UNDER NORTHERN SKIES By J. C. Allard “Aye, when my soul shall sally forth Let it be to the naked North…” Robert W. Service Table of Contents Author’s Note I. Symphony of Silence……………………………….page 1 II. The Pool…………………………………………...page 21 III. The Girl on the Train……………………………....page 36 IV. Joe and Donn………………………………………page 54 V. Recalling the Road…………………………………page 65 VI. Fly-In…………….…………………………….......page 87 VII. Dances with Caribou…………………………….. page 104 VIII. The Gates of Valhalla...…………………………..page 121 IX. Requiem…………….…………………………....page 142 X. Showdown at Strangle Woman Creek...…………page 164 XI. A Beautiful Take-Off………………..…………...page 179 XII. Night Moves………..…………………………....page 198 XIII. Sitka...………………………………....................page 212 Postscript Author’s Note: I cannot remember a time when I didn’t feel drawn to the North by some irresistible internal compass. My favorite bedtime story as a child was about a moose- hunting, anthropomorphized bear named Pierre, who wore snowshoes, lived in a log cabin and used a rifle to procure moose meat and seal skins for his family. Later I thrilled to Saturday mornings and black-and-white television images of Sergeant Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police and his brilliant dog, Yukon King. Still later came all the times I would ditch my schoolwork to devour the written works of Jack London. Then there were those times with my grandfather. Riding in the car, working in his shop, or the vegetable garden—given any long stretch of time, he would recite the poems of Robert W. Service from memory. He would recite them so often that any member of the family could repeat the words right along with him. For ten weeks in the summer of 1968 I traveled to Alaska for the first time, my parents having concocted a grand adventure before I started my senior year of high school. The people, places and events of that trip, and two subsequent ones, have lived in my mind and heart ever since. I often imagine that all my other days are just time between trips north. This book grew almost by accident from a trilogy of articles I was working on for an outdoor sporting magazine. With the sculpting, shaping and encouragement of many hands, it arrived in its present form, but its errors are mine alone. The characters are real and the scenes as factual and as accurate as my memory can make them. The conversations all took place, but the recounted dialog is no more than the best I can recollect. Journals have helped me verify facts, but I’ve never been one to record conversations. I’ve done the best I could with the dialog and leave it to the reader to judge. For me, the passion remains. All that stirred me as a child stirs me still. The north of our planet remains in large measure a place where man is a transitory resident. The weather is wild. The land is wild. And the people are unforgettable. Whether it is Alaska or the Yukon or the great sweeping expanse of the Canadian Shield extending from the Northwest Territories into Labrador, the land and its inhabitants remains compelling. My love for the north also extends across the seas to Greenland, the northern fringe of Scandinavia and even Russia. J.C.A Highview October 5, 2016 1 Symphony of Silence “I don’t know about you, but I’m done in,” Jim announced, as he eased the truck into a dirt turn-out near the spot where British Columbia Route 99 crosses the crest of the Coast Range. After planning for most of a year, we were underway back to Alaska. Jim was returning to the state he’d lived in for five years, and I was making my third visit there spread over three decades. We were two retired Army guys, both wondering where we would fit in next. For this trip we’d be heading into the bush above the Arctic Circle on a hunt for early season moose and caribou. More than twelve hours from Jim’s place in Olympia and well past midnight, we swung open the doors and let the chill night air of the mountains roll into the cab. I shivered at the unexpected rush of air. “I’m fried,” I said. “Let’s nap for a little while at least.” Stepping outside for the first time since leaving our stop for Canadian Customs where Blaine, Washington, touches White Rock, British Columbia, I walked forward into the beam of the headlights. The well-used pull-out was pockmarked with puddles from the frequent rains, as clouds off the Pacific try to scoot over the mountain ridges. I did squats in the bright, white light to ease the kinks in my back and legs. We’d roared along with Vancouver’s evening rush-hour traffic without stopping, and followed the coast around to Squamish before entering the mountains at Garibaldi and Whistler with the late summer sunset. 2 From Whistler the road is a steep, slow climb almost devoid of civilization and traffic. Now at the top, when Jim cut the engine, a darkness as black as anywhere on earth enveloped us. A silence as deep as the inner chamber of Egypt’s Great Pyramid seemed to spill out of the surrounding forest. There was no moon. “Geez, look at the stars,” I said as my eyes adjusted to the plunge. My words were hushed, and I thought, barely audible. But Jim answered unseen somewhere, off to my right, “We get a little further north and it’ll still be light at this time of day. We won’t see sky like this again until the end of the trip.” “I haven’t heard this kind of thundering silence in years,” I said. Both our voices involuntarily hushed as though we stood in some European museum in the presence of something great. I twirled in slow circles, my head tilted as far back as I could to take in the whole fantastic sweep of the sky. After a minute a slow ticking from the cooling engine invaded the silence. “All the same, these stars are glorious,” I said. “I haven’t seen a sky like this in a long time. The nebulae look like clouds. When Gail and I went to Alaska in ’01, we never saw a sky like this one. Cruising among the islands of the Panhandle, all we saw was clouds and fog.” “It’s cold up this high,” Jim said. “Let’s get inside and get some sleep.” “I know I haven’t seen a sky like this since I was in the Mojave at Fort Irwin,” I answered. “That was thirty years ago.” 3 Jumping back into our seats, we slammed the truck’s doors against the chill. Tilting my chair in search of a comfortable angle for sleep, I could see the stars almost as well as from the outside. Succumbing to an urge to quote Robert Service as my grandfather often would, I repeated, “…the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe…” “Yeah, well, it’ll be daylight before we know it,” Jim said from his side of the truck, where he flopped back and forth in an effort to get comfortable. He finally settled with his cap pulled over his eyes to shield them from the starlight and his arms folded across his chest. My legs felt cramped against the firewall and I fought to make myself as diagonal on the seat as possible. The junction of the seat and its back dug into my hip, so I had to lay as flat as I could, my face to the ceiling. “I’ll drive when we pull out of here,” I said just as Jim seemed to settle in one spot. Sleep didn’t come so soon for me. Looking through the glass at those constellations slowly turning the night away, my mind drifted to a star-filled night from thirty years before. Retired two years, scenes of my former life often played across my mind, especially just at the edge of sleep. * * * * The first Tuesday in November dawned like any other late autumn day in the vast expanse of the Mojave Desert. One moment it was dark and frigid and silent, and the next the gliding disk of the sun chased away the dark, first changing it to grays and russets and then tones of pink on the hillsides. The cold lingered for a while, reluctant to loosen its 4 grip. The silence remained unchallenged day or night, dark or bright, unless the wind was a sound or a rarely seen raven found its voice. After nearly two months in the field, Task Force Blackjack, the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, stirred slowly. We were tired by then. Two months of constant training, bitter cold by night, broiling heat by day, field rations, dry shaving, and weeks between showers wore us down. The strange nighttime climate turned the steel of our tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery pieces into refrigerators—colder inside than out. Lucky ones like me had a Jeep. Its hood provided an hour or two of warm dozing as the engine heat dissipated. Usually the last ones in at night, Private First-Class Etheridge, my driver, Sergeant Hilton and me, a First Lieutenant, would ease into the company perimeter and hunker the jeep into some arroyo or behind a sand dune so that we’d be the last ones disturbed in the morning. Hilton and his tool box always travelled with me as my rapid reaction mechanic.