Subarctic Equinox

Seals, Birds, and Bears

As soon as we entered the Seal River, we encountered its namesake marine mammal, ferrying back and forth in the water, fishing for grayling. We saw scores of harbor seals, often lounging on boulders with their tails in the air. At our camp next to a rapid, they swam up and down in the current immediately offshore, sticking their heads up for a better view as they bobbed by.

Although we didn’t catch as many fish as we would have liked, the Seal made up for this scarcity with an abundance of birds. Hundreds of tundra swans, geese, and ducks repeatedly rose in flight to fill the sky as we passed. Eagles, ospreys, and hawks cruised the ridges, and northern hawk owls swooped low through our campsite, floating like ghosts between the trees in fading twilight. Flocks of geese and cranes squawked overhead on blustery days, and onshore we flushed bevies of ptarmigan already white in winter plumage.

A Canadian Heritage River, the Seal combines fun whitewater with the transition from boreal forest to tundra. Eskers and sand beaches provide exceptional hiking and camping, with ample firewood until its last few miles. We had to pull over to scout a ledge at the top of Great Island—a massive granite hill that looms out of the low, sandy valley—and at Rapids of the Drowned, just upstream from the coast at Hudson Bay. Otherwise, we scouted from the boats.

Rock walls along Great Island made it seem as though we were riding Class II rapids through a canyon. In other spots, the river fanned wide into boulder fields that required careful navigation. A recent burn scarred the river’s channel in one place, but the new growth of birch that followed the 1994 fire glowed yellow, orange, and red. As we stumbled sleepily from the tents, a bull moose trotted through our frosty camp at Bill Mason esker.

The fall equinox came and went, and we felt the season turn. We bucked strong winds, and ice formed on our paddles as we pulled hard to stay warm. Snow dusted the hollows and there was a hard freeze every night. “Toward Iceland” became our joking mantra.

When we reached the Seal River delta, we aimed for the shack that would be our shelter while waiting for our prearranged boat pickup from Churchill. The river split into rapids around a maze of islands. Losing daylight fast, we paddled hard against the incoming tide, and chased off a large polar bear near the shack after dragging our boats over a ridge of ice and frozen kelp that marked the high-tide line. Inside, we made a call on our satellite phone to confirm our rendezvous the next day. Because of an unusual combination of high seas, short day length, and quirky tides, we learned, it was out of the question, and might be for some time.

To warm our frigid shelter, we fashioned a chimney out of old discarded coffee cans and attached it to a rusty wood-burning stove that we found beneath its foundation. We lounged and took naps between reading, playing cards, and listening to the CBC. Meanwhile, gale-force winds continued to blow down the coast, preventing our pickup boat from leaving port.

After a few days, we decided that we’d better make other arrangements and called the helicopter base in Churchill. Then we sat back to wait some more.

Our window of opportunity arrived on the last day of September, and so did a pair of choppers. We climbed aboard and hurried off toward Churchill, smiling at our good fortune and the bright sunny day.