I am always so quick to blame my poor drawing skills, which is true enough, yet even if I had the skill, it seems I lack the constitution for true science. I recall how much I looked forward to visiting the natural history museum while in normal school, and I asked to be shown the ornithology display. Should I have expected anything different? Yet to find myself in a room full of dead birds, staring blankly with their glass eyes, and trays of pinned wings and breasts, and jars of preserved organs. I lost all spirit for the endeavor.
Even Mr Audubon’s beautiful paintings that I have long admired?—?all were done in death. He would shoot the birds down, then re-create their beautiful details. I was foolish to not realize it sooner. Why, in our efforts to understand and observe life, must we so often snuff it out?
Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester
April 13, 1885
We have seen the Aurora Borealis! Tillman woke us in the night. At first we all complained loudly, but when we brought our heads out of our sleeping bags, we understood his excitement. Sheets of eerie green light wavered in the clear dark sky, then shifted, turned, shot through with purplish red. The brightness was enough to put a glow over the white mountaintops. We were struck silent.
Nearby the Indians were also awake. Several whispered, pointed to the northeast where a large wedge-shaped mountain was illuminated by the auroras.
This morning over breakfast we learned more. Skilly says this mountain has its own mysterious power, not unlike that of the Aurora Borealis. For as long as he can recall, the mountain has emitted smoke, fire. Often the earth shakes. Deep rumblings can be heard. They say the mountain spirit is both great & dangerous. Before we leave this morning to travel past the active volcano, the Indians insist on smearing their faces with charcoal, ash, mixed with water into a muddy paste. All but the young woman, who seems defiant.
I asked Samuelson about her.
?—?She likes to stir up trouble, he said. He pointed to the scrap of bear pelt she sleeps on.
?—?No good. Bears are strong spirits. Only the men are supposed to look at them, much less lay hand on their hides. See, she’s got nothing to lose. She’s young, but they say she’s barren & that it’s her own fault.
I studied the young woman. She is slightly younger than Sophie, perhaps 20 or 25, but there is something older in her thin face?—?a sharpness to her features that speaks of hardship.
Samuelson said she disobeyed her family to run off with that otter husband of hers. They had already promised her to a chief’s younger brother. When she came back home, she took to hunting & wandering alone.
?—?She comes & goes as if there aren’t any rules. No one will have her now.
I asked if he knew her name.
?—?I don’t know what they used to call her, but now it’s Nat’aaggi, he said. —?Like the geese & cranes that fly through when the seasons change, on their way to someplace else, never stopping for long, always looking for a better place to be.
At last, the weather has allowed Pruitt to take his readings, calculate our location. He estimates we are a day from the canyon.
Samuelson warns me that the Indians will likely refuse to go beyond. With the ice weakening, it is considered dangerous passage. I regret our decision to hold back at Boyd’s cabin these past days. We saw no more sign of the caribou despite hunting far across the river in the direction they fled.
Equally frustrating is the lack of reliable information. The Indians who travel with us warn that the river will break up within the week. When we met a small band of Midnooskies traveling downriver to trade with the Eyaks, one said the ice was still strong up to the canyon. Yet another in the very same group disagreed, said there is already open water only a few miles upstream.
Tillman asked what we should do if the river gives way while we’re traveling through the canyon.
?—?Say your prayers, if you’re the praying type, Samuelson said. —?From what the Midnooskies tell, there won’t be any escaping up those cliff walls. Hard, vertical rock. Hundreds of feet up on either side.
Pruitt asked if there is no way to travel around the canyon.
?—?Through those mountains? You’d be slowing yourselves by weeks, maybe more. Not sure you’d even be able to find a way. This is rough, glacier country. You could run into a gorge or crevasse that would stop you dead in your tracks.
I was impatient with the discussion. Our success depended entirely on traveling through the canyon with the river still frozen. Everyone from Haigh back to the Russians had proven it.
It seemed Boyd could read my expression.
?—?I suspect your Colonel thought all this through well before now, he said.
I am glad Samuelson & Boyd continue to accompany us up the river. Since Boyd says the ‘color didn’t pan out’ in the creeks near his cabin this past year, Samuelson is keen to explore upriver of the canyon where there is rumored to be gold & copper. Boyd’s condition, however, concerns me. He is thin, weak, distracted. I suspect he goes on in hopes of finding his Indian wife.
April 15
We have suffered a considerable loss, delayed our expedition even further. I can blame no one but myself.