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Chapter 17.

Old Man

DC-3 CF-CUC—Whitehorse to Dawson to Old Crow to Inuvik—4.2 hrs.

Leaving Whitehorse, flying the scheduled run to Dawson, Old Crow and Inuvik, I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful the Yukon was in the late summer. From 5000 feet it was almost lush. The Stewart River gathering water from the Selwyn Mountains to the east flowed quietly westward to join the mighty Yukon River. I could picture myself lying on my back along the banks of the Stewart, half asleep in the warm sun, chewing a piece of dried grass and watching the formation of the puffy, popcorn cumulus clouds. The sun was high and strong, baking the shallow Yukon soil into a porous, crunchy mat. Heat waves reflected upward gently rocking the wings. The Yukon looked at peace with the elements, resting, storing and waiting. Its rolling mountains were painted a shimmering mosaic of green trees, yellow grass and red fireweed.

Our track to Dawson took us along the Stewart for a short way then angled northward to cross a low wooded area filled with evergreens and the occasional moose pasture. Shortly thereafter we rounded a corner to see the airport dead ahead. It was in a valley, which ran southwest to northeast with Dawson City at the southwest end at the confluence of the Yukon and the Klondike rivers. The strip was 4000 ft. long and surfaced with gravel. We landed straight in and trundled up to the gas pumps to take on fuel. The GNA manager of the Dawson base, Kelly Connelly, and his wife, Evelyn, met us on our arrival. They were a homogenous pair who had lived in Dawson for many years and had that same guarded coolness toward strangers as Bud Harbottle.

After takeoff from Dawson I relaxed in my seat and listened to the song of the engines. Like an orchestra each part had its music to play. Each piston slid up and down like a trombone. Each tappet clicked away in perfect rhythm with its neighbour, like castanets. The spark plugs fired in concert. The timing and distributor kept all pieces playing together like a conductor to provide smooth accompaniment to the throaty song of the exhaust.

What a beautiful day! The weather was perfect with smooth air and blue skies. The engines were motoring over perfectly as they were designed to do. The stewardess was feeding her tranquil passengers. The co-pilot was sitting with his hands on the yoke, quietly plying his trade as I sat in my seat hypnotized by the beauty, the solidarity of it all. The revelation came to me like a cool breeze on a warm night. I was completely at peace with the world and my place in it was secure. That was exactly what I had wanted to do all my life. I would not want to have been anywhere else, or do anything or be anybody but me. If it had been fifty below I would have been comfortable in my spiritual warmth.

I thought, “I am a pilot. I am in command of twenty-six thousand pounds of machine that is moving comfortably through its own medium. I have a full load of passengers who are safe and comfortable and a crew of two who are doing the job that they have chosen for themselves. I am happy with myself and my life. I think that I now know what the bible means when it uses the word ‘ecstasy’, that fervent, almost violently inspired feeling that begins as a thought and moves slowly through each brain cell permeating and saturating, blocking out all other senses with its warmth and pleasure. It firmly controls your mind and propels it relentlessly, inexorably toward an orgasm of trance-like emotional well being.”

I glanced at the co-pilot. He couldn’t possibly know what I was experiencing. I felt like clapping him on the shoulder and like a mentor say, “Listen closely fellow and I’ll tell you the secret of happiness.” But of course he would have thought that I was crazy so I just sat there for most of the leg to Old Crow, bathing in the glow of my contentment.

In the distant I could see the village of Old Crow. A new airport had been built close to the village so it was no longer necessary to land on the sandbar in the middle of the river. In one way I was disappointed because I had become proficient at planting the wheels of the airplane within a foot or two of the water.

Our stewardess, Lily Louie, entered the cockpit as we began our descent.

“Danny, Kelly told me that we will be picking up an old man at Old Crow to take to the hospital in Inuvik. He will be on a stretcher.”

“Thanks, Lily. I’ll see you on the ground.”

After landing we were met by Stephen Frost. Stephen was a very enterprising individual. He had a large family that he had to feed but his ingenuity gave them a comfortable living. Take the following story for example:

A large oil company had been doing exploration work about twenty miles north of the village of Old Crow close to the Porcupine River. It had hundreds of empty, forty-five gallon fuel barrels laying around that had been used to service the helicopters and float planes that carried the men and equipment to and from the site. The barrels had to be removed due to environmental concerns so the oil company put out tenders for their removal. If the oil company had been as smart as Stephen they could have done it themselves for peanuts but—they weren’t. It cost them a lot of money that went into the pockets of Stephen’s jeans because nobody knew how to efficiently get rid of the barrels and nobody bid on the contract except Stephen. The company, ever conscious of getting static over damaging the environment, gave him what he asked. But Stephen had a plan; he waited until the winter when the river froze over then moved all the barrels with his skidoo to the centre of the river and left them there until the spring when the river thawed. After the ice went out the barrels floated downstream and Stephen picked them all up with his boat as they drifted by Old Crow. He collected his money from the oil company then sold the barrels to another oil company who had begun exploration in the area. It’s no wonder that Stephen had one of the nicest houses in Old Crow.

