A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation
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A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation |
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Chapter XVIII
The following morning broke fine and clear, but sunless. Breakfast was as unappetizing and almost as slow as last night’s meal and we were all glad to get off. The Lodge, together with the Maintenance Camp and Repeater Station were at Mile Post 300, and four miles after leaving these we passed the turning to the Airport, several miles back from the Highway. Across the River the Old Hudson’s Bay Post of Fort Nelson had been founded about 1800; thirty years later when a party of white people were murdered there it was abandoned, remaining empty until in 1865 when it was reopened. It had since been maintained by the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Did you notice the water?” Barney asked me over his shoulder as we ground on through more cottonwood forest. I had found that in my room it was undrinkable and had asked for another jugful from the kitchen. “That’s the oil in it.” explained Barney. “All the water around here’s the same; they have to haul all the drinking water from way out by the airport – eight miles.” So far, nobody had tried boring for another supply, “But maybe someday they will” he added. Cautiously we began to descend the steepest hill on the Highway. Gleaming with mud it ended in a hairpin bend over a bridge across Little Beaver River, here no more than a creek seeping through a root choked, boggy hollow. For the last few miles the engine had been pulling increasingly badly, and on reaching Prophet River Maintenance Camp, Barney pulled in, and one of the engineers came out and delved with him into its interior. Not a twig was stirring this cold morning and a Sabbath stillness pervaded the colony of huts until a young man with a fur collar to his jacket came out of one carrying a fishing rod in one hand and a gun in the other. Barney looked up from his tinkering to exchange news of recently seen bears – he had already told me he had seen seventeen black ones on his last trip south – and the young man said he had shot one nearby a couple of days ago before he strolled away among the trees. A while later, with pungent remarks about his vehicle, Barney emerged, wiping the oil from his arms. The engineer watched us depart rather dubiously. Not without reason. We had not gone far, when crawling half heartedly up a long hill, the engine again began to splutter like a candle flame on the point of expiring. We managed to gain the crest and Barney was slowing to a disgusted stop when Nancy leapt up squeaking excitedly, “Look! – There’s a bear!” - It had just run from the roadside. “Over there – look! Two more!” Frantically she pointed. Barney flung open the door.
The engine forgotten we all crowded to the bus door. “There they go now – two of them – see!” For a moment or two nothing stirred in the painted scrub. Then, not a hundred yards away a huge black bulk reared suddenly beside a rock, stared at us, and with uncanny speed, lumbered off down the hillside. “Gee, he’s a whopper! Seven hundred pounds I guess!” exclaimed Barney. The cubs too, had disappeared; not a leaf or twig moved. The wilderness had closed its doors and the brooding stillness swung down once more. Nancy was lamenting she had not been able to get a picture of the two cubs. “Those bears were all right weren’t they”, she stated confidently. “Not like grizzlies – those black bears wouldn’t hurt you?” “Huh!” retorted Barney with finality, “don’t do to trust no bear!” Mysteriously, the engine seemed to have recovered, at least temporarily, and we jolted on still regretting such a brief sight of the bears. The sun came out and on the crest of a grassy ridge we passed a knot of Indians clustered about a tepee, a pale plume of smoke curling beyond the criss-cross of its pole tips and several horses grazing nearby. The Road suddenly dipped again cutting off the momentary sharp frieze they had cut against the sky. Not long afterwards we came on one of the Highway’s
wrecks. At the foot of a long slope a tank truck lay like a huge scarlet
leviathan sprawled on its side half way up a gravel bank, and Barney
stopped. He wanted a photograph of it. Although the smash had occurred five days previously, the air was still rank with petrol and a warning notice about smoking had been hung on the smashed radiator. Deeply scored ruts in the surrounding gravel testified to the violence of the skid; the cab was buckled and smashed irreparably, and it seemed incredible that the driver, Barney had heard, had escaped unhurt save for a few bruises. “Nine lives that chap must have got”, he observed. “That’s the third smash he’s had and he’s only been on the Road a few months. He must have had one heck of a skid”, he added critically eyeing the angle of the Road and the embankment. A car we had seen slowly approaching like a small blue beetle down the opposite slope now drew level just as a dun coloured truck, lumbering from behind us down the hill, also stopped. With our own bus, they formed quite a traffic jam. The driver of the blue car and his passengers, scenting some mishap, looked puzzled at seeing three people, all apparently whole until Barney explained the situation. On hearing such a tame conclusion they continued on their way looking slightly bemused, or was it disappointed? The driver of the truck was a friend of Barney’s. He too, had been having trouble this