Travelogues: WET EXIT Part One: Currents and Tides ! M

Home , Drink the Water, The Big Cats

! ! Travelogues: WET EXIT Part One: Currents and Tides ! M. Mewborn ! ! ! ! ! ! ! a marlow[ﬁlms], inc. travelogue #2 This story is dedicated to Doug Whittaker, who forgave me, I think.

! Copyright © M. Mewborn 2018 WET EXIT is a work of un-fiction -- as the author likes to call it -- and hopefully a work of art. Because the story is based upon events which actually occurred and people who actually exist, or did exist, there may be some resemblance between the story's characters and people still living or deceased. The names of all the central characters have been changed and, for the most part, only first names are used. By no means, even if the person upon whom a character is based can be deduced, should it be assumed that the character's fictionalized background or anything they are depicted as saying or doing within the story is any reflection of behavior or speech that ever pertained to the actual person.

The illustrations accompanying the text are pencil drawings executed by eye and based upon photographs either captured by the author, discovered in magazines, or downloaded from photo aggregating web sites. In each case, the pencil drawing, already an approximation and typically only a portion of the original image, was scanned and modified using a variety of photo editing software. Ultimately, the illustrations used in this book are assumed to bear scant, if any, resemblance to the original photographs. If the owner of any photo, upon perusal, discovers an image too obviously based upon their work and objects to it being used in this way, they only have to contact the author by email and it will be switched out with a different image in all future editions. The same goes for anyone who finds, and objects to the fact, that their actual first name was used (unlikely) for a minor character in the story !which might come across as too evidently based upon them. The author would appreciate readers alerting him to any typos, misspellings, inac- curacies or other screw-ups. Every effort will be made to correct same in future edi- !tions. ! ! ! ! !

M. Mewborn 970 W. Broadway #265 Jackson Hole WY 83001 307.713.2745 [email protected]

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! PERSONAE In Order of Appearance: ! Marlow - unreliable narrator Dinah Orbeck - former librarian Dodi - Course Leader Beth - all around helpful person Cheryl - a girl from "The Valley" Thad Houston - Apprentice Instructor Burl - Second Instructor Tyler - medical student Pat - sailor and wife of congressman Cord - big wave surfer Will - culinary school grad Crandall - biology teacher Todd - Cord’s paddling partner Sean - collegiate male Mike - the third Mike Ben - undifferentiated male #1 Brian - undifferentiated male #2 ! Adam - undifferentiated male #3 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

WET EXIT

! ! Section #1: Aqueous Light ! Number Three student group is slow to load this morning. Nothing new in that, the Instructors would say. It's not my fault we're taking so long. My gear is packed and on-board. I may be the so-called student leader for this little foray, but the In- structors cannot, in all fairness, hold me personally responsible for the work habits of other grown adults. I have my job, critical to the task of loading, and am pursuing it diligently. Someone has to lie inside the boat like this and be ready to receive the equipment as it's brought down from camp. Here she is. Dinah, my paddling partner for the day. I spy her frowning face as she moves past my oval peephole. She's preparing to pass a stuff sack down through the cockpit opening. "I have this for you," she says. She holds the stuff sack down through the opening and waits for me to take it. Her hands are close, inflammation marks from her bout with sun poisoning visible at the wrists. I take the stuff sack from her in a way that brings our fingers into contact. Her hands pull back sharply, as if she'd inadvertently touched me on the cheek, or on the chin near my mouth, or some other intimate place. I thank Dinah for the delivery of the equipment. "Keep it coming," I tell her. I put the stuff sack she gave me next to my own and shove them both as far as I can reach into the tapered bow. Tied to their ends are short lengths of paracord which trail back along the bottom of the hull. It's a trick the Instructors showed us, making it easy to extract the gear once we get to wherever we're going. A single pull on the ends of the line and the whole affair -- sleeping bags, personal gear, group gear, everything in the compartment -- comes sliding out. I can only hope Dinah will go back up to the campsite and quickly shuttle down the rest of her personal equipment and whatever group gear has been left. This would be the expedient approach, as long as I'm going to keep lying here half-in and half-out. [2] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! If we could manage to get afloat within the next ten minutes our tardiness might go unnoticed in the general confusion of the launch. The sounds of other students moving about the intertidal zone drift down through the cockpit opening. The voices of those nearby are very loud. I can hear their activity right through the hull, even down to the shifting of the greywacke beneath their boots. The shouts of students further up the beach, or those already on the water, are less distinct out of proportion to their distance from where I'm lying. The mystery of the difference must lie in the acoustic properties of the plastic tube into which I've stuffed myself headfirst. I'm wondering if this is the same Seascape Double with the lime green trim that Dinah and I paddled together way back when, at the beginning of the course. Impossible to tell, though there was a time when I could pick the boat out from the other nine student craft. But that was two weeks ago, a long time in the context of this expedition. Speaking of time, ten more minutes have now gone by along with any chance we can still get on the water and have our lateness chalked up to something as blameless as poorly synched wrist- watches. Under the circumstances ten minutes wouldn't be all that behind time, really. But there's no longer any way around it. We are late. To walk to camp and back to the beach is a trip of no more than two minutes. I know what's happened. Dinah's gone to the other side of the spit, or possibly even up into the trees, where she can find privacy in order to change into her paddling outfit. Even though it exposes nothing, she can never bring herself to change her outer layers while, say, sitting on a rock here on the beach in the open. Or maybe she's gone to find a spot for her morning evacuation. And once there she has become distracted by the doings of some small animal, or the way fungi has taken hold on a downfallen log. While time's wasting, Dinah is up there imagining herself small beneath the crown of a toadstool, on eye level with a caterpillar. I really don't mind the delay. So what if we overshoot the agreed upon departure time by fifteen minutes. Or by an hour? It's peaceful here inside the kayak, the world reduced to a quiet tube filled with aqueous light. Here one breathes a marine hardware odor of brine and sun-warmed plastic. There's an intimacy with the underside of things, the nuts that secure the deck cleats, the slots along the side of the hull where the rudder pedals travel, the miniature turnbuckles that are used to adjust the tension on the cables, Sec. #1: Aqueous Light [3] ! one of which could use a little snugging up. Have to do that. Later. The reality of the day outside is handily contained within the coaming of the stern cockpit, a brilliant oval of blue sky I can easily shut my eyes against. It's far too bright out there for comfort, and breezy with a sharp wind off the water that snaps and pulls at the nylon of your pants. Much better to lie in here where it's warm and the sunlight is filtered through green fiberglass. There are more loud footfalls as the student paddling teams move back and forth over the shale. Group Two is assembling to launch. Let 'em go. I want nothing more than to lie head down inside this boat for the rest of the morning until the clamor subsides and all of them -- the three Instructors, the fourteen other students -- pass away over the water. Dinah can stay, if she wants. If I know her she'd prefer not to paddle anywhere today, either. Maybe in a few days she and I will load up and shove off to some new place, but for now let us stay behind on this spit of shale and scrub, this navigational checkpoint inscribed on the chart with the auspicious name of Golden. Later this afternoon, when the light falls off the vertical, we'll have hot drinks of coffee cut with dissolved chocolate powder and sit on foam pads placed upon the margin where the trees overhang the beach. We’ll read, or talk, or simply ponder. Dinah wouldn't complain. She has demonstrated time and again that she's happy to occupy a day poking about at water's edge, observing the raucous life of a tide pool. As for myself, I'd be quite content for the rest of the day, or at least until the afternoon when those hot drinks might happen, to rest here in the bottom of this kayak whose hull deforms so smoothly over the sharp stones of the littoral and, like a chunk of insensate driftwood, possessing no will of my own, listen for the seep of the incoming tide. On the other side of the fiberglass hull, very close to my ear now, is the sound of rubber boots treading upon the barnacled rocks, crushing the little accretions the creatures build for protection, tiny enclosures of great intricacy -- if you've ever bothered to get down and look at them -- now smashed to smithereens. It's enough to make you cry, thinking of their work destroyed so casual- ly. "Hey in there," comes a voice. "You asleep?" It's not Dinah back with another load of gear, but Dodi, the Lead Instructor of this outfit. She prods the kayak with a boot and rocks my tubular confine. "Nope. Not asleep," I say. "Just waiting." I pull myself out of the boat to stand squinting against the light as the blood slowly becomes less thick in my ears. The world is riotous, an honest affront [4] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! to the senses. Greywacke boulders flash signals to the sky. Every- where, imitating a hundred snakes coiled amongst the rocks, rope kelp glistens like chromed metal, the sunlight reflecting malevo- lently off of their damp tendrils,. "You getting close to launch here?" asks Dodi. She stands up-slope on the beach which puts her eyebrows about on level with mine. The Lead Instructor is standing just as I've seen her postured on nearly every one of the past twenty mornings -- hands on hips, salt-stained windpants tucked into the tops of boots, olive drab p.f.d. hanging loosely off of her shoulders like a flak jacket. Thus clad, she stalks the intertidal for lagging students. "No. Not ready yet,” I say. The light is truly relentless. Every leaf in the furze at the top of the beach quivers individually. At my feet a rubber tube of a kelp lies limp across the hot stones, exuding moisture like some massive brown variant of steamed asparagus. I'm feeling a little sick to be truthful. All I want to do is get back down inside the boat and away from the poisonous light. "How much longer?" she insists. "Fifteen minutes, maybe.” I can see what almost appear to be scales on the cylinder of the kelp, a complex and layered pattern of cross-hatching. "I really don't know. My partner has disappeared off somewhere." Dodi is holding a double-bladed paddle vertically at her side like a harpoon while the blue neoprene of her sprayskirt sticks out rigidly all the way around her middle. It's the uniform of an advanced aborigine, a nylon and rubberized Inuit prepared to hunt cloned beluga. The Lead Instructor is physically small, but the paddling outfit lends her an imposing air and she typically contrives to stand up-slope of her subjects, boosting her height by two or three inches. I've been convinced since the day we met our three guides at gear issue that Dodi models her outfit before a mirror. Senior Instructor on dozens of sea kayaking expeditions, she's had ample opportunity to perfect her presentation. One cannot fault her for this. It's important she do what she can to effect a commanding presence. Frankly, I envy her having achieved a set uniform. This alone is almost reason enough to go through the training necessary to enter the school's instructor ranks. To get one's personal gear established, at least for as long as one is in the field, which can be for the better part of the year, would be an immensely satisfying achievement in a life swamped by trivial possessions. "Fifteen minutes," Dodi mulls. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, carapaces of barnacles cracking beneath her boots. "In that case," she continues, "I think we're going to go ahead Sec. #1: Aqueous Light [5] ! without you. When you're ready, you and your group make the crossing on your own. We'll meet you at Black Sand." I glance over my shoulder toward the water. The other two Instructors, Thad Houston and Burl, are afloat in their singles. Burl is sealed into his cockpit and -- since I know they are there -- riding high upon the extra pads he puts down on his seat. For his hemor- rhoids, he once said with a grin. I took this to be a wry comment on his age relative to the other two Instructors and relative to us students, but I guess this a statement which hints at other meanings, as well. Arms crossed and chin on his chest, bored with the delay, Burl appears to be taking a nap. The Apprentice Instructor, Thad Houston, floats further out, fishing. I imagine that his kayak floats a little higher than it otherwise might for his having recently loaned me a book, a fairly thick anthology of short fiction, which otherwise would be stowed below waterline in the hold of his boat. He's mentioned he'd like to have this ballast back within the next day or so, if it's convenient. Mr. Houston wets a line and slowly reels it in. Even from here I can see tension in the motion of his wrist. We've learned that Thad Houston does not appreciate one bit waiting for students who fail to be ready at the agreed upon departure time. This morning he's opted to stay on the water and let Dodi come in and give us the word. "Sure," I say. I will agree to Dodi's proposal. Up the beach, the second student group is underway, bows coming around in rough formation, doubles getting their paddle strokes in synch. Dodi unfolds a topo on the afterdeck of the kayak, her topo, not mine. She knows better than ask for my version of the map which, bedraggled as it is, would never survive being unfolded in this breeze. Dodi has already given me grief about my topo, no need to go into that. She’s also not going to say a word about people who are late getting on the water. It's not her style. It wouldn't be Burl's style, either. As long as it's not a question of safety, both Dodi and Burl see the end of their responsibility with the setting of an example. "It's your course," they remind us constantly. "You paid for it." I reach to help Dodi hold down a flapping edge of the map. The topographic is a cheerful patterning of blue water, brown shores and green forests. Beginning at the navigational aid labeled on the map as Golden, our present location, curving dashed lines marked in black ballpoint arc into the azure waters of the fjords and return to make separate landfalls upon the shore. These are the proposed travel routes of the Instructors and the three student groups, parabolic leaps that remind one of schoolbook illustrations of the Age of Exploration, the ocean routes of Magellan and Ponce de Leon. Or, if not that, then a flight of sand fleas testing bite spots [6] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! along a stretch of exposed skin. Student Group One podded up an hour ago and pointed bows toward College Fjord where the glaciers go by the names of Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Yale and so forth. Which is fitting since Group One is comprised almost entirely of young college students, mostly male, though there are two females among them, Beth and Cheryl, both college age, as well, who chose to exert themselves on the more difficult route. This gang of youngsters, to an individual, has been waiting all trip for a chance, as they put it, to test their physical limits. Evidently, the course thus far has not fulfilled everyone's desire for punishment. They'll all soon be returning to their schools, some of which may actually be namesakes for the previously mentioned glaciers. We’re entering the last phase of this expedition and they might as well start being exposed to reminders of the lives that await for them back in the world. Student Group Two, who just shoved off, has a more open itinerary. Their plan is to establish beach heads all up and down Port Wells until they've traveled as far as possible in the allotted six days and five nights, allowing time to make the rendezvous point at Entry Cove. On the map some of Group Two's landfalls are represented by question marks. Their Float Plan, officially filed with the Instructors and the other two student groups, is full of contingen- cies. Group Two has said they're not necessarily about pushing their limits, but they don't rule out the possibility either. If they should overextend themselves on the outbound leg and have to paddle all night on the inbound that'll be okay with them, so they say. This way they can make a decision to test their limits without having to make a decision. They can just let the necessity sneak up on them. Two sets of dashed lines leave Golden and travel in parallel across Port Wells. These are the intended travel routes of the In- structor Group and Student Group Number Three, of which I'm the designated leader. Group Three is not interested in testing any limits, unless it be the limits of a late start. The parallel dashes tuck into Harriman Fjord and travel together up the channel of Barry Arm to a place where three distinct flows of white ice come down to touch the blue of the water. "Black Sand Beach. Right here," says Dodi, laying a fingertip next to a small, sparsely vegetated crescent of brown lying hard against the moraine of the easternmost glacier. "We'll go on the assumption the beach is still there but, as you know, the map's dated. There's no guarantee the beach will be where the map says it's supposed to be, or whether it'll be there at all.” "Sure," I say. "Expect to encounter ice here, at the point where you turn Sec. #1: Aqueous Light [7] ! this elbow," Dodi instructs, tapping the spot on the map where there's a decided crook in the extension of Barry Arm. I know all of this. We went over it yesterday. The floating ice she speaks of has to be imagined. The map depicts Barry Arm as a perfect baylet of blue, uncluttered except for the thin, italicized Roman capitals of its name. Dodi is simply being thorough, covering the liability. In addition, as is her style, she's driving home for my edification an example of how to conduct a launch. Dodi now takes the binoculars from my daybag and, after casting an unaided weather eye in the direction of Port Wells, she begins to glass the offing. The skin at Dodi's temple is wrinkled, white streaks radiat- ing out from the corner of her eye where the flesh is permanently creased from squinting into the hard reflection of sunlight off water. I've never seen Dodi put on a pair of sunglasses. I don't think she owns any. Instead, as a means of cutting the glare, she wears around her head a tight fitting neoprene band that flattens out in front to form a visor. This bright yellow headgear is, apparently, something of a trademark with her. She may’ve tested it in front of a mirror and found that wearing sunglasses in addition to the visor was too much and caused her head to appear cluttered. The first time I saw Dodi put on the neoprene visor I immediately recalled it from a photograph that appeared alongside the course description in the school's catalog, a photo which at one time I'd devoted considerable close study. This was after I'd made the decision to sign up and send in the money. After my application was approved, I went back to the catalog and more carefully scrutinized the course description and its three or four accompanying photographs for clues as to how oppressive it might be to travel for twenty-eight days in close contact with a crowd of strangers. The very photo that depicted Dodi wearing her signature gear item, the yellow headgasket, was the one into which I'd tried hardest to project myself. The picture showed half-a-dozen students, under Dodi's direction, carrying kayaks onto a beach very much like this one. The ocean behind them was dark as slate except for bright patches where the sun shone down through breaks in a heavy cloud cover. One student was well in the foreground and the expression on her face -- certainly the reason Marketing selected the photo -- was of surprise and wonder as she came ashore upon a new land, her forehead illuminated by a shaft of sunlight dedicated to her personally, as if salvation had only been waiting for her to take the first step upon those sands. Dodi stood slightly upslope, as is her habit, competency personified, the one who'd delivered these students to the shore, now standing aside to let them have their experience. The yellow ring was stuck on Dodi's head like a halo perfectly encircling a [8] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! crown of sun streaked hair. Months ago, I imagined it might be pleasant enough to come ashore with such a band. No one in the photo appeared to be talking, to my mind a good sign. I could see myself bringing up the rear of the landing party, toting a kayak by it's grab loop, quietly doing my bit, nobody inquiring after my thoughts which, given how chilly the weather looked in the photo, would probably be centered upon how soon a hot cup of coffee might be reasonably expected to arrive to hand. "You've got some chop out there," Dodi says, reading the water. "Sure," I say. I can see there's chop, even without binos. "Considerable fetch," Dodi says. This statement is apropos of nothing, but not untypical of our CL. She often says things simply for effect. Sure, there's some fetch, but it's not like it's the open ocean. It's an inlet, off a bay, within a sound. I feel a bit of intestinal gas building up which I release into my windpants, so called. The off-shore breeze guarantees the Course Leader won't detect anything. "You'll be okay," she continues. "Keep your group tight. You know the drill." She turns her blue eyes on me and her lips pull back in the smile that shows teeth so close and smooth they form one solid front of brilliant white enamel. "See you at Black Sand.” She hands the binoculars over, reminds me to perform a final check of our campsite and, taking up her paddle, careful not to ding the edges of the blades on the rock, moves off to where her Polaris lies with its stern in the water. I turn to put the binos back in the daybag, taking a moment to adjust the position of other items within the duffel. When I look back the Instructors are already dimin- ishing forms upon the water, the hulls of their kayaks hidden in the swell, their paddles naught but thin sticks. That's fine. I'm glad to let them go on ahead. I'd just as soon have it this way. There's a lot of water out there, maybe we'll get lucky and lose them altogether. Of my group, only Tyler is waterborne, having launched herself in the one single-seater kayak that's been allocated to our group. She floats ten yards off-shore, the mass of her reddish hair catching the wind like a sail and pushing her back toward the beach. She's using the blade of her paddle, reaching with it across the length of the deck, to adjust the lay of an eagle feather affixed to the bow of her boat. Now she sees me looking at her and points at her wristwatch. Ah, yes. The time. She's probably thinking that if we were going to be late launching she would’ve liked to have taken a swim this morning. Two slots up, Pat and Cord are battening down the hatches Sec. #1: Aqueous Light [9] ! on a Seascape double. They've stowed their headnets and are close to launch. Cord, as is typical for him, wears no shirt beneath his p.f.d. As he works to jam some piece of gear behind the stern seat the morning light glances off the muscle groupings of his back. Pat leans motionless over the kayak's mid-deck, supporting herself with her arms, the cropped iron grey hair falling forward over her face. I always seem to catch her in these rigid postures and every time I briefly wonder if she's experiencing some sort of seizure. At forty-nine, Pat’s the oldest participant on this float. Pat has a son Cord's age who enrolled on this same course a year ago. In fact, it was the son's specific recommendation to his mother, if she could manage it at some point on her own sea kayaking course, that she paddle up Barry Arm to see the glaciers. I can just see the boy enthusiastically explaining it all to his mother. This would've taken place at the kitchen table, while the father, apparently a man of position, one of the congressmen of their home state, kept an ear free for the TV news and listened in on the conversation from around his newspaper. The kid is too young to pick up on the marital vibe as his mother proceeds to concoct a separate vacation from her politician husband. And, so, it was the recommendation of Pat's son, voiced perhaps a year ago in a faraway city, which has resulted in our, Student Group Number Three's, Float Plan to be initiated here on this sunny morning in the Gulf of Alaska. The Instructor's are only going along because they're uncertain about conditions at the head of the fjord. Dodi says none of them have ever been up there, a statement which I’m not sure I fully buy. In any case, I think they're more than a bit curious to check it out for themselves. The Instruc- tors say that if all appears reasonable at Black Sand Beach they'll leave us to our student-led expedition. I go up to the campsite to see what's keeping Dinah and meet her right as she's emerging from the tall grass. I avert my gaze because I think it quite possible she went in there to relieve herself one last time before getting in the boat. This is no embarrassment to me but Dinah is peculiar about such matters. She's put on extra clothing in preparation for launch. Beneath her p.f.d. is the school- issue paddling jacket and, I believe, she has a sweater on under- neath that. The extra insulation exaggerates her body's already egg-like shape. Atop Dinah's head is the peaked woolen hat she wears even when asleep. A balaclava, she calls it, with a short bill and built-in ear flaps that can be folded down. The breeze is keeping the bugs off pretty well and there's no need for a headnet, especially this close to launch, but after putting on the balaclava, she has reinstalled her net, folding it over the frame of her glasses and then draping it around the sides. It's Dinah's preference to enclothe her- [10] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! self as much as possible with the gear she's been issued. We're not even in the kayak yet and she's pulled on the insulated neoprene pogies that pass like gauntlets over the sleeves of her paddling jacket all the way up to her elbows. "Is that ready?" I ask, indicating her daybag lying on the ground. "Not quite," she says. "I have a few things yet to organize." Her eyes are not discernible behind the reflective panes of her glasses. In fact, the only visible portions of her body are the reddened cheeks to each side of the pinched nose and the compressed lips of her mouth. "Let's take everything down to the beach, anyway." I suggest. "That way we can get a better sense of things. We're getting a little behind schedule here." I grab the canvas satchel that holds the campfire grate. Dinah takes up her daybag and we start to head out. I give her the news regarding the most recent development with the Instructors. My words stop her in her tracks. "I thought," she begins, "the only reason they agreed to let us go up there was because they were going with us." "They are going with us," I tell her. "We'll all be camping together tonight at Black Sand Beach." "But," she continues, "I thought the main reason they were going was to make sure it is safe." Dinah turns to face me directly, her brown eyes peering at me from behind the panes of the glasses which have now become transparent. "That's what they told us," she adds. "Maybe the truth is they don't think it's any big deal and are only going up there because they're curious to see the place." Dinah turns her head, the angle changes and the lenses become opaque again. She moves the daybag to her chest where she can clasp it with both arms, made clumsy by the pogies, and moves off down the slope of the sand toward the boat. The campfire grate is the last of the group gear to be loaded. Cord and Pat and Tyler grabbed all the rest. I make a final sweep of the site, scuffing around in the dirt for tent stakes and whatnot. Looks good. Except for an empty stuff sack someone left behind. How could they miss it? Presumably some sort of gear was supposed to go into it. You can never account for some people's methods. I use the stuff sack to smooth out the ground where the door of the tent was positioned and then hang the empty ditty on a branch of the scrub. Whoever missed the stuff sack has evidently figured out a way to do without it. I certainly don't want it clutter- ing up my gear. I leave it on the bush as a marker in case some day we should need to return to this spot, however unlikely.

! ! !

Section #2: The Extent of Her Bicep ! We quarter into a fair wind blowing down from the head of Port Wells. The boats pitch and roll in the diagonal chop. It's not a difficult motion to adjust to. A little tightening of the stomach muscles here, a little relaxation of the back muscles there. My main difficulty at present is finding a paddle stroke to synch with Di- nah's. There was this same problem in the early days of the first go- around, when she and I paddled together most everyday. The trouble is she doesn't pull evenly on both sides. Her right stroke is con- siderably stronger than her left, though I'm not sure if I should use the term "stronger" in the same sentence with Dinah. Good grief. I've been with the woman in the same boat for fifteen minutes and already my sarcastic reflex is coming back. It'd been such a nice break. Ten days of not dwelling upon the strange case of Dinah Orbeck. There now. I think I've got us matched well enough. I just needed to remember that this is Dinah's quirk. Oh, if it were her only quirk. The other two boats key on Dinah's and my double. Tyler’s on the upwind flank, the eagle primary she stuck on the bow of the single twining nicely in the cross-breeze. Pat and Cord move into the downwind position. Cord has feathered his paddle, the upstroke blade slicing forward easily into the wind. This is good technique on his part. I feather my own paddle, twisting the shaft until the blades are opposed, and then shout out to the group until everybody does likewise. This will not help a great deal but it will give the breeze less to blow against and ought to save us a couple of hundred strokes over the course of the crossing. Compensating for wind drift, not to mention Dinah's and my combined uneven paddle stroking, with a slight application of left rudder, I keep the tip of Dinah's balaclava pointed just north of the gap in the opposite shoreline which the compass reckons to be the mouth of Harriman Fjord. Now it's simply a matter of pulling water. [12] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ! A steady crawl at three knots, maybe slightly less with the wind quartering off the bow, should put us at Harriman in about an hour. Everybody just needs to stay tight and close, like we've been taught, and keep an eye out for drift logs. I take a quick pause between strokes, long enough to remove the binos out of the daybag, and scan the water ahead. All appears clear. I drop the binos and get back on the paddle just as Dinah senses something amiss and half turns in her seat. Her effort the only thing that was propelling us through the water for a couple of seconds there, the boat slowed noticeably, almost as if no one was paddling at all, a reminder of the old days with the woman. It takes half a minute to get back up to speed. Tyler has shot ahead slightly and Pat in her bow cockpit stopped paddling for a moment, wondering if something was up. Everyone's back in synch again. The binos picked up no sign of the Instructors anywhere. They've probably already completed the crossing and are on their way up the Arm. Sunlight glancing off the chop is putting little stars in the corners of my glacier glasses. Golden has already fallen well astern. The line of furze that shaded the sandy mounds where we pitched our tents has merged back into the landscape. The stuffsack marker is long gone to view. The precise same beach would be difficult to find again. God knows how many fathoms of cold water are already beneath the hulls. I keep one eye on the handy balaclava directional indicator mounted atop Dinah's head which, though it oscillates wildly with the roll of the boat, is plenty accurate for our purposes. At one point this morning, Tyler mentioned the precise heading we'd need to assume for the crossing. "Is that corrected for declination, or not?" I asked. "Uncorrected," she said. Not that it matters. We can see quite plainly where we're headed. With one eye on Dinah's cap, I devote the other to studying the way Tyler's hair is blowing across her face. She lets the hair settle wherever it wants to. I guess there's no point in fighting it. The dark red hanks carry reluctantly out on the breeze. The wind is barely able to lift them. I know what that tangled mess feels like. It fell across my face once, coming to rest upon nose and mouth, so heavy and thick I thought I might suffocate. On her next downstroke, Tyler smiles back at us. She, for one, is happy to be on the water and to be paddling solo in the Po- laris single, not dependent upon anyone else. She flicks the loose ends of the blue bandana knotted around her throat and the wind takes the tips out to flutter in the air over her shoulder like twin pennants. Section #2: The Extent of Her Bicep [13] ! ! Tyler pauses in her stroke and holds the paddle cocked. She checks her wristwatch, her upper arm emerging clean and smooth from the sleeve of the t-shirt. It's deceiving, that arm. It appears soft and possibly even a bit flabby with the sunlight pooling in the contours. I've had my mouth on the arm, right there where the skin follows the muscle, and it felt pliable enough to my lips. But to grasp her upper arm with the hand is to discover rock hard tissue beneath the softness. Tyler gives me a nod. Right. The time. We must be doing okay by her calculations. Tyler has reviewed the tide chart, either last night or this morning, and memorized the relevant data. She'll not need to consult the chart again for days. "A penchant for minutiae," she calls it. We're still on schedule, by her calculation, to catch the turn of the tide up the fjord. I don't really care about catching the tide, but if we do succeed at this small goal it'll make the day easier for Dinah and Pat, which is enough reason to follow Tyler's lead. As the girl resumes paddling, one can make out a hint of the clenched muscle beneath the dimpled skin of her arm. It was only yesterday that I learned about the extent of those muscles. Tyler and I had gone out for a walk at Golden. The idea was to hike to the point and be back to camp in time to help redis- tribute rations. We made it to the point, all right, but that was when the trouble started. We were investigating a cave, a sort of dug-out in the bank, human-built it looked to be, the walls and ceiling blackened with soot. We speculated that it'd been used at one time by native fishermen for smoke curing fish. We were taking turns peering into this divot and when she bent over and the thick hair fell away from her neck leaving it exposed and vulnerable and, well, that was that. Tyler was busy hypothesizing that the dug-out might've enjoyed a long history as a fish smoker, as opposed to a one-time operation, which was all very interesting. In the meantime, I took hold of her arm as an anchor point, appreciating fully for the first time the measure of the bicep. I'm not sure what brought our mouths together -- I don't think it was entirely my doing -- but they sure came together, hard enough to cut my lip against my own teeth. She talked on, saying, "I think it's definitely soot", even as I pressed forward. For an instant, with my lips on hers, I felt her mouth still moving with words, her voice vibrating in her throat. "Sheesh," she said, when I finally pulled away. "I thought for sure you were going to make your move back on Olsen. I was beginning to wonder.” "It's not that I didn't want to," I said. I could hardly catch my breath. I was actually panting. "It's just that I thought it inadvis- [14] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! able. I still think it inadvisable." "Well, jeez. You sure caught me by surprise. I couldn't figure out why you were leaning in so close. I thought you were going to blow a bug out of my hair. Why do you say inadvisable?" "Because there's so little time." "All the more reason to act, don't you think?" This was yesterday, less than twenty-four hours ago. Now, today, Tyler paddles on a close parallel to our boat and on every upstroke the breeze licks the seawater off her paddle and carries it straight back to Dinah and me. This is more my problem than Di- nah's. Buckets of seawater could splash against Dinah and she'd never notice, bundled up as she is. The spray hits me in the face, droplets so cold they almost burn. I don't mind it so much as long as the sun's out. The water beads up nicely on the deck, each drop a miniature world of sky and sea and green headland. Someone else's blow-by I might object to but as it's coming off Tyler's paddle it's okay. Like taking a sip out of her personal water bottle, which I never mind doing. I hesitated so long before making my move, as Tyler puts it, because I do think it ill-advised. I don't see where we can possibly go with it. If she and I were to become involved we should've started on the outbound leg. As it was, aside from a little chit-chat on the bus from Anchorage, we hardly spoke to one another until the camp at Columbia Glacier. Apparently, she was waiting for me to take the lead. Not that I could tell. Besides, I was kind of late getting in line. There were those other two males, Cord and Thad Houston, who clearly have, or had, an interest, though she says in neither case was it reciprocated. Then there's Will, the line cook from Cleveland. I still don't know entirely what's between Tyler and that guy. There's simply not enough time. Tyler can have no idea how long it takes me to even begin getting comfortable with a woman. On a trip like this, with everybody grouped up and forced to be together, it's impossible for her to understand the extent to which, normally, I live in solitude. She'd be appalled to learn how much time I spend by myself each day doing little aside from collecting my thoughts. If she and I were going to be out here for a year, or if we were never going back at all, well then, okay, it'd be worth it to try and work out a strategy. Even if we could go back to Day One of the trip, knowing what we know now, that might give us a fighting chance. Then, after a month of traveling this way together, we could see what we have. But this is not the situation before us. In a matter of days this is all going to end. My right side is getting soaked. Some of the spray comes from Tyler but now I see most of it's coming from my own paddle. Section #2: The Extent of Her Bicep [15] ! ! These paddles aren't equipped with drip rings and the water's running right down the shaft into my drawers. Something's not right. Well, now I see what's going on. The drawstring has once again pulled out of my sprayskirt. Goddamn school issue equipment. Not all the stuff they gave us is bad but some of it is downright cheap and institutional. Sweatshop spawn. This is the second time this has happened. And the group gear sewing kit which I'll need to fix it has become misplaced, probably lost. Dinah has turned her head to say something to Tyler. I cannot hear what Dinah’s saying but I can guess she's asking Tyler to back off a little. At this point, I wouldn't mind a little less spray, myself. Yep, that's exactly what it was. Tyler nods and moves out ahead of us on the flank. I get synched back up with Dinah's stroke and check the course heading with the pointer of her balaclava. I'd swear I've been holding true to the vector with the sun positioned steadily at a set angle off my left shoulder, but the balaclava shows us proceeding toward a point south of the gap. A bit of right rudder returns the bow to a heading slightly north of the opening, aiming it at a spot where the trees thin out down by the shoreline. The sun has now swung around to hit me square in the back. We'll see if the new heading keeps us on course. With the tide going out there must be a cross-current carrying us southward. Very likely the wind, too, is responsible for some drift. Dinah has revolved around in her seat and is speaking to me. Her mouth moves excitedly, but her words are blown away across the water. The lenses of her glasses are fogged with spray and I can't tell anything of what she means. I tap my ear and shrug. She points with her paddle across the water. This time I hear her. "Grebes," she yells, or what passes for a yell with Dinah. Well, sure enough. An echelon of waterfowl is beating its way through a wave trough on a slant away from the boat. Compact flight bodies undulating with each wing thrust, the birds cruise low to the water to take advantage of ground effect. Even angling against the wind the grebes are making better headway than we are. It's been ten days since Dinah and I last paddled together and I'd almost forgotten how she can be relied upon to I.D. any and all bird life. Later, when we get to camp and she's had a chance to look it up, she'll inform us of the proper genus and species of the grebes. The two of us, Dinah and I, spent the first week of the course as boat mates, paddling the same green and white expedition double, day in [16] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! and day out, a week that now seems six months ago. It's all fine, her bird reconnoitering. I only wish she wouldn't pause in her stroke whenever she takes a notion to turn around and tell me something. It's a habit of hers I recall very distinctly. The other boats have moved somewhat ahead again and I have to really dig in to bring us up to speed. The grebes are almost gone from sight, heading to wherever they’re going, toward whatever vision of water and shoreline they hold in their tiny pencil heads. Letting my gaze wander out along the bird's projected flight path, I see a speck of brilliant white that doesn't appear to be connected to anything in the background. It's either sea ice or it's a whale. One or the other. Unless I get the binoculars out again I won't be able to tell which until we're closer. Back at the school's branch in Palmer, the evening of our arrival, we all sat around, students and Instructors, and voiced our expectations for the course. Everyone had their reason for signing up and, more often than not, individuals expressed a hope that there'd be sightings of bears and whales. No one said anything about icebergs. And no one at the time, including myself, made a distinction between sighting orca or humpback. Prior to our setting out, I suppose, we would've been happy to spot either. Now that we've seen about a hundred orcas, both at a distance and at close range, and I mean very close range, like practically in our campsite, which I'll explain by and by, the main thing we want anymore is to sight a humpback. With only six paddling days left to go, I cannot say I've completely given up on the humpback, but it's sure starting to seem a scratch. Reluctantly, because of how it retards our forward progress, I get the binos out and after a couple of good pulls on the paddle put the lenses on the white speck. It's a chunk of ice, all right, the first sea ice we've come across in several days. The berg appears to have floated out of College Fjord. I'm going to refrain from pointing it out to the others. As long as we don't acknowledge the ice then it doesn't exist. If Dodi is correct, we'll see plenty of bergs up Harri- man. Let everybody, particularly Dinah, enjoy an uncluttered prospect for now. The whole glassing of the iceberg took about five seconds, maybe one and a half paddle strokes, not enough to cost us much momentum. Dinah in the front cockpit, completely clothed against the elements, an impenetrable construct of layers, diligently puts her paddle down to both sides of the kayak. She's fully warmed up to the task of our crossing, probably stroking as vigorously as she's going to from here on out until the course is over when she'll return to her car travels. I'm not willing to concede she's pulling much wat- Section #2: The Extent of Her Bicep [17] ! er, but at the same time I don't think she's too much of a brake on our progress. It's odd, given all Dinah and I have been through, that I have no recollection whatsoever of her being on the bus that carried us to the Palmer base. More than likely, she was sitting in the seat directly behind the driver and upon boarding I was past her before I had wits enough to take any particular note of my fellow students. Certainly, at some point in the ride, my gaze must have rested upon the back of her head. She wasn't wearing the balaclava on the bus, that much I'm sure of. I'd remember that. It's easy to imagine Dinah there, the only occupant of the seat behind the driver, sitting with hands folded in her lap, head turned to the scenery, the housing tracts of Eagle River gliding across the panes of her eyeglasses. Nothing about her demeanor would've offered the least clue to the tumult working within her person. Nor did I have any specific reason to notice Dinah once we were at the Palmer compound, the defunct dairy farm that serves as the outdoor school's Alaska headquarters. The school has actually converted with good result the long milking sheds into equipment dumps and supply depots for the backpacking, mountaineering and sea kayaking courses they run up here. I don't recall Di- nah's presence the first couple of hours of that morning when we listened to the Instructor's various spiels and then filed through rations issue, receiving the two duffel bags each of dry food, mostly poly bags of legumes and grains and pasta, that was to see us through the expedition. I recall the odd action or word of many of the other course members during this initial phase. I remember Dodi going over the list of student names before we got on the bus in Anchorage, how the Lead Instructor appeared uncomfortable subsuming her personality, even momentarily, to something as organized and dry as reading off a roster. Our Course Leader smiled as each name was read and it was then that I first noticed how the woman's teeth seemed all of a piece. This reading of the names, a sort of recruit- ment, transpired in the parking lot of the Anchorage train station and I, for one, was excited for a moment thinking we'd be taking the train north to Palmer. I said something about it to one of the other students and was overheard by one of the male Instructors, Burl or Thad Houston, I don't recall which, who informed us that we'd actually be taking the school's bus, parked nearby, to Palmer. However, he added, when it came time to travel to Whittier, the launch point of the expedition, we would in fact take the train. I recall Tyler and Cheryl from the bus ride, although I didn't succeed in connecting their names with their persons right off, re- [18] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! quiring the girls to re-introduce themselves again when we got to Palmer. I recollect many initial impressions surrounding most of the individuals with whom I've become bound up with over the course of the last month. But of Dinah's presence I have no memory. She was like a ghost, cloaked in her retiring mannerisms, not visible to any eye, not to my eye anyway, until the student group and the Instructors settled down to the process of equipment issue the afternoon of the first day. Then I saw her, Dinah Orbeck, in addition to all of the personal gear and paraphernalia she'd spread about her feet for the Instructor's inspection. This was when the mystery of Dinah began to unfold, or occlude, depending on how you look at it. Man, that damn iceberg is on some kind of weird lateral drift. The waters of Port Wells are supposedly subject to all sorts of kooky currents. The berg is now quite visible against the dark eastern shore. I'm sure everybody in the group has spotted it, but no one's saying anything, which is good. No use in pointing out the obvious. ! ! !

! ! ! !

