Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,60

I settle down on the edge of the bed for some fresh caribou steak and canned peaches.

Eight miles or so from the cabin is the former camp of a compatriot of my grandpa’s, a man named Joe March. I have read in the diary how their paths would cross once in a while, and there is mention of some dark moment where their lives intersected, murder and mayhem hinted at, although it is nothing he expands on, and nothing he ever mentioned to me. What the diary does have is a sketched map and a set of directions to both the camp and to something he calls the “cairn.” I had not imagined I would be curious about this, but now that my northern life has settled into a routine, I find that I am.

And so I load up the toboggan with my tent, my sleeping bag, emergency supplies and food. Then I wax my skis and strap them on, sling my rifle across my back, and with one more check of the GPS unit in my pocket and the compass and map draped around my neck, head out.

The day is splendid, the sun out and low on the horizon, not a cloud in the sky. This time of year I should still have enough light to make it to the old camp and find a place to pitch my tent for the night.

Twice in the distance I see Arctic fox or hare, hard to discern white on white from such a distance. Too far for me to haul out my rifle, not that I have terrible need for food right now anyway.

My grandpa told me a story once, of he and his father and this Joe March and his son, riding their dog sleds, coming off a trap line and sliding out onto the frozen, snowy lake. There was a mother caribou and her calf, bounding through the snow and aiming for the shelter of trees, about a thousand yards away.

Grandpa reached down, still riding the back of his sled, and pulled out his rifle. The others laughed at him, told him he was crazy to think he could hit anything from such a distance. But he didn’t listen, jumped from the sled, and with the rifle held against his hip and still running from the momentum, let off a shot.

“Dropped that goddam mother with a bullet right through the spine,” he told me. “Shut up those sons of bitches real quick.” Then they rode to where she lay, warm blood melting and staining the crusty snow, and finished off the calf, standing and bleating helplessly for its mother to stand.

Food for them and for the dogs.

I had expressed doubt about this tale sometime later, talking with my father. Dad just laughed, and told me how Grandpa would knock the puff off a dandelion from fifty yards, and point out how every hunting season he was able to come home with a good-sized moose in the back of the truck.

*

A storm is brewing. The wind has picked up, more often than not raking rock-hard pellets of snow against my face, and the clouds are building swiftly. I hunch over to peer at my GPS unit, compare it briefly to the map while holding a flashlight in my teeth, then swear as I angle myself more towards the north. Fighting this I must have veered away from the winds.

It is now getting dark, the sun dropping below the horizon earlier and faster every day. I should have been there, or at least nearby, an hour or more ago. I make for shadowy shapes that I hope are trees, swearing at the toboggan, which feels more and more like nothing but dead weight.

And then I see a light, waving and blinking through the blowing snow. Not too distant, I think. I try shouting, but doubt that I am heard. Still wrestling with the toboggan, wax on my skis no longer gaining me much purchase, I fight my way through small patches of pine, limbs all pointing in one direction from flagging, trying their best to impale me as I slip and slide.

Now I can hear dogs barking, yips and moans and howls coming in brief snatches through the wind. Exhausted, I stop and tie the toboggan to a tree, anxiously wrap the yellow nylon rope around a high branch, then kick off my skis and stand them up next to it, quickly remove my ski boots and slide my numbing feet