The old gray kayak

KOTZEBUE — The west wind off the ice has kept the bugs down, and on the sunny summer nights I’ve been working on a kayak for my daughter, China. Actually, I’m copying one my dad built back in the 1970s, a light hunting craft that I used all my life.

These days I have cordless power tools — drills, screw guns and a jigsaw — items that would have been magic in my youth, when I was woodworking with hand saws, chisels and a brace-and-bit. (Not to mention first snowshoeing out to find a tree, then hauling it home to make boards.) I’ve been surprised, though, piecing a kayak together here on a blue tarp, how impatient I am. I miss not being busy, and immersing myself in a project. Once in a while I stop and marvel at these modern riches — even this blue disposable tarp.

This winter when China and I snowgoed downriver from our home along the Kobuk, I lashed that old kayak on my sled. It had hung under the cache for decades, and suffered, and snow finally buckled it. Over the years porcupine had crawled inside to gnaw the frames, and bears strolling by had fondled it. The ancient spruce stringers cracked more as I tightened the ropes. I felt bad hearing that breaking wood. Our sleds and kayaks were so vital and valuable when I was a kid, back a half-century and more, when this craft was made.

Standing there on the snow, I recalled the spring that Oliver Cameron camped at Amaktuk, a slough near our sod igloo, and how he’d walk down the bluff to help my dad build his first kayak. Those were simpler times. It was easier to recognize the value of things, and a kayak meant you could hunt the tundra after breakup, after the water dropped. Oliver was known for knowing things and he recommended skinning it with canvas, painting the cloth, then waxing it. He was living under a homemade canvas tent, with little besides a cooking pot and hand tools. Oliver enjoyed making tools, and I can still hear him filing teeth out of my dad’s ripsaw to make bigger teeth so it would cut faster.

My dad, Howie, worked on the snowdrift in front of our house, ripping spruce stringers on crude spruce-pole sawhorses. Geese flew overhead, calling, and caribou crossed the melting river ice. Day and night they climbed out on the drift, shook off, and headed north.

After sawing, Howie planed the wood. He was always sawing and planing: in winter, it was hardwood for sleds; spring and fall it was boards for our floor, furniture, and later, boats. The air smelled like wood and my family always had beautiful shavings for firestarter.

The kayak came out tippy and my older brother, Kole, and I weren’t allowed to use it. Too dangerous. Howie made more kayaks the following springs: one big enough for our family to fit in; one blue (I’d forgotten all about it!) wide and safe and slow. The last two were a green deckless craft, and this gray one, my favorite.

We boys were 5 and 6 when my parents’ friend, Keith Jones, built a log raft. He’d cut the trees for Charlie Jones on the coast, and after breakup we rafted down the Kobuk. Onboard were six adults and two boys. It was a grand adventure: sun and wind and rain, animals crossing, fish jumping, ducks skimming past, and of course, mosquitoes biting. Birds sang all night and occasionally a bear walked the shore. There was a Black man along, Marty, who I haven’t thought of in years. I wonder who he was? And Keith’s brother-in-law, Don Bucknell, too; young, probably 21 and already liking to carve paddles and spoons out of spruce roots. One day he dropped his pocketknife between the logs. Plunk. Gone. I never forgot that. I wonder where that knife is now.

Nights we camped, and days Kole and I paddled out, circling the raft. We didn’t know how to swim, but as long as we wore our life preservers, we were allowed to practice turns, race and cautiously approach loons that randomly surfaced.

A few years later, Howie and Keith taught us to portage — carrying kayaks, guns, ducks, eggs and muskrats, from pond to pond — hunting through the night, exploring waterways in tundra. This gray kayak was the best. Howie had made it light and low. Even the ribs were just split peeled dried willows.

The funny thing is, even now, broken in pieces, it’s not easy dismantling his workmanship. The glue and screws are holding fast, the twine lashing each rib is still tight. I’m reminded of how spoiled I am, running stringers through a table saw, filling poor joinery with adhesive, sanding it down with an electric sander. Working, I think about China’s life in the future, and about life further back, too; ancient stone tools, in the hands of Inupiaq, making the first qayaqs.

When I was a kid, one night on a pond I flipped in the gray kayak. Kole and I and our friend Alvin Williams were hunting with .22s and one shotgun. Alvin had amazing eyesight and spotted two shovelers. I couldn’t see the ducks, only the lines on the water. “Male in front!” he advised. I knew to shoot the female first. Boom! Instantly I was in icy water.