Section #3: Circular Concentrations

! Following rations issue and a hot lunch at the base, we fifteen students were led to a large open bay which featured numbered squares painted upon a smooth cement floor. The squares were about the right size to lie down in diagonally and one of the other students, not knowing what was going on any more than the rest of us, suggested it might be time for our naps, which didn't sound like a bad idea to me. The Instructors had a name for this place, the White Zone, a term I figured they'd been using for years and which they pronounced so glibly it was hard at first to make out what it was they were saying. ("Whi-zo"?) Our luggage, off-loaded by the bus driver, had been lined up in a row against one wall of the so-called White Zone. We students were cued to grab our bags, take them to a square, unpack and place around us all of the gear we'd brought from home which we thought might be useful on a twenty-eight day kayak trip. When we were ready, the three In- structors would come around to each of our staging areas and determine the suitability of our personal equipment. The instructor named Burl, with hands on hips, broke into the ensuing hubbub -- "PSA, people!" -- to advise that when we each went to the issue room we should be careful to purchase or rent layers which weren't too tight on our bodies. "There should be some drape," he said. "For comfort and proper insulation." It was an odd thing to say, I thought, though I noticed the Lead Instructor, Dodi, thought it highly pertinent, even amusing. I took the whole process to be a sort of test, a determination of what each of us, on our own, thought might be necessary to survive in the wilderness. A quick look around produced the impression that for some of my fellow students Wilderness existed in their minds only as an imaginary region and not a place they'd actually spent much time in. Their notion of the equipment they were going to need in the bush appeared to be derived entirely from lore they'd [20] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! been exposed to via movies, or T.V., or gleaned from the culture at large. The tools some of them placed down for inspection in their white painted square -- buck knives, Army surplus gear, web belts with attached plastic canteens, hooded parkas featuring fur ruffs, flint and steel fire starters, I swear I even saw a pair of night vision goggles -- well, it was a kind of sampling of everything Americans had ever carried with them into a frontier wilderness, or into inhospitable combat zones, since the country's inception. On the flip side, it appeared a couple of students were going to try to bring actual pillows. As it was, this inventory was placed against the In- structor's real knowledge of state-of-the-art wilderness equipment most of which they'd personally field tested to determine its useful- ness. I'd traveled to Palmer with my large external frame pack containing all my normal gear and accoutrements. Since I anticipated returning to the harbor town in Southeast directly following the course, I'm not sure why I felt compelled to travel so heavy. Habit, I suppose. I sort of don't know how to pack anymore without packing everything. And there's always the possibility a person might decide not to go back. It took me all of about a minute to disburse from my extra large rucksack the few gear items I thought might have some utility on a sea kayaking expedition. I placed the framepack and everything else off to the side and spent a moment studying the equipment which I estimated had a fairly good chance of being approved. This included: one insulated watch cap, a pair of polypropylene gloves, a woolen union suit, a daypack, one small set of binoculars, a metal stowaway pot with lid and other odds and ends such as a couple of brass safety pins held together with a short length of day- glo utility line. Because I don’t know how you can reasonably travel anywhere without taking along a few safety pins, you know, to fix a blown zipper, or bad elastic in your underwear. My penny whistle, which I fully intended to take, I hid in the inside pocket of my rain parka. Not that I didn't think it's inclusion wouldn't be approved, I just didn't want to advertise the fact that I owned a musical instrument. It can lead to the awkwardness of being asked to play. I also added my tent and stove to the pile, on the off-chance I might be allowed to bring my own shelter and cooking gear, you know, for the sake of privacy and self-sufficiency. I then took a minute to wonder how badly I was going to feel when all of this stuff was lost due to the capsize of my kayak. Some of the gear, the binos for instance, I'd managed to retain in my possession for more than a decade. It was going to be a hard loss, for sure, when they went overboard and sank to the bottom of the Sound. Section #3: Circular Concentrations [21] ! I glanced around the barn to see how the others were doing. I gathered an impression of hunched figures concentrating upon various indistinct objects placed upon the floor and then my attention was drawn to what was taking place in the square next to mine. There stood a woman who looked to be about my own age, or possibly slightly older, absorbed in the task of neatly setting out dozens of gear items in rows perfectly parallel to the painted lines of her staging area. And here is my first distinct memory of Dinah, that is, of her standing within the confine of her square in the White Zone. I’d probably have no recollection of even this if all that eventually came to pass between her and I never took place. I was struck by the array of equipment in the female stranger's possession. It seemed she'd brought with her all of the recommended personal items -- sunglasses, camera, camp shoes -- in addition to every item of optional gear indicated on the various checklists the school had mailed us -- sleeping bag, camp pad, thermal underwear, rain gear, insulated cap and so on -- all of which the school stocks in its issue room and is happy to rent out at a nominal fee, or even sell, to its students. I took particular note of a bug net, lying on the floor still stapled to its display card, and experienced a brief anxiety. I knew all about the quantity of mosquito bites the state of Alaska is said to offer its visitors. But I couldn't remember a headnet being on the school's checklist and I'd not brought one with me. I've never owned a headnet. As it turned out, they had them for rent. I saw that the woman in the square had also brought her own personal pair of rubber boots and immediately regretted not having brought the pair I had down in Southeast, worn while working in canneries and on fishing boats. I suppose rubber boots were on the school’s checklist, as well, but they aren’t a part of my standard travel equipage and I’d left them at the house as if I were never coming back, which is interesting in itself. Anyway, it was more stuff I had to rent. Which ever way you went, rent or purchase, the school emphasized that everything in their storeroom had undergone ample field testing and would be the gear most suited to the terrain and the season and the type of travel. The woman in the adjoining square, whose name I'd probably heard during the initial introduc- tions but was yet unable to bring to mind, had evidently decided to take the matter of equipment acquisition into her own hands. She and the clerk at whatever outfitter shop she'd ransacked had left very little to chance. Bottles of sunscreen and mosquito repellant, a full first aid kit, down booties, pile pants, bandanas, travel toothbrush -- on and on the rows of gear, truly like a going-out-of-busi- [22] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ness sale at a sporting goods store, which perhaps was the circumstance under which all this bounty had been harvested. There was a pair of full-sized binoculars in a zippered case. Next to the binos was a small cardboard box with a picture of a cookset on the label. Next to that, still in its pegboard display carton, I saw a solar shower rig, gear I've always thought to be a little gimmicky, though I guess it might work, or at least be of sufficiently durable construction to last more than one outing into the field. It’s certainly no more complicated than the hydration bladders everyone seems to be going for these days. As a side note, that particular model of solar shower has been on the market some ten or fifteen years. I remember seeing the same unit for sale when I was a teenager. Always the same fetching young woman on the package, pictured from her rounded bare shoulders up, blown dry hair still fluffy, a hand on the nozzle where she anticipated the warm trickle of water to emerge. During the course of ten plus years, in countless gear shops and outfitters, I've checked in with the girl on the box and discovered her still waiting for the arrival of her solar heated rinse. Four or five years ago I caught up with her in age and then went on past. Her naked shoulders still offer the same allure as they did when I was seven- teen, maybe even a little more so. The woman in the next square paused in her sorting activity to stare fixedly at a compass in its cellophane blister pack. I edged over toward my own property line, near enough to determine that the compass she'd brought with her was very similar to, if not exactly like, the standard orienteering model I own and which I actually had with me in my pack, though I hadn't thought to take it out for possible acceptance into the category of approved gear. I couldn't tell what the woman was eyeballing so closely. The cardboard backing behind the compass was covered with text and featured a colored illustration of a man and woman wearing backpacks, not very realistic looking backpacks, more like felt covered boxes, which the artist had failed to equip with anything like waist belts. The couple were in close conference over a compass-like instrument that the man was holding flat on the palm of his hand. The two figures bore calm expressions and appeared confident the gadget would direct them safely back somewhere, to their car, I suppose. I assumed the woman was considering how best to remove the device from its plastic and cardboard enclosure. She had no idea I was watching her, so intent was she upon the problem of the package. As she bent her head to study the literature on the cardboard backing, I took note of the unusual length and sharpness of Section #3: Circular Concentrations [23] ! the woman’s nose. After a minute or so, she returned the compass, still in its cellophane blister, to the floor in the row she felt appro- priate to its organization. Suffice to say, most of the equipment the woman was distrib- uting in her white zone square was entirely new and unstained by use. A good deal of it, like the messkit, was still in its original packaging, instructions and warranty cards tethered to it by a zip-tie. The sight of all that pristine plastic, stainless steel and fresh cordu- ra in my neighbor's square -- a spirited testament to the manufac- turing capabilities of the Preparedness Industry -- moved me to glance once again over my own meagre pile, its eight or nine items so battered and threadbare even I knew it was questionable their inclusion would be approved. About the only two pieces of gear still in decent shape, which I fully intended to bring no matter what anyone said, was a set of waterproof rain pants and a wool shirt, neither of which were on the floor because I was already wearing them, had worn them on the plane ride from Southeast Alaska to Anchorage. They were the only clothes I owned that could be said to qualify as casual apparel, a stretch at that, and which could be worn without drawing notice in the company of other more nattily attired airline travelers. The Instructors were working their way around the group. The gear assortments of the other students, which I quickly sur- veyed, appeared to range in quality and quantity somewhere between what the woman next to me had brought, and to my own offering, or to virtually nothing, other than maybe a sweater, or a pair of sneakers. Clearly, there were students who’d arrived expecting the school to completely outfit them. On the far side of the bay I spotted the young woman who had re-introduced herself to me on our bus ride from Anchorage as Tyler. She was standing in the company of the same female with whom she'd shared her bus seat, the seat which happened to be directly in front of mine. This other female was Cheryl, also forced to re-introduced herself to me on the bus. Of course, by the time we were herded into the White Zone some two or three hours later, I'd forgotten Cheryl's name again. Fairly typical for me. Looking back on it, I really can't say for sure, as I gazed over at the two girls on the opposite side of the equipment bay, that I was actually able to recall to my mind Tyler's name but it seems I might have managed it. Based upon our brief conversation on the bus, I was already thinking she was a girl to be acquainted with. Nice looking and smart. Young, certainly. She struck me as unusually self-possessed. Who knows if by the time the bus discharged us at Palmer I'd successfully imprinted Tyler's name on my mind, but I'm going to say [24] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! here that I had it available to recall. The two girls were conversing enthusiastically with a third student, a male of athletic parts who appeared to be about their own age, which is to say, around twenty or maybe twenty-two, not older than twenty-five. I would eventually learn this fellow's name to be Cord, short for Cordwainer, a familial surname assigned to him to use as a middle name. He uses the shortened version for casual acquaintanceship, as he's explained, it being more distinctive than Mike, or Michael, his actual first name. Even with all the commotion within the barn, I was thinking I could make out what I'd already noticed on that morning’s van shuttle from Anchorage, this being a certain way the auburn-haired girl, Tyler, had of laughing and talking at the same time. I also remember the way the afternoon light, issuing directly in through the open bay door, was playing upon the side of her face, making it possible to spot the dimple which occurred over a cheekbone. The dimple was a tiny phenomenon I'd observed while on the bus ride. The morning sun shining through the bus window at Tyler's side had thrown the bottom of this minuscule divot, when it chanced to appear by the contraction of certain muscles, into shade like a small lunar crater. Granted, if I hadn't already known the dimple was there it’s doubtful whether I could have spotted it from across the equipment bay. Now, at the time, I understood it was necessary for Tyler to stay on or near her White Zone square. Naturally, she could hardly have been expected to break off the conversation with the girl, Cheryl, Tyler's best shot in her new surroundings for a female sidekick. Nor should I have expected her to stop talking to the young man who was by far the swarthiest and most well-proportioned of the males present. Nope, it wouldn't have been at all reasonable to suppose she would leave the company of those two and come over and talk to me. I did hope I might catch her eye, have the opportunity to lift a chin in recognition, with the possibility she'd nod back, but it didn't happen. Out of pure retribution, I had the thought that neither her hair, nor her sidekick's, both sleek from having been recently shampooed and subject to whatever else it is girl's do to their hair, was not going to look nearly so lovely once the two of them were a week into the backcountry. When one of the Instructors broke up the threesome's discussion -- which I figured, at that stage of things, couldn’t be about anything more substantive than their respective schools, major areas of study and so on -- in order to inspect the girls' individual gear piles, the young collegiate whom I'd later know as Cord, again short Section #3: Circular Concentrations [25] ! for Cordwainer, ignoring the directive to stay in our assigned squares, went to stand just outside the open barn door. There he took off his shirt and oriented his body toward the sun. I remember how the light embraced the skin of his torso, skin that was stretched over ridged musculature like a well-tanned and supple leather made from the most select part of an animal's hide, the sort of blemish-free leather you'd choose out to fashion a pair of gloves, or a nice briefcase. The darkness of the youth's tan spoke of life in some southerly place, a latitude where one could go shirtless most of the year. I've since learned that Cord, surfer and mild renegade from The Program, frequents a tanning salon during the winter months, a sort of occupational requirement to keep his skin condi- tioned for the five summer months he spends aboard an oceanside lifeguard stand, which is when the true burnishing takes place. It was at about this point in the whole proceeding that I had a chance to thoroughly scrutinize the student group individual by individual, separated as they were from each other by small gaps, and was dismayed to note, aside from two or three older folks, one of whom was the woman next door, a generally collegiate tone to the individuals who were to be my future travel mates. To a person they looked very clean and groomed. I found myself wondering if any of the youngsters standing or kneeling in their painted squares had ever done anything more extensive than regulated kamp- ground camping, much less a wilderness trip along the lines of the expedition we were soon to undertake, an outing scheduled to run twenty-eight days without re-supply or any other logistical support. I certainly hadn’t. I'd been on some lengthy outdoor excursions, mainly walkabouts, ventures that had nothing to do with boats, trips where the basic drill involved hauling a heavy pack through mountainous regions or red rock canyons for ten days, maybe a couple of weeks at the most. I've been on enough such outings to observe that, around the seventh day, people who are new to the backcountry mode will often pass through a threshold at which juncture some of what they thought to be their most closely held assumptions can be subject to alteration. Call it an absence of the usual props and reminders. It happened to me, enough times in my early twenties that the alterations became permanent, and I'll admit I now make something of a study of the process in others. Invariably, within mere days of being on the trail, there's a tailing off of concern for one's status and position within the larger society. This is replaced by new preoccupations regarding food, muscle fatigue and incipient weather. What you might call pre-industrial era instincts begin to kick in. The realization hits each per son in turn -- some quicker than others -- that in this new, previous- [26] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ly unappreciated circumstance of living between the ground and the sky, no one can afford to be entirely out just for themselves. In order to minimize risk and maximize physical comfort while continuing to move forthrightly over the landscape, individuals begin to look for the best way to align their efforts with others in the group. One person sets up the tent while another fetches the water and someone else begins the cooking. That sort of thing. It's been my observation that when people detach from their old self-ag- grandizing schemes the result can be very up-lifting. A long backpacking trip can shake people loose from their moorings and infuse them with a sense of greater possibility. They figure if they can hack it day after day in the back-of-beyond then what else can't they accomplish? Well, I can't say I really know for sure yet about the capacity of a sea kayaking expedition to uplift one's sense of what's possible. I wouldn't exactly say it's done this for me. Not so far, three weeks into the trip. It's possible some of the younger people are going through a change and are maybe beginning to consider the possibility of dropping out for a while, extending their travel, or even going on to become instructors and working for the school. Sometimes you don't know the full effect of these excursions until you get back and are returned to the confusion of the world. In retrospect, a day in the backcountry can seem to have the temporal weight as a full week in the front. A fellow hiker once confided to me after returning from a twelve day out-and-back he felt it almost necessary to trick himself into taking the old concerns seriously again. Let me expand a bit more on the concept. Once upon a time, I worked a succession of summer contracts for the concession at the Old Faithful location in Yellowstone National Park. Each time I returned for another summer go-around, reporting to the employment office in Gardiner, Montana, I'd survey the room full of other starting employees, most having just arrived for their first summer, and wonder how many would end up seduced by wilderness and the seasonal lifestyle. The scene at the outdoor school's headquarters in Palmer, twenty-one days ago now, reminded me enough of starting day at Y.P. to prompt some thoughts along the same lines. Scruti- nizing my course mates that afternoon of Day Zero, noting that nearly all of them appeared younger than twenty-five, it was impossible to predict which of them, or if any of them, would be radical- ized by our month long stint in the wilderness. If any have since decided to chuck the standard deal and go find some other way to live, maybe something more materially simple, more communal and spontaneous, I'll be the last to know. They might not even know themselves until they get ten or fifteen years further down the Section #3: Circular Concentrations [27] ! road. Such change tends to be insidious. The affected don't realize what's happened to them until they try to re-insert themselves back into the conventional mode and discover they can't trick themselves into full participation anymore, even after years of trying. Most times, I guess, the change is pretty subtle. Here's a typical sequence: wilderness initiate arrives back home, ten years goes by and then looking back upon the trajectory of their early adulthood they notice that around the time they took that outdoor course, or the short internship counting cutthroat trout, or banding birds for the Forest Service, a noticeable shift had occurred. On their kayak trip, or mountaineering expedition, or three weeks in Denali, or whatever it was, they'd met some people, or maybe just one individual, who spoke eloquently about the West and its oppor- tunities. On the strength of this they’d taken a job working in Mon- tana, or Wyoming, or Utah, one summer off from college, or so they thought. That experience had led to repeat summers and while keeping at their Bus. Admin. major they’d obtained a minor in Out- door Rec., or Resource Management, or some such thing. After graduating from the East Coast school, they’d ended up marrying someone who wanted to live in Boulder CO, which didn't sound like a bad idea. This carries them up to age thirty. One thing leads to another until they find themselves at forty doing marketing for a non-profit dedicated to wild lands preservation. Everything had stemmed from that one transcendent month, the Alaska adventure, say, experienced at age nineteen. I've seen it go this way. It went that way with me. A summer working in Yellowstone when I was twenty, exposed to the subversive effects of repeated forays into a mythic landscape and that was it. I was lost to The Program, never to return. Two months ago, I applied for and was accepted by this outdoor school to enter upon a long haul backpacking trip through the Brooks Range. A few weeks before I was supposed to confirm my enrollment I had the thought that maybe I should instead try a mode of travel about which I didn't already possess a load of opinion. I'd been thinking I needed to find an alternate outlet, anyway, something other than hiking. The situation is that for the past year or so I've been living and working in a fishing town in Southeast Alaska. The town is situated on an island which measures about twenty miles across on its longest axis, about three thousand feet above sea level at its highest point and is covered almost completely by a dense temperate rain forest. In places where the island doesn't support trees, which is most places because the terra is not at all that firma, it's blanketed [28] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! by muskeg, a sort of thick moss. This peat bog soaks up the hundred inches of annual rainfall like a big sponge. In many areas the island is so soggy it cannot be traveled over except upon a board- walk whose pilings are driven down ten feet into the sphagnum muck. A worse substrate for backpacking cannot be imagined. I suppose you could try hiking on it but it'd be a big step down from what I was used to, trekking the high, cold ridge lines of the North- ern Rockies. The idea of slogging all day through that marsh, sweat- ing up the insides of your raingear, camping at night upon the big wet sponge ... misery. I wouldn't want to take someone new to ruck- sacking on a three day traverse of Mitkof Island and have them think that's what it's all about. However, the island is said to lie smack in the middle of some of the best sea kayaking grounds in North America, if not the world. I frequently witness the cruising doubles pulled up to the town dock, tethered to the pilings by paddlers who've left their boats for an hour or so to hit town for re-supply. These folks are on trips from Seattle to Sitka, or all the way up to Haines and back. Their gear always looks impressive, I must say, the boats salt encrusted and sun bleached, fishing rods and paddles and whatnot bungee-corded to the decks. The double cockpit boats are big, eighteen feet long, some with sail rigs and outriggers. I could tell by looking at them that manning the fore cockpit would be one sort of challenge while occupying the rear would be another. Sea kayaking looked like an endeavor you could really give yourself over to. My thinking then was that while I was pretty sure kayaking could never supplant backpacking -- and three weeks into this course I'm even more convinced of this -- it might offer a physical outlet, exposure to elemen- tal forces and so forth, and possibly forestall my moving away from the fishing town where allegiances to certain individuals are already keeping me longer than I'd normally choose to stay. The upshot is that for some time now I've been considering the purchase of a kayak. It was the reality of writing out the check to the outdoor school for the backpacking trip that caused me to take a hard look at the expedition to which I was about to commit and to consider that, while I was sure the Brooks Range would be deluxe and all, maybe it'd be more to the point to expand my skill set in some other direction. I also began to reconsider what it might cost to acquire a sea kayak at some time in the future. I realized that for the same outlay as purchasing a boat I could instead enroll in the month long sea kayaking course offered by the school. I figured this way I could learn the necessary water-related skills, have a chance to try out different craft and gear before doing something as radical as buying my own boat. After all, the aforementioned al- Section #3: Circular Concentrations [29] ! legiances in the fishing town could dissolve at any moment. I knew that. In fact, they may've already dissolved in these few weeks I've been away. I’’ll admit, one of the reasons I'm on this trip is to give the allegiances the opportunity to dissolve, if they've a mind to. If the allegiances do dissolve -- and, really, it's a matter of one alle- giance, only one -- there will be literally nothing holding me to the town. It would only interfere with a clean break to have to dispose of an expensive and situation-specific piece of gear like a sea kayak. I know my tendencies. I'd be tempted to abandon the boat and related equipment and take the loss, which would be too bad. So, with all this in mind, I contacted the school and requested a switch from Brooks Range to Prince William Sound. Interestingly, the student packet for the Brooks Range course arrived while I was awaiting word about my change request. A quick scan of the pamphlets and literature convinced me I'd made the right decision. The last phase of the so-called backpacking trip entailed hiking out of the mountains to the banks of a certain river, inflating rubber rafts and floating down the river to the sea. I knew I wouldn't care for that. I've never liked sitting on a river raft and drifting with the current. Even before receiving notice from the school that the course change had been approved, I checked out of the library a book about sea kayaking in order to obtain a better notion of what it was all about. The book, written by a man apparently famous for his oceanic crossings performed solo, was interesting enough for its muscular style of prose. What really seized my attention were the picture plates, a series of photos depicting the near or total capsize of kayaks in a variety of seas. I kept returning to one photo in particular, a grainy black and white shot of a fully loaded double half- submerged between two waves. Everywhere surrounding the boat were wind-whipped wave crests. The photo, itself, was blurred and fogged due to droplets of sea water lashed up by the gale and blown against the camera lens. The kayak's stern paddler was already overboard in the drink, the back of his head barely supported above the waves by the pillow of his p.f.d. The poor fellow was reaching his arm out in desperation toward the paddle blade held toward him by his partner who, for the moment, was still in his bow cockpit. Di- rectly behind the boat, held motionless by the snapshot, was a foam-streaked wall of water six or maybe eight feet high. It was obvious that about two seconds after the shutter had been released the kayak had taken that wave broadside. The outstretched hand was never going to grab hold of the life-saving paddle. There it is, I thought, the snapshot brought back by the only survivor of the obscure maritime disaster. The school granted my course change request. I returned the [30] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! book to the library and resigned myself to the notion that the kayaking venture was probably going to involve capsize on a regular basis. My own boat would likely be among those that flipped and when it did I was going to lose all of the personal gear, my binoculars and my candle lantern and everything else, faithful equipment which had been with me through so much travel. I figured, before it was all over, at least one course participant would be lost to drowning. My acquaintances in the harbor town, all cannery workers and fishermen, screwed up their eyes and looked at me oddly when I told them I was planning to take a month off from work right at the height of the summer season to go sea kayaking. A few of them tried to work up enthusiasm for my outing but I could tell that in one part of their minds they thought I was nuts to have come so far for the chance to earn Alaska wages and then to bail right when the money stream was expected to be at its highest flow. One of my compadres responded to my travel plans by announcing he'd heard somewhere that long distance sea kayakers routinely employed anal plugs to keep from having to take a crap while on the water. While the predictable laughter played out amongst those who were listening in -- I’d forced my own laugh -- I reviewed in my mind the contents of the sea kayaking manual, unable to recall mention of any such plugs. A physical exam was required. I looked on as the town doctor, an ancient general practitioner who possessed the appearance of a man who'd encountered about every anatomical divergence from the human norm there was, completed the school's medical questionnaire, perused the release form and scanned the advise- ments. He looked down through his glasses and mumbled out loud in sentence fragments portions of the questionnaire. "In my considered opinion ..." he said, reading down, "... any reason to believe ... prospective student not fit to engage in an outdoor expedition of many days ... not limited to paddling a heavily loaded sea kayak on potentially rough water in sub-arctic conditions ... other strenuous high altitude travel ... elevations over ten thousand feet." The doc looked up. "Where in god's name are you going, son? Lake Titicaca?" The doc asked me what they were paying me to participate in the expedition. I explained that it was a school, that it had campuses around the world teaching various outdoor skills, mountain climbing and sailing and so forth, and that I was the one paying them, paying tuition in order to learn how to sea kayak. I looked at the doctor, hoping he wouldn't ask me how much tuition. If he had, I was prepared to lie and understate the amount by a thousand dollars. He glared at me for a second or two from beneath the thicket Section #3: Circular Concentrations [31] ! of one eyebrow and then returned to the paperwork. "I'm not going to waste both our time going down this checklist," he said, referring to the page or two of medical questions and concerns. "Why don't you tell me now if there's anything I need to know." I told him there wasn't anything that I knew of. The doctor nodded, signed and dated the form and handed it back to me. It seemed he hadn't much more to say to a young person, two or three generations his junior, who appeared determined to enter into a foolish and time wasting endeavor whose end purpose was beyond fathoming. I left the good doctor's office with the sense that my physical exam might've been the last chore of his long career, that as soon as the door shut behind me he was going to close up shop, take down his shingle and immediately retire to Arizona. Well, all right. I didn't anticipate that I, myself, would necessarily become a casualty while on the trip. I figured I could handle whatever hardship was entailed, as long as there was the opportunity to get a bit of sleep and the occasional cup of hot coffee. I could even for periods do without the sleep. However, I almost could not believe, as I looked around the so-called White Zone that afternoon, the collection of individuals before me, most of them around the age of twenty, a few of the males even possibly still in their teens, who were to be my companions on an expedition which was going to involve, as far as I'd been able to glean from the available literature, traveling upon dangerous seas from one deserted shoreline to another. As mentioned, there were a few exceptions to what I perceived to be the extreme youthfulness of the participants. There was Crandall, the fellow student whom I'd sat next to on the bus from Anchorage, a biology teacher from Texas, whom I estimated to be in his late twenties. There was also a woman whose square was at about the nine o'clock position to mine and who, with her shock of iron grey hair, struck me as possibly old enough to be my mother. At one point I watched this woman disgorge a sleeping bag from its stuff sack -- the bag seemed to just keep coming and coming -- until it lay at her feet, an enormous pile of nylon and fill. I presumed she'd done this so the Instructor's could give her sleeping gear the once over. I couldn't actually make out the brand name of the bag, but I could tell by the sheen of the material and its color that it was of high quality and by its loft a good zero degree bag if not rated even colder, a bit much for this season. I wondered if the Instruc- tors would allow it. I was pretty certain the school rented its own sleeping bags for the course and I'd already made the decision to leave my own bag in Palmer and put the wear on the institutional [32] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! gear. So, there was Crandall, and the woman with the sleeping bag, who was possible fifty or fifty-five years old. Then, of course, there was the well-equipped female in the square next over who looked to be in her mid-thirties. But whether they appeared to be of adult age, or not, none of these people, the wilderness novitiates standing around in a circle that day, seemed prepared to ride raging ocean waves in flimsy watercraft and to accept the losses that were bound to occur. I suppose it's possible, to those looking over at my square, that I might not've cut a particularly seaworthy figure either. I don't know. I've always figured myself to come across to the casual on- looker as more or less physically durable. I'd done a couple or three stints on halibut long-liners out of the fishing town down in South- east, forty-eight hour openings with not much sleep, and had sur- vived those with reputation intact if not much wealthier. But, looking over from their squares to mine, maybe all the other students saw was a skinny guy of indeterminate age, definitely not young anymore, wearing beat up clothes, a pile of dubious looking gear spread around his feet as though the bottom had fallen out of a cardboard box he'd been toting down to the Mission. This may be true, as far as my appearance goes. Still, I get around. I've seen some action. I played sports as a kid, football and track and whatnot. How was it even possible, I wondered that afternoon, that certain individuals had come to be in the equipment bay preparing to receive issue for an undertaking of extreme physical endurance? Not individuals, plural, really. What I'm talking about here is one particular person. Contained in the square one down from the older woman with the shock of grey hair was a young female of a type only our modern convenience store culture can produce. We've not seen the end phenomenon of this physical type by any means, that is yet to come, but until the present age the sun never shown down upon this species of creature, not in the numbers at which they currently exist. It's not at all a requirement that she have been female to fall into this category, there are plenty of male versions, probably a million in our nation alone. I couldn't say how old she was, or is, let's say twenty-two, somewhere between eighteen to twenty eight. The problem is, a lot of the usual indicators, such as wrinkles around the eyes, the definition of surface tissue, weather- ing of the skin and so forth, is almost entirely absent in such persons. They rarely go outdoors, or exert themselves indoors or out. She was, or is, mildly obese -- I keep saying "is" because I don't want anyone to assume even for a second this girl didn't follow through Section #3: Circular Concentrations [33] ! and enter upon and stay with the course. She did come on the course, she's on it now, headed into College Fjord with the mostly male Student Group Number One who to a man are out to try their physical limits. I don't believe this girl enrolled on the course for the corrective quality of the experience, to lose some of that weight, that flab, or put more definition in her face. I think she made the trip purely out of a sense of adventure, a desire to experience Wild Alaska and so forth and by all witnessed accounts she's thrived and performed and had a good time for herself. She may've, in fact, lost a little weight, but she's still about as pudgy as the afternoon I saw her there in Palmer when the overheads of the bay illuminated a complexion so pasty the analogy I couldn't help but make was to masticated potato chips. I didn't know her name then. Of course, I'd probably heard it two or three times by the hour of early afternoon we gathered in the White Zone, but it took the usual couple of days before I could link the name Beth with the girl. All I saw was someone who had a way of moving, or not moving, that brought to my mind the notion of a young person who up to that point in her life had spent considerable time inert, sitting or reclining, subsisting upon cream-filled cup cakes and canned cheese dip. She seemed slightly stooped as she moved about her square -- of course, this might've had something to do with the task of sorting gear items located at floor level - - but I read into the stooping a continual readiness to flop herself upon couch, or bed, or bean bag recliner. I imagined she squinted out at the world from beneath her brows as if it was difficult to focus upon on any object not the accustomed distance between her recline and the television. There it is, my biased and spiteful mind pointed out, the body shape we would all assume if we ceased to struggle and drifted downward to the minimum effort required anymore by the modern mode. I mean, here's how it is: you can take a job as a hotel night auditor, for example, forty hours a week, most of it spent sitting in a chair, monitoring the gimbal mounted television on the wall behind the front desk. Once the work shift is over the necessity of placing one foot in front of the other to gain the parking lot will constitute the day's only extended bodily endeavor, the trip from carport to couch, with a pause at the refrigerator, wrapping up the totality of physical expenditure. It's a life of eating food out of cellophane, or cardboard cartons, or aluminum bins, the only demand placed upon the body being the requirement to replenish these supplies, transport them to the little table in the T.V. room without spilling anything on the rug, or the remote. Slumped into the upholstery of a couch, drowsing there, even sleeping all night with the television [34] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! volume set on low, is the custom because it isn't necessary, really, for a person to make the move from couch to bed. This is sufficient rest and recreation to prepare a body for the task of throwing on jacket and shoes, getting out the door again to the car, the machine taking over the job of motility, hauling the corpus back to the site of sedentary employ. This actually qualifies as a bona fide existence, provided no one looks too closely. It's all that's asked of the individual in these modern times. If they do nothing more than this until retirement, or until the occlusion of plaque kills them, no one will raise an objection. And without knowing the first thing about her, about Beth, I concluded that this, or some approximation, was the way she'd been living right up until the moment she joined our expedition. Suffice it to say, these were grotesque and unfair assumptions on my part, no doubt prompted by insecurities concerning my own physical fitness, brought to the fore by what I assumed to be the upcoming ordeal. I have no idea how the girl named Beth lived prior to coming on the course. Plus, I had no reason to suppose even then, on Day Zed, that she wasn't the most pleasant and helpful of persons. She was certainly smiling all the time and chatting with everyone she met in Palmer, everyone except myself and I'm sure she would've come over and talked to me as we stood in the many lines of that morning and afternoon if I'd made myself the least ap- proachable, if I'd been willing to make eye contact, or look steadily in her direction. I don't think Beth had any idea, good natured person that she is, that I felt so repulsed and threatened. It was individuals of a type like the muscular chap, Michael, or Cordwainer, or Cord as he prefers, who stood near the bay door repairing his tan, I'd expected to find on a undertaking of this sort. I assumed this was the way it'd been for all of human history, that the swarthy and the fit were the ones to leave the comfort and safety of their home environment to venture out into the wildernesses of the world to discover what they could make of it, what they could make of themselves. Aside from the fellow, Cord, the male contingent who were present in the White Zone was not entirely impressive. Callow youth all, with untried expressions, they appeared every one of them freshly arrived from a stint at some summer academic reme- dial program. Again, as with the pasty girl, it didn't seem possible the school would recruit such individuals for the sort of ordeal upon which I imagined we were soon to embark. My mind rambled on, as I waited for my gear to be inspected. At one point my eyes rested upon the gear room seamstress who was situated in a sort of semi-enclosed cage off to the side of the is- Section #3: Circular Concentrations [35] ! sue bay. This worker, whom I noted had very sun damaged skin, was putting through its paces an industrial sewing machine which featured a flywheel as large as the sort you used to see on steam engines. She was bent to her task, intent on the process of mending one article of outerwear after another taken from a mound that overfilled a hamper. From time to time the rumble of the machine, as it shored up rents and tears in this or that article of raingear or insulating layer could be heard over the chatter of the student group and the Instructors conducting their inspections. Even if there were no capsizing, I thought, I didn't see how each of us could possibly subsist for an entire month on what was contained in those duffels, mostly poly bags of pasta, legumes and grain. As a backpacker, the feasible limit for carrying your own rations is about ten days, two weeks maybe if there's some base camping. Even with boats to haul everything I didn't see how we'd make it for twenty-eight days. I'd left the rations issue room, head somewhat reeling, already missing my simple backpacking fare, the bread and cheese, apples and whiskey, an oatmeal gruel that's simple to cook no matter the weather or conditions. I assumed on the course we'd be expected to catch fish, or forage for edible plants, but that only made it seem all the more likely some one or two of us would perish of starvation while the rest of us would get pretty hungry. While I thought this might be an instructive experience for a group who, to a person, appeared to be the progeny of white suburbia it was not necessarily going to be pleasant. Well, I guess it was right then, standing at ease in the White Zone at the Palmer Base, I had the first inkling that possibly this trip was not going to prove as harrowing as I'd supposed. Unless -- and this actually occurred to me -- my membership in the youth culture had so long since expired I no longer knew anymore what stood for the rites of passage. It'd been a long time since I’d showed up at the track for 440 intervals and it was possible the debauch of beer and menial labor and bar browsing I'd been engaging in for the past several years had distorted my view of what was considered acceptable physical risk. I'd gotten soft and meanwhile a more as- sertive generation had grown up and reached an age where they were the ones setting the tone for organized physical undertakings, sports, trips into the backcountry and so forth. A wilderness expedition which would present hardship and contain the risk of getting someone killed was the sort of challenge a new generation preferred to meet in order to pass on to the next phase of their lives and careers. I really don't know how it works anymore and I've never known how it works among the families and off-spring of the elite. [36] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! My rumination, presented here as a sort of complete effect -- not exactly how it played through my mind at the time, for no one can remember weeks later all the twists and turns of the thought process -- was broken into by the well-outfitted female in the square next to me. "Do you think," she began, "that I should bring all of these lighters?" The woman had come to stand right at the edge of the painted line which separated our squares. She was holding out across this arbitrary divide three cigarette lighters arranged in a neat row upon the palm of her hand. Even as I gazed at this trio of objects and tried to grasp what it was she was asking she reached up and with the fingers of the other hand made an adjustment to one of the lighters so it would lie more perfectly parallel with its two brethren. There they were, three disposable butane lighters -- green, pink and clear plastic -- of the sort manufactured by the millions, if not bil- lions, filling the waste stream with their expended containments, metal thumbwheels and springs rusting and turning to dust even as the plastic tanks outlast their erstwhile human possessors by a thousand years. "In the personal equipment checklist they sent," the woman went on, pausing to indicate with an incline of her head the admin- istrators of the Palmer facility, the efficiency-minded people labor- ing away at that moment in some office who knew where in the compound to create exhaustive checklists of wilderness equipment. Or maybe she implied by her gesture the organizers in the outdoor school's headquarters all the way down in Wyoming, five thousand miles to the south. "They recommended," the woman continued, "we bring only two cigarette lighters. But they only seem to come in packages of three." "Let me see that," I said, taking up the one lighter made of clear plastic. I held the device up to the overheads until it was possible to locate the liquid butane sloshing around inside. Handy, I thought. You can know at a glance how much fuel’s left. It’s always struck me as kind of ironic that the little units, designed to enable tobacco smokers to pursue their deadly habit under any and all conditions, have become a fundamental tool to the wilderness traveler, probably the last demographic in the world to use a cigarette lighter for its original purpose. I took another look at this woman who inhabited the next square over. She was wearing a thick, grey cotton sweatshirt with its hood thrown back, fatigue pants and a pair of combat boots, jungle style. Now this woman is ready, I decided. Additionally, she wore a pair of heavy, black plastic framed glasses, what you'd call sturdy Section #3: Circular Concentrations [37] ! and practical, military field issue possibly. She had short cropped dark hair and an outdoor complexion. What I mainly noticed were her cheeks, each of which bore a ruddy, wind-chapped spot of color. I thought, really, aside from Cordwainer, she was the only other student I was seeing that afternoon about whom I felt any confidence. Clearly, she was the only one of the bunch who took her gear systems seriously. I recall saying to myself that here was an individual upon whom I could definitely rely. "I don't know if you need all three," I told her, handing back the lighters. "I've got one I've been carrying around for years and it's still going strong. Sure, though, bring two. Good to have a back- up. They almost never malfunction but there's always the chance you can lose one. But three's overkill. Unless you're a smoker," I added, "in which case, I don't know." "I don't smoke," she said. "Even if I did, it's strictly prohibited while we're in the field." "Well, that's right. It certainly is," I said. Though I had no idea, nor did I care, what the policy was. She began to shuffle back amongst her little piles. I was reluctant to let the conversation drop. Looking around for something else to talk about my eyes fell upon a map of Alaska thumbtacked to the wall behind our staging area. "I guess we'll be taking the train to Whittier," I said, stepping over to the map. "Here's the tunnel." And I tapped the spot on the map where the railroad track symbols disappeared beneath the Chugach Range. I looked back to where the woman still stood within her square. She appeared interested in what I was saying about the train route but would approach no closer than the painted bound- ary of her staging area. "I'm sure the Instructors won't mind if you leave your square for a second," I suggested, “as long as you don't stray too far." She hesitated for a moment and then stepped across the line. "My name's Marlow," I said when she was close. “Dinah.”. I appreciated that she was willing to go through introduc- tions again. This woman named Dinah didn't put out a hand to be shook, so I didn't offer one of my own. "Where're you from?" I asked. “Chicago.” "You work a job?" "I'm a research librarian at the main branch downtown. The Harold Washington.” "No kidding." I thought it kind of funny she would say it like that, as if the actual name of the building would mean anything to [38] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! me. "I would not kid about something like that," she said. "My employers were good enough to give me time off to take the sea kayaking course. What do you do?" she asked. "I'm a cook and a bartender at a pub in Petersburg. Down in Southeast. Southeast Alaska." "That's very interesting." "Not really. Before that I did manage to work some typically Alaskan jobs. Cannery, fishing boats, stuff like that." The woman smiled, didn't seem to have much to say about my various employments. I moved back to the map, pointing out again where the tunnel lay beneath the Chugach. She scrutinized the spot carefully, leaning in close to the chart. "I suppose it is safe enough," she said. "The tunnel." "Oh, sure. That’s kind of interesting," I said. "I don't think I've ever met a Dinah before." She didn't make any response to this inanity. Encouraged by her quietude, I went on. "You mean, as in the one who was asked to blow her horn?" "Yes," she said with almost no hesitation. "You mean like, ‘Someone's in the kitchen with -- ?’" "That would be correct," she said before I could finish. "Right. Okay. So, did you fly into Anchorage?" "No," she said. "I drove my car to Seattle and took passage on the Alaska State Ferry boat from Bellingham." "That's a nice thing, isn't it? Did you camp out in the solari- um?" "No. Deck passage sounded too strenuous for me. I took a small stateroom." "Well. How 'bout that. See a lot of wildlife?" "Yes. Bald eagles. A plenitude of sea otters." "Great. So, did you get off at Haines and make the drive via Tok?" "No. I stayed on the ferry all the way to Anchorage. However, on the way back I am considering driving the Alaskan Canadian Highway all the way to Montana.” "The AlCan. Sure. Quite a trip. Or so I've heard." "I have not yet made a final decision about that." I asked her how she'd come to hear about the kayak course. She replied that someone she'd met on a previous outdoor program told her about it. I asked her what sort of program that had been, the previous one she was on. "An all-women's sailing course in the Florida Keys," she answered, looking directly at me. Her glasses magnified the size of her Section #3: Circular Concentrations [39] ! brown eyes by at least a power of two. At this point, the woman, Dinah, began to take sideways steps back toward her square. I stayed with her, matching her footwork, intent upon inspecting more closely the spots of color located in the center of each of her cheeks. I decided these were not the result of exposure to weather but merely an aspect of her complexion, circular concentrations of minute blood vessels precisely positioned off the corners of her mouth, each spot about the size of a twenty- five cent piece. They'd probably been there from the time she was a little girl, maybe since birth. I pressed the woman with the old fashioned first name for more information about the Florida Keys sailing course and she gave me the name of the umbrella organization under which it was administered. I was familiar with the outfit and knowing something about its particular approach to wilderness asked her if she'd done a period of solo travel as part of the curriculum. "Yes. I did that," she answered. I waited for her to expand upon this a little, or to perhaps reciprocate and ask me how I'd come to hear of the Alaska sea kayaking course, but the woman was not forthcoming. She'd re-entered her square by that time. I paused for a moment at the bound- ary and then proceeded on in to where she was in the process of removing the cookset from its box. "Did you fast on your solo?" I asked. "Yes," she said, only looking slightly uncomfortable over the fact I'd entered her square. "We had water to drink, but no food for twenty-four hours." The mess kit, which she succeeded after a short struggle in removing from its packaging, was a thing of wonder and completely top notch: bright stainless steel pots and pans nested one within the other, all held together by a nylon strap of green webbing gripped by a shiny buckle, one of those nice, old style metal toothed buckles you see less and less of anymore. My own single stowaway pot hadn't looked that good in years. I'm not sure it'd ever looked that good. But that's okay because a perfectly pristine pot doesn't distribute heat as well as one that's, you know, blackened all over with carbonized food spills. I wondered if she intended to bring the whole kit on the course. The checklist only called for a cup, bowl and spoon. "That's very interesting," I said. "For me, the hardest thing about a fast would be not having coffee." "I would not know," she said. "I do not use coffee." She turned the cookset over, studied the bottom for a moment and then, without undoing the buckle because, I then sup- [40] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! posed, she wasn't that curious about it, put the whole arrangement back into its box. Knowing Dinah better now, it's more likely she found the buckle intimidating, too complicated a thing to attempt. As she put the mess kit in its carton back on the floor, I took note again how very pronounced was her nose. I marveled that the woman had been able to preserve something so sharp and distinct in a world that usually wears down and blunts pointy objects. "Just as well," I said. "Not using, or taking, coffee. Expensive habit, that is if you're partial to good bean." It was around this point I became riveted by the sight of a lightweight backpacking stove she'd lined up next to her binoculars. The stove, like almost everything else, appeared brand new -- maybe test fired once, judging by the blueing of the generator -- a detached burner, multi-fuel type of the exact make and model I'd been contemplating the purchase of for several years. I'd scrutinized this stove many a time through the glass of display cases, admiring the way its metal parts took the light. From time to time I've requested clerks place the stove on the counter top for me where I could better inspect its workings. I recalled how the controls felt to the fingers, precise in their adjustments, everything machined to a nice tolerance. Someday, I've thought, I'll be able to justify owning a stove like that, but not until I'm preparing to travel overseas. As mentioned, I'd also brought a stove with me to Palmer. I always include a stove as part of normal traveling gear, even if the travel doesn't involve the backcountry. You never know. I could end up in a motel room and need to heat water for coffee, if not to cook up some rice, or a noodle pack. Currently the role of cookstove is fulfilled by a clunky, white-gas-only model, not nearly as spec and top drawer as Dinah's. I had a feeling the Instructors weren't going to approve any personal stoves, not even Dinah's, nice as it was. I knew the school provided stoves as part of the trip cost. I figured they'd be standardized with repair kits and spare parts and so forth. Dinah continued to sort through her gear. I noticed she'd brought a headlamp instead of a flashlight, another indicator, I assumed, she took a serious approach to her outdoor gear. I suppose the school's checklist had indicated a headlamp as opposed to a flashlight. I can't remember exactly. Headlamps are common enough these days though I still use what is essentially a flashlight converted to hands-free by an accompanying strap. I'd come of age in the outdoor scene with this particular brand of flashlight and I trust it. When it does fail, due to the threads on the barrel wearing out, or the spring losing its tension, I will know how it failed, have Section #3: Circular Concentrations [41] ! the right spare parts on hand and generally can get it fixed and going again within minutes. I suppose someday I'll switch over to a bona fide headlamp, but not yet. There was a Sierra cup in amongst her stuff. This was standard issue outdoor gear twenty-years ago but is now considered to be a thing of minimal utility. It was completely predictable that it'd be there. The outfitting companies are still trying to offload their stock of Sierra cups. My gaze held on it momentarily and then moved on. There was a pocket knife still in its box lined up in the row with the mess kit and the water filter. Dinah might've been arrang- ing her items in groupings of higher or lower priority. Hard to say. I knew the knife by its famous brand name. "Okay if I take a look at your knife?" "Yes. That would be fine.” The little two-toned box that contained the heaviness of the knife within was one of those cardboard units that celebrates the art of retail packaging, as if you were buying the package as much as the item, or some concept of the item the package was designed to communicate. In this case, what you were purchasing was down- to-earth reliability, a no-nonsense approach to tool manufacture, so simple and pared away there was no possibility of malfunction, or even normal wear and tear. The very pasteboard of the box had a nice texture to it, a tactile grippiness which inspired me to lift the lid and lower it back down a couple of times just to feel the suction, the satisfying fit between lid and box proper. In the box was a pocket knife that was going to be with you the rest of your life and the life of your progeny and their progeny after them. Maybe at that point, a hundred years into the future, the hinge would start to ex- hibit signs of wear, or the handle might come a little loose from the rivets. The knife was still wrapped in the manufacturer's silk-like cellophane. It seemed the knife had possibly never been removed from its little holdment. For some reason I was reluctant to slip the device out of its wrapper to handle it directly, maybe because I feel it’s something only the owner should do the first time. I could tell it was a good quality tool, no doubt, with two locking blades of different sizes and a beautifully polished plastic casing. The knife was almost commemorative quality, the sort of product whose purchase often includes free engraving. It exceeded by a good ways the recommendation on the school's checklist. I lowered the lid on its cardboard hinge and set the box back down next to the mess kit. "Nice knife," I said. "Do you think so?" she began. "I am considering not taking it." [42] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Why's that?" "I am not sure what use it will serve. Will there really be anything which needs cutting?" "You never know," I said. "Generally, on a camping trip, a pocket knife turns out to be a handy thing to have. I guess a case could be made for not bringing a knife. You should probably bring it." "I will ask the Instructors what they think." "Good idea." I was preoccupied examining an object which lay next to the slot where I'd returned the knife, an item which the woman should certainly be placing, I thought, in the Do Not Take row. This was a snakebite first aid kit of the old school category, an article foisted upon her by another, or maybe the same, unscrupulous or plain ig- norant outfitter, by some clerk who specialized in fishing tackle, or archery equipment, but not someone up to date on backcountry protocol. I hadn't seen one of these kits in a long time, hadn't handled one since I was a Cub Scout. A snakebite kit of this type is definitely surplus, obsolete, dangerous even for its emphasis on cutting and sucking. Current medical thinking indicates that keeping the en- venomated person calm until help arrives is overall the best and, really, only treatment. Without asking Dinah's permission about it, I picked the item up and immediately remembered the way the sur- gical rubber of the suction cups felt, how they fit tightly together to form a containment for the paraphernalia. The red-colored rubber had that familiar sticky feel but in this case seemed a little stiff with age. Believe me, I was tempted, but in the end decided not to risk trying to twist the cups apart to examine the rest of the kit, the tourniquet, the razor blades, the antiseptic swab. I remembered how once the two halves are separated it's hell to get all the equipment back in and the sections put together. I returned the little red rubber lozenge to the spot on the floor where I'd found it. I saw another item of interest in her pile, a candle lantern, not in its original packaging like most of her stuff, but not looking as if it'd received much field use either. Being a sort of aficionado of candle lanterns, I took the device up. This time, Dinah noticed my rummaging. "Be careful with that," she said. "It's okay. I have one of my own. These things are great." I saw that the state of the art in candle lanterns, if hers was any example, had taken a downturn since the day I'd purchased mine, five or six years previous. Though they're probably cheaper to manufacture and lighter to transport, these new aluminum mod- Section #3: Circular Concentrations [43] ! els with their rolled and stamped cylinders have to my eye a tinny appearance. "I've got the older style lantern," I said. "Heavy duty impact plastic, designed along the lines of a hurricane lamp." "That sounds nice," she said. "It's got character.” I could see she wasn't much interested in my commentary. I decided she probably didn't fully know what a candle lantern was good for, the way it lets one read for hours after dark at much less expense or weight in flashlight batteries, not to mention how a candle creates great ambience in a tent for, you know, whatever you might have in mind. I carefully put the lantern back down where I'd gotten it. Not seeing anything else at the moment which could be employed to extend the conversation, I started to drift toward my zone just as the Instructor named Burl arrived to conduct a review of the gear in Dinah's square. "You seem to have arrived very well-equipped," he said. ! "I just want to have everything I need," she replied. ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #4: A Dense, Fortified Loaf ! ! Harriman Fjord opens out as a wide channel. As we come within its embrace the breeze falls off and the chop subsides to a ripple. Fifty yards in front of us a purse seiner is working its gear, the skiff closing the loop. Three deck hands, grey-faced with fatigue and moving like automatons, are working the hawser through the block. Dinah expresses a need to remove a layer of clothing. As a group we ship paddles and glide to a stop. Cord takes the chance to wet a line, casting his spinner into the reflection of the trees. I give a glance to the rod and reel strapped to the deck in front of my cockpit, consider making a few casts, then give up the idea. Fishing tackle on this course has largely proved to be the equipment of a pointless undertaking. Tyler drifts in her single, the light air catching her boat around by the eagle feather stuck on the bow. She dips her paddle and pulls a single stroke that propels her toward the seiner. The deck crew doesn't pause in their operations but they halloo and are glad to see the young female kayaker coming in close with camera in hand. The skipper pokes his head out the window of the pilot house and gives our pod the once over. The Instructors have mentioned there are a number of regular working fishing boats on the Sound under contract to the school to provide aid and the use of a radio in an emergency. Something tells me this seiner is not one of them. The skipper barks hoarsely at Tyler to back off as the net begins to come clear of the water. Cord calls over: "Hey, Marlow, waddya have to do to get a job on a boat like that?" He’s stopped casting his spinner and is closely observing the action on the seiner's deck. “Mostly just be in the right place at the right time," I answer. In front of the lad in the double seater, Pat's sitting up straight and appears watchful, for which I'm glad. Constantly there's the question of how Pat is doing. It's not like she hasn't spent plenty of time Section #4: A Dense, Fortified Loaf [45] ! in boats. Apparently, she and her congressman husband have for years maintained a sailboat on Lake Michigan. Pat has contributed her own knowledge and experience to the Instructor's various spiels on navigation, tides and knot tying. However, paddling a sea kayak, legs stowed below waterline and upper body exposed to the vagaries of weather, must be a pretty different experience from standing upon the deck of a sloop, three or four feet above the waves and the spray with the option to duck into the cabin to get out of the wind, or maybe scare up a sandwich and a mug of something hot to drink. Pat suffers from the physical strain of this travel and is occasionally waylaid by terrible headaches. At present there's good col- or in her face and her expression is open and alert. I believe she could turn right around and make the crossing again. "Is that anything like the boats you work on?" Cord asks. He's brought his kayak over closer so we don't have to yell. I look at him and see he isn't kidding whatsoever. He's really interested. Maybe the lad is actually being affected by the experience out here, getting primed for some change in his life. "Nope. Not a seiner like that one," I tell him. "Worked a halibut long-liner last summer in Petersburg. Salmon troller off Cali- fornia about five years ago. It doesn't matter. The application process is the same." "Which is?" "Basically, show up, pound the docks, talk it up with boat owners, try to appear sea worthy. I've never known anybody who wanting a job on a boat fail to get one. But keep in mind," I add, with a nod toward the seiner, "though it might look simple, what you're witnessing there is considered one of the most dangerous jobs going." "How's that?" "Sleep deprivation. And equipment that will pull you overboard if your attention wavers." I can see my words are having their effect on the young collegiate. He likes the part about it being the most dangerous job. He's caught up in the vision of it, imagining himself on the deck, dressed in the yellow foul weather pants, sus- penders hiked up over a Norwegian sweater all grime-blackened at the sleeves, coiling the net as it leaves the block. We watch as the last of the seiner's net comes clear of the water. "A guy like you would have no problem getting a job on a boat," I assure him. "And the crew share," I go on in a lowered voice, dripping it slowly into his ear, "can sometimes be in excess of ten thousand a summer.” Cord glances at me, a pain of yearning visible on his face, [46] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! then returns his attention to the boat. The purse is opened and a greenish silver rain of kings falls to the deck. The rain stops and the crew realizes their skipper hasn't been all that clever in his placement of the gear. Disappoint- ment, thick as diesel exhaust, flows out from the boat. "Then again," I say, "maybe it's all over for the fishery up here." "I take it that wasn't such a good catch," he says. "A bit scanty." Cord looks again at the boat and its slow moving crew, possibly rethinking his plans. Tyler has got her snapshot and is paddling back to us. Her goodbye to the boys on the fishing boat fails to incite even a wave of the hand. Dinah snaps her sprayskirt around the coaming and puts her hands back in the pogies, the signal she's ready to proceed. We assume a normal trajectory up the inlet, exactly the way we've been taught, in this instance paralleling the north shore, keeping enough water beneath the keels for rudder clearance but close enough to the beach to enjoy the sensation of movement. We're making good progress. Back when the expedition was new, there was always considerable chatter between the cockpits. Now it's typical for folks to row silently along, shoreline passing at about the speed of a brisk walk. There always seems to be a period like this on any given day and for these brief stretches I don't mind the paddling so much. Cord, studying a topo map open on the deck in front of him, breaks the silence. "By my estimation," he says, "we are now in Barry Arm proper." "Sounds about right," I say. Up ahead, we can see what's probably the bend of the arm's elbow. It's at that point, if Dodi's correct, we should begin to encounter some ice. The inlet appears entirely clear of bergs between here and there, nor is the surface of the water, as far as we can see, marred by so much as the single blot of an Instructor in his or her kayak. I suspect the I-team is just up around that bend. There's no reason, in my opinion, to rush our catching up. "What say we pull over and have ourselves a break," I suggest to the group, indicating with my paddle a likely looking sandbar off to starboard. "Get out of the boats. Eat a snack." There's some hesitation. The group may not be feeling we need a break just yet, or that maybe we should keep paddling until we catch up with the Instructors. They're vague on that last part, Section #4: A Dense, Fortified Loaf [47] ! though, not sure what plan was worked out before the Instructors split Golden, and nobody brings it up. "Sounds reasonable," says Tyler, checking her watch. "Tide's not gonna turn for at least an hour." "Okay then," I say. "Funny, the map doesn't show a sandbar here," observes Cord. I check my own map and confirm he's correct. "Just because the map doesn't show it doesn't mean we can't land on it." Rudders kick over. In the end, the student group is compliant and will do whatever I, their designated leader, suggest. "Is this a lunch break?" asks Pat. "We can work it that way," I tell her. Despite the school's policy of never designating lunch, per se, because on a physical undertaking like this you're supposed to snack all day between the conclusion of breakfast and the onset of supper, Pat's never been able to get away from calling it that. The sandbar is a heated strip of land where beached kelp is slowly turning to rawhide in the sun and the tide pools have evapo- rated into a thick soup. The spaces between the greywacke are inhabited by a drab species of insect. We've met this bug before, a gnat-like creature evolved to subsist upon the organic residuum left on the rocks by the outgoing sea. It's no particular nuisance and doesn't bite. At every footfall, a dozen of the insects, like animated motes of dust, fling themselves into the air to bounce with a pinging sound off the rubber of our boots. Within a minute it's apparent we don't need headnets as there doesn't seem to be much in the way of mosquitoes or biting flies. Probably too warm for them to differenti- ate us, their prey, from the background. Cord and I haul the food bags over the rocks. We've only been on shore thirty seconds and Cord has already taken off his p.f.d. to expose his bare chest to the sun. We shout to give the bears a chance to clear out and the group deploys itself along the bank of a water course. I continue upstream a space to relieve myself on the shingle. In a few seconds, Cord is beside me doing the same. The sandbar, I notice, forms the base for the silvered skeletons of hundreds of dead trees, casualties of seismic activity. Annunciating slowly into the silence of the trees, Cord says: "I'll monitor my urine, Marlow. And you monitor yourn." "Will do." "This place has kind of a weird vibe, don't you think?" Cord asks, laying down his line of piss about three feet over from mine. [48] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Yup. Feels like it could sink away right below us." "I was thinking more about bears," he says. "Once we get set up under those trees we'll be all right. Any bears around will be able to see us from a long way off and we’ll be able to see them. I wouldn't worry about it." "Right," he says. He secures his trow and heads back to the tree line. Cord expresses these occasional concerns about bears. We've actually yet to see a bear on this trip. Just as with the sound's famed humpbacks, the bears are making themselves scarce. There've been a couple of instances, the entire student group and Instructors hitting the beach in force without first sending in a recon, when we've discovered a pile of fresh scat at the margin of the trees. The bear had heard us coming, dropped its load of dung and, sensibly, took itself back into the woods. It's possible that traveling as a small group like this we stand more chance of a bear encounter, but I doubt it. If we need something to worry about we should worry about getting sideswiped by an earthquake and the accompanying tsuna- mi. Those trees over there once throve beside the freshwater stream that still slants across the spit. The trees -- they might be cottonwoods, though I am as our Course Leader is forever pointing out weak on flora I.D. -- all died standing upright when this shoreline suddenly dropped, plunging the trees' roots into salt water. The quake must've happened fairly recently for the spit not to show on the map. The map did indicate a slight indent where the stream empties into the arm. The survey data is old, but it's not that old. I'm not going to mention anything to the group about it but it would probably be a good idea not to get too far from the boats in case the spit takes a mind this afternoon to go the rest of the way underwater. You never know. The air is cool in the strips of shade cast by the tree skeletons. I shift around one of the whitened trunks until I can sit in full sunlight. Sea kayaking is a chilling sport. During any break from the boats, my principle ambition is to garner as much warmth as possible to feet and legs. Pat's using a knife to break up a loaf of the dense, yeasty bread she baked yesterday at Golden. She inserts the point of the knife, a plastic knife if you can believe it, the knife she brought with her from home to use on the course, amazingly still unbroken, and with a levering action pries off a chunk. This action just about does it for the knife. You could hear the plastic creak as she applied pressure, the knife coming close to snapping in two. Pat leaves off with her plastic tool and asks Cord to pass over his sheath knife, Section #4: A Dense, Fortified Loaf [49] ! which he does, extracting and then reaching it over to her with a fancy switcheroo that puts the handle toward her and the point toward him. I'm handed a fist-sized piece of the bread. The loaf has only been knocking around with the rest of the rations overnight but already it's taken on the distinctive and rather unpleasant aroma of the food duffels. Both pungent and cloying, it's hard to say from where the smell originates. I reckon it might come off of the brown sugar, or the bean flakes. I hold Pat's offering up to the light. Granules of cornmeal shine in the sun like quartzite. To be honest, I've been feeling bound up for the past day or so, another side effect of sitting bent double in a kayak for hours on end with little opportunity to get out and stretch a leg. And probably also from eating too much cheese, the only ration we don't seem to be short of. If I eat this bread it's only going to make the situation worse. I take a bite and work it around from one side of my mouth to the other. It certainly is a solid loaf, fortified I believe with bulgar. Rolled oats, too. The more wetted down with saliva I get the chunk the more the constituents reveal themselves. The bread's interesting texture seems to derive from small chunks of dried papaya mixed with sunflower seeds. I can already feel more gas building up. I can't remember when I last had a bowel movement. The day before yesterday maybe. "Hey, Pat, shoot me over one of those puppies?" asks Cord. Pat shoots it to him all right, sidearm fashion. The puppy hits Cord on the front of his shoulder, leaving there a red mark, bounces off his knee and rolls into the sand. "Sorry 'bout that," Pat says. "Tyler?" Pat asks, holding out another chunk. "Sure, Pat, huck me a piece." I don't want to see any more bread chunks flying through the air. I imagine someone being struck in the eye. I get Pat to hand me the piece which I pass to Tyler. "Thank you, Marlow," Tyler says. She smiles and for a moment I am so full of feeling I can't look at her. Now I do look, in time to witness her blow a puff of air at a clump of bangs in order to move it away from her mouth, a sight which only worsens the feeling in my chest. "I tell you", she says, laughing, "salt water is just murder on my perm,". "Bodacious bread, Pat," announces Cord, articulating around the bolus in his cheek. "Farinaceous, you mean," corrects Tyler. "I used to know that word," I say. [50] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Full of seeds." "Sure. I knew that. What do you call your bread, Pat?" "I call it wayfarer's bread.” "What makes it so?" "Because you make it any way you can." "Truly beautimus," Cord says by way of summation, taking another bite of his chunk. Everybody gets a piece of the wayfarer's bread. Dinah takes hers and moves off to sit against a limb of downfall. A bag of g.o.r.p. begins to make the rounds. I gnaw off another mouthful of the way-farinaceous loaf, chase it with a handful of raisins and peanuts and observe the play of light upon the corrugated surface of yonder stream. I swear, if I were to spot a salmon humping its way over the rocks, I'd spit out the wad of grains and legumes and go after the fish with my bare hands. Back at school headquarters, the Instructors assured us our dry rations would be augmented with fresh caught fish. Employing the school-issue tackle they said we'd haul from the waters of the Sound a great plenitude of salmon and with the Instructor's strong encouragement most of us purchased a seasonal license. We've not stopped trying to catch the fish but so far the ocean hasn’t been provident. Some students, the more determined, claim they've tried every lure in the kit a dozen times over, but I guess they haven’t been “holding their mouth right”, the oft-dispensed catchphrase, used when anyone among us is seen to be casting out a line to no effect. Apparently, even the commercial fisherman have lost the knack. The Instructors say they've never seen anything like it. They say they have no idea where the fish are. Well, I think I know. The salmon are all in cans stacked on grocery shelves down in the lower forty-eight and when that supply is gone there won't be any more. It's called over-utilization of the resource. Actually, I did catch a fish, one fish, early on in the course. An itty-bitty thing of fourteen inches. Down in Southeast such a minnow would be considered only suitable for bait. Of course, the student group made a fuss over it. Except Cord, who took note of the particular set of my mouth and said: "Big deal, huh, Marlow?" Another member of the student group also caught a fish during the first go-around, the already mentioned heavy set girl, Beth. Her chinook was not a measly fourteen inches either but more like a yard long and she had reason to be proud. Once it was fried in margarine and distributed around we each got a nice chunk of pink meat. This makes a total of two fish caught, that I've heard about. Section #4: A Dense, Fortified Loaf [51] ! Word is, a couple of the cook groups have become expert at prying mussels off the rocks at low tide and boiling the creatures into a kind of chowder. So far no one's tried stewing the kelp but that's probably next. The Instructors, initially assuring us there'd be plenty to eat on the trip, what with the school-issue rations and all the fish we were going to catch, have now put out the rumor that there could be some voluntary fasting toward the end of the course. If this comes to pass, we're supposed to consider it an opportunity to work on our expedition behavior. Well, sure. Expeditions since time immemorial have experienced running short or completely out of food. The Donner Party comes to mind. I don't at all like the idea of fasting, myself, but figure it'd never be incumbent upon to me to participate. There are a number of individuals on this course who've vowed to put themselves through arbitrary hardship. I believe we can count on them to do the fasting, if it comes down to it, and leave what remains of the rations to be split among the rest of us. Cord has finished his portion of bread and is lounging back on the greywacke with a p.f.d. tucked under his head as a cushion. He's removed his windpants, thus stripping all the way down to his patterned boxer shorts. Our young collegiate comes on this expedition straight from what has already been for him a long summer atop his Redondo Beach lifeguard stand. In the glare of the afternoon sun, Cord's upper body, entirely hairless, is a bronze breast- plate, the light glancing off the exaggerated thoraces. I believe he's advanced his tan a couple of shades just since we arrived to this spit. When he has his shirt off like this, the dazzle is so terrific the women, particularly Dinah, are almost unable to look at him. Well, they do look at him but I've noticed it's not easy for them. Pat has asked if anyone cares for seconds of the bread. Receiving no takers, she passes back to Cord the knife she borrowed to break apart the loaf. She literally has to shield her eyes from the flashing of sunlight off the boy's bare chest, or maybe it's the glare coming off the water, hard to say which. Conspicuous is the sheath knife that Cord straps, diver style, to the calf of his leg just above the ankle. The knife, which he cleans between two fingers to remove all residue of Pat's loaf, is a wicked looking unit of brushed steel that glints dully in the sun. There's a serrated edge and large lightening holes have been punched through the metal handle which is all of one piece with the blade. Cord slides the knife into its sheath and there's an audible click as it locks into place, held there by an invisible mechanism. Rarely have we had the chance to see the knife out of its plastic scabbard. Being it's the sort of weapon designed by the military for use in underwater hand-to-hand combat there hasn't been much occasion on the [52] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! course to bring it out. "If no one minds," Tyler says, "I believe I'll also take my shirt off." Cord looks up. "Absolutely. Go ahead," he says. "We're all brothers and sisters here." I don't know what Cord's expecting. I know Tyler’s wearing more than one layer. She turns and pulls the thermal top off over her head. I'm trying not to watch but cannot help noting the dim- pling of flesh over the strap of the tan-colored sports bra. The thick tangle of her hair is lifted by the shirt collar to momentarily expose the white column of her neck with its single bump of vertebrae. The shirt catches for an instant on the knot of the blue bandana which snugly and completely encircles her throat. Tyler's hair pulls free of the collar to fall back down upon shoulders which are freckled in the normal way of redheads. For me, in the sight of those freckles, there’s something of the joy of recognition. It was only twenty-four hours ago I had the chance to observe the freckles up close. Now, I study the clasp on the bra-strap, the device that yesterday my fingers fumbled with uselessly and which, in the end, Tyler circum- vented entirely by simply pulling the bra off over her head. Now, in the clear light and sitting back a little ways, I see how it works with its tiny cam release. "I apologize," says Tyler. "Normally by this point I've managed a little color. This isn't exactly going down as the summer of the golden tan." "No apology necessary," says Cord. Tyler lies back alongside Cord -- the cool cat -- shuts her eyes against the light and with the young surfer begins a conversation about the menu items they plan to order when the expedition arrives back to Palmer. What Cord doesn't know is that, normally, Tyler spends a fair bit of time in the summer sailing her parent's sloop -- topless -- keeping a shirt handy in case any one heaves in close. So, it's true that she does, in fact, usually manage a bit more color in the sum- mertime. Tyler's navel is a shallow bowl into which slant the beams of the westering sun, casting one edge of the depression into shadow. Yes, the navel is nice, and I'm sure I could make myself small enough to swim laps in the moisture pooling there, but it was her neck that provoked me yesterday, when she leant over to peer into the cave, all inquisitive and full of theory. I went from the nape of her neck, to the dimple over her cheekbone and on to her lips. Un- der the circumstances, which I'll get around to explaining, what else could I do? ! ! ! ! ! Section #5: A Moist Wind ! It should be mentioned right here, in fact it can be pretty much stated without a great deal of doubt, that Tyler offered her lips to me as far back as our camp on Olsen Island. I knew she was doing it when she was doing it, yet at the same time I didn't believe my own perceptions. Only later, reviewing the incident in my mind, did I decide she'd really done what I thought she did. Even back then, a full six or seven days ago, I was already paying attention to the exudations of her pores. Bushwhacking through the island's interior, she and I paused to rest against the massive bole of a spruce. Tyler was panting from the effort of ma- neuvering through the bracken. I took note of the symmetrical trickles of sweat at her temples. Beneath a glaring sun, Tyler turned to me lips of reddish translucency, organs expectant and fairly pulsating with her elevated heart rate. I'm sure there arrived the unmistakable moment when I was supposed to cover those lips with my own, but for all my various reasons, not to mention failing to see her offering for what it was, I held back. It's possible, after my failure to follow through, there were not going to be any more offerings from Tyler. Yesterday did not exactly constitute an offering, except in the sense that it was her idea to make the hike to the point. Maybe there was going to be a second unmistakable positioning of the lips but, if so, it hadn't happened by the time we reached the fish smoker's cave. After all, a whole week had passed since the first tendering at Olsen Island. In that time, there'd been a short Small Group Expedition -- three days, two nights -- a kind of preliminary to this longer SGE, which saw her and mr assigned to different groups, paddling divergent routes. There was a guy in her group, Will, from Ohio or somewhere, who like myself works as a short order cook back in the real world, only in his case he's a trained professional, a culinary school grad, not cooking merely to have a job but working on the line at an downtown restaurant of some renown. Will and I camped together during the odd interregnum that began when we left Columbia Gla- [54] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! cier and which ended with the inception of the first SGE. I don't know why the I's bothered assigning us to new tent groups for those five days and four nights, but I guess it's all part of their policy to keep mixing us up, exposing us to different personalities and different expedition dynamics. Five days was long enough in their opinion to make it worth the hassle of shifting gear and rations around. Aside from that one five day period, I hardly know where Will the Cook has been this whole course. He might say