morning with his truck, an eight ton refrigerator, hauling supplies to the posts between Dawson Creek and Whitehorse. He and Barney now held a consultation while Nancy, still thirsting for photographs, tried unsuccessfully to stalk one of the Indians’ horses, several of which were straying about nearby. Distance it is said, lend enchantment, and to Nancy, my unimaginable environment seemed to provide her with increasing fascination. At intervals she had plied me with questions, and now as we returned to the bus she asked if she might have my address. The strange words could have conveyed nothing to her when, with difficulty writing it down against the jolting of the bus, I handed her the bit of paper. She studied it with interest and then looking up at me she asked hopefully, “D’you know Helen Smith?” Last night she had confided that she once had a friend who had gone to England, and now her artless enquiry reminded me of the successful quest of that Eastern princess who, according to legend had traced her Crusader lover by repeating the only English words she knew: “Gilbert” and “London” Accustomed to an environment so vast that among its handful of inhabitants every stranger was noted, how could Nancy visualise a world where man had begun to efface his background? In her imagination its largest cities were but a bigger Whitehorse. Gravely I tried to explain that there were so many, many people in England, among them rather a lot of Smiths, but that some day perhaps I might meet her friend. The mileage was shrinking. By mid-morning we had reached Mile Post 233, where we stopped for coffee at the small trading post known as Lum ‘n Abner, the name of its owners during Road Construction days when they had been inundated with business. An expanse of glistening mud surrounding a collection of log huts backed by scrub and a seeding mist of fireweed beneath tall cottonwoods gleaming in the sunlight like golden mops – that is how I remember Lum ‘n Abner’s. I remember too, the Indian boy lounging against the door of a hut, hand on hip, a wide, curling black hat cocked rakingly on his sleek head, a black and white dog at his feet. Motionless and watching; he was the embodiment of careless grace. New huts were springing up like raw, shining mushrooms from the trampled undergrowth; already one had been furnished for the accommodation of overnight travelers. Flattening our faces against the panes, Nancy exclaimed rapturously over the chenille spreads of the beds and longed that she might stay there. Inside the wide, low-raftered post – it was one of the first of early days – we admired the little white moose hide dress, which Barney had ordered on a previous run, for his baby girl. Made by the local Indians famed for their beadwork the tiny, white, fringed jacket was beautifully worked in a design of flowers. “I’ll just return to Whitehorse in time for her birthday – she’ll be a year old the day after I get back” Barney announced proudly, carefully wrapping up the jacket. The proprietor’s wife, a brisk little sandy-haired woman, spoke with a foreign accent. Barney thought she was German. “She writes letters to Germany”, he said, holding up the latest addition to his pile of mail when we were once more on our way. Directed in a tall, foreign-looking script it seemed odd up here to see an address in an obscure German town. After another thirty-three miles we reached the Maintenance Camp and Repeater Station at Trutch, high above the densely forested Minaker River Valley. An area famous for game – elk, moose, woodland caribou, bears and mountain sheep, it was also a starting point for hunters setting out towards the main range of the Rockies away west beyond the Minaker River. Beside the little post was the mud-caked bus in which I had gone to Marsh Lake from Whitehorse, now on its return journey north from Dawson Creek. As we went in, the stout driver emerged, carrying his little bag and shepherding a handful of passengers. Having exchanged news with Barney he greeted me with a friendly salute and enquiry as to how I was enjoying myself and charged into his bus. Barney told us it was his habit on reaching the end of every journey to rush into the office and weigh himself on the weight scales and when as usual, they turned at eighteen stone he would bounce out with a sign of relief to announce he was just holding his own! “He’s a dandy!” commented Barney. Ed also had arrived, and had lunch with us in the little scrubbed, sunlit room with two other truck drivers on their way north. Due to the morning’s various delays we were running late, and it was almost two o’clock when we left Trutch. For the next twenty miles the Highway above the Minaker River, mounted steadily to the summit of Trutch Mountain, 3,984 feet, the second highest point on its length. From a chill at the beginning of the day, it had blossomed into a perfect afternoon, brilliant and windless. With each mounting spiral we looked out as from an aircraft to see far, far to the West the vast ramparts of the Rockies lifting purple and blue. How well the Indians had named them the Shining Mountains! Behind us, infinitely far now, the northern sky was pricked by the dim, spear-like points of the Stikines. After leaving Trutch we had passed and in turn been overtaken several times by Ed, and now, ahead of us on the crest of a long rise his truck was drawn up. His brakes had seized! We all got out, and Barney joined in the examination. There was nothing to be done but wait for the smoking brake shoes to cool. After some desultory poking