Ober's journey, week 13

Oberholtzer Foundation

Week No. 13

Sept. 7-12, 1912

The paddlers were left in rather dire straits this past week, unsure about their fate and getting colder along the eastbound Thlewiaza River. If readers are following along in “Bound for the Barrens,” this week’s travels takes Ernest Oberholtzer and Billy Magee to the end of Ober’s “book three.” 

One of the excellent features of this book is that readers get to read of the journey twice. First, we read it in Ober’s own words, somehow logged in pencil along the route. Then we read of it in Robert Cockburn’s afterword section. Of this week, Cockburn writes, “As they pressed on downriver, caribou, wolves, and seals kept them company. Fifteen days from Sealhole Lake, on the afternoon of 12 September, ‘The river broadened to a mile or more and we soon saw with fresh hope a great opening before us.’” They had reached saltwater, notes Cockburn. And thus begins the most “providential” (in Cockburn’s words)—the most providential experience of their meeting “an Eskimo in a kayak.”  

In his own journals, Ober for days writes of wildlife and weather, of foodstuff and campsites. Readers are again reminded that fire is their salvation, since Ober always notes if there is “plenty of wood.” He describes the deer, ducks, seals —“a black one with white nozzle and breast and a larger tawny one with black spots. They kept raising their tails and tipping their noses toward the water. I tried for a photograph…” On Sept. 8, Oberholtzer and Magee cover 25 miles and witness the aurora. 

Readers know that these men are still paddling a river unknown to them. “All day (Sept. 10) we were in the tension looking out for rocks and some of the rapids took our utmost vigilance.” Later, “we had explored several blind bays...” 

And then, Sept. 12, Ober writes: “Low, stony shores and islands — with grasses all yellow and brown. Soon after I had tasted the water, Billy saw two queer curling columns shifting against the gray eastern sky. If not smoke, he said, he had never seen anything like them before. Then, while we were marveling at the phenomenon, I saw something black moving on the water and presently there was a boat coming toward us. I saw at once that it was an Eskimo in his kyak.” 

To follow Ober’s journey, purchase “Bound for the Barrens” available at www.lulu.com.