the same about me. I generally tend to lump him in with the clique of male collegiates, though he's a few years older than any of them and already out in the world making a living. He generally presents a quiet and unassuming aspect to the student group at large, though I've observed that among his male cohorts he cuts it up with quips and comments which I never seem quite close enough to hear but which those standing around him find hilarious. Apparently, Tyler also finds Will hilarious, having now had a chance to get to know him when the two were assigned to the same first small group expedition. For several days afterward she'd make a point of visiting him at his camp in the evening for half an hour at a stretch, coming back with eyes wet from laughing and her mouth still holding the shape of all that hilarity. This drove me a little crazy because during the whole five days I was in Will's company he remained almost entirely in- scrutable to me. Yet, he didn't seem to mind opening up to the youngsters and later to Tyler. By then, since I had very little sense of what he was like, I was free to fill in the vacuum and imagine an incredibly worldly and experienced fellow whom Tyler found end- lessly fascinating and funny. I thought for a while maybe Will was number four in the line of males on this expedition who have or who are currently making a play for Tyler's attentions. I'm including myself in this number. It seemed quite possible to me that when I failed to accept her Olsen Island overture, and a girl as self-possessed as Tyler tends to only make one overture, she'd moved on. Whereas, I never make over- tures. Any girl there is usually has to make about two or three offerings in my direction before I decide I'm not imagining things. Un- til the afternoon I attacked her at the cave, Tyler might've assumed she and I we were going to be hiking pals and nothing more. Who can plumb it? If there was more time I'd ask her about it all but time is another ration of which we're in short supply. "Where're you two going?" Dodi asked, as we were heading out. "We're going to go look for the benchmark," Tyler told her. "Okay," Dodi said. "But at three o'clock we're getting together Section #5: A Moist Wind [55] ! to divvy up the rations." "We'll easily make it back by then," Tyler said. Dodi looked at me. "Sure," I said. "The benchmark will either be there or it won't." The benchmark idea was not something Tyler came up with on the spur to divert Dodi. The map did indicate there was such a thing and we really did go looking for it, following the shore to the end of the spit and then systematically criss-crossing back and forth through the woods. As we dodged through trees and bramble, with an eye out for what we supposed would be a little metal disc fixed into the ground, Tyler talked about her father, a doctor, a specialist in infectious dis- eases. "I finally went to him," she was saying, "and told him: 'Look. Dad. You need to put me on some sort of allowance here. I can't keep coming to you every time I need twenty bucks for groceries.' He agreed. I mean, he's the one who always hoped one of his kids would go to med school. It was never exactly my idea to be a doc. I always thought one of the boys would go, but none of them was interested and before I knew it I was on deck. Anyway, he put me on a schedule for a bi-monthly transfer of funds. Dad makes it easy. If I had to work my way through school, or take on a load of debt, I'd never go for it." She paused and looked at me and this was the first moment I had reason to wonder if she were waiting for me to make her a better offer, or at least suggest something else she could do for the decade of her twenties. I couldn't come up with anything then, I still can't come up with anything which would be an improvement over the chance to attend medical school all expenses paid. Actually, I can come up with a few suggestions, particularly if the money were still available to be used otherwise, but I don't think the notion of investing in a fleet of ultra-lights to smuggle marijuana out from an underground hydroponic farm set up in the Alaska bush would be Tyler's thing. I thought the implicit understanding contained in the arrangement between her and her father was quite elegant, the way he perceived that his daughter was not so passionate about a career in medicine she was willing to undergo any hardship. No metal benchmark ever did turn up, but there on the loamy soil, roughly at the coordinates indicated on the map for the marker, was a lone feather which Tyler took into her possession. "Eagle?" I asked. "I think it has to be," she said. "Considering its size.” We came out onto a beach, the north shore of the point, [56] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! where the greywacke had been pounded into fine dark granules by ten thousand years of storms. It was the windward side of the spit and breezy enough to allow us to remove our headnets. Not more than a thirty second walk along the shoreline turned up the cave. Not more than thirty seconds after that, as Tyler leaned over to examine the ceiling of the dugout, the mass of auburn hair fell away to reveal the delicate bump of the vertebrae and I found the nape of her neck with my mouth. If I think about, it did seem she paused there longer than necessary to study the soot which coated the walls, bent over with the hair falling away, so maybe she was making a second offering, figuring that if I wasn't interested in her lips, maybe I'd be interested in something else. As it was, I moved quickly enough from the nape to the mouth. "An Alaska native must have put --," was the last thing I let her say without obstruction. After that everything else she said got smothered until she figured out what was going on and stopped talking altogether. Wilderness trips carry a high potential for romantic interlude. I've always known this. I also know that as a male specimen I tend to show a little better around natural forms and under an open sky than I do in places infiltrated by cars, where the population mostly congregates indoors. I can come across as more confident and more my own man in the wilderness where the usual status markers are not in play. Still, I feel I can honestly say that when I signed on for this deal, I didn't do so with the idea of finding romance. I mean, I've got, or had, my fill of romance, if you want to call it that, down on Mitkof Island. I came along on this course to learn how to handle a kayak so that upon returning to my short order life in the fishing town I could maybe, on a day off from the restaurant, borrow somebody's boat -- there seems to be a lot of sea kayaks around town not in use, stored under the eaves of houses and such -- and paddle over to the mainland for the occasional one or two night bivouac. If it worked out and kayaking provided the sort of remove I was after then maybe I'd look into buying a boat of my own. Far from anticipating romance, my principle preoccupa- tion about the trip, after reading the book written by the long distance sea kayaker, was whether we'd all make it to the end without suffering loss. I'm not kidding about this. It's hard to believe now, and I know I've gone into this some already, but from the moment we boarded the school's transport in Anchorage, I was seeing everything through a dark veil of impending disaster. Sidestepping my way down the aisle of the bus to accommodate the bulk of my heavy frame pack, I made a point of catching the eye of as many of my fellow students as I could. They were all friendly and smiling and not one of them seemed to suspect that breath and life might Section #5: A Moist Wind [57] ! soon be denied them, that before the month was out it was possible their corpse would be washed up upon some unnamed shore. Tyler says she recalls me specifically as one of the last to get on the bus. She admits it was partly because of the size of the backpack, but claims there was more to it than that. She keeps referring to a glance we exchanged. I don't recall exchanging any glances. Like I said, I was feverishly looking from one countenance to the next, trying to get a sense of our chances for survival, making an effort to connect on some intuitive level with these people with whom I was soon to share calamity. Tyler casts back to our first meeting and imagines what was not there. I'm sure she and I did exchange a look, but when I didn't see any foreknowledge of doom written upon her features, I moved on to the next person. Still, I'm all for infusing an element of fatalism into romantic encounters and if she wants to read it that way I'm not going to strenuously deny there was an immediate and shared spark of interest. The spark occurred soon enough, in any case, but in all honesty it had not yet fired off as I made my way down the bus aisle. I can safely say it was pure happenstance that brought me to slide into the seat directly behind the two youngest and most alert appearing females on the course. I had to sit down somewhere. It's just as likely I spotted the red-haired fellow with the prepossessing freckles and with relief recognized a male roughly my own age and took advantage of the fact the seat next to him was vacant. Sitting next to Crandall was a way of grabbing a spot not too close to the front of the bus and its driver, nor too far toward the back, the same coordinates I've occupied on a thousand school bus rides and overall my desired position in the scheme of things. The bus took the expressway north out of Anchorage through the anomalously verdant Matanuska-Susitna Valley. My seat mate and I re-introduced ourselves to each other -- I wonder if anyone remembered anybody else's name from the roster announcement in the parking lot of the train station. I learned Cran- dall was from Amarillo, where he teaches earth science at the high school level. The school system is subsidizing his trip up here. Crandall is expected to take notes and photographs and bring back voucher specimens with which to augment and enliven his lectures. Crandall appeared a bit fazed by too rapid a trip from the Texas Panhandle to the Kenai Peninsula. He rolled his eyes toward the view out the bus window and exclaimed that he still could not quite believe he was in Alaska. "The Last Frontier," he intoned, reading the phrase off the license plates of SUVs slowing to turn into the bedroom community of Eagle River. Though I didn't say anything to Crandall, it's really kind of a joke, this "last frontier" business. You [58] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! can get yourself some "frontier" in Alaska. Or you can get it in Ida- ho, or Utah, or Wyoming. In any number of western states you can step from the safe, climate-controlled and well-stocked confine of a chain grocery store and in a walk of fifty yards, barely out of the parking lot, reach a spot where you could be dead by morning of hypothermia, wild animal attack or blunt force trauma as a result of falling over a cliff. Anyway, back to Crandall, who is one of those classic red heads with the freckles and the smooth almost plastic, pore-less skin which can make a man appear a decade younger than he is. Since he appeared to be around twenty, I figured in truth he might be about my age. When the earth science teacher inquired into my own situation, I told him about the fishing town down in Southeast where, for the past almost year now, I'd been cooking and serving pizzas, work crucial to any modern frontier. Crandall proceeded to ask me the usual questions about bears and Eskimos and aurora borealis. It was easy to respond to him with a string of rote answers while at the same time eavesdropping on the young and fresh appearing females in the seat in front of us. I overheard the girls express surprise at the occurrence of malls and outlet stores along the expressway. Well, again, that's right. Rolling north through the Anchor- age suburbs, you can look out the windows of your vehicle in every direction and not see a single sign of the lauded frontier, not detect anything which would indicate you weren't bombing along some feeder on the margins of Denver, or Richmond VA. It was the same green highway directionals, the same franchise gas stations, food outlets and familiar logos of strip mall culture. Not a fur trader, or gold panner, or dog sled in sight other than the trivialized, cartoon- ish logo versions on the signs of the convenience stores, or the plate glass fronts of shops where you could buy carpet, or bathroom fix- tures. Further on up into the Mat-Su, as the commercial zone began to thin out, I heard the girls state their amazement at the green- ness of the landscape, the establishment of so many farms. Still surprised, I supposed, that it wasn't all snow and ice. I held my hand up to Crandall as a way of signaling I wished to take a pause and leaning forward a little in my seat said: "Stands to reason, doesn't it, considering the amount of sunlight and rain they get up here in the summer?" Both girls turned slightly in their seats to look at me. "Does the sun, like, never go down?" asked the one who wore a set of stereo headphones connected by a wire to some point lower on her body. The girl had a small, pale, pixie-like face enclosed with- Section #5: A Moist Wind [59] ! in a forest of dark, possibly black, hair which appeared subject to quite a bit of shampooing and conditioning. I was pretty sure I could smell whatever chemical rinse she'd used on it that morning. "These days the sun doesn't set until around mid-night," I informed her. "Four hours later it comes up again." "I've noticed that, even so, it never quite becomes completely dark.” This was the other girl, a mirror image of the first female, same curve of pale cheek punctuated by the points of long lashes, same cut of longish, blown dry hair except in this case the girl's mane was auburn instead of black. Turning to her seat mate she explained: "I stayed up for a while last night after you went to bed. Writing in my journal. Around one in the morning I took a walk. It was still quite light out." I immediately liked the auburn haired girl's strong mouth and her forthright delivery, explaining her activities the way she did, making no mystery about it. And that hair was something: a rich reddish-brown with about every tenth strand glowing a golden copper color in the sunlight which streamed in through the bus window. It appeared somewhat less managed than did the hair of her seat mate. I'd leaned forward to fold my arms on the back of the twosome's seat which brought me so close to the girl's hair that if I focussed upon its confusion I couldn't see anything else. "That's about right," I said. "Never gets dark. Just sort of stays dusk until sunrise." She gave me a bemused smile at my having worked so hard to repeat what she'd just said. "What, do you live up here or something?" asked the one with the personal stereo. Leaning over as close as I was, I could hear the buzzing in her headphones. I recall thinking it made sense for these two females to have chummed up, splitting a room at their motel, going out together for breakfast, walking together or, considering the fact they had luggage, taking the hotel's courtesy shuttle to the train station to meet the rest of the course. Males appeared to outnumber females on the expedition three to one. The conversation at the train station pick- up point had quickly taken on the masculine tone endemic to any group of males approaching an outdoor venture. Wilderness as Proving Ground and so on. The girls had to know it would be this way when they signed up. The school may've advised them of their minority, put them in touch so they could meet up upon arriving in Anchorage. To the dark haired one's query I gave out the same couple of lines of information I’d just given to Crandall about living in the harbor town in Southeast. The two swiveled a bit more in my direc- [60] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! tion. It was the one with the auburn hair who thought to re-introduce herself. Her name was Tyler and I still maintain I was able to keep her name, along with Crandall's, fixed in my brain all the way through to the White Zone. The chum's name was Cheryl, which I'm pretty sure I forgot within seconds. "So, you're a chef?" asked the one named Tyler. A really fine name that, I thought. So good, she didn’t really need a last name. It was at some point in this bus conversation, I can't say precisely when, but let's just say it was right then, I noticed when she spoke her upper lip lifted up a little higher on one side than the other. "Not exactly," I said. "I only took the cook job for the winter. I've been doing a bunch of different things. Commercial fishing, cannery work, day labor. Whatever comes to hand." There was a pause and then she said: "Sounds reasonable". Possibly it was then that I spied the dimple which occurs high upon her cheek when Tyler smiles a certain way. I'll even bet it was during the bus ride I first touched with my eyes the downy hairs along her jaw, just below the ear. I'm sure I gave those fine hairs a good inspection, the sun coming through the bus window highlighting the fuzz along with every pore and freckle on her face. I'm sure I noted everything, though it's possible I was not conscious of the study, not aware of my own fixation upon the delicate hairs below her ear until, say, the moment I sat next to her at the class in Advanced Navigation. One cannot always be aware of such flaring of desire the moment they occur. Of course, but for what's transpired between Tyler and myself, making it imperative to recall every detail of the past, the whole encounter on the bus would've likely vanished into memory's dark well. I would've never had any reason to reflect to the point in time I first noticed the lifting of the lip, or the dimple, or the downy hairs, any of it. But I'll tell you, clouded as my mind was at the time with thoughts of mortality, drownings and lost equipment, the instant I perceived the neat line of Tyler's chin extending out from her slender neck, however far away I stored the impression, I knew right then I wanted to lie with her, should we both live long enough to have the chance. Improbable though it is that attraction to a virtual stranger ever plays out the way one's erotic urges would have it. "That's right. There's no end of work up here," I said, because already I wished to influence her and her dark-haired girlfriend to stop whatever they were doing in their lives and move to Alaska. I went on: "This is a young person's state. All you have to do is show up and the place will load you down with work until you can't take any more. Within an hour of stepping off the ferry in Petersburg, I was in a cannery cleaning shrimp. The cannery job played out after Section #5: A Moist Wind [61] ! ten weeks and since then it's been one paid gig after another. Yes- terday was the first full day off I've had in over a year." I should mention that a quiet prevailed on the bus from the moment we pulled out of Anchorage. I was aware of being the one who was breaking the silence, even as I tried to keep my voice low. I could feel my words attended to by those in the bus seats around me, college students all, it seemed, or if not that then individuals in some sort of transition, secretly wondering if there weren't other viable ways to go about a life. I decided the attention was a good thing and the nods and interested expressions encouraged me to fill the air with words. It helped diminish the feeling that we were each of us proceeding to a soggy grave in the company of strangers. "They ever hire girls to work in those canneries?" asked Tyler. "All the time," I answered. "Most cannery workers are female." "I've always thought it'd be interesting to work for a while at a job like that." She said this as much to her seat mate as to me. The statement drew only an uncomprehending gaze from the dark haired girl. I was absolutely mesmerized by an odd crease in Tyler's lip where it seemed the wire must be attached, the filament which was triggered to pull it up sharply upon an instant. Countless times since our bus ride that morning, while sitting in camp, or out with her collecting firewood, I've studied the action of the wire. The lift will occur during the most casual of conversations and, in itself, seems to denote no particular emotion other than her impulse to be communicative and knowledgeable on some topic. Well, it was not her lip, ultimately, that incited the touching. Her lip I could resist. As I said, it was the nape of her neck which was responsible for the trouble. And the fact that I was continually thinking about how her leg had felt next to mine through the material of our sleeping bags during a chaste bivouac the previous night. It'd only been her calf and maybe a little bit of her thigh, but they'd felt unnaturally warm and heavy against my own. Whether she intended to put herself in a vulnerable position at the fish smoker, to give me another chance to act, or whether it just worked out that way, who can say? All I know is, I couldn't refrain from placing my mouth on the soft skin just to the side of the bony protuberance of vertebrae, skin which had forever been shielded from the sun by the thick drapery of her hair and was so very pale and covered with tiny, nearly invisible hairs which when I pulled away held the droplets of saliva. I clumsily smeared my way to her mouth, stopping her speculation about the fish cave. Tyler straightened from [62] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! her inspection of the little grotto, got her bearings, oriented my face with her hands and moved in. I had no choice but to press straight on against her upper lip, if for no other reason than to see if I could detect the wire working beneath the flesh. I couldn't feel anything there as harsh as a wire, or a pulley, or any other mechanism. I couldn't feel anything beyond the perfect seal of our mouths. Our tongues, after so many hours of setting vibrations loose upon the air, finally encountered each other directly. So, we kissed. Then what were we to do? From that moment, we'd entered a whole new way of regarding one another. Having established this much I believe I would've been content to return to the student group and the re-divvying up of the rations, probably by then already underway. It was at this juncture Tyler expressed her surprise at my move and how she'd begun to suspect maybe I didn't like girls, to which I countered with my concern about it being ill-advised, which added up to a bit of inadequate discussion lasting no more than twenty seconds before we commenced to kiss- ing again. Holding our position against each other's mouth we stepped away from the uneven ground in front of the cave until we could feel the level terrain of the beach beneath our feet. We fell together as one upon a dark sand still warm from the sun, trying to avoid the masses of rope kelp which lay about everywhere with their tendrils in the water. I lowered myself back upon the pulverized greywacke and she followed, our lips still fast. At some point, I managed to hook a finger beneath the strap of the tan colored sports bra. When she lifted her head, I raised my own to preserve the seal, the tendons of my neck tight as the elastic of the bra strap. I fiddled with the clasp but could make no sense of it. Tyler pulled her mouth away with a hermetic pop. "Really, though, why do you say inadvisable?" Her hair was over my face and her voice sounded indistinct, having to find its way to my ears through all that underbrush. "Because," I began, forcing my words out through the thicket, "once we get back to Palmer, you and I will be going our separate ways. It doesn't seem advisable to start something we can't finish." "Well, you started it. So now what're you going to do?" What I did was refasten myself upon her mouth and, reaching around her waist, attempt again to disengage that clasp. My gaze became fixed upon the spot where the strap of the sports bra was indenting the flesh of her shoulder. I thought about the load borne up by the strap and felt it was critical to somehow relieve her shoulder of the pressure. "Here." She stripped off the thermal top I'd bunched up be- !Section #5: A Moist Wind [63] neath her chin. Then she pulled free the tan colored harness of the bra intact over her head. "I never bother to unhook it," she said. "Too complicated." She was completely bare above the waist except for the oversized watch strapped to her wrist. The freckles on her shoulders were as expected as the dappling along the dorsal ridge of a fish. The corners of the blue bandana flipped down to lie against her chest, extending past the freckled region all the way to where the skin was purely white. We lay back again and the tips of the bandana swung out. I took one of the cloth tips between my teeth and worked my way along it until I was at her neck and once more within the safe, dark place beneath the canopy of her hair. "Careful of the feather," she said as we rolled. She'd been continuously holding it by its stem out and away from the action. We rolled over a couple times, her hair spilling all over me, getting in my mouth and nose, threatening to block my breathing, until we came to a stop almost on top of a length of rope kelp which lay half-concealed in the sand. My hand searched beneath the tangle of her hair until it found my old friend, the bump of vertebrae. I put the tips of two fingers against the bony protuberance where the skin was damp and I pressed, and then I pressed some more. I swear I could feel the swelling of her pudenda right through the layers of thermals and windpants. She took her mouth away. "Marlow, we can't." "I know," I said, falling away from her. There was a sickening weakness in my legs, a heavy, nauseating weight in my groin. The long breath of air I expelled made her laugh. "It's okay," I said. "There are about fifteen reason's why we shouldn't." "And one big one.” "Haven't you heard?" I said. "The virus doesn't exist out here." "Not funny," she said. "That wasn't what I meant but I'll add it to the list. Your lifestyle down there in St. Petersburg doesn't exactly inspire confidence." "No saint. Just Petersburg." "That's what I mean. All those women." "There've only been two." "Right. Only two. You've got blood on your teeth. Your lip's bleeding." "I'm sure it is." After that, we were quiet for a space. I twined the copper fil- aments of her hair, discovering they'd take a curl off my finger. "The light has an interesting quality," she said. "The way it's reflecting off the water. Not an easy thing to capture. You could stop [64] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! down for depth but then there probably wouldn't be enough light for exposure. Unless you were using very fast film, which I'm not. I thought you older guys always carried condoms." "I thought all you younger girls were on the pill." "I was once. Not any more. And even if I was we'd still need to use a condom. You know that." "I didn’t think I’d need one on a wilderness trip." "I should think this would be the very circumstance you’d come prepared. You can't exactly stop by a convenience store." "Nope. Can't do that." "Maybe you could fashion something out of that kelp," she said, indicating the inert rubber tube next to us. It was like a greenish, semi-translucent snake right down to the checkered patterning of its skin. The kelp was at least four inches thick through the middle. "I'll get right on it," I said. "The end might work. Right there where it tapers off." "Come now," she said. "I'll not stand for any self-deprecation." We got up and brushed the sand off the backs of our knees. Behind us a trail of gear and clothing began at the high tide mark and ran all the way to the water's edge. It was easy to make out where we'd hit and rolled. The sand was chopped up in places and there were divots where our heels and toes had dug in. "Evidence of a struggle," she said, eyeballing the progression. "You know, that was kind of nice," she added. "That was the first real heartfelt making out I've had in a while." We proceeded to gather up the gear and the layers. Tyler asked me if I'd ever seen a certain movie, an old black and white which contained a famous scene of lovers on a beach. "They actually roll in the water," she said. "The surf washes up all over them." I told her I'd never seen the film, but was vaguely aware of the scene, one of those shots sometimes included in reels of film highlights. "Too cold for any rolling around in this surf." "Speak for yourself," she said, studying the water. "But maybe not right now." We decided to return to camp by hiking over the top of the spit instead of following the shore. As we left the beach, I glanced back once more at the marks and tracks we'd left in the sand, a tiny and insignificant disturbance in the vastness of the place. To give the two of us credit, we made it past the highest point of the spit and were descending toward camp before succumbing again and falling together, this time not onto sand but into tall grass. Again, it was my doing. I'd only touched the side of her face near her ear with my hand, but that was all it took and down we Section #5: A Moist Wind [65] ! went, pulling at each other until our pelvic bones were locked. I put my mouth against the smooth muscle of her upper arm, the arm which was holding the feather out of harm's way. The skin tasted deliciously of salt and bug dope, the muscle beneath my lips very firm. Concentrating upon the flesh of her upper arm, feeding there, I got control of myself. I had one arm clasped about the girl's shoulders and was struck by their width and mass. I'd already learned something of Tyler's years playing varsity sports. "Do field hockey players still wear those tartan skirts?" I asked, lifting my mouth from her bicep. "You shouldn't talk with your mouth full," she said, laughing as she spoke in the way she will sometimes do. "Some teams wear tartan. These days it’s considered a little old fashioned. Our uniforms were orange and black. You know, 'The Tigers'." "They're pretty short though aren't they, those skirts?" "Well, sure. It's an athletic event." Then she saw what I was thinking and added: "You know, you are very possibly an evil-minded person." "No doubt. I’m wondering though, does field hockey even have positions?" "Yes, field hockey has positions. I play, or used to play, mid- field." "What else do you play besides field hockey?" I asked her. "I don't play anything these days." I put my chin over her shoulder. Our bodies were so tightly cleaved I could feel the movement of her breathing, the pulsing of her heart. I tested again the muscle of her arm, this time with thumb and index finger. There was the hockey and the swimming but, still, I thought there had to be something else. The muscle deep inside the tissue was hard and unyielding. You don't get tone like that swimming laps, definitely not by swinging a hockey stick. "You sure there weren't other sports?" "I rowed intramural crew all four years as an undergrad.” "Now we're getting to it. Why not intercollegiate?" I'd moved my mouth down to apply it lightly against the skin right above the point of her shoulder. I was watching her mouth move as she spoke, studying the way the gap between her lips widened and narrowed, admitting and then shutting off the sunlight to the back of her throat. It was remarkably instantaneous. When she opened her lips, there was the light already shining down upon her tongue and teeth. She stopped talking about her reasons for not rowing against other schools and the lips continued shut. I could see her eyes mov- [66] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ing back and forth. "What's on your mind?" I asked. "The Rule of Thirds." "The what?" "Photography-speak. Divide the frame into thirds. Makes a stronger image. In this case you could do grass-mountain-sky. Or grass-water-mountain. With a couple of those trees in the frame and the edge of the slope you've even got opposing diagonals. It'd make a good shot." I'll admit I wasn't listening very closely to her explanation. I'd made myself small and was down inside her mouth, balanced upon her wet tongue, leaning back against the smooth wall of a tooth, eyes closed, experiencing the utter blackness when she brought her lips together followed by a flood of pink-colored light when she opened her mouth again to speak, feeling the moist wind from her lungs rush by carrying her words to the outside air. “Sure.” I could almost see what she was talking about with the trees and the slope. I could also make out the Instructors and the student group through a break in the furze. They appeared to be already well into the process of rations re-divvy. We were closer to the beach than I'd thought. We could see them but I didn't think they could see us, or see what we were up to. There was no reason for Tyler and I to go down there until they were finished. "How d'ya know all that?" "Film appreciation class as an undergrad." “Still photography?” “No. Movies. Most of the principles are the same.” “Right.” I’d lain my cheek along her shoulder. The sunlight was glowing through the hairs of her arm exactly as it was shining through the blades of grass. She and I had fashioned a world unto ourselves. There was a reluctance to destroy the magic by exposing it to the mundane chatter of our fellows "We should probably be getting back," I suggested. We gathered ourselves up from the ground. It felt as if we'd been lying down and getting up for years. When we came down the bank onto the beach the student group and Instructors were wrapping up the rations redistribution. Thad Houston, who'd honchoed the operation, squinted at Tyler and me as we strolled into camp but didn't say anything. At that stage of the trip none of the Instructors and only Cord among the students had offered comment about the way Tyler and I were spending time together. ! ! ! ! ! ! Section #6: The Smooth Depression ! The heat of the afternoon is slowly pushing us down into the greywacke. Cord and Tyler's discussion of supermarket foods -- last I heard they were comparing notes on olives -- fell off to silence twenty minutes ago. It appears everyone's drifted into sleep. There's Pat, mouth agape, face muscles slack beneath skin weathered by twenty summers of Great Lakes sailing to the color and texture of a walnut shell. Out of habit I check to make sure she's still breathing. I'm constantly on the alert for Pat to experience a paroxysm, or to pass into a throe. I must glance over at her two or three times a day to make sure she's still with us. When Pat and I first made each other's acquaintance back at Palmer I was reminded of the various tanned and sinewy women my mother would meet on tennis courts, or on the apron of the community swimming pool, and invite to our house for late afternoon coffee. During my high school years it seemed I was introduced to legions of these anonymous, brown-skinned housewives. I encountered Pat for the first time apart from the group in the boot fitting room. She was having trouble selecting a pair of the school's rubber footwear. I arrived to hear her wondering out loud to the issue person if there might not be enough time to have her husband next-day-air a pair of rubber boots -- she referred to them as her "gum boots” -- from back home. The clerk assured her the package would never make it to Palmer before the course departed. I was forced to maneuver around Pat where she sat on a stool, three or four castoff pairs of high-top black rubber boots on the floor around her, plus a quantity of socks of different thickness- es. I supposed she'd been trying different combinations in an attempt to find the right fit. If her clothes were any indicator -- crisp new pair of khaki convertibles and a nice sweater-like top of natural fiber that must've cost a couple of hundred bucks by itself -- anybody would’ve suspected the problem lay in the fact the school does't stock boots as expensive and well-made as Pat was used to. The clerk had left the room so I self-issued my own rubber boots, making a point of simply taking them off the shelf, not bothering to try them on but going by the size number written on the [68] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! heel in white laundry marker. This was my way of commenting upon the plight of the older woman who sat on the fitting stool. The whole gear issue process was a series of minor hurdles, the sort of accommodation to circumstance a traveler is always forced to make. You can't always have things perfect. I did put one of the rubber boots down for comparison next to the light sneakers I was wearing. The size appeared close enough and I started off, boots under my arm, toward the next station, a circular rack of foul weather gear. Glancing back once more at Pat sitting on the little stool, I saw the situation for what it likely was: the woman was nervous about the trip and was only trying to achieve a normal sense of preparedness. "Boots don't fit, huh?” "Oh, they're okay," she said. "They hurt the tops of my toes. It's not the fault of the boots. My feet are deformed from forty years of squeezing them into too small a shoe. I forgot this could be a problem or I would've brought my gum boots from home. I have them tailor molded to my specifications by a shop in Chicago. Any- way, the fellow thinks he might have an older model with a squarer toe box. If he can't find anything I suppose I’ll have to live with it." I liked the sound of that. The woman was making an effort to accommodate. "Where're you from?" she asked. "Once upon a time I was from Virginia. I've been living for the past year down in Southeast." "Virginia's pretty. A few years ago my husband and I went to see the cherry blossoms." She was doing even better in my estimation, refusing to have the focus be on herself, or her boot dilemma. "Oh, sure. Virginia’s pretty. Just too lived over for my taste. No wilderness left." "Same problem in Illinois," she said. "That's why we go out on the Lakes." The boot person was back with another person who might've been the issue room manager. It looked as though they had something in mind, a new tack with respect to Pat's feet. I wished her luck and moved on. I continually reflect upon the terrible stillness that overtook Pat on the second morning of the trip. Subject to debilitating headaches triggered, apparently, by any abrupt change in diet or locale, Pat knew what she was in for when she left her comfortable house in Lake Forest and flew to Anchorage for twenty-eight days of wilderness travel and a dietary regimen of dried fruit, pasta, rice and fresh caught fish. Only there've been no fish. Even the codeine Section #6: The Smooth Depression [69] ! she'd brought with her was unable to touch the migraine that seized her the morning of Day Two. She sat on the beach, watching us load the boats, knees pulled up under her chin, rocking just per- ceptibly back and forth, her face no longer a healthy walnut color but more the color of bleached driftwood. The Instructors were discussing the possibility of a boat evac and I could tell by their tone that for this to be occurring so early in the course was disheartening. Ultimately, we did launch that morning, no evac required. Pat seated herself in the bow of a double with one of the stronger males in the stern -- this might’ve been Cord, I don't recall -- and holding a paddle athwart her cockpit, anxious I believe to give the impression of not being entirely dead weight, she submitted to being hauled to the next "X", as we call them, the day’s final pullout and campsite. I believe Pat did occasionally put the paddle down and pull a little water. On the following day she was much recovered, thus demonstrating by her lack of complaint during the episode at least one variant of what the school terms “Good Expedi- tion Behavior”. Pat has experienced no reoccurrence of the migraine and maybe there will be no more headaches until she arrives back to suburban Illinois and to her previous diet of cucumber sandwiches, or whatever it is she normally subsists upon. Naturally, it bothered me at some level to discover this woman on the course, a female twenty-five years my senior, not so sturdily built and yet still admitted onto the expedition, sitting there in the boot issue room making references to a husband who could be phoned to air express a pair of tailor molded gum boots. Not as bothered as I was by the chubby girl, Beth, you understand, but, I mean, what kind of physical initiation was the kayak trip going to offer if such an obvious product of settled suburbia was coming along. In my mind, Pat belongs to a generation that doesn't take unnecessary risks. Physically, she didn't look like the sort of individual who’d willingly endanger her health under any circumstances. We wouldn't learn about her son, Philip and his influence on her decision to take the course until the go-around talk later that day. As she sat patiently on the boot fitting stool, Pat certainly appeared as though in her normal life she might be a settled sort of person, one upon whom other people were dependent. If I was worried about a capsize and losing all my precious gear, the attendance of someone like Pat -- settled, married, propertied -- was as good an indicator as any that the trip was possibly not to be as harrowing as I feared. A snoring is presently coming from Pat. Well, she's a good [70] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! woman. Taking the time to bake us a loaf of bread, passing it around, making sure we all got a piece. I did eventually ask her how the boot fitting worked out. She told me that nothing in issue could be made to work but that an instructor based in Palmer had leant her his own pair, a higher end model, a size or a size-and-a-half bigger than what she normally wore with ample room for her toes. Aside from myself, Dinah is the only other one the warm afternoon sun has not put to sleep. Naps are not Dinah's style. The rest of the crew are off somewhere, making private trips through the Land of Nod. This shouldn't be a surprise, given the relentless pace the course has been setting as of late and having arrived to this warm, quiet spit of sand. At some point in the proceedings Cord installed a pair of stereo headphones on his head. The air is so still I can hear the static of the music in the earpieces. Dinah must've taken a seat up near the front of the bus, near the driver -- her preferred place in the scheme of things -- which is why I have no recollection of her on the ride from Anchorage to Palmer. At present, she sits upright, her back flat against the tree trunk, staring out across the stream, thinking god knows what. Her legs are together and stick straight out as if she were still in the bow of the kayak. I'm presently afforded a view of her face from precisely the same angle I've enjoyed all morning from the rear cockpit, the same modified profile I was afforded early on in the course when she and I paddled together nearly every day. Dinah's head is turned slightly, the point of her nose projecting out like a ruler beyond the curve of a cheek, one lens of her glasses distorting the line of the opposite stream bank. Down by the water, the kayaks are brilliantly painted drift logs, firmly settled in their troughs of sand as if beached there by a storm long passed. The afternoon sun strikes the hulls broadside in a way that sets the synthetic colors vibrating beyond the plastic laminate. If I stare at them long enough it becomes easy to imagine their bows and sterns stove in, the boats divested of any possible utility to anyone. It's odd that the manufacturers of sea kayaks feel they must imbue their product with these exorbitant colors, like party balloons, enhanced with metal flake, coats of clear gel, as if we are little children and this is what’s required to get us excited about riding their contrivances out onto the water. Unreal hues of blue and green don't get me excited. If anything, the colors cheapen the experience. I suppose there's some safety consideration at work. It'd certainly be easy to spot the boats from the air. The water appears to have crept up a foot or so, almost to the boats’ sterns. I know we originally pulled them up further than that. The tide has turned, just as Tyler predicted. The sun has shift- Section #6: The Smooth Depression [71] ! ed in the time we’ve been laagered here to completely fill in with shadow the smooth depression of Tyler's navel. We should probably get going, but I'm halfway thinking maybe I will let them snooze, if that's how they want to spend their time, while I get out the stove and the coffee gear and make a hot drink. Some instant joe cut with hot chocolate would be just the thing. Maybe even get in a little reading. I consider this prospect for half a minute or so and then decide to let it go. Rustling about in the food duffels will only rouse the others at which point they'll want to shove off post haste. They might allow me my cup, but I'd be rushed. Better to wait until we reach camp at Black Sand and once there see if some hot drink action can be made to happen. My gaze has caught upon the indention of flesh beneath the cups of Tyler's sports bra. Stretched back like she is, the bra has pulled slightly up from the ribcage to ride upon the softer tissue. How odd it must feel to wear an elastic contrivance clasped around one's upper trunk like that. "What sorts of places do people find to live there on your island?" Tyler asked me this morning as we were breaking down camp. "Well," I began, “some people live out at tent city. Or on a boat in the harbor. The canneries offer space in their bunkhouses. People live in regular houses, too, but that usually means paying some sort of rent." "Where do you live?" "In a regular house, believe it or not. I pulled a four month stint at tent city when I first arrived. Then I was on a live-aboard for the winter. Now I share a house with two of the guys from work. One fellow lives downstairs, the other two of us sleep on pallets in the attic." "Is this a good time to find work in a cannery?" "Things are slowing down but there's still work." "One day I'll be free of school and I'll try something like that." "You mean you'll take a break from being a doctor and work for six-fifty an hour yanking roe out of salmon?" "You never know," she said. Tyler must feel my eyes on her. She sits up, looks around as if she can't quite remember where she is, sees me and points to her watch. Catching sight of me always seems to trigger in Tyler a concern about the lateness of the hour. She's right, we should go. The tide's turned, or is turning. If we're to have hot drinks at any reasonable hour at Black Sand Beach, and not at eight o'clock tonight, the sooner we shove off the better. I grab up a food duffel and head down to the beach. As a sig- [72] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! nal that it's time to get moving I drop a paddle resoundingly upon the deck of the boat. This rouses the others and gets them to their feet. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #7: Flawless Panels of White ! Two Instructors approached my square in the White Zone where I was waiting to undergo the equipment critique. One was the comely female Instructor whose name was unusual -- I was still unsure of its spelling or pronunciation -- and the other was Burl, the older of the two male Instructors, who’s name I had down. Only one Instructor was needed for the gear appraisal and I observed the pair to discuss the matter even as they advanced toward my spot. The blonde and svelte female Instructor caught my eye and I saw her indicate to Burl that she would like to be the one to inspect my equipment. The woman had a clipboard with attached papers and, after a preliminary survey of the gear I'd set aside to take on the trip, we proceeded to go down her list. Right off, she approved of the "camp shoes" I'd brought, the very shoes I was wearing, the same pair of sneakers I've been wearing for the past six months at my pizza pub job. "Rubber boots?" she asked, pen poised above the clipboard. “Yep. Sure wish I'd brought 'em." She made a mark on the paper and said the school would rent me a pair of waterproof rubber boots to wear when "working around the boats". "No use for hiking boots, I guess, huh?" I asked, using my chin to indicate the waffle-soled medium weights sitting atop the frame pack like a pair of sibling dogs. "None," she said. "Sure." That was a hard one for me, not bringing the hikers, but I understood it wasn't going to be that sort of course. She also approved the cold weather hat and the gloves and the binoculars. "We're gonna issue three pairs of binoculars to the students as a group," she said, "but you can never have too many binos on a course." She mentioned that it would be good method to keep my binoculars ready for use in the "daybag", as she called it, [74] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! the duffel which would be stowed while afloat, on the floor of the kayak between the knees. She said I would probably have little use for a flashlight, but to bring it along if I wanted. What she didn't know yet was that I didn't have, or need, a headlamp, that my flashlight with its strap was my headlamp. However, she said, I was most definitely to leave behind the candle lantern. "It'll never get so dark you'll need to light a candle.” "We're bringing headlamps," I pointed out. "They make good signaling devices." "Well, okay." I didn't like the idea of not bringing my little lantern, com- panion on a hundred backpacking trips and a way to save on flashlight batteries. The last thing I do every night is read a few pages from a book by its light. I do this even when I'm in the front country, even if I'm in a motel room, or at my parents' house. The candle lantern has become symbol and reminder of my identity as a traveler, second only to the traveler's dog tags I wear around my neck. Sometimes, I will put my book down and spend some minutes in reflection while staring at the tiny flame behind the glass globe, digging on the sense of home and place it provides. Still, I took the female Instructor's advice and shifted the candle lantern to the pile of gear slotted to be stored in Palmer until we got back. "Haven't seen one of these in a while," she said, picking up the minimum register thermometer, tilting it until the little piece of metal slid to the end of the alcohol column. "Could be useful," she said. "Bring it." "Headlamp?" she asked. "Right here," I said, indicating once more my flashlight. She looked doubtfully at the device with its elastic strap, not a bona fide headlamp, but went ahead and checked it off. "Compass?" she asked. I proffered for her inspection the compass which after returning to my square following the conversation with my well- equipped White Zone neighbor I'd retrieved from the framepack at the last minute. The Instructor took a look at the device and immediately approved it. "Better than school issue," was her assessment. "Watch?" she asked. I drew forward from my pile of possibles the small travel alarm clock that serves as my timepiece. "You're kidding?" she asked. "Not a bit. Very reliable.” “It’s not water resistant.” "I'll wrap it in a plastic bag." I'd already thought of this and Section #7: Flawless Panels of White [75] ! had brought a couple of empties from Rations Issue for the purpose. "Fine," she said. "Or, it's really not fine. But I guess there's no reason we should sell you a watch." We continued down the list. "Cup?" "Check." "Spoon?" "Check." "Bowl?" "Stowaway pot doubles as a bowl.” I indicated the small metal cookpot with the folding handle. Honestly, it was nice to have this lissome female paying such close attention to my traveling gear. Gear is something I enjoy discussing and about which I'd like to think I have something cogent to say She examined the item. "The school provides cooking pots. We’ll sell you a plastic bowl. Much lighter." "I'm sure. I prefer to eat off stainless steel," I explained. I also thought: What does it matter about the weight? We aren't carrying our gear. "It's also handy for boiling small amounts of water," I went on,"such as for coffee." "Fine. Bring it. How are you set up for thermal underwear?" I rolled out the woolen union suit. "Seems a bit threadbare," she observed. "Makes up for it, though, by being all of one piece." "Maybe," she allowed. She examined my raingear, running her palm over a sleeve. "It's de-lamming," she said. "The nap's gone. Will it keep you dry?" "More or less. The patina of grime functions as waterproof- ing." "Seriously," she said. "We get a lot of rain on these courses. It can rain every day for weeks on end. We'd better rent you some foul weather gear." "How 'bout if I take the pants and the school rents me a top?" “Fine." Her pen made tapping noises against the clipboard. She expressed concern about one of my layers, an item I intended to wear as secondary insulation on top of the union suit, a button-up woolen shirt I've had for five or six years, the sort of gear that at one time was standard issue for backpackers in the North- ern Rockies. These items are still commonly sold in places like West Yellowstone and Bozeman, Montana where they're referred to as Buffalo Shirts. "Very frayed at the cuffs," she observed. "True," I said. "But I think it's still viable across the should- [76] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ers.” She set the clipboard and the pen on the floor and looked at me a second. "Haven't you heard?" she asked. "Wool is passé. The union suit, as you call it, I'll allow, but I don't think I can approve this shirt, or coat, or whatever it is. A synthetic pull-over will work much better. We have them in Issue. Not for rent. Purchase only. You really should have one for general purposes." "Maybe," I said. "Really, I prefer to take the shirt. I'm used to it." "Wait until you see the pull-overs. They're very nice. I'll make a note for Issue." Starting at that point, this female Instructor with blonde hair cut level with the neckline of her tight polypropylene top, as if that'd been the determinant of her hair's permitted length, began to reject in quick succession a variety of gear items that had worked fine for me as a backpacker and traveler. Sleeping bag -- "insufficient loft". Sleeping pad -- "insufficient thickness". Tent -- "school provides". Stove -- "school also provides and it's included in the cost". "What about the camp seat?" I asked, indicating the little folding chair which I'd already set over beside my frame pack as a leave behind. I wanted to hear straight from her if it wasn't recommended. "Leave it," she said. "You won't be sitting around that much." Right, I thought. When we weren't asleep in our tents we'd be out in the boats, battling the waves and rescuing one other from capsizes. "Leave all this stuff," she said, waving her hand over the pile of set aside gear as if to erase it from her visual field. Only for an instant did the woman take up and examine the maroon colored ditty bag that contained my stove, a drawstring unit I'd custom sewn to hold and protect the fragile fins of the burner. "Fashioned out a of a lady's handbag," I said and showed the Lead Instructor how I'd additionally cut down a tupperware container to fit inside to provide stiffness. She was not impressed with the stove ditty made from a purse and as quickly as she'd picked it up set it back down with the other rejected equipment, the heavy hiking boots, the frame pack, the tent, etc. Well, I'd suspected as much about the tent. The school was certain to provide tents. It didn't surprise me there was no room for discussion. Same as with the stove. These were just whims, the silent and desperate pleas of a man who needs his sleep and who likes to have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and again later in the afternoon and can sometimes make all of this happen with Section #7: Flawless Panels of White [77] ! more regularity if he has his own tent and stove. But I let it go. And really, as I reminded myself, we might as well put the wear and tear on the school's equipment and preserve our own. Other than the toothbrush and a small travel container of toothpaste which she picked up and quickly put back down without comment, possibly put off by the residuum encrusting the cap, the female Instructor nixed all of my toiletries. I knew she wouldn't go for the deodorant, I'd only left it in as a joke. As for soap, she said the school issued its own biodegradable version. "What about a razor?" I asked. "Nobody bothers to shave out there. However, I do like the way you cut the handle down." I looked at her steady for a moment. "Okay, then. No razor. One less thing to worry about." We were done. In all this inspection the only gear item about which she'd been whole heartedly approving were my glacier sunglasses with the side panels. Even then she qualified her enthusiasm. "You'll be glad you have those side shields," she said, "on the rare occasion the sun comes out." Already feeling the pain of separation, I shoved the no-go items inside the heavy frame pack, closed the flap and carried it over to the growing pile near the storage closet where eventually all our stuff would be sealed up to await our return twenty-eight days hence. At the last second, when I was sure no one was looking, I pulled the candle lantern out of the pack's side pocket and slipped it inside my shirt. And the short pants, which she'd approved, I put into the pack, thinking there'd never be a need for short pants where we were going. The female Instructor detached the checklist from her clipboard but instead of handing it to me and sending me off to the Is- sue Department, as appeared to be the procedure, our Course Leader hesitated, looked back once at the White Zone, put the paper back under the clip with a decided snap and, taking me by the elbow, escorted me to the equipment room herself. Which was fine with me, that is, to have the lithesome female take me by the elbow and draw me along to whatever was next. Strolling toward Issue, I attempted to make light conversation. I told our CL how I'd heard about the outdoor school and how much time had passed -- two years -- before I'd actually signed up, all of this without any prompting for her. I asked how long had she been working for the school. I made a try at her name, pronouncing it "Jo-Dee," then "Doh-Dah", both of which I knew were incorrect the instant I uttered them. It was an honest enough attempt on my part but immediately I saw on her face the pained expression of some- [78] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! one whose name has been mispronounced and misspelled all her life and realized I'd become one more in a long line of idiots. Even then, she didn't correct my pronunciation. It was later that day I finally learned from another student how to properly say the Lead Instructor's name. "Doh-Dee". Dodi did inform me as we walked along that she'd been an instructor at the school for fourteen years. "Wow," was all I could think to say. Arriving at Issue, Dodi waved off the young fellow who stepped forward to take the clipboard. It seemed the Lead Instruc- tor was personally going to help me procure what I lacked in terms of equipment. The two of us went straight to a bin where she ex- tracted a pair of insulated pogies and handed them over, briefly explaining their use. I don't think I was imagining it when the woman made a point of leaning over far enough to reveal the display beneath her t-shirt, indeed a very tanned frontal assembly. I held up the gauntlet-like pogies -- olive drab in color and tactical looking units -- and indicated to Dodi how impressed I was by the quality of their construction. I said we must certainly be in for some weather if such specialized gear was required. "Don't you worry," she said. "Chances are you'll be wearing them most of the trip." She steered me into the boot fitting room with instructions to grab a pair of rubber boots off the shelf and meet her on the other side. I proceeded in, found a pair of boots that looked like they might fit, had my conversation with Pat about the cherry blossoms in Virginia, and exited through the opposite door. The corridor offered a short cut to the room of painted squares. I made a detour to drop the boots off at my pile whereupon I about-faced, turned left and then right and there was Dodi, waiting with her clipboard. Once I was again at her side, she pulled a rental foul weather top off a rack and held it against me. "Looks like a medium will fit just fine," she said. Now, it needs to be understood that as Dodi pressed the yellow rubberized coat against my chest I was still trying to get over how pleasant everyone was at the school's base compared to the gangs of cannery workers and fishing boat crews I'd been living amongst for the past year. For instance, when I mentioned to my cannery mates the name of the seaport town our kayak expedition was to launch from a couple of the boys who'd been into the harbor town of Whittier from time to time and had sampled some of its amenities immediately gave voice to a little ditty which summed up, I gather, a generally held opinion of the place, a rhyme in which the name "Whittier" is paired with the obvious crude adjective. I didn't Section #7: Flawless Panels of White [79] ! think it was particularly amusing and not a thing I'd ever repeat out loud in front of the Instructor's or the other students. Never mind actually being touched by a female, there on the working man's island of Mitkof you can go a month without talking to a woman, weeks without even being near one. Since I’d already started to allow the aforementioned allegiances to dissolve it'd been a coon's age since any female had touched me, aside from a bar regular who one fine evening grabbed my arm and insisted on a dance, which caper I declined only to let myself in for a raft of verbal abuse. The bar regular wasn't bad looking, if you could ignore the muscle tone around her mouth, slack in a way which might be con- strued to indicate poor character. In any case, having my arm yanked could hardly qualify as being touched. When the tanned and curvaceous female Instructor with teeth like flawless tiles of white linoleum -- squares so perfectly set in their grout as to make the joints invisible, over which her lips seemed to slide with minimal resistance -- put a hand on each of my shoulders to hold up the foul weather gear for sizing I could not've been more transfixed if her palms had been supplying charges of electrical current. On we went around the room, Dodi and I, in a ballet of acquisition. Pogies. Foul weather top. Sleeping bag. Dry bag stuff sack. Sleeping pad. For a man that might make one significant equipment purchase a year, if that, the effect of all this gain, even if most of it was rental, was dizzying. "You'll need one of these," she said, consulting her clipboard and dipping her hand into yet another bin. "This will serve as your daybag, where you'll keep equipment and water bottle and snacks close-by in your cockpit." She draped upon my shoulder a simple nylon duffel, a nothing item, two handles, a zipper, your basic gym bag. But I didn't want it. I'd had enough. My limit exceeded. "Can't I just use my daypack for a daybag?" "You mean the thing with the patches?" "It's as waterproof as this duffel." There must've been something in my voice. Dodi looked at me for a moment then slipped the duffle bag off my shoulder and tossed it back in the bin. "Sure," she said, giving me another reveal of the perfect, white formica teeth. "Use your daypack." Apparently, she still could not get the inappropriateness of my woolen buffalo shirt out of her mind. She led me to the rack of "Purchase Only" gear and selected out one of the synthetic pull- overs of which she'd spoken. The one she picked for me was pastel blue in color. Even given this awfulness, I offered no resistance and pulled the top on over my head. Dodi patted my chest, made a show [80] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! of dusting off my shoulders and announced it a perfect fit. "You can travel anywhere in that," she said. "See how it zips up close beneath the chin." Aside from its color, I'll admit the pull-over was in many ways a very spec item with ballistic cloth sewn at the shoulders to resist the abrasion of pack straps. Even though from my experience the shoulders are not where the wear occurs, it's at the lower back. Not a place they’ll ever put a ballistic nylon patch. In all truthfulness, I hate pull-overs. They can never be properly vented. And pastel blue, any kind of pastel, is a bad color for someone who doesn't do laundry, certainly not outer layers, more often than once every six months. But I was so mesmerized by those teeth -- enamel plates fitted together into a wide, brilliantly smiling smooth surface -- I was unable to formulate any objection. Well, that's not exactly true. I was formulating objections but the competing phrase, "I must not nay-say Doh-Day," kept repeating itself over and over in my mind blocking out every other thought almost to the point I was about to say the little jingle out loud, which would not have been a good proceeding. The female Instructor, whom I estimated to be a couple of years older than myself, leant in so close I could make out the minute blonde hairs curling delicately this way and that upon her upper lip. I think she was finally picking up on my hesitancy, my outright resistance really, to purchasing the pull-over. She pointed out how, as an enrolled student, the school would sell me the jacket at a discount. "You'll find this to be much more functional than wool," she said, giving me a couple of last pats on the chest. At this point, mercifully, Dodi detached the equipment list from the clipboard, sticking the paper between the only two fingers I had left that weren't hooked into a strap or a length of webbing, and pointed me in the direction of the cashier. Still tingling from the woman's touch, I proceeded on with my load of crisp and untried equipment to be rung up. Then I bethought myself of my old shirt. It was bad enough all of that issue, the stuff sacks of sleeping gear, draw strings cutting off the cir- culation in my fingers, the pogies with their mysterious snaps, the rubber non-breathable foul weather gear already making the skin sweat where it was draped over my arm, so much strange and alien equipment I'd never needed on any sort of traveling I'd ever done. Then there was the pull-over which I was still wearing, unbearably warm, impossible to ventilate, in a completely non-spec color guaranteed to draw sniper fire as soon as I was exposed to the enemy, an item that even with the discount was going to cost me a hundred dollars. There were the high top rubber boots sitting in my White Section #7: Flawless Panels of White [81] ! Zone square, boots which I already decided I'd better actually try on before departure to make sure they fit. It was all too much. It was going to be hard enough to keep up with the old stuff when it all went overboard into the drink. I was on the way to the cashier with the pull-over and the rest of the crap I was buying or renting when I caught myself up short, drifted to the side and eventually came to slump against a support post. I considered how far that buffalo shirt had come with me, the girl I was dating that fall in Yellowstone when I bought it, and how far yet the shirt might still travel. The woolen shirt is one of the few gear items still in my possession which dates back to the very time -- a decade ago now -- I deliberately took up the traveling life. Here was this woman, the Lead Instructor, who certainly had a nice, casual way of touching a fellow, but whom I'd only met that morning. Unbelievable, really, her assumption I'd give up my old reliable woolen shirt/jacket just like that. It was not a question of money, though really the cost of the pullover equalled a day's wages aboard a halibut long-liner, and that’s a twenty hour day . If I bought the jacket was I to simply put the buffalo shirt in the trash, just like that? Or was I supposed to travel away with both articles? Did she think I had so much room in my travel pack I could afford to carry redundant gear items? Such were the thoughts that passed through my mind as I stood temporizing between the equipment racks and the waiting cashier. Well, as far as I could tell, the synthetic pull-over was optional equipment. My slumping maneuver had bought sufficient time to allow Dodi to vacate the issue room. I removed the blue pastel thing, its fabric the byproduct of some arcane process of petroleum distillation, the fibers spun into a fluff that'd probably dissolve away the first time I spilled stove fuel on it, and slipped it back on a rack, the wrong rack I'm sure, but I didn't care. Pull-overs like that are the wrong gear, period, and if nobody ever located the poor excuse for a layer to try on or purchase so much the better. For better or worse, I was back with my old buffalo shirt with its herringbone pattern, the elbow patches I'd sewn on myself, the one buttonhole that constantly needed repair. The buffalo shirt, sodden with seawater, pockets filled with sand, would still be duti- fully buttoned around my lifeless corpse when it washed up on the nameless shore, the shirt still doing what it could to keep the ca- !daver warm. ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #8: Destination of Last Resort ! It was later during that first day at Palmer, after all the food and gear had been issued, the Instructors gathered us around in the equipment bay for a talk. They had by that stage of the preparation each changed into their expedition gear, capilene with overshorts and synthetic tops. I have to say, I was impressed by the Instructor's identical synchilla zip-ups. These items were most definitely not pastel blue, but rather the color of smoke and their zippers ran full length, not merely the top eighteen inches like the poor idea of a layer Dodi had tried to foist on me. Now, I might've gone for one of those dark grey jackets if that'd been what she'd smoothed against my chest with her hands. The full length zip-ups are apparently Instructor-issue only, serving as a sort of insignia for the trip leadership. The appearance of our guides in their field uniforms struck me as the first true indicator that we were soon to leave the protection of the strip malls and convenience stores of Palmer, the clean and well lit dining room of the school's headquarters with its plenitude of salad, baked products and coffee, and move in the direction of wilderness. In my recollection of that afternoon, the storm collars of the Instructor's jackets were zipped all the way up to just below their noses. Now, I know the collars didn't actually cover their mouths but that was my impression. I see the three standing there, hands thrust into the warming pockets, mouths concealed behind the high collars, their eyes shifting back and forth as they waited for us to group up and become quiet. I admired their comportment: a trained cadre, weathered and serene, privy to a knowledge of the earth's last untrammeled places. The one whom we knew as Thad Houston possessed a thick beard which grew high upon his cheek, almost to his eyes. Clearly, he didn't bother to shave in the backcountry nor did he bother to shave in the front. As I imagined it, the man didn't frequent the front country all that much. Beneath a shaggy brow, Thad Houston's eyes were permanent slits against the sort of glaring sunlight that only occurs in outdoor expanses, the dazzling Section #8: Destination of Last Resort [83] ! brightness of snowfields and desert, the sun glancing off of the wa- tery surface of the ocean. I decided right then that I should undergo whatever training was necessary to become like them, like the Instructors. I envied the three mostly, I believe, for the evident opportunity their position provided to bring their personal gear up to a very high specifi- cation. Also, they struck me as being pretty far out there on the leading edge of the competency curve. When the Instructors saw we were assembled they zipped down the storm collars a few inches and began to talk, trading off turns as speaker, an obvious leadership strategy designed to keep their audience alert and listening. The one who referred to himself simply as Burl -- no last name has ever been given -- detailed for us the expected sequence of events leading up to our launch from Whittier twenty-four hours hence. Thad Houston took over and mentioned that we should each begin thinking about whom we we’d like to tent and cook with for the first go-around. Dodi -- who did at one time, I believe, mention she had a last name though I cannot recall a single instance of it being used and, besides, she doesn't need a last name, her first is distinctive enough -- capped off the first segment of our meeting by emphasizing how, above all else, we should each be ever mindful of “the privilege represented by the opportunity we'd been given to travel through a remote and pristine wilderness”. Well now, I thought. The Instructors arranged for us to circle up and each of us, one by one, to tell the group a little about ourselves and what it was we hoped to obtain from the course. Around the student group we went. I listened closely to the words of these strangers I'd been thrown amongst. I heard the older woman with the permanent deep water tan, the one who was having trouble getting a pair of rubber boots that fit, describe how after twenty-five years of marriage and raising a son the expedition was an attempt to lay claim again to her own life. This was a proclamation that left me wondering if her marriage or even her family were still intact. She claimed her concerns had narrowed to little more than upgrading household appli- ances and monitoring the romantic hi-jinx of characters on television. “I felt like I was becoming a boring person,” she said, seeming to imply that by the very act of signing up for the course and making the trip to Alaska she'd already begun to remedy the situation. Which, in a way, she had. Because Pat is older than the rest of us, though possibly not as old as Burl, I paid particular attention to what she said during the getting-acquainted go-around. She told us how her son, just out [84] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! of college, had enrolled on this same kayak course the year previous and since getting back home could hardly talk about anything else. Pat and her husband own a motor sailer which they tradition- ally take out for a month long cruise on Lake Michigan each summer. Only this summer she's here in Alaska, on her own, to try sea kayaking, a separate vacation from her politician husband. "A separate vaca", was how she put it. I also paid close attention to the words of Tyler, the young female with the reddish brown hair. During our conversation on the bus I'd not picked up on the East Coast accent that now issued distinctly from the corner of her mouth as she explained that she'd enrolled on this course as a way to take advantage of the last free summer she was to enjoy before medical training began to occupy her entire year. Tyler didn't tell us right off the name of the medical school where she’s currently matriculating. Dodi had to prompt her. When Tyler did name the school she spelled it out for us, the prestigious east coast university where'd she'd done her undergrad and the school of high reputation where she's presently in her second year of the medical program. There were appreciative whistles by a few of the other students, young people still caught up, I supposed, in the status of higher education brand names. I thought her reluctance to drop the name of the school rather good form on Tyler's part, a good conversational strategy for putting us at our ease. A lot of people she might talk to would have trouble getting past the glamour and gloss of a thing like that and then would fail to hear what it was she actually had to say about her experience of being a student at such a place. In general, Tyler's testimony echoed that of the other young students, all of whom struck me as burdened with backgrounds of affluence, each careful to make it known they were bound for a defined future of one sort or another. Whether or not it constitutes a privilege to travel these waters it sure seemed the trip was going to fit right into the general program of these people's lives. Not an experience to be appreciated for itself, really, the outing seemed to constitute for these youngsters mainly a break from book application, a reward for what had been achieved so far and a brief diversion before entering the next phase of whatever track they were pursuing. Bundled up with their other motives for signing onto the kayak trip was the notion that the excursion would provide a necessary form of initiation their academic life was unable to provide. The course was going to round them out in some crucial way which would then loop back to help them in the realization of future academic and career objectives. At our rap with the Instructors that day most of the students Section #8: Destination of Last Resort [85] ! indicated their primary goal for the trip was to view wildlife, to spot whales -- nobody said which kind of whale, simply "whales" -- and also bears. Dodi broke in the first time a student put forth this hope to say that our wildlife viewing ambitions were likely to be fulfilled. She indicated we'd probably see, in addition to whales, "lots of bears", an announcement that stimulated a cry of dismay from some in the student group. Dodi didn't specify which type of bear we'd most probably spot, but really there was only one species of bear we could encounter at this latitude. I don't recall who said it first, though actually I believe it might've been the pudgy girl who introduced herself as Bethany but said we were to call her Beth who voiced a desire to push herself physically, or have herself pushed thusly while on the float. It should be noted that we'd succeeded in passing halfway around the student group without anything like this notion of being pushed being uttered. Once the concept was articulated suddenly two out of three of the remaining students, plus most of those who'd already had a chance to speak and who then politely waited until there was a pause in the proceeding to add to what they'd already said, now put forth as their primary reason for signing up the desire to have themselves physically challenged. To a man the college-aged males were emphatic about it. To test their limits. That was the repeated catchphrase. One of the younger males didn't quite put it that way. "To push my, you know, what do you call them, my envelopes," he said, which produced a guffaw or two from his mates. At any rate, the idea seemed to be that an outside agency would goad people to a level of vigor they'd never assume on their own. I began to realize that many of these youngsters were approaching the kayak expedition as an advanced version of summer camp. The couple of students who, during the first few hours at Palmer, had referred to the Instructors as "the counsellors" or "the coaches" had been quickly corrected out of the habit. But mentally they and a good number of the rest, I began to suspect, viewed the trip as one more opportunity to win ribbons and trophies and such, to chart their achievements with tangible markers, first place in archery, an award for Most Helpful Camper and so on. The husky male who went by the nickname Cord used the term "stoked", as if he were a steam engine primed with fuel, to describe how ready he was for the physical challenge to begin. Anoth- er male expressed the same sense of physical readiness, employed instead the word "torqued". The boy had arrived to Alaska twisted by some tool into a slot with so much pressure that if he didn't find an outlet soon he was possibly going to shear right off. I could not have been more alarmed by this talk of pushing [86] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! limits, which sounded to my ear like relentless travel with no time for sleep, or coffee, never mind reading or reflection. If these students had their way we were in for the sort of maximum effort that would only seem worth it once we'd gotten to the other side, well after the ordeal was over and had receded into memory. We hadn't budged from our places in the equipment bay and already I felt like the push had begun. I was ready to begin calculating the number of days until the whole business was over. Before proceeding any further, let me state right here that an opportunity to demonstrate physical courage and stamina was never part of my rationale for signing onto the kayak course. If someone else joined up for those reasons then that was their per- rogative. No one else's motives or personal capacity for hardship have any bearing on how I will in the end perceive my own performance during these twenty-eight days, or how I will characterize the experience to others when I get back to the world. As the young collegiates spoke, I could see in their counte- nances the grown men they would become, successful and powerful like their fathers with faces fleshy and heavy of jowl. It wasn't hard to imagine how these boys were already looking forward to returning to wherever they were from and telling their people the story of the kayak trip, laying special emphasis from the start upon the name of the state, because if they failed to make it clear that they had traveled all the way to the forty-ninth state then their tale would lose half its power. Even for the couple of generations that have come of age since the state was admitted to the union the term Alaska is still code speak for a place of extreme conditions, a frontier where young people can go to test themselves against nature and seek their fortune. The Gold Rush. The Yukon. The Chilkoot Trail. Jack London. Robert Service. Bush pilots. Eskimos. Northern Lights. Dog sleds. Perpetual darkness and the midnight sun. No other state, not Texas, not California, has remained so remarkably resistant as a concept, or a symbol, to emendation in the popular imagination. The personal qualities still thought to be helpful to survival in Alaska -- physical strength, courage, outdoor savvy -- are exactly those qualities young men everywhere of a certain age, let's say ages fourteen to twenty-five, wish to believe they either already possess or can acquire. For an adolescent male to be able to say they traveled to Alaska and lived in the wilderness for twenty-eight days with the bears and the killer whales, well, aside maybe from obtaining a recording contract, I don't know what else would carry as much prestige amongst his peers back in the Lower Forty-Eight. Even though at some level every adult knows you can order Section #8: Destination of Last Resort [87] ! a latté in Fairbanks and expect it to be delivered to your hand about as quickly as it would be in Times Square, Alaska is still thought of as a place necessitating an extreme degree of self-reliance, an at- tribute no longer required and quite possibly an impediment to success in the Contiguous Forty-Eight. The only reason the frontier construct of Alaska has so long resisted correction is that not enough folks have come up here to have a looksee. What the boys and maybe the rest of the country don't know is that Alaska is not just a place to seek your fortune, if it's even that any more -- now that the pipe line is finished and the fishing appears to be playing out -- but if finding good fortune is not possible in Alaska the state still works pretty well as a place to get away from a bad one. You don't have to spend much more than a couple of days camped in the tent city of any fishing town in Southeast to discover that for a lot of grown males Alaska has become the destination of last resort, the !place they've come to attempt a salvage of what remains to them. ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #9: Shackelton Wasn’t Going With ! The collegiate males were not the only ones fashioning themselves as machines needing but to be revved up and pointed toward the wilderness. In addition to Beth it seemed all of the young females were infected by this notion of wilderness as proving ground. I assumed it was an attitude currently in vogue on university campuses, possibly coming in by way of the media. Or else it was simply a mental stance endemic to the children of the country's ruling elite, inculcated as they were with the idea of nature as commodity, or substrate. Responding to all of this expressed desire for physical punishment the Instructors pointed out that it was our course and we could certainly tailor the trip to make it more or less athletically demanding, whatever we wanted. This was an announcement that produced in me a further chill of apprehension. As if it’d not been demanding enough to have shown up to Palmer, a thousand dollars in traveling costs and lost income, thousands more for the course tuition, a complete disruption of the normal round, the obliteration if only temporarily of the activities which sustain one on a day-today basis. At one level, this disruption of routine was all well and good and part of what I was after, another reason among many why the Brooks Range course wasn't the best choice. There've already been plenty of backpacking trips. A surfeit of backpacking. I can backpack in my sleep. But this business with boats and paddles and PFDs, yeah, now here was something different, presenting the very real possibility I wouldn't wake up every morning and pretty much know what was going to happen that day. A part of me wanted to be put to the test. I've always had the uncanny ability to quickly re- duce almost any circumstance to mundane routine. It's why I'm continually forced to shake things up by cutting myself adrift to see what will happen. By virtue of simply having arrived to Palmer my desperate need for the waking hours to play out in some unpredictable way was already being fulfilled and I was sure would continue to be fulfilled by the task we were soon to be given: a twenty-eight day un- supported journey by sea kayak. I didn't see it was necessary we do Section #9: Shackelton Wasn’t Going With [89] ! anything fancy. I assumed the expedition would follow some sort of route out and back. The Instructors probably already had the passage worked out on paper. All we needed, then, was for them to mark the directions out on a map and we could be off. There would be plenty of challenge in accomplishing the route by the most effi- cient means. The Sound looked to be wild, with islands and headlands and cold ocean currents, bears stalking the beaches, orcas cruising the waves for the odd overboard sea kayaker. There were certain to be plenty of surprises and unlooked for impediments. No reason to arbitrarily make the trip more difficult. Well, I thought, it might be our course but about one thing I was pretty sure, very few if any of these kids had paid the course tuition themselves. Well, it's probably not entirely fair to put it that way. While I would say it unlikely any of them had worked at a job to cover the cost of the trip, it was clear they were paying for it nevertheless, each in his or her own way, if only by the effort required to first discern and then to align themselves to the expectations of their milieu, no rude accomplishment in itself. Without going into it too extensively at minimum there are standards of dress and grooming and speech that must be met, not to mention performance in sports and academics. If a young person doesn't keep up they can face expulsion from the tribe, a heavy consequence with which to be continually exposed. So, they keep pace and occasionally are rewarded for doing so with trips and excursions as well as allowances and material effects. When it came my turn to talk I gave the gathering the short version about living and working in the fishing town situated in Southeast not more than a few hundred miles south of where we were presently assembled. I made a point of stating to the group as a sort of reaction to all of the elaborate plans and ambitions we'd been exposed to as we went around the circle that the town was where I lived, that I'd been living there for over a year and had no immediate plans to live anywhere else. "None of this is to say," I pointed out, not wishing to sound as though I were imprisoned on the island against my will, "that the place doesn't possess a certain romance." This was an admission which prompted Dodi to interject some comment that I didn't catch but which stirred laughter amongst those close enough to hear. I paused for a moment to see if Dodi or anyone else would repeat what she’d said but nobody saw the need. I guess they assumed I'd got it. I went on to explain to the group how, being as I lived on an island, I'd been thinking of buying my own sea kayak and that I'd signed onto the course as a way to learn something about the boats and the gear before I made the [90] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! plunge of a purchase. And that was it, those were my reasons for being here, or at least all the rationale I was willing to give them. A moment of silence followed my uninspired statement of intent. Into the silence Dodi spoke and this time I heard her just fine. She said, very plainly and respectful of my uncomplicated needs, that the school's course as it was designed should provide me with basic sea kayaking skills and expose me to a range of boats and equipment preparatory to a future purchase, or words more or less along those lines. The Instructors spoke last. I recall practically nothing of what they disclosed about their background or their aspirations for the expedition. I believe everything I've come to know about their personal histories is the result of eavesdropping on later conversation. I do remember Burl saying that he hoped over the course of the next twenty-eight days to improve his fishing technique. And I vaguely recall the Third Instructor, Thad Houston, describing how he'd already worked for the school several years in the capacity of a climbing and backpacking instructor and that this was only his second or maybe he even said it was his first sea kayaking trip, a skill area he wished to migrate into. This made him a sort of Ap- prentice Instructor. We finished up the getting acquainted circle with a short question and answer session. Initially, there was a short pause and it started to seem as though possibly none of the students had any questions. "You will all become such good travelers as a result of this course," Dodi inserted into the pause. I thought this was an interesting thing to say. And I believed she was right, or at least that the course would move us along toward being better travelers, more capable and possibly more obser- vant of the natural world. I did wonder to what extent her statement carried meaning to the others in the room, particularly the younger set. One of the collegiate lads piped up: "Will we see any polar bears?" This caused some tittering and I heard the term "idiot" mut- tered by somebody. The Lead Instructor looked at the youth a moment to see if he was serious. "No," she said, deciding to take him at face value. "We aren't quite far enough north for that. The bears we're likely to encounter will be Alaska browns." There was another pause and then someone asked if there'd be strict rationing of the food supply while on the trip. This concern was voiced by one of the young males who went on to say, in more Section #9: Shackelton Wasn’t Going With [91] ! of a mumble, more to the students sitting nearest to him, that he tended to need a lot to eat. Dodi answered that we'd be carrying more than enough food in our duffels for the twenty-eight days -- the school had figured this out long ago -- and what with fishing and foraging for edible plants, rationing would not be necessary. “You'll be able to eat all you want," she said. "Within forty-eight hours of being outdoors," the Instructor named Burl put in, "your metabolism's going to increase to make up for the fact that there are no longer any external sources of heat. Essentially, your body becomes your furnace. You must fuel it." "If you're hungry, you need to eat," said Dodi, adding: "An army marches on its stomach." I listened to this and thought that given it was a waterborne course it didn't seem we'd be doing a lot of marching but I understood what she meant. Maybe she should've added that a navy floats on theirs. I don't know. That doesn't sound quite right either. As long as we were on the topic of foodstuffs I had a concern of my own. I'd noticed that no coffee, instant or otherwise, had been issued in the rations. Now, before going on here, it should be mentioned that I'd been careful to choose this particular school for my introduction to sea kayaking because, through considerable research on my own and discussion with other outdoor types, I'd arrived at the understanding that this school, compared to some other outfits, did not place its students in artificially contrived survival situations. I had some anxiety about whether or not a particular outdoor program had as its primary focus personal growth, or the goal of acquiring self-confidence with the idea a graduate could then take the newly acquired self-confidence back with them to their front country life. I didn't want any part of anything like that. I'm working hard toward the eventual elimination of a front country existence, meaning that someday I hope to be perpetually in the outback. And, anyway, personal growth is, in my opinion, a fallacious concept. Once a person has reached full stature there is no growth, only accommodation. The focus of this outfit, from what I'd heard and read, was not the teaching of communication or interpersonal skills, or any such claptrap designed to be taken back to the urban sphere, to of- fices and board rooms and such. All I needed or wanted from an outdoor school was tutoring in the hard skills. And by that I didn’t mean exposure to a bunch of survival methods. There's no need for it. There’s plenty of good gear out there for shelter, fire, food and warm layers. You don’t need to be setting snares or rubbing sticks together. No solos or fasting or vision quests or other non-pertinent stressors. No touchy-feely and no encounter sessions. [92] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! I was glad to hear Dodi's reassurance about there being plenty to eat. This school was said to focus primarily on traveling safely through remote regions with a high degree of awareness and competency. I hoped such an approach would not extend to having to forgo certain small vices for the sake of ascribing to somebody else's notion of a more pure approach to the backcountry. Not being able to get a cup of coffee for twenty-eight days would be a priva- tion. It would make life at sea doubly hard and I didn't see why anyone would willingly put themselves through it. Even the British Antarctica expeditions, at their worst moments, had their tea. But if, in fact, No Caffeine turned out to be the school's policy then I figured having come this far I'd deal. After all, if I was hoping to be thrust into a circumstance in which I wouldn't know what was going to happen everyday one way to ensure disequilibrium was to be forced to live with no hope of obtaining my usual three cups of coffee a day, the cups spaced out at regular eight hour intervals. Take that away and things were guaranteed to get weird and unpredictable. However, I will confess the prospect of this was depressing and only made me feel that much closer to some sort of personal apocalypse. Rationally, I knew I could survive without the coffee sessions but I was not going to be happy about it. I'd come prepared to endure any hardship the expedition presented as long as the occasional mug of hot joe could still be brought to hand. If I didn't have to go without the bean then I didn't want to. I just wanted to be straight on the policy. It was not like I was asking that there be cream and sugar. Black was fine. I raised my hand. "I'm just curious," I began when I got the go-ahead to speak, "will there be coffee on the course?" A number of students, in fact I think most of them, seemed to find my question amusing. Probably, despite my effort to be even- toned, I'd failed to keep the sound of desperation out of my voice. They might've thought I was trying to be funny but I was in dead earnest. "The school doesn't provide coffee, or M&M's, or even a wide assortment of teas," said Dodi. "Before we leave Palmer you'll have the opportunity to hit a grocery store." What relief I felt at the Lead Instructor's answer, for truly there's nothing more enjoyable in the backcountry than a cup of hot joe. So, at least, whatever else happens, I thought, there'll be coffee. You wouldn't think I'd have any more questions after that and I didn't until another student asked the Instructors when we might first expect to encounter the open ocean. I listened up since the answer to this would provide some clue as to when the first cap- Section #9: Shackelton Wasn’t Going With [93] ! size would likely occur. The surprising answer, coming from Thad Houston, was that we would never actually be in line of sight of the Pacific and that all of our paddling would be carried out in relative- ly protected waters. Typically, the so-called Apprentice Instructor went on to say, we'd hug the shore line and whenever possible avoid lengthy open crossings. I don't know what prompted me to ask the Instructors a follow up to this. It must’ve been the sense of elation I was experiencing as one by one the sources of my various fears were evaporating. "In that case," I piped up, "will there be times when we'll sleep on the water in our kayaks?" My question inspired another, this time longer, outburst from the student group. Burl was likewise amused. "You can sleep in your kayak if you want to, Marlow," he said, "the rest of us are going to sleep on-shore in our tents." Well, that was it. Lucky for me I'd not broached any questions about urinating in a can while on the water, or about the possible use of anal plugs. The briefing continued on a bit longer but I was through asking questions or even listening. The group was into some sort of discussion regarding personal electronics in the backcountry, portable radios and cassette players and so forth. I didn't pay much attention to it since it didn't affect me. I started focusing on what the Instructors had said regarding choosing up tent mates. I wasn't going to tent with any of the young collegiates if I could help it, the ones whom I was pretty certain had laughed the hardest at my perfectly honest queries. I circled around the group and sidled up to Crandall, my old seat buddy, the biology teacher from Amarillo and to him proposed the idea of being campmates. He immediately said he thought the two of us tenting together, sharing cooking chores and so on, an excellent idea. I could tell he was relieved, as well, to settle the matter and maybe had also been worried about being assigned to a tent populated by nineteen year olds. "We're going to need at least one more person," I said. "They're not going to let us get away with only two people in one of those domes." Crandall had no suggestions. I spotted the woman whom I'd talked to earlier by the Alaska map, the older one who'd brought all the shiny new gear. "What about her?" I asked. "Dinah." Crandall had no objection, no feelings about her one way or the other. I moved a little further around the circle. The Instructors were wrapping up the meeting with a discussion of something they [94] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! called Expedition Behavior. Let me state right here that it often strikes me as a bit much to refer to our little outing as an expedition, though I do it, as if Earnest Shackleton were in charge. But I understood immediately what the Instructors were talking about regarding this E.B., the shortened way they usually referred to it. Obviously, when you're traveling with a group of people you have to suck it up and not complain about every little thing that irritates you. Each person must strive to be helpful and do their part. Burl concluded by reminding us that our end-of-course evaluation would basically boil down to how well each of us manifested the principle of Good Expe- dition Behavior. Meaning, I guess, that there was also such a thing as Poor Expedition Behavior. "Hey, Dinah, I've got a question for you," I whispered, moving up beside the woman with the hooded sweatshirt and the fatigue trow. "How'd you like to be tent mates?". She didn't respond right away to my question but kept her eyes directed toward the Instructors. Dodi was giving the rundown for the rest of the day, blocking out the hours for us, so much free time, followed by supper, followed by a trip to town to the grocery store, et-cetera. "Well, Dinah, what do you think?" "I guess that would be all right." she said, still not turning to look at me. I thought for a second she was going to say something more but this was the sum of her response. "Great," I said and refocused my attention on the Instructors in time to hear Dodi say if there were no further questions we were free to go, to sort gear or whatever, but that she wanted the girls to stick around for a few minutes for a discussion of issues specific to females in the backcountry. A couple of the male collegiates tenta- tively put out they'd be interested in hanging around for the discussion, too, if that was okay. I was about to head off to see if I couldn't score a cup of coffee from the branch kitchen. If that didn't appear workable I was going to fire up my camping stove while it was still accessible, before it was placed in the lock-up with the rest of the stuff I was leaving. Right then Dinah turned to me and said: "I hope you're not looking for anything more than a tent mate." I met her gaze for a full three seconds before I grasped what she was getting at, or at least what I thought she was getting at. "We'll be sharing the tent space, Dinah. You and Crandall and me." I pointed out the biology teacher in case she didn't know who I meant. "The tall fellow there with the red hair. The way I see it, the Section #9: Shackelton Wasn’t Going With [95] ! three of us will cook our meals together and sleep in the tent. Or not sleep in the tent. I might occasionally decide to sleep outside the tent. You know, for the fresh air." "Good," she said. "I simply wish to clarify my position." As the group dispersed there was some confusion among the three Instructors. Thad Houston, a form in his hand, trying to catch us before we split, asked for a quick confirmation from those who were taking the course for college credit. There was a pause and no less than three of the group raised their hands. Well that just about takes it, I thought, finding my way out of the equipment bay. I hadn't known such an option was even available. It must be in the fine print somewhere. Here I'd signed up for the trip in a desperate attempt to infuse variety into my life only to discover I'd be traveling alongside people who were getting their curriculum ticket punched, their pre-reqs, or whatever they call them. It was a frickin' P.E. elective. I couldn't believe it. Clearly, !Shackleton, the great man, was not going with us. ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy ! By Day Three or Day Four of the course, Crandall and Di- nah and I had settled into the steady camp routine I knew we were capable of when I first approached them back at Palmer about tenting together. We had some adjustments to make, for instance who got to sleep where in the semi-dome. I always like to be next to the tent wall and was bent on securing that position. The other two didn't care that much where they slept. Plus, we had to figure out how meals were going to work, who was going to cook when, what sort and how much spice each of us preferred, what we liked for hot drinks and other concerns along those lines. We got it sorted out quickly enough. Almost from the very start of the trip there were a couple of hours every evening, once the pesky group rap sessions on the beach were over, when the three of us would return to our en- campment, rekindle the fire with moss and sticks and situate ourselves around the cheery blaze. We'd co-exist quietly and contentedly for the next few hours, each spending time in his or her preferred way, Crandall labeling and packing away his biological specimens, Dinah continually pulling the personal gear out of her duffles, closely inspecting each item to determine its purpose or to establish its utility and then putting everything back again into various zippered bags. This routine was performed by her at least once in an evening, maybe twice if she became convinced she'd missed something. While all this was going on, I'd peruse this or that excellent book from the traveling library. Once it fully sank home the trip was not going to contain the dangers I once feared -- I did have a couple of days trouble with a certain boat, which I'll go into by and by -- I was able to settle fully into the reading, knowing that in all likelihood I'd be able to finish whatever book I started. The only thing I was missing was my camp chair. I don't know how I let Dodi talk me out of it. I was forced to find a rock or a log to set my ensolite pad against as a back rest. No big deal. A book on glaciology proved interesting, full of useful terms like "till" and "drumlin" and others with which to describe the anatomy of an ice flow, but eventually I gave up on it. What I quickly Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [97] ! began to yearn for was some fiction but the expedition library was completely devoid of the genre. It was around the evening of Day Five -- we weren't a week into the course, I'm sure of that -- Crandall put down the paperback he'd brought with him and, with a sigh, said that while one of his high school students had recommended the book to him but he was finding it too dense. Right from the evening of Day One I'd taken note of the title of the book my campmate had in his possession. I'd read the book, myself, back when I was twenty-three or twenty- four, backpacking around Y.P., going through a couple of books a week on the trail. The cover art alone took me back to the golden time when I'd first read it. It was one of those books that's perfect to digest when you're in your early twenties, traveling around, scram- bling to put together an existence that won't unduly compromise your ideals. And maybe, I was thinking, observing Crandall to set the book on the ground, it’d be a good book to revisit half a decade later while on a sea kayaking expedition, at a time when you might say a lot of things were once again up for grabs. About the only thing I could remember from the story was the dictum that it was better to perform your own motorcycle maintenance than pay someone else to do it. I think that was it. Anyway, I decided it wouldn't be such a bad thing to live again within its pages. "I'm going to give this one a rest," Crandall went on to say. "I'll work on my other book for a while." So saying, the biologist removed from his day bag a less thick paperback, a title familiar to anyone who's done much reading along the lines of eastern religion, or about the Buddha. This was all the opening I needed. I looked at my tent mate, so rich in personal reading material, and as blandly as I could muster, asked: "Would you mind, then, if I borrowed your other one for a few days?" indicating the book he's laid aside. "That'd be okay," he said. "I don't have anything to trade for it." "It's fine. I'll want it back eventually." I took the book from Crandall's extended hand and, with a sip of hot drink to get my mind focussed, immediately opened it to the title page, realizing that in actuality I had little recollection of how the plot proceeded, that it was almost going to be like a fresh reading. Honestly, there's nothing like good literature in the backcountry. If you don't have something to crack open when you feel inspired to read you can start to wonder what's the point of it all. As Dodi had indicated, the nights never become truly dark in this season at this latitude. I’d sit beneath the edge of the kitchen [98] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! tarp, relying on the overhang to keep the insects off, pulling up a handy erratic for a back rest if need be, and read quite late into the evening, pausing only from time to time to stoke the fire or replenish my hot drink. "Coffee anyone? Hot chocolate? Tea?" I would ask my campmates as I placed a pot of water on the coals. Crandall was not a man for hot drinks -- I thought his being from Texas had something to do with this deficiency -- and he always declined. Cold rainwater from an upslope catch pool was his drink of choice. Later in the course, he learned to brew hot tea, allowing it to cool to taste. "Dinah?" "A nice cup of hot water, please," would typically be her reply. "You want a tea bag or something in that?" I’d ask, knowing full well what her answer would be. If Dinah hadn't started out the evening with a tea bag in her mug she wouldn't add one later. It seemed to be some sort of rule with her. Neither of my campmates ever drank cocoa. I didn't know what was going on in the other cook groups but, if it was anything like what was going on in ours, I could see there was not going to be any shortage of hot chocolate mix to add to my instant coffee. "No. Just plain hot water, thank you," she’d say. Those were our happy times, Crandall, Dinah and myself, adjusting our mosquito headnets so we could bring the hot drinks up beneath them for proper sipping. Right from the get-go, I felt assured I was going to get my money's worth on this trip in terms of novelty. There was a terrific romance to traveling in our self-sufficient little boats, camping wherever we chose on the remote and unspoiled beaches. I was generally in an elevated mood, particularly with the discovery that this was, in fact, about all there was to it. As Thad Houston had promised at the briefing, there was to be no paddling on the open sea. The Instructors to a person were cautious in their assessment of our proposed route and, despite all the stuff about our wanting to be physically pushed, for the first two or three days they eased us slowly into the physical demands of the course. Much of our time in those early days was taken up on shore exposed to classes on camping, stove use and cooking methods. All fine with me. During these classes I watched the sun arc overhead and was satisfied to think that each additional minute passed on shore meant one less minute available for paddling the boats, one more minute when we might instead be able to spend time in camp, reading, sipping hot drinks, daydreaming or sleeping. Every day brought some unlooked for event sufficient to keep the travel fresh and interesting. I knew it couldn't last, it never does with me, but if Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [99] ! the heightened mood could be sustained for a week or ten days, that was good enough, after which I'd need some sort of shift. There was an instance one evening when Crandall nudged me with his boot and with a movement of his chin indicated in the direction of the water. I looked and saw a pod of three doubles coming back into shore off a late patrol A low-lying vapor obscured the hulls and the paddlers appeared to be traveling upon an invisible medium. We might not be adventuring in such a way to put our lives at peril, I thought, but that sure didn't mean the occasional wondrous sight of mystery wouldn't befall us. By eight o'clock most mornings we were launched upon the water. One of the early pleasant discoveries was that, no matter how thick and annoying the flies and mosquitoes were on the beach, once we were ten yards out from shore the insects dissipated and we could remove our bug nets. On days when the Instructors made the decision to move camp we’d paddle away most of the morning and then part of the afternoon, cycling along with our arms, the rocks and trees of the shoreline moving by at a satisfying speed, the rate of a fast walk, or a jog if we were enjoying a tailwind. We made our way up through the channels between the land forms. Here and there an island had been split in two by the probing of a glacier and with the retreat of the ice there remained a long firth where the water was dark beneath the shadow of the overhanging trees. We entered such narrows as a flotilla, three kayaks wide by four kayaks deep, the wake from the boats slopping to both sides onto the steep rocky shores. I recall afternoons when the air was absolutely quiet, not a cloud above. At such times, one became very aware of the sweep of the paddles, the reflection of their movement in the mirror of the water. Instead of hugging the shore into a baylet and then moving back out again we'd venture the long open crossing from headland to headland, the kayaks in staggered formation, singles with rudders pulled up for less drag, everybody forward stroking, the hulls cutting tracks through water as still and thick as glycerine. Here and there, oftentimes not very far away, the smooth plane of the water would be punctured by the dorsals of orca, the fins sticking up like posts. On such days and on such crossings conversation between the cockpits would slowly fall off as one by one we became mesmerized by the steady plash of the paddles, the drip of sea water onto the glassine surface and the perfect bow waves fanning out behind us to infinity. Thad Houston, sitting upright as a Russian fur trapper in the cockpit of his single, propelling his boat forward with short punch ing motions of the forearm, would sometimes break the silence [100] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! with an estimation of our speed made good. “Speed three and a half knots," he'd announce, forward stroking like a machine, that dark unibrow of his bunched up beneath the brim of his ballcap. "Aye, Captain," a student voice from somewhere behind would say. "Steady as we go." "Abaft the beam!" someone would call out, adding nonsense to nonsense. But steady as we go was right. We had so many days of un- blemished sky and quiet water that, even with the Instructors gradually easing us into the regimen, we made rapid progress in an easterly direction. The Instructors, who'd issued us the foul weather gear in Palmer with the assurance we'd use it practically on a daily basis, said they'd never seen anything like the uninterrupted stint of fair weather we were enjoying, are still enjoying, though now we take the clement conditions almost as a matter of routine. Not that the days were always free of wind and there could be some chop but the daytime skies were almost completely devoid of clouds. In actuality, we did have the yellow rubberized gear out one afternoon when we spotted a distant squall, a single dark cloud with what appeared to be a silver sheet of rain falling from its un- derbelly. A few students may've even put on their hooded jackets before the dark smudge slipped away and the sky went back to being clear again. No drops fell, at least not upon us, and aside from that single occasion the foul weather gear has remained stowed in the duffels between our knees, collecting the food crumbs that spill over from our snack bowls and the little poly bags of trail mix we reach into all day long. We paddled, as the saying goes, through a sunstruck dream. This is how to do it, I thought. John Dowd, author of the book I’d checked out from the Petersburg library, could keep his deep water, transoceanic crossings. Paddling twenty feet off the shore is the way to go, magically drifting past the rocks and the vegetation, the occasional flurry of leaves from some unseen animal. Around Day Five, or Six, I can't recall precisely, the Instruc- tors began advising us to take advantage of the clear weather and make as much progress as possible toward our ultimate turnaround point at Columbia Glacier. They said we should save our hold-over days, when we’d spend mornings and afternoons in camp attending class or enjoying personal free time, for when the weather turned inclement, a circumstance certain to arrive eventually. As we commenced to paddle away the morning and afternoon of nearly every day, to rarely take a layover, there was some Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [101] ! grumbling. The Instructors reminded us of our stated desire to push ourselves, which I'd not thought to have been so generally agreed upon as a strategy, but whatever. Once we got past the initial break-in phase and learned which boats personally suited us and which ones didn't, I never found the exertion overly difficult, just long and tedious. There were several days when we paddled right through and well past afternoon coffee time, always a rough deal for me. Pulling ashore for a late afternoon bladder break and a pow-wow the Instructors would encourage us in the decision to paddle on into the evening to take advantage of the placid calm of the ocean. On one occasion toward the end of the ten day so-called “initial phase" we didn't arrive at a suitable camping spot until nearly midnight. That was a record in my book, something I'd never do as a backpacker. Of course, there's still plenty of light up here in this season even at midnight. I remember coming onto the beach with the curious sensation that my arms had been used in the same fashion as legs on a long day of hiking dry land. One of the Instructors said we'd progressed twenty- three or twenty-four miles linear. Not an unappreciable amount, I guess. The kid who'd stated back in Palmer how "torqued" he was for the challenge to begin now admitted to feeling "tooled". Each day of the break-in phase the Instructors appointed a pair of so-called student leaders -- officially referred to as the Stu- dent Leaders of the Day, or SLoDs -- whose job it was to set the time for our morning launch and once we were underway make decisions concerning how much distance we'd cover, when shore breaks would occur during the day and so on. The Instructors began to deliberately hold back and let the student leaders, typically each assigned to a cockpit in the same cruising double, assess the water prior to a crossing and, once it was determined to be a "go", desig- nate which boats were to set the pace and which were to be on flank. When it was time to make camp, the rest of us idled off-shore in a loose pod while the student leaders took their double in to re- connoitre the embayment. If it looked promising, they'd paddle in close, glass the beach with binos and locate a landing point. Finally, they'd go ashore as a landing party with another pair of students, secure the painters of kayaks to a drift log and scrounge around to determine if the beach would suit our purposes. Calling out to the bears, as the Instructors have taught us, the foursome would move about and conduct a systematic inventory, the way you’d go into a hotel room to see if the beds and bathroom were acceptable, if the TV and the air conditioning work. One pair of students would split off to investigate the proximity of fresh water, either as a stream or in the form of catch pools. The beach would be paced off, kelp lines [102] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! studied, all to establish whether there was adequate space on the shingle for five student tents plus room for the Instructors who prefer to camp at some remove from their charges. If all appeared good a signal was given to those of us still loitering upon the water and we'd go in and take the beach as ours. Some of these landfalls had clearly been camped on before as evidenced by the blackened stones of fire rings, though they'd not necessarily been camped on previously by the school. Dodi told us she'd never, in the course of dozens of these twenty-eight day expeditions, used the same campsite twice. As we travelled further from established human settlements we landed upon beaches that showed zero sign of earlier occupation. The idea was alive that possibly we were the first humans to ever visit a particular parcel of shoreline. The Instructors discounted the notion, pointing out that indigenous people of the Athabaskan tribe had lived upon and traveled these waters for ten thousand years and had no doubt stopped in every cove that offered reasonable shelter. Acknowledging the likelihood of this didn't at all ruin for us the sense of discovery. It was fine if the Athabaskan had been there. What mattered was that we might be the first moderns to have established camp upon the shore. The Instructors continued to emphasize that more time spent on the water early in the trip would translate to more camp time down the line. This might've been true if we'd ever hit the proverbial bad weather. Since we've not, what this policy has translated to has been instead an unrelenting pace of travel. As time passed, my only complaint was with the constant push. Again, not that it was physically exhausting, at least not for me, not after the first couple of days and that was only because initially I’d picked the wrong boat to row, but given three or four hours of paddling -- a couple of hours before lunch and maybe a couple of hours afterward -- certainly by four o'clock in the afternoon, I was always ready to stop and do something else. Let me tell you, the few times it worked out this way, when we put in a reasonable effort on the water and then called it quits by mid-afternoon, the late afternoon coffee on the beach never tasted so good. More often than not, it seemed, right at that juncture of the afternoon when I would've preferred to be sitting on dry land enjoying the hot drink and reading another segment of Crandall's book, or if not reading then drinking the coffee and conversing with my campmates while observing the play of light on the water, which is best viewed when not actually on the water, instead we'd be on a paddling jag, or else held up for half an hour in the chop of some headland while the student leaders discussed whether to make the crossing or go back and find a different Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [103] ! route. This is not to say it hasn't all been fascinating to a large degree with plenty of exposure to the mystery, that is to say, to natural processes not sanctioned by humans. The vast broken cliffs of the headlands where we might be stalled waiting for a leadership decision are commonly used by cormorants for their rookeries, the birds nesting in the crags by the hundreds, or thousands. I wouldn't have known they were cormorants -- double crested cormorants, to be exact -- but always during that early phase of the trip Dinah was there in the front cockpit of the double kayak to inform me. The sea, surging against the base of the headland cliffs, swirled among rocks whitened by a millennium's accumulation of guano. Only by kayak could we have ever gotten in so close to such a tumultuous patch of water. Dozens of the hook-billed birds, agi- tated by the nearness of our boats, would drop simultaneously from their perches, unfold their articulated wings and glide to the water's surface where, with a flash of onyx underwing, they'd bank and soar off through the wave troughs. The first time we witnessed one of these dark perching birds collapse its flying apparatus and plunge head first into the water, Dinah, ever a font of information regarding bird life, informed me how deep the cormorant is able to dive -- one hundred feet, if you can believe it, literally flying underwater -- and how long the bird is able to stay down -- a full minute, not so hard to believe -- and that the cormorant catches fish which it swallows and later regurgitates for its young. Interesting enough, though I didn't like the woman pronouncing that word "regurgitate", which she did a good job of making sound exactly like the throat action. The cormorants we observed that day weren't required to fly about underwater in pursuit of prey. Whatever food fish they were after must've been schooled up just beneath the surface. The birds, dropping from their resting spots to plane out over the water, would shift into immediate dive bomb mode, re-deploying their wings just before crashing into the surface to ensure a shallow entry. "Maybe you should do your mini-class on cormorants," I suggested to Dinah. "Or regurgitation." I mainly said the word out loud to demonstrate to my boat mate how it could be pronounced without all that action of the throat and tongue. Good grief. "No," she said. "I'm doing my mini-class on survival shelters." She'd brought up her heavy binocular optics to study the rookery. I was hoping she wouldn't discover what I'd already picked out, that one of the birds, perched one-legged upon a rock, had something artificial wrapped about one leg which was keeping the [104] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! appendage in a permanently cocked position. But I’m sorry to report she noticed it. "There is something amiss with the cormorant on that pin- nacle," Dinah said, lowering her field glasses for a moment. "Do you see it?" she asked, putting her glass back on it. "Yes," I said, taking up my own binos from the daybag. It took me a second to lock in on the bird and the snarl of material on its leg. "Appears to be monofilament." "What is monofilament?" she asked. "Basically fishing line." "Isn't there something we can do?" she asked. "I don't think so." I told her. And of course, there wasn't. There was no possible way we could paddle in close enough to the rock without risking capsize. Not that the cormorant was going to let us grab hold of it. "I think the bird has figured out how to live with it's problem.” "The poor creature," Dinah said. She'd dropped the field glasses to the lap of her spray skirt. With the binoculars hanging from her neck and heavy in thought, Dinah was unable to look in the direction of the rookery anymore. I back-paddled away from the spot and turned the nose of the kayak toward the group which was beginning to get underway. "As a child," Dinah began, after some minutes had passed, “did you read, or do you recall it being read to you, the story about the Chinese duck family who lived on the junk on the Yangtze Riv- er?" The instant Dinah uttered these words I was seized with a recollection of images, pen and ink drawings filled in with watercol- or and the sound of a man's mild mannered voice reading out loud: "Their home was a boat with two wise eyes on the Yangtze River." It was a parcel of stored memories I'd not considered for more than a quarter of a century, a reach back in time sufficient to induce a mild vertigo. "I did read the story," I managed to say, only beginning to sort out what it was I recalled and where the memory was rooted. "Remember how the one little duckling becomes separated from its siblings," she went on, "and goes off to have adventures? He discovers a flock of cormorants, just like these, who were exploited for their ability to fish. Their human master had installed metal bands around their throats to prevent them from swallowing their catch." Or later regurgitating it, I thought, thankful she'd not employed the word again. It was as if Dinah had done a fresh reading of the book some- Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [105] ! time within the past six months. It was true, as I admitted to her, I'd also read the story. Or rather, because I was too young to read, the story had been read to me just as it had been to about a million other kids in that early television era by a man who hosted a morning children's show, a pudgy fellow who appeared on camera dressed in quasi-naval attire but who was nevertheless an exceed- ingly kind and gentle man by all appearances. Now that Dinah had prompted me, I recalled the detail of the metal bands around the cormorants' necks. I remembered the feeling of awfulness I experienced, at age four or five, in reaction to the idea that the birds could never swallow the fish they captured. The recollection triggered the equally disturbing memory of another book the man with the page boy haircut and the ship's captain uniform would frequently read out loud on his program, a story about a family of Chinese brothers who conspired to help one of their siblings escape execution. The story assumed of its child audience a working knowledge of execution methods, drowning and burning, beheading and suffocation, rendered all the more appalling by the story's casual tone, as if these were fates that could befall anyone. I'm sure it was my first exposure to the time-honored horrors humans will inflict upon one another. I was terrified by the story of the Chinese brothers, each expert at evading a particular form of execution, and never failed to listen again when the captain once more picked up the book to read aloud to his audience, though I learned to avert my eyes from the illustrations, depictions of yellow-skinned youths bound to stakes, or sealed inside ovens filled with, of all things, whipped cream, the youngsters all the while wearing bland smiles as their fellow townsfolk made another vain attempt to put them to death. I was brought back to an awareness of the present moment by the woman's voice in the front cockpit asking if I happened to remember the title of the book about the little duck. I knew if I didn't dredge the title up quickly on my own Dinah was going to tell me, but to save my life I couldn't bring it to mind. I knew it was something short, a title deliberately chosen by the author to appeal to children by way of innocuous simplicity. Then I knew it was too late, that Dinah was going to say it and that it was going to be painful to hear when she did, worse even than her pronouncing “regurgitate”. I was almost going to ask her to please not say the title but I wasn't quick enough and she said it and the pain and annoyance rose up. "Yes," I acknowledged. "I believe that was it." Dinah went on to explain that many people assume the title of the book simply to be the name of the central character -- which she pronounced again in case I hadn't heard it the first time -- but [106] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! that in actuality the full title begins with "The Story About ... " and then she distressed me further by repeating one more time the name of the little yellow duck. "He ran away to avoid being punished," Dinah said, more to the air than to me, "but in the end he learned it was better to stay at home with his family. Even if it meant getting his spanks." The woman had a knack for introducing terms in a way that made me cringe. Dinah was thrilled by the sight of the double-crested cormorants. She was able to add another notch to her so-called Life- time List, the sum total of bird species she's spotted in the wild over the thirty odd years she's been keeping track. "Phalcrocorix auritus," she said, checking the latin in the guidebook she keeps in her daybag. To be honest, I'm on the fence about this Lifetime List business. It may qualify as a form of nature commodification. I did take a vicarious satisfaction knowing Dinah was able to tally the bird. I appreciate this sort of systematic approach. Dinah was getting to see a lot of birds she'd only previously read about. I wasn't all that interested in the specifics but I was struck by the fact that if my paddling mate was afforded the opportunity to sight the rare and unusual it was one more example of how the trip was taking us far from the populated zones. I asked Dinah at one point which bird species was her favorite. I have no recollection where we were at the time, on water or on land. "The cedar waxwing," she replied without hesitation. “Such a sleek, elegant little creature. It is commonplace amongst birders to say the cedar waxwing is the only bird species that appears to be wearing a tuxedo. When I was a little girl, I made colored pencil drawings of all the birds I spotted one winter." She began to reel them off: "... robin, cardinal, crow, chickadee, tufted titmouse, pileated woodpecker ... if you can believe it, in the city, too ... bobolink and finally a cedar waxwing.". I thought we might be in for quite a roster, but the number turned out to be small, these bird species which comprised the beginning of her Lifetime List. Despite the curiosities we were given to witness, the strange sights and rare fauna, I was restless in the boat, restless to be on my feet and walking, to take hikes, to get away from the group. It was not acceptable that by the time we made our last landfall for the day, got everything secured and camp set up there was barely enough time to eat supper and begin moving toward sleep. Which didn't mean I couldn't work a cup of coffee in there somewhere, it Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [107] ! was just not at the preferred time, the magic late afternoon hour that works so well for coffee and reading, when you need a reminder the mythical world still exists and it's not all about the practical and the mundane. Do you begin to see what the coffee ritual means to me? It's not simply the satisfaction of a chemical craving, it's what the act represents: a time for reflection, a moment's respite from the struggle. A dose of reading, forty-five minutes or so, is perfectly sufficient. Conversation instead of reading is allowable, if the other person is imbibing and if they're capable of conversing on an elevated plane. In any case, if after several days this caesura fails to occur I can get a little edgy. The trip has contained wonders, no question about it. The journey has been a reminder of what it's like to approach the world with the openness of a child, each minute unfolding unexpectedly. As much as I dislike the confinement of a boat, the manner in which the craft float and glide through the water past the shoreline is quite dreamlike. I'm not dull to the mystery of large pinnacles of rock jutting from the water. It's haunting to think of the rock, inex- plicably connected to the ocean floor, rising up through the dark fathoms to breach the surface. What loneliness is evoked by the sight of these promontories, standing isolated above the depths, waves lapping about their bases. I enjoyed the drama of a near pass to one of these needles, steering the boat in close enough to graze the surface with the fingers. I'd revel in the giddy sensation as the ocean lifted the boat and heaved it in close. Dinah, my constant boat mate in the early days, was always alarmed by these near misses. "We shall be dashed upon the rocks," she would cry and at the same time cease paddling. "You are reckless to bring us so close," she'd say once we were back out into clear water. Little did Dinah know it was not recklessness but more exuberance over the sense of reprieve I felt as the trip revealed itself to not be nearly so fraught with hazard as I'd originally imagined. It was almost as if I now had a need to play out the capsize drama I'd once assumed would be enacted against our will on a daily basis. The exuberance eventually wore off and then such stunts, when I performed them, became more a way to break the monotony of constantly staring across the water to distant shorelines whose details couldn't be seen and toward which we seemed to make little progress. I suppose steering in close to the rocky pinnacles was also a way of rebelling at the relentless pace of the travel, demonstrating how the requirement for speed obliged us to take chances. We weren't into the second week before the realization forced its way up to the surface, like another rocky outcropping that couldn't be [108] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ignored, that I was bored with the damp and splashy mode of travel. I silently tallied up the number of days remaining until the trip was over even as I thought it was awful to be concerned with a count- down so early in a new venture. On Day Five, or maybe it was Six -- I could pinpoint it exactly if I looked at the map -- there was an instance in which we approached a grouping of rocks that marked the conclusion of a spit of land. Dinah would've been more comfortable, I'm sure, if I'd steered wide of the rocks, but we were the last boat to make the approach and I thought it'd be interesting to thread our way through the snags to the other side. I pulled the rudder up in case it turned out to be shallower than it appeared and guided us in by use of the paddle. We made it through fine, without much complaint from Di- nah that I recall -- the gap between the rocks was at least twice as wide as the beam of the kayak -- and gained a little on the rest of the group to boot. Plus, I acquired a souvenir, a starfish snatched off the rock where it'd adhered itself just below the waterline. I placed the creature upon the deck of the kayak just forward of my cockpit, pressing down in an effort to make its suction cups stick to the fiberglass. What I was thinking was if I could manage to keep the starfish on the foredeck for a couple of days the sun would dry it out and make of it a nice memento. As a child, at a shell shop in Pana- ma City, I'd purchased -- or rather had purchased for me by my parents -- just such a specimen, a large golden-colored starfish, completely dried out, light and airy as a popcorn ball, coated with shel- lac to bring out its color, the tips of the rays delicately curled up just as in life. I kept the little dead creature for years, well after most of its spikes had broken off until upon my family moving again, it was thrown out and ended up in a dump or a landfill to finally decompose at what must have been a long way from its place of origin. Dinah, turning around in her cockpit to say something, noticed my capture. "Oh, that's an Ocher Sea Star," she said. "I have been reading about those. I will have to look up the exact species when we get to camp." She tried to pretend I'd brought it aboard simply to observe for a few minutes but I think she knew what I was about. "It has a nice color, doesn't it?" she asked. "Look how the red shades off to yellow. I would not keep it out of the water too long," she advised. "And you should be sure to return it to the same depth.” Right, I thought. There'd already been instances of Dinah ex- hibiting an annoying degree of assumed empathy with the natural Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [109] ! world. A sea bird would float by, or an otter surface not far from the bow of the kayak, and immediately I'd hear my boat mate offer coo- ing sounds, or exclaim rather too loudly, "Well, hello little one," as if expecting a greeting in return from the startled creature which had only one motivation and that was a total avoidance of us. It seems Dinah is one of those people, prompted by loneliness or a distrust of others, who feel they are exceptional and singled out for recognition by wild animals who in turn recognize a sympathetic nature. I’ve mentioned the concentration of blood vessels that form little spots of color on each of Dinah’s cheeks. That afternoon the spots, visible between the ear flap of the balaclava and the high collar of her paddling jacket, were constricted with concern regarding the creature I'd brought on board. The woman's nose projects so far out from the rest of her face the sharp point of it will swing into view with the slightest turn of her head. Dinah's beak was continually bearing down on me that afternoon as she swiveled in her cockpit to have another look at the six-rayed starfish. "Keep paddling, Dinah," I prompted. "Don't stop paddling." The starfish oozed moisture onto the hot plastic of the deck. Every now and then I’d adjust the position of its arms, determined that the ramifications dry evenly and as the final stages of rigor mortis set in point directly out from the center. Dinah, by that time, must've decided I was keeping the animal on board for the sole purpose of watching it suffer. I was looking out across the water, daydreaming about something or other, and was startled by Dinah turning around in her seat to squeeze seawater over the starfish with the bailing sponge. That does it, I thought. Rounding the point of the next island I knocked the starfish off the deck into the water. It sank straight away, hit the side of a rock, would've certainly kept sinking hundreds of feet to a depth at which no starfish could ever live but instead managed to stick itself to the rock no more than three feet below the surface. It was just as well. I had a feeling the starfish was going to stink pretty bad once it fully entered into the process of dying. There were already questions in my mind about how to process the carcass to achieve the effect I was after. As for Dinah, she never spoke about the starfish or referred to it again, never asked what had been my intentions. I think she chalked it up to some sort of aberration in my character best not acknowledged. Well, she may’ve had her hesitancy about inquiring too deeply into another person’s motivations, but I have no such inhibi- tion. Dinah and I were not long into our partnership as boat mates [110] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! when I began to drill down into the woman’s past in an attempt to understand what made her so peculiar. "When you were in college,” I began asking Dinah one day when we were on the water, “there in Champaigne-Urbana, did you live at home or on campus?" "On campus all four years," she said. "In an all girl's dorm. No males allowed after eight p.m. No unescorted males ever. On weekends I traveled home to be with Mother and Father. Two hours one- way by train." I cannot recall if this conversation took place after the starfish or before. It was somewhere in there. I know that I started out with the intention of getting to the bottom of something. "Immediately after college," I continued pressing her, ”did you take time off for travel or other experience?" "No. I went straight to work at the Main Downtown Branch, the Harold Washington." "As a research librarian?" "That is correct." She was spitting her replies back to me from the front cockpit, keeping the phrases deliberately short so they could be heard over the interference of the breeze and the splash of the paddles. "Did you ever work at any other job, for instance maybe while you were still in school?" "When I was a senior I participated in an internship at the Oak Park Main Branch. I took the El both ways, a thirty minute commute. That was the first time I had occasion to travel outside the Downtown Loop. Very adventuresome of me. Three days after graduation, bright and early on a Monday morning, I started at the Harold Washington, the only place I have ever worked for full salary. I was employed there fourteen years right up until I took my first leave of absence for the sailing course. In fact, for most of those fourteen years, I occupied the same work carrel." Which would account for the compressed lips, I thought. People who work with paper all day, touching it, sorting it, year in and year out, tend to have that sort of pinched expression. Dinah seemed to know her commute times to the minute. Something told me she could name all the stops on her rail line in the proper order, both ways, if I'd asked her. "How do you spell that?" I asked. "That term, 'car-rel'?" She spelled it out for me. "Basically a cubicle?" I asked. "Yes. It contained my desk, a chair, a phone, a computer monitor and a file cabinet.” "How did you get to work?" I went on. "To the Harold Wash- !Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [111] ington?" Dinah and I had touched on this aspect of her life in a previous discussion, but I couldn't remember if she’d said she occasionally took the subway, or the elevated. "It was a walking commute. Only when the weather was completely ferocious did I take the El." "Okay." "I didn't learn to drive until just before the sailing trip," she went on. "To this day my parents do not possess a car. I grew up taking taxis everywhere. I have never owned a bicycle. I still don't know how to ride one." "Right. You told me that." "When I moved out of my parent's apartment and was on my own, I quit taking cabs and walked to save the fare." "The efficiency apartment you lived in, it was downtown?" "Yes." "What floor did you live on?" "The fourteenth. Actually, it was the thirteenth. You probably know how that works. Out of superstition, many buildings do not acknowledge the existence of a thirteenth floor." “I’ve heard of that." "From my efficiency apartment to the library was eighteen minutes walking time. I lived in that apartment for ten years. I was very happy there. It was a twenty-three minute walk from my door to my parent's apartment where I grew up. It has occurred to me that up until the time I left Chicago my life was completely contained within a triangle, the three points consisting of my apartment, my parent's apartment and the library -- " Right there Dinah had said something I didn't catch. You either had to speak in a staccato fashion while on the water, or else you had to speak loudly to be heard. It was worse for Dinah being in the front cockpit. I had to occasionally ask her to speak up, or to repeat herself. "What was the last thing you just said?" I asked. "My 'Triangle of Safety'," she said, forcing the words back toward my cockpit. "Only it turned out not to be very safe." "Was that an equilateral triangle, or more of a scalene?" "What?" "Never mind.” I'd not employed geometrical terms such as those in a long while. I wasn't sure if I was using them correctly. Conversations with Dinah always had a strange way of thrusting me back into my early school years. "It was more of an isosceles," she called out, having pieced together what I'd asked. "The longest leg was formed by the line be- [112] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! tween my efficiency and the library." "How big was this triangle of yours compared to the Down- town Loop?" "Oh, much smaller." "Well, I wouldn't know. I've never been to Chicago. You always lived alone in your apartment?" "Yes. Always alone." "No pet? A cat, a goldfish, something? A houseplant?" "No pet, but I always had a working television set. A portable I would carry between the kitchen and my bedroom." "I guess a T.V. qualifies as a sort of pet. What exactly does one do as a research librarian?" The answer Dinah gave to this question was an involved one - - I had to keep cueing her to not pause in her stroke -- but was about what I expected. Dinah did for people what they would've known to do for themselves if they spent more than fifteen minutes a year inside a library. "I have to say, though," she added, "helping patrons with their requests has often led me down some unexpected avenues. I will freely admit I sometimes spent more time reading off-subject and examining the odd photograph than I probably should have." "That could've only helped you with future requests," I suggested. “That is what I told myself. You will never believe it but sometimes I became so absorbed in extraneous study I would miss my meal break." When Dinah put forth statements like this I'd have to paddle on for a while in silence before I could continue talking. In this case it took several minutes to get the image of a librarian's "meal break" out of my mind, the nibbling on the corner of a saltine cracker, or other hard tack, the apple whose skin her teeth would only penetrate after considerable delicate gnawing, with pauses to take sips of bottled water. "What, typically," I began, picking up the thread again, "would you become so fascinating by it would cause you to do something so incautious as to overshoot your scheduled meal break?" It wasn't that I deliberately wanted to mock Dinah's style of speech, I just couldn't help it. "Photographic albums," she answered. "Photographs of what?" "Natural scenes." "For example?” "Photographs of the treeless tundra tended to speak to me the most." Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [113] ! I thought about this for a minute. "In those photos, were there possibly mountains in the background?" "Sometimes. It was the presence of open tundra that was most crucial. It could be a veldt, or any expanse of uninhabited land. I favored a veldt." It was apparent Dinah enjoyed saying the word "veldt". And she said it well, too, with the lightest touch on that "t". "Wildflowers?" "Wildflowers are acceptable. If in bloom." "That's what I meant. How about animals?" I asked. "Would you allow, say, a herd of caribou, or gazelle?" "Large ungulates are all right. As long as they are not ob- structing the foreground." "What about birds, Dinah? I know you have positive feelings towards birds." "Certainly. Birds are fine. Only a few, however. No flocks." The tip of her nose showed as she began to turn toward me. "I prefer it," she went on, "when there is a single representa- tive animal. A caribou and a bear and a fox. Or an elephant and a lion and a gazelle. No herds. I find herds oppressive." "I think I see the pattern," I said. "A tiger, a monkey and a python." “That is it," she said. "Except I don't care for jungle. All of the vines and creepers and unregulated vegetation." Here she made with her mouth a sound of dismissal. "I prefer it open. A few trees are fine, even preferable to no trees. A small number of clouds in the sky. Distant mountains are nice, or very large hills. What is best are mountains with snow that stand cool and removed. Pho- tographs of that sort are very appealing to me." "I think that's intensely interesting," I said. "Sounds like East Africa. Or Wyoming. Except you said uninhabited. No people." "Well, no people in the photograph. There can be people in the actual place. It would be too much to expect there would not be." "Sure," I agreed. "After all, somebody had to go out there and snap the picture." I was beginning to obtain an answer to my hidden question. Dinah had described for me an urban childhood spent entirely around human made forms and objects. I could see why she might hold the natural world in such holy reverence. As I mentioned, this conversation between her and myself occurred early on in our career as paddle mates, a couple of days or more following the morning the Instructors put the course through various drills to enhance our ability to survive capsize. It was the morning after the day of the capsize drill that Dinah and I began [114] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! our joint career as boat mates. In my mind, I bracket the era in which she and I shared the same cruising double between the day of the self-rescue drill and the day of the course's arrival to Columbia Glacier on Day Ten. Almost all other events in the first phase of the expedition have to be approximated by working forward or backward from those two points. I will admit right here that I tend to recall conversations or events better than I do locations, even if I can't always place the events in the correct time sequence. This probably renders me something of an unreliable narrator. Given that, I'll do my best to provide you with the gist. We paddled along for a period and then Dinah said: "I am unable to precisely explain it in words, Marlow. The places in the photographs are special to me. It is as if they exist entirely for me alone. They inspire in me a calling to become a steward of the natural world and not simply utilize it as a refuge for myself. You may mock me if you wish, but it is as if these places are waiting for me to take up the role of their defender. They are the reason I came to Alaska." "I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that your manner of expression strikes me sometimes as quaint. You came here to find the open tundra?" "Yes." "Yet, you're on a sea kayaking course." "True. This course was recommended to me by someone on the sailing course. But this does not comprise all of the traveling I am going to do while I am up here. If you had not been so intent on poking fun, I would have explained that the most compelling photographs for me are the ones that depict an expanse of open tundra featuring a copse, preferably containing some large trees and a freshwater stream. My dream fantasy is to someday live in a thatched roofed log cabin bungalow next to a stream, right on the verge where the woods give out onto the veldt. Adjacent to my home in this forest glade is likely to be an ocean shoreline where my new skills as a sea kayaker will stand me in good stead." After this bout of effusiveness, about as much as could be uttered at one stretch from the front cockpit of a sea kayak, we paddled along in silence for a space. "Sounds good," I finally said. "I don't know where exactly you're going to find an arrangement like that, with the ocean so close to the tundra. Maybe Patagonia." She didn't offer any comment to this. Understand, I was not being dismissive toward her plan. You hear a lot of adults talk about chucking it all and moving to a cabin in the woods, but by and large most of them are blowing smoke. With Dinah, though, given her Section #10: Her Dream Fantasy [115] ! background and the factors which had forced her onto her present path, it was impossible not to take her seriously. She really was seeking a simple habitation in some untrammeled place. Of course, I knew the sort of images she was talking about. You encounter them all the time in magazines dedicated to outdoor travel and living. Oftentimes, they're nothing but dreamscape com- posites put together by clever artists. I'm not sure if Dinah knows they can be faked. It's necessary to give them close study to see how they do it. I've seen photographs of this class featuring the most compelling tree house arrangements, elevated grass roofs dripping with orchids, benevolent wild creatures, giraffes and mon- keys and whatnot, peeking in through the windows. Another photographic fiction might depict a houseboat floating upon a translucent lagoon, dolphins leaping clear of the water to grin at the camera. Always there's the seeming acceptance by the wild life of the gross intrusion of the human and their conspicuous living quarters. I can't deny that such juxtapositions hold an appeal. I mean, I'd try to get to these places, too, if I thought they existed. I once joined an audience who'd gathered to listen to a talk about how to build your own tiny one person house. The speaker, who claimed to have lived for years in his own miniature abode in defiance of all existing building regs, presented a slide show of dozens of such ar- chitectures, all reputedly designed by him, miniature houses sitting upon the most idyllic homesites imaginable, high mountain passes, tiny islands in the South Pacific, or perched upon an escarpment hard by a dramatic waterfall. I'll submit that every adult present in the auditorium that evening, impatient with the excrescence of American suburbia, yearning for simplicity, not asking for much, only a place to live in this world, a simple abode, gazed upon the photos projected against the auditorium screen and was filled with yearning. A question and answer period began in which we learned that every one of the photographs was a phony. The houses, where we assumed the speaker's clients were contentedly living in har- mony with the natural world, were in fact false constructs super- imposed upon outdoor scenes themselves artificially enhanced with non-indigenous megafauna and overflowing with a celestial light such as does not occur anywhere on Earth. It turned out the only mini-dwelling the man had actually built was the one he presently lived in, a house situated on a friend's property atop a sort of trail- er, the only way he was able to skate around the building codes. Strangely, the fellow seemed not the least abashed that he'd mislead us. He continued right on encouraging us in the belief that such micro-domiciles were legal and attainable. Well, sure. There was Dinah's vision: a sparsely vegetated pe- [116] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! neplain running uninterrupted to distant mountains, all very static and clean and uncluttered, an orderly natural space, certainly not like these SE Alaska coastlines washed over with seaweed and barnacles and all manner of flotsam. Give me a good stretch of tundra or veldt for long, unimpeded strolling without the need to step over downed trees or pick one's way around swamps and peat bogs. By the time of this conversation with Dinah, four or five days into the trip, I would've been happy to abandon the kayaks for a long walk over open tundra or for that matter an open parking lot, anyplace the legs could have a chance to fall into a rhythm. A patch of trees, a copse as Dinah called it, is necessary in such a landscape, serving as something to anchor you in the vast openness. At minimum it's nice to have a stand of cottonwoods with trunks spaced to accommodate the pitching of a tent. And Dinah can keep her log cabin bungalow. I prefer a good four-season semi-dome with vestibule. When winter finally arrives, as it always does, better to strike the tent and re-locate southward than attempt to dig in. She can have her ocean shoreline, as well, with its chill, the mist coming off the breakers wafting high to water suspended colonies of moss and fungi. Forget it. “By the way," I said to her after a while, "in that downtown library of yours, do they use the Dewey Decimal System, or the Li- brary of Congress?" "The L.O.C., certainly," she answered. "It is universal now." "I always kind of preferred the Dewey Decimal, myself.” At this, Dinah turned around in her cockpit, smiled and said that she, too, had long preferred the Dewey Decimal System over the Library of Congress. And, at that instant, there was the bark of a laugh from across the water, and the comment, "Sounds like true love to me." It was the student named Cord, paddling on the flank by himself, rowing a single kayak, one of the three singles issued to the student group. This was the red single, the only one of it's kind on the course, a boat that has proved to be unaccountably resistant to being shoved through the water. Which is the only reason Cord would've ever been so far to the rear of the pack as to be paddling alongside Dinah and me. And this serves to pinpoint our conversation in time. It had to have been Day Four, or possibly slightly later, !after I, myself, gave up paddling the red kayak. ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #11: A Scarlet Drift Log ! Among the kayaks laid out in a row upon the platform of the Palmer train station the morning of our departure I took note of a single-seater of red fiberglass. It stood out like a brush fire amidst the blues and greens of the other boats. The train not due for some minutes, I sauntered over for a closer look. I inspected the red kayak inside and out. It appeared to be brand new, not a scratch on its hull, shiny as a sports car. Unlike the other two student singles, the red kayak was equipped with a foot operated rudder. I thought this was pretty cool and more along the lines of the sort of expedition single of which I was contemplating purchase. Dodi, chancing by, confirmed that the school had, in fact, just acquired the boat. This was to be its first time out on the water. She said it like that, as if the boat would have to learn from the more experienced craft the trick of staying afloat. As our train made the famous passage beneath the Chugach Range, I thought only of the red kayak. All through the darkness of the tunnel the boat's tapered bow was in my imaginings. I decided I would make the red kayak mine for the duration of the course. This would allow me to learn precisely what was entailed in loading and paddling a single rig in these waters, the best preparation for in- corporating a sea kayak into my existence down in Southeast. They may’ve laughed at my question about sleeping in the boats and I’ll admit I was relieved to learn we weren't going to have to do this. Nevertheless, I'd been contemplating the possibility that once I possessed my own cruising single I'd be able to camp on, or inside, the kayak, thus making the boat serve more than one function. My loose plan in those days was to buy a foldable rig, the sort of kayak that consists of treated fabric over spruce ribbing, more like a traditional Aleut baidarka than the plastic boats the school uses. Not only would the kayak serve as my vehicle to the remote wilderness found throughout the Southeast Alaska archipelago but would also serve as my habitation. I figured there'd be room to slide down inside my boat, pull the sprayskirt tight over the cockpit opening and, all snug and dry inside, read by flashlight until I fell a- sleep, like the guy who wrote the long haul sea kayaking book. Only [118] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! I wouldn't be out in the middle of the ocean at night drifting against the pull of a sea anchor but tied up to the Petersburg quay near where the locals dock, or along the shoreline not far from town. The kayak would also function as a gear dump while I was away all day at the job site. It wouldn't exactly be a case of living in the kayak, it'd just be the place where I slept. I'd have to do all my hanging out in the cafes or bars in town, what I do anyway. For me, there’s never been much point in paying rent, simply for having access to the amenities of a house. I'm rarely at home and I'm happy using public bathrooms and pay showers. In any case, what I imagined was, when I chanced to have whole days off from the paying gig, I'd pro- vision the kayak and paddle it across Frederick Sound to the uninhabited beaches of the British Columbia coastline. I foresaw working out a whole system of different camp spots. It'd be a way of not only consolidating my living scene but also exploring the locale, in- corporating some mild adventure into my existence and boosting it out of the mundane. The main trick, as I saw it then, was how to assimilate the backpacking equipment into this waterborne form of travel. For one thing, I knew I'd have to check the dimensions of any boat I was looking to purchase, the beam particularly, to make sure my heavy frame pack could go down inside, protected from salt spray. I'll confess, before I'd even arrived to Palmer, I was anxious about what new gear I was going to have to acquire to become a sea kayaker. Dodi had only increased my uneasiness with her stated concern that most of my outdoor equipment was inadequate to the task, that my rain parka, for instance, a piece of issue that's stood me in good stead for years in the mountains, was no good as foul weather gear. I decided that the school's brand new red kayak was going to be my personal ship, loaded with only my equipment and my share of the group gear. My own self-contained system. In my red kayak, I'd be ready for anything. If a situation developed in which the In- structors needed someone to paddle back several days to obtain help, or to search for a lost kayaker, I'd be their man. Have kayak. Will travel. Utilizing my own dedicated boat, I was sure I could survive the twenty-eight days, all the while keeping a little distance between myself and the confusion of the other boats, the other student's untried gear systems, the mix-ups of equipment and rations which were sure to plague the trip. The train emerged from the tunnel and rolled to a stop at the port town of Whittier. (Incidentally, every time someone on the course has mentioned the name of the town, the little ditty mouthed by my cannery pals back in Petersburg plays itself through my head, the rhyme which positioned Whittier in an unfor- Section #11: A Scarlet Drift Log [119] ! tunate relationship to fecal matter.) When we disembarked at the train station, I took a quick look around to discover the expected squalor but, honestly, the place didn't seem so bad. The sky was clear. The onshore breeze carried over to us the usual dock smells of salt water, tar and fish bait. The town, itself, seemed a bit grey in aspect which, I suppose, did not entirely bely the rhyme. There appeared to be some old derelict housing projects. Burl informed us later that these were BOQs left over from the Second World War and that at one time nearly the entire town had resided in them. Which was odd but apparently not the case anymore. All in all Whittier seemed your typical harbor town. It certainly smelled like any other harbor town. The Instructors ordered us to double up and carry the K's -- how they'd begun to refer to the boats -- down to the end of the dock. I moved quickly to the railroad car that held the red single and removed the boat to the siding, hoisting the kayak over my head, not accepting help from anyone. I should've known the instant I tried to board the flaming red boat that something was amiss. Of course, short of an ocean liner, I consider there to be something basically wrong with all boats, an inherent instability that makes them a risky proposition. I mean, you have to take into account right off that their medium is water, a substance which is cold and unpleasant to the touch. Even given this the red kayak proved to be worse than any boat I've ever had to contend with. Carrying the kayak from the train station down to the end of the pier, I set the vessel in the water, tied the bowline off to a cleat and loaded my gear through the fore and aft hatches, as we’d been instructed. Battening down the seals, ready to begin the venture and to be one with my vessel, I untied the bow rope and put a foot in the boat. The kayak, not harboring the same desire for unity, made like to capsize the instant my toe rested upon the inner surface of its hull. I was only partially, only fractionally, aboard when the kayak of its own volition began to head toward open water. For a long two seconds I was stretched between boat and dock, only barely able to jerk myself back onto solid ground without sending the kayak to sea without me. This spasmodic display proved highly amusing to the male instructors, Burl and Thad Houston, who were afloat nearby in their singles, supervising the launch. I turned a look of murder in their direction, right then ready to quit the whole business and transfer back to the Brooks Range hiking course. The two Instructors straightened up -- I heard one of them say “poor primary stability” -- and offered helpful advice to the effect that I should put both feet in the cockpit from a sitting position on the [120] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! edge of the dock and then lower myself down onto the kayak’s seat. Once the entire group was on the water we formed up and got underway, six cruising doubles, the Instructors, Dodi, Burl and Thad Houston, aboard their Polaris one-seaters plus the three student singles one of which was my red kayak. Twelve boats. Eigh- teen individuals. Initially, the sea lanes out of Whittier were cluttered up with fishing boats and tenders and private craft, the shoreline on both sides of the inlet dotted with houses and commercial enterprise. Dodi spoke to any concerns we might be having about the proximity of all the development and said that civilization would thin out within the first few days of travel. She also informed us that we wouldn't be required to travel the polluted and untidy stretch of water on the return leg, that a motor launch on contract with the school would shuttle us back to Whittier from the coordinates of our final camp. The harborage extending out from the port of Whittier appeared to be home to countless sea otters whose tiny black heads poked out of the water here and there to have a look at us. Burl demonstrated how a mere wave of the arm, or pointing with the hand, would cause the otters to quickly submerge. "They think you're aiming a gun," he explained. "The fishermen around here take pot shots at every otter they see.” Burl indicated that the incidence of this learned behavior would drop off the further we got from Whittier. We were also assured that encounters with what the Instructors termed "civilians", meaning other sea kayakers not affiliated with the school, would also attenuate as we put distance between ourselves and the port. I liked their use of the term. Made it seem as if our undertaking was more than serious. In the course of the last three weeks we've only encountered a handful of so-called civilian paddlers and, with the exception of one boat, we've given them all a wide berth. Dodi has said the school tries to avoid even visual contact with civilians as the presence of a large group like ours can easily impact their sense of wilderness. Well, maybe so, I thought. Seemed like the proximity of a lot of purse seiners and tour boats would be just as bad if not worse. The school's traditional first night's stop for these Prince William Sound courses is on the shore of an island about a three hour paddle from Whittier. Dodi may claim to have never put in at the same campsite twice but I have a feeling the school uses the same spot on that one island at the beginning of every course. I don't know why they wouldn't. It's the perfect distance for the initial shakedown, before the course gets fully underway into the Section #11: A Scarlet Drift Log [121] ! Sound proper. If someone should prove right off to be horribly sea- sick, or otherwise inadequate, they could easily return to town, make the connection home, apply for a refund. Within fifteen minutes of our little flotilla departing Whittier and attaining a steady traveling speed I found myself to the rear of the group, struggling to keep up. At first I attributed the difficulty to the fact that, while I had on-board about the same load of personal gear as everyone else plus a split of the group gear, I was required by virtue of being a solo paddler to move a proportionally greater load through the water. But the Instructors, who were also in single-seaters, were having no trouble pushing their boats along. I assumed they were in better paddling shape, that they'd done this before, their muscles more attuned to it. The other two student singles, dark blue Polaris brand boats like the Instructors’, were doing okay, maintaining well with the group. One was manned by a collegiate male, I don't recall which one, other than to recall he sat tall in his cockpit and that his untanned arms were defined by sinew and muscle which strained along their length as he rowed. The other student single was crewed by the youngish female, Bethany, who preferred to be called Beth, the large-boned girl I'd first noticed in the White Zone. Her arms were most decidedly not defined by muscle or sinew, but appeared to my eye flabby and as untested as ... well, I'd employed the analogy to masticated potato chips but that was indoors, under the lights of the equipment bay. In the glaring sunlight of our first day on the water her arms more resembled cooked pasta, to stay with a food metaphor. Yet, this girl, whose tis- sues appeared as if they'd been nourished entirely upon nacho cheese tortilla chips, onion dip and sugary cola, was keeping up with the group just fine. And judging by her expression she couldn't have possibly been experiencing the same ache I was feeling in the arms and shoulders. No, it was evident Beth was enjoying the au- tonomy of steering her own craft, was satisfied to have taken on the extra bit of responsibility entailed being in command of a single seater and was having no trouble meeting the physical challenge required of a solo paddler. Before an hour had gone by following our launch off the Whittier dock it felt as though I were paddling the kayak through cement. I lost all incentive to keep up with the main part of the group. All I cared about was not becoming the last boat in line. Soon, I didn't even care about that and for short periods was the last boat, although when this happened I tried to stay out on the flank so that my lagging wouldn't be so obvious. By the time we pulled the boats up onto the beach at our first night's camp I was physically shaking, mildly delirious and felt it was quite possible, if [122] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! I didn't get away from the sucking sound of the wavelets coming in upon the shore, I might very well, in full view of everyone, lose the contents of my stomach. Day Two found me back in the red kayak, which seemed to me no longer the color of a hot rod's flame job but more the color of blood, as in the blood that filled my vision, the blood that swelled in my neck and arms as I cursed and pulled and pushed the scarlet drift log of a vessel through the water. During one brief moment following our launch the morning of the second day -- because I was under the delusion the second day couldn’t possibly be as hard as the first -- I had the wits to examine the forward hull of the red boat, to eyeball its depth and beam, and mentally calculate whether my heavy frame pack would fit down inside the kayak's hold. An important part of my scheme was to use my future kayak as a means of transport to trailheads where I could proceed to backpack and camp on dry land. Before the fog of pain and fatigue once again rose up to engulf me I arrived at the conclusion that my backpack, even if loaded in at an angle, would never fit into the hull of the red boat, a serious concern if the kayak was any example of a typical single seater. Again, my only goal the second day on the water was to hold the position of next to last boat in line. I would do anything to not be tail end charlie. In the bow cockpit of the kayak which was the last boat in line, the touring double I was determined to stay ahead of, was Dinah, my tent mate of twenty four hours. Whenever I detected Dinah and her balaclava creeping up on my stern I’d put on as much steam as necessary to say ahead, not give her any more opportunity to say, "Well, hello, Marlow," as she'd already done several times since our launch that morning. I was in no state of mind at that time to be noticing details but I should've drawn a connection between the fact that the kayak in the rear, the one boat slower than the red kayak, featured the librarian as a member of its crew. All in all, looking back on those initial couple of days on the water, my memory is of a dim tunnel of light surrounded by a darkness of pain and fatigue. On the short open crossings we began to attempt the afternoon of Day Two, I deliberately stayed well out on the flank where no one could hear my labored breathing. There was a constant drumming in my ears, my own pounding heartbeat, the cadence drum on a slave ship whose rowers had no notion of where they were going or how long they'd be required to labor at their oars, the sinking of the boat and their merciful drowning their only hope for relief. Most of the particulars of the second day, as with the first, are lost to my recollection. I do remember, for some inexplicable Section #11: A Scarlet Drift Log [123] ! reason, that the left side of my paddling jacket was continually soaked with sea water, an odd bothersome effect like an inexplicable annoyance in a dream with no logical source or solution, whose cause I lacked the energy to investigate. At one point, Thad Houston appeared out of the dark periphery to see about this soaking of the jacket and to give me pointers. The Third Instructor examined my rotation and the manner in which my paddle blade entered the water, what he referred to as my “plant”. He offered a demonstration of a proper propulsion stroke, powering along with his fulcrum arms, driving his kayak through the water a full league with each manly pull. I didn't want any advice from the Apprentice Instructor. I was still smarting from his and Burl's smirking and guffawing the previous day. The Third Instructor observed that my paddle strokes were uneven. "Too much splash on the left side," he said. Of course, I could have figured this out on my own. Each of my arms was already pulling as much water as it was capable, so naturally the left arm was never going to catch up with its stronger fellow. There was no question of evening it out. I would've had to have begun years ago on a strengthening program designed to bring the left arm up to the same muscularity as the right. A sort of uncoordinated flailing at the water was all the left arm was capable of. I'm not as strong as Thad Houston. If what he wanted was for me to admit this fact then I was happy to do it. I can't paddle as he does, using only the arms. I have to put my whole body into it, or as much of my body as a kayak will allow. "Lean into it more, Marlow," he said. When I showed no sign of heeding his advice, or of even having heard him, Mr. Houston changed the heading of his boat by a precise degree and vectored away into the impenetrable mist which prevailed everywhere except directly to the fore of my vision. Eventually, even Burl drifted back in his single to scrutinize my methods, tipped off probably by the Third Instructor that I appeared to be struggling. He observed the splash that was soaking my left side and said: "Too bad these paddles aren't equipped with drip rings." I didn't know what Burl meant by "drip rings” and he offered no explanation. After a minute he increased his stroke and moved back up toward the front of the group. Late in the afternoon of Day Two we rounded a headland. Having made several little hops across the mouths of various bights earlier in the day we were faced by what was to be our first major open water crossing of the trip, a leap that would now probably strike us as fairly paltry. We formed up into a pod, as it was called. [124] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! The Instructors never formally defined the term. They just started calling it that and we accepted its aptness. Pod. Right. Like whales. Dodi went through an elaborate demonstration of procedure, casting her weather eye into the offing to assess water and sky. Bobbing about, talking to us over one shoulder and then the other as the chop spun her around, she described in detail how the boats would be deployed, emphasizing that when we were off on our student led expeditions it would be up to the student leader to ensure the crossing was carried out safely, keeping the group tight, not pausing until the opposite headland was gained and even then not stopping, not until the headland flattened out to become a cove, or a beach where a landing could be effected if need be. Slumped over in the cockpit of the red kayak I was barely able to attend to Dodi's instruction. I was about nothing other than resting my arms and upper body, begrudging even the mild paddle dips required to hold position and keep the bow pointed forward. All of my being was focussed upon the problem of summoning the strength I was going to need to make the proposed crossing, which Dodi judged would require us forty-five minutes to accomplish -- she said we'd eventually become expert at estimating these distances ourselves -- followed by whatever reach we'd be required to paddle after that. I was getting the sense that the crossing might be our last effort of the day and that we'd head to camp shortly thereafter, a notion heartening to entertain. If I could just get through the one crossing, I thought, I'd be okay. If nothing else, there'd surely be a rest break after the crossing before we fixed upon the next objec- tive. I was trying to set my sights on that and not think about what lay beyond. Right as most of us were probably ready to hear Dodi, our slave ship master, give the command to resume paddling, she surprised us. At least, she surprised me. "Or," Dodi began," we could head over to that beach" -- she indicated an open spot on the shoreline no more than a few hundred yards distant -- "and start scouting for a suitable camp. Which would you prefer to do?" There was no response from the student group. Burl spoke up. "It's your course," he said. "You paid for it. Dodi and Thad and I only work here. We’re leaving it up to you to decide." A moment passed. There was the feeling in the air that so early in the course such decisions should still be up to the Instruc- tors. We weren't ready yet to begin determining our own fate. If the Instructors were in our employ then I think most of the student group wished for them to keep at their job and tell us what to do. As Section #11: A Scarlet Drift Log [125] ! for myself, I was blinded by the shining possibility of us calling it a day, of heading straight to shore, to camp, to coffee, food and blessed rest. Then Cord spoke up. "I think," he began, "that the majority of us are for pushing on." He looked around the group in a way that made it clear he was speaking for the greater number and there followed a murmuring which seemed to support his declaration. I saw that we were going to do the crossing. There would be no early retiring to camp. Cord was one of the young and popular students. He had his finger on the pulse of the group and would know what level of exertion the other students were up for. The dark tunnel of fatigue re-imposed itself around my vision, even clamping itself in a little tighter. The notion trickled into my head right around then that I was only getting what I deserved for con- niving and scheming to possess the red kayak all to myself. Dodi, somehow sensing she was not being apprized of the full student opinion, decided to put it to a vote. "I'm not hearing much discussion out there," she said. "How many of you would prefer not to go around the point? How many would prefer to make camp now rather than do the crossing?" I liked the way she phrased it, making it sound as if giving up was an undertaking equivalent to pressing on. Yet, I didn't bother to raise my hand or speak out. I figured it wouldn't make any difference. I imagined the support for Cord's statement to be just about unanimous. Clearly, I'd fallen in among a band of youthful adven- turers determined to test their mettle, to push on into the far reaches of an uncharted ocean and an odyssey from which only a few would return. Whereas, I deserved the tendinitis in my elbows and needed to suffer still more for the sin of willful appropriation. As it turned out, it was true it wouldn't have made any difference if I'd casted a vote. Only three of us kept our hands down or otherwise didn't show support for the option of making camp right away. Even Cord's paddling partner, Todd, a member of the college fraternity, was for heading to camp early. I was close enough to hear Cord ask him about it. "Dude," he said, leaning forward in his cockpit. "I thought you wanted to keep going?" The boy in the boat's front compartment, having cast his vote to camp forthwith, appeared to have nothing else to say about it. "There'll be plenty of opportunity later," Dodi said to the group, "once you begin your student led expeditions, for those of !you who want to spend long days on the water, to do so.” ! ! ! ! !