“We have a sick old man to take to Inuvik,” he said.

The old man lay child-like on the stretcher that had been strapped to the folded down seats. As I bent over him his birdlike fingers grasped my hand and pulled me closer. He spoke in a harsh rattle, his eyes glued frantically to mine. Lily listened carefully to translate for me. As he spoke I watched his face, tanned and worn like an old moose skin. In his features I saw decades of trapping, hunting and fishing. I saw a melding of man and nature—a symbiosis. He needed the forest and its life and the forest and its life needed him to observe its beauty, to partake of its bounty—to complete the cycle and restore the balance.

He coughed and stopped speaking. Lily said, “He doesn’t want to go. He wants to hitch up his dogs and go trapping. If he dies while he is trapping, that is good. He does not want to die in a hospital. That would not be right.”

“Lily, tell him that the hospital will make him better so he can go trapping again.”

Lily spoke the guttural Loucheaux tongue.

He shook his head and looked at me again. He was proud and defiant but fearful that he was not getting through to me.

He spoke again.

Lily said, "He wants to die with his dogs.”

What could I say to this man of the forest? Taking him away—no matter how well meaning—was like tearing a diseased limb from a tree. The tree would probably live but would be forever scarred. Better to leave it whole and when it dies it dies with dignity—naturally, as it was intended to be.

I spoke directly to him, not through Lily, feeling a strong rapport with this sick man. "If you go with me to the hospital and they tell me that you are going to die, I will take you back to your dogs and your trap-line so you can die in peace. This I promise you.”

As Lily spoke the words he looked from me to her. Her reassuring smile seemed to relax him a bit and his eyes began to lose their haunted look. He squeezed my hand one more time and nodded his okay. I left him after a bit but his face followed me and I knew that my promise must be kept.

During the following week my thoughts kept going back to the old man. There was something in his philosophy of life that was alien yet attractive. I was better educated. I could fly airplanes and he probably couldn’t even drive a car. I had been to places that he couldn’t have dreamed of. He of course had the ability to manipulate machinery had he wished and his education included a Ph.D. in the science of life and the psyche of the forest. He had seen mountains and valleys with crystal clear rivers flowing through them. He had talked to the moose, elk and wolves like a brother. He had sung the song of the migrating geese and wished them a good journey. Mother Nature, his friend, greeted him at each change of season and he lived, loved and now he may die. But he couldn’t die in the white man’s hospital with its antiseptic smells and starched walls. I had to get him home to his dogs.

I entered the hospital with trepidation. Maybe he had died already. The nurse on duty looked askance at me when I asked for the old man from Old Crow.

“What do you want with him? He is just another sick old Indian.”

“Maybe, but I would like to see how he is doing.”

“He’s giving us a hell of a time,” she told me with her mouth pulled up at the corner.

“So he’s still alive?”

“Oh yes, very much so but I don’t think that he has much time to go.”

“Oh, are you going to release him soon to go home?”

“The doctor says that the best thing would be to let him go home and quit bugging us. We need an interpreter to understand him.”

I told her that I was the pilot who flew him in from Old Crow and she told me that he would be released in time for the next scheduled flight back there. Just before I left I peeked into his room. He was lying still as death with his eyes closed and his breath rattling in an uneasy rhythm.

The morning sun shone its weakening rays through the cool morning air as we strapped the old man into his seat in the airplane. Lily wanted him to lay on the stretcher as he was when we brought him from Old Crow but he would have nothing to do with it. He insisted on wobbling up the stairs himself and with great dignity lowered his emaciated body into the seat. He was very pleased that I was to fly him home. He told me that he was going home to die. When I told him that he wasn’t going to die he nodded his head slowly and smiled.

Upon our arrival at Old Crow he said good-bye to me and thanked me for giving him a ride. At the doorway of the airplane he proudly pointed out his dogs as they sat looking up at him. His family—all smiling politely—met him with the one-pump native handshake then after chatting with him for a minute they took him away, his dogs walking slowly beside him, waiting.

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