Chapter 12
Page 83
Page 83
Jenny shouldn't have bothered drying Jed's clothes. By mid-morning he was wet, again, from socks to stocking cap. And Jenny, leading the way, tugging on her end of the lining rope while lecturing on how early Alaskan sourdoughs had spent months hauling flat boats, or canoes, upstream, loaded with enough supplies to last through a long winter, just to spend a brief interval of prospecting the following summer —was dry. She was the one wearing fly fishermen hip waders. In Anchorage, Jed had rejected the idea of hiking in the awkward rubber boots.
Jed paid the price for his arrogance in silence. After missing his footing on a slippery sawyer —a half buried log, with one end dancing up and down, in a sawing fashion, in the wild, cold, rushing current— he had taken an unexpected bath. This was the finale to a series of mishaps that had progressed from wet feet to wet pants. Jed wasn't in the mood to hear how others had suffered. He was miserable, and too embarrassed to admit it, to someone who seemed to be enjoying the challenge.
The problem was that Jed had taken to water in the manner of a bare-assed duck. He sank. Jenny had been the one to figure out how to assemble their two-seat, collapsible Folbot kayak. The coated canvas fabric and wood struts weighed ninety-six pounds total. Yet, this packed away into two containers slightly larger than a knapsack. Looking at the wind driven waves on the broad, shallow, river, Jed thought the craft too light, too much a toy, to take then across to Sasha Creek.
He was wrong. Once they had mastered the coordination required by double paddles, with Jed in the front seat to set the pace and power, and Jenny, in the rear, in charge of steering, they fairly flew across the rolling swells. Driving hard to avoid being carried downstream by a deceptively strong current, at times the nose would be completely buried in a wave, which would surge back across the covered deck and spray cover, pulled up tight across the paddlers chest. The first time this happened, Jed yelled a warning, and ended up choking on a mouthful of the silty water. By then the buoyant craft had popped out of the roller that would have swamped an open canoe. Gaining confidence in the principles of a kayak, Jed began to enjoy the adventure.
The fun part ended all too soon. Near the confluence of creek and river, the lazy stream flowed in a series of deep water, horseshoe bends. Paddling against the flow the couple inadvertently surprised what Jenny called an Alaskan Alligator. Being a cheechako —a newcomer to Alaska— this sight took a second look before Jed realized with a laugh that the alligator-like snout barely breaking the water was that of a swimming black bear struggling across a watery obstacle on his trip of climbing yet another mountain.
Jed paid the price for his arrogance in silence. After missing his footing on a slippery sawyer —a half buried log, with one end dancing up and down, in a sawing fashion, in the wild, cold, rushing current— he had taken an unexpected bath. This was the finale to a series of mishaps that had progressed from wet feet to wet pants. Jed wasn't in the mood to hear how others had suffered. He was miserable, and too embarrassed to admit it, to someone who seemed to be enjoying the challenge.
The problem was that Jed had taken to water in the manner of a bare-assed duck. He sank. Jenny had been the one to figure out how to assemble their two-seat, collapsible Folbot kayak. The coated canvas fabric and wood struts weighed ninety-six pounds total. Yet, this packed away into two containers slightly larger than a knapsack. Looking at the wind driven waves on the broad, shallow, river, Jed thought the craft too light, too much a toy, to take then across to Sasha Creek.
He was wrong. Once they had mastered the coordination required by double paddles, with Jed in the front seat to set the pace and power, and Jenny, in the rear, in charge of steering, they fairly flew across the rolling swells. Driving hard to avoid being carried downstream by a deceptively strong current, at times the nose would be completely buried in a wave, which would surge back across the covered deck and spray cover, pulled up tight across the paddlers chest. The first time this happened, Jed yelled a warning, and ended up choking on a mouthful of the silty water. By then the buoyant craft had popped out of the roller that would have swamped an open canoe. Gaining confidence in the principles of a kayak, Jed began to enjoy the adventure.
The fun part ended all too soon. Near the confluence of creek and river, the lazy stream flowed in a series of deep water, horseshoe bends. Paddling against the flow the couple inadvertently surprised what Jenny called an Alaskan Alligator. Being a cheechako —a newcomer to Alaska— this sight took a second look before Jed realized with a laugh that the alligator-like snout barely breaking the water was that of a swimming black bear struggling across a watery obstacle on his trip of climbing yet another mountain.
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