Section #12: Applegate ! In the first days of the expedition -- there's that word again, completely overstating the seriousness of our undertaking, but a useful enough term to describe what we're about so I suppose I'll keep using it -- you couldn't so much as pull on your boots without an Instructor showing up to provide a critique. Our three jefes were present when we loaded in the morning, ready to call attention to a poorly trimmed boat, or some overlooked bit of micro- trash, a couple of elbow macaroni's spilled at supper the previous night left lying in the dirt up at a student campsite. The Instructor's were there when we set up camp in the afternoon, or evening, or whenever we landed to shore, to point out a slack guy line, a stray piece of issue blowing around unsecured on the beach, the failure to park a kayak above the highest high tide line. Always the Instruc- tors were there to remind us, whenever we might be in doubt about a crossing, or a launch, or anything beyond our ken, to give the environs a good glassing with our binoculars, as if this would allow us to descry the future and determine the most expeditious way of transporting ourselves and our impedimenta to a distant place and point in time. The fog of my personal exhaustion and probably the mental fog of every other exhausted student was haunted by the form of the Lead Instructor, the one who wore the yellow neoprene headgasket, and her constant refrain to haul the boats higher upon the beach. We did haul them up, but never far enough above the high tide mark to Dodi's satisfaction. Or, if we did, there'd always be something not quite up to spec, a poorly fashioned knot on the lead line, equipment left in the boats, a P.F.D., or a paddle, or some item that would be better off stowed beneath the gear tarp. We worked in teams of four to carry the heavier cruising doubles into and out of the water. Despite our best effort we could not seem to keep from dragging the boats' hulls on the greywacke. We rarely, if ever, commit this crime now -- with the eating of the rations, the boats don't weight as much -- but in those days we were confused and feeble, many of us from all reports not sleeping or eli- Section #12: Applegate [127] ! minating well. We didn't have it in us to coordinate our lifting effort. A boat would skid, there'd be the hollow noise of plastic grinding upon barnacled rock and a pained expression would fly to the face of Thad Houston. "C'mon, use your heads," he'd yell, not quite driven to curse. That would come later over a different issue. "Don't scrape the hulls. Every time you scrape a hull you weaken it.” I saw him make one group unload a double and turn it over so he could show them where the rock had gouged the fiberglass. "The integrity of the hull is critical," he explained. "Kayaks are the one thing we don't have spares of." It wasn't my group he was yelling at that day. I was standing, if not kneeling or lying, several yards away when the incident took place. I immediately took up a piece of the grey rock from the beach and tried it on the hull of a nearby kayak. Sure enough, the rock put a nice scrape in the plastic, but it seemed it'd take a thousand such nicks to cause any real damage. I thought exposure to all the U.V. was likely to destroy the decks before anybody had to worry about the hulls being damaged from scraping on the sand. In those days, preserving the equipment was nothing against the desire to preserve what strength remained in our arms. In order for us to lift in unison someone would have to interrupt their precious breathing to count down from three. Instead, we learned not to move a boat until Instructor Houston was out of earshot and not in a position to hear any scraping. Each day, after numerous beachings conducted every few hours en route for rest and bladder relief -- the guy in the book, of course, had a plastic bottle for that purpose -- there arrived the glo- rious moment when we’d come ashore for the final time. Within twenty minutes of our landing the Instructors could be seen walking about singly, or as a team, up and down the line of student encampments. How they were able to set up their own bivouac so quickly I was never able to tell. But there they were, clothed in their dark grey cadre jackets, zippers pulled up to noses, intent on trans- lating to our untutored minds the school's methodology for outdoor living. I could hear them coming down the tree line, inspecting student camps for "bombproofness", as they call it, preparing us for the "big blow" they keep predicting but which never arrives. Not that keeping a neat and tidy camp isn't also an aesthetic consideration. The I's moved along briskly, conducting their inspection, keeping up a constant chatter with the students, exhorting some hapless cook group to additionally use their heads with regard to tent placement, or kitchen tarp set up, reminding us that it was already Day Four, or Day Five, or whatever Day it was, and that we should have the [128] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! drill down by now. And, so, with a word here and a suggestion there and the occasional on-the-spot demonstration, we were brought into line with the outdoor school's standard. On what must've been the second evening -- it's becoming difficult to pinpoint certain episodes in time but this must have been Evening Numero Dos as I can put together a fairly good recollection of our first night's camp which was under trees and on more or less flat ground, while the second night's camp was differently situated - - Burl came over to where I was kicking out a platform for my group's tent in the greywacke of a steeply sloping beach. The tent, which was self-supporting, was already pitched and standing nearby for placement once a level pad was ready. Incidentally, I should mention at this point, the term greywacke is entirely a misnomer and geologically inaccurate, at least in the way we use it on this course. Greywacke is a label normally applied to a type of sandstone. Eventually, I was to conclude it was Burl who promoted the term though I never knew for sure. In any case, somebody dredged it up out of their vocabulary from an entry level geology class and applied it in this original way to the loose, darkish rock that covers all the beaches around here. It more than covers the beaches, greywacke is the beaches. Incorrect or not, we enjoy calling the slate colored rocks by this word. The term suits the stuff and is even onomatopoeic of the clattering sound the stones make when they shift underfoot. Plus, it's kind of indicative of the whacky, or uncoordinated, lurching gait one is forced to assume when hauling gear over the random, uneven pieces. "There's no need to trench out your tent site," Burl said. I ceased kicking the instant he spoke. "It will only leave a weird mark," he said, "and require the tide that much longer to obliterate signs of your camp." I stood and looked at the Second Instructor. It would be entirely in keeping with the theme of those first few days if I'd been weaving slightly back and forth in a fatigue induced delirium, exhausted from the effort of pushing the red kayak through the water. Probably I was weaving, though I have no specific recollection of it. "Trust me, Marlow," he said. "I know what I'm talking about." And because maybe it appeared I wasn't getting it he added drolly: "I camp for a living." It's not that I doubted what Burl was saying. It seemed reasonable advice. To be honest, I hadn't actually been aware I was kicking out a trench. I've never in my adult life put a trench around a tent site. I'm aware of the practice, stemming from a time when tents had canvas floors, or no floor. I'd been kicking at that greywacke for fifteen or twenty minutes before Burl showed up. I Section #12: Applegate [129] ! thought I was just leveling out the rocks. I wasn't attempting a trench. It was simply easier to stay in motion and build up a berm around the level area than to stop and consider what camp chore should be tackled next. After the daily round with the boat of blood, I was too tired to explain myself to Burl, or to delve out the purpose behind my actions. Once I was jolted out of my fugue state I was only too glad to stop kicking and not to exert myself any further. My main recollection of the incident is that without saying the first word back to Burl I picked up the semi-dome, placed it upon the platform I'd prepared and, hoping the Second Instructor wouldn't be offended by my abrupt leave taking, went inside and lay down upon the bare plastic tent floor, heedless of the bumps created by the underlying stones. The whole business was for nought, anyway, and typical of the cock-ups and miscommunication of those early days. Dinah showed up right after Burl split to tell me that Crandall had succeeded in locating a flat spot for the tent back of the tree line. Dinah scrutinized the platform I'd kicked out of the greywacke and stated she wouldn't be comfortable, anyhow, sleeping so close to the water. I started to point out to her that the tent was positioned well above the high tide line, that the water had probably not crept as far as my platform since the last solar eclipse, but I didn't have the energy to go into it. A tent spot in the trees was preferable, anyway. I dismantled the tent and was prepared to follow Dinah into the bush to find Crandall, when she asked: "Aren't you going to smooth that out?" She meant the berms and, I suppose, the trench work. "Maybe later," I said. "Let's go." I might have trouble remembering the time placement of certain events but I distinctly recall, beginning with the very evening of Day One and continuing almost every night until the onset of Small Group Expeditions, how the Instructors -- usually Dodi -- would organize a camp game, a diversion designed to break down social barriers and help us become better acquainted. You could say that the getting-acquainted go-around back at Palmer HQ had been our first camp game, though it'd seemed a necessary exchange. These other camp games, I'm not so sure. Once we'd established our bivouac for the night, had something to eat in our respective cook groups, there'd be a lecture or a class on the beach, maybe a student presentation. At which point the games would commence. One of the first little contests I recall us playing involved the group sitting in a circle and taking turns responding to a lengthening and increasingly complex sequence of non-sensical sounds combined with hand gestures, slapping the palms against one's knees, snapping the fingers and so on. When an [130] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! individual finally couldn't keep up with remembering the sequence, they were out, at least for that round. The idea, of course, was to catch people off guard, before defenses could be erected, and to expose our foibles. And, of course, the games were there to help structure the time between supper and sleep, to prevent those of us of suburban extraction from succumbing to a television-deprived ennui. In my opinion, camp games of this sort, like an evening spent sandwiching roasted marshmallows and chocolate between graham crackers, or trying to scare one another with ghost stories, only trivialize and distract from the wilderness experience. There was another game -- I don't remember what Dodi called it, let’s just say it was called “Attraction/Repulsion”. Upon a signal, each of us, all at once and without anyone saying a word, were supposed to move toward that member of the expedition who we felt we knew the least well and away from the persons with whom we already felt ourselves to be reasonably acquainted. Or, maybe it was that we were supposed to head toward the one person who we'd normally not feel inclined to approach. I don't recall what it was because for me it amounted to the same thing. At the Lead Instructor's "GO" I moved away from my campmates, Crandall and Dinah, away from Tyler and Cheryl and Cord and others I was always talking to on a regular basis and headed toward Beth, the chubby, pasty skinned, but surprisingly athletic girl who already by Day Two seemed to be gaining color and trimming down. Beth didn't move toward me when Dodi gave the signal, but headed off on an oblique toward someone else. I couldn't imagine that there was someone on the course whom she felt she knew less well than me. The whole thing was a tumult and inconclusive, really. The arbitrary and wholly unnatural social forces put in motion by the Lead Instructor instigated a strange and shifting pattern of human movement, quickly depopulating the inner circle and driving some of us out into the trees and brush where we, if Dodi hadn't finally signaled a halt, would've continued ricocheting about, wandering in ever widening orbits, perversely shunning those toward whom we felt disposed, futilely seeking our opposites, never stopping until we reached the other side of the island and water too deep to wade. I guess the game served its purpose and got us thinking about our obligation to make some kind of effort to know each of our fellow travelers. And it may've delayed for a day or two the natural human tendency to clique up. For me, this diversion -- and this was the one that finally did it -- resulted in my moving away from the group entirely and not participating in any more organized pastimes that evening. Which, I guess, if you think about it, was still in the spirit of the game. Section #12: Applegate [131] ! I got caught unawares a few times, but after the first two or three evenings, once I learned to sense a camp game coming on, I'd slip away from the group as soon as I could feasibly do so and return to the kitchen tarp I shared with Crandall and Dinah. Usually, I arrived first and would sit by myself, pretending to read one or another of the books from the traveling library or Crandall's loaner novel. More often than not I simply dozed or stared off into space. Eventually, Dinah and then Crandall would take their leave from the main group and return to camp. Sometimes we'd attempt to cook something from out of the ration duffels, or boil water for hot drinks, and sit around on our camp chairs thumbing through books until the hour arrived when we could justify crawling into the tent to sleep. Clearly, I didn't have the market cornered on fatigue in those early days of the course and I don't mean to come across as though I did. Each person had their struggle, which typically they didn't disclose until well after they'd made their accommodation. The evening of Day Two the expedition was camped upon the previously mentioned sloping beach along a bight of shoreline near a particular navigational aid designated upon the map as Apple- gate. I liked the sound of this "Applegate" and once ashore found myself looking about for an old homestead, or derelict bush dwelling, with maybe an overgrown orchard fenced off with dilapi- dated pickets. I'm sure nothing of the sort existed. It was merely an image born of delirium, the same way travelers in a desert will hal- lucinate shaded courtyards and fountains. The following day, Day Three, was designated as a partial layover. It was the first morning in which we didn't have to get directly up and begin breaking camp. I recall that the collegiates were glad for the opportunity to sleep in. The morning shaped up calm of wind and the Instructors took the opportunity to put us through a self-rescue drill. They said they wished to familiarize us with the procedure before we traveled much further along the route. In unloaded doubles we paddled out onto the flat water and at the Instructors' signal deliberately cap- sized and then egressed from our kayaks. Treading water, we righted the boats, then got ourselves back aboard and into our cockpits, snapping sprayskirts in place. The water was astonishing- ly cold but the sun was bright and warm and it was a good day for such wet exits, as they are called. We broke camp later that afternoon. It was probably too much to expect we'd be allowed a full day off from paddling so early in the course. The Instructors said it'd be worth it to put in a few hours on the water and move along to a new camp. I wasn't overly [132] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! annoyed with the idea of getting back in the red boat for what I was expecting to be a short paddle. I'd had afternoon coffee and was feeling motivated, already beginning to work on a theory that three hours in a given day was about the perfect amount of time to be on the water. Following our re-assembly after the wet exit drill and a short day hike lead by Burl, under pressure from the Instructors to get underway as quickly as we could manage it, the student group shifted into urgent mode. The sooner we commenced paddling the sooner we'd reach our "X", as our stopping points are called, like the marks we make on our maps. Nobody wanted to be dinking around in the boats into late evening. As it was already mid-afternoon we were advised to load snacks into our day bags as anything like a hot supper would certainly be delayed. I should've known what we were in for. Since we were anticipating a short paddle, right from the get-go the group put on the steam. And the Instructors went along with it, encouraged it, even laughed out loud at the spectacle, the bows of the kayaks ploughing through the sea with a great foaming, the paddles making audible detonations as the blades entered the water. There were no pauses for assessing open crossings to provide the usual breather. We hit it and we hit it hard. I’m sure the limit pushers in the group were happy with the max effort, as there was a set end point. They were like sprinters who love giving themselves over to a hundred yard dash but who'd never enter the agony of eight continuous laps around a track. That evening, following a late supper and, thankfully, no meeting, nor class, nor camp game, I was settling down with a hot drink when Cord showed up in our kitchen area. He said a word or two to Crandall and Dinah near the fire then deliberately came over to where I was sitting with my book. I was not really reading but thinking over the situation and sipping the mocha joe that Crandall had prepared for me. "Marlow." "Cord." "What would you think about me taking your red kayak out tomorrow." I studied the lad. He'd literally caught me at the very moment I'd decided there must be something about the organization of my arm muscles that rendered me unfit for paddling a sea kayak, that all of my strength was really in my legs and that I was built more for hiking. By the third day of the trip it was evident most of the other students were beginning to relax in their boats. More than one of my compatriots, I believe, had observed me in the red Section #12: Applegate [133] ! boat and wondered why a grown male who appeared physically fit was all the time lagging at the rear. It had to be laziness, an unwill- ingness to exert himself. I kept thinking the whole time that these people should see how well I performed climbing in the Tetons, or on a long-haul bike tour, or any pursuit that required using the legs. No joke. I was actually considering going to the Instructors about it, to see if there was any way, being that it was still early on, to get off the kayak course and back on the Brooks Range. There was still a week before the backpacking course was to begin. I knew the In- structors would never let me paddle back to Whittier on my own, but there had to be some sort of system set up for students who became hurt, or unduly homesick. I wasn't really thinking straight. Sitting around in camp before supper, in the delirium of my fatigue, I'd been crazily mulling over the concept of a drip ring, how I might construct such a thing out of what was available, maybe employing one of the heavy duty rubber bands I use to keep my gear items organized. This despite the fact I had no idea what a drip ring was, or what it looked like. “So, whaddya think, Marlow?" Cord pressed. “Can I paddle your single?" "It's not my boat," I said. "It doesn't belong to me. Everyone should have the opportunity to paddle it. I’ll tell you, it’s a real daisy." "Thanks," he said. "I'll just take it for the morning. Then you can have it back." "Either way," I told him, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible. "It doesn't matter. Take it for the whole day if you want. I'll paddle with your buddy, Todd." Cord was satisfied. He said that he thought if he was in a single seater he'd have a chance to occasionally paddle away from the group, do a little exploring on his own. "Sounds good," I said. "Tomorrow, you're the captain of the red kayak." He thanked me again for being willing to switch-out and returned to his tent group. On the morning of Day Four, I came awake and discovered the sense of foreboding I'd been harboring since well before the course's inception was beginning to dissipate. For one thing, it appeared I'd managed to dispossess myself of the red kayak. Having schemed so hard to make the flashy new boat mine I'd assumed I was doomed to paddle the cursed thing the rest of the trip. But now, just like that, it was gone. I figured, even if Cord changed his mind, the boat would not necessarily fall back to me. I'd paid my dues and could make an honorable break from the infernal vessel. If it came [134] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! down to it, I'd insist some other student be allowed the privilege of paddling the school's most recently purchased water craft. By the time I'd settled in with a first hit of coffee I was resolved that for the rest of the course I'd only travel in double-seaters where there'd always be another person to split the effort. And speaking of coffee, it was around this time that I became fairly reassured of the bean's availability. I'd joined the half-a-dozen other students on the foray to the grocery store our last evening in Palmer where I bought a big jar of the highest grade instant joe I could find on the shelf. Once back in the gear bay I portioned out the freeze dried stuff, spoonful by spoonful, until I'd filled a bag with sixty heaping tablespoons, enough for two strong cups a day for the duration of the course, then put in another ten tablespoons to cover the period when we'd be lost and marooned. The rest of the jar of instant joe, still a quarter full, I put with the rest of the gear I was leaving for storage. I thought about how pleasant it'd be to discover it there in the food compartment of the frame pack when we returned, weeks overdue, probably well after the search had been called off. Finding the jar of instant coffee, purchased in what by then would seem to have been a previous lifetime, before the capsizes and all the terrible loss of life and equipment, the struggle for survival on a hostile shore with no shelter or food, at that point a cup of instant joe might seem like the first return to normalcy. I wasn't the only one who’d taken advantage of the store run to stock up. A couple of the youngsters came to me into the Coffee- Tea-Hot Cocoa aisle to ask, exactly, what sort of coffee brewing approach I thought would be the most workable on the course. It was evident from their questions that these children, in addition to not paying their own tuition, had also never been responsible for making their own coffee. I told them that freeze dried instant was what I was getting and that they'd better do the same if they wanted to be assured of having coffee under all but the most demanding of conditions. By breakfast on Day Four, it was evident I was going to be able to arrange to have a mugful of mocha java headed in my direction at least twice a day, the first cup not too far along in the morning after coming awake and then one more mugful later in the afternoon, though maybe not always at the precise perfect hour of the afternoon. Under the circumstances, and considering what I feared might be the case, this was good enough. The reassurance about coffee was no less tantamount than the realization that capsizes were, after all, not likely to happen. My binos and compass and other readily sinkable gear, so long in my possession, would likely survive the course to see more travel. The previous day's exercise in- Section #12: Applegate [135] ! volving the deliberate overturning and righting of our boats had gone a long way toward reassuring me that even if a kayak flipped it was possible to rescue oneself from drowning and equipment loss. In any case, I'd awakened that morning a bit lightheaded from the exertion of the previous three days but otherwise better rested than I'd been since leaving Petersburg five days before. It was basically the usual three day adjustment period after starting any extended outdoor excursion, a transition I tend to forget from one trip to the next. A night of passable sleep certainly helps to encourage a hopeful outlook and what I was hopeful about was the possibility, from then on of feeling less fatigued and more alert to the instruction we were receiving. In keeping with a philosophy that one should be wary of eliminating all sources of anxiety, I'd soon be forced to create other problems for myself, but for one brief period lasting about two hours, all through breakfast and the breaking down of camp with Crandall and Dinah, I seemed to be liberated from concern. Soon enough, I was on the beach, day bag and personal gear under my arm, looking for any cruising double with an empty seat. It appeared that Todd, Cord's erstwhile paddle mate, had already lined up a partner. I discovered my tent mate, Dinah, standing next to a Seascape Two, her mosquito head net draped down over her face like a veil. She informed me she'd lost her usual paddling partner to another boat and that without help she was unsure of how to even begin loading the kayak. In my brand new status as free lance paddler, I hadn't considered Dinah as a candidate for boat mate. She and I had partnered the previous day for the capsize drill and afterward, while having hot drinks on the beach and waiting for the rest of the student group to finish up, the two of us had an interesting talk. You might even say it was an intimate talk, at least on Dinah's part, as she disclosed some critical aspects of her background, events leading up to her enrollment on the kayak course and so forth. Her willingness to reveal these aspects about herself seemed natural enough at the time. I'd been quizzing her each evening and morning in camp about her life and experiences. By the morning of Day Four, she and I had been cooking and tenting with each other, along with Crandall, for going on seventy two hours. I've been on backpacking trips of shorter duration in which the participants have revealed aspects of themselves that in a front country setting might've required years to uncover, or to which one would never have become privy. In between pitching tarps and boiling water and breaking down our campsites, I'd worked in a number of stories about my own background and travels. In turn, Crandall had described some [136] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! features of the life he was pursuing down in Amarillo, a single male in a career field dominated by eligible women. It turns out he rides a road bike with a local touring club, plays bass in a rock band, has done some day hiking, wants to do more backpacking, frankly is more into land-based sports and, like myself, wary of boats and water and only signed up for the kayak course because of the life sciences angle and the school system’s willingness to cover tuition and expenses. Crandall has emphasized that this business of spending consecutive nights in the bush is very novel for him. Both of my tent mates seemed new to the transcendent effect of long haul wilderness travel, the way it encourages volubility and familiarity between participants. Even Dinah, who's been through a couple of prior outdoor courses, apparently has done zero personal expedi- tioning, either with friends or by herself. From her description, it sounds as though she was so overwhelmed by the physical and technical demands of the Florida Keys trip she had little wit left over for instigating friendships. It does take a while to relax out here. It took me a couple of seasons in Yellowstone to get past the proving phase of backpacking, including a period in which I felt I had to go by myself because in those days traveling solo in the wilderness was a crucial part of the metaphor. Eventually, I moved into the stage I still occupy. I backpack now almost always in the company of others and I go mainly for the conversation. There's so much less distraction in the woods. You're sharing meals, or on your feet engaged in activity critical to everyone's well-being, setting up shelters, gathering firewood, scouting a stream crossing. Actions feel consequential. Sud- denly one's entire previous life, given that it led up to this particular trip and to traveling with these particular individuals, seems a subject worthy of analysis. To be honest, I've never been quite able to put my finger on why wilderness travel has the effect of encouraging conviviality. Maybe it taps into some sort of collective tribal memory, trekking over the landscape in small groups and so forth. All I know is that out here you can feel, possibly for the first time in a long while, that you really have someone's conversational attention, as well as the airtime to fully explain yourself, really go into the motivations. This may be the way it used to be between people, prior to the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the time clock, before the distraction of the media. Even with the Instructors taking up most of our shore time with rap sessions, or dry land classes, or with camp games, not to mention the fact that each of us had been separately preoccupied with getting a handle on the practical skills, because in Section #12: Applegate [137] ! the end we're going to be evaluated on our performance not as a group but as individuals, even after meeting all of these demands the three of us still needed to spend a little time each day alone with our thoughts -- we were, after all, older individuals, the three of us, with hidden lives -- yet despite all of this, Crandall and Dinah and myself, in the mere space of half a week had managed to get in some pointed discussion. I realized at some point, in the middle of Dinah's and my post wet exit drill confab, sharing hot drinks on the beach, that she and I had actually done very little talking just the two of us. Crandall was almost always party to the conversation. In fact, our exchange on the beach was about the first time Dinah and I had talked one-on- one since leaving Palmer, since the White Zone. She had a stockpile of stuff she wanted to go over and, as it turned out, there was a lot more to come. Now there she was, standing beside a double kayak which still needed to be loaded with gear, and I could see she wouldn't mind if I stepped in and became her partner for that day's paddle. Or until the mid-day break ashore, when a lot of the students typically traded off boats and partners, a practice I'd eschewed up to that point but which I now thought might not be such a bad way to go. As I said, I wasn't necessarily looking to paddle with either of my tent mates. I always suppose others to have the same sense of proportion as I do and that they also reach a point when it seems, good as the conversation might be, that enough is enough, that it's time to call it quits and either spend time alone or talking to someone different for a change. Apparently, others don't always share my feelings about this. It's a lonely world and it seems for some individuals, once they discover a sympathetic ear, it's all over for them, they don't look any further. I was already camping with Di- nah. I didn't feel a need to paddle with her, as well. I felt the same way about the biologist, but the issue never came up with him. I think Crandall also possesses the sense of proportion. He and I never paddled in the same boat, even after we ceased being campmates. However, I was feeling expansive that morning. I'd shrugged off the albatross of the red kayak. I'd had a taste the previous day, partnering with Dinah for the self-rescue exercise, of what it might be like to share the paddling effort with another person. And, so, I made the mistake. Maybe the mistake had already been made when I joined Dinah on the wet exit practice. Still, that was only a thirty minute diversion and shouldn't have set a precedent in anyone's mind. Maybe the mistake had been lending an ear to her disclo- [138] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! sures on the beach following our capsize recovery. I don't know. Af- ter our dousing in the cold water the hot coffee tasted good. I'd been happy to enjoy a second hot drink at a relaxed pace so early in the afternoon. If Dinah wanted to join me and tell stories about her life while she sipped her mug of plain hot water that was fine with me. And so, employing the same justification I'd used back at Palmer when I approached Dinah about being campmates -- she was older, supposedly in possession of an individuated personality -- I figured I'd be as well off with her that day as a paddling partner as I would be with four-fifths of the student group. As I stood there considering the matter, other paddling teams were getting their boats squared away and launched, one boat following another quickly out onto the water, like herding sea mammals. Dinah and I were pressed for a solution and, in fact, for all I could tell, the solution had already been arrived at and there were no longer any unclaimed cockpits available. "I'll paddle with you this morning, Dinah," I said, careful to put it that way. "The first thing we need to do, before we load anything, is place the kayak’s stern in the water." I helped her distribute the gear in the holds, constantly backing the boat off the beach so it was always right on the verge of floating free. This was a trick I'd learned with the red boat, negating the need to have any other students around to help launch, a useful method for the solo paddler, which was what I still thought I might become someday. Dinah's and my boat for that day and, as it turned out for many days afterward, was a pleasant two tone model, white with lime green trim. It may’ve been the very same craft we’d used the previous day on the wet exit drill. I’m not sure. All I know is, the boat was so much easier on the eyes than the cursed red kayak which, incidentally, was already out on the water learning how to float beneath Cord, its new master, a strong and spirited youth. I recall thinking the boat had better fall in if it knows what's good for it. With Dinah in the front cockpit and myself in the stern, we easily back-paddled off the little bit of greywacke sand still holding the bow in place. It was a good thing the procedure worked because we were the last boat to get waterborne. What I'd hoped for, that the paddling would be much less difficult now I was in a double -- and believe me I was looking for a difference the instant we were away from shore -- didn't quite materi- alize. There was some improvement, but even with Dinah up there stroking away I felt the same old familiar strain in the arms. I dug in on the paddle and we were, for a while, able to hold steady in the middle of the group, but this required an effort I couldn't sustain Section #12: Applegate [139] ! and by the time an hour had passed we'd drifted back toward the rear of the echelon. There must've been a mid-day shore break that day. Why didn't I take the chance to trade off boats? I don't fully remember why. I retain the vague recollection that the mid-day rest stop occurred more toward mid-afternoon and that it was only a short paddle afterward to the final haul out at the days "X". There'd been no opportunity to make coffee while ashore. It was little more than a pee break and a leg stretch. The lack of joe would've produced some despondency. Possibly, I didn't feel up to making the effort to shift myself and my personal gear to another double and, truthfully, by Day Four there may've been less trading about of boats and cockpit positions. Any or all of these factors may’ve influenced my inertia. I should emphasize that paddling the double with Dinah was never, even on that first day with her, as difficult as shoving the red kayak through the water. I don't think the left side of my paddling jacket ever received the same soaking as it did while in the red boat. Still, paddling the double was challenging to a disheartening degree. I decided that, well, this is how it is. If this is the physical output required of everyone on this course, then I'm simply not up to it. I don't possess the correct muscle arrangements, not fast enough twitch or something. At the time, you see, I assumed I was doing no more than my fair share of contributing to the boat's for- !ward propulsion. !

