Early October was way too late to be alone this deep into the Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories. The shore ice extended into the deep water, leaving a shelf too thin to stand on and too thick to force my canoe through if I found myself in trouble and needed to reach the shore fast. The season closed in. The geese had left, and in the drifted snow of the shoreline I saw no sign of small animals or birds. A few days before, I’d watched a snowy owl with a fish on the shoreline of Beverly Lake, which marked the terminus of the powerful Dubawnt River, cut deep into a great flat plateau. Everything changed when I entered Beverly Lake. The great tundra walls hid me from a larger world. Shore ice formed quickly in the shallow edges, where only a few grasses and sedges rose above the uneven ground. If I chose the wrong campsite in a shallow bay, ice would form in the night and trap the canoe for the season.
I hadn’t allowed myself to hope to see the finish of the Dubawnt. I’d lasted longer than I expected. The old utility Mad River canoe that had taken me this far twisted in circles. It was a dog in the wind, and it took strong shoulders to turn her in current, but more than once her stability had saved me in ten-foot waves when storms on the big lakes came suddenly. I’d like to say I chose this canoe because of my instincts with small watercraft, but that would be wrong: I chose her because of the emblem of the Mad Hatter emblazoned on her bow. When I looked up after straightening the bad tangle my Mepps spinner had made in my fishing line, I saw a featureless shoreline, low and snowy in fog. I had no idea where I’d come from or which way I needed to go. Surrounded by heavy, cold fog that both settled around me and permeated my mind, I spent a long time with the map and compass.
