERE!

  When Dad says, “We’re here, Aaron!” it’s like an echo of my mind.

  I pull my paddle out of the cockpit and say, “Let’s roll!”

  “Hold your horses,” Dad says, getting all folksy now that we’re out in the wilderness. “We have to secure the cart to the kayak. Maybe we should have a snack first. We may regret it if we don’t.”

  Dad folds the handle and bungee-cords the cart to the bow of the kayak, then starts opening the forward hold. I’m hungry but I just want to get going.

  “Why don’t we snack later?” I say. “Can’t we keep going?”

  Dad scratches the stubble on his face. “Okay. You sit in front. I’ll steer.” Here we go again. On our Bella Bella trip, I had to earn that position in back, where you have more control of the kayak, before he’d let me sit there. As always, Dad wants to control everything. Whatever. I just want to get moving.

  He starts shoving the kayak into the shallows. I help.

  “Wait,” he says. “We better put on our spray skirts. Looks like rain.”

  Right on cue the wind picks up and there’s a roll of thunder. Ka-BOOM! Sounds like the gods bowling in the mountains. A jagged branch of lightning lights up the insides of a cloud.

  “Sorry, Aaron. Can’t go out on the lake if there’s lightning!”

  I know he’s right but I can’t wait. I just stand there. A gust of wind almost knocks me over.

  “We can’t do it,” he says. “We’ll be the tallest thing on the lake. A magnet to lightning. We’ll have to wait and see which way the storm goes.”

  It’s so frustrating, I throw my double-bladed paddle like a spear. It skims along the shallows, starts to sink, and bobs back up. It floats in a slow spiral into some reeds, not far from shore.

  “You can’t control your anger any more than you can control the weather, can you?” Dad says. He pulls the kayak back up the muddy incline.

  He’s right. But it’s hard to admit. It’s like everything’s conspiring to shut this trip down just when I really want it to take off.

  The first drops pock the surface of the water as I wade in, wearing my river sandals, and snatch up my paddle before it drifts
away.

  I squelch back out and stand under a short tree, leaning against the rough trunk. “Sorry,” I mumble.

  The drops are flying sideways now in the wind, like stinging needles of ice. Dad tosses me a poncho from a wet bag and puts one on. He hauls the kayak in under some branches. He’s skinny but strong. Tallish, all bones. But his bones must be attached by steel cable.

  I wrestle into my poncho and slide down the tree trunk to my heels, before the wind can blow me down. Great start, I think. Just great. Black clouds boiling and Ka-BOOM! The dark sky lights up with an electrical charge and goes dark again.

  But the next flash of lightning is farther away. I count the seconds till the thunder booms. At least three miles away. I can still see lightning dancing on the peaks, but it’s moving on.

  And except for the wind, the storm is gone as quick as it had begun.

  “Give me a hand here.” Dad starts pulling the kayak back down toward the water. I shuffle after him and push. My jeans are soaked up to my crotch, and my wet legs and feet are freezing cold.

  But I don’t care. I even take my poncho off. It just gets in the way. I just want to get going.

  “First we better climb into our spray skirts,” Dad says again, lowering the boat to the ground.

  He fishes out his spray skirt from the leg space, steps into it, and straps it on over his shoulders. He looks like a man in a skirt.

  “I’ll pass,” I say.

  “Then you’ll learn the hard way. But don’t bellyache to me that you’re cold and wet when we’re out on the lake. I’m not your mother.”

  If this was a movie and I had it on DVD, I’d skip forward to the fun part.

  The Day a Grizzly Ate My Dad.

  Dad’s wearing river sandals and three-quarter-length pants. He wades in, pulling the prow rope with him. Then he swings the kayak sideways to the shore.

  I step in and almost tip the boat. I know better. One leg flies out and I nearly topple over, but I catch myself and stand up in the murky muck, cursing.

  A frog jumps and I could swear it’s laughing at me.

  I try again and this time I get myself seated. I’m out of practice and out of patience. We haven’t been in a kayak for a year. Dad steps into the rear cockpit, squats, and sits down, all in one smooth, fast motion. He used to be the awkward one. Now I feel like the spaz.

  Roger and Willie were the leaders on our last two trips. Now Dad wants to be the leader. But maybe I do too. Once I’m back in practice, that is.

  He stretches the skirt and attaches the elastic hem to the rim of his cockpit. Then he digs his paddle blade into the muck and starts pulling us out into the chop.

  We paddle as hard as we can, but the wind hits the kayak and pushes the nose sideways and we start drifting rapidly backwards into the reeds. The wind lashes the surface of the lake, pushing water over our kayak.

  I wish I was wearing my spray skirt. And my poncho too.

  I hate it when Dad’s right!

  My paddle clashes with his. We’re out of sync and spinning in circles. The boat rocks in the chop, water sloshing into my cockpit. In minutes I’m soaked to the skin.

  I’m freezing. I mean I’m totally freezing. I’m wearing just a T-shirt and my arms are all goose-bumped. I’m shivering like a guy locked in a freezer and my teeth are clacking like dice.

  Suddenly, standing waves start smacking us silly.

  Dad’s yelling and I’m almost in a rage of panic, but then into my head pops an image of me and Lisa in the sea kayak last year, waving our paddles around, laughing like loons.

  As Dad yells some more, I can’t help it: I laugh like a crazy person.

  And then it happens.

  We capsize.

  DAY ONE

  FOOD FOR

  THE BEARS

  Cold shock and darkness. Water everywhere. Pure instinct. Pushing free of the kayak. Following my bubbles toward the surface. Kicking, clawing, grasping for life.