about with spanners Ed and Barney gave it up and we all strolled about enjoying the sunshine. We were late anyway - as Barney observed philosophically. After a while Ed decided he would try and push on to the next Camp, and Barney agreed to keep him in sight all the way, and somewhat anxiously we all watched him start. Fortunately the cumbersome truck was not loaded. Gathering speed it bounced and lurched down the first slope, negotiated the bend at its foot and began laboriously grinding up the opposite hill. Overtaking it on the upward grades: waiting at the top for it and watching it coast down the next we all progressed to Sikanni. Here we were hailed by a smiling man from the doorway of the Camp’s repair hut whom Barney introduced as one of his friends, another truck driver. While the three of them examined Ed’s engine, Nancy and I strolled along the Highway towards a tepee, whose points appeared above the bank ahead. It was empty, but over the next rise mounted figures were moving. Turning onto the Highway, they galloped towards us, the Indian on the leading grey pony letting out a whoop as they swung past like centaurs in a swirl of dust. Wheeling again they reined in beside the bus and the crunch of hooves on gravel mingled with voices. After a while Barney overtook us, accompanied by Pete, who had come out early that morning from Dawson Creek to visit a friend at the Camp. Ed remained at Sikanni: If his truck couldn’t be repaired there a tow would have to be sent out from Dawson Near Mile Post 155, Pete, who was sitting beside me recounting stories of the Road, pointed out a hill east of the Highway which he told me had originally been part of its route, bearing at the top the warning: “SUICIDE HILL, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD!”. Swinging along a forested, level stretch somewhere near Mile Post 128 Barney suddenly yelled “There’s another bear!” It was five o’clock when we reached Blueberry and stopped at the little post for coffee. Only another hundred miles to go. Gradually the character of the country began to change. We had left the hills now, and farmlands appeared, timidly at first, they gained in extent as the forest thinned and receded. After leaving Blueberry, Pete had been driving, Barney propped on one elbow stretched out on the wide ledge among the mail and parcels. Snatches of their talk, the endless, engrossing gossip of the Road sounding non-stop above the engine’s roar. Then the forest vanished altogether, rolled back by encroaching flat corn lands, their black soil streaked only occasionally by a ragged copse. Suddenly the Highway was paved, cars sliding along it. Ahead in the deepening dusk, lights sprang up and rushed towards us. It seemed no time before we were driving up the wide street of Fort St. John, Mile Post 49 and Nancy’s destination. Whether the aunt or the job to which she had vaguely referred did in fact exist, I never discovered. Barney, as he handed out her battered small case chaffingly told her he expected to see her on the next northbound bus! But beyond denying any such intention, she did not tell us what she was about to do. The final glimpse I had of her little scarlet figure as Pete slowly backed the bus from the kerb was its silhouette against the brightly lit window of a store, vainly smoothing her wind ruffled mop of hair. “She’s quite a girl!” was Barney’s enigmatic comment. “Wonder if she really has got a job here?” He looked enquiringly at me, but I could only say she had never volunteered any information, and apart from one or two references to her mother, and her obvious fright and distress on encountering the man claiming to be her father, the riddle of Nancy and her journey remained unsolved. Of those last forty-nine miles jolting across the flat, moonlit lands, I can recall little. Pete, turning at intervals from his engrossing conversation with Barney to include me, enquired in his cheery way, “How’r you doin’?” and my reply, “Fine” for now, because with the distance shrinking to my journey’s end how could I explain I was doing poorly? As with its beginning, there comes a moment marking the real end of every journey, independent of the actual time of arrival. So it is not of this that I think when weary, hungry and more than two hours late, we reached Dawson Creek. The previous night I had made the dismal discovery of having lost the bit of paper on which Mitch had scribbled his family’s address, and I didn’t know their name! Now at the bus station there was no sign of the big chap who might haven taken me there. Having explained all this to Barney when he had asked where I was going to stay, he picked up my suitcase and took me to the hotel to make sure I was given a room. It is not of that final, dull thud as the door swung shut behind him and friendly Pete, or the bullock like stares following me from the circle of men seated smoking round the walls of the lobby or how being once more ‘Outside’ was confirmed on finding the hotel dining room implacably closed, and only my last apple from Nick Solly’s orchards saved me from going supperless to bed….. Before any of this, with crossing the Peace River had come the seeming end of my journey. From the height of its great bridge we were following the quivering reflections of a sickle moon, jewel-like in waters burnished by the last light, I glanced back. There, where darkness was falling as a gently closing door, there was the end of a journey seeming short when measured only by days. |
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