! ! ! ! ! ! Section #13: Titty Nipper ! My willingness to join Dinah in her double the morning of Day Four was the innocent and helpful impulse that eventual- lyt came to determine so much. Despite my initial hesitation, ratio- nalizations known and unknown conspired to keep me returning to the same boat each morning. Before long I fell into the role of the librarian's set paddling partner. For the next week or so, until we reached Columbia Glacier, every time the course took to the water I was in the stern of the green and white Seascape Two and she was in the bow. I'm certain Dinah preferred the predictability of having the same partner every day. And I guess there was a part of me that favored it, as well. I don't want anyone supposing that I was starting to ﬁnd the librarian intriguing, or that I was beginning to feel a connection I wished to preserve not only on land but also on the water. In any event, an unspoken and shared assumption established itself. Each morning the librarian and I rendezvoused upon the greywacke to load and launch the same kayak. "How did you come by the name 'Marlow'?" Dinah asked somewhere along Day Four. "Is that the name you were given at birth?" Truthfully, the woman might've posed this question on Day Three, or Five, or Eight. There's no reason to be a stickler about the precise timing of this exchange, or the timing of most of the dia- logue that's transpired between Dinah and myself. I often get this question about my name. I recall only being surprised it hadn't already come up with Dinah. "No," I explained. "It's a nickname. A guy I used to work with started calling me that and it stuck." "Well, then," she said. "Marlow is a cognomen." "Right," I said and thought, man, these librarians and their vocabularies. Employing words nobody ever uses or has even heard of. "If that is the case then what is your real name?" she asked. I told her. "Marlow is a better name for you," she said. "More distinctive, anyway." Section #13: Titty Nipper [141]

"How long have you been going by Marlow?" I thought about telling her it'd been several years, to make it sound more established, less of a whim. “Actually, only about six months, but I intend to keep on using it." "It is Middle English, is it not?" "I have no idea." "Yes," she said. "I believe it translates to 'the hill by the lake', or something along those lines." "And your name," I began, "does it translate to something?" She turned around in her cockpit and the sunlight, flashing off of the circular panes of her eyeglasses, created two bright orbs to either side of her nose. "It derives from the proper noun 'Diana'," she explained. "The ancient Roman deity. Virgin goddess of wood and hunt." "Is that so?" was all I could think to reply. I figured she probably had the virgin part right. "Doesn't it also have something to do with the moon?" "Not that I know of.” "Well, I'm probably mistaken. You’d know. It's your name." As I said, this conversation took place, though possibly not during our very first morning or afternoon of paddling together, sometime early in Dinah's and my joint career as boat mates. It was right around this time, right around the business of "virgin goddess of wood and hunt", that Dinah was horrified to discover the combi- nation of sun and salt water we were all being exposed to had raised tiny pustules upon the backs of her hands. She came to me in camp the evening the malady first manifested to discuss her condi- tion. It should be mentioned that most of the student group had already experienced, or were in process of experiencing, this reaction to our new living environment. Although, I have to say, the outbreak upon the backs of the soft librarian hands was the worst case I was in a position to witness. "Should I approach the Instructors and request a medical evacuation," she asked. I looked at her. "It's a skin rash,” I said. I momentarily fixated on Dinah’s wrist watch, a lady's model of a rugged digital timepiece, no doubt waterproof to considerable depth and all that. The black nylon band cut into the flesh of her wrist right where the skin rash had stopped climbing her arm. "The school might be able to recommend a dermatologist in Anchorage," she continued. "Dinah, they're sun bumps. Three fourths of the student group have them. I have them." I showed her my own outbreak, which she didn't bother to examine. "The Instructors say they heal [142] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! up on their own after a few days. It's a matter of acclimatizing." "I'm worried it could be a precursor," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's not a precursor. It's not cancer. At least not yet. Maybe in thirty years. Didn't you get sun bumps on the sailing course?" "No, I did not." "Well, maybe the conditions were different. I assure you, you'll be okay." From that day forward, instead of letting her skin become used to the exposure, whenever she was on the water Dinah began to wear the insulated pogies, the gauntleted waterproof gloves that extend all the way to the elbow. Not only did Dinah quickly come to assume she and I would paddle together in the same boat everyday, she also assumed I'd be happy to help her affix the pogies to her arms each morning and afternoon. Normally, a person can do this on their own, deal with the snaps and the straps and so on, but the librarian seemed to have trouble summoning the required dexterity. So, I helped her attach the damned pogies. And following every launch, once we were out away from shore, I reminded her that she could probably take off her head net. And while on the water I prompted her to keep using her paddle. Everyday I did these things. I'm not sure why it occurred to me to conduct the experiment -- no doubt, I was still mulling over my experience with the red kayak and my apparent weakness as a paddler -- but right around the time of her skin rash episode I took it in my head to test the strength of Dinah's paddling effort. All I did, without warning her, was simply ship my own oar for about a half a minute. Dinah appeared to still be paddling, putting first one blade and then the other into the water, but immediately the other boats around us pulled ahead as our kayak drifted nearly to a standstill. Dinah looked back at me, baffled as to what was happening. "Nothing's wrong," I said. “Please, keep paddling." I realized then how much I was compensating for a vastly weaker stroke on Dinah's part. It's possible her effort had become more tentative following the onset of the skin rash, as I believe she viewed herself as being in a state of convalescence. However, I saw in those thirty seconds that not only were her shallow dips doing little to propel the boat forward but beyond a certain speed she was allowing the kayak's forward motion to carry her paddle blade back after each stroke, thus serving as a brake on our progress. Often- times, as we paddled along, in order to speak or to more closely observe some aquatic creature or bird, Dinah would cease to row alto gether. These pauses were a source of frustration to me. I continual- Section #13: Titty Nipper [143] ! ly reminded her it was possible to converse and paddle at the same time, yet based upon my little test that day I'm not sure it mattered. Whether Dinah was helping or hindering, it was never as difficult to paddle the double kayak as it’d been the red single. Why this was the case, I can't say. Possibly I’d actually gained some in strength by the time I moved to the larger boat, yet I don't think that entirely accounts for it. "Have you always been a reader?" Dinah asked me on our first, or second, full day together. "Always," I told her. "I started reading Hardy Boys on my own when I was in the third grade and kept going from there. How 'bout you?" "My mother would drop me off by taxi at the library when I was a little girl," she said, "I'd spend the entire afternoon reading books." "The same library you now work in?" "Yes. The same. Is that not something?" "You mentioned the book about the duck and the cormorants," I said. "What else were you reading as a little girl?" "I would read anything," she said. “But for the most part I preferred fictional stories about creatures living in their habitat." She went on to mention a half dozen titles. Of course, somewhere in her list of books was the one about the mallard mating pair who decides to raise their brood smack dab in the middle of Boston. I immediately recalled the cover illustration which depicted the mother duck leading her little waddlers in front of lines of traf- fic which barely manage to brake to a halt. I knew most of the stories she mentioned. I'd read them, or had them read to me, when I was still very young. They were morality tales, by and large, enacted by animal forms with the ability to speak proper English and walk about on two legs. Typically, like the story about the duck on the Yangtze, the plots involved a hero animal undergoing an adventure of some sort and then returning home again to a familiar setting, having learned the larger world is no exchange for the place of one's origin. "What's with all the books about puddle ducks?" I asked. "I prefer bird characters," she said. "I read books about other animals, too. When I was older, I read -- ,” and here she mentioned the title of the novel about the runt-sized rabbit who, with the help of its warren, manages to complete his own hero's journey. "That's a good one," I said. "Now I read mostly natural science," she went on. "Non-fiction. On a range of subjects. Non-academic studies of plants and animals.” [144] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Not all that different, really, from what you were reading as a child.” "I suppose not.” I gave Dinah a few titles of the books that'd been influential for me, stories of essentially the same sort she favors -- coming of age and heroic journey -- except mine contain more or less actual human characters. And, by contrast, when they return to their place of origin they discover it's no longer their home. Thus it was I fell into a pattern with the librarian. I had a chance to break the pattern, or to have never let it get started, the morning of Day Five, the day following the capsize recovery drill. What worked against me was that the Instructors, apparently figuring we'd enjoyed enough recoup time at Applegate, wished for us to get fully with the program, particularly as the weather was holding clear. The evening of Day Four, they briefed the student leaders to go around to all of the student cook groups and get us prepped for an early wake-up and launch. This obliged me to egress out of the tent the next morning earlier than was my habit to enjoy something of a leisurely hot drink and a chance to read for thirty minutes before giving the next twelve to fourteen hours over to the expedition. There was the usual manic hustle by the student group to break camp and get the boats loaded. For the sake of expediency, I ended up paddling with Dinah on the fifth day, again she in the bow and myself in the stern of the white Seascape Two with the lime green trim. I can't tell you from memory the location of our "X" on Day Five but I recall it turned out to be one of those long days on the water, putting us into camp late, which translated into more rush that evening and the following morning. And so it went, each day the groove was worn a little deeper, making it easier than not for me to get back into the stern cockpit of the green and white boat with the librarian in the bow. I've reflected back on those days more than once, trying to understand when the creep became the norm. Dinah certainly never suggested a change to our paddling arrangements. Whereas, I'd entered a period of psychological malaise that didn't end until the moment, nearly a week later, when the student group sat down to attend Advanced Navigation, the class conducted by Dodi on the evening prior to the day of our arrival to Columbia Glac- ier. It might’ve been sometime on Day Five or Six -- this is the period about which my recollection becomes muddy -- I tried switching positions with Dinah, changing off bow to stern. I had the idea that putting Dinah in the rear cockpit and asking her to syn- chronize her stroke with mine might motivate her to put a little Section #13: Titty Nipper [145] ! more oomph into her effort. And I think maybe it did inspire her to pull a little harder, but being in the rear cockpit also put her in charge of the rudder. She never could lick the problem of how much right or left pedal was needed to keep us on a heading. Granted, as I recall, we were experiencing a quartering sea for most of the time she was in the stern which complicated her task but, you know, conditions are never perfect. As Dinah's attention strayed so did our course. She'd only realize something was wrong when we began to actually leave the group. To get us back she'd drastically over- correct. I turned around a couple of times to check on her and could see behind us the track of our winding trail through the water. We struggled on this way for a few hours until we were required to beach the kayak for a bladder break. In this instance, it was Dinah's suggestion that we stop. "Marlow, I am so sorry. I’m feeling an urgent qualm. We must go to shore." It was her code for needing to relieve herself. I communicated the need to pull over to the SLoDs who sub- sequently podded up the group. Only about half the boats went in, Dodi included. When we reached the shore, the Lead Instructor did her usual calling out for bears. "Hey, bear! Yo, bear!" That sort of thing. We each went off to perform our various ablutions. Returning to the kayak, without discussion, I took back the rear cockpit. So it was I resigned myself to the task of each day single- handedly paddling a fully loaded cruising double complete with passenger. To be fair, Dinah's minimal pull upon her oar probably compensated for most of her personal ballast. I no longer cared whether or not I was paddling in the last, or next to last, boat of the group. Anyway, by the beginning of the trip's second week I think my arms and shoulders were beginning to adapt to the regimen. This didn't mean my strokes were more powerful but that the stroking didn't hurt so much and I could carry on without thinking much about it. There were times when Dinah and I fell progressive- ly further and further behind and would've eventually been left a quarter of a mile to the rear except the group always paused for one reason or another, either for the student leaders to check maps, or to consult about the route, or for someone to make a layer adjustment. We were able to catch up, of course, only for the group to resume paddling almost the moment we arrived. What surprised me was to find Cord toward the rear of the formation. I'd assumed that if anybody could shove the red kayak through the water and keep it up to speed it'd be the young lifeguard from California. But there he was, bending his paddle almost to the point of snapping it in half and yet he was often the second to last or next to last boat in the group, Dinah and I generally occupy- [146] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ing the hindmost slot. Judging by the fixed expression on Cord’s face, it was evident he was doing all he could to maintain his position. He was certainly not paddling away from the group or exploring on his own as he thought he might once he was in command of his own boat. As far as Cord's physical limits went, it appeared that keeping the red kayak moving in a straight line and at some acceptable speed was proving to be a sufficient test. I asked him at one point during the first couple of days after our trade-off how it was going. "It's going," he said. I asked if he wanted to give the boat back. "No chance.” I knew there was no risk in offering to trade back. It was obvious Cord had taken on paddling the red kayak as a personal challenge. I could not’ve been more happy to be quit of the boat of blood. Each morning, I focussed my attention on getting Dinah and myself loaded. I initiated verbal cueing to keep the librarian on task, to keep her bringing the gear down from camp, to keep her from becoming distracted by the filling tide pools, or any birdlike commotion in the bushes. Usually, I was successful in getting us on the water not too long after whatever was the established launch time. Once we were on the water, no amount of cueing could prevent Dinah from constantly swiveling around in her cockpit to draw my attention to this or that manifestation of the natural scene. The woman demonstrated a sharp eye for the smaller species of wildlife. "Jellyfish," she would announce from the bow and ship paddle. "Aurelia aurita," she would say a moment later, having looked it up in her guidebook. "Can we back up please?" she'd ask, completely oblivious to what it was going to cost me to put the boat in reverse and give up all the forward momentum. Naturally, I'd do as directed, for I was already of a mind to see how far her excesses would go. "There it is," she'd say if, in fact, she was able to spot the creature again. "The Common Moon Jellyfish." Following her pointing finger, I might actually spot the gelatinous undulations of a marine invertebrate, appearing for all the world like a living wad of cellophane, pumping its enigmatic way beneath the hull of the boat. Many are the times she would cease paddling to direct her oversized field glasses at some bit of wildlife. There was nothing I could do about it, nor did I want to as these sightings were, I've come to understand, so much a part of the trip for her. Now I, myself, am generally content to let the shapes and forms of the natural world pass across my vision without remark. Section #13: Titty Nipper [147] ! Whereas, Dinah, at any moment, could break a perfectly quiet stretch of paddling with an excited series of "oh, oh, oh's". Her spray skirt snapping back, up would come the massive barrels of the binoculars to track some tiny speck winging its way along far off in the sky, or to zero in on what I took to be a little cast-off tuft of feathers floating on the swell but which Dinah would inform me was a bird resting from flight. The spots of color in Dinah's cheeks would flush large when she had one or another winged creature captured within the prism of her field glasses. I once asked if I might borrow her "binos" -- that was how I put it -- to look at the fin of an orca that was poking above the water's surface a hundred yards off. She had no idea what I was talking about: "binos". She'd never heard this slang term. It turned out she was not inclined -- basically refused -- to remove the strap of the field glasses from around her neck to pass them back to me. "I'm afraid they'll fall into the sea," she said. No matter, I thought. But they must be powerful lenses. Half the time, with only the naked eye, I couldn't make out what she was glassing. Dinah asked me "how well versed" -- the phrase she used -- I was in the field identification of birds. I answered that beyond a robin or a crow or, now thanks to her, a cormorant, I probably couldn't identify a singe bird species, never mind give its correct taxonomic name. She became quite silent following this admission. Well, I don't care to know the precise names of birds, or con- stellations, or flowers, either, for that matter. Four footed animals are okay and maybe the names of some fish. I was given to know most of these before I was old enough to have any say in the matter. To know the precise labels that humans apply to natural objects, particularly all that stuck-up latinate vocabulary, takes away from the mystery of their autonomous existence. I try to curtail the reflex in my mind that wants to know the official name given to any wild creature, whether the creature is right before me, or on television, or in a movie. I don't need or want to know. When I witness, as I have on this trip, a bird tuck its wings and plough into the water like a tiny, living missile, the bird's body frozen for an instant as a dark lozenge shape within the translucent medium of the wave, followed instantly by the creature's tiny birth explosion back into the air, my sense of wonder is not enhanced by Dinah reporting that the bird is a Horned Grebe, "Podiceps Auritus", and the food fish it dives for most likely shad. In fact, I would have to say my sense of wonder is nearly obliterated by knowing the librarian had at the very same moment as myself witnessed the bird's flight through the ocean swell and immediately fed data concerning the bird’s features into the machinations of her categorizing mentality. [148] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! Dinah talks about her lifetime list, the roster of every species of bird she's ever spotted in the wild. Her list has well over a hundred entries and she's pushing to break two hundred before this outing is over. She's already added a dozen bird names since the start of the trip. Prior to Dinah, I'd never heard of this lifetime list business but I gather it’s a passionate concern amongst birders, as she refers to herself and others of her ilk, the cult of individuals psychotically fixated upon these animate arrangements of feather and beak. There was an instance of her and me paddling along a shoreline one afternoon. Who knows when this was? Day Six or Seven. This is the grayed-out period in which I can hardly recall one day from another. Incidentally, this began about Day Six and proceeded to Day Ten when we arrived at Columbia, or I should say the evening of the day before Columbia, when the tone of the trip began to change for reasons I'll get around to explaining. Anyway, Dinah and I had fallen back somewhat from the main group. No surprise there. Cord was nearby, soldiering on in the red kayak, committed to paddling the boat the remaining twenty-two days of the expedition if it killed him. He'd accepted his fate of pain and difficulty in the manner of any decent suburban kid possessed of an unconscious reservoir of guilt and masturbatory self-loathing. All was quiet and peaceful within the flotilla of kayaks. I was rowing steadily, mesmerized by the up and down motion of my own paddle, completely in my thoughts, no longer on the Sound, or for that matter even in Alaska. I was jolted out of my reverie, the blissful escape of it, by Dinah's loud cry. She was pointing out toward deeper water. I figured it had to be at least a whale. But, no, it was just a little bird, a tiny puffball with a compact body and short wings, beating its way low over the water, nicking the tops of the swells with its beak. Di- nah was on it with her field glasses like a gunner. "Oh, oh, oh," she said, as if pulling off shots. "A blacklegged kittiwake," she announced, singing the name out over the water in her contralto voice. Cord looked over at me from beneath his concentrated brow. "Really?" he said. "I could have swore it was a red breasted titty !nipper." ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #14: Initiatory Experiences ! Early on in Dinah's and my time of camping and paddling together there arrived the moment in which it was time to enlarge upon the topic of how we'd each come to know of the outdoor school and the sea kayaking course. For me, there's always a curiosity about what twists of fate and volition have managed to bring others and myself together into the completely unanticipated relation of companions on a wilderness venture. My query prompted Dinah to describe in greater detail the all-women's sailing expedition she'd participated in down in the Keys, a twenty-two day trip sponsored by the outfitter that’s the principle rival to this school. It is, in fact, much larger than this school in terms of enrollment and more familiar by name to the general public. Dinah always refers to the sailing expedition by its full catalog name, the Florida Keys All-Women's Sailing Course. The capital letters -- FKAWSC -- pop up before my mind's eye every time she exhausts my patience with the full pronunciation. I'm certainly not going to spell it out every time I quote her. Dinah required very little cueing to give an account of her experience in the Keys. She described the course, the calisthenics conducted on the beach every morning, the run of several miles along the sand before breakfast. She gave me a picture of the boat they used, a vessel previously employed for commercial fishing. A "pulling boat", she said it was called, thirty feet long and rigged as a sloop with an open deck designed for hauling nets. The boat evidently offered minimal protection from the weather. When there was no wind oars were fitted to the locks and the women rowed. Naturally, I had to wonder how much the librarian had contributed to the boat's forward propulsion. Well, I didn't have to wonder, I knew how much she'd contributed. "We relieved ourselves in a bucket," Dinah said, at the same time holding her paddle clear of the water and swiveling in her cockpit to lock gazes with me over this astonishing fact. "You mean, like a five gallon plastic bucket?" I asked, thinking of the white PVC type that restaurants sometimes get pickles in. [150] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! I'll admit, I was attempting to diminish her sense there was anything particularly unusual about taking a crap in a bucket, S.O.P. on all the fishing boats I've worked on. Sometimes deck hands will dispense with the bucket entirely and simply hang their rear ends over the gunwale. "I found it extremely hard," she said. "I'm sure it was hard," I said. "Did you also sleep on the boat?" "Only if it was calm and we were able to anchor in close to the shore. The Instructors would pitch a tarp between the masts. It was nice for a change not to have to deal with the sand or the insects. The great majority of the time we camped on the beach." I wanted to hear more about her solo. I knew the school was notorious for its insistence students undergo a solo fast which could last as long as three days. "Oh yes," she replied when I asked her to enlarge on this. "Some of the women approached it as a vision quest, hoping to find their life's direction. I thought of it as an opportunity to be alone and collect my thoughts. They dropped us off at intervals along the strand. We were each given two gallons of water and a plastic sheet to sleep on, or under, and a whistle to blow in case we got into trouble. The strategy was that the next person over would hear your whistle and blow theirs and so on down the line until the Instruc- tors came. We were allowed to build a small fire at night if we wished. I never did. Mostly I slept." "Doesn't sound too bad," I said. Again, she turned around in her cockpit. "Actually, it was quite difficult and frightening." She laid her paddle shaft athwart the coaming and I began to think she was going to stay turned around in her cockpit, not paddling, until we were so far behind the group as to completely lose sight of them at which point it would just be Dinah and me, the two of us, alone upon the ocean. "Yes, I'm sure it was difficult," I said. "And I know you must feel as though you've paid you dues, but as long as you and I continue to share this boat, Dinah, I'd prefer it if you'd keep paddling." Maybe it was questionable whether her rowing was doing us any good but I wasn't going to let her get away without at least a show of effort. Dinah learned about this course, this Prince William Sound Sea Kayaking Course, you know, the PWSSKC, while on the Florida Keys sailing expedition. The all-women's sailing trip was not the first wilderness venture she'd undertaken. She'd heard about the sailing course and the outfit that runs it while enrolled upon a wilderness skills survival class conducted in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, "the Pinelands," as Dinah likes to call it. When I ex- Section #14: Initiatory Experiences [151] ! pressed incredulity about any kind of valid wilderness training being conducted in New Jersey she let me know pretty quickly that "the Pinelands" comprise the largest undeveloped tract on the East Coast. Well, okay. Again, it required only a little prompting on my part to get Dinah to tell me about this other foray of hers. I watched the swirl of bubbles created by her paddle blade, alert to any diminution in her stroke, wondering whether the pattern of foam she created in the water denoted forward propulsion or backward braking, and listened as she described the charismatic instructor of the Pine Barrens survival course, a white man who claimed a spiri- tual connection to the Native American. A biological connection, as well, for according to Dinah he's one eighth Chippewa, or one six- teenth, or something along those lines. She also announced the man's name at some point, his given name, which I no longer recall. For the most part she referred to him simply as "The Tracker". The training on this course, conducted over a single long weekend, focused upon what Dinah continually referred to as the Sacred Four. "In a survival situation," she intoned, "one must con- centrate upon the satisfaction of four crucial needs. These are, in descending order of importance, shelter, water, fire and food." Apparently, to initiates of the Pine Barrens school, all of these requirements can be met by the enlightened use of found objects, such as twine or, even better, wire, which can be used, for example, to fashion rabbit snares. Plastic sheeting and a tin can supply sufficient material from which a solar still can be constructed in order to obtain drinking water. "Sounds like rather exotic materials to be stumbling across in the woods," I offered. Dinah made no response to this. Staring at her back as she mutely stroked along, I decided not to be overly critical of her experience in "the Pinelands". She did say it was New Jersey, a place where it may've reached the point such trash as cans and plastic is so ubiquitous as to be considered almost naturally occurring. Any- way, I can see why the head shaman dude, "The Tracker", might conduct his classes there, aside from the fact that I guess it's his neck of the woods, where he grew up. Similar to the Okefenokee Swamp, or the Dakota Badlands, I'm aware there's a certain mystique attached to the Pine Barrens. Whether there's any true wilderness left in any of these places is up for debate, but in the modern mind they stand in well enough for symbols of the remote and inhospitable, places full of frontier lore and mystery. I asked D. how well the solar still worked, how much water they got out of it. "Not very much," she said. [152] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Did anyone try peeing in the hole below the plastic?" I asked, "You know, to provide more moisture for evaporation?" I wasn't making fun of the process. Really, I was curious to know. I've wondered about these stills ever since I was a kid. She didn't answer me about the peeing. She may've thought I was suggesting that, in lieu of water, people should drink their own urine, which was not at all what I was getting at, though of course it's been done. I didn't inquire into the business of the solar still any further. "Isn't there something about wild dogs in the Pine Barrens?" I asked. "Domestic dogs gone feral?" She remained quiet for a moment, then: "For the most part, the wild dog packs have been eradicated. The Tracker helped to hunt them down." "No kidding." I was interested in one other aspect of the bushcraft she mentioned, this being fire by friction. Who isn't at least mildly fascinated by this, those of us who travel the outdoors in the modern fashion, relying for the most part upon butane igniters? "How'd it go with the bow drills?" "It was hard," she said. "You needed to be quite strong to make it work. Even some of the males on the course failed to kindle a fire. I never achieved more than faint smoke." "The course was mostly males?" I asked. I sort of expected it to be the case. "Eight men, two women," she answered. "Including me. The other woman, I am sorry to say, was something of a femme fatale. Needless to say, she was not required to do much on her own behalf." "Right. You needn't explain further." "A large aspect of The Tracker's philosophy," Dinah went on to say, shifting quickly away from the distasteful subject of the femme fatale, "concerns building confidence within oneself, a confidence that cannot be eroded by outside events. The Tracker", she continued, again applying the cognomen to the instructor of her weekend course, with never an explanation of what it meant, though I could sort of guess, "encouraged us to practice building confidence in our normal day-to-day lives. For instance, carrying on with activities even though we might be suffering from a head cold, or a toothache." "Not a bad approach." I then asked Dinah to remind me again how long she'd been away from the library. "I began my leave of absence two weeks ago." Section #14: Initiatory Experiences [153] ! "When did you say they're expecting you back?" "I did not give them a return date. I am officially on what is referred to as indefinite leave of absence." "When do you think you'll return?" "I don't know. After this course is finished I want to travel and explore some other programs." "What sorts of programs?" I thought maybe she meant she wanted to try out different jobs, legal secretary, maybe, or medical records filer. "Well," she began, "I am scheduled to attend a wooden boat building internship this fall in Maine." "No kidding. That sounds great." "Yes. The internship is a month in duration and they say no experience with tools is necessary. And I am thinking about taking another outdoor course, maybe something in the Southwest during the winter. I have heard this school conducts a backpacking course in Baja. That might be a worthwhile endeavor." "Won't be any veldts or tundra down in Baja." "That is where you are wrong, Marlow. I have read that in Baja the mountains extend all the way to the sea. That could be just what I am looking for." "I've heard the school's backpacking trips can be pretty rig- orous. Maybe you should sign up for one of the sailing courses they run down there. " "You don't think I can accomplish backpacking." "I'm not saying that." "I have already tried sailing. I do not see a reason to take another course in a skill I already possess." I didn't want to suggest to Dinah outright that there might be some things, a lot of things, about sailing she didn't yet know. "From what I've read," I went on, "sailing the Sea of Cortez could be quite a bit different from what you did in the Keys. I think they do a lot of spear fishing on those Baja courses. They grill and eat the fish they catch." "Spear fishing?" she asked. "Yep. Too bad the water around here isn't warm enough for a little spear fishing." "The students swim in the ocean?" "I believe that's where the spear fishing takes place." "I do not think that would suit me at all. You might have noticed I am not a strong swimmer." She was referring to the capsize drill. I experienced a momentary recall of her barely effectual dog paddle. "I thought you did just fine." [154] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "I was struggling." "Okay. I'm just telling you, I've heard those backpacking trips can be tough. The packs are really heavy. But what do I know? Maybe you'll be ready for something like that after this thing is over." "I have been thinking that while I am on the boat building internship I will institute a program of jogging and calisthenics, like we did in the Keys." "Not a bad idea." I don't remember if Dinah ever asked me how I came to hear about the sea kayaking course, but it didn't matter. It was at about this point in my talks with Dinah -- somewhere around Day Six, or Seven, if I had to fix it in time -- that I began to grasp what it is she's after with all these courses and internships. What I believe she's seeking are what might be called initiatory experiences, stints of travel or episodes to stand in contrast with the routine of her work- a-day librarian life. I mentioned this to her, using the phrase, "initiatory experiences". When she said she wasn't quite sure what I meant, I provided her with something of a definition. "Any undertaking involving physical and psychological hardship," I proposed. "Usually," I added, "with well-defined start and end points. Such as this course. Because having an end date helps you keep at it. And when you arrive to the other side you're guaranteed to be a different person than when you started. More initiated." She seemed to like the definition. Over the course of the next few days, as they occurred to me, I suggested to her some other programs I'd heard about, even a few I'd participated in, undertakings which I thought would be within her physical capabilities, some with fixed end dates and some without, a twelve month stint on a rural farm commune, for example, or working seasonally in the National Parks, or a couple months' gig in a cannery, something I'd done the previous summer. Plus, I mentioned shorter undertakings, a parachuting course, a caving seminar. "Have you ever thought about learning to scuba dive?" I asked. "No," she said doubtfully, reflecting again, I suppose, on her swimming capabilities. "But, I will put all that you have mentioned in my file." "On your computer?" "No, an actual card catalog. Index cards. I am keeping a file of worthwhile endeavors. Initiatory experiences, to use your term." A card catalogue, I thought. Perfect." There was an evening in camp around this time in which the three of us, Crandall, Dinah and myself, were concocting hot drinks. We always seemed to be putting together hot drinks in preparation Section #14: Initiatory Experiences [155] ! for spending time at our autonomous pursuits, like any threesome of adults in a normal, conventional setting. I recall we were waiting for the water to come to a boil. Crandall was sitting off a little ways, organizing his specimens. I was loading instant coffee crystals into my mug as Dinah looked on. "Would you like to smell it?" I asked, holding the open polybag up to her. "No thank you." she said. "I tried coffee once. My supervisor at the library made some for me. She and the others drink coffee almost continuously. The little I drank affected me severely. I broke out into a sweat and the tips of my fingers began to tingle." "That would be the normal and desired effect." "Well, it was not normal for me," she said. “Nor desirable. That was over ten years ago. It was the first and last coffee I will ever try." The water achieved a boil. I poured the proper quantity into each of the three cups, stirred my own and took a sip. Dinah continued to observe, as if she might witness me with the first taste of the coffee begin to tremble and shake uncontrollably. As per usual, Dinah was wearing her mosquito head net fully deployed over her face. Crandall and I had our nets on, too, but by that stage of the trip we'd learned the trick of draping them over the bills of our caps, sufficient to keep the bugs off. I took Crandall his hot drink which, if he decided to have a hot drink as opposed to plain branch water, would've been steeped with herbal tea that he'd let grow cool before drinking. Texans prefer their tea cold, I guess. "You got any experience preserving starfish in the field?" I asked the biologist. "Very difficult without formaldehyde. Or something compa- rable," he said. "You may've noticed most of these specimens are on the small side. I’ve dried them out as much as I could in the sun." He indicated the shells and leaf cuttings and whatnot arranged in nice rows upon his ensolite sleeping pad. At least a dozen of his glean- ings were secured within tiny ziplocs with neatly lettered labels. "A few of them will need additional prep when I get back to school," he went on, "like this mollusk here." And he lifted up one of the sealed plastic bags which contained a tiny black lozenge shape. "Anything as big as a starfish would be a mess as it decomposed. Maybe, if I happen to come across a small one the last day of the course, I might try it." Crandall always appeared to be very content at the job of ordering his phyla. As if the pursuit was all he needed to derive full satisfaction from the travel. I tried to recall what precisely the bio- [156] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! logist had said at the Palmer go-around concerning his expectations for the course. I was fairly certain he was one of those who'd seconded the idea of testing limits. Which struck me as odd, as he is older and should be past any notion of proving himself. It must've been a notion he'd picked up from his high schoolers. He may view the younger people on this course analogous to his students back home and wish to do what he can to encourage them to stretch themselves. My intention was to take my hot drink off to where I could accomplish some reading. I was just making a move when Dinah asked me, apropos of our conversation about initiatory experiences, what I thought about hiking the "Appalachian National Scenic Trail". Naturally, she would pro- nounce the name of the trail in full. "Do you think it best to hike it north to south, or south to north?" she asked. "You mean the Aye-Tee?" I was already beginning to counter the librarian's insistence on referring to every outfit by its entire, official nomenclature. "Georgia to Maine is the recommended direction. You could try it north to south but you wouldn't be able to get started until July. You’d have to be a fast hiker." "That would not be me," she said. Right, I thought. That would not be you, Dinah. I knew exactly how the Appalachian Trail figured in the woman's mental schemata. The A.T. is another of those places freighted down with wilderness mystique, particularly in the heads of people who live east of the Mississippi for whom the trail stands as the great Amer- ican backcountry challenge, as if the frontier had never advanced further than Boonesborough. Now, I don't want to be putting down the A.T. I've hiked sections of it, most notably a ten day stretch between the grand old trail town of Harper's Ferry to the southern tip of Shenandoah N.P. I have nothing but fond memories of the gentle, undulating ridge lines with the many viewpoints overlooking Vir- ginia farmsteads and Interstate highway. The only drawback and the reason I quit was that there were far too many other hikers. I'll bet I encountered a hundred a day headed the other direction, many of them long haulers hiking south to north. "You get off this trip," I said to Dinah, "you might find the Ap- palachian Trail a bit tame. There's a reason this school doesn't run any courses east of the Rockies. As trails go, the A.T. doesn't pass through much true wilderness anymore. In some places it's divert- ed onto paved roads. I’ll bet a couple of million people a year hike at least some portion of the trail. It's become more of a walkathon. Everybody wants thru-hiker status, to be a two-thousand miler, or whatever it's called. I'd advise you to stay out west. Hike the Pacific Crest Trail. That'd make a nice five month go-around." I was talking to Dinah as if she routinely shouldered a fifty pound pack. Section #14: Initiatory Experiences [157] ! "I frequently hear you use this term 'go-around'," she said. "What do you mean by it?" I hesitated to get into another explanation of my personal schemata. But in the end I went ahead. Dinah had certainly disclosed enough of her inner workings to me. "I think of the year as broken up into summer and winter go-arounds. The way I see it, every adult is allocated about a hundred six month go-arounds. Six months is enough time to get yourself to a new place, figure out some means by which to earn a living, form a relationship with the locals and the landscape, and delve out a narrative." "Then what?" “When you’ve got your story, you close down shop and head to somewhere new." She thought about this for a moment. "It sounds too transito- ry for me." "Nothing says you can't stay on longer, dig a little deeper." "Do you own a car?" she asked. "Not presently," I said. I was prepared for her to ask me how I managed without a car to get from one initiatory experience, or go-around, to the next. But Dinah had a more practical concern "Do you think it damaging to my vehicle to be sitting all this time in the parking lot at Palmer?" she asked. "When I bought the car it was recommended I start it at least once a week." "It'll be okay for a month. You might have to jump it when you get back." "How does one arrange to have a car jumped." "Don't worry about it. I'll help you, if you need it." So it went with Dinah, either while ashore, sitting on our camp pads, or paddling the Seascape double. Sometimes we talked and sometimes we sat, or rowed, in silence. Always, if we were on the water, we were the last or next to last boat. Many times I noticed the other students ahead of us pointing out features of the travel, or the Instructors pausing to relate to the group some anec- dote, yet Dinah and were I always too far to the rear to be privy to the conversation. There was an instance, getting on toward the end of my "initiatory experience" serving as Dinah's paddling partner, when the student group, in the process of effecting a crossing between two headlands under the charge of our self-elected student leaders, encountered two women paddling a foldable double. This had to be within a day or two of reaching our turn around point at Columbia Glacier because if it'd been much earlier I, for one, wouldn't have had the presence of mind to appreciate what it was we were seeing. [158] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! As it was, Dinah and I didn't know what was going on until the strange kayak had penetrated almost to the middle of the group. The two strangers in their kayak came upon us so fast at first I thought it was one of the other student boats turned around to retrieve something fallen into the water, a dropped bailing sponge, or a map, or something. The pair of women backfilled with their paddles and stopped to have a short chat with Dodi, whom they seemed to know, and then, taking up oars again, plowed on through our flotilla without looking right or left. A few of the group shipped paddles out of concern there might be a collision, but the women in the foldable were in complete control of their craft. They threaded their dun colored kayak through the pod until they reached open water whereupon they set a course that soon took them out of sight. Those two weren't hugging the shorelines, or making a crossing between headlands, they were on a dead reckoning toward some point beyond the horizon. I was reminded of the solitary birds we sometimes come across out here, sleek grey and white creatures, gulls, I suppose, only bigger, determinedly sweeping their way through the air on silent wings toward some mysterious destination. Dinah and I moved into the main group in time to hear the last of Dodi's explanation concerning the two women. They were known to the school, acquaintances of the Lead Instructor. Dodi had chatted with them enough that afternoon to learn where the women were headed and how their summer was going. Apparently, in the opinion of the two women the fishing was okay, maybe a little spotty, but not too bad. Burl offered up a little spiel about foldable kayaks, the type of boat the two women had been paddling. I already knew about this class of watercraft from my own researches into a kayak purchase, but it was interesting to hear what Burl had to say about wooden spars and neoprene skins. According to the Second Instructor, the design of a foldable kayak provides a very different feel from the vacuum-molded tubs we were driving. Someone asked why the school didn't provide foldable kayaks, to which Burt answered that they were more expensive and required more upkeep. Someone else asked what purpose the outrigger served and Burl explained it was there to complement the sail rig. Well, a sail rig, I thought. That would certainly be a useful thing. I was sorry Dinah and I had missed the entirety of what our Course Leader had said about her friends in the foldable. Crandall filled us in later at camp, telling us that according to Dodi the pair worked in the bars and restaurants of Valdez all winter, stockpiling wages, and then spent the four or five months of the summer travel ing about the Sound in their fabric kayak, fishing and foraging. Section #14: Initiatory Experiences [159] ! "Dodi says they keep a twenty-two caliber rifle on board for small game. Evidently, they're artists. One's a painter, the other's a photographer." That had looked to be about the case, I thought. Wilderness bohemians. The women's hair was unbelievably matted and bound up in knots atop their heads. Neither of them had been wearing sunglasses, nor ball caps, or headgaskets, but instead sported terrific squints that creased the dark leather of their faces. I saw how the two women were doing it. And here I was thinking all the possible ways to live off the land were gone, but there you go. The rifle would be the critical thing, to take up the slack when the fishing was poor. That and a good knowledge of edible plants. With some staples like corn meal and flour and coffee you could live out here almost indefinitely. The constant exposure to the ecosystem would infuse one’s artistic work with more reso- nance, deepen it in some way that'd be hard to describe. You'd certainly become more intimate with the moods of the place. How to- tally great. I have no recollection of Dinah's take on the pair. She was present at Crandall's and my discussion, but she either went on with her gear sorting and paid no attention, or walked away, I can't quite recall. Whether this was because Dinah wasn't interested, or found the women's approach objectionable, or incomprehensible, who can say? Nothing about the two wild women kayakers seem to resonate with our librarian, though I've had cause to wonder about this since. It's possible the two women in their foldable, the exper- tise they embodied, was more than Dinah could bear to counte- !nance. ! ! ! ! !

Section #15: Debris Hut ! Beginning with Day One and continuing every day thereafter the Instructors conducted classes on the beach. We students were advised right off, this being an outdoor school and all, a given class would take place as scheduled no matter what the weather, even if a rain squall was in progress. Of course, there've been no rain squalls or any other category of rain, so it could be ar- gued the policy has never been fully tested. Nevertheless, we've been required to show up to these instructionals with a possibles bag containing at least, but not limited to, one full water bottle, headnet or bug dope, enough in the way of snacks to see us through and whatever additional gear we might personally require to remain comfortable and attentive for the duration. If a student, say, failed to bring along their foam sleeping pad to sit upon during class, to retard the transfer of body heat into the greywacke sub- strata via the conduit of the backside, the student was sent back to their tent to retrieve said foam pad. Speaking of which, I don't know what Dodi was thinking, advising me not to bring my little camp chair, saying that we wouldn't be sitting around that much. We sit around all the time, what with the never ending classes and rap sessions. The extra weight and bulk of my camp seat wouldn't have mattered. It would’ve hardly added anything to the cargo of gear we're hauling. Calling it a seat is even misleading. It's a couple of flexible panels held together in a "L" shape by some inch-and-a-half webbing. Very high utility to weight ratio. Oh, well. No one else brought a camp seat either so I shouldn’t complain. The student group, sitting buddha style with no back support, has submitted to classes on navigation, route planning, natural history, identification of flora and fauna, knot tying for sea kayakers, stove operation and repair, first aid plus a curriculum the I-team refers to as "the leadership progression". To list a sampling. They're not kidding about it being a school and any one who's thinking about signing up for one of these trips ought to have no illusion about it being otherwise. It's not summer camp. There hasn't been a single sing-a-long or weenie roast. There was a class early on in which Instructor Houston Section #15: Debris Hut [161] ! brought us into passing familiarity with all of our bagged rations and the contents of the spice kit. This was followed by a demo of the school's baking methods involving a recipe I wouldn't have thought practicable in the backcountry. We gathered around the Third Instructor, each cook group equipped with its issue of rations, plus stoves and related utensils, and followed along as he showed us how to concoct and bake a batch of cinnamon rolls. Activating his mixture with yeast and then loading it into an empty ration bag, Thad Houston demonstrated how the dough could be kept warm during the rising phase by placing the bag, rather ignominiously I thought, beneath the clothing layers until it was against the skin. The way a mother might situate an infant or, for that matter, an unborn child. One astonishing procedure followed another. The risen dough, removed from beneath the Third Instructor's clothing and returned to the light of day, was rolled flat using the floured cylinder of a water bottle. Thad Houston slathered on the margarine and onto this adhesive sprinkled brown sugar, cinnamon and the optional raisins. He then bent the dough upon itself, slicing out the separate rolls with a loop of dental floss. One of the collegiates interjected to ask if it would be all right to employ used floss. I think he was only kidding, but Instructor Houston took him at his word. "Use whatever you've got," he said. The whole thing was simply fantastic. The rolls were spaced in a skillet and, as a way of maintaining the warmth of their environment while the yeast worked again to raise the dough, the covered skillet was folded into a sleeping bag, a nifty demonstration of backcountry culinary technique which doubled as a way to impress upon students, who perhaps had never given it much thought, the heat conserving capabilities of synthetic fiberfill. Once the rolls had sufficiently risen within the skillet, Mr. Houston assembled a "twiggy fire", a thing the school’s apparently famous for -- Pat had heard about this procedure in advance from her son, well over a year previous -- utilizing the small depression built into the top of the skillet lids. We all followed suit, breaking up sticks "no bigger round than a finger" and soon the heat from our respective twiggy fires was radi- ating downward into the pans, baking to a delectable crispness the cinnamon raisin rolls. From start to finish a mere hour and a half elapsed before we were all enjoying the rolls hot from the skillet with a drizzled syrup of sugar and vanilla. For Crandall and Dinah and myself this was the first food we'd eaten that day. I recall feel ing a little sick from the over-sweetness of it. The Third Instructor's baking lesson that morning struck me [162] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! as almost more of a performance than an class. No individual, I thought, could've come up with so much novel procedure on their own. Clearly, what we'd just witnessed, the rapid display of little tricks glibly and expertly trotted out by Thad Houston, was the ag- gregation of hard won knowledge and technique gathered over the three decades since the school's founding, culled from the experience of instructor teams working with this same equipment and these same ingredients under a variety of conditions all over the globe. Not to mention consultation with the manufacturer who provides the school with the custom skillets. We were encouraged to do as much cooking on wood fires as possible, as long as wood was available, and to conserve the white gas for those instances when we’d pull over briefly upon a beach during the day to have a snack and a hot drink. We were continually reminded that there'd be times in the weeks ahead in which we'd be camped upon barren, glaciated tracts with no wood, no deadfall, nothing that could be burned and we'd be completely dependent upon the stoves and their petroleum-based fuel. The Instructors advised us to take advantage of our nightly campfires to boil drinking water for the following day. The official word is that all water, whether dipped out of a rushing stream, or toted down from an upslope catch-pool, while generally considered to be reasonably free of pathogens, should be heated for purposes of sterilization until small bubbles -- "fish eyes" is the school's descrip- tive term -- begin to show on the bottom of the pot. My feeling was and still is that the fresh water we find on these islands is purer than what comes out of most faucets in the lower forty-eight and when no one's paying attention, or when no one is around who will care, I drink the water straight from the source. To help us start our cook fires we've been directed to a certain species of moss which grows downward from the branches of its host tree. Ubiquitous and loaded with resin, this moss burns so aggressively when a match is applied to its fronds you'd think it'd been soaked in kerosene. I was very impressed with the mossy fire starter and with whoever had first discovered that it could be used this way. I've long been in the habit of pouring a little stove gas, you know, some "boy scout water" as we used to call it, on the tinder to ensure a successful fire. Since it sounded as if stove fuel was going to be at a premium on this trip I was thankful for the flammable moss. The morning of Day Two, not a moment too soon and for some of us maybe already overdue, Dodi and Burl presented us with the Backcountry Hygiene Rap. They stressed the importance of keeping ourselves well-hydrated to counteract the effect of a high Section #15: Debris Hut [163] ! roughage diet. They encouraged each of us to monitor our own urine, to observe that the flow remained clear and copious. "If your urine is yellow," Dodi said, "you're dehydrated." Which statement caused me to reflect that I couldn't recall my urine ever not being yellow, that possibly I'd been chronically dehydrated all my life. Dodi then proceeded to lay out in a row for our consideration some alternatives to toilet paper -- rocks and sticks and leaves and such -- all but ignoring the shocked but largely silent expression of alarm from students who perhaps only then realized it was true, the rumor they'd heard, that this particular outdoor school does not issue t.p. for use in the field, the paper being considered anti- thetical to minimum impact travel. Dodi moved quickly on to the business of bathing. "It will not be possible," she said, "to maintain the same level of personal cleanliness most of you are used to." The Course Leader, it turned out, was an advocate of sun baths. Without going so far as to remove her clothes, though she said that would be necessary to achieve the desired result, Dodi lay back upon the sand and demonstrated the position one would need to assume to expose the flora in armpit and groin to the sanitizing effects of direct sunlight. "Irradiating the hidden places," was how she put it, her voice sounding small and strained in her recumbent position. The collegiate males were rapt with attention and, let me tell you, I was not uninterested in the way the comely Instructor's hips flattened out upon the greywacke. Sitting back up, Dodi reminded us that there was always the ocean to bathe in, as well as the occasional waterfall. Burl stepped in to point out that his personal preference, which we were welcome to emulate, was to douse himself with a pot of water dipped from a creek. The two Instructors typically traded off in this fashion, taking turns imparting information, a good strategy for particularly long and involved classes, like a team of DJs changing off to keep the audience perked up. It hadn't passed observation that a bar of soap was included in each cook group's ration duffels. Someone asked if it was permis- sible to use the soap when bathing. "Not recommended in the freshwater streams," Dodi said, "but okay in the ocean." She added: "The lather action in salt water will not be so good as you'd notice." Someone then asked, being there was so much emphasis on leaving as little trace of our passage through the region as possible, -- a policy which after all didn't permit us the benefit of toilet paper - - if to use soap in the Sound wouldn’t also be polluting. [164] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "The ocean's too big for it to make a difference," put in Burl. "If you're going to release a small amount of soap residue into the environment the ocean's as good a place as any to do it." So saying, Burl segued smoothly to advice on the matter of bowel movements, recommending that when possible, instead of squatting in the loamy woods and burying our result in a cat hole, we conduct our activity on the beach below the high tide line and simply let the ocean take our offering out to depth. "Dilution is the solution to ..." he began to slowly intone and then paused, letting his audience complete the phrase. It was Burl who got us started with the pleasant, if non-pro- ductive pastime, of fishing. No later than Day Three he conducted a class on the activity, introducing us to our tackle, encouraging those of the student group who weren't already familiar with fishing rods and lures -- probably the majority of us -- to begin augment- ing our diet of dry rations with fresh caught salmon. The way Burl laid it out the enterprise couldn't have sounded more appealing,. "If you don't get a strike after a half dozen casts," he said, "change your lure. If you don't get a strike after a change of lure, change your location." Coming from Burl, it seemed a sure fire recipe for success. "When changing your lure," he continued, "don't put the butt end of the rod on the ground. Sand and reel mechanisms make for very bad juju." Which got a laugh. Much of what Burl says gets a laugh. Generally speaking, Burl isn’t here for the purpose of giving anybody a lecture. There was the dose of advice he'd offered against trenching out a tent site on a low angle beach. Then, on a different evening, not long after we'd arrived to our camp for the day, Burl came up behind me as I was snapping limbs off a drift log. My plan was to take the sticks back to the cook group for use as firewood. It should be noted that when I'm engaged in a repetitive activity like that I often don't know where I am or what I'm doing. It was the same when I'd been kicking out the tent platform. Or paddling a kayak. Any activity that occupies me physically but which requires no thought will send me off to some place in my head. Afterwards, I can almost never say where my thoughts were. "Now, Marlow," Burl began, jolting me out of my dream state. "Think about it. That log's probably going to be sitting there a long time. Maybe longer than you and I will be alive." He went on to point out that by leaving a row of angry stubs -- that was his adjective for the stubs, they were "angry"-- I was detracting from the pristine quality of the beach. He recommended, for the sake of whomever might came after us that I go search for deadfall in the woods. "Go back a hundred yards," he said. "You can break off limbs to your Section #15: Debris Hut [165] ! heart's content." Looking back on the incident, I could've responded by saying that a storm might come along and take the whole log, angry stubs and all, back out to sea. Burl could not have said such a possibility was unlikely. Of course, who'd think to put forward such an argument when we travel under such relentlessly clear skies? It doesn't seem possible it could ever storm here, although I know it does. Every weather system that hits the Continental U.S. is said to have its birthplace in Prince William Sound. There’s something about Burl's tone that discourages one from getting defensive about his corrections. You can tell the man doesn't give a hoot about the overall scheme and that he probably split the program a long time ago. The one thing he obviously does care about is the health of the wilderness. It'd been so easy for me to stroll down the length of that log and snap off the branches, requiring no more effort than knocking tin cans off a fence rail. I decided that what Burl had said about the stubs was very much to the point. I'd honestly never considered such a thing before. And now my assumptions were thoroughly disturbed. It was beautiful. As I shifted my search for downfall to the woods in back of the beach, I knew I was going to incorporate Burl's suggestion into my own methodology from that day forward and use it whenever possible to undermine the complacency of other, less conscientious, wilderness travelers. We students were encouraged by the Instructors to each present our own mini-class, or lecture. More than encouraged, though no one is forced to do anything out here. After all, it's our course, our expedition, we paid for it. But a critical part of the Final Evaluation would apparently hinge upon this presentation, this mini-class. The idea was for each of us to declaim for fifteen or twenty minutes upon some topic of our own choosing, hopefully a subject at least tangentially related to the region through which we were traveling, the flora, or fauna, or geology. We were prompted to access the resources of the traveling library if need be. Among the books in the library -- two large gasket-sealed ammo cans full -- I discovered the very manual on sea kayaking I'd read before coming on the course, the book with the photographs of capsize and disaster. Although I'd like to think I wanted nothing more than to alert the rest of the course to the fact that we had in our possession an interesting book written in a compelling style with much to say about the skill area, I believe I was not a little motivated by the desire to prove the questions I'd asked back at Palmer, the ones that excited such amused laughter from everyone, were not completely from out in left field. I decided that for my [166] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! mini-class, as they called it, I would present this book and I prepared a synopsis and a review. About a week and a half ago, maybe it was actually a full two weeks ago, a few days anyway before we reached the Columbia Glacier turn-around, it fell to me to be one of the first up to present my class to the group. I left aside any mention of the anal plugs reputedly employed by long distance sea kayakers, though the topic would certainly have held the attention of the collegiate males and maybe some of the others. To be truthful, I couldn't find a reference to such plugs in the sea kayaking manual. It was probably only something my cronies back in the fishing town had cooked up to antagonize me. I did quote the book on the practice, utilized by many an ocean-going kayaker engaged in a crossing of several days or weeks duration, of setting a sea anchor at night and sleeping in the boat. Then, without really intending to, I launched into a spiel about the author's choice of photographs and the manner in which I'd closely studied the snapshots before I left home for clues about what we were all getting into. I confessed to the group, to their general amusement I'm sorry to report, how the photos had encouraged me to believe that kayaking on the Sound was going to entail a good deal more risk than has actually turned out to be the case, at least in the sheltered waters that constitute our route. I held the book up, open to the photo plate depicting the two kayakers who, in their expedition double, are about to be pulverized by the storm roller. People in the front row leaned in close to get a better look. "Man," I said, "will you look at the size of that wave." This for the benefit of those sitting further back. Which only served to elicit more laughter from the group. I had the momentary thought that I was never going to win here, never going succeed in convincing these youngsters that I wasn't an eccentric. So it goes, I became convinced, when you’re dealing with people not overly burdened with imagination, individuals destined merely to fill their designated slot in the edifice. I went on to read a few pertinent sections of the text, chosen for their rich descriptions of risk and danger, and let it go at that. Concluding the presentation, about twenty minutes on the nose, I derived the sense I'd won the sympathy of at least the older clique, Pat and Dinah, maybe Burl, and had managed to convey something of how the book's passages and photos had inflamed my imagination. In the end, who cares? Did anyone in the group, Instructor or student, actually recall the exchange about the availability of coffee, or the perfectly innocent question about sleeping in the boats, any of it, during the getting acquainted go-around back at Palmer? Section #15: Debris Hut [167] ! Probably not. Honestly, though, their laughter still smarts in my memory. The Instructors thanked me for the presentation. One of them said -- I don't recall which it was, either Dodi or Thad Houston -- more as a note of caution to the other students who'd yet to present their class, that a book review was not quite what they had in mind with regard to our mini-lectures. As it turned out, no one else presented a book review. The classes conducted by the other students covered a wide range of subjects.. My campmate, Crandall, led us all in an aesthetic exercise which involved stacking greywacke stones up to balanced heights, as tall as we could reach, eight feet or more in some cases. I have to say, I went into the exercise feeling kind of goofy but when the sculptures were finished and we stood back to examine our work, there was something undeniably mysterious and compelling about the stone persons we'd created, cairns that stood mute and still upon the edge of the sea. It produced an odd sensation to walk among the statues, as if the rock, now stacked to human height, had developed sentience and scrutinized us as much as we scrutinized them. I would've left the sculptures in place, you know, as something more intriguing for a future wayfarer to discover than angry stubs on a drift log but, of course, in the end the stone people had to be knocked over, their rubble dispersed. Pat, sailor of the Great Lakes, conducted a nifty workshop on knot tying. I believe it was an attempt at vindication, as my own class had been. As I learned later, Pat had been subject early on to a private rebuke from Dodi for being overly helpful in a knot tying class. Using the mini-lecture format to demonstrate her own rope handling prowess, it certainly appeared Pat knew her stuff, although her methods were possibly more applicable to working around a forty-foot motor sailer than a sea kayak. Pat liked to use the term "painter", about which Dodi corrected her, reflexively repeating "bowline" each time Pat used her preferred word. It was like a duel between the two women. Painter. Bowline. Painter. Bowline. When it came to be Dinah's turn to be mini-instructor she returned to her experience in the Pine Barrens and demo-ed the construction of a survival shelter, one of the Sacred Four requirements. She had the procedure memorized by rote. To make sure there wouldn't be any hitches she'd spent a couple of hours before her class gathering and preparing materials. Despite the prep, Di- nah's class ran long and after forty-five minutes she'd barely managed to lay enough boughs and sticks across each other to afford us the minimum idea. She referred to the thing as a "debris hut”. It was a sort of wigwam minus the animal skins. Sliding herself inside [168] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! feet first, only partially knocking down one section, she provided us a good demonstration of how we might lay calmly within our own hand-built survival hut to await rescue. We could see her quite plainly through the ribs of the structure. The student group was fascinated by her construct and gathered around it on all sides. "How long," someone asked, "would it take to build a complete shelter, one that would fully protect you from the elements?" I was afraid that Dinah, thinking the shelter she presently occupied solid as a house, might’ve been offended by the question, but she replied that she'd assembled one such complete hut in the backyard of a friend's house in about five hours. The Instructors thanked Dinah for her most interesting class and within minutes all of us, with the exception of the librarian, had quit the gathering spot, dispersing to our respective camps. I went back after a while to check on my campmate. I was going to call her over for supper, but when I saw her still lying within the debris hut, eyes closed, hands folded across her stomach, I let her !be. ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! Section #16: Dry Toast ! As it played out, the biology teacher and I acquired a good deal more with Dinah than merely someone to occupy a third of the tent. For instance, right off, we found out it was necessary to physically wake her in the morning, and I don't mean by simply calling out her name from the tent door. Dinah had brought with her, as per the school's trip checklist, a wrist watch, in her case a nice digital model with built-in alarm, the sort of timepiece used by extreme athletes, ultra marathoners and whatnot, but perfectly suitable for someone on an extended outdoor expedition. It seemed to be the one piece of gear she possessed about which she felt no ambivalence. Crandall showed her how to set the alarm and most mornings we heard the electronic beeper sound off inside the tent. Dinah slept with the balaclava fastened beneath her chin and the hood of her sleeping bag cinched up over the balaclava. No wonder she couldn't hear the wake-up signal. The alarm would run out its full programmed minute without bringing her to a state of wakefulness. We kept trying to make it work with the watch alarm, first placing the watch on the tent floor near her head, then inside a pot turned on its edge as a sort of sound amplifier, but nothing proved effective. I don't think the alarm would've awakened me either if I slept with that much headgear, but we couldn't convince Dinah to make any modification to her system. At my suggestion that she sleep with the watch inside her bonnet she only looked at me with a sort of pained baffle- ment. Every morning, to rouse our campmate, one of us, Crandall or I, had to actually go in the tent and shake her by the shoulder until she came awake. Then it was necessary to check on her at least twice to make sure she was up and moving. All of this was necessary if we wanted Dinah to have time to drink her tea, get herself together and join us in the task of breaking down camp. Per- sonally, I hate waking up anyone who is sound asleep. I would as soon let a body doze away. Less commotion in the world that way. When it became clear this was going to be the drill every morning with Dinah, I was happy to let Crandall have the duty. [170] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! Puzzled that someone age thirty-nine hadn’t developed a method for waking on a schedule, I asked Dinah how, when she was on the sailing trip, did she manage to get up on time. She said the trip's instructors came and woke the students all at once and, even so, she still didn't always wake up right away. There was so much tumult with the women moving about in a confined space she couldn't help but eventually be roused. "How did you manage when you were in the city, living on your own?" I asked. She explained, of course, that her mother would call her on the phone each morning and keep calling back until she answered. "At night, I’d set the phone across the room on my dresser so I was forced to get out of bed to answer it." Dinah described this as though it were the most natural arrangement in the world, as if all of us younger than the age of forty must have someone of the older generation to give us a wake-up call every morning. "And your mother was the only one likely to call?" I asked, not to the point of anything, I just didn't know what else to say. "She is the only one who has my number," Dinah said. "If the library needed me, they would call Mother and she would call me. Once I was up and moving about, Mother would call me back in twenty minutes to make sure I had showered and was eating breakfast." "Incredible," I said. I paused slightly but then I had to ask: "Has it ever occurred to you that this might be different from the way most adults operate?" "My parents used to remind me quite often that the day was going to arrive when I would have to wake up on my own. They have been telling me this for years." I wanted to tell her that the day was here, that it’d arrived. "What happens when there's no one to wake you?" "Oh, eventually I will wake up. After I have been asleep ten or eleven hours." "What did you do in Anchorage to make sure you got down to the pick-up point on time?" "Wake-up call from the front desk. That's what I do. If I check into a motel, I arrange for the operator to call me at set intervals until I answer. Usually they do not have to call the room more than twice." I thought, but did not say, that this sounded like some sort of progress. Throughout the first go-around, Crandall and I traded off performing the cooking chores for our little tent group. Dinah said that she'd prefer not to cook. She didn't think she'd be comfortable Section #16: Dry Toast [171] ! with the responsibility. And, besides, as she explained, her reper- toire was limited. Some might say that for a fellow camper not to occasionally help with the cooking was to evince poor expedition behavior, but Crandall and I didn't mind since Dinah volunteered from Day One to do all the washing of pots and utensils following the meal. Quickly on, the Instructors made it known that a critical part of everyone's final course evaluation would be to demonstrate proficiency with the stove, to cook a nutritious and tasty meal for their tent group. Crandall and I sheltered Dinah from the scrutiny of the Instructors in this matter, not thinking about what was going to happen later when we'd all be re-assigned to new cook groups. During the first week, it was impossible to conceive there would ever be any "later" in the course. It was hard enough to brace oneself for all we were going to have to do when we arrived to shore each day, all of the chores and camp tasks that had to be accomplished, hours of busyness, before anything like a little coffee and reading could happen Initially, neither Crandall nor Dinah knew what to suggest we cook for supper. I was okay with taking the initiative, but I didn't have much energy in those early days for experimentation or for studying the school-issue cookbook. We tended to prepare the obvious stuff, mainly pasta and rice. It was the same with the tent and the tarp. If Crandall and Dinah didn't feel they'd signed onto this course to learn backcountry cuisine, they also didn't appreciate the requirement to learn nylon shelter deployment. As with stove operation and cooking, a satisfactory final evaluation depended upon the two eventually demonstrating competency in these and other camp skills. At the start, it was easier for me to set up the dome tent, the kitchen and gear tarps and let Crandall and Dinah focus on the grunt work, hauling gear and water and firewood, rather than have them practice the more complex tasks. It should be acknowledged that both of my campmates, after only two or three days break-in, started helping with shelter set-up, putting poles through sleeves, securing tie downs and whatnot. And after an additional day or two Crandall began to experiment with the school approved recipes, coming up with a tasty dish that involved dried bean flakes, potato pearls and a type of granulated breakfast cereal. You'd never think it'd pan out, based on the ingredients, but it was quite delicious and filling and Dinah and I often requested it from him. There was an instance of Dinah observing me put trucker's hitches on all the pull-outs for the kitchen tarp. This was the school- approved knot for any circumstance which required tension be placed on a line. Both Crandall and Dinah had been exposed to the official instruction on this small procedure. As with everything in [172] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! this world you have to practice a thing, get your hands involved, if you want to acquire the skill. Finally, after Dinah had watched me put the fifth or sixth hitch on a line, I suggested she give it a try. "Oh, I will never be able to tie a knot like that.” "I believe you have to if you want to pass the course”. "I did not realize we were subject to a pass/fail." "Here," I said, giving her the next tie-out to secure. "Do it just like the Instructors showed you. I'll back you up." "I have never tied a knot before," she said, but took the line from my hand. "You learned to tie your shoes.” "Never. I always had buckles." "Throw that end around your anchor.” I pointed to whatever it was we were using, a boulder, or the limb on a drift log. I then showed Dinah how to put a bight in the trailing line. "Now, pinch it right there and finish your slip knot." "It will never hold," she complained. "It'll hold. You'll be amazed how much tension you can put on it. But you have to pinch it in close." And she did it. More or less. The bight could've been a little further up the trailing line, but good enough. "Great, Di. Keep practicing.” The end of the paracord was quite frayed and possibly had never been properly finished by whoever had cut it to length. I retrieved my lighter and put a flame to the end until the nylon bub- bled, then spun the molten tip between my fingers. "Is that not terribly hot to the touch?" Dinah asked, observing. “Not much. I’ve done it so many times I think the nerve end- ings are cauterized." She became curious as to the contents of the purple ditty in which I keep the lighter and the scissors I'd just used to trim the end of the paracord. "What else have you brought in your little necessaries bag?" she asked. "This and that.” Then I looked at her and saw she was actually interested. I proceeded to dump the contents of the ditty on the ground, or more likely upon the uncluttered surface of my camp pad. Most of the items were recognizable to Dinah right off. A pair of butane lighters. Scissors. A spool of thread and a needle. A tube of lip balm. A somewhat diminished packet of toilet tissue secured with a rubber band. She picked up the thimble, which I assume she recognized for what it was, and set it back down. "What is this?" she asked. Section #16: Dry Toast [173] ! "Footbag," I said, then noted her incomprehension. "You kick it. It's a sort of game." "Interesting. And this?" "Magnifying glass. Good for looking at stuff up close. Bugs. Leaves. Whatnot." "Well, I like the idea of that," she said, putting the glass down and picking up the next object. "Why a thermometer?" I demonstrated to her the minimum register function. I was ready to go into an explanation of how I find it interesting to know how cold it was the previous night, partly as a way of seeing how well my sleeping gear is performing. But Dinah put the thermometer back down without further question. "And this?" she asked. "Ear plugs." I flipped open the lid of the little container to show her. "Why would you bring ear plugs into the wilderness? "Sometimes the birds are noisy in the morning when I'm trying to sleep. Or the wind kicks up and rattles the tent." "I see." "Hasn't been much call for the ear plugs on this trip." I'm rather proud of the contents of my purple ditty. The items are uniquely reflective of the vagabonding life. Considerable thought and hard experience has gone into their inclusion. As much thought has gone into the decision to not include certain items, such as a P-38 can opener, or a signal mirror. I don't think Dinah was all that impressed. Aside from the lighters and maybe the scissors, I don't think she fathomed the purpose of any of my small items. There was an evening meal which found the three of us sitting close together beneath our kitchen tarp, attempting to keep out of reach of the mosquitoes. The sound of Dinah's chewing -- she eats noisily, in the manner of a person used to taking their meals alone -- inspired me to ask what it was she normally ate when back in the world. She replied that what she particularly relished was cold pasta salad. That was the word she used: "relished". Which caused me to ask if she put chopped pickles in her salad, the idea of pickles probably sounding good to me right then. "Certainly pickles," she said. "I'm surprised. I'd think they be too vinegary and sharp tast- ing for you." "Sweet pickles," she said. "Honestly, what I would not give right now for a dish of cold pasta salad. And toast," she added. "A nice stack of toast." "Would that be wheat toast?" [174] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Rye." "Of course. Rye toast. With butter?" I asked, but then immediately corrected myself: "No. You prefer it dry, don't you?" "Correct." "You'd need a beer to wash all that down," I said, knowing full well that would not be correct in Dinah's view. "Certainly not a beer," she said. "Hot or iced tea. Depending upon the season." Right, I thought. Depending upon the season. Every Sunday, Dinah explained, on the day the library was open "administrative hours only" and didn't require her presence, she'd stay home and make a large batch of the pasta salad to keep in the refrigerator to nibble on all week. At one point she started to name the ingredients, "... sweet pickles, bow tie macaroni shells, mayonnaise, peas, chopped celery ... ," but I stopped her before she went further. I didn't want to hear about the ingredients in her salad. Not even the pickles. It was too painful. Not because I was missing such food, it was just too much to listen to the librarian delin- eate so precisely and with such perfect pronunciation her list of condiments. "Do you pack your own lunch for work?" I asked. It was the question I'd put to her to distract her from any more ingredient listing. "Yes," she answered. "When I was still working, I always packed my own lunch." Before I asked her to elaborate, I tried to formulate in my mind what this particular librarian would put in her brown paper bag, because I was certain there'd be a brown paper bag involved, a bag that'd been re-used for lunch duty so many times the paper had acquired the texture of velour. Don't ask me how I knew this. Let's say I was developing an instinct about my punctilious campmate. "And what would you pack for lunch in your little brown bag?" "Tuna salad sandwich," she said. "And an apple. I would buy a carton of milk from the vending machine in the staff lounge." I could have mouthed the words right along with her. The tuna sandwich was entirely predictable, the ingredients an easy cross-over from the pasta salad. And she hadn't contradicted my supposition that she'd brown bagged it. "Sometimes a hard boiled egg," she added. "Perfect. Of course. A hard boiled egg." I should've guessed the egg. I thought about this for a moment. "You don't happen to transport your sandwich in one of those little triangular containers, do you? With the snap down lid?" Section #16: Dry Toast [175] ! "I do," she said. "It prevents the bread from drying out and keeps the filling between the slices." Of course it does, I thought. You bet. It keeps that old filling right where it's s'posed to be, between the slices. Early on in the trip, not much later than Day Two or Three, there was an evening in which I was putting components together in a pot for our supper and I asked Dinah if she'd mind re-lighting the stove. I don't recall why, in that particular instance, we weren't cooking on a wood fire. We might've been camped upon the lee of an island, meaning there wouldn't have been much in the way of readily available drift wood lying about. Sometimes, if we'd already assembled the stove late in the day for hot drinks and no one had so far gathered wood for a fire, it made sense to keep using the stove, at least for initial supper prep, the boiling of the pasta and so on. Crandall was probably up in the woods gathering dead fall right that very moment. Even though the Instructors always encourage us to cook on wood fires, they've never explicitly forbade us from firing up the stoves. In any case, I needed the stove to be re-lit. I'd only turned it off a few minutes before, after melting a mess of margarine for a rue. The stove was still hot and primed to run and should've required no fussing. I suppose I should've realized I'd never actually witnessed Dinah operate the stove, or light a campfire, or attempt anything involving an open flame, that possibly this was a procedure she wouldn't be comfortable with. I looked over after a few minutes to see how she was progressing and discovered her holding a lighter in the grip of one hand and repeatedly pressing at the top of the tiny device with the index finger of the other, producing neither spark, nor flame, nor any other useful result. I guess I assumed her hands were still cold from the paddling. I don't know what I thought. I simply reacted. I was hungry and wanted to get supper underway so we could be on to the next thing, to the evening ritual of reading and communing with our private thoughts. I told Dinah to never mind, I'd light the stove myself. "That tracker guy," I said, as I took the lighter from her and lit the stove, "should've skipped teaching you how to start fires with a flint, or a bowdrill, or whatever, until you'd mastered the butane lighter." Later on that evening, as we were sitting around camp, I was reviewing in my mind the way Dinah had been attempting to strike the lighter. I broke the silence to ask her about it. She revealed the astonishing fact that she didn't know how to operate a butane powered cigarette lighter. "I assumed the Instructors were going to conduct a class on it," she said. At first, I didn't believe her. I couldn't understand how any- [176] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! one could reach even the age of ten in our culture without acquiring this small skill, barely more complicated than turning on a light switch. I'd arrived at the habit of using a cigarette lighter, not matches, not flint, not steel and tinder, but a lighter for all fire starting so early on I couldn't recall ever having used anything else. In truth, once upon a time, I thought matches were the way to go for starting a camp fire, but only because adults didn't notice so much when a pack of matches was swiped from the kitchen drawer. By the time I reported to Palmer for induction, I'd been using lighters for so many years on wilderness trips it was entirely normal to see "One Butane Lighter" listed on the school's checklist of required personal items. No more remarkable than the requirement we bring a toothbrush. With my question about lighter operation, I'd interrupted Dinah at her standard evening occupation, the re-organizing of her personal duffel. One of her own lighters was lying right there, the clear plastic model, lined up in a neat row on an ensolite pad with all her other gear items. I scooped up the lighter with the see- through tank and began to declaim upon the ingeniousness of the device, its self-contained fuel supply, the spring loaded flint, the steel striker wheel, the thumb operated gas release valve, the compact, utterly foolproof design, the durability of the materials. Aware that Crandall was lending an ear, I went on to say that if I were to ever to make a trip through the Kalahari, I'd carry a dozen of the little igniters along with me to distribute to the indigenous as a to- ken of goodwill from our civilization. You know, along with aspirin and stainless steel fish hooks. Speaking of which, we should send the bush people the fish hooks from this course as they're not doing us any good. I tilted the lighter against the evening sky and showed Dinah how, in the case of her very special, very rare clear plastic model, you could see the liquid butane flowing back and forth in the plastic tank. I explained to her how the butane sublimates at a fairly low temperature, forming the actual gas which burns at the lighter's nozzle. Without depressing the gas release valve, I spun the striker wheel and invited her to admire the beauty of the sparks that flew like meteors about the top of the device. After this, I figured she was ready to appreciate the additional miracle of thumbing the gas release to produce a jet of pure flame. "Why does it hiss like that?" she asked. "That's the gas escaping." I handed the lighter over to her and, with a nod, encouraged her to give it a try. Her thumb moved over the top of the lighter mechanism. Section #16: Dry Toast [177] ! "It isn't an on/off switch," I said. "You have to apply some pressure. Don't worry if it doesn't light the first time. Sometimes it takes a couple of strikes." If there's any truth to the notion that my own arm muscles are not organized for effective paddling then, in a similar way, Di- nah's finger muscles are not organized for operating a cigarette lighter. And in the case of the lighters, I've come to believe, for Di- nah it's as much a problem of practical understanding as it is of physical dexterity. Her mental processes are not organized for monitoring any mechanical effect. She was willing to take my word on the necessity of pressing the gas release valve while there were still sparks in the air to bring about ignition, but the rapid sequence of it was more than her thumb could master. When, at my insistence, she gave it a determined try the little metal wheel bit into the tip of her thumb, causing her to drop the lighter in order to minis- ter to the insulted digit. I picked up the lighter and reassured her that with practice she'd eventually get it. After our lesson with the lighter, Dinah went off toward the tent. I returned to the book I was reading and had accomplished maybe half a page when she reappeared before me with an outstretched hand. On her palm were the three lighters, including the clear one. Despite my advice on the day of issue, Dinah had been unable to resist bringing the entire lot. She might not've been sure there wasn't something significant in the fact the lighters had come packaged as a threesome. At least she'd succeeded in freeing them from their blister package. "Marlow," she began, "I would like for you to pick out one of these to have." The lighters were spaced evenly upon her palm as if she'd carefully placed them there one by one with her free hand to show them to best advantage. "I appreciate the offer, Di, but I've already got two lighters that work just fine. I don't need any more lighters. You hang onto them. " She looked down at the display on her palm, then slowly closed her hand, turned and walked back to the tent. Truth is, if we'd still been in Palmer, I would've probably accepted her offer and chosen the one with the translucent tank. I've seen cigarette lighters like that before, but they're rare and not easy to come by. But as we were in the field, I didn't want the extra clutter. A day or two after our training session with the butane lighter, Dinah asked if I'd stand by while she attempted a run [178] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! through on the gasoline powered stove. "That's not necessary," I said. "There'll always be someone around who knows how to work the stove." She was insistent. "I want to be able to boil my own water for tea." "You don't mean tea. You mean plain hot water." "Sometimes I drink tea. I want to be able to boil water for my own hot drink, whatever it is." By that stage of the trip, Day Four or Five or whatever it was, Dinah was dabbling in the variety of herbal teas that'd been issued to each cook group. Even someone as routinized as our book shelver would occasionally crave a different taste sensation, a change-up from the constant regimen of pasta/legume/grain/whole wheat cracker with plain water cold or hot to drink. I knew this. I'd seen her picking through the tea bags. I was being simply being ob- structive. "Well, all right," I said. "I guess, if you end up living out there on the veldt, you'll need to know how to fire up a stove." There was a time, back when I lived on the commune -- one of the initiatory experiences I mentioned to Dinah -- I was the community's official driving instructor. Many of my fellow communards had grown up in East Coast cities where there'd been no need for them to learn to drive a car. And then there they were, age thirty- five or whatever, living on a rural commune with a whole fleet of vehicles, any one of which could be checked out for personal use, trips to town, or to the mountains. The trick was teaching these folks how to operate a clutch. My approach was to separate out the different operations. One: establish a suitable engine r.p.m. with the gas pedal. Two: slowly let out the clutch until the vehicle begins to move forward. There was no need to coordinate the two foot motions. That would come later with practice. I figured I'd do the same with Dinah's stove training, break it down into discrete steps. I knew there'd be little to gain in going over the mechanical and chemical principles of the stove. The best approach would be to have her, Dinah, memorize the steps by rote. One: shake tank to confirm the presence of fuel. Two: pump thirty times. Three: slowly open valve. Four: ignite escaping gas at the burner plate. And so on. We also decided, she and I, that until she got the lighter business figured out we'd keep things simple and have her fire the stove using the wooden matches the school sends in with the rations. I worried that matches might not prove to be any easier for Dinah to manipulate than a lighter, but it turned out she'd been in charge of lighting the dinner candles at her parent's almost every night starting from when she was a teenager. Right away, she demonstrated Section #16: Dry Toast [179] ! for me her ability with matches, a skill acquired when her muscles and reflexes were young and educable. Almost always by the second strike she'd succeed in getting the match to fire up. She even knew to hold it so the flame would climb onto the stick. So, using a match instead of a lighter, I demonstrated how to light the stove and then had her try it. "It's no more difficult than operating a toaster," I encouraged. "Optimus," she said, reading out loud the brand name of the stove emblazoned on the fuel tank. "Frankly, I am not all that opti- mistic." "Now, now." She was wary of holding a lit match near the stove burner and in her first couple of attempts the match fell uselessly onto the sand. "Confusticate it," she blurted out. I thought it not an expletive you encounter much in these modern times, not since the invention of the steam engine. So that she could better see what she was doing, I suggested she raise her military grade mosquito netting onto the little brim provided by the balaclava. "And, if I were you, I wouldn't lean in so closely." It startled her when the stove caught with a whoosh. She took my point about not bending over so close. I assured her the small flash of ignition was in keeping with normal operation. "What's this for?" she asked, pointing at the little wrench connected by a chain to the stove box. "It's for removing the jet." She looked at me uncomprehendingly. "A necessary maintenance from time to time. It gets clogged with soot." "How do you know all this?" she asked. "How do you know so much about tools and machines?" I didn't quite know what to say. "There were always tools around the house when I was growing up," I began. "We had a whole garage full of tools. I fixed my bike, the lawnmower, the car. Didn't your family have tools?" "No," she said. "As I have told you, I never owned a bike. Nor did my parents have a lawnmower. Or a lawn. Or a car. Or for that matter a garage. Probably at the age you were working with tools," she went on, "I was learning how to set the table, or something equally useless. Or reading my way through another stack of books from the library. We had no tools in our apartment. If something needed to be fixed my parents called the superintendent." "Right. Well, now's your chance to learn a little about how [180] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! things work." We began to go through the stove lighting process again. "What you are showing me," she began, "would it be applicable to my own stove, the one you saw back in the White Zone?" "Same basic principle." Around this juncture, she became distracted by the sun poisoning on the backs of her hands. That very afternoon may've marked the peak of her outbreak. "My poor hands," she said, delicately caressing the bumps. "How awful. Look how some of them are filled with fluid." She gently probed at the tumescent bumps. "Don't pop those," I said. "I would not think of it. Do you suppose my skin will ever be smooth again?" I assured her that her hands would heal and then encouraged her to focus on the procedure I was outlining. I was showing her how, if you were really slick and on top of things, you could use the last of the pre-warming burn to ignite the stove for actual cooking. The expression of incomprehension on her face made me realize, with this additional bit of info, I'd lost her. It was too much detail. Plus, Dinah's hands were altogether too delicate for the manip- ulation of the metal adjustment knobs. Her fingers appeared more accustomed to handling paper, or cloth, or cakes of scented soap. I noticed again the one anomalous feature of her pale, nearly translucent hands, aside from the sun bumps. This was the scar which roughened the webbing between two of her fingers, a disfig- urement Dinah had already explained to me, essentially a knife cut, although there was a bit more to it than that. You almost couldn't tell the scar for what it was except that on this particular afternoon it was possible to make out at the edge of the scar the suture marks, a half-dozen tiny, healed-over perforations from the long ago injury and its treatment. It was not long after the stove lesson, maybe during supper that very evening, that I asked Dinah whether she'd always had the same toaster. An odd question, I know, but not entirely out of the blue. Anyway, there was something about the woman's life, as she described it, which inspired unlooked for trains of thought. I imagined her parents having given her a toaster for her twenty-first birthday, prior to her moving into her own apartment. Dinah always answered my inquiries, whatever they were, as though they were normal and entirely called for. "No," she said. And here she paused, as if a painful memory had been stirred. "I now own two bread toasters," she went on. "My first toaster, a Sunbeam, mysteriously stopped working after ten years of faithful service." Section #16: Dry Toast [181] ! "Man, anymore, you get ten years use out of an appliance," I said, "you should count yourself ahead. You didn't throw it away, did you?" Another odd question, inspired by the way the woman took seriously any subject you might touch on. "I took a half day off from work and carried my broken toaster to an appliance repair shop down the block. The man told me it would cost three times as much to fix than to buy a new one. In fact, he sold me a refurbished toaster on the spot. I put the Sun- beam in my closet, where it sits to this day." ... awaiting future advances in small appliance repair, I thought. "Well, Dinah, welcome to the age of planned obsolescence." "No doubt. This reminds me, Marlow, to ask whether you would know of any way to make toast in the backcountry?" Crandall had been present for most of this conversation, eating his supper glop out of his bowl. At this point in Dinah's and my exchange, he got up, possibly shaking his head in wonderment, and moved off, likely to get a jump on the evening's sample filing. "There is such a thing as a campfire toaster," I said, in answer to Dinah's query. "I've seen them for sale. A sort of rack-like device. Kind of a gimmicky. Probably wouldn't work all that well in practice." I suggested to her it was possible to obtain something like toast by grilling bread in a skillet with some margarine. "I prefer dry toast." "Right. Well, the next time Crandall or I bake bread you could try holding a slice near the fire with a forked stick." "I might do that." The biologist and I were eventually to witness Dinah's attempt at toast. As well as I can remember, it was on an evening very close to the end of the first go-around, before our little threesome was broken up never again to re-assemble. We were having pasta for supper. Dinah had let her portion grow a little cold in her bowl so as, I suppose, to better replicate the food she was used to eating in her home environment. For the toast she was using bread we'd baked using the school's buried skillet method, which tends to produce a loaf a bit on the crumbly side. The best Dinah could do was toast the exterior of a chunk that'd been broken off the main loaf. She did pretty well balancing the lump of bread on the end of a branch held with one hand while using the other to shield her face from the heat of the campfire. Her stick would've worked better if she'd agreed to let me split it with a knife -- she could've revolved the chunk, exposing different facets to the fire -- but the librarian wanted to do it her own way. "When I'm in my apartment," she said, "I don't have assis- [182] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! tants to help me operate the toaster." It was the self-sufficiency she was after as much as anything, I suppose. The final result may not've been quite what she desired. I watched her take a forkful of the cold pasta into her mouth and then chase it with a nibbled-off bit of the singed bread wad. She chewed and examined the unevenly browned chunk of decidedly non-rye bread loaf. I thought she was close to tears. "Hang in there, Di. Only twenty-three more days 'til we're !back in the land of sliced bread." ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! Section #17: P-38 Occasionally, Dinah would take a break from the perpetual sorting of her gear in the evening and settle down with a book. If I glanced over I might catch her intently scrutinizing the photographic plates of a field guide, in the manner of a func- tionary wetting her finger before turning a page. I'm sure it was a habit picked up from her bureaucrat parents who, according to Di- nah, had worked their entire adult lives for the city water works. Yet, the book perusal was an exception. Dinah's chief and principle pastime during our off hours was the organization of her personal equipment and various fitments. In particular, she never seemed to tire of rummaging through and inventorying the contents of her duffel. Of course, she always preferred to do this in close proximity to the spot where I happened to be reading. I was always afforded a good view of her system over the top of my book. When Dinah wore her headnet, which was most of the time, I'd stare at the drapery of the netting and wonder what thoughts were passing through the skull hidden behind. Or, in those rare moments when it was too cool or too breezy for the bugs to swarm and she'd be without the bugnet, I'd fixate upon the side of her face and the sharp, indicating nose, the pointer which was always aimed at whatever was of most concern to her at the moment. Dinah's routine consisted of removing each item from the zippered satchel of her personal duffel and placing it neatly upon her foam sleeping pad. She'd take out a nicely folded article of clothing, open it up, and smooth it flat with the palm of a hand. As her flavorless hot drink cooled next to her on the ground, Dinah would order her layers and hardware upon the ensolite pad, large to small, oftentimes pausing to hold an item in her hand, the case for her sunglasses, say, or her travel toothbrush -- the type with the little compartment that snaps onto the end to keep the bristles clean -- or her school-issue ballcap, or some object I couldn't see, didn't really want to see. There was her first aid kit which she'd wrapped in layers of plastic and tape to keep dry. I'd watch her turn the kit over in close examination for what must've been the tenth time since the start of the trip. I'd even swear I witnessed a little bag of scent, a sachet, or whatever it's called, in with her gear, you [184] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! know, to keep everything smelling nice. Sometimes I heard the librarian mumble to herself as she handled this or that of her possessions. It was impossible to make out her words, but I imagined her quietly putting forth the question each time: "Is this a worthwhile item?" She'd set the object down and pick up another piece of gear and ask again: "Is this a worthwhile item?" Everything would eventually end up re-folded and placed carefully back in her overstuffed duffel When I witnessed her finally split the zipper on the duffel's closure -- I knew it was going to happen -- I set my book down before she'd had a chance to turn to me with her concern. "It is ruined," she said, speaking to the empty space in front of her, then looking over at me with plaintive eyes. "It's not ruined." I squatted down to get a closer look at the problem. "You're lucky it's the self-repairing kind." I ran the slider to the end of the closure to get it back on track. Then I showed her how, if she was going to insist on jamming her duffel to max capacity, to use one hand to relieve the pressure on the zipper as she moved the slider along. Well, she learned that one okay. I never had to go over the procedure again and, as far as I know, she's never had an issue with the zipper separating other than the one time. There were instances when Dinah would interrupt my reading to ask me about certain of her necessaries. We had a discussion of more than forty-five minutes duration concerning her headlamp, a nice unit that put out a remarkably strong beam for its size. She had a multitude of questions about how long the batteries could be expected to last and why there were different settings for the beam. She wondered about the proper fitting of the straps, how tight or loose they should be. Making an adjustment to the webbing, she'd put the device on and shake her head vigorously back and forth by way of checking the fit. Initially, she sized the headlamp with the balaclava off which was a mistake as the thick woolen hat is her principle buffer against the elements. I advised her the straps could probably be let out enough to accommodate the hat's bulk. She started to fiddle with the buckles and camlocs to put more slack in the webbing, then decided she didn't like the idea of cinching the top strap down over the heavy knit of the balaclava. She was as protective of that hat as if it were a living creature coiled up there on top of her head. "All right now, here." I showed her how to strap the headlamp over her ball cap worn backwards. This seemed to satisfy her and I went back to my reading. I'm not sure if she ever tried it that way. It's hard to visualize the librarian wearing a backwards baseball cap. Frankly, I don't know what she does about her headlamp. She Section #17: P-38 [185] ! probably holds it in her hand like a flashlight. Not that it ever gets dark enough at night to require a headlamp. Nor have we, as Dodi said we might, ever once used a headlamp as a signaling device. It's good to have such devices along, I suppose, should we become marooned and be forced to cope with the darkness of the Alaskan winter. When Dinah learned that I didn't own a standard headlamp but preferred a small flashlight with a single elastic band to secure it over my ball cap, she was very troubled by the deviancy, my failure to go with the approved gear. I explained to her that I'd had to address the problem of how to make a flashlight hands-free a long time ago, a good decade before anything like a headlamp ever hit the market. In truth, I'm constantly amazed at the rapid development in headlamp technology. It's getting to be a pretty close call in terms of weight and efficiency between my flashlight with its simple strap and these compact headlamp units with batteries integral to their casing. I doubt if Dinah had known such gear as strap-on personal lighting equipment existed prior to her delving into the world of outdoor travel. I assume the sailing course asked her to bring along a headlamp. Not the survival school, though. They'd have you start out with an old school flashlight and then show you how to fashion a head strap out of a squirrel pelt. Now that Dinah is amongst people like myself, for whom outdoor gear is a concern and a passion, she's taking advantage of the opportunity to learn all she can about these tools which to her mind hold a key to the life she's moving toward. Take the example of her field glasses. Dinah had apparently for a number of years harbored a question about the binoculars. One evening, she took the binos from her pile and, breaking into my reading, asked me about the purpose of the small knob. "It allows the focus of each barrel to be independently adjusted". I said it just like that and her blank stare indicated that my words had failed to convey the least bit of useful information. "How long have you had those things?" "Ten years," she said. "Maybe eleven." "And you never wondered what was with the knob? There's probably something about it in the owner's manual." "Owner's manual?" "The literature that came in the box." "There was no box," she said. "I received the field glasses for Christmas. They were there waiting for me under the tree with a ribbon tied around them. My one present that year. I'm sure my parents threw out the box and all the paperwork. They never keep [186] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! anything like that." "Here's what you do. "As with the stove, I'd already decided to spell it out for her in rote sequence. "Put the binos up to your eyes. Close your left eye while keeping the right one open. Use the main knob to correct the focus. Close the right eye, open the left and use the small adjustment knob to compensate. You might have to go back and forth a couple of times." She went immediately to work on it, focussing the field glasses upon a tree. The procedure kept her occupied for more than an hour, for the better part of the evening almost. When she was finished she said the focus did seem better, less of a strain. Possibly. She wasn't sure. The Instructors had let Dinah bring her own sleeping bag on the course as it possesses a better thermal rating than the type the school issues. Also because, I'm sure, she had seemed to really want to bring it. Dinah never said as much, but I'm sure she didn't like the idea of sleeping in a bag that'd been subject to the sweat and scurf of dozens of students before her. She wanted to know why there were little loops spaced out within the sleeping bag along the length of the main hem. First off, I complimented her on her attention to detail. Most people would never notice such a thing, or if they did notice it they wouldn't have any curiosity about it. Then I explained that the loops were used to secure a liner if she ever wished to increase the bag's efficiency. "Why would I want to do that?" "You might want to camp somewhere colder than this." "I cannot imagine ever wanting to do such a thing." "You never know." In those early days of the trip, after re-organizing her personal duffel and her day bag, the next step for Dinah was to shuffle to the tent in her rubber boots and bring over all of the items she'd staged at her sleeping spot. This would include a pair of those high tech sandals which she'd brought along as camp shoes as per the school's recommendation but which I've never seen her wear, not once. The sandals are really something, all crisscrossed with webbing and various instep adjustments. They're the sort of open-toed footgear with a thick orthotic sole you could almost backpack with, actually can backpack with as I've seen people do it. And they work fine, as long as it's not snowing, or raining and you're not negotiating a boulder field. I've considered the purchase of a pair of these sandals for use as fording and camp shoes but I can tell by looking at them they'd be no good for hacky-sack, so there you go. Still, they are a wonder to behold and I always wished for Dinah to wear hers Section #17: P-38 [187] ! around. "Why don't you give your feet a break from those rubber boots?" "Maybe I will, as soon as I feel we are not always on the verge of getting in the kayaks and traveling off somewhere." "I don't think we're going anywhere until tomorrow morning." "Morning will be here before you know it." "I suppose it will." A lot of my exchanges with Dinah ended this way. I didn't know how to respond to someone so hemmed in by irrational concerns. I saw that the rubber boots, or galoshes as Dinah calls them, though I'm fairly certain she doesn't wear her shoes down inside, were simply one more gear phenomenon she was trying to come to terms with. Plus, I think the rubber boots are the only footgear she trusts to adequately protect and keep her feet warm in this cool, damp place with all of its barnacles and bramble and soggy ground. I might've suspected she was wearing the boots in her sleeping bag if I hadn't seen them every night standing at the head of her sleeping position like a pair of sentinels. In the end, I figured, as long as the woman was diligently wearing her boots maybe we'd never actually get any rain. And so it went, almost every evening of the first go-around. Incidentally, I never did notice amongst Dinah's gear inventory the aluminum candle lantern I'd examined in her sector of the White Zone back on Day Minus One. I guess that was one item Burl convinced her to leave behind. I recall, at some odd juncture, Dinah interrupting my concentration, or my daydreaming, whichever it was, to ask if having cigarette lighters in her duffel bag was not a "safety hazard". Her phrase. "Might they not ignite themselves amongst my clothing?" I looked upon the woman, amazed she could worry that a device she was unable to make produce a flame while holding it in both hands and exerting all the dexterity and concentration she was capable of could possibly come alive on its own within a duffel bag as a result of being pressed upon by random objects. "No," I answered. "The lighters in your duffel pose no safety hazard whatsoever." Eventually, it seemed, I was able to satisfy all of the gear related questions which occurred to the woman. Still, she continued to perform her sorting operations near my reading station. I won't say I always found her rummaging entirely a distraction. Observing her organizing activity, I often saw something inter- [188] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! esting and would ask her to pass it over so I could take a closer look. Her pocket knife, for instance, which it turned out she'd brought along, possibly due to my insistence way back when. Sev- eral times during our time of camping together I took a few minutes away from reading to examine again the beautiful clasp knife. The unit was still in its retail box, still in its little sheath of cellophane. No longer reluctant to be the first to slide the knife out of its protective wrapper, I would appreciate the fine machining, the built-in clip, the lanyard ring. I'd test with a thumb the edge of both blades, opening and closing them a few times to remember the fine tolerance in the hinge, always an indicator of quality. As with everything Dinah owned, the pocket knife was top shelf and I told her so, assuring her she should obtain from it years of trouble free service. A life time's worth, I thought, if she never took it out of the box. Af- ter a few minutes of examination, I'd pass the knife back over to her, careful to first restore it to its cellophane and the display box's felt-covered, form-fitting insert. While I'd never purchase such an item for myself it was reassuring to know such a tool exists in the world, to know that manufacturers still go to the trouble to produce that level of hardware, not to mention the exquisite packaging. One evening, as I was engaged in meal prep, I said to Dinah: "Why don't you take out that fancy jackknife of yours and help us move supper along by slicing up some cheese." "I am uneasy handling a knife. Can I not help you in some other way?" "That happens to be the help I need right now," I said. "But never mind. If you're so uneasy handling knives how do you dice up the cheese and the celery and the whatnot for that fancy pasta salad of yours?" "I always buy the cheese pre-cubed. The celery I cut with a pair of scissors." "Right. Of course you do." "When I was growing up," she went on, "my father handled the knife. We only had one knife in the apartment. A carving knife for the roast beef. Electrically operated." Sure, I thought. I remember those. Difficult to clean due to the meat juice tending to leak into the motor housing. I really didn't want to hear any more about it., but I was tempted to ask if, while she was growing up, there were no butter knives, or steak knives? But why go into it? I'd only get more non-sensical noise in reply. As I came to know Dinah better, I could understand her dis- inclination to handle a sharp knife. Still, her timidity went beyond all reasonableness. It got to where I didn't want to examine the clasp knife in its display box. I didn't want to be reminded she had Section #17: P-38 [189] ! such a choice item in her possession, so frustrated was I by her un- willingness to put the tool to any use. I wondered how she'd gotten through the Pine Barren survival course without touching a knife. How did she carve her bow drill fire starter? Of course, for all I know, the tracker dude provides you with a kit, everything pre-fab, ready for assembly. Or maybe Dinah played a little of the femme fatale, herself, and enticed some male into whittling her spindle. Dinah would always pause to observe as I manipulated her various oddments, the headlamp, the field glasses, the knife, amazed that I could handle them with such easy familiarity. I examined her gear partly out of curiosity and admiration. The truth was, I was unable to rest easy until I had satisfied myself that I wouldn't personally want to own such equipment, not the headlamp which is overcomplicated, or the field glasses which are heavy, or even the knife because it has two blades, whereas I think one blade is sufficient in a pocket knife. "Did you happen to bring along a P-38?" I asked Dinah one evening while observing her gear sort. "Pray, what is a pee thirty-eight?" "A sort of tiny can opener." "No, I did not. Were we supposed to?" "Not at all. I just thought you might've brought one." The device mentioned, the P-38, wasn't on the school's checklist for the reason that we weren't expected to be opening any cans of food, not on the student side of the expedition anyway. Still, I was pretty certain Dinah had a P-38 somewhere in her possession. She just didn't know it. I say this, because it's the sort of freebie a sales- person will throw onto the pile when a customer rings up a big total. As for myself, I've always drawn the line at P-38s. I'll agree that they're the most inconsequential of gear items in terms of weight and bulk. You'd have to have a dozen of them in your pocket before you'd even notice it. And I'm not saying they don't have some utility. If you don't have a P-38 you're forced to use your pocket knife to open cans, a procedure just about guaranteed, no matter how good the knife's construction, to loosen up the hinge over time. A P-38 can be attached quite elegantly to a lanyard where it'll always be handy. But still, no P-38s for me. The same with nail clippers. Use your scissors to trim your nails. I mean, you have to stop adding to your load at some point. Otherwise, there's no end to it. There was such an intensity of purpose to Dinah's equipment scrutiny. It reminded me of watching an animal, a marmot, or a pica, or some such solitary creature, intent upon the task of polish- ing a nut, or stuffing its cheek with seeds, or engaged in other enigmatic behavior which must have a purpose or the animal would've [190] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! never evolved to perform it. I hold a belief, in a way I can hardly say I hold a belief about anything, that it's of primary importance to come to terms with your traveling gear, the load of stuff you put in your ruck and carry with you for weeks at a stretch, months or years even. You always want to be satisfied the utility-to-weight ratio is as good as you can make it. To observe an individual in the throes of this process is, for me, akin to observing a crucial stage of personal development, like witnessing someone learning to read, or to swim, with all of the mystical and transcendent result such skill acquisition brings. You don't interfere with such a process. You only try to help it along. I really have no idea what the existence of these objects, these gear items, signifies to Dinah. What I hope is that each piece of equipment will speak its secret language to the librar- !ian and incite her to a larger life of action and preparedness. ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! !