  Gasping for air. Lungs bursting.

  Head blowing through the surface. Spluttering. Treading water. Wave in my mouth. Going back under.

  Coming back up.

  Alive! Alive! Alive!

  Dad grabs me as I grab the kayak. It’s bobbing upside down, two-thirds submerged. Awash in waves.

  It’s all total deja vu. Last year. Lisa and I capsizing in the riptide when it started flooding the lagoon. Hanging upside down. . . .

  I kick my feet and hug the hull. Dad’s beside me now, draped over the topsy-turvy boat like a dead otter.

  My feet touch bottom. I get a purchase on it and lose it and get it again, heaving myself and the boat toward the shore.

  We’re not very far out. The wind and the waves slap at our backs and press us toward shore, through the chop, into the shallows, into the reeds.

  Dad coughs and gags and then he’s all adrenaline. Like me.

  Like a gorilla.

  We heave and wrestle the heavy kayak back in, snatching at paddles, my poncho, Dad’s water bottle glugging toward the bottom.

  Grounded. The kayak’s bottomed out. We squat and wait for the next wave to lift it up. And when it comes we lift with a burst of energy and flip the boat.

  Right-side up. It floats for a moment and we slide it up on shore. Then we collapse in the mud like puppets with our strings cut.

  We look at each other. And I almost laugh again.

  The squall is gone. The wind has died. The sun tiptoes out like a blazing ballerina and makes a grand stage entrance between the drifting clouds.

  We’ve rocked the water out of the cockpits. The hatch covers and sealed bulkheads have kept the cargo holds almost watertight. And the wet bags have done their job. We’ve opened and checked them all. They’re spread out on the mud like beached seals.

  We’re exhausted. We’re shipwrecked sailors lying next to them, soaking in the rays of the sun.

  We’ve stripped and put on dry clothes. Our wet clothes, squeezed and hung, drip from low hanging branches. Our shirts fill with ghosts of wind.

  We’re not speaking. I’ve been wavering between hilarity and horror. Relief and anger.

  Anger at my dad. Anger at myself.

  This shouldn’t have happened.

  This did happen.

  Why?

  I don’t know.

  I know it’s not all Dad’s fault, but I wish it was.

  Finally, he rouses himself. “We can’t stay here,” he says, rising to one elbow. “We’ll camp at the first campsite we come to.”

  “Why can’t we just camp here? I’m starving!”

  “We have to stay in a designated campsite. That’s the rule. And like the ranger said, we’re in grizzly country. There are bear caches at the campsites. We don’t want to lose all our food on our first night out, right?”

  “I haven’t seen a single bear, Dad.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not here.”

  Suddenly, I feel the eyes of a hundred grizzlies on me. A hundred hungry bears. I roll over and groan. I get on all fours. I feel like a bear. A hungry bear.

  I ROAR!

  It sounds more like a croak and it’s kind of funny, but Dad’s not going for it.

  “Why don’t you laugh, Dad?” I sit up, wipe mud from my elbows with the edge of my towel.

  “Is something funny, Aaron?”

  “Everything’s funny. You. Me. Man, we capsized within three minutes of taking off! That’s pretty funny, don’t ya think?”

  “It was my fault,” he says grimly. Where’s this guy’s sense of humor? “I let you rush me. We should’ve stopped and eaten before we hit the water. We should’ve waited to see which way the storm went. I should’ve made you wear your spray skirt. Water filled your cockpit and destabilized the boat. It was my fault.”

  My laughter flees like autumn leaves. Dad has a funny way of saying it’s his fault.

  I smack the ground and jump up.

  “What you mean is it’s my fault. Right, Dad?”

  “Aaron,
listen. You’re not listening to me! I took off work just so you and I could do this. You could’ve had your ‘wilderness survival experience’ in Montana, but I wanted you to have it here. With me. No guards. No barbed wire. Just you and me. This is for you, Aaron. Someday you’ll understand that.”

  There’s nothing I can say to that. I suppose he’s right. But I just can’t admit that.

  Not yet. Maybe someday, but not now. Not yet.

  Right now all I can think is: He has a backhanded way of blaming me while claiming the fault is his.

  Maybe someday he’ll see that.

  I slap the first mosquito of the trip. The sun’s going down beyond the snowy peaks. We’re in the cold shadows of the Cariboo Mountains.

  Another mosquito buzzes and whines and I slap it away. We’ve snacked and loaded the kayaks again and we’re about to launch for the second time on our maiden voyage.

  This time I use my spray skirt. And put on my poncho.

  I may learn the hard way, but at least it’s my way.

  There’s still enough daylight to see by. Just. The lake is as flat and reflective as a mirror now, and when we push off it feels like we’re sliding on ice.

  I’ve talked Dad into letting me sit in the stern and steer. I told him if he wants me to build up my “self-confidence,” like he claims, there’s no better way to do it.

  “That’s your counselor who cares about your self-confidence. But I’m fine with that, Aaron. He’s right and you’re right. Go for it.”

  This time I know I’m right.

  And it feels good.

  We leave the mosquitoes behind. Water drips down my arms from the paddle, but the rest of me stays dry. For a while we follow a couple of loons. Sometimes we get close enough to see the red of their eyes. Whenever we get too close they dive down and we never know where they’ll bob back up.

  The sky’s washed clean now of clouds and the mountains are getting closer and higher. Tall cedars wave from shore in the slight breeze and the ripple of the paddles in the water is the only sound.