I gasped for air, splashed, and tried to grab Alvin’s kayak. We were best friends and he grinned and used his paddle to force me away. I had to lean across the stern of my kayak, and kick around ice pans, toward shore. It was slow going until Kole pulled in the strings tied to my trigger guards, to retrieve my guns dragging on the bottom. Alvin built a fire and Kole plucked the duck while they retold the story over and over, struggling with bouts of laughter. I thawed out and the duck sizzled. When I was shivering less and the bird was half done, we ate it, and continued on in the night.

My family built a new sod house when I was 16. We moved up the hill and our kayaks went in the old igloo. More years went by. My wife, Stacey, and I kayaked from Ambler once, and below Onion Portage the wind was strong, the waves huge, and she was afraid in that tiny gray kayak. We camped, and waited for the wind to go down. When we got home, I stapled material over the bow and stern. It didn’t help much: the following spring, one night I talked two friends, Dave Fleming and Chris Todd, into going portaging, and back in the ponds Dave fired the shotgun and flipped. Pretty much as I had. Except I don’t remember him hitting the duck. We built a fire. We laughed, but less than we had as kids, and it was cold and late and we had women wondering about us, and we went home.

Later, living there alone, one fall at freeze-up the river was running ice and I crossed after a wounded goose. I was maybe 28, and this kayak a bit younger. I got the goose but was swept under the ice on the way back and nearly drowned. When I crawled out and dumped all the broken ice out of the kayak, I couldn’t believe the old stringers and vinyl covering were intact.

Over the years, the old igloo fell in. Snow drifted in and crushed two kayaks. Vandals stole my shotgun and shot holes in a third. The gray one survived and hung under the cache after that. Then we had a daughter, and she loved kayaking. She was light and the cracked ribs held. Bears still beat on it and the bottom grew pocked with patches of duct tape.

One fall I was supposed to fly to the dunes to meet BBC photographers to film caribou; the plane was delayed, and my friend Linnea Wik and I decided to kayak downriver to meet the pilot. I had my camera and gear — too heavy — and only survey stakes for paddles. The kayak creaked horribly. Water squirted in and it was hard to steer. We stayed close to the shore, stopped to dump it out, and laughed the whole way.

I thought that was that, but my daughter kept using it. I built her a new one, and still she preferred the old one. A black bear came up the shore one morning and took swipes at it. We needed meat, and she shot the bear. After we were done skinning, we got out the duct tape again.

Finally, the fall of 2020, there were no caribou, the land felt different and the old kayak really was compost. The willow ribs were white, the spruce as gray as the cover. Then, I spotted a lone caribou on the tundra. The north wind was howling, the sky brilliant blue. My friend Anne Beaulaurier was visiting, and I gave her the new kayak, took the old one. Wood cracked as I got in. My butt was instantly wet. My dad’s old portage trails were brushed in. At the Beaver Pond grasses had grown a floating swamp. Anne had Patagonia waders, I just rubber boots. I stared across dark waves, longing for caribou. I took off my pants, pushed my boat in. The water and grasses grew deep, over my waist. I couldn’t turn. My rifle stock was wet. I leaned up on the stern, tugging at grasses, inching forward. When I got to open water, I was frozen and the waves scary. At the north shore, the tundra was empty, the caribou gone. I wonder where he is now?

Working out here tonight, the wind and those memories swirl around me. I wonder where China will travel in this kayak. It feels strange, how much has changed. I’ve listened to podcasts — about Palestine, AI, guns and modern youth — while I make ribs of beautiful birch from a friend in Fairbanks, John Manthei. The electronic voices are full of information, but also seem to bury information in my head. For years I’ve thought that sleds and kayaks are good examples of changing values, and questioned how a young person might value a manufactured piece of plastic as much as one started from a tree, and finished by their own hands.

I’m not sure what I’m saying. I do think values are important and hold our lives together — maybe like these screws, twine and staples. Last week my friend Andrew Greene chastised me, asking, “Why are you still making that old stuff? Just buy a new one!” I’ve wondered that, too. For some reason, I often prefer to make my own. I realize modern society is about specialization and new stuff, but I remain wary of not being self-sufficient, and recognize my strong attachments to things made by hand.

Anyway, when it’s done, I hope my daughter likes this kayak. I hope her adventures are as intertwined with animals, friends, and this land as mine have been.