! Section #18: Spoons Dinah had toted along as much gear as she could fit into her personal duffel and daybag. Most of the equipment was on the checklist, though clearly the school never intended everything they suggested be brought. Dinah also carries gear not listed by the school, items sold to her by one or another mid-west outfitter under the guise, as she describes it, of necessary survival equipment. I understand how this can happen. The stores are so big, the items for sale numbering in the tens of thousands. How can a beginner know where to start? I've been inside one or two of these big box outfitters, in the mid-west, too, though not in Chicago or its environs, but near St. Louis and one time outside of Cleveland during a two hour bus layover. I'm always on the lookout for these emporiums as they stock the old standbys like rope and wool socks, plus the cutting edge equipment, water purifiers and whatnot. Simply to kill time, I'll stroll along their aisles, pass my gaze over the shelved and racked displays of gear, if only to assure myself I haven't missed any recent innovations. Passing through the entrance of these so-called outfitters -- humongous, windowless retail spaces -- I'm always mindful of how distant they are from any wilderness which might actually require or even accommodate the use of their merchandise. The outfits always seem to be staffed by pushy, quasi-knowledgeable salespeople driven principally by the need to make commission, rarely by a desire to be emissaries to the backcountry. Fending off these busybod- ies, some of whom I'm convinced have never put foot to trail, and gathering my wits about me, I might manage to purchase this or that bit of gear, a candle lantern candle, or a replacement tent stake. There isn't ever much I need. Honestly, I find it difficult to buy outdoor gear in such a setting, hard to keep the morale up long enough for the search and the transaction. After an hour's perusal, sometimes paying for the tent stake, sometimes simply slipping it into a pants pocket, I'll head back out through the multi-staged entranceway and hike straight into the overfill of shopping malls, grocery and pharmaceutical [192] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! mega-outlets and other encrustation capable of providing every product a person could possibly need in life. I'll pass my gaze over the verge of residential zones and office parks which stretch out in every direction from the retail nexus and not see a route of escape anywhere, every corridor is infiltrated by an unceasing flow of vehicles. Except for a line of stunted trees poking up through the as- phalt, or the occasional berm of grass, the original land forms are all but obliterated beneath pavement's vast desolation. The whole build-up of amenity suppliers -- food, clothing, entertainment, even medical attention -- enclosed within about a million contiguous square feet of indoor climate controlled loiter, well, it tends to make the purchase of a tent or a sleeping bag seem as quaint and unnecessary an undertaking as buying a kerosene lantern, or a wash- board, items which might be acquired for decorative purposes, to celebrate a long vanished way of life, one that was rumored to feature simplicity and a connection to the natural rhythms, but irrele- vant in a region given over to cars, up-market townhouses and bill- board warfare. I've witnessed Dinah take out or put back into her duffel at different times, in addition to the sunglasses, the Sierra cup and other impedimenta first noted back in the White Zone, one waterproof match container featuring all-weather striking surface, one signal mirror with a hole in the center for sighting overflying air- craft and one emergency blanket still factory sealed in its zip-loc pouch. The latter is an item about which I can say, without equivo- cation, she should've left back at the car. At one point, I asked her to pass the so-called "space blanket" over so I could have a closer look. I hadn't seen one of these gimmicks in the field since about 1979. There it was, supposed spin-off of the space program and moon shots, a product unchanged in the almost forty years since it was first wreaked upon the public. Aluminized mylar. The cheap xerox label and instruction sheet were there, same as they ever were, visible through the zip-loc enclosure, proclaiming the item contained within "Suitable for Home, Car, Boat and Camping", featuring the exact same photo of the same hapless, unconscious person, victim of some unknown outdoor calamity, stretched upon the ground with the thin metallic coverlet draped chin to knee, res- cuers standing back out of camera range to give the blanket a chance to work its resuscitative wonders. What you don't know before purchasing one of these rip-offs is that, aside from offering very limited thermal capability, once freed from it's pouch the mylar sheet can never be induced to go back in. What appears to have happened with Dinah is that the clerks at the camping equipment warehouse saw an opportunity to off- Section #18: Spoons [193] ! load surplus inventory. I couldn't help but try to imagine the transaction. First off, the official list of approved personal equipment ne- cessitated that our city dwelling librarian leave her comfortable downtown enclave and take a bus out to the suburbs where the big outlet stores bestride the rivers of paved expressway. Once Dinah located the proper store, the one dedicated to camping supply, this alone requiring an hour's foot recon, she went inside, cornered a clerk, and proceeded down the checklist, throwing out such incan- tation as "one polypropylene (or its equivalent) thermal top" and "four pairs medium weight synthetic socks". She uttered the phrase "battery powered headlamp with strap", prompting the clerk to take another mysterious item enclosed in styrene blister-pac off of a pegboard and add it to the pile of strange and alien objects for which she'd soon be required to pay money to make her own. Not wishing to find herself improperly outfitted when she arrived to the West, Dinah was induced to acquire, in addition to the above items, a collapsible drinking tumbler, plastic ground cloth, tent whisk broom, storm whistle and other rubbish which several decades ago, at the onset of the Rucksack Revolution, had entered the popular imagination as essential outdoor gear -- a process, I'm sorry to announce, was largely removed from any valid experience or understanding of what was required. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, though she may've told the warehouse min- ions she was headed to Alaska to paddle a sea kayak, they'd induced Dinah to purchase a pair of heavy, lug-soled Italian hiking boots, the sort of footgear considered back in the 70's and 80's essential equipment and at one time as much a signifier as a pair of glacier glasses, or a bandana knotted around the neck, that the possessor was a serious and savvy outdoors person. I hadn't noticed a pair of heavy hiking boots lined up in the librarian's square. They might've been out in the car still in their box. Not for twenty years has that type of boot been considered necessary for anything other than the most serious crampon work. I'm sure the Instructors recommended she leave most of this superfluity behind, but Dinah figured the items must have some useful purpose or else they wouldn't exist. Then again, maybe the Instructors, after discouraging the stove, the tent, the candle lantern, the snake bite kit and other useless or redundant gear, didn't have the heart to protest further and eventually gave up, allowing the librarian the smaller knickknacks. It is sea kayaking, after-all. We're not bearing the weight of the equipment upon our backs. In the end Dinah couldn't resist trucking along the components of her mess kit. She was unable to limit herself to the smaller [194] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! of the metal pots to serve as a bowl. Of course she couldn't. Nossir. How could Dinah bear to break up the close-knit family of the mess kit, the smaller vessel nesting down inside its sibling which in turn nests within the two windscreens, the close foursome held together for transport by a length of bright green webbing secured with a tiny stainless steel buckle? The thing is, and I didn't tell her this, she had the wrong mess kit for the stove she'd bought. Not that it really mattered. A pot is a pot. But her kit was designed to accommodate an old style brass mountaineering stove, the bottom wind- screen featuring built-in brackets for holding the stove base fast. I know this because I once owned one of these arrangements. Oh well. Still, I'd like to find the outfitter who sold her the mismatched set and yell at him for a couple of minutes. At least Dinah didn't bring her stove. Her tent would've been too obvious to sneak along, but the stove, heavy as it is, could've easily been slipped into a duffel at the last minute and now we'd be hauling it along in addition to the school issue Optimus. Nor did it seem she'd brought the solar shower which I recalled seeing set out in her painted square. It appeared the Instructors had successfully induced her to leave it behind. I hoped she'd left it behind. The first time I took note of Dinah's equipment inspection routine was the very evening of the day we became each other's paddle mates. Barely recovered from two days of struggle with the red kayak, I felt myself becoming angry as I observed all of this cargo, the useless junk she was laying out, knowing it was mostly my arm muscles that were propelling the stuff over the water, ten pounds of impedimenta at least, possibly as much as fifteen. I wasn't conscious of it then but I believe, right at that moment, I made a determination that once we reached the Columbia turnaround point someone else, not me, was going to have to help the librarian paddle all that crap back to Whittier. "This gear you own, Dinah," I began one day when we were out on the water in the white and green Seascape. She responded from the front cockpit. "Yes?" "Now, don't stop paddling, but I was wondering, did you already have that stuff in your possession prior to the Keys?" "Oh, no," she said. "I purchased almost all of it when I was making preparations to drive west. That was six months after I returned to Chicago from the All-Women's Sailing Course." "You didn't have any of that equipment when you went down to Florida?" "No. I didn't know the first thing about outdoor equipment. I just used whatever they issued me." "Why didn't you do that for this course?" Section #18: Spoons [195] ! "Well, the fact is, I prefer not to wear clothes or eat with utensils someone else has used. In addition, I have begun to feel it is important for me to learn how to use my own equipment." "Sure," I said. "I understand completely." What I understood as well, or began to, as I watched the librarian manipulate and struggle with her gear, was that this equipment -- the thermal layers, the compass, the hot drink mug, the headlamp, the butane lighters, the nesting cookpots -- form a category of objects unlike Dinah has ever before possessed. They are tools and implements for a mode of existence that's a complete divergence from the intended goal of her upbringing and training. For decades now, she's lived the life of an apartment dweller, office cubicle worker and passenger on public transport, a constrained existence in which the feet never leave manmade surfaces and, except for the occasional brief moment of exposure to weather when passing from one portal to another, a life almost entirely cleansed of natural processes. She's probably the only person in American who got through childhood without being issued one of those cheap nylon sleeping bags with the cotton batting and the flannel liner imprinted with Irish Setters, only good for sleeping on your grand- mother's living room floor and even that was pushing it. The function of outdoor gear items, how they work to provide shelter and warmth and sustenance where otherwise there'd be none, the fact that the gear exists and can be purchased and owned, that there is an industry dedicated to its production and to its display in a retail environment is, I believe, a source of wonder to Di- nah. I'd go so far as to say that to the librarian these objects are almost frightening in their import. The items seem to ask something of her. She is their purchaser and, in a way, it's as if she gave birth to them. Now that she owns the objects they are her responsibility to animate and care for. It's up to her to help these tools and fitments perform their intended function, if she can figure out exactly what that is. Not only the hardware, the spare sets of headlamp batteries, the Write-in-the-Rain field notebook, the folding pocket knife -- which only recently has she summoned the courage to remove from its box and actually put to use -- but the very clothing and insulating layers she's worn on her body every day of the expedition, all of it seems to contain a coded message she's so far only been partially able to decipher, a semi-concealed directive about how a life might be lived. To observe Dinah as she removes each implement from her personal gear duffel and with great concentration place it neatly upon her sleeping pad is to join her in grappling with the question of what it means to be the possessor of objects. This is a route of inquiry, particularly for Dinah, considering what [196] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! she's been through, that's not far from the attempt to understand what it means to be the possessor of a body, which we do each seem to possess, though in some ways we don't, since apart from our bodies where can it be said we exist? Let me admit right up front that when I was fourteen years old, even when I was twenty-four years old, I was no more immune than the next young suburbanite to the lure of objects marketed by linking them to a philosophy espousing simplicity, self-reliance and a return to the wilds. Even now, if you possess only the most curso- ry interest in traveling the outdoors, whether you intend to ever go there or not -- and what true American ever discounts the possibility they won't someday pick up and light out for the territory? -- it's hard not to be susceptible to a product that speaks to the desire to be competent in a wilderness setting, should you ever chance to find yourself in one. I'm talking here about a time when there were a lot of popular books and movies out there whose subject was the downfall of civilization, or preparation for the downfall. "Alas, Baby- lon", "Fahrenheit 451", "Logan's Run", "Billy Jack", "Deliverance" and other such books and movies offered a blueprint for readiness and survival. In an era of cold war fear mongering to not be prepared to take to the hills if necessary was to submit, it seemed, to the only other alternative and become one more sorry, ultimately doomed casualty of a targeted population. Yessir, I've owned my share of bear bells, locking Buck knives, tube tents, alcohol stoves, paisley patterned bandanas, Sven saws, nylon gaiters, waffle stompers, collapsable water jugs, foldable shovels, bota bags, reusable peanut butter and jelly squeeze tubes, waterproof clip lights, all manner of chemical and battery powered foot warmers, emergency whistles, survival bracelets, felt crushers and probably a lot of other junk whose purchase I've blocked out at this point. I have paid attention to just about every item that's hit the market claiming a connection to outdoor living. I'm still paying attention, though the margin of utility offered by most of what's for sale out there has flattened consid- erably. To this day, I'm not sure how I was able to monitor such a quantity of industrial output. How did I come to know the products existed? How did I grasp their intended application? It can only be the result of so much aimless wandering as a youth, hundreds if not thousand of hours now lost to memory, shuffling along the aisles of sporting goods stores and camping supply outlets, eyeing the gad- gets stuck upon the pegboards or secured within glass counters, yearning for the day when I would come into an adult estate, not only able to afford the equipment but with the latitude to pursue a life in which the ownership of a good frame-pack, a tent, a sleeping Section #18: Spoons [197] ! bag, a stove and all the other rucksack accouterments could be jus- tified on a daily, if not hourly, basis. It was just about impossible to accomplish any reading when Dinah was deep into her sorting activity. The vibe coming from her direction, like the build-up of ozone prior to a lightening strike, was entirely distracting. I'd swear some sort of instinct is triggered when anyone in your proximity is that fixated upon an object. You start to feel as though maybe you'd better have a looksee, yourself, to discover if there's any threat that needs paying attention to or if not that then some boon in which to partake. I really didn't mind the distraction. To observe Dinah, to speculate on her activity was in many ways richer than anything I could glean from a book. Dinah brought her compass, which I'm sure the Instructors encouraged her to do, just as they encouraged me to bring mine, as I gather you can never have too many compasses on these courses. Up until our camp the evening before we arrived at Columbia Glaci- er -- a full nine days into the trip -- Dinah's compass remained sealed within its thermoformed wrapper, the one with the illustration on its paperboard backing of the lightly dressed urbanite couple forever frozen in the act of consulting their device with the hope that it would, by the mysterious means it was understood to possess, guide them back to their vehicle, to shelter, back to their structured lives. I want to make a note here. Manufacturers are hereby advised to take more pains with their package illustrations. To depict a pair of hikers wearing fakey looking backpacks, with what looks like, well, I know they're supposed to be sleeping bags, but they look like big jelly rolls cinched up under the top flaps, not to mention that experienced hikers taking a trail break to consult map and compass would immediately drop loads, particularly loads without waist straps which would have to be putting excruciating weight on shoulders and neck muscles, except that these packs appear to be filled with helium so it's no problem. Frankly, the whole counterfeit scenario is a turn-off to any dedicated outdoors person looking to purchase a reliable piece of equipment. It's a shame, too, because the compasses thus packaged are as good as can be got in that price range. Every time Dinah went through her rummaging routine, I saw the compass in its polystyrene blister pack, mirror open and bezel revealed, with built-in hook for retail display. If what Dinah did was go to a reputable outfitter, checklist of the school's approved equipment in hand, and ask for a recommendation on a compass, this is what the store would've sold her, an instrument of mid-range quality and cost, better than a toy but not quite some [198] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! thing with which you could survey real estate. I've owned two of these compasses, actually wore out the first one through use. Over time the devices will develop an air bubble within the fluid-filled bezel rendering them unreliable. In the owner's manual it states that if the bubble's bigger across than a quarter of an inch, that's it. Kaput. Or, if the rest of the compass is still in good shape, you can send it back to the manufacturer for repair. It took about eight years for my first one to develop a half-inch bubble. And I would've sent it in for repair if I'd had a physical address to which it could've been returned. I replaced the defunct compass with another of exactly the same model. I prefer the ones with the fold out mirror feature. Very handy for sighting along a bearing and for shaving in the shower. "What sort of compass training did you women receive on the sailing course?" I asked Dinah. "We received very little training in that area," she answered. "The instructors made most of the navigational decisions. They did conduct one single class on map and compass. More of a demonstration, really. I am afraid not much of it stuck." As Dinah expanded on the topic, it was apparent there'd been no hands-on compass training in the Keys, no need for any since there was nothing on the sailing trip analogous to the Small Group Expeditions which are a feature of this school's curriculum. On her Florida trip there was no way for the student group to split up. They only had one vessel. Nevertheless, I thought the lack of compass training deplorable. Now, I'm assuming, from about elementary school on, Dinah has grasped what is meant by the phrase "the four cardinal directions" and that she understands a compass, like the sun, is a device which can be used to determine bearing. However, I'd bet a sizable sum that up until Dodi's Navigation 101 class, conducted the evening prior to our last day of eastward travel, as familiar as Di- nah might've been with the term "compass" as object and metaphor, loadstones suspended from strings and so forth, she hadn't a clue as to how a compass actually worked, had very probably never held the actual device in her hand. For Dinah, freeing her compass from its package, birthing the object into the world so to speak, and finding that its needle did point more or less north must've struck her as miraculous. Like the sparks that fly off the allegorical flint and steel of her lighter. Like the black and white stripes of an actual ze- bra, first witnessed at her Chicago zoo, the Brookfield, amazingly just like the zebras in books and movies, even the wooden version that prances upon the carousel in Lincoln Park, which apparently Dinah still rides as an adult. Section #18: Spoons [199] ! Back in the so-termed White Zone, we were advised to bring a spoon, and only a spoon, as an eating utensil. Even before that, "SPOON" was listed on the checklist mailed out to us by the school as a required personal item. If we chose to arrive in Palmer without a spoon then we were issued one -- "Purchase Only", of course -- a spoon of white ABS plastic. These spoons are plenty durable for a one month trip, however I've discovered after trying one of the spoons soon after they hit the market, enthused as I was by their elegant design and remarkable lightness, not to mention the fact they're made of a material touted for its stable chemistry, after six months of hard travel and stirring hot foods in a cookpot the plastic of the spoon degraded to the point the handle snapped off in my hand one day as I was moving peanut butter onto a bagel. Yessir, let me tell you, that was a happy moment. Naturally, the material failure occurred on the second day of a ten day backpacking trip, which infuriated me enough to swear the plastic spoons off forever and to warn others away as well. I switched back to a metal spoon, the one I'm presently using, the one I have with me on this trip, which has lasted so many years I've lost track of how long I've had it. Long enough that over time the mere act of tapping the handle of the spoon on the rim of a metal pot has caused the edge to flatten in a way that couldn't be replicated if I sat and rapped on it with a ball- peen hammer for a month straight. That's how long it's lasted, my trusty metal spoon, whose handle shows no sign of bending let alone snapping in two while out and away from civilization. Dinah arrived to Palmer with more than a spoon. She brought the whole shebang consisting of a knife, fork and spoon, a matched set of the most superior sort complete with protective vinyl case. Most of the personal gear Dinah has with her is of excellent quality but this utensil set is the choicest, the rarest of gear items, so far exceeding the next best implements in lightness, durability and design as to not even belong in the same category, not on the same page, not even the same catalog, as other chow kits. Such equipment only arrives to the shelves and pegboards of your most uptown outfitter. The purchaser of such a utensil set would be someone with a lot of discretionary income, or someone who didn't know what they were doing, anxious about their upcoming wilderness trip and hyper-concerned about weight. Such gear is well out of any justifiable price range. Even so, I've been tempted to buy one of these sets merely for the celebration of it, to encourage whomever in our industrial system made the decision to dedicate engineering talent and materials and factory time to something as prosaic as eating utensils for campers. I could keep the spoon but, of course, since I already carry a single-bladed pocket knife and a [200] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! pair of chopsticks, I'd have no use for the set's knife and fork and would have to pitch them in the trash, which would be too bad. There must be a score of different distributors of camp/travel eating utensils in the U.S. alone and, believe me, I've examined every version which has appeared over the past twenty years, taken them down off their pegboard hooks, removed them from their little snap-closure faux leather cases, scrutinized the various ways, split ring, bayonet style, slider, all of the different methods manufacturers have devised for securing the three utensils together into a single interlocking unit. I've tried a score of these kits, in the field and in the front-country. The fitted-together cutlery and the non- fitted-together. Even the sporks, which typically have tines that run too deeply into the scoop making them better as forks than spoons. In any case, none has shown itself to be any improvement over any previous version, except that in the long run metal is still better than plastic. The first time I saw Dinah using her fine utensils to eat supper I almost asked her to hand them over right then, pronto, bad manners or no. I recognized the set immediately for what it was by the telltale dull gleam of the metal and the beautifully sculpted shapes. You see, Dinah's eating utensils are made of the same type of metal primarily used in fashioning the airframes of fighter jets. Until humankind is routinely bringing back elements mined on as- teroids we're not likely to see any material stronger and lighter or more durable than the stuff which comprises her knife, fork and spoon. I managed to wait until that evening's gear sort, after the fork had been washed and dried, the tines made free of food residue and, along with the knife and spoon, returned to its case, to give Dinah's utensils a thorough examination. As if I hadn't already looked over examples of the same model a dozen times in as many outfitter shops over the ten years since the product was first introduced. Once again, I took time to admire the three implements, holding them up one by one to behold their splendid profile, taking satisfaction in the fact that the set apparently continues to be offered for sale at some outdoor gear supplier somewhere. Once more, I was amazed that while no expense seems to have been spared in the manufacture of the utensils, the vinyl case that encloses the set is as cheap as the sort that accompanies chow kits of chromed slag. Separate design departments involved, I suppose. Besides, I don't think they really intend for you to bring along the plastic sheath. It's supposed to be treated as disposable packaging and tossed immediately upon purchase. Naturally, Dinah will utilize her vinyl case until it falls apart, which should be by the end of this trip, if it survives that long. Section #18: Spoons [201] ! Against what had to have been Burl's advice, unless he'd flat given up by that point, Dinah brought the whole set into the field. It's hard for the uninitiated to understand why you wouldn't need three utensils to eat with. How is it possible to get by with just a spoon, anyway? In this instance, it didn't really matter that she'd brought the whole kit. This stuff is so light the Instructors wouldn't have a case for insisting she not bring along the knife and fork. It'd be like getting exercised over the weight of an extra safety pin. Gear such as her utensil set insists that it be used. It's like my minimum register thermometer, too ingenious to leave behind, too light of weight to inspire serious objection. Really, we should be honored to have such gear as Dinah's utensil set along with us. It's very existence is a validation of the whole sub-cult of self-powered wilderness travelers, who suffer enough from their marginal position within the larger society. At great cost to my peace of mind and sense of equilibrium, I've observed Dinah to meticulously place her utensil set upon her ensolite pad, fanning out the implements from the attached ring until the three handles rested at perfectly equal angles to one another. She'd then sit back and quietly wait thirty seconds, sometimes as long as a minute, allowing the three implements opportunity to divulge whatever secret they might wish to impart. After a space, evidently no secret forthcoming, or who knows maybe there was, she'd gingerly take them up and with only the faintest clinking of metal return them to the vinyl case and place the kit back in her duffel. Dinah simply couldn't break the set and only bring the spoon. It's not that she thought she'd need the whole arrangement. Even in the front country it doesn't sound as if she ever dines on anything requiring a knife, rarely even a fork. I don't think the issue was the split ring, either, which could've been removed. I think the problem she came up against was not knowing what to do with the vinyl case. Bring it with her? Leave the knife and fork behind without a case? Absent its partners, the spoon would've been lonely rattling about by itself in a vinyl sheath meant for three. If the Instructors had paid closer attention to the clues to Dinah's nature, abundantly manifest in her square of the White Zone -- the fastidious and inclusive manner of her checklist overkill, for starters -- they might've guessed it wasn't going to suffice to simply suggest to their student she leave behind any equipment they'd deemed superfluous. What they would have needed to do was actually stand by to witness her place the extraneous stuff in with her luggage for storage and then make sure she walked away empty-handed with pockets turned out. [202] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Dinah," I began one evening, after once more witnessing her ritual communion with the titanium chow set. "How'd you guys work out eating utensils on the sailing trip?" "It was all group gear," she answered. "Utensils, bowls, plates, cups, everything. At the end of each meal we washed the entire lot in a tub and stored it in a big tupperware box." I didn't like the sound of that. "What if you wanted to snack on your own at some point?" "You were welcome to all the granola bars and dried fruit you could get your grubby hands on." She said this in a manner which left me convinced the librarian never did any extraneous snacking, not like some of the other hog-out participants in the sailing course. I'm glad this outdoor school leaves it up to us as to how and when to avail ourselves of our rations. The school also has it right about spoons. You don't need more than a spoon in the backcountry. You can even cut cheese with the edge of a spoon if you need to, a metal spoon anyway, not one of the ABS jobs. Besides, there are plenty of pocket knives spread around amongst the students. The school encourages personal knives the way it encourages compasses. Not everybody needs to have one, but if every third person !brings a knife it works out. ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! Section #19: Amorous Animalcules ! "Say, Dinah," I began one day when we were out in the boat. "I'm just curious. How do you feel about people who talk in libraries?" "You mean loudly?" "Sure. Loudly. Or any other way." "If you want to know, I think it is very disrespectful. If patrons wish to converse they should leave the library and go to a bar, or a saloon. And that is what I tell them. Is that not what such places are for, bars and saloons?" "Such places are primarily for the purpose of getting a buzz on," I told her. "Or worse, " "Then people should go to a social club," she said with some heat, "but they should not talk among the stacks. Or in periodicals, as they are even more wont to do. Simply because they happen to be sitting amongst magazines instead of books does not mean they can talk without restraint." It'd be almost impossible for me to pinpoint this exchange in time, but I know it must've taken place sometime early on in Di- nah's and my long adventure of sharing the green and white Seascape. I was still amused by the fact that she was a career librarian, before I began to realize that very likely for her the career was over. "Do you 'shoosh' the miscreants who talk in the stacks?" I asked. "No," she said. "I simply say: 'Please. No conversing in the library.' That is the official reprimand. It is usually sufficient." I decided that it probably was sufficient, coming from her. Whilst I was on the subject of librarian clichés, because it needed to be gotten out of the way, I asked her about the business of people who dog ear the pages of books. Following my query Dinah was silent for several paddle strokes. I was beginning to think maybe she hadn't heard me, always a problem when talking to the back of her head, attempting to pitch my voice over the noise of the wind and the lapping waves. I started in again, rephrasing the question: "You know, people [204] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! who mark their place by folding down the corner of the page." Still no response. "Causing it to resemble a dog's ear. How do you -- " "It does not matter what I may think about it," she broke in. "It is a willful destruction of public property. As bad as laying an open book face down thus ruining the integrity of the spine. Both are infractions punishable by loss of library privileges" A great response, I thought, perfectly characteristic. "And I fully support such punishment. Now, tell me, how do you feel about the way computers are beginning to infiltrate the library?" "Frankly," she said, "I do not see what people find so compelling about computers." "I think the idea is that eventually we'll see a day when all knowledge is instantly accessible." "The lack of gatekeepers is what is disturbing," she said. "I will admit, I have investigated a few birding CD-ROMs that were intriguing. They even offered audio clips. Not that this was particularly helpful in spotting new species. Overall, I think computers are a bad proposition." "You don't own a personal computer." "No. I am on the computer enough at work." "How do you feel about the idea of digital books? The day's probably coming, you know." "So I have heard. I worry that we might raise a generation who will never understand the joy of holding a physical book. When I was a child, I imagined the book I was reading was written just for me, that there was only one of its kind in the entire world. Of course, when you are older you don't entertain such notions. But for a child, reading a book is a very special and private experience. I fear we may be losing that." "We are losing it," I said. "However, I read somewhere that a typical bound book lasts about a hundred years. Even if they stop making them tomorrow you and I will be okay." "Just prior to my Leave of Absence," she said, "I began an internship with the library bookbinder. I was learning how to repair torn spines." "Now there's a job with a future." It was easy to imagine Di- nah at a table in the library's basement, working with clamps and a pot of glue. "If and when I return," she went on, ignoring me, "I will do what I can to extend the life of books well beyond a hundred years." "You'll probably have a whole lot of work for a while and then nothing." It was right around the juncture of Dinah describing her as- Section #19: Amorous Animalcules [205] ! piration to be a book binder that I made preparation to pull the boat into shore for a bladder break. Not for Dinah, but for me. I didn't bother to notify the SLoDs. I've always hated the idea of being the one to put the flotilla on pause for a personal need like that. Nevertheless, I really had to go. We were paddling past one of those sections of shore where the trees and bracken grow down to the water and the ocean floor falls off abruptly. "I'm pulling over for a second," I announced to Dinah and, without waiting for an answer, kicked the rudder to starboard and back-paddled to slow our approach. Naturally, it required little effort to counteract the tentative forward dipping of her paddle stroke. I ran the bow onto what beach there was. Pivoting about to face sternward, one knee in the kayak and one booted foot on the submerged rocks in eighteen inches of water, I got my wind pants down and let go right into the waters of the Sound, careful not to dribble onto the rudder assembly. When the bow of the kayak nosed into the sand, Dinah turned around in an effort to understand what was going on. I guess she figured out pretty quickly what I was up to for she re- sumed her normal forward gazing attitude without comment. "When I was a little boy," I began, feeling expansive with the release of pressure, "I liked to read and eat crackers at night under the bedcovers with a flashlight." "Well, I never did anything like that," Dinah said. "You know what else I've always liked?" I said, buttoning up, or velcro-ing up as the case was. "I've always liked those little wooden boxes in libraries with the slips of scrap paper and the tiny pencils. Does your library have those?" "Yes. It is one of my responsibilities to cut up waste paper for the scratch caddies and make sure the pencils are sharpened. Two pencils per box." "Scratch caddies! How great. The pencils are my favorite. They're just like the ones they hand out at miniature golf courses. To keep score with." "I have never been to a golf course." "Miniature," I said. "You should try it. Some time when you're at the beach with your friends. You know, after a couple of beers." I laughed out loud, one single guffaw. There came a point, that day or it might've been some other day, when I was musing about the nature of Dinah's library job and interrupted a period of silent paddling to ask what sorts of questions, exactly, did she field as a research librarian. "What? Do people want to know the name of Napoleon's horse? Stuff like that?" "I have had that question a few times," she said. "And it is not [206] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! an easy one to answer. Napoleon rode a dozen different horses into battle. More typically, patrons will call to ask how to obtain a pass- port. Or how to make out a will. We get a lot of questions about ge- nealogical matters. Medical questions. Advice on grieving. Cooking recipes. How to do crafts. " "Can you give me an example of an unusual request?" "Oh, it can be anything from antonym to oxymoron," she said. "There seems to be no limit. I have been asked how many spots there are on a Dalmatian." "That had to be a joke." "No. I believe they were quite serious." I suppose it would've been the usual thing, somewhere along here, to have asked Dinah what sort of training she'd had, what de- grees she'd earned and so forth. But I dislike the topic of university and degree programs. Unless the subject of college is forced upon me, I won't go into it. It's such an empty, soulless realm of discussion. As bad as asking what sort of car a person drives, or what professional sports teams they follow. I'd already picked up a little about Dinah's college life by way of general conversation. That was enough. "I'd think the number of spots on a Dalmatian could vary," I said. "That is correct. The American Kennel Club only issues guidelines for how big the spots should be and how dispersed." That evening in camp, or it might've been the following evening, in any case it was not long after the paddle in which Dinah and I had our conversation about spots on a Dalmatian, I was in my usual posture of relaxation, sitting upon my ensolite pad, perusing one of the volumes from the library, or the novel Crandall had loaned me. I was in position to observe Dinah take a seat at the edge of the kitchen tarp and attempt to fire up the Optimus. I believe a day or two had gone by since our stove lighting lesson. She was using stick matches, as I'd suggested, but instead of applying the lit match directly to the burner she was dropping one match after another in the general direction of the stove from a height of several feet. Dinah pumped and primed, dropped two or three matches in succession, pumped and primed, dropped more matches, unable to get the burner to light. Clearly, I thought, observing her, it's possible in this modern era for people to attain full adulthood with virtually no working knowledge of simple tools and mechanisms. Dinah was proving to be an extreme example, but I meet grown-ups all the time who don't know which way to turn a screw without resorting to some infantile rhyming scheme. Or who haven't figured out a simple thing like Section #19: Amorous Animalcules [207] ! measuring coffee water beforehand. They'll run three or four times as much water as they need into a kettle and then sit around for twenty minutes until it comes to a boil. I meet adults, and I was fairly certain Dinah was one of them, who seem to have never in their lives handled a sharp knife, who have all sorts of uncomfortable associations surrounding knives and for whom a sharp knife un- sheathed in their presence is cause for disquietude. And I'm not even going to get into the general lack of exposure to firearms, the pervasive ignorance about how a gun is loaded, aimed and fired. Or what seems a complete incomprehension regarding the nature of dogs, the inability to read a dog's body language, full-blown anxiety around any dog that's not on a leash. Evidently, these are adults tightly leashed in their own lives, raised as they were in some weird hypoallergenic and controlled environment that didn't permit dogs, or guns, or knives. As I watched Dinah's delicate librarian hands struggle with the controls of the stove, I wondered how far, really, someone could go toward rectifying their practical deficiencies, you know, once they were past the age of thirty. I ended up concluding that people have to be allowed to effect what change they can. Dinah's school issue hot drink mug was sitting next to her stove operation, possibly with a fresh tea bag in it, or not, waiting for a ration of hot water. As has been mentioned, she'd also brought along, certainly against Instructor recommendation, a Sierra cup. Dinah produced the little implement the first evening she and Crandall and I got set up for hot drinks. I quickly disabused the librarian of the notion that a Sierra cup has any utility in the outdoors. "Unless you happen to be day hiking in the Sierras," I went on. "Because that's what they're designed for, to be hung by the handle on your belt and kept handy for dipping into streams. Only now you can't drink water straight from the streams in the Sierras because it'll probably make you sick." Naturally, Dinah insisted on trying her first hot drink of the trip out of the official Sierra cup. She managed to keep the wave action -- which you can't help but generate in the wide, shallow vessels -- from carrying her drink over the cup's rim, but she did manage to get a nice lip burn from the metal edge, as I'd warned her she might. I haven't seen her Sierra cup in use much since the first evening. Crandall borrows it from time to time as an auxiliary vessel to hydrate the little dried veggie bits from the spice kit. Dinah's fingers, more accustomed to smoothing out the corners of dog-eared pages, appeared to be suffering hurt from the pressure of the pump valve, her hands flinching at the hardness of the metal. In some ways, it was too bad she hadn't snuck her per- [208] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! sonal stove into the gear. Not that I wanted more redundant equipment to lug around but in the future, when Dinah comes to rely upon her detached burner model, she'll be forced to learn yet another procedure by rote. Not only that, but by not bringing her stove on the course, she's missed an opportunity to put wear and tear on it, dents in the fuel tank and burned-on food spills, visible signs of usage she'd be able to reflect upon someday and recall when and where they were incurred, a traveler's only true memorabilia. This would help move her along toward feeling the stove is actually her possession. It was very difficult to sit by and watch Dinah's ineffectual attempt to light the Optimus, the matches falling one after another like signal flares dropped into a void. Either the lit match went out as soon as it left her fingers or it extinguished as it impacted the stove case, or the ground at her feet. To give her credit, one match did hit the top of the burner only to bounce away without result. She was simply too nervous, too fearful, whatever her previous experience with lighting candles. Finally, I had to speak. "Try holding the match closer." "I'm afraid of the flash," she said. And another match bit the dust. "Didn't you guys use stoves on the sailing course?" "No. We did all our cooking over open fires." One more match fell uselessly into the dirt, missing the stove box by nearly a foot. I could abide it no longer. Ordering Dinah to move aside, I came in with a butane lighter set on blow torch mode. Thinking about it later what I realize must've happened was that Dinah had left the stove valve open even while she was doing all that pumping. Which was why gas had overfilled the spirit cup and pooled at the bottom of the box. And the sun shining directly upon the fuel got it all nice and vaporous. I have to admit, when I applied the lighter, the ensuing fireball was truly impressive. Dinah shrieked and fell back. Though the hair of my arm from wrist to elbow was singed to the skin, I didn't let on that anything was amiss. I made out as if it were all entirely routine. The liquid gas in the box burned off quickly in a raging bonfire and I caught the last flicker before it went out to ignite the burner without having to resort to the lighter again. Dinah railed at what she took to be my incautiousness. "There was no need to bully your way in," she said. "And, now look, you have burned up the stove." "It's not burned up. It's fine." "What is all that black stuff?" she asked. "And what is that awful odor?" Section #19: Amorous Animalcules [209] ! "It's soot. It doesn't mean anything. Put your pot on." I recall thinking at the time it was a good thing she'd not been sitting close wearing her headnet. I don't know how flame re- tardant those mosquito nets are, probably not much. It wouldn't have been good to put it to a test. The Instructors continually reminded us back in those days to cook on wood fires as much as possible and save our gas for the time when there'd be no natural fuel. The general approach amongst the cook groups, which Crandall and Dinah and I adopted as well, was to do nearly all cooking and boiling water for hot drinks over a campfire, as long as there was wood around, but to occasionally boil water on the gas stove as a convenience. It didn't always seem worth kindling a fire for the sake of a round of hot drinks. This was particularly true first thing in the morning when sometimes you need a cup of coffee before you can focus on anything else. It was inevitable Dinah and I would have a discussion about the extent to which water needs to be boiled in order for it to be considered safe. She and I went around and around on the topic. While the school is not opposed to us boiling our water, if we want to be extra cautious, the generally accepted line of thinking, though apparently not quite official school policy, is that water in the Alas- ka bush is not yet contaminated by the pathogens commonly found in the wildernesses of the Lower-Forty Eight. However, that's all Dinah had to hear, terms like "contaminated" and "pathogens", and all logical thought process went out the window. "A rolling boil maintained for seven minutes for purposes of sterilization is what we learned in the Pine Barrens," she said. "No," I corrected. "It's only necessary to heat the water until large bubbles appear on the bottom of the pot. That's sufficient to kill any dangerous organisms in the water. Only around here there aren't any dangerous organisms." At first, she didn't say anything, but stood motionless looking down at her feet, the spots of color in her cheeks flushing red. "I would prefer that you thoroughly boil any water that goes into my hot drink. You have been boiling it, haven't you?" "Yes," I said. "I let it come to a boil if I'm cooking on a campfire. Most of the time. Not always when I'm using the stove. I'm trying to conserve fuel here." "You haven't been consistently boiling our hot drink water?" I could feel it coming. "No," I said. "Not a rolling boil. Dinah, there's nothing wrong with this water. You can drink it right out of the creek." "You, yourself, said one could become sick from drinking the [210] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! water straight from the source." "I never said that." "Yes. You did." I thought about it for a second and then realized what she was referring to. "I was talking about the Sierras," I said. "You can't drink un- treated surface water anywhere in the lower forty-eight without risk of contracting giardia, or crypto. None of that stuff has reached Alaska. " She wasn't listening any more. "I cannot believe you would be so cavalier with our personal safety," she said, putting forth her utterance with some force, all the more terrible because of how tightly her lips were compressed. And that term "cavalier" was interesting. I'd never heard anyone say the word out loud before. Suddenly, squatting down next to us at the kitchen tarp was a fellow wearing a plumed hat, a hand pressed down upon the pommel of his saber in order to keep the point of the scabbard out of the dirt. As he listened in on our discussion his mouth was stretched in a rakish grin. I admit, I took a certain confidence from his presence. "That's the way it is, Dee," I said. "The water is fine up here, boiled, frozen, or straight from the creek. Check with the Instruc- tors if you don't believe it." "I do not mind you calling me Di," she said. "But I do not approve of Dee." "Okay. My apologies." I don't know if she ever did check with the I-team about the water. I never heard about it if she did. I didn't mean to be harsh with her. Really, if Dinah wanted to boil the water for a full hour, or until half of it was steamed away, that was fine by me, as long as she did it on a wood fire. The Instructors had succeeded in infusing me with a concern about running out of stove fuel. To begin with, I didn't see how it was possible, even with the ability to make campfires, that we had enough fuel with us to run five stoves for a month without re-supply. I was worried that eventually firewood would turn out to be like the fish, largely non-existent. We were sure to run out of gas, I was convinced of it. We were going to find ourselves up some fjord camped on a treeless moraine with no gas and no wood and no way to boil water which meant no way to cook or more crucially to make coffee. And having come this far without that pri- vation I was not going to be very happy about it. Right from the beginning, Dinah demonstrated an odd ambivalence toward campfires. She never seemed to derive satisfaction from building a fire, or to take much comfort in the heat and Section #19: Amorous Animalcules [211] ! light. She'd always be helpful at the start, lending a hand to gather the wood, but once I began to kindle the fire using twigs and the special resinous lichen the librarian would fall to mutely staring at the ground between her feet. By the time I started to feed in the larger sticks, as if no longer able to stand it, she'd typically move herself off a short ways and remain in a downcast aspect, head net covering her face. I figured maybe Dinah hadn't been around camp fires much, that she objected to the waste of it and the mess, the ashes and the blackened stones, also maybe anxious that an open fire was, as she liked to put it, a safety hazard. It was mystifying because I was certain she'd said they'd had campfires on the sailing course and even did most of their cooking on open fires. It was around Day Five, or so, that I collected my wits sufficiently to get the candle lantern out of my gear duffel and set it up in the tent at the head of my sleeping spot. I'd brought the lantern along mainly I think to spite our Course Leader's rapid dismissal of its utility. I was lying there, gazing abstractedly at the flame, when Dinah poked her head into the tent and -- no surprise -- indicated she was concerned about my having a lit candle in the tent. "Are you sure it is safe?" "Am I sure what's safe?" "Is it safe to have an open flame in the tent?" "It's perfectly safe," I said. "Watch." And reaching out a hand I knocked the lantern over, immediately putting the candle out and splashing wax all over the inside of the globe and the tent floor, worth it as a demonstration to my overcautious campmate. "It's even safe to run a camp stove in your tent. I've done it plenty of times. Course, you have to pay attention to what you're doing." Dinah let the flap of the door fall to and walked off without additional comment. It didn't matter about the candle lantern. Dodi was correct about it being too light in the evenings up here for candles. Burl says the daily advancement of nightfall at this latitude is something on the order of two minutes per day. The sun will be setting an hour earlier as we get on toward the end of the course. Even so, it'll still barely be dark enough by ten o'clock on our last night's camp to warrant a candle. With me around, Dinah has had no end of opportunity to ex- hibit her downcast expression. We were to witness the display of dejection later on in the trip when Dodi conducted an impromptu Comparative Anatomy class employing a sea otter skeleton she'd found washed up on the beach. Some of the otter's hide clung to its bones and the tough material of the webbed feet was still largely intact, but the ocean and its scavengers had cleansed the rest of the carcass down to bones and cartilage. My recollection is that Dinah [212] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! left the little instructional at about midpoint and walked off down the beach. I had the thought that the dead sea otter was possibly the first corpse larger than a swatted housefly the librarian had ever witnessed. There was an evening in which Dinah returned to camp from one of her forays to the tide pools. She bade me put down my book and hot drink and follow her to the beach to see something she'd discovered. I did as she asked and together we knelt beside a slot filled with sea water where Dinah pointed out the cavorting of tiny animalcules. She directed me to appreciate how the barnacle-like creatures deployed minuscule feather-like scoops to sweep invisible food toward what served as the creature's mouths. I will admit it was worth it to appreciate that these encrustations we are always walking upon, flinty enough to gouge the fiberglass hulls of sea kayaks, contain such delicate life forms. "Look," she said, directing my attention to another part of the pool. "That one little whirligig is making advances toward the other. That would be the male. He is showing her his stuff." She continued in a hushed voice. "Only she is pretending not to be interested." At this point I shifted my attention from anything that might or might not be going on in the tide pool to study the side of Dinah's head, as if I could bore into the brain matter to discover the mental processes responsible for shaping these off-putting utterances. Right then, to my greater annoyance, Dinah put her mouth down near the surface of the water and began to make tiny sucking noises in sympathy with the drama, the wooing or whatever it was, she imagined to be taking place. Peering closely, I was able to make out one small, demented crustacean spinning itself madly around by means of its water jet. How Dinah could know the monad's gender was impossible to determine. I don't think it was possible. Besides, I'd always assumed most animals living at that level were hermaphroditic. After a minute, there did seem to be some sort of joining between two of the organisms, but there was no way to conclude that it represented any sort of copulation. It might just as easily have been a mortal battle over territory, or a joint feasting upon some speck of food, starfish waste or some such delicacy. I stood up and prepared to head back to camp. "Now the male will do his business," Dinah said. I walked quickly away, before I could hear any more, back to my book and my cooling hot drink, feeling, I don't know, slightly emasculated. Recall, it was on the morning of Day Two that Dodi presented to the student group the backcountry hygiene rap. This was when Section #19: Amorous Animalcules [213] ! we were made acquainted with the business about irradiating underarm flora, voiding below the tide line, monitoring the color of our urine and so on. Dodi's instructional concluded with a reminder to the females of the group to secure their used tampons by double wrapping them inside a couple of empty ration bags -- by Day Three beginning to accumulate by the bushel as we plowed through the food -- and to place the tampons thus wrapped beneath the gear tarp at night away from the tent. "Used tampons have been known to be a bear attractant," was how Dodi put it. This was the suggested procedure for when we were camped on the islands, where the likelihood of bear presence was minimal to nonexistent. When we were camped on the mainland, females were advised to put used sanitary napkins in with the food whose duffels were to be stashed down the beach at night well away from the sleeping area, an additional precaution in case bears came around. Dodi was right to bring the matter up to the whole group and provide the male contingent with the official rationale for why on a given morning a baggie of used sanitary napkins might be discovered in with the rations. Plus, the discussion reinforced the whole business about bear-proofing our camps, policing up food scraps and keeping odiferous personal items like toothpaste out of the tents. The mention of tampons naturally prompted the younger males to sit up and pay attention. Having nothing to do with them biologically, the term still served to put the boys in mind of ancil- lary matters. When it came time for questions, one of the boys asked, I'm sure as a joke, whether the school provides condoms on its courses and, if so, should the expended ones go into the food duffels or be stored separately. The query didn't deserve an answer and it hardly got one but it did open up a subject the Instructors seemed to wish to touch upon. "No, the school does not provide condoms," Burl said, not bothering to wait for the tittering to die down. "Not only that, but it is our feeling that students should refrain from being sexual while in the field. If that seems unreasonable to you, you might take a moment to consider the reasons you signed up for this course. Maybe it was to learn to kayak, or to learn how to camp, or to experience the remote wilderness. I suppose it's possible you enrolled with the secret hope of hooking up, but I doubt it. The odds for that happening would be much better, I'm sure, if you'd stayed home. What the school has learned from twenty-five years of conducting wilderness expeditions is that, typically, when students couple up it tends to detract from their experience and from the experience of those around them. Couples spend time with each other to the ex- [214] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! clusion of others. It's only natural," he went on, "that the involvement becomes the focus, instead of the skills you might be learning, or the other students you could be getting to know, or the amazing place you're traveling through. Now, there's no way for us to stop you if you want to have sex out here. You're all of legal age. But we'd like you to take a minute and consider how it could affect your experience." There was a pause and then Burl asked if what Dodi had said about the tampons made sense and if there were any more questions. There were no further questions. "You should never lose sight," Dodi put in, "of what a privilege it is to be here. Most people will never have the opportunity to experience something like this. You should all strive to make the most of it." ! Absolutely right, I thought. ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #20: Paper Dodges ! "When you're at the library, Dinah," I began one day in camp, unable it seems to quite leave off my pursuit of librarian clichés, "and you're skimming through a book, or maybe a photographic album, do you sometimes wet a finger to turn the page?" Of course, I knew she had the occasional habit of doing this. I'd probably just witnessed her in the act, flipping through the pages of some field guide. I wanted to draw her attention to the annoying quirk. She surprised me with her answer. "No," she said. "Acids in the saliva are not good for the paper." "Okay." I wasn't going to contradict her, though I was startled by the lack of self-awareness. "I use a paper dodge," she said. "It's a paper what?" She described it to me. "A little rubber cap. Made of natural rubber. You wear it over the tip of your index finger. You must have seen these in office supply stores. It has little tiny nubs to grip the page. The nubs are sticky to the touch." I didn't like her use of the term "nubs". "I don't get into office supply stores much," I told her. "Are you sure that's what they're called? Paper dodges?" "That may not be the official name. Paper dodges are what my parents called them." "Do they come in sizes?" "Yes. Size eleven works best for me." We'd quickly gotten into a realm in which I was learning more than I wished to know, but I guess I was the one who'd started it. "Some of the library workers use the little containers of stickum," Dinah said, "but I prefer a dodge. My mother used one when she worked for the City of Chicago Water Works. Thirty years she worked for the city." "So you've said." I understood that, for Dinah, the little tool of the rubber page turner must symbolize a commitment to serious work, steady year- in-and-year-out employment at an occupation in which time and [216] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! money are at stake and mistakes cannot be afforded. I've seen librarians and other bookish types use the rubber eraser on the end of pencil to flip through pages. It would make sense to have something that fits on the finger, a tool dedicated to the task. Incidentally, it was not true, what I told Dinah, about my rarely going into office supply stores. I go into them all the time, typically not to buy anything specific but for the sense of possibility the stores invoke, the feeling that if you wanted you could finally once and for all get organized. I didn't tell Dinah this, though I think she would've understood exactly what I was saying. I should mention right here that a situation was beginning to develop with regards to the librarian and myself and the student group at large. It was something I was only just becoming aware of. My concern about it caused me to hesitate before saying anything which might contribute to any further affinity between Dinah and myself. As for the paper dodges, in all my office store wanderings I can't recall ever coming across such a product. I suppose they were there, I just didn't see them. What I do remember was an image from a stint of foreign travel I did some years ago. This was in Eu- rope, where I ended up riding around on the trains quite a bit. There was a ticket seller in Pamplona who wore on his finger an implement such as Dinah described. There was a morning on which I interacted with this clerk for the better part of twenty-minutes. My Spanish was poor and his English wasn't much better. I was there at the train station at some godawful time of the morning, four-thirty or five or something, which didn't help. Through the bars of his enclosure, I tried to communicate to the clerk the fact that I was trying to get back to the Aude Region of France without going back through Paris. I had a list of potentially useful phrases in Spanish, supplied by my girlfriend at the time, who at that hour was still asleep at the pension. The clerk wore a dark suit and on his index finger was a device, probably natural rubber like Dinah has described it, but so blackened and worn I initially took it to be a de- formity, or the result of amputation. I stared at the thing quite a long time before I realized it consisted of material separate from the man's finger. "Did your dodge tend to become blackened with use?" I asked Dinah. "Oh, it certainly would," she said. "I frequently washed mine with soap and water. I wish I had kept all my dodges. The day I left to begin my Leave of Absence, I put the box of dodges in the top drawer of my desk for safekeeping. I am sure by now the box has either been thrown away or stored in the back of the utility closet." Section #20: Paper Dodges [217] ! "I'm sure you'll find them when you get back," I said. "And right where you left them." "Well, you know, it may be years before I get back." "Well, then, you'll just have to buy more. What do they cost? A dollar?" "They do not come separately," she explained. "You have to purchase a carton. My director presented me with a brand new box of dodges when I first began my employment. I am sure they assume you are going to lose or misplace most of them along the way, but I am the sort of person who keeps up with things. I never took out a new dodge until I had completely worn out the one." This was as far as I felt like investigating the matter of the paper dodges that evening but Dinah had got me dwelling on the little devices and, I'm ashamed to say, I brought the business up again when the two of us were on the water. I believe it was on one of the days -- we've had several like this -- which featured minimal wind, making conversation between the cockpits easy. There might've even been a mild tailwind which tends to make it feel as though you're paddling in a windless vacuum. Every gurgle of the paddles or knocking of a shaft against the hull becomes a distinctly articulated sound. Breaking the silence to pursue the question that'd been incu- bating in my thoughts, I asked Dinah: "How many weeks, or months, does one of those little finger things last, exactly. I mean, with steady use? "You mean a paper dodge?" "Yes. That." "Five," she answered. "They each last five years. With steady use, as you say." Immediately, it became painful to continue the discussion, but I managed to persevere a few minutes longer. "How many dodges have you gone through at this stage?" I asked. I guess I could have done the math myself but my mind simply balked. "At the time I began my leave of absence, I was on number four." "God help us," I said. "And how many come in a box?" "Ten. I will be seventy-two when the last one wears out. Time to retire. Of course, now I've thrown the whole schedule off by taking the Leave of Absence." I gave this a moment of silent consideration. "I don't think, in the end, it would've worked out that neatly, because the rubber, or whatever it is, would degrade over time. By the time you turned sixty, your back-ups would've turned to powder. You'd have to take early retirement." [218] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "I remember distinctly the day my first paper dodge finally wore out and needed to be replaced," she mused. "Almost two decades later, when I was leaving the library for my extended Leave of Absence, I had gone through nearly half the box of dodges. Yet, I have no recollection of replacing any but the first. Which I kept with the big hole through its tip on my desk for nearly a month before I could bring myself to throw it out." "That's great," I said. "You should write the company. They'd probably love to have information like that from the field, from a professional page turner like yourself. They'd send you a free box." "Do I detect a mocking tone?" "Not at bit. I've always been fascinated with the observable wear and tear on everyday objects. Dinah's description of the secret life of paper dodges brought to mind another article that librarians use, or maybe used to use but don't any longer, this being the little glue bottle with the red rubber tip. Now there's a memory rooted deep in childhood. The rubber tip was split to allow the amber colored adhesive to spooge out. I believe the glue was only good for paper. I had to think about it for a minute before I could bring the term to recall. Mucilage, I believe it was called. The goop could be rolled between the fingers to make a perfectly sticky projectile. It was an archaic product I thought for sure Dinah would know about. But here I struck out. "No," she said, in answer to my query. "I am not sure what that is. Mucilage. Maybe at one time, as you say, it was commonly found on a librarian's desk. Unfortunately, paper is becoming a thing of the past." During this whole exchange, Dinah was continually turning around in her cockpit, interrupting her paddling to answer my questions about dodges and mucilage. It was the usual challenge for me to match her cadence. That much I remember about this conversation. I couldn't tell you where we were in route to that day, or whether our talk took place in the morning or afternoon. Some of the discussion may've occurred on one day, the rest on another, now conflated in my mind. I recall quite vividly the vector we paddled on Day One out of Whittier. I remember clearly most of the places we've camped, but as to where the group was at the time of any specific discussion between Dinah and myself is almost impossible to fix. One day on the water has become in my memory much like any other, the weather brilliant and clear and unvarying. As the Instructors are baffled by the lack of fish available for us to catch, so they are puzzled by the relentless march of perfect weather. They say they've never seen anything approaching this many consecutive days of unclouded sky Section #20: Paper Dodges [219] ! upon the Sound. The only thing that varies throughout the day is the degree of glare. During every break from paddling, or when we come to shore for the final time, as it's never a question of the sun not shining, there's hardly an hour when Cord doesn't take the opportunity to maintenance his tan. More than maintenance it, he may've actually increased its darkness and luster since departing Whittier. For the most part, believe me, I've been quite happy about the absence of rain. I get depressed even hiking in rain. My only regret is that the lack of falling moisture has made it impossible to observe Dinah's write-in-the-rain notebook in full action. I was curious to see how well the special paper would work when wet. Well, the conversation about the dodges must've taken place sometime during the first week of the trip. I can narrow it down that much. I didn't start paddling with Dinah until Day Three, after turning the red kayak over to Cord, and then there were about seven straight days in which she and I were paddling partners. It was not until Day Ten, when it came to be my turn to be one of the Stu- dent Leaders of the Day, that I stopped paddling with the librarian. This was on the very day we came into Columbia Glacier. All that time, I was under the supposition that Dinah had taken an extended leave from the library but was planning to go back. This was the fiction she'd loosely presented in the early days. Somewhere in there, between the Pine Barrens and the Florida Keys, her absence had become officially designated as an LOA. By the time she left Chicago for Alaska the classification of her leave was changed to something more indefinite. "Has your library gone to bar codes, or are they still stamping books by hand?" I asked her on what could've been the same afternoon or morning we discussed the dodges. It was after the conversation in which she and I had discovered our mutual appreciation for the Dewey Decimal System. Looking back on it, it seems I was always asking Dinah questions about her time at the library. I almost didn't know what else to ask her about. It was always difficult with the woman to find an opening into other aspects of her life. "Oh, bar codes, absolutely," she answered. "The Downtown Library was already stamping books electronically well before my time there." "Too bad, huh?" "Yes. It is too bad." In retrospect, if I'd been really interested in discouraging further affinity with Dinah, I was clearly going about it the wrong way. Giving away my opinion about the bar codes inspired Dinah to [220] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! perform one of her most memorable cockpit turnarounds. It was both aggravating and endearing the way something in our conversation would so enthuse the woman she'd forget all about her obligation to paddle and would want to look directly at me, not easy given the way these boats are designed. She did get one eye on me for purpose of acknowledgement before swiveling forward again. "You might recall my mentioning that I did my internship at a small branch library in Oak Park," she said. "There I participated in the last days of stamping the due date by hand. Before the custom went away forever, it was fascinating to examine a card and see all of the dates a book had been checked out, sometimes going back fifty years or more. The dates would be stamped in different colors, the older ones more faded. Sometimes when you were stamping the card, you would notice the book was going out to a patron for the first time in over a decade. That was always very intriguing to me, to think of the book sitting in the stacks all those years waiting for that precise reader to come along." "Remember how," I interjected, "in elementary school, they would actually have you sign the card when you checked out a book? You'd sign your name right next to the due date." Honestly, it seemed I was incapable of preventing myself from layering on more affinity. It was either this or to stop talking to the woman entirely. At the surprise of my recalling this detail to her, Dinah stopped paddling again, forgot she even had a paddle in her hands, and again managed to turn almost all the way around in her cockpit. "Yes. Was that not wonderful? You could read the names of everyone who had checked out the book. Of course, this would never be acceptable these days." "Nope. It'd never do these days, even in elementary school. What with the kids checking out 'The Anarchist Cookbook' and all." "No, it would not," she said. "And, you know, most libraries refuse to carry that title." "Censored, huh?" "Not that. The problem is, every time a new copy is put on the shelves, the book is stolen." "Somehow that's not surprising." "It is criminal." "Isn't that sort of the point?" I cued Dinah to resume her paddle stroke as we moved onto a different topic. In my continual effort to pry apart some other aspect of her life, I asked Dinah if when back in the city she occasionally went out to eat, or to see a movie. Section #20: Paper Dodges [221] ! "I rarely go out to eat. Maybe once or twice a month. Only with my parents and always on a Sunday. It was something we did as a family instead of going to church. My parents are of the opinion that most restaurant kitchens are filthy. But they know the owners of one downtown establishment that offers a nice Sunday buffet at a reasonable price. We have been patrons of the restaurant as long as I can remember. Before I became a vegetarian, I used to always ask for meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas. Now I only eat the mashed potatoes and peas. However, for the most part I eat at home. I prefer my own meal preparation." "Such as it is," I said. "What about a movie?" To this Dinah brightened up and replied that as a little girl she'd been taken to a number of "motion picture shows", to use her phrasing. She mentioned a half-a-dozen titles, the standard series to which most American youngsters between the ages of five and twelve are exposed. The plots of these films, almost without exception, revolve around the mystical, almost occult, relationship between a child and an animal, typically a dog or a horse, sometimes a cat, sometimes involving creatures as exotic as a porpoise. I'd seen every one of the films she mentioned and recalled being mildly traumatized by some of the scenes they presented, often depicting the death of the animal protagonist. Looking back, I've always wondered that adults would subject the impressionable to such plot turns, but maybe the films are as good an initiation as any into the truth of living and dying. "I love those movies," Dinah said. "I still watch them on television, when they come on, which is not that often." "I guess you don't have cable." "No, but occasionally on my travels I will stay in a motel room that has cable. Rarely do I see those particular movies listed." "You could always rent them on tape," I suggested. "Or check them out of the library." "I know I could. For some reason it would feel like cheating." I considered this for a moment. "Because you feel you should wait for fate to bring the movies to you? Like the book that waits on the shelf?" "Something like that," she said. "Of course, for the foreseeable future, I will not have access to television." "You never go out to see something currently playing in a theater?" "No. Not since I became an adult. Almost never. I have tried a few of what they refer to these days as children's movies but find them too full of special effects for my taste." We paddled along in silence for a bit. Something was bother- [222] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ing me in all this, something unsaid which I felt needed to be approached. "What about shopping?" I asked. "Don't you ever go out to the mall, to buy clothes, or shoes?" I was scraping for examples of things a settled urban dweller might require. I have to say, even as I posed the question, I was immediately struck by the incongruity contained in the idea of Dinah walking over the polished tiles of one of the vast multi-story retail conglomerations. I couldn't see her having any enthusiasm for it. The only plausible image I could come up with was of her sitting at the edge of the mall's indoor fountain, nibbling upon a cinnamon roll, watching the other shoppers going in and out of the stores and wondering what it was they found so absorbing. "No," was her flat reply about the shopping. Supposing there must be some way to acquire clothing other than going into a store, something I'd not heard of, or that possibly she sewed her own slacks and pantsuits, or whatever it was she wore back in the city, I asked Dinah where then did she buy her clothes. She replied that for over thirty years she'd gone to the same "clothing broker" -- her term -- her mother had first taken her to as a child. "On the first day of September each year," she explained, "I purchase one new winter outfit and give the oldest set in my possession away to a charitable organization. I do the same thing in the spring. On the first day of April I buy one outfit suitable for warm weather and give away my oldest summer dress." As with the dodges, the unfolding explanation of how she managed her clothes was irksome to apprehend. I had to follow it out. "How many outfits, as you call them, do you have?" "Seven of each type." "Sure. And you wear your newest outfit on Monday, depending on the season, and go right down the line." "That is correct." "Your oldest clothing sets are for weekends?" She didn't answer but I was pretty sure I had it right. "And that works for you, summer and winter?" "Yes. With the addition of a coat and leggings in the winter." "What about shoes?" "One new pair on the first of April. Good for summer and winter." "Well," I began, "I think you've hit upon a very practicable solution." I did the slight bit of math required and then continued, "I'm amazed you get nearly two hundred wearings out of a set of clothes. Then again I've found that a t-shirt, if worn continuously, Section #20: Paper Dodges [223] ! will last about a year. You might be getting a little extra distance because you give your duds a break between wearings. You probably don't sleep in your outfits." "No. I do not wear them when asleep." "And you spend your days mostly sitting quietly indoors in a chair." I pointed this out as much to myself as to her. "That saves wear and tear." "I suppose." "But now you have all this new outdoor apparel. Outerwear and layers and such." "Yes." "How does all of that fit in?" She hesitated before she answered and it was easy to imagine she might be troubled by the intrusion of the laminated and seam-taped garments she'd recently acquired, toward which she'd not yet worked out her responsibility. "I see now", she began, "where it might be possible, such as in situations like the present, to wear the same outfit day in and day out and to go years before being forced to replace a worn out item." "Well, you can replace them more often than that," I said, "but it'd get expensive. You'll find that specialized gear like this lasts a long time. The stuff is pretty durable. You're basically talking about a whole different classification of clothing. Besides, once you find gear that works it's a shame to get rid of it until it's completely shot. These blue wind pants I've got on are five years old. I will wear them every day during the winter, less in the summer. With some patching they'll probably last another five years. Literally thousands of wearings." "I am beginning to understand how this would be possible." "Aside from your twice a year shopping excursions, do you ever go out at all?" I asked. This was when Dinah told me about her visits to the zoo, The Brookfield, which I've mentioned, and Lincoln Park, the place with the merry-go-round with it's wooden mock-ups of animals, black and white zebras and camels with actual humps and whatnot. "Aren't you a little old for a carousel?" "You'd be surprised how many adults are riding on the carousel at any given time." "No, I wouldn't be surprised. And when you go to the zoo, do you delight primarily in the big cats, or do you also enjoy viewing the primates?" It never required more than a few minutes talking to Dinah before I started to adopt her manner of speech, even to dropping the use of contractions. It wasn't that I was intentionally mocking her, even if she sometimes saw it that way. I suppose I mi- [224] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! micked her partly for the amusement, but mainly I thought I might make myself better understood if I employed her idiom. "Mostly, I spend time sitting in the aviary," she said. "Of course." "When I was a little girl," she continued, now in a musing, recollective tone, " I would sit in a certain grassy spot at the Brook- line and play with a set of action figures I had been given for Christmas. My parents would observe me from a bench where they rested and talked. That was a very happy time for all of us, I believe." "Action figures?" "Yes." Dinah described what they were: plastic figurines molded and painted to resemble the characters from a certain T.V. show which had aired in the '60's, a show about a veterinarian in Kenya who takes care of injured or displaced animals. Her reference opened up another long lost memory chain in my mind. I instantly recalled the theme song with it's tribal drums and African chorus, no doubt quite stylized and clichéd but authentic enough to my young ears, evocative of pith helmets, native bearers, Land Rovers and the hot Serengeti. "Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion?" I ventured. "Yes. He was my favorite. His is the one figure I still have in my possession. I took him to college with me. For four years Clarence crouched on the shelf above my desk at school to watch me study. Now he sits contentedly on the dashboard of my hatch- back." "And the vet's name, it was Mars, or something." "Marsh," she corrected. "Doctor Tracy Marsh." And his pretty young assistant, I recalled, with the wavy blonde hair, whom I had something of a crush on when I was twelve. "It was one of the few programs I was allowed to watch on Saturday morning," she went on. "I read something once about how the entire series was filmed not in Africa but on a game park north of Los Angeles." Dinah ignored my comment to focus upon her memory of playing with the figurines. "I would create little dioramas with the figures at the base of a tree, between the root flanges. I played for hours entirely content in my imagination. My mother always bought me ginger ale in a bottle to drink." It was later that day that Dinah said: "I hope I did not give you the wrong impression about my trips to the zoo as an adult. I do not want you to think I was gone every afternoon to the Lincoln Park, idling away the hours, having a gay old time on the carousel." Section #20: Paper Dodges [225] ! "I was beginning to wonder." "Usually, during my time off from the library, I am at home, reading. If I feel a need to give my eyes a rest from printed material, I will take in a television program." "A nature show?" "Certainly not a situation comedy." We were on the water again for this conversation and, as I recall it was not one of those days when it was mild and windless. When I asked her which of all the animals amongst the ones she'd seen on nature shows, or for that matter in the wild, was her favorite, I had to yell the question out a couple of times to force the words through the breeze. Her reply, which surprised me, came back easily on the wind. "Otters," she said. "I love television nature shows about otters. The otter is perfectly at home in its environment, so ideally suited to life in the water. They are happy creatures, constantly at play, enjoying the company of their fellow otters, sliding down a rock into a pool." I had thought for sure she was going to announce some species of bird as her favorite. Dinah will sometimes fall into a flat, scientific delivery, a style picked up, I think, from the narration of televised programming. "You must like being out here, then," I yelled up to her. "What with all the otters around." "These are sea otters," she said, following this with the taxonomic designation for the species. "River otters are my preferred species. I do like watching the sea otters cavort. Now that I have learned to focus my field glasses I am able to make out their whiskers." "Right. Whiskers." "As I said, I really do not watch television that much. Mostly I read." "Right. Natural history. Plants and animals in their natural habitat." "That is correct. Then, of course, sometimes I go back and re- read the stories I enjoyed as a child." "Right. Ping." I was determined to say it before she did. "By the way, Di," I went on, intending to pursue a thread which had been on my mind ever since she disclosed her predilection for children's stories, "I was wondering, in these stories of yours, do the animals sometimes live in hutches, or hollow trees? Do they eat bowls of berries for breakfast and porridge for din-din?" I had studiously avoided the use of Dinah's term "thatched roof bungalow" and I was sorry about my use of the term "din-din". It was one thing [226] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! to adopt some of Dinah's vernacular, it was another to descend into infant-speak. She let it pass without comment. "Sometimes they eat porridge." "And do the animal protagonists sometimes possess the power of speech and walk about on two legs?" She didn't answer. For ten or fifteen seconds the only sound was the splash of the paddles. I should have let it go, but I was compelled to pile it on. "Do the animals sometimes wear waistcoats and sleep on straw mattresses and have house servants who are also animals but of a different species?" "Yes," she said. "Such characters appear in the stories." A slightly defensive tone had crept into her response. "Don't get me wrong," I said. "I've read a lot of those stories myself, or had them read to me when I was a boy. I can't say I've fully plumbed it out but it's quite possible those stories have something to do with why I became a backpacker. And why I'm on this course." "You think it strange I should still be reading children's books as an adult?" she asked. "Not at all. Adults wrote them. I fully appreciate what you're saying. When I'm backpacking off somewhere in the mountains, holed up in my tent at night, sitting in my camp chair, candle lantern lit, sleeping bag pulled up, reading a book, there's a terrific feeling of cozy self-sufficiency. I'm fully aware it's an image that comes straight out of the stories I read as a child. Even before I could read I'd spend hours staring at illustrations of animal characters hunkered down in their little dens. I was on a hike in Sequoia National Park one time and came across a hollowed out log which the placard said an entire family had lived in for years, a decade or more. Inside the hollow log, roped off to keep the tourists out, were a bed and tables and chairs. Very charming. When I was a kid I watched a lot of Tarzan movies. I loved the scenes in the tree house where Tarzan and Jane and Cheetah lived. I was always captivated by anything like that, anything that made it seem as though you could go out and live comfortably in nature. Even now, I can be driving through the desert in a car and look off down into some canyon where there's a stream, some trees growing beside it and it will get me thinking about how I could put a tent down there and live quite happily." I paused, to give her a chance to say something. "Maybe it's similar to the feeling you get from looking at the photo albums." "A photograph of a wild place," she began, "with no people, no man-made structures, is very up-lifting. A world uncorrupted. It is reassuring to think such places exist in the world. I like thinking Section #20: Paper Dodges [227] ! that if I had to I would be able to go there." "If you had to?" "Yes. That is to say, if my situation became intolerable." "Has it become intolerable?" I asked. "Is that why you're on this trip." She didn't answer for a minute. Then she said: "Photographs of the natural world give me hope that a life could be lived away from the human crowd." "And it can be," I said. "Provided you have the right gear and the know-how." "I have been enjoying this kayak trip for the expanse of the water and the sky. Also for the wildlife." "Right. A bear, an orca and an otter. Only we haven't seen any bears. At least you've got your distant mountains." "What about you?" she asked. "What about me?" "Are you enjoying the trip? Do you not think all of this is amazing?" Placing her paddle athwart the deck she took her hand out of its pogie and gestured in a way that took in the whole arrangement of water, mountain and sky. "Yeah, sure. It's all very nice," I offered. "I think you are unbelievably blasé." "You have to understand. I generally prefer a landscape I can hike on." It was her turn to remind me what manner of course we were on. "It is sea kayaking," she said. "That means we travel on the sea." "I didn't think we'd be on the sea quite this much. Now, Dinah, if you would please take up your paddle." We we went on talking, building more of the affinity I would later come to regret. In my recollection, she and I covered a lot of ground that afternoon though it's very likely I may be combining together here several conversations. I never did get to the thing I felt was going unsaid about her life back in the city. I'll have to settle for discussing it here. What has always bothered me about the lives of urban dwellers is that these people can even begin to assume they live any kind of authentic existence when they have no contact with a landscape, when the seasons are all but obliterated, wildlife reduced to squirrels and pigeons and cockroaches. How can they consider such a truncated existence to be acceptable? Maybe with respect to the librarian I had my answer. Clearly she'd decided it wasn't acceptable and therefore had effected a break. She'd decid- [228] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ed there had to be another world beyond the city and she'd taken the necessary steps to find it. When I registered for this little outing what I looked forward to most was spotting whales. I figured there'd be some bears and other critters, sea otters and whatnot, but whales were going to be the main attraction. At the Palmer pre-launch briefing, Dodi had said "whales", but she didn't specify humpback or orca. Not further into the trip than the evening of Day Two, which marked our one night stay adjacent to the triangulation checkpoint of Applegate, our on-shore campgame was derailed when an orca, pursuing its prey too close to the shore, beached itself less than twenty yards from where we were gathered. We rushed as a group to the water's edge and watched for nearly a minute as the whale, a smallish specimen no more than ten feet long from snout to tail, rolled and thrashed with flopping pectorals until it managed to back its way off of the sand into deeper water. I was glad for the whale's inter- ruption and took the chance to duck out and get back to camp for some reading. Crandall and Dinah followed soon after. We didn't discuss the whale incident much beyond Crandall saying that when he first heard the commotion he thought it was one of the students messing around. I said it was probably a good thing nobody was in the water at the time. "Orcas aren't known for attacking humans," pointed out Crandall, the biologist. "Maybe not," I said, "but I heard they're having some trouble along those lines with a killer whale down at Sea World. Of course, that could simply be payback." I noticed the librarian staring into her hot drink mug. "Any thoughts on the subject, Dinah?" "It is less objectionable," she began, "to refer to them as orca as opposed to killer whale." "Yes. I suppose you're right." "When I was little," she said, "I read about the grampus in a book of English children's stories. When I first saw the orca that had come ashore, I thought it might be a grampus. But the grampus is a different species altogether. The other name for grampus is Ris- so's Dolphin. In olden times, sailors would often mistakenly identify orca as grampus." I stared at the librarian for a few seconds. "Whatever you do," I said, "I advise you to never use that term outside of present company. Never say what you just said to the Instructors or the other students." Dinah looked at me and then went back to her hot drink. I thought the orca's visit to our camp would be the beginning of innumerable whale sightings which I assumed would eventually Section #20: Paper Dodges [229] ! include humpbacks. Since that evening, twenty-one or twenty-two days ago, the only cetaceans that've come anywhere near as close as the one on the beach have been the occasional pod of orca, twenty or thirty yards away, only discernible by the dorsal fins that stick up out of the water like planks. The wondrous spectacle of a humpback sounding, the huge mother ship of it, a thousand gallons of sea water sluicing off upraised flukes, like the whale in the photograph which accompanies the course description in the school's catalog, the one natural spectacle I was hoping for on this twenty-eight day excursion, may not be a sight which will present itself to us. It probably won't present itself now that we are at minus six days and counting. And it really shouldn't present itself if for no other reason than to reinforce the corollary that the natural world is not here for the convenience, or to serve as entertainment, or to conform to the schedule of homo sapiens. There was an afternoon during the first go-around, a portion of the student group returning from an optional day paddle, when something occurred that was nearly as miraculous as a sounding whale. Only half the student group had signed up for the layover day excursion to the salmon hatchery. Never easy with the idea I might miss out on something I felt compelled to go. I don't recall how it evolved but, of course, never getting an even break, I ended up in a double with Dinah in the forward cockpit. The kayaks were largely empty of gear and supplies which in itself was a pleasant enough change. All together there were three student doubles and the red kayak manned by Cord, who'd heard there might be authentic Haida totem poles to the seen en route -- this turned out not to be the case -- and Dodi in her Polaris single. Thad Houston and Burl stayed in camp to read and fish, keep an eye on the other students, and to engage in whatever else Instructors do when they're in camp, fry up cheese bread and eat fruit cocktail out of a can, that sort of thing. At first, when the peculiar vibration began, I assumed Di- nah's and my boat was the only one affected. In fact, I thought at first she was responsible, that she was doing something up in the front cockpit, trailing something in the water, to cause the odd tremor. Then, as the vibration increased, I decided some piece of the boat's hardware was out of whack, that one of the fasteners holding the rudder to the pivot, say, had come loose, allowing the skeg to shimmy through the water. I was checking the stern to see if I could figure out what was wrong when Cord, bringing up the rear in the red boat, caught my eye. "You feel that?" he asked. [230] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! Well, it turned out everyone was experiencing the same tremor along the length of their boats. "Echolocation," Dodi announced. "Whale sonar. Only a humpback can produce vibration that strong. It must be swimming right beneath us." At this announcement, I saw Dinah stiffen and check her paddle. The Lead Instructor's words had prompted her morbid imagination to conjure up a vision of all that dark water below us and the massive creature which lurked there. If Dinah had rea- soned it out she would've realized it was a good thing the whale was catching us in its echolocation. Less likely it would breach and carry us with it up into the air. As for me, well, I never expected that one. Whale echolocation. How 'bout that? It might not be upraised flukes sheeting off lakes of sea water but Dodi's explanation, if true, was every bit as good for sheer wonderment. So much for the whales. Now, to dispense with the bears, the large brown ones said to inhabit the region. At the briefing back at Palmer, the Instructors said it was likely we'd obtain a visual on scads of bears. Twenty-five days into a thirty day course and so far there've been no satisfactory sightings. What we have seen of the bears has been about as inconclusive as what we've seen of the whales. There've been a couple of instances of students and In- structors, storming a mainland beach with the disturbance of an occupying force, discovering within the first line of trees a large pile of scat, richly brown, chock full of seeds and roughage like a big expelled plug of chewing tobacco, the steam still on it and probably still hot to the touch though nobody was checking. You could imagine the bear wheeling about at the noise of twelve kayaks hitting the beach, forcing a shat to lighten itself and then haul-assin' into the woods. It's what anyone would do. Suffice it to say, no one ever spots the author of the droppings. Well, one of the students on the first SGE came back with a report of sighting a bear at a distance, but he was by himself when it happened, so I don't know. They say the brown bears along the Alaska coast, where there's plenty of food year round and the brutes never need to hi- bernate, are known for their extroversion. Down in Southeast, in and around the fishing community where I've been living for the past year, the locals never venture into the bush without packing at minimum a sawed-off shotgun, the magazine loaded with slugs al- ternating with shells of double aught buckshot. I can hardly imagine a scenario more frightening than one in which you might be compelled to discharge such supplies into the face of a charging bear. The idea, as it's been explained to me, is that by blasting the double aught into the bear's face the animal will be given pause, Section #20: Paper Dodges [231] ! forced to take a few seconds to blink away the irritant, allowing time for the more precise firing of a slug into the bear's shoulder with the hope that some part of the animal's running gear might be sufficiently put out of order. I don't buy for a second that it would go down that smoothly. The one story I heard was of a panicked out- doorsmen who with the first discharge blew his own foot off and then suffered a mauling to boot. No one on the expedition has discussed the matter out loud but it stands to reason that the initial scouting parties we sometimes send ashore, typically comprised of two or three unarmed sea kayakers -- their combined physical bodies about equivalent in mass to the muscle and bone of a brown bear's left hind leg -- would not be sufficient show of force to scare off one of these animals. It wouldn't surprise me if, in almost every instance, a bear has devoted at least a few minutes to scouting the scouting party, test-stalking the rearmost student right up until the point the recon team either re-boards their kayaks or gives the come-ashore signal to the rest of the course. At which juncture the bear gives up its stalk, drops its deposit of spoor and moves off deeper into the brush. Bears and whales, rainstorms and tsunamis, maybe they do exist out here but they're making themselves scarce. Nothing much has come along to disrupt the daily sequence: morning paddle, mid- day break ashore, afternoon paddle, final beaching of the boats, campsite selection, water and wood acquisition, meal cooking, evening class to attend, camp game to avoid. Eventually, Crandall, Dinah and I would converge back at camp to quietly occupy ourselves in our usual ways. The evenings spent as a threesome around our fire were a welcome break from the intense social at- mosphere of the trip. If there were no classes or anything else to disrupt the time following supper, if we were allowed to proceed through the evening unhindered to arrive to an hour at which we could reasonably head to the tent for sleep, so much the better. There was an evening, it must have been around Day Seven -- a day or two after the incident with the stove and the pool of gas and the fireball and, I'm pretty sure, only a day or two prior to our reaching Columbia -- when the three of us were enjoying just such an uninterrupted evening when a second round of hot drinks was proposed. There'd been hot drinks before supper and then, as there was no class announced for the evening, the three of us -- the librarian, the biologist and the "itinerant laborer", as Dinah has liked to phrase it -- became immersed in our respective personal projects. A second hot drink to fuel another hour of reading always sounded like a good idea to me. Dinah volunteered to start the stove. This time, she said, she [232] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! was going to fire up the stove with a lighter instead of matches. I put my book down to observe as she gesticulated with her lighter in the direction of the stove two or three times, unable to scratch up a flame. The hang-up appeared to be that she was not spinning the striker wheel with sufficient authority. Leaning in close, I suggested to her this might be the problem. I was only going to point out the striker wheel to her, make sure she understood what I was talking about. It seemed Dinah thought I was attempting to take the lighter away from her. "I will do it, if you do not mind," she said, pulling her hand away sharply. She tried the lighter once or twice more but of course by then her hand muscles were cramping and it was of no use. She sat there for a moment with her head bowed and then reached the lighter over to me. "You're lucky," she said. "You're a boy. You were raised to use tools." "This again?" "The only tool my parents owned was one yellow-handled screwdriver which was kept in a bottom drawer of the dish cabinet. I think it was a screwdriver. Maybe it was a chisel, or a pick. I have no idea. All we ever used it for was to chip ice." "Sounds like it must've been a screwdriver." "How would I know? I was never afforded any experience with a screwdriver. Or with a plier." "Pliers," I corrected. "It's plural." "Or a wrench, or a hammer. It is probably too late for me to learn now." She was right about my background, I thought, as my hands moved to the cookstove and began of their own accord to manipulate the controls. My upbringing was filled with tools, racks and drawers and pegboards of tools, along with workbenches and car- ports and garages where my friends and I dismantled and reassem- bled the previously mentioned bikes and lawn mowers and car engines. Or built devices out of wood and scrap metal. It wouldn't have been seemly to describe to Dinah how, as sixteen year olds idling away a summer's afternoon, we built a mock-up of a female body, a very rough mock-up, hinged at its waist, fitted with boat's sponsons for breasts and a vagina constructed of vulcanized rubber complete with its own heating coils, the whole contraption actuated by a sal- vaged washing machine motor. When we threw the switch smoke rose up out of the void of the rubber vagina and the breasts flopped with such violence they threatened to tear away from their moorings. It was a nightmarish machine born of adolescent male desire Section #20: Paper Dodges [233] ! which none of us could bring ourselves to mount. We eventually dragged the whole incriminating monstrosity out to the back yard and using gasoline from the edge trimmer burned it down to cin- ders. Nope, I wasn't going to tell the librarian about that. Fiddling with the stove as Dinah watched me, I become self- conscious, aware of the wondrous dexterity and coordination of my own fingers, fingers who knew their job without my telling them. The tank was primed, the lighter sparked and the stove flared to life. "What did you say your parents do for a living?" I asked her. "They are employed as office clerks at the City Water Works." She seemed to think this was adequate explanation, but I was hoping for a little more. "They make sure people pay their water bill on time," she added. Right, I thought. Now there's something to fashion your life around, insuring that complete strangers pay their utility bill. Filers. Her parents were receipt filers. I'll bet they love to gather the receipts into a bunch and tap them on the desk top until the edges are even. "It isn't as though your life has been completely devoid of tools," I pointed out to her. "You said, yourself, that when you're back in your normal habitat, you routinely operate a toaster. That requires skill. And I take it you boil your pasta on some sort of range. And don't forget the paper dodge. That's a tool of sorts." "That's no more a tool than a woolen sock is a tool." "Absolutely a sock is a tool. You have to be concerned with fit, how the material interacts with your boot, the thermal insulation. You have to monitor a sock for wear, make repairs." "Maybe," she allowed. "No maybe. Getting a handle on how your layers work is complicated. It's far more nuanced than this lighter. The only difference is you've been wearing clothes a lot longer than you've been using cigarette lighters." I turned the stove off when it seemed the water was about to boil and lifted the pot toward our drink mugs. "Are you going to stay with that used tea bag?" I asked, pausing with the pot over her cup to give her a chance to fetch the bag out before I poured. "The tea bag is fine. But that water has not boiled yet." "It's boiled enough. Fish eyes, remember? Little bubbles?" I was still holding the pot over her cup. "Can't be much flavor left in [234] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! that tea bag, Di. Why don't you get yourself a fresh one? We have lots of tea." "Sometimes a little flavor is all I want," she said. "I wish you would let the water come to a rolling boil, if only for a minute." Here we go again, I thought. The pot was getting awkward to hold. "Fish eyes are good enough," I said. "It means the water has reached a boiling temperature. Heating it any further will not raise the temperature and it's a waste of fuel. The Instructors say the water's probably safe to drink even without boiling." "They said if you want to be absolutely sure it is safe then you should boil it." It was like this with Dinah, going around and around on the same track. It'd only been a day or two since our last discussion. The problem was that there was some ambiguity about the whole business of sterilizing the water. Recently the Instructors have admitted the school is preparing to revisit the policy as it pertains to its Alaska courses, possibly re-writing the protocol to encourage greater stringency. "Well, of course," I said, "if you press them for the official line on the matter, that's what they're going to tell you. For the sake of liability. But they don't mean for you to take them at their word. There's nothing wrong with this water." She was quiet for a moment. I was still holding the pot over her hot drink cup, the grips cutting into my palm. I made another move to pour the water when she started in again. "I do not want to get sick." I turned the pot from her cup to mine and poured in the water. "Well, fine," I said, using one hand to stir up my hot drink, "but if you're worried about this water then you'd better start worrying about the way we and everyone else rinses out their cooking gear with unboiled pond water. Dangerous microorganisms are obviously being left on the surface of our eating bowls. You'd better start worrying about the water in those streams where you and everybody else bathes. That water hasn't been sterilized and yet you're splashing it all over your face and into your mouth and nose." She sat back, startled by this consideration. "I don't think any gets into my mouth." "Maybe not, but the pathogens will find a way in somehow. They could be coming in through your ears, or other orifices. So, how about it?" She didn't answer. I went ahead and poured the water from Section #20: Paper Dodges [235] ! the pot over her wasted bag of camomile. "There you go," I said. "A nice hot cup of protozoa tea." And then took up my mug and went back to my reading. Whether Dinah drank her tincture or dumped !it onto the ground, I didn't bother to notice. ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Section #21: The Glade ! It'd be accurate to say that by about Day Seven -- the end of the first week of the trip with three more weeks to go -- the formation of cliques among the student group could be noticed. If you weren't elected to join any one particular clique, or if you didn't fall into a group by mere association, then you were placed into one by default. By the time we were approaching our bivouac on the Co- lumbia moraine I saw that I'd been lumped by the young collegiate majority -- the opinion makers and trend setters on this little excursion -- into the older and less dynamic segment of the student group. If some raucous game got going, for instance the passing around a clump of trashed poly bags roughly compressed into the shape of football, the youngsters didn't throw it to me or to any of the other members of the "oldster crew", not Pat, certainly not Di- nah, not even Crandall. They may've assumed that if we were to go after the ball we'd risk straining something. When one of their passes fell short and I reached up from where I was sitting and caught the ball one-handed the boys only apologized for the disturbance. Even after I returned the ball with as decent a spiral as could be put on a wad of trash, the collegiates made no overture to include me in the game. Not that I necessarily wanted to be included. Around the time of clique formation, I perceived an even more alarming development. I'd hardly given a second thought to the fact that every morning the librarian and I had loaded and launched out in the same Seascape double and, aside from our small adventure in rudder tracking on about Day Four or Five, she and I had always sat front to back, Dinah in the bow and myself in the stern. Following the experience with the red kayak, I was happy to have found a paddling arrangement with which I could live. I was glad not to have to go through the trouble, as I saw most of the others doing, of negotiating a new boat and a fresh partner every morning. With all of the switching about between boats, people were forever losing track of personal gear. Almost daily the Instructors made an announcement about some ditty bag or duffel which had Section #21: The Glade [237] ! turned up missing. Some items have never been found and are for certain lost upon some forgotten shore. Sticking with the librarian and the green and white Seascape helped to streamline the loading and unloading, which translated to more free time for reading or consulting my thoughts. I guess Dinah's and my daily routine could've been viewed as the sort of habit a married couple might fall into if they happened to be on a month long sea kayaking trip. This is probably what the younger crowd saw. But really, it was just tem- porary expediency, a way to get through the initial phase of the course with a minimum amount of hassle. I can honestly say I didn't suspect anything amiss. I did notice, by the time we were well into the first week of the trip, if Dinah and I were standing or sitting in close proximity to one another, others would hesitate to approach -- even Crandall started doing this -- out of some sort of deference, I suppose, to the idea Dinah and I might not wish to be intruded upon. I chose to believe the other students were adopting this attitude simply because Dinah and I are older and might appear to be preoccupied with the concerns of older people. Apparently, because of our habit of propinquity and an unfortunate tendency early on for her and me to occasionally secret away from camp together, a sizable portion of the student group began to view Dinah and me as romantically involved. Evidently, one member of the student group who labored under the assumption that there was more between Dinah and me than simply being each other's campmate and paddling partner was Dinah herself. Very probably, I was slow on the uptake. I'll grant it. Tyler, for one, indicates that I should've easily guessed Dinah was harboring feelings. "You encouraged her," Tyler pointed out. This was just yesterday, after she and I stood up from the tall grass and were making our way back to the beach. The med student had taken advantage of a lull in the conversation to ask whether there was anything going on between Dinah and I. "Absolutely not," I said. "There's nothing between us coming from either direction, so far as I know." "That's not what I've observed," Tyler said. "You talked with her all the time on the water. You'd ask her all sorts of detailed questions about her life." "We had to talk about something. Dinah and I also spent a lot of time not talking." "Maybe so," said Tyler, "but I'll bet she's never had anyone like you to talk with before. Even I was convinced you were an item. For a while there, I assumed the two of you had arrived to Palmer [238] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! together and were possibly even married. I mean, you were always stealing off in each other's company." "Good grief," was all I could think to say, even as I wanted to inform Tyler that it'd been Dinah, herself, who'd made it clear from the start that all she desired from me was someone with whom to share a tent. The more I thought about it the more I saw that to raise the point with the med student would only serve as more evidence for the truth of her case, this being that the librarian desired romantic involvement without knowing it, the most dangerous of these types of situations. "You know, Marlow," Tyler went on, "it's not hard to see how you got into this fix, considering the way the genders are segregat- ed in this culture. I don't know how Dinah was living before she came on this trip, but I have my guesses. Here she is, out in the boonies, barriers between the sexes largely non-existent, and she meets a man around her own age who shows more interest than any male since probably her father. No wonder she got attached." I couldn't fault her reasoning. "You may be the only male she's ever trusted," Tyler said, driving it further home. "You might be the only person, period, male or female, who's ever really listened to her." There was an evening -- it must've been around the evening of Day Four, or Five -- when the expedition made its camp upon one of the Sound's innumerable and obscure islands. Students and In- structors had gathered together after supper for a meeting to discuss the upcoming travel sequence, the so-called "Three Day Plan". A mist had rolled in off the water, a fog which didn't go so far as to condense into rain but which put enough moisture in the air to encourage some of us to don foul weather gear as a layer against the damp. The discussion of route and upcoming classes took all of fifteen minutes. By Day Four or Five, whenever it was, we students had evidently managed to pass through the "initial shakedown", as Dodi called it. I don't know what else we could've done. The only other option would've been to effect a mass evac and cancellation of the remainder of the course. The Instructors briefed us on the next concentrated phase, a sequence which would carry us through until we reached the turnaround point at Columbia Glacier, not quite the halfway point in time, nor even the halfway point in distance, but the furthest point we would move in an easterly direction from Whittier. Recall that in those early days of the course, meaning longer ago than a week and a half, the Instructors were capable of sneak- ing up on us with a camp game morning, noon or night. They'd in- ject a camp game right into the middle of a class if they thought we Section #21: The Glade [239] ! were looking sluggish. This was before Greywacke Drop, the last campgame we were to play. I'll have more to say about that in a bit. Well, on that evening, immediately upon reaching the end of student questions, Dodi sprung another game on us, segueing so quickly from the formal meeting phase to her little sporting affair I didn't have time to escape. I don't recall the particulars of the diversion she inflicted upon us that evening other than it required us to remain in our circle and take turns replicating a collection of pantomimes, or gestures, each of us adding to the series a finger snap, or a fillip, or an ear pulling, or an underarm scratching until, as the sequence was passed around the circle, it became so complex people began to forget the order and were thus eliminated from the match. All very amusing, I'm sure. I faked an enthusiasm for a couple of rounds, until the contest narrowed and the real competitors were revealed. Whereupon, I deliberately threw my turn and stepped back from the circle, fully intending to return to camp before there was the risk of getting caught up in Dodi's next brain- storm. There was at that instant a light tap upon my shoulder. It was Dinah, who beckoned me to follow her away from the group. "To engage in a short hike," as she put it. I readily assented. In those days, not a full week yet into the course, Dinah's quirks were still intriguing to me. Within thirty seconds we were gone, away from the sight of anyone who might've bothered to observe our departure. The librarian and I moved upslope, turning our steps into a stream bed where the water ran purling between the rocks. "I didn't come to Alaska to play silly campfire games," Dinah said, turning around briefly. "I figure it's for the youngsters anyway," I said. "It's been hard for them, no T.V. and all" When Dinah didn't respond, I had the worry I might've offended her, she being at one time by her own testimony a pretty heavy user of television. "Anyway, I'm with you," I said after we'd continued on a ways. "What are these kids going to do when they get older? They're completely failing to prepare themselves for the loneliness and isolation of adulthood." This worked no better as a spark to conversation, so I let it go. I shouldn't have been distracting her with questions. Dinah isn't like other people who've had experience carrying on a conversation while negotiating uneven ground. Her insistence on wearing the rubber boots at all times, of course, contributed to her ungainli- ness. The stream bed would've been perfect terrain for the technical [240] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! sandals, but I'm sure we'll never see those on her feet. I asked Dinah where we were headed. She turned slightly to inform me that it was not much further and, naturally, the instant she took her eyes off of where she was putting her steps she stumbled and fell. The foul weather gear prevented the splash from wetting her insulating layers, however the elbow she banged on a rock, I believe, still smarts her to this day. Poor Dinah, continually subjected to one small hu- miliation or injury after another. We exited the stream bed after a short space and took to a deer trail. I'm assuming there are deer on these islands. In any case, it was some sort of animal trail which wound its way up the muddy slope. The path quickly leveled out upon a muskeg bog. "Here we are," she said. I left her side and walked forward as if onto a stage. Yellow and purple wildflowers -- don't ask me what kind, I have no idea, it wasn't important -- were giving back the sunlight they'd absorbed earlier in the day, glowing like phosphors against the dark green of the sphagnum moss. Wisps of vapor curled through the tops of the fir trees and the mist, collecting on the needles, dripped into circular catchpools. I turned to say something about how nice it was but stopped before uttering any words. The expression on Dinah's face told me she was quite aware of how nice it was. She'd already visited the spot, of course, fetching water or firewood, and had now returned to show me her special glade with its wildflowers and pools of rainwater. I'm only using the word "glade" here because it's the sort of word she'd use. I'm not at all accustomed to using such a term. I'm certain that this "glade" was precisely the landscape feature Dinah had hoped to find coming to Alaska. It was why she'd signed up. It wasn't exactly tundra, but it was about as close as she was going to get around these parts. Obviously, she felt as if she owned the spot, hers by virtue of discovery. The glade had only been waiting for her to arrive and take possession and someday, Forest Service land or no Forest Service land, she'll return and build her thatched roof log cabin bungalow, or whatever she wants to call it, on the banks of one of the catchpools. Dinah stood blinking, looking directly at me, hardly sparing a glance for her new property. I wasn't sure what she wanted from me, or from the situation. It occurred to me perhaps she was a little sorry she'd brought me to the spot, that she would've preferred to have kept the magic to herself. I looked around at the margin of grass which perfectly encircled the pools. The turf continued uninterrupted to the clear understory of the surrounding trees at which point the grass ceased and the ground was blanketed with a thick Section #21: The Glade [241] ! pine duff dark with the wet. There was considerable downfall lying about, branches and whatnot, and normally I would've gathered up some to take back for the evening fire, but something told me it wouldn't be proper to disturb any of the natural objects found within the clearing. Even to dip water out of one of the pools would be a transgression. It was one of those perfectly pristine set-ups that humans should leave alone. I turned to Dinah with the suggestion that we hike on a little further only to discover that she was gone. I guess she only wanted me to see her glade, nothing else, and certainly not talk about it. Really, though, who can say what the woman wanted? If Tyler's correct, the librarian harbored some half-worked out notion that if she got us off together to a private spot and looked at me with a certain expectancy I would move in and force the both of us - - to what? Lie down together? Was Dinah offering me her bed, so to speak, the deep sphagnum moss by the catchpool, only the mystical light for a coverlet? Was she hoping I'd be so overwhelmed by the romance of the place I'd feel compelled to fall with her upon the miry ground and, you know, strum on the old banjo? I'm not sure I buy it. I'm going to stick with the theory that Dinah as much as I only wanted to escape Dodi's campgame and that she'd taken me along to the special place, away from the tumult of the course, so I could see how green the light that reflected off the catchpools. The librarian hadn't wanted me to do anything other than look and appreciate. Now, I should make myself absolutely clear. It's not that I don't find those ruddy cheeks of Dinah's unattractive, the skin un- marked by strain or exposure and covered as it is with fine dark hairs. I found the cheeks attractive the first time I took note of them in the half-light of the White Zone. I still find them attractive. I've studied the cheeks with an eye toward possible involvement with their owner. There's a moment when I study the lips and the cheeks and the whitened neck of every woman I meet. The survey means nothing in itself. As I have said, I well know the potential for romantic interlude on a wilderness trip. This is a pit I've fallen into a couple of times, more like three or four times, and each of these missteps into darkness required a year or more to climb back out to the light again, usually only after the female and I were well away from the charm of the particular backcountry that'd been responsible. As demonstrated, despite all of my many preoccupations at the onset of this trip, I still had some mind left over to scrutinize the entire female component of the course and consider the possibili- ties. It was all accomplished in the way of an idle daydream. There was no real intent involved. I've grown quite wary of mixing wilder- [242] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ness and romance. I've resisted so far the impulse to join with any of these women because to do so, as the Instructors so eloquently put it, would limit my exposure to the group at large and diminish my experience of the trip. I can say with a fair bit of certainty that if I was going to succumb to an affair with any of the females on this expedition the librarian would be, if not the least likely candidate, not the most likely. Besides, the impulse that wilderness most in- spires in me has more to do with books and reflection and what I like to refer to as the middle-distance, an imaginary plane that can get difficult to focus on or even locate when an expectant female is around. I'm not supposed to be here for romance. I came here to learn how to sea kayak and for that reason alone it seemed to make sense to get up every morning and load and paddle the same boat with Dinah. And because I didn't get a whole lot of help from the librarian I had to figure out on my own how to pack both our personal equipment and our share of the group gear into the various holds and stowage compartments of the double kayak. I took it on as a personal challenge, tinkering with the approach until I was satisfied I could replicate it with my own boat, should I ever own one. I can't say I necessarily enjoyed helping the librarian get situated in her cockpit prior to every launch. "Button my pogies, please," she'd ask. To which I'd correct, "You mean snap them, don't you?" Every day she and I would go through this little back and forth. I can be very stubborn about proper nomenclature. During the first go-around most members of the student group traded off paddling partners at least once a day. I think there was an unstated but generally accepted understanding about this, almost something generational, or class-based, that dictated the policy, a protocol picked up by these offspring of the affluent elite from their experience at summer camps and other extracurricular undertakings. This is simply what one does. You circulate and meet. It's bad manners to do otherwise. These youngsters, who took it upon themselves to enroll in something as arcane and expensive as a month long self-supported sea kayaking expedition are precisely the sort to enter into such an endeavor with the understanding that half the equation has to do with establishing a good working relation with the other participants. It's networking. It's how these youngsters have been raised to function, it's how they'll achieve success in a corporate climate, it's how they'll reach a point in their own lives when they'll be able to afford their own passel of children and someday provide them with expensive educations and experiences like this trip through remote Alaska. Even Crandall, older and from Amarillo, less under the influ- Section #21: The Glade [243] ! ence of upper class behavior norms, made it a point to paddle with someone new each morning, then to trade off again in the afternoon. In this way, within the space of a week, he'd been successful in getting to know each of the other participants, was even starting to work his way around a second time. The only thing he didn't do was man one of the singles. He said he was only interested in the double kayaks, having a partner with which to share the effort. Crandall always returned to camp with stories about the other students, the one kid who was on a golf scholarship at his college, the one who's into falconry and keeps three birds that he takes to com- petitions. Not counting Dinah, I was traveling in the company of sixteen other people whose separate characters were slowly being revealed to each other by the gentle vicissitudes of the expedition, only they weren't being revealed to me. I saw that the precise thing which I've come to fear as a result of romantic entanglement and which I strive to steer clear of was happening anyway. My experience of Prince William Sound was fast becoming dominated by a single personality. This didn't necessarily need to be a bad thing, I mean, look at what I'm presently doing with Tyler. But in the case of Dinah, the peculiarities of her nature, like the great pointed woolen hat around which I was forced to view the scenery, were irksome. Now, as it's turned out, the leveling effect of wilderness travel has made it possible for me to be involved with someone whom I'd otherwise likely never meet. I'm talking here about the med student. I chose the involvement with Tyler and I accept the limitations it will impose in exchange for the benefits. With Dinah, I was experiencing only the limitations. Interestingly, and purely as a side note, it seems I'm involved with the very girl about whom I would've said from the get-go was the most attractive in every respect. And this, I believe, is entirely a first for me. I still can't quite believe it. The circumstance of an expensive and remote wilderness expedition, drawing for its participants not only from elite academia but also from skid culture, has bent the rules of who's permitted to meet whom. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? ! On the evening of the day before we reached Columbia, the evening of Day Nine, we camped on the mainland about fifteen miles north of where the big glacier, first of the Ivy League namesakes, comes down to meet the sea. There were thick woods above the beach and plenty of flat ground for us to spread out in order to, you know, give the Instructors their desired space from us, their charges. As Crandall and Dinah and I were getting settled in, pulling the last of the slack out of the guy lines and taking a hard look at the ration bags in an attempt to settle on something for supper, Cord came over to our camp and asked if I might stop by his cook group and check him and his mates out on the procedure for baking bread with yeast. They wanted it as a sort of follow-up, I guess, to Thad Houston's cinnamon roll class of Day Three, almost a week previous. I'm not sure why the boys picked me. Possibly they recalled me saying something back at orientation about working as a cook in my other life. I was free to go with Cord right then and as the two of us walked in the direction of his camp I mentioned that it was an opportune time to do some baking because with all the downfall lying around building a fire and generating the necessary stash of coals wasn't going to be a problem. He didn't have much to say to this. "You okay?" I asked. "I'm okay. Just woke up from a nap." His eyes did appear a bit glassy and blood-shot. If I didn't know better -- there's no reason I should know better -- I might've said he'd been smoking something. I accepted his explanation of the nap. Cord and his posse were bivouacked off quite a ways from what I would've estimated to be the foci of the student encampments. I chalked it up to the boys wanting to create the illusion of being on their own in the woods, in wild Alaska. When Cord and I arrived to his camp, the other four collegiates were engaged in helping one of the fellows pull his sleeping bag out of its stuff sack. The bag had somehow come out of its dry bag, or maybe had never been put into its drybag, and was now evi- Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? [245] ! dently soaked with bilge. The other three young punters, whose sleeping bag it wasn't, stood about letting out groans and whistles as they watched the fourth lad wring out of the bag about a half gallon of seawater which ran dripping down his legs onto the greywacke. Joining in the laughter, as he stepped on one end of the bag and twisted the sodden mess, the youngster didn't appear too fazed by the fact that he was probably going to be in for a couple of chilly nights, until his own body heat dried the bag out. I stepped up and advised him to right then go hang the sleeping bag on a branch where it could be exposed to as much sun and breeze as was left to the day. Amusement over, the other three fellows returned to the campfire where they already had some kind of stew, or chowder, boiling away in their largest pot. I put my nose over the lip and took in an oily inundation, like a chum bucket needing a rinse out. "Whew," I said. "That's pretty strong." "Mussels," one of them informed me. "Sounds delicious." I noticed the boys hadn't made much progress in the realm of setting up a tent or a kitchen tarp. It appeared that as soon as they arrived to shore they went mussel picking and got busy on the soup. First things first, I suppose. When I was their age food was a big concern, too. And also, I'm sorry to admit, I would've likewise been working on my tan. Every one of the chaps -- maybe in imita- tion of Cord, maybe because when you're young and in college these are the priorities -- had their shirt off, clearly not for the first time. Nobody was as dark as Cord but they all had what you'd call a passable base. None of our young swarthies was wearing a bug net because they either didn't care about getting bitten or -- and this was the far stronger possibility -- they'd laved on so much insect repellent there wasn't the possibility of a bug lighting upon their skin much less biting. Why should there be any concern about the long term effects of the chemicals involved? More important to go for the consistent tan than to fret over toxins whose effect would be years down the road and more likely anyway to distress the internal organs. The fellows, to a man, effected a light bearding on the chin and cheeks, more of a downy, spotty outcome than a real beard. It was as if they'd made a pact between themselves before leaving Palmer to grow what whiskers as could be mustered during a month in the Alaskan outback. And, of course, the Lead Instructor was there at the time of issue to discourage the bringing of razors. I'm sure none of them had planned to bring a shaving kit anyway. It's all part of the American male wilderness experience. Why both- [246] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! er to travel to the Last Frontier if you're not going to attempt a beard? One of the fellows was tipping a poly bag of pink colored powder, some flavor of instant drink mix, into his palm and licking the result off with his tongue. I thought about saying something as to how this didn't seem behavior proper to a frontier wilderness. In- stead, I asked the trio if it'd be okay to borrow some coals from their cook fire in an hour or so for some bread baking. I suggested that a nice loaf of yeasted pan bread might go well with what looked to be a pretty thin soup. Cord and I and one other member of the fraternity disbursed from the food duffels everything the fellows had in the way of flours and meals. Turned out there were still a lot of basic ingredients left. In fact, though we were almost ten days into the trip, it appeared the young champions hadn't touched any of their flour, or grains, or legumes, either. "Well, there's plenty to choose from," I said. "Doesn't look as if you guys have been doing much baking, or frying, or anything for that matter." "Zero," said Cord. "That's why we asked you over." Further questioning discovered the fact that, except for boiling some of the pasta, the boys had in fact done zilch cooking of any sort and so far eaten only those rations which could be consumed straight out of the bag, even some, such as raw oats, which weren't meant to be eaten uncooked but which they'd given a try to anyway. "We're basically down to trail mix and cheese," said Cord. "Lots of cheese." "And mussels," added one of the boys over by the pot. "Maybe less pepper this time, Todd," Cord said to the youth who was in charge of the stew. "What about cereal?" I asked. "Gone." "Crackers?" "Ditto." "If the fishing doesn't pick up you boys are going to be in trouble." "We enjoyed the salmon you gave us, Marlow," said Todd, dumping into the pot a handful of spice, hopefully not pepper. "Only next time we'd like the whole fish." "About the only fish eyes we've seen," said one of the others, "has been at the bottom of this pot. How do you think those two ladies managed to catch so many fish?" he asked. "You mean, the two female savages?" I asked. "Yeah," he said. "The ladies with the sail rig. How come Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? [247] ! they've had such good luck?" "Don't know. Superior knowledge of the waters maybe." The cook group's fuel canisters were lined up in a row at the edge of the kitchen area. I tested their weight and found every one of them heavy with gas. "You fellows aren't much for hot drinks either, are you?" "Nope. Sean there drinks a little hot Tang from time to time." When he's not licking it straight off his palm, I thought. The fellow who'd gone off to hang his wet sleeping bag returned to the group and I had the boys gather around for the lesson. I judged it best to demonstrate a method of yeast baking which would allow them to fashion a loaf of bread out of almost anything: corn meal, oats, even bulgar if it came down to it. I decided to essentially go over exactly what Instructor Houston had shown all of us the morning of Day Three. Looking around, I asked the boys for their other cookpot. Each cook group had been issued two pots. There was a slight pause and then Todd owned up: "We actually don't have the small pot anymore. We think it might've floated away on the tide." "Right," I said. Then I remembered something else. "Is this also the group that lost a sleeping pad." "Yep. Went away around the same time as the pot." "Well, why don't one of you go see if you can borrow a pot from one of the other cook groups. Any size pot will do." While one of the fellows strolled off on this mission the other three young sparks, plus Cord, gathered around close as I started to assemble ingredients for a dough of whole wheat flour with an ad- mixture of what I believed to be corn meal grits, though it might've been granules of cream of wheat. Same difference. Which was the point. As long as they had something glutinous to hold it together they could add whatever they wanted. Witness Pat's Wayfarer Loaf. I dipped a little broth out of the chowder with a mug, dissolved in some brown sugar and swirled the mix until I figured it was cool enough not to kill the yeast outright. I wanted a dramatic result and I sprinkled in a quantity of spores sufficient to leaven concrete. The five of us squatted down in a tight circle. There was a pause while we waited for the little organisms to spring out of sta- sis. Todd went back to monitor the mussel chowder. To stir the yeast mix, I'd grabbed a random spoon lying on a rock, one of the previously mentioned white ABS plastic spoons, standard issue if you show up to Palmer not already equipped. There were a couple of other spoons lying around, all of the same white thermoformed plastic. The boys had put me in a didactic [248] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! mood with the baking lesson. Plus, I sensed they seemed to be observing me afresh, less of an out of touch old dude maybe as a result of my having come over to help transmute bags of unpalatable dry ingredients into something they could chew and digest. After all, it's not as if I'm the same age as their dads, I'm not that old. But -- and maybe this was the problem -- I was somewhere in the middle ground between them and their parent's generation. They didn't know where to fit me in on the spectrum of status and accomplishment. Who knows, maybe at some level they were beginning to sense that here before them was an adult male who existed outside the spectrum of status, which might've been just a little bit interesting, you know, in a theoretical way. Feeling their attention on me, I started to say something about the school issue spoons being suitable for maybe a month in the backcountry, like the present trip, but if any of them were anticipating future excursions then they'd be better served to obtain spoons of metal. I ended up not being able to deliver the full spiel on spoons. Probably just as well. I'd have made a bore of myself and been reinstalled back into the classification of parental type, or if not quite that then into the nebulous category occupied by assistant coaches and talkative school bus drivers. Right as I was heading in to say something about the advantages of metal spoons versus plastic, one of the chaps interrupted. "You've got some good growth going there, Marlow." He meant my beard. "Yep. Wish I'd brought a razor. It's going to smart some when it comes time to shave." I could tell he thought I was nuts not to be reveling in my success at whiskers. "Where'd you get those boss pants, Marlow?" one of the other fellows asked me, meaning of course the blue nylon wind pants, decidedly non-issue. "Just kidding," he quickly added. "Those pants are stylin'." I let it go about the pants. It should be mentioned that all of these young stripling's faces and hands were blackened from attending the campfires of the past nine days. The fronts of their windpants were likewise covered with a dark grime, the result of continually using the pants as a wiping surface when they ate, also probably from using their laps as plates. I started to ask if they were bothering to brush their teeth, but refrained. One of them took note of my campshoes, the sneakers which are, in actuality, a reputable brand of basketball shoe. "You play sports, Marlow?" "Not really," I said. "There's the pizza cooking. Maybe that Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? [249] ! qualifies as a sport. There's plenty of footwork involved." The one who'd asked me about sports then spat onto the ground a stream of ocher colored saliva. Some of it dribbled onto his lip which he just as quickly sucked back in. "Excuse me," he said. "Why the chew?" I asked. "It's snuff. I was a smoker before the course. Maybe I'm still a smoker. The Instructors said it would help the withdrawal." "Might also give you another habit." "So, Marlow," one of the others inserted, "you're living -- where did you say? St. Petersburg?" The fellow was eating straight out of its bag a sort of spicy sesame stick mixture, part of the ration. I could smell the stuff on his breath even from where he was sitting. "No saint," I said. "It's just Petersburg." "Where's that exactly?" "South of Juneau, north of Ketchikan. Near Wrangell." I could tell there was little point in making these geographical references. They had no idea if I was talking about Southeast Alaska or the Arctic Circle. "What do you do in St. Petersburg? You say you're a cook?" The essential facts of our lives had been laid out back during the getting acquainted circle at Palmer but I didn't mind going into it again. "Well, when I first got off the ferry," I began, "a little over a year ago, I picked up a job in a cannery. Then I worked on a fishing boat. And at present I'm a cook in a pizza pub." "Is being a cook better than working on a fishing boat?" I don't recall which of them asked me this. They were pelting me at random. "I wouldn't say it's better, it's just what happened." "Must be a lot of girls in down there in St. Petersburg, huh?" "Less than you'd think." "So, what keeps you on?" "Not a whole lot. I'm thinking of leaving in the fall." "How do your parents feel about you living up here in Alas- ka?" I looked hard at the young collegiate who'd asked me this, whichever one it was. It'd been a long time since anyone had inquired about the expectations of my parents. "How do you know my parents don't live here, too?" I asked. "They might live in Anchorage." The fellow smiled back without comment. "I'll tell you, Sean", I began -- let's say it was Sean, I don't remember who it was -- "I may not look it, but I'm way past being con- [250] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! cerned about what my parents think about anything." I didn't want to be hard on the lad. When I was nineteen, or whatever he was, I'd spent considerable energy attempting to reconcile how I thought I wanted to live with what I imagined my parents and everyone else expected. It's a difficult thing to feel yourself at odds with the program that's been laid out for you and yet be uncertain how to forge any other path. "He's old, dude," one of the others said. "Marlow's old. He's his own man." I'm not sure if I qualify as old, not yet being thirty, but these fellows were definitely young. They hadn't attained control of their faces yet, nor the expressions that sprung to their eyes and mouths. The one who'd asked me about my parents assumed an embarrassed mien, as though he'd said something entirely uncool, which took him a minute to shrug off. Well, I thought that was okay. Maybe I'd been reinstalled back into the oldster clique but it was sounding more as if I'd been placed into the category of an uncle, dad's younger black sheep eccentric brother. The kid who'd gone after the pot returned successful in his quest. I took the vessel, poured in the yeast slurry and showed the boys how to mix in the flour, adding a little of this and that to demonstrate it didn't really matter about proportions, that it was far from being rocket science and so forth. When the dough was ready for its first rising I asked if anyone remembered the next step. No one did. I rolled the lump into an empty rations bag and instructed Cord to put the package down inside his windpants where it'd stay warm. "Can't we just put it in the sun?" he asked. "Better to put it in your pants," I told him. "Right there under the drawstring." The other boys watched as Cord pulled up the hem of his windpants and tucked the poly bag down below the ridged stomach muscles. "Right against your skin," I told him. "I thought Thad was just kidding," Cord said. I assured him putting the dough directly against his ab- domen was the best way to go. "Got yerself knocked up, dincha Cord?" one of the fellows commented, eyeballing the bulge. Cord reached over to a duffel, evidently his personal gear bag, and took out a sleeveless yellow shirt, "Beach Patrol" stenciled on the front, a shirt that had seen considerable wear, the white lettering cracked and chipped. He threw the shirt on which made the bulge less obvious. Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? [251] ! When I informed the boys it'd be about twenty minutes before the dough proofed sufficiently all of them but Cord and one other drifted away to play hacky-sack, every now and then someone going over to give the chowder a stir. Instead of playing hack and working on their tans, I thought they should've been putting up tarp and tent. We had class later and the I's insisted that shelters be set up even if a group didn't intend to cook or sleep in them. We were still expecting the inclement weather to arrive any day. The fellow who'd stuck near the fire took up a paperback from the ground and turned to the place where he'd left off. I read the title on the cover and instantly recognized a work of fiction which had been enormously influential to me back about half a decade ago. The book is famous for its several lead characters who pursue lives of uncompromising individualism, who value above all else the freedom to create and build. I was envious of the youngster having this long, original work in his possession, possibly reading it for the first time. The book was easily going to see him through to the conclusion of the course. The fact that he was out here with so little media distraction was only going to heighten the experience of reading the book. To be honest, I was a little struck by the image of this nineteen year old, a mere boy concerned about his tan and his standing among the other young fellows, taking on a tome of such substance. I was twenty-three or twenty-four before I managed to tackle it. But I gather a lot of the kids on this course are in accelerated programs. "That's a pretty good book," I said out loud. "It's okay," he responded. "A best seller," I went on. "About the only book that's sold more copies is the Bible." "Yeah, someone told me that." The young scholar returned to his reading but couldn't have gotten more than another page or so before his comrades called out for him to participate in their hacky circle. He set down the novel of uncompromising individualism to join them in their game of coop- eration, a gentle distraction in which no one wins or loses. I considered drifting away myself, returning to camp, to see what Dinah and Crandall were up to. The sight of Cord sitting motionless, tied to the spot, hands clasped over his middle to keep the bag of dough positioned upon his groin, inspired me to ask him how it was going, particularly how it was going with the red kayak which, stalwart that he was, he'd paddled without complaint for almost a week of days, ever since he took the boat over from me. "That kayak's a dog," he said flatly. Cord was the exception amongst the boys on the beard grow- [252] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! ing front. He's older and has clearly already been shaving for a number of years. A darkish beard was coming through full and even on his cheeks, chin and upper lip "I agree," I said. "At first, I thought maybe I was just weak. You'd think by looking at it that boat would be fast. There's something wrong with it. You've certainly done a man's job keeping up. You should give it over to somebody else." "You want it back?" "No thanks. I did my stint." "I'll see if one of the bro's will take it." I looked over to where the bro's were still at the footbag. I can play a little hackysack when I've mind. I even had a sack with me back at the tent, you know, in my purple ditty. It's a clear sign I was feeling oppressed by the forced socializing of the trip that I hadn't once taken the footbag out to kick around. Nor was I inclined to join in with Cord's tentmates. The fellows were having a little trouble with their reaction time on the sand, still I saw them take one round up to what must've been about twenty-five hacks. Cord had removed a project from out of his personal duffel. Sliding the diver's knife out of its leg sheath, he bent to carving and gouging at what was a section of tree branch thick as his wrist. "Whatcha got going there?" "Totem pole," he said, holding the stick up for me to examine. I saw the beginnings of several figures, faces really, what looked possibly to be a bear and above that something humanoid. It reminded me of a totem pole I'd seen somewhere, hard to say where exactly. I've seen so many since arriving to Southeast Alaska. At the very top of the stick was a bird shape with a short, hooked beak. I saw how Cord had taken a pencil and, as a way of working out the placement beforehand, sketched other figures upon the un- carved lower portion. "It'd be nice if your bird has outstretched wings," I said. "I'm gonna carve them separately and stick 'em on with pine pitch," he said. "The way the Athabasca did it." "That'll be fine." I had a question I'd been meaning to ask the lad and I went into it, this being as good a time as any. "So, Cord, did you pay for the course yourself? If you don't mind my asking." "My Mom and I split the cost. She thought it'd be a good idea for me to get out of the valley for a while. Get away from certain in- fluences. The only place I really wanted to go was Alaska." "You in school down there, in the valley?" "Nope. Took a few classes at community college, not to much good. Been toying with the idea of enrolling in a two year law en- Section #22: Is It A Boy Or A Girl? [253] ! forcement program." One of the guys quit the hacky circle, because, really, when it comes down to it three is optimum for footbag. As I watched, the superfluous kid took out his own knife, a folding pocket type. Using the thumb stud, the youth actuated the tactical edge one-handed and with practiced movement flipped it at a driftlog about fifteen feet away. The knife traveled end-over, struck the log handle first and fell to the ground. "That'll be good," I said about Cord's law enforcement, though I didn't really think so. "Aside from carving totem poles, do you practice any other kind of art?" I was watching him drill what appeared to be the beginning of the bear's nostrils. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I mean, do you draw, or sketch, take photographs, play a musical instrument, sculpt?" He lifted his head from his work to look at me. "Not a bit," he said. "I surf." "Right." The young sportsman who'd flipped his pocket knife at the log made a short line in the sand with his toe, retrieved the knife and, stepping back a couple of feet from the toe mark, threw again, this time with force and confidence. The tip of the knife blade met the log perfectly, sinking almost an inch into the soft wood. "Hey, look, Marlow," Cord started in, "I think they're still asking for volunteers to be SLoDs tomorrow" -- he pronounced the acronym as if it were a word, more or less rhyming it with "slobs" -- "you want to go in with me and crew one of the doubles?" I was instantly struck by Cord's proposal. As per the Instruc- tor's directive, each us was obliged to be a Student Leader of the Day at least once before Small Groups began. It was part of the so- called Leadership Progression. I'd been trying not to think about the requirement other than scheming to keep a low profile with the hope I might be passed over. I assumed, if the duty turned out to be unavoidable, I was fated anyway to share it with Dinah. Though, in truth, it would've been impossible for her and me to be effective SLoDs while paddling the same double as we always end up at the rear of the group, sometimes so far to the rear that for periods of time we are no longer part of the expedition. Cord's proposal opened up a glimmer of light on the possibility that the trip, only a third over in actuality, could take an inspired turn. Maybe it could actually be worked out so that I wouldn't have to help the librarian with those pogies anymore. "Well, you know, pal," I said, "tomorrow might be a very interesting day to be a SLoD. We're going to be heading into Columbia [254] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! and word is there'll be ice." "Killer.". I suggested he give me the bag of bread dough and go right then and check it out with the Instructors, report back. He removed the plastic bag from beneath the hem of his pants, handed it over for me to place against my own stomach and took off at a dead run. In the meantime, I prepped the skillet with some oil. The boys, still at their game of hack, weren't around to observe but I was sure they could figure out oiling a skillet on their own. Cord was back in less than five minutes with the information that, so far, only Beth had volunteered for SLoD the next day and she had no partner. The Instructors would "consider our petition", as Burl had phrased it to Cord, and would let us know some time in the evening. "That's fine," I said. And it was fine. I needed a little time to talk the matter over with my current paddling partner. I showed Cord how I'd punched the dough into the skillet. "The best approach at this point would be to put the whole thing, skillet and all, inside a sleeping bag, the way Thad Houston showed us." "So, is it a boy or a girl?" asked the fellow who'd been at the knife throwing, coming over to check on our progress, seeing that Cord's pants no longer swelled outward. "Do you think you can pull off the baking without me?" I asked Cord. "It'll work best with coals from yonder fire." He indicated that he and his campmates could probably handle it. I'd guessed as much, fire being these boys' forte. "It was the yeast business we weren't clear about," he said, adding that in addition to putting coals on top of the lid he was also thinking of placing the skillet on a stove set at low idle. "Give it a quarter turn every couple of minutes," I said. "It'll work out great." "Thanks, Marlow," said Cord, the surfer. "We have untold options now." As I was getting up to go, the boys broke from their game to ask how they could pay me back for the baking lesson. They wanted to give me some of the bread when it was done. I told them they'd better keep the loaf to split among themselves. It wasn't going to go all that far as it was. I said I'd be happy to accept a polybag of hot chocolate mix, if they had any to spare. It turned out a couple of the fellows had developed the habit of eating the cocoa powder straight out the bag, "free-basing it" as they put it, but they still had plenty of additional and were happy to give me some. In the end, they let go of two full bags, a veritable wealth of hot chocolate. ! ! ! ! ! Section #23: Currents and Tides ! As far as fires went, Cord had certainly lit one under me with his plan. Hiking back to camp, I was excited to consider the prospect which seemed to be opening up. I felt a change in the air as surely as if the light had shifted, as if the trees and rocks had suddenly come into better focus. Truly, I was feeling revivified. I wouldn't have necessarily said I was ready for a modification to the routine but when the possibility fell into my lap I realized how much I wanted it. A five minute discussion with the surfer had al- tered the whole lay of the land, and the sea, too, I guess you could say. Crandall and Dinah were at camp, waiting to see what I wanted to do about supper. I debated for a minute whether to stash the two poly bags of hot chocolate powder in my personal duffel for emergency back-up later down the road, but then I went ahead and put them in with the rest of the rations. While I was at it I took a quick inventory of possible supper items. Class was scheduled for that evening and there wasn't time to prepare anything elaborate. I don't recall what we ended up cooking. I remember we got a fire going and heated whatever it was we'd decided to eat -- probably beanie mac, always our fallback -- directly over the flames, not having the leisure to wait until coals were generated. The whole time we were at this, I mulled over my secret possibility. There was still some time left to us post-supper and we decided on a round of hot drinks with the idea we could take our mugs with us to class if need be. I accepted my ration of hot water and as Crandall poured it for me over a spoon's worth of instant crystals, I considered how this right there had been essentially the problem. It was the regular cups of coffee that were killing me. The fact that I could count on coffee arriving at more or less predictable intervals each day contributed to the days passing easily, one after another, without challenge and consequently without notice. In one of my visits to the Instructor camp, at my request and using my topo as a reference, Thad Houston had blocked out the three weeks which remained to the course, including the two upcoming Small Group Expeditions, the first anticipated to be a three [256] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! day outing, while the last SGE could be as long as five days in length, schedule permitting. Instructor Houston tapped with his finger upon the final rendezvous at Entry Cove where the entire course, kayaks and all, would be shuttled back to Whittier by a fishing boat under contract to the school. As the Third Instructor iterated the whole sequence, I marked the segments on my map and ever since that day have done everything within my power to move the trip along, to get everything wrapped up lickety-split and us out of here. I was resigned to paddling every day with Dinah. I'd practically stopped thinking about it. It was on some anonymous stretch of water, rowing along without taking notice of the surroundings, I realized I was counting how many days were left to the trip, yearning for a swift conclusion. Then came Cord's suggestion and suddenly I saw it didn't have to be this way, that the resignation could be fought. Even if I'd already started to tick off the days there were still plenty remaining, more days than had passed. For it's always a shame to count off the days of one's life, as if upon the count reaching zero there'll be anything other than void and emptiness. I was listening to the tiny smacking noises Dinah made as she sipped her mug of hot water, or extremely dilute herb tea, and decided that for whatever reason I'd shelled out the course tuition I'd not forked out over three thousand dollars to continually exist in the miasma of another person's anxious personal struggle. Even if Cord and I were not selected as SLoDs I decided maybe I'd see if he wanted to paddle together, anyway. And if I was not to paddle with Dinah any further perhaps I shouldn't tent with her anymore. None of this is to say I wasn't worried about how she was going to take the news, if this was what I decided to do. Then my thoughts went back the other way. I considered that perhaps it'd be best to continue on as we were. There was comfort in our routine and if nothing else Dinah was a known quantity. In this way, I wrapped the trip up in my mind and projected myself to the other side of its conclusion. Yessir, I'd reflect at some future date, that sea kayaking trip had sure been a choice little adventure, the ocean air really carrying a nice tang, but not something to repeat any time soon. If what I wanted was ultimately for the trip to come to an end then it was going to come to an end a whole lot quicker if I stayed with the known and predictable. I'd grown fond of the Seascape with the lime green trim. It'd taken the better part of a week but I'd finally gotten the rudder pedals fine-tuned the perfect distance from the seat. Still, SGEs were going to happen. Change was coming whether we wanted it or not. I saw that it'd behoove me to exercise Section #23: Currents and Tides [257] ! control over the change rather than wait for it to overtake me. Plus, I knew that I only wanted the course to come to an end because I was so dissatisfied with the way it was proceeding. Without too much effort I was able to locate within myself a spark of curiosity about how it might be if things were different. I mean, as long as we were sticking around and not opting for a general, course-wide evac. And so I vacillated. I couldn't see my way clearly. I decided to leave it up to fate, dependent upon whether or not Cord came by our camp with news of the Instructor's decision. I'd take my cue from that. No sooner had my thinking reached this stage when Cord appeared from out of the bushes. He'd been sent around by the I's to inform the tent groups that Nav Class to be followed by at least two student mini-lectures was to begin on the beach in ten minutes and to be sure to bring along, in addition to ensolite pads and layers and the usual items, all of the compasses and maps we could lay our hands on. As he was walking away he paused and turned just long enough to announce, "The Instructors say we're on, Marlow." "Okay, man." My campmates didn't ask me what he meant. I'm not sure they heard him. We stacked up the pots and utensils to be washed later and, gathering hot drink mugs and water bottles, pens and paper and maps and the rest of the meeting-for-class crap, we split for the beach. It was Navigation 101, or rather Advanced Nav 201 since we'd already had some quickie instruction on declination and bearing earlier in the trip. We were to work in pairs for this next in- stallment. I'd heard what Cord said about bringing along our compasses but my head was so full of changeful thoughts I forgot mine and had to return to camp. I was only gone about three minutes, class hadn't started yet upon my return, and yet most of the group was already partnered up. Dinah, as usual, was moping about at the periphery, headnet draped down over her face, though I don't recall the bugs being much of a problem that evening. It was clear the librarian hadn't located a partner, probably hadn't even tried, and was waiting for me to get back, assuming I'd join up with her. Previ- ous to that evening, I surely might've teamed up with her out of habit. I even moved a little in her direction until I was close enough to see her compass in its unopened blister pac. There on the cardboard backing was the hapless couple, still unable to find their way back to the comforts of media and routine lawn care. That did it. I was no longer able to deal. Dinah was going to have that thermo- plastic package the rest of her life. Even if she could bring herself [258] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! while on the course to break the seal and remove the compass, I decided, she was never going to be able to bring herself to throw the package away. She'd stow it in a drawer and coming upon it years hence examine the illustration and wonder at the strangeness of people traveling through life so habituated to one another they couldn't venture into the backcountry without the other along. I avoided Dinah's eye and veered away from the spot where she was loitering as abruptly as if I'd glanced off an invisible barri- er. A new energy was upon me. I was possessed of my secret plan to salvage the trip. I wasn't going to sit next to the librarian anymore. That era was coming to a close. I moved to the middle of the student group and threw my ensolite down on the greywacke next to the pad occupied by the young female whose name I knew was Tyler, about all I knew regarding her at the time, other than something she said about attending a particular high-powered college back east. It was Day Nine and I'd just about forgotten all about the girl with the Titian hair and the dimple high on her cheek. I didn't bother to ask Tyler whether or not she'd already arranged for a partner. It didn't matter. I had my own map and compass. I could work by myself if need be. If someone wanted to join in that'd be fine. Otherwise, I was going to hunker down on my ensolite and figure out the business of tides and currents, the evening's stated curriculum. The instructional got underway and suddenly it was evident in a way it'd not been before that Dodi, our Course Leader, was deliberately preparing us for SGEs and a time when we would travel without her and the other two instructors. Without announcing it formally it seemed the three I's had decided we students were capable of managing ourselves on land and sea without their supervi- sion. Dodi took a moment to revisit declination from Nav 101. "Remember," she said, "don't be tempted to flatten your map on a rock." She placed the topo she was holding atop a small erratic and then just as quickly whisked it away. "Iron ore in the rock will throw your needle off sure as anything. Put your map on the ground, preferably on the sand, or on the hull of a kayak." And so she continued on with her tutorial, soon to leave declination and move on to tides. "I'm still not exactly getting this," said the female named Tyler. She hadn't been addressing me precisely but in my new expansive mood I was glad to offer help to anyone who wasn't Dinah. "I can explain it," I said, "but I'm going to put it differently than Dodi." Section #23: Currents and Tides [259] ! "That might be a good thing," the girl said and she took it upon herself to scoot her pad over toward mine until she and I were side by side upon one continuous carpet of closed cell foam. She shifted her topo over. "Okay. So, go ahead." I'd gotten stuck there for a second staring at the indentation in Tyler's lip. There was the spot, just a little over from center, where the lip appeared to be pulled up sharply by a wire. You might recall that I'd experienced some trouble over this lip indent ten days previous on the bus ride from Anchorage, another lifetime ago. I managed to snap out of my trance and together the girl and I proceeded to align her topo map with the landscape. Tyler took up my compass. "It has a mirror," she exclaimed and immediately held it to her face. "For sighting on distant objects," I said. "Works great on land. Not so good on water what with everything bobbing around." She didn't care about any of this, didn't appear to be even listening. "I was writing in my journal just this morning," she said, holding the compass at different angles in front of her mouth and then at her nose, "about how strange it is to go an entire week without seeing your face in a mirror. You sort of lose track of where you're operating from. But there it is ... my face. I swear," she said, licking at a finger and touching her brow, "someone should take a person aside and tell them when they have soot all over their forehead." I'd not noticed the soot. The only thing I was interested in was the lift of that lip. I did take a moment to note the way the blue kerchief was knotted around the slender white throat. Boy, I was thinking, the bandana making it evident, the circumference of the girl's neck couldn't be much bigger around than my water bottle. "Do you have a plastic or a metal spoon?" I asked. "Metal," she said, still working the mirror. "Why do you ask?" "You can use a spoon as a sort of mirror." "Oh, believe me, I tried it," she said, talking and laughing at the same time, a talent she'd exhibited back on the bus. "One way makes my too nose big, the other magnifies my ears which, I don't need to point out, are large enough." "I wouldn't exactly say so." "You don't have to say so, but it's true. The ears are over- large." She put the compass down with its base parallel to the edge of her topo. I boxed the needle and showed her how the map still needed to be oriented slightly. [260] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "You have to compensate for the fact the needle points toward Hudson Bay." "Tell me why that is again?" "Large ore bearing bodies." "Right. Makes sense." We leaned in over her map and our shoulders touched. I was very mindful of this soft pressure, which the girl allowed for a full fifteen or twenty seconds. "Why does Dodi say to rotate the bezel before boxing the needle?" "School compasses don't have built in declination." "And yours does?" "Yepper." I showed her the tiny set screw used to input the deviancy. I started to demonstrate the alternative method of turning the bezel by hand, but for some reason it wouldn't go, the plastic ring was stuck. At that point, I was going to call it good on map orientation but Tyler reached in to make an adjustment to the chart whose edge was still not precisely parallel to the base of the compass. I noted that compared to mine her topographical map was still very clean, with precise creases. I also noticed for the first time Tyler's wristwatch, a complicated and over-engineered device with beau- coup dials and readouts. "I'm surprised that thing doesn't have a built-in compass," I said, indicating her watch. "Seems to have everything else." "That's right," she said. "If you need to know the current hour in zulu time you know who to ask." Sometime around this point in the proceedings, I glanced over across the student group and spotted Dinah, who had chosen that very moment to contend with the packaging of her compass. I lost all track of everything going on around me so intent was I on discovering how Dinah would proceed. I saw her attempt to tear the top of the package open with her bare hands, which of course was a no go. She actually started to bring the package up to her teeth then thought better of it. Her partner, squatting on the ground, said something to which Dinah gave heed. I saw the librarian shift her grip on the package and put tentative pressure on the friction tabs. Initially, nothing happened but right as she looked to her partner for guidance the two thermoformed halves magically opened and the compass, along with the cardboard backing with its illustration of the useless couple, plus some sort of instruction sheet went flying to the ground. Over the tumult of the class, I heard Dinah cry out and drop to her knees to retrieve these wayward objects. There being no further disaster to witness, I turned back to Tyler's map. Section #23: Currents and Tides [261] ! Dodi chanced by our pads to see how we were faring. She saw my compass and took it up to show the class an example of a type which permits an internal declination adjustment, plus a mirror to facilitate taking a bearing. She started to hand the compass back. "Why's the bezel so cloudy and gunked up?" she asked, tilting the compass back and forth. "Don't know," I said. "Maybe because I take it in the shower so I have a mirror to shave by." "That would do it." Dodi handed the compass back, but not before she availed herself of the little mirror to make an adjustment to her hair and perform a quick inspection of her teeth. She started to move onto the next pair of students, then reached down to take up my topo map. Shaking the paper chart until it opened out as much as it was going to, our C. L. noted the split creases and water stains, the one corner completely mashed to pulp. She dropped it back down on the ensolite and said: "I hope the rest of you are taking better care of your maps than Marlow here." When Dodi conducts classes ashore she trades in the yellow headgasket for a faded red ballcap. This cap features a blue and white patch sewn to its front which up until that moment I'd never been quite able to get a read on. With the Lead Instructor so close, bending over and critiquing my methods as she was, I could see the patch featured the image of a chicken-like bird. It had small wings like a chicken and as far as I could tell the creature was a chicken, except that it sported a prodigious beak, disproportionately enormous like a toucan's. The bird stood solidly upon two splayed feet, an odd tuft of feathers sprouting from its hind end. Of course, it wasn't a chicken. The identifying word "Dodo" was stitched below the image, the lettering curving along the border of the patch. Dodi returned to the front of the group and proceeded on to tides and currents. And it was my turn not to get it. "Here, look," Tyler began. "It's simple. I had this figured out by the time I was eight years old, sailing my sunfish around Narra- gansett." She went on to give me a way of visualizing the position of the sun and the moon and their combined effect upon the elastic skin of the ocean. The girl explained how the moon could be at first or third quarter. She used terms like "apogee" and "perigee". I didn't care much about the terminology, but I was happy to watch her mouth shape the words. It was delightful to observe up close her lips form a word like "extrapolate". When she pronounced the word "neap", the wire came into effect, lifting her upper lip in its interesting way. I thought possibly I had the concept of ebb and flow fixed in my mind, though later I would discover little of it had stuck. All I [262] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! could think about as Tyler spoke was how I wanted to place, not necessarily my lips -- that would come later -- but the side of my face against her cheek. That was entirely it. I wanted to put my cheek against hers, just to the fore of her ear where the skin appeared soft and covered with a light fuzz. I believe I'd wanted to do this ever since she and I met on the bus. When the navigation class ended, I thanked Tyler for explaining the business about the tides. "You're welcome. Thanks for the coaching on declination. All I needed to know was why the needle points east of north and the rest made sense." She and I could've gone on talking like this but the situation called for returning to our separate encampments where there were the evening procedures to attend to, the securing of food and setting up of sleeping stations. I gathered my gear, pausing only briefly to see if I could figure out what was wrong with the compass bezel -- not that I needed to be able to rotate it but simply to determine what it was causing it to jam -- and headed back through the woods. It'd been nice to sit next to the young girl. Nice to touch shoulders. A stealthy way of touching. No one else can tell it's happening. You touch for a minute, then you don't touch. As I made my way back to camp, I began an urgent process of scrapping together everything I could recall about Tyler, beginning with the bus ride from Anchorage. Honestly, I couldn't remember much. Until the evening of NAV 201 it was as if she and I had been on separate courses. About the first and only item that came to mind was the certainty, based upon scant observation which now had taken on a new piquancy, that Tyler and Cord had already entered into something like a heavy flirtation. Which right there complicated any scheme for future shoulder touching with the med student. Isn't it interesting that I'd only just hit upon a way to disbur- den myself of the librarian, was feeling free for the first time since the course began, and almost immediately began to entangle myself anew? Anyway, I think it's interesting. Makes you wonder if possibly I'm uneasy with equanimity, don't trust it, and require something to worry and fret about at all times. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Section #24: Packing It Out Only Dinah was back at camp immediately following Nav class. The campfire was out, as per the protocol when students leave their kitchen for any period of time. I wouldn't have expected Dinah to rekindle the fire. It wasn't something I'd ever seen her do. She'd shown herself to be uneasy around campfires, for some unknown reason, though within thirty minutes I was to learn the cause. Dinah had the stove going under a pot of water, already near a boil. I noted a number of expended match sticks lying about and found myself nodding at evidence that she'd managed to ignite the stove on her own. It'd been two or three days since our last joint conference over the stove and it seemed, step by step, the librarian was beginning to make progress. I felt a moment's superiority over The Tracker, Dinah's old Pine Barren's mentor, who not only hadn't bothered to teach her how to operate a lighter but had also neglect- ed campstove instruction and virtually all other skills basic to comfortable outdoor living. I asked the librarian where Crandall was. "He has gone down to the beach to wash the skillet." "Good deal." It looked like everything was getting set up for a last round of hot drinks and a stint of reading, brief as our time would be before heading to the tent and sleep. Crandall was back after a few minutes and we settled in. With a book I'd taken earlier from the fifty cal. ammo boxes of the traveling library, along with the novel about motorcyclists at large in the American West, I set up a reading station against an erratic where there was a little natural ledge in the rock, just the right height and placement for my hot drink mug whenever it should arrive. Crandall had specimens to file that evening, plant cuttings I believe it was. Dinah was messing with her nesting pots. I had the library book open in my lap, ready to begin reading as soon as hot drinks came together. Meanwhile, I mused upon the troubling presence of the young woman, the medical student, Tyler, a girl not adverse to touching shoulders. I couldn't believe the female and I had coexisted on the same course for over a week and yet nearly everything having to do with [264] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! her had occurred beyond my ken. She'd quietly gone about the business of participating in the expedition, hanging out with her cook group, eating, talking, sharing a tent, pairing up each morning with another student in a double, or paddling a single, the whole hour-by-hour spectacle of her existence occurring away from my observation. It was all I could do to keep from going over to her camp, right then, under some ruse or other, to see what she was up to, not necessarily to talk or to disrupt her activities, but to be in proximity where I could watch her hands move, the way her hair shifted upon her shoulders. Clearly the sickness had begun. When it seemed that about three times as many minutes had passed than was necessary for hot drinks to be prepared, I looked over and saw Dinah still attending the pot which was at a boil, steam jetting out in all directions from beneath the lid. I decided that perhaps it wasn't right to expect Dinah to fix our drinks and serve them to us. I went over to see if I could help in some way. "How soon before water's ready for hot drinks?" I asked, taking the lid off the pot. I thought it possible she didn't know a boil was on. "Not making hot drinks," she said. "What're you doing?" I asked, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I saw what she was about. Partially submerged in the boiling water was her titanium knife, fork and spoon and the small metal pan, part of the nesting cook set, which served her as a plate. "Sterilizing my utensils," she said, using the pot grips to momentarily lift the chow set clear of the water, as if to check its doneness. I felt an immediate flash of annoyance. I didn't want to feel aggravated. I tried to see this new project of Dinah's as a good and necessary thing. Sure, why not dip one's utensils into boiling water? Probably not a bad idea to do every few days. Get everything back to a base level of sterilization. And when she was finished we could still use the water for hot drinks. "For how long?" I asked. "Ten minutes at a rolling boil." She checked her watch. "Al- most there." "Are you crazy, woman?" I said. Actually, it was more like I yelled it. I reached down and turned off the stove. "First off," I said, "it's a huge waste of fuel." I tried to tone down my words, but they still came out overloud in the silence which followed the last sput- terings of the burner. All I could think about was how many times she might have done this without my knowing it, burning up ungod- Section #24: Packing It Out [265] ! ly amounts of white gas, bringing us closer to a time when we'd be camped on the glacial moraine with no trees, no downfall, out of stove fuel, no way to heat water, some of us forced to drink instant coffee crystals dissolved in glacial melt to keep the jones off. "You haven't been sterilizing Crandall's or my stuff have you?" I asked. I looked over at the biologist who was studiously going to avoid any involvement. "Because there would be no point in it," I said, answering my own question. My outburst had stunned her. The spots of color on her cheeks narrowed down to points and then flowed back large, suffus- ing her whole face with a rosy pink. I stared for a moment at her headnet, bunched up on top of her balaclava like a pompom. I couldn't understand what was making it stay in place. "Don't you remember what the Instructors said about conserving fuel?" I said, trying to moderate my tone. "All I'm saying, Di, is we need to use our heads here." It was no good. I couldn't get her to even turn her head to look at me. Without saying a word, she stood up and walked downs- lope away from camp, the headnet bobbing about and yet somehow managing to stay put atop the balaclava. Crandall continued to sort his specimens, the frontal hank of red hair falling a little lower over his face. "How long has she been boiling her utensils like that?" I asked him. "I have no idea," he said. "I know she sometimes boils her drinking water." "Sure," I said. Then I saw how Dinah had done it. It'd been a process of chipping away bit by bit, first acquiring a knowledge of how to work the stove, under the pretext it was all about heating water for tea, and then slowly taking advantage of my inattention. I might not've minded so much if she'd brought the water to a boil and then adjusted the stove back to an idle. But, no, it was going full blast, the water lapping and foaming, practically jumping out of the pot, as if she was depending upon the sheer violence of it to lay waste to the germs. She probably boils her pasta at home the same way, stove burner cranked up to max, making sure those spirals are thoroughly cooked and sterilized. Truth was, at the time, Dinah might not've known how to adjust the stove to an idle. I'd never showed her and I'm sure Crandall hadn't. It's unlikely she could've figured it out on her own. I don't wish to be overly negative or to place limits on anybody, but I believe, certainly believed at the time, such mechanical fine tuning was beyond Dinah's ability. So far, she hadn't demonstrated that she could consistently light the stove, not with matches or by any [266] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! other means. There was no need to show her how to idle the stove. It's a bit tricky to keep these Optimus units from candling at low output. She'd opted out of all the cooking and baking so there was no reason for her to know about making any fine adjustments. Bringing water to a fish eye boil for the purpose of hot drinks was what she'd been trained to do and she should've limited herself to that. I've never been able to tolerate for very long the existence of bad feeling between the librarian and myself. Not more than five minutes after she walked out of camp I went to find her. I discovered her down by the water. She was squatting beside a tide pool, dabbing at the pool's edge with a stick and peering into the small containment, observing the riot of the animalcules, inspecting the holes and preparations the little creatures make for themselves, or so I supposed. "Look," I began, kneeling down next to her. "I apologize for getting so upset." "There was no need to curse like that." I replayed the scene in my head and couldn't recall using any profanity. Actually, she was lucky. I'd bit my tongue before calling her a "dumb cluck", not exactly profanity but almost as bad. "Again, I'm sorry," I said. "I was out of line." My apology produced little change in her features. She continued to squat as if made of stone, her mouth compressed into a straight line, eyes hidden by the folds of the mosquito headnet which had disarranged itself during her stomping off. "Dinah, I know you're doing your best and that the course is difficult for you, but you need to try a little harder and consider what's good for the group, what's reasonable and what's not. We don't need to be using the stove so much. There's tons of wood around here. Ask Crandall or me to build a fire if you want to sterilize your utensils. You don't even need us. You know how to build a fire. You said you learned on the survival course." "Actually, I never succeeded in starting a fire with the bow drill. Only a few people did." "Right. You only discussed fire building in theory. Sure. What about the sailing course? You said you built bonfires on the beach." "Other women built them, not me." "Fine. I'll show you how to build a fire. You've watched Cran- dall and me do it dozens of times. There's nothing to it." "I would prefer we not make campfires." "Not make campfires?" I sat back on my haunches to study her and consider this new manifestation of her psyche. Now, you see, that's the advantage of a trip like this. It's the Section #24: Packing It Out [267] ! result of not being around T.V. or movies or radio for a month. Without the distraction of media there's more time and inclination to delve into the personalities of one's fellow humans. I was as curious at that moment regarding Dinah's motivation as I could ever be about the character in a sit-com or a film. It didn't take long before I sussed out the problem. I decided it had to be the burning of the wood. The librarian didn't approve of our aggressive appropriation of the driftwood and downfall which we dragged over and incinerated for the trivial purpose of heating water for hot cocoa, or cooking our food to render it palatable. The more I thought about it, crouched there beside her, the more I was certain this had to be it. To her, burning downfall was a wanton destruction of scenery, of natural objects that had been here long before we ever arrived, which had more right to be here than we did. "Dinah," I began, "we need to make fires for cooking. There's nothing else around here to burn but wood. It's the most basic of human needs. People have been burning wood for tens of thousands of years," I went on, trying to couch my argument in terms that would be of strongest appeal. "It's natural," I said. "And the smoke helps to keep the bugs away." "It's not the wood," she said. "I don't care about the wood. The wood is already dead." I stared at her. "Not the wood. Then what is it?" "It's the moss," she said. "You always start the fires with moss." "Right," I said, for then I understood the difficulty. "And the moss is alive. Sure. There it sits on the limb, quietly existing, not hurting anyone, except maybe the tree, and then we come along and rip it down and set it on fire. That's it, isn't it?" "Yes." "Well look, we'll start our fires some other way. We'll use paper. Or leaves and twigs. We can even dribble on a little gas to help get it started. Gasoline was once wood, too, you know." Dinah didn't say anything in response to this. Her muteness always irritates me. Now, about that moss, or lichen, as it's strictly classified. Di- nah had informed Crandall and me of the plant's taxonomic name, a member of the genus "Usnea", or something. That was as specific as her field guide went. Dinah, of course, preferred to call it by its common name, "Grandfather's Beard," a term which I could barely abide and would shut my ears whenever I sensed she was about to utter it. These lichens have a way of deliberately nestling themselves picturesquely in the crooks of branches, like the fanciful specimens which drip off the trees in illustrations accompanying [268] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! Norwegian fairy tales. That's the way the lichens manage it, making a silent appeal to human sentiment, like the fixed smiles on the beaks of dolphins, which of course have nothing to do with the emo- tional state of dolphins it's simply the way their mouth parts are formed, for scooping up squid or whatever. It sure rounds out the holiday for us humans, though, to go to Sea World and witness Flip- per hoist himself halfway out of the water and swim backward, all grins and bottle-nosed laughter. In the end, this fixed cheerful expression may save the dolphin while other species go by the board. As for the lichen, our Grandfather's Beard, its only recourse is to position itself in the crooks of branches and do its utmost to evoke ancient woodlands, dusky forests inhabited by sprites and lep- rechauns and other ciphers of innocence. It's the sort of thing that puts people like Dinah under a spell, stuck as they are in their childhood imaginations. Considering all of this, I watched the soft white librarian hands change their hold on the end of the stick they were using to piddle around in the water. I know I shouldn't have been so hard on her. Dinah is only manifesting many of the romantic impulses I hold within myself. I can only fear for such impulses in a harsh and grinding world. I don't see how such fragile notions can possibly survive. They can't survive. To be truthful, I'd not been entirely easy myself about the business of tearing down the innocent lichen for the purpose of kindling our cookfires, applying flame to their delicate green tendrils and so on. But Dinah's whimpering concern compelled me then, as it compels me now, to be an emissary from the realm of violence and cruelty, the world's reality. I was intent upon eradicating all sentiment in the name of practical survival. I got a grip and went on. "Here's what," I began. "From now on we'll start our fires using twigs and paper and pine needles, stuff that's already dead. Sprinkle on a little white gas to get it going." "That might be all right," she said. Then you can boil the water until there's no water left, I thought, staring at the impenetrable fabric of her balaclava. And after boiling your eating utensils for twenty minutes, I continued to intone in my head, you can put everything in the fire for flame sterilization. Honestly, sometimes the woman's tone sent me crazy. I wanted to blurt out that all the gas she was burning to spare the local scenery was instead disturbing the scenery in certain Middle Eastern countries, with tens of thousands of men, woman and children being slaughtered in the debate over who was to control the resource. "Okay," I said, "Let's head back to camp. See what Crandall's up to." I estimated the bad feeling between us largely dissipated, or Section #24: Packing It Out [269] ! resolved about as well as it could be. "I think I will stay down here for a while," she said. I got up from the squat that was paining my knees. Her mosquito net was still for the most part wadded up on top of her head. "What's holding that thing in place?" I asked. "What thing, pray?" "Your bug net." "Safety pin," she said. "That way the net is always on my balaclava and ready for use." "Right." I walked away leaving Dinah to her probe stick and her rumination and whatever else she needed to do to work her way back into a mood to rejoin us in camp. Since that fateful evening with Dinah on Day Nine, so long ago now, almost two weeks into the past, I've been more at large within the expedition, certainly less hermetically sealed off as I was for a time with the librarian. For starters, I've been privy to more communal discussion and also exposed to more general information about the outdoor school. During one or another kitchen tarp chat with the Instructors, I made a joke about how if the fishing continued poor we might turn for sustenance to the small land animals, the birds and squirrels and such. Burl chuckled and offered a little history on the school's approach to hunting. In addition to other interesting facts he gave me to know that in the early days of the outdoor school the mountaineering courses were issued .22 rifles with which to dispatch small game. And it wasn't always small game that suffered. The Second Instructor mentioned a sea kayaking course which ran out of food a week early and was forced to shoot and eat a small black bear. Guns are no longer issued to courses but to this day the school's Rocky Mountain backpacking expeditions will occasionally supplement their rations with a grouse or a rabbit dispatched with an ice axe, or a sling shot, the latter perfectly legal with a small game license. If I'd known all the ins and outs of the school's history at the time of camping with the librarian I might've been tempted to inform Dinah about the rifles and the slingshots, the roasted grouse and the black bear stew. It would've given her some perspective on her concern for the moss. I know that Dinah has experienced some difficult events in her life, more awful than anything I'm likely to go through short of a prison sentence. It's not necessary to remind her the world can be a horrifying place. She's plenty aware of the fact. I simply found myself wishing she'd incorporate at least some slight acknowledgement of life's evils, so that her utterances embraced more a range of values instead of a constant storybook version of reality. Otherwise, my own innate need for balance rears up and I'm [270] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! compelled to remind her of the world we actually live in, the one that contains both good and bad. I realize her concern for the moss is all a part of her attempt to preserve some place on this orb from the spreading degradation. I shouldn't fault her for this. It'd just be easier to deal with her protestations if she'd acknowledge that in this world the fate of a few clumps of Grandaddy Moss is of nil consequence. If she'd allow this much then she'd be free to add that given this fact maybe we should try not to add to the horror. If she'd put it that way, I'd feel all sides had been acknowledged and I'd happily be in league with her. Prior to ducking back into the woods in the direction of camp, I looked back once toward the librarian and saw that she continued to squat in the same position, trailing her switch back and forth over the surface of the tide pool. I slipped into the margin of the trees and began to pick my way through the thicket of deadfall, a chaos of branches and denuded tree trunks tossed up and left high and dry by past storms. Passing through this verge, entirely by myself for a period, I considered the manner in which Dinah had been squatting there next to the tide pool, stick in her hand. One of the great mysteries of the trip has been the question of when and where Dinah performs her evacuations. While I have at one time or another come upon almost every other student on the expedition hunkered down amongst the greywacke boulders, or leaning intently against downfall in the woods, and most of them have managed to surprise me in the same attitude, I've never once spied Dinah. Of course, I've never spotted the Instructors either, but they're a stealthy lot, practiced at this outdoor communalism. With most of the individuals on the course you could simply ask them about their method or their regularity and they'd tell you. Maybe not when the course was young but certainly at any time after the first week. However, even now, if you broached the subject with Dinah, she'd walk away without answering. The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that when the librarian needs to move, or void, she'll go far into the woods away from camp to the very limit that her anxiety about bears will permit. While she's situated, waiting for her paroxysm to arrive, she'll get in a little preening, utilizing the signal mirror with the hole in the middle. I have to wonder what she did in the Keys, but I guess even down there some sort of brush must grow above the beach where she was able to find concealment. Traveling entirely with women perhaps the need for privacy wasn't as pronounced. She said something about them using a bucket at the back of the boat when they were under sail, which doesn't sound very private. I'm pretty sure Dinah steers clear of the beach when she Section #24: Packing It Out [271] ! needs to go. Too exposed. The woods, or the forest, as she always refers to it, is her natural habitat. It's the setting where she first received her basic outdoor training in the Pine Barrens, though it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the tracker school skipped over the entire procedure and instead provided outhouses. It'd be hard to get the proper dilution with everyone hanging around the same general area for days on end practicing the debris huts and whatnot. I hate it, but I cannot prevent myself from visualizing her strategy. Knowing the librarian, I'm sure she's got herself on a schedule. I imagine her to be as punctual as a cat, taking care of business just before retiring to the tent at night. That'd be the most discreet approach. It's the time of day when we're all wandering off to brush teeth and urinate. The light is at its dimmest. Her absence from camp would never be noticed. Given how little she eats she probably doesn't feel the requirement to evacuate more than once every three days. She wouldn't be a leaner, few women are. Dinah would squat like the rest of her gender. I imagine her first locating a spot on the ground entirely free of plant life. There she'd deposit her issue, a spoor which I imagine to resemble both in size and compactness and possibly even in color the lozenge of the rubber suction device of the emergency snake bite kit. Which kit, incidentally, because I've not spotted it in her stuff, I feel confident was been left back in Palmer. I do happen to know what the librarian wipes with. At least I think I've delved it out. Of course, Dinah would never use a stick, or a rock, or moss, or any of the natural toilet paper options suggested to us by the Instructors. She wouldn't want to desecrate these sacred objects of the natural world. Certainly not the moss. Well, not for nothing have I scrutinized Dinah accessing her toiletries bag during her evening gear sort and inventory. Numerous times I've spotted her handling a zip-locked bundle of something which appears to be toilet paper, or Kleenex. Same thing. Following her evacuation, the silent and expeditious movement of her bowels, there it would lie, the little log, almost seeming to float in the air above the duff. For Dinah, there'd be no using a stick in the approved manner to mash the dookie down into a cat hole, mixing the offal with loam to aid in decomposition. Nosirree. I see her using the end of a switch, the same length as those wands she takes along on her tide pool investigations, to gingerly coax the result of her session into a re-cycled poly bag, along with the single square of soiled tissue. Eventually, she'd pack this out in her personal duffel to join all of the other cargo my weary arms were once required to propel from one campsite to the next. And for a time I [272] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! remained convinced that all of this was true, though there's never been any actual proof. It might be -- probably is -- my imagination taking things too far. ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Section #25: Noisome Boots I arrived back to camp to discover Crandall putting a pot of water on the supper fire which he'd rekindled. "Hot drinks?" I asked. "Could be," he said. "Some of it's for my water bottles." "Cran. Not you, too?" "Well, you know, she got me thinking. I'm not saying we need to sterilize our utensils, but maybe boiling the drinking water isn't such a bad idea. Just to be on the safe side. You want a couple of bottles filled?" "No. But, boy, if you end up with any hot water left over, I'd sure like a little for a cup of coffee. You know, only if you can spare it." When the librarian returned she went straight over and took up her duffle bag. It was looking like we might finally settle into an evening of quiet reading, specimen study and gear sorting. After no more than ten minutes, which shows what you can do with a wood fire -- one can only hope Dinah took note -- Crandall announced that water was available for hot drinks. "... or anything else for which you might want a quantity of boiled, sterile water," he said. The three of us gathered around the fire and the steaming pot, everything back to normal, everything worked out and smoothed over. Wishing for the dispersion of boiling water to happen as soon as possible, I set out our three mugs and checked with my tent mates about their preferences. "Crandall? Zinger on ice?" "Sure." "Okay. Kidding about the ice." There has been ice, even cubes of ice, but not in those days, not prior to our bivouac on the Columbia moraine. I checked Dinah's mug and saw it contained one wasted tea bag. The bag had probably been in there for days. She'd just kept pouring more water on top of it. "And for you, Dinah, one hot mug of fractional tincture." Which got a snort out of our life sciences teacher. [274] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! "Or, we have some fresh pasta water left over from supper," I suggested. "It's probably congealed at this point but it could be re- heated." Dinah had only recently begun to request the drain-off from our noodle boiling as a hot drink. The first time she did this, which couldn't have been further along than about Day Five, Crandall and I exchanged a glance. He put out his tongue and shook his head in disgust at the very concept. I asked Dinah if pasta water was something she "relished" back in her home habitat. "It seems such a waste to pour it into the sink," she replied. "Water that contains perfectly good nutrients and calories. I would not say I relish it, but I do not mind the taste." I actually didn't know if the pasta water was still around from Crandall's supper prep. Probably he'd poured it out on the ground. "No, thank you," she said. "I would prefer simply plain hot water." "Simply plain hot water it is." And I poured her a portion of boiled water right on top of the tea bag. The thing couldn't have had any flavor left and was the same as not being there. Like the left over pasta effluent, plain hot water was not an unusual request from Dinah. I saw both as connected to a desire on the librarian's part to diminish her impact upon the planet's resources. Which led me down a train of thought ending with the conclusion that, really, it didn't matter about Dinah using up all the stove fuel. Word was, when we reached Columbia, we were going to form new tent groups and re-divvy up the rations, including the stove gas. I knew of one tent group who'd hardly touched their fuel supply. There was going to be plenty of gas to go around. We were still futzing with our hot drinks, Dinah and Crandall splitting what remained of the water into their drinking supply. "Hey, Dinah," I began, "what do you know about the dodo bird?" "The dodo is extinct," she said. "That much I'm aware of," I said, though to be truthful I hadn't been so sure about the bird's extinction. I thought maybe it was like the gooney, much reduced in numbers but still around. "When did it go extinct?" "Only recently," the librarian said. "I believe it was in the sev- enteenth century. The dodo is the first species whose extinction is verified to have been caused by man." "No doubt." "The interesting thing is that the seeds of a certain species of tree will not properly germinate unless they first pass through the Section #25: Noisome Boots [275] ! digestive tract of the dodo." "I take then the tree's not faring so well either?" "I have not read anything one way or another concerning the tree." "Well, that's all very interesting. I knew you'd have some information. Isn't there also an 'Alice in Wonderland' tie-in?" "The dodo is the one who organizes the caucus race." "Right. The caucus race." "Dodi has a dodo bird patch on her ballcap," Crandall said. "So I noticed." "When she was little her family called her 'Dodo' as a sort of nickname. As she got older they switched to 'Dodi'." "No kidding." I looked at the biologist. Well, well, I thought. The red-headed lad from Amarillo has apparently been engaged in some personal chit-chat with our Course Leader. I was a little jeal- ous, if you can believe it. I wondered if Dodi had likewise selected Crandall to go through issue, had perhaps pressed a tactical outer layer against his chest, as well, and encouraged him to make a purchase. It was right as Crandall was topping off his bottles with the boiled water that he brought up the fateful subject. I don't know if it was his concern over pathogen-free drinking water that inspired his line, but I could not've been more grimly satisfied by the topic he chose. "Beth and I were paddling alongside the Instructors today," he began, "and overheard them talking about a recent student fatal- ity, a girl who was on a backpacking course in Wyoming. She drowned while attempting a stream crossing. I guess it happened a couple of summers ago. Beth asked the Instructors if there'd been other fatalities. Burl said that since the date of the school's founding over half-a-dozen students have died while on-course." I looked over at Dinah. She'd not changed her posture one bit. Not even her expression had changed, though you could see that her muscles had sort of tightened up and a tension had begun to emanate from her like barely audible static. "Yeah," I said, turning back to Crandall, "I heard something along those lines." I could feel Dinah's eyes slowly fixing themselves on me, not upon my face, but as if her gaze was boring into my chest. "Would you mind telling me how all these deaths occurred?" she finally asked. "I really don't know," I said, concentrating on stirring the contents of my cup. "What d'you hear, Crandall?" "Mountaineering accidents, mostly," he said. "Rockfall and [276] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! whatnot." "Well, sure," I said. "That figures. Gets pretty sketchy on those glaciers. Hell, it can get pretty sketchy anywhere. I once heard about a backpacking course, not this school's, a different school's, down in Mexico. Baja or somewhere. Robbed at gun point by banditos. The whole expedition. Right in broad daylight. Even took their boots. The banditos herded everybody, students and instructors, into a tent, fired some shots at the doorway to dispel any ideas of giving chase and then took off." I stopped there. I didn't add that in the end, from what I'd heard, no one had been hurt. My goal was simply to horrify Dinah, give her some perspective on the pal- triness of her concerns. I wanted to create a picture of wilderness calamity so pervasive she couldn't possibly have any complaint about how things were going with us. "So, you lose a few students to rock fall," I continued, "you lose a few to the crevasses. A couple of drownings here, a case of hypothermia there and you've got your half-dozen fatalities." "They said a couple of the fatalities involved sea kayaking," Crandall added. "No doubt," I said. "Still, I'll bet it's statistically safer to be on one of these trips than to be a typical American at large in a major city. How long's this school been in operation?" I asked. "Around twenty years, I believe," said Crandall. "And only a scattering of fatalities. That's not bad. Down around Yellowstone and the Tetons they lose that many tourists every summer to the mountains and the rivers and the bears. Not to mention the thermal features." "A scattering," Dinah said, managing to raise her eyes level with my chin. "I think you are incredibly calloused." I was suddenly seized with an impulse to ask Dinah what the deaths of a few privileged, risk-wavered white kids could possibly signify in a world of snuff films and state sponsored torture. But I refrained and without saying anything else took my drink away to the rock, the one with the little ledge shaped like a cup holder. Dinah carried her own travel mug of plain hot water over to where her duffel bag lay and commenced to rummaging. In keeping with her usual method, she removed the items one by one from the duffel, placing them carefully in a row upon her ensolite: headlamp, mittens, the interlocking chow kit, everything. A week and a half into the trip and she was still trying to understand what the gear items asked of her. All they asked, I wanted to tell her, was to be taken up and put to their intended use. She paused in the selection of items to intently examine some object which she held in her hands. As you can imagine, I Section #25: Noisome Boots [277] ! wasn't getting much reading accomplished. Dinah didn't entirely remove the object from the duffel and I couldn't tell what it was. She was hunched over, fixated on the thing she held, her sharp nose projecting downward. To this day I'll bet the librarian could turn the pages of a book with that nose of hers. I imagine her eating toast and pasta salad while flipping the pages of a magazine with the adroit action of her proboscis. Dinah has informed us that the next character building experience she's put in for after this kayak trip is a month long ap- prenticeship at a facility located on the coast of Maine specializing in the hand-building of wooden sailboats and dories. Lord help us. When I picture Dinah standing in the midst of the tools required for such an enterprise I experience a constricting sensation in the middle of my forehead. I'm sure the director of the boat building school assumes his apprentices will arrive for their stint in possession of some practical know-how, some commonsense ability. Well, it's going to be an initiatory, character building experience all right. As soon as Dinah's exposed to the rapid work methods of ship- wrights and carpenters it'll be a toss up whose character gets built the most, hers or those of the regular employees. When they say no prior experience with tools necessary they don't mean you should show up without instinctively understanding that a wood chisel shouldn't to be pulled through a plank in the direction of your chest. They'd expect you to know beforehand that a poorly struck nail is quite capable of flying back with the force of a bullet. Because it's true. A wrongly tapped tenpenny can shoot back with enough velocity to penetrate the skin. I've seen it. Dinah would know about the glancing power of nails and other objects if she'd ever played tiddlywinks. Has Dinah ever played tiddlywinks? I think it doubtful. Her parents would've recognized the dangers inherent in the game, the risk of eye injury from a poorly flicked tiddly, and steered her to something safer, like turning the pages of books. Dinah's parents. Man, there's one source of the difficulty. Parents who insist their offspring call them Mother and Father -- right there's an indicator things got off on the wrong track early. Dinah has given me some background on her people, bureaucrats whose philosophy of life can be summed up by the phrase: "Take heed". She's described to me how her father is of the school which believes humans are allocated only a limited number of heart beats per lifetime, therefore one needs keep a close tally on their count while exerting themselves. Sheesh. The main advice this pair seems to have passed on to their daughter, their secret to survival in the modern age, is stick to a routine. Establish a lifelong routine as early as possible and then never deviate. Yep. That's how you do [278] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! it. That's how you help your child reach age thirty-five with limited life experience and almost devoid of practical skills. These are the parents who, according to Dinah, forbade her from wearing patent leather shoes because boys might use the reflection to look up her dress. Now, tell me how that makes any kind of sense? I don't care how polished the shoes, the reflection off the leather would never produce a useful image. Well, it's not fair to say the librarian's entirely inept. Dinah does know how to operate a toaster and the controls of a stove top, can manage some food prep, even if she does buy her cheese pre- cubed. And the little rubber finger tip is not to be discounted. I was completely serious when I told Dinah she should consider it a sort of tool. I'm considering getting one of the things, myself. I'm sure I love handling paper every bit as much as she does. It couldn't weigh much, the rubber thimble, and might be a useful device to incorporate into the daily round. Another object to monitor for wear and tear. When I get back to town, meaning Anchorage, where there are actually office supply stores unlike in Southeast, I'm going to look into buying a box of the little knobbed devices. Now, I assume Dinah can turn on a light switch. That has to be a given. It's within bounds, however, to consider whether or not she's capable of changing a light bulb. She might have to get the superintendent to do it. I suppose a lot of people these days call in the super to change a light bulb. Still, I'm thinking most people could change one if they had to, if it were entirely up to them. As for Di- nah, well, I don't know. She might examine the defective bulb and not know how to get it out of the socket, not understand that it's screwed in, or which way to turn it out, or even understand which part of the fixture is the bulb. I guess I could ask her at some point if she knows how to change a light bulb, but I'm almost afraid to hear the answer. Now for certain, Dinah can operate the flush lever on a toilet. She has to be able to do that. This has to be beyond debate. As for what's going on in the tank when she depresses the lever, I'm sure that remains a mystery to her. Doesn't sound as if her parents ever did much lifting off of toilet tank lids. Dinah might not be aware that the lid can be lifted off. Well, I've pulled off a few tank lids in my time. I can re-attach a float if need be, even adjust the chain, but to be honest I have to confess to being mystified by how a toilet works, the hydraulic and syphoning forces which guide the water into the bowl and make it swirl around like that. The fact that Dinah has reached the age of thirty-five and not mastered the use of a screwdriver, or a pair of pliers, or is even able to recognize and name these objects, is an indication of how bad the Section #25: Noisome Boots [279] ! situation has gotten. It's really only short of incredible that an individual such as our librarian could've found her way onto an expedition like this. I guess all she had to do was sign up and pay the three thousand four hundred. The school needs enrollees and I'll bet it especially needs female students over the age of thirty to keep its course registration from too closely resembling the roster of a college fraternity. Watching Dinah reassemble the gear items into her duffel that evening -- the last evening, as it turned out, the three of us were to spend in our old familiar way -- I was struck by the astonishing fact that Dinah must know how to drive. By her own testimony, she'd purchased a vehicle and drove it out west by herself, drove the car onto the ferry in Seattle and three days later drove it off the ferry at Haines, proceeding to complete the two day road trip to Anchorage. She told me all about it on Day Three, following the wet exit drill, but at the time I had no way of appreciating what a monumental accomplishment it must've been for her. And if Di- nah knows how to drive, somebody must've taught her. I continue to be stunned by the idea of what this had to have involved, the toll it must have exacted upon the person of her driving instructor. Somewhere in this world is an exceptional being. I'd like to meet the person who taught Dinah Orbeck how to drive. I could never have done it. I watched Dinah jam the last of her appurtenances into the overstuffed duffel, closing it using the method I'd taught her to prevent the zipper from separating. And you know, it has to be allowed that Dinah is making some headway in her quest to become self-re- liant. It's more than self-reliance she's after anyway. What Dinah's after is more along the lines of self-transformation. I'll state right here, now that I've returned to my old station of sitting behind the librarian as we paddle our way up Barry Arm, I've always been sympathetic to her quest. I wish I could've helped her more than I have. In the end I had to obtain some distance from the woman. Even the driving instructor, whoever he was, the worthy and self-sacrificing individual, was not forced to eat every meal in the company of his student and sleep in a tent each night with her. What I was thinking the evening of Day Nine was that, with the majority of the course still to go, if I made a change and made it soon then maybe the whole epoch in which I'd lived and traveled with the librarian would in hindsight seem to have been only a small part of the overall experience. I cannot say this has exactly worked out to be the case. Maybe if Dinah and I hadn't ended up together on the final Small Group Expedition my time with her would've fallen into its proper proportion. Now that we're back [280] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! in each other's company there almost doesn't seem to have been a time when we were apart. At some point the evening of Day Nine, Crandall started in on the process of securing equipment and food duffels for the night. Dinah wrapped up her rummaging stint to help. This was typical. Instead of savoring their hot drinks my campmates will slug them down in ten minutes. I still hadn't had a chance to do any reading to speak of but I couldn't let the two of them do all the work, so I put everything aside and went to assist. My plan was to get everything squared away and then settle back down for twenty minutes of book perusal before heading to the tent. I zippered up the nearest food duffels and placed them in a pile beneath the kitchen tarp. Then I helped Crandall and Dinah gather up what paddling equipment was still lying around, securing it under the gear tarp along with the personal duffels. This accomplished, I was making myself comfortable once more against the reading rock when I saw Dinah take up one of the food duffels by its handles and start to walk away. I knew something was up and I had my guess as to what it was. Fact is, aside from whatever personal reason was motivating her, she was correct in the decision to move the food bags away from camp that evening. I should've just let her do it and avoided any further strife, but I couldn't help it. I needed one last, sharp conflict with her in order to make the break. "What're you doing, Di?" I called out. Crandall had already moved to help Dinah when I broke in. They both stopped in their tracks, he gripping three duffels, she the one. Dinah turned and looked at me over the top of her glasses with the same expression of utter disbelief she might've directed toward someone talking too loudly in periodicals, or worse some poor homeless bastard tearing the revealing photo of a celebrity out of a gossip mag. "The Instructors say we should move our food away from the sleeping area in case there's a bear," she said. Had they said that? I hadn't heard them. Not lately, anyway. It should be understood, my campmates were only following established policy. The argument was, camped on the mainland as we were, there was a greater likelihood of bear visitation, as opposed to when we bivouacked on an island. Of course, according to the Instructors, bears have been known to swim out to the islands, too. Yet, we'd never take any extra precautions on the islands. We'd stash the food beneath the kitchen tarp and called it good. Frankly, I couldn't take any of it seriously. As far as I could tell, bears weren't much of a presence in this region, on the islands, the mainland, or anywhere else. Naturally, just because we hadn't come upon any Section #25: Noisome Boots [281] ! bears didn't mean they weren't around. I simply didn't think we were at risk for having our food tampered with. It was all a question of degree, not absolutely one way or the other. If you wanted to get technical about it, our combined human stink was probably enough to repel any bears who might inadvertently stumble upon our camp. So, if you look at it that way, the duffels would be more secure if kept close at hand. Anyway, the food stashing policy had not been all that consistently adhered to. It seemed to depend more than anything else on how physically exhausted, or not, people were. Why Dinah and Crandall were making such a point of it that night I have no idea, unless the Instructors had said something about it at the meeting, maybe during the little gap when I was gone retrieving my compass. Either way, I hated Dinah's unthinking compliance with the protocol. I disliked even more her smugness over the fact that in this instance her fears were sanctioned by school policy. Hers was a complacency I was determined to undermine. "We were camped on the mainland last night," I pointed out. "What did we do with the duffels then?" The question was directed toward Dinah, but as she wouldn't give me an answer, I repeated the question to Crandall. "We stowed them beneath the kitchen tarp," he answered. "Was there a problem?" I asked. "Did any animals get into them?" "Nope," he answered. "That's right," I said. "Have any animals ever gotten into our duffels, or anyone else's food duffels that you've heard?" I asked. "No, they have not," I said, not waiting for an answer. I didn't like drawing Crandall into the discussion, but he'd been willing enough to go along with Dinah and therefore had to suffer as well. "Why don't we just leave everything beneath the kitchen tarp like we've been doing? It'll be fine." "The Instructors say there could be a bear," Dinah repeated. "No bear is going to come within a mile of this place after the racket we've been making. Hell, we could keep the duffels in the tent if we wanted. It'd be the safest place for them. Two bags each for us to cozy up against." This was taking things too far, I know. I could see I was even starting to scare Crandall. On cue, the two of them placed their duffels upon the ground as if they'd silently concluded they had no choice but to join together and give me a physical beating, or drive me away with stones. "First off," began Dinah, the spots of color undergoing visible expansion, "you are cursing again, which is Poor Expedition Behavi- [282] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! or. Secondly, I cannot believe you would consider being so reckless about our personal safety as to leave the food in camp. It is entirely cavalier. You do not have to help us if you do not want to but I am going to move the duffels down the beach to the group pile." There was that word again. The fellow with the plumed hat had returned to join us. He was out there at the edge of our camp, cape twirling about his legs. I watched as he knelt down in his knee- high boots, jamming the tip of his scabbard into the pine duff, employing the pommel as a sort of chin rest. Desiring a bit of entertainment, he'd decided to stick around for a few minutes, see which way the discussion went. "Cavalier?" I asked. "You think I'm cavalier?" "Yes," she said. "This is beyond cavalier. You are being entirely and willfully reckless." I looked closely at Dinah. She was standing still, not making any move to pick up the duffels. "What is it, Dinah?" I asked. "We were camped on the mainland last night, plus two or three nights ago, whenever it was. You weren't all that concerned about the duffels then." "I was probably too busy worrying about myriad other things," she said, "but today I feel it is prudent we move the food duffels away from camp." Suddenly, it hit me. No doubt prompted by my rumination earlier that evening, along with something that'd come up at the backcountry hygiene class. This was in response to Burl's suggestion we make our morning deposits down below the tide line. One advantage to the approach, he pointed out, was that it wouldn't then be necessary to bury our offering. One of the collegiates piped up to ask if this wouldn't cause a problem as he'd heard bears liked to eat human feces. Poop, I believe, was the term he used. This got a laugh from those present who'd never heard of such a thing. Maybe a laugh, too, from some of us who were familiar with this bit of camping apocrypha but couldn't help being amused by the way the kid had put his question, so deadpan, not a crack in his serious expression. Those of us sitting toward the back of the group heard one of the other youngsters mutter, "Yeah, I've got a dog does that." As for the collegiate's question, Burl didn't hesitate. "Well, that's right" he said. "To bears, human poop tastes like chocolate." The problem was, since it didn't have any relevance to anything, Burl hadn't bothered to refute the backcountry mythology, completely erroneous as far as I know. For the librarian's sake, and maybe for other's, he should have clarified the matter. So, with the three of us standing there stock still, I decided it was true and just as I'd suspected: Dinah was packing out her do-do. Section #25: Noisome Boots [283] ! It was in a plastic bag, or a series of plastic bags, jammed down inside one of the duffels where Crandall and I wouldn't accidentally come across it. Now, really, I didn't care if Dinah had decided to transport her turds back to Palmer, or completely back to the Lower Forty- Eight for disposal in a proper septic system. I've been in some high altitude bivouacs where, because of the concentration of climbers and other truants, it was S.O.P. to pack out your dookie. The stuff was never going to decompose at that elevation and it was easy enough for everyone to wrangle their mountainside offal into plastic bags, hard and desiccated as it was due to the general state of dehydration,. The concern I had was how and whether to bring the subject up with Dinah. She wasn't exactly the sort of person with whom you felt comfortable discussing bodily processes. How many deposits could the librarian have made by that stage of the trip? A total maybe of three or four little scats? I failed to understand how Dinah imagined she could keep it a secret from Crandall and me, how she thought we wouldn't eventually make the discovery. I was surprised she wasn't concerned about contaminating the food. Evi- dently, she thought bears would do anything, undergo any risk, for the delectability of human feces. Then the real reason occurred to me. Not to fully dismiss the possibility that Dinah's been containerizing her poop, though like I said it may be entirely my imagination at work. There's never been any indisputable evidence to support or disprove the notion -- we'll probably never know the truth of the matter -- whereas my new suspicion was immediately corroborated. "You had your period," I stated. She hesitated. The spots of color went through a rapid cycle of expansion and constriction. "Yes," she confirmed. "And you've placed something special in with the rations, something you wish to store away from camp?" "Yes." "And what is that special item?" I asked her. So help me, I couldn't stop myself. "You know what it is." "I think I do, but I want you to tell me. So there are no doubts." "I do not want to say it. You know what it is." "I just want to make sure I understand correctly. Tell me what it is, Dinah." Once more she hesitated. It was like the pause she used to put in before saying the word, "cockpit," a term which gave her [284] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! much trouble in the early days of the trip. She eventually learned not to use the word at all but to substitute the term "opening". The splotches of color grew as large as we are ever likely to witness them. "Kotex," she finally said, barely whispering. "Kotex," I repeated. The old product name. Co-opted for the generic. I didn't think anyone still used it in that fashion. I believe the generic has switched to something else. Tampax? I don't know. Modern people probably just say "pads", or "tampons". "How many?" I asked, nodding at the duffel she'd now taken up to clasp against her chest with both arms. "What does it matter how many? Why do you need to know?" she asked. "Three or four, I believe." "Sure." That was fine, I thought. Now I wouldn't be required to open up the duffel bag to see what it was we were talking about. This business of used tampons in the backcountry is a long debated subject amongst the backpacking tribe, a notion I was exposed to decades ago. They also used to say that sex in the backcountry was a bear attractant. Hard to say about that. I've never heard of anybody refraining for that reason alone. But if human feces fail to wet a bear's appetite, I've also never been fully convinced that used tampons are a bear attractant. However, I decided, for that evening only, I'd allow the possibility. If used tampons are of interest to bears, then three or four would certainly do it and could justify concern. I had only needed to know it was not another instance of Dinah overreacting, that we weren't going through all this ha- rangue for a single, lightly spotted menstrual pad. I could've gone on and asked Dinah when, precisely, in the last week her flow had begun -- there are, you know, girls to whom you can pose such questions -- and whether some of those pee breaks from the kayak, made at her instigation, were actually for the purpose of other adjustments. There was no need to embarrass her further. I could've insisted she remove the little ditty from the food bag and take it alone, by itself, down the beach somewhere and set a rock on it. We'd gone into it enough. There was no point in getting further exercised. I'd managed to overcome her prudishness, forced her to talk about it. I'd accomplished my purpose, brought up another conflict, provided us reason to butt heads. We were prepped for what I really had to tell her, once it came time. "What do you want to do, Crandall?" I asked. "I can go either way." That was about what I expected from our science teacher. Dinah repeated her intention to move the duffels by herself, Section #25: Noisome Boots [285] ! if need be. I decided to do whatever she wanted because by the next day I meant to be free of her. I pulled my mosquito headnet off the brim of my ballcap and stuffed it into a pocket. There'd been no bugs and there weren't likely to be any as the evening was cooling down. "No, no," I said. "We'll help you. Let's go. Everyone together. C'mon, Crandall. Here. I'll take these two. We'll get 'em all in one trip. If someone'll grab a foul weather top, we'll put it over the pile, because sure as anything if we don't it'll rain." Dinah was left with nothing to carry aside from the one duffel. She continued to hold the bag to her chest as she walked, like a little girl comforting herself with a stuffed animal. Her wadded up headnet bobbed atop her balaclava, held there by the safety pin. She's not a fast walker in those rubber boots and with the weight of the duffel hindering her Dinah immediately began to lag behind. I let Crandall go on ahead. I fell back, matching my steps with the librarian's. It was time to give her the word. "Dinah," I said. "There's something I need to talk to you about. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to switch off and paddle with someone else." So saying this I looked over and, maybe I'm wrong, but I imagined her face took on a stricken expression, the spot of color on her cheek narrowing down to a mere pinprick. I would also swear that right about then she caught her toe on chunk of greywacke and stumbled slightly, but I might not be remembering correctly. "I'm telling you this now," I continued, "so you'll have time to line up a new partner first thing in the morning." She didn't speak. The only sound was the slate-like clacking of the sedimentary stones shifting beneath our feet. We reached and passed the spot where the first tent group had cached their food bags. "It had to happen eventually," I went on. "We can't continue to be paddling partners the entire -- " "That is fine with me," she said, cutting me off. Yes, well. Fine with me, too, I thought. What I'd come to realized was that this kayaking method of travel, in of itself, posed sufficient challenge to Dinah. She had no need to take on a new boat or adapt to a different paddling partner each day. If the travel had proved as harrowing as I'd originally imagined, I might've been quite content, as well, to have stayed on with her as a boat mate. As it was, I'd almost kept on with her out of sheer ennui and inertia. I had by then grasped something of the quality and degree of Dinah's terror and what it was she was up against. I understood [286] Travelogues: WET EXIT ! that for her the sense of danger and threat never goes away. It's there every day and every waking minute. Camp stoves, lighters, drinking water, UV rays, bears, orcas, her fellow students, the cold night air, the deep blue ocean -- this is but a partial listing of her fears, what I can come up with off the top of my head. The poor woman. I only hope she's being compensated by the scenery and the wildlife spotting that from time to time does seem capable of drawing her out of herself. For Dinah, the trip has proved every bit as harrowing as she imagined it might and maybe even then some. I believe it's fair to say that of all the individuals along on this expedition she's the only one who wakes up every morning terrified of nearly everything she's going to be asked to do that day. And, very probably, being forced to deal with her tent mate, the one who's so cavalier with everyone's safety, was no small part of her overall fear. The food duffel which she held to her chest -- I assumed it was the one with the pads or tampons -- appeared to weigh her down as she plodded forward over the shale. She wasn't going to raise any objection to the idea of a boat switch. It was fine by her and she seemed to have said all she needed to say on the subject. She and I were done with each other. I thought possibly it was the last time we were ever to talk. Despite what you might think, the idea of not talking to the librarian anymore did not provide me with any sense of relief. Poor Dinah. Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. We caught up to Crandall who'd dropped his food duffels at the base of a large erratic. "How 'bout this right here, Marlow?" "Looks great. The rock will serve as a marker." We covered our pile of food bags with the foul weather gear weighted down by rocks and hiked on back to camp, none of us saying much en route as I recall. I found my hot drink mug on the ledge, much cooled by then, and drained it off while glancing down at the cover of the book I'd intended to crack. By the time I'd secured my area Crandall and Dinah were headed toward the tent and I joined them forthwith. I was taking off my pizza cook sneakers at the tent door when Dinah piped up from her spot against the far wall. "Marlow. I have been meaning to speak to you and Crandall about a concern. I would like it if at night both of you moved your shoes a little further away from the tent entrance. Your shoes have become quite noisome." That was the precise word she used, one more in a continually expanding roster of archaic expressions. "Noithsome?" asked Crandall, who was to the side of the tent brushing his teeth. He spat. "What does she mean they're noisy?" Section #25: Noisome Boots [287] ! "She means smelly," I said. "Our shoes stink so loud she can't hear herself think. That's fine," I said, turning to Dinah. "We'll keep our shoes outside the fly." I was actually glad for her request, the renewed show of spunk. I took it to mean she was already getting adjusted to the new lay of the land, the fact that she and I were not !to paddle the same boat together anymore forever. Or so I thought. ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! This concludes Part One of WET EXIT: Currents and Tides. Please go to www.TravelDeliberately.com to read the remaining two parts as downloadable PDFs, or to request hand-bound, signed softbound copies. WET EXIT Part Two: The Place of Enchantment and WET EXIT Part Three: Soundlessly Into the Sea will appear at TravelDeliberately.com in the spring of 2019 and 2020, !respectively. !

Also by M. Mewborn and available from ! Peregrinator Press & Binding:

! ISLAND DESPAIR In pursuit of the exotic, the narrator takes a job as a pizza cook in Southeast Alaska and falls in love with the native Tlingit woman, Doris Mae. ! ! WET EXIT Part Two: The Place of Enchantment - The narrator and the Small Group Expedition of which he is the !appointed student leader arrives to Black Sand Beach. Part Three: Soundlessly Into the Sea - The narrator comes to terms with both the librarian, Dinah, and the young medical student, Tyler.