THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020 49
everything was O.K., that I wasn’t going
to hurt her, and that she was beautiful.
I sang the first song that came to mind:
“Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” a sea chantey
that I’d learned from my grandfather as
a boy. (“It’s only me, from over the sea!”)
But there was nothing I could do to
help her, and I worried that my pres-
ence would only make her more upset.
Finally, as I wrote in my journal, “I left
her to her natural fate.” Walking on to-
ward the southern coast, I felt that I was
abandoning an intimate. It was the clos-
est thing I’d had to a conversation since
leaving Nash Harbor, three days earlier.
After a few more ridges, I reached
Dahloongamiut, a treeless stretch of
lichen-covered rock at the edge of the
open sea. On the beach was a sod hut,
dug halfway into the earth—Tom’s
uncle’s shelter. But there were no racks
of drying fish outside, no boat pulled
up on the shore. Inside the hut, it was
dank and deserted. I had come too late.
Overwhelmed with loneliness, I
pitched my tent on the beach. Better to
be outside than to be sheltered in a place
that reminded me of other human be-
ings. Looking south across the water, I
knew that there was no one between
me and the Aleutian Islands, four hun-
dred miles away. Beyond that lay the
entire Pacific Ocean.
T
here was no qiviut at Dahloon-
gamiut—there was nothing there
at all. I resolved to make it back to Me-
koryuk as fast as I could, a forty-seven-
mile hike across the heart of the island.
I had no written accounts to guide me.
Matthiessen had tracked his musk oxen
by helicopter, or in boat landings on the
coasts. The Cup’ig did not often ven-
ture into the interior, either. The seals
and walruses they hunted were on the
coast, or out at sea; the salmon could be
caught near the mouths of the rivers.
Hiking to Musk Ox Hill, I’d spent
hours navigating around bogs. Now
they were unavoidable; the terrain was
almost all muskeg. By the afternoon, I
was plagued by mosquitoes; at one point,
I hurled down my pack and began curs-
ing at them, only to realize, in shocked
embarrassment, that I was yelling at in-
sects. The water in the bogs was nearly
freezing. Once, I stumbled in up to my
knees, and, with a fright, recalled Jackie
Williams’s warnings about the risk of
drowning. After that, I started carrying
my pack over my head. Later, I saw
musk oxen far in the distance, and spent
an hour approaching them, but when
I got to the spot there was no qiviut to
be found.
Toward sundown on the second
night, I could see the northern coast,
the valley lakes to the east giving off
eerie mist. By then, I was hungry and
cold enough to try Tom Nortuk’s seal
oil. When I took the cap off the bottle
and sniffed, I nearly gagged—it gave off
a stench like vomit. But I squirted it on
a piece of dried fish, and ate it holding
my nose. Before long, my body felt
warmer, just as Tom had said it would.
On the third day, exhausted but de-
termined to make it back to Mekoryuk,
I hiked eighteen miles under a threat-
ening gray sky. I arrived in darkness. “A
killer, an absolute killer of a day,” I wrote
in my journal. “I was within sight of the
northern coast all day, crossing swampy
tundra and over two hills then tundra
and then tundra again to reach the god-
damn airstrip.” But I’d been lucky, too.
The grasslands were covered with
wildflowers and will-o’-the-wisps, and
I had picked wild celery and small, sweet
nagoonberries. And I’d found a few more
swatches of qiviut: the most I’d encoun-
tered since the cliff tops at Nash Har-
bor. By then I must have collected two
or three pounds.I
n quiet moments, something had
been nagging at me. Before leaving
the mainland, I’d received a telegram
from the director of the Oceanics school,
my old employer, asking me to get intouch with her. As I slogged through
miles of frigid bog water on Nunivak,
I found myself seized by the idea of re-
turning to Peru. In my journal, I re-
corded a vivid fantasy of a seaside table,
laden with “ceviche, stuffed avocados,
shrimp and beer.” Back in Mekoryuk,
I went to the post office to call the di-rector. She had an offer: if I could get
to Lima, she’d hire me to guide an Amer-
ican teen-ager into the backcountry. I
was free to go into the jungle, but I
should keep him, and myself, out of
trouble. I told her I would be there in
a few days. “Is it my wisest move? I
dunno. It’s certainly the most appeal-
ing,” I wrote. “Always dying to see the
landmark, the destination, beyond the
next tussock, river, or hill.”
I booked a seat on the next mail plane,
then ran around saying goodbyes and
thanking people for their help. I re-
turned Jobe Weston’s rifle, along with
some extra ammo, and retrieved my qi-
viut and my Cup’ig artifacts from Tom
Nortuk. Back in Girdwood, I left the
qiviut and the horns with Mick. If there
were to be any financial rewards, they
lay in his hands. I was already sketch-
ing out an itinerary: south from Lima
via Nazca, then across the desert by
burro and over the Andes toward the
Madre de Dios.
My time in Peru was eventful, if not
quite as I’d planned it. We climbed the
peak above Machu Picchu, a kind of
pilgrimage site for me. (On my previ-
ous trip, I had travelled with a titi mon-
key, who liked to curl up inside my shirt
as we walked. She had died on the jour-
ney, and I buried her near the peak.)
We made it to the Madre de Dios, and
camped near an indigenous Amarakaeri
community, but couldn’t enter: they had
closed themselves off to outsiders, be-
cause of a flu outbreak. Downriver, pros-
pectors had set up pumps and sluices
along the banks, the pioneers of a gold
boom that would ravage the area in the
coming years.
In the jungle, I forgot about the qi-
viut and my dreams of riches. But, this
spring, as I was held in place by quar-
antine, it occurred to me to wonder what
had happened. I tracked down Mick,
whom I’d lost touch with decades be-
fore. It turned out that he’d stayed in
Alaska, and had a rough-and-tumble
life. For a while, we told stories and
caught up. When I asked about the qi-
viut I’d left with him, he said that he’d
given it to a friend in Girdwood. Had
the friend got rich? Built himself a wil-
derness compound? No, Mick said: he
had knitted himself a hat. “A hat?” I said.
“That’s all it came to?” “Well,” he re-
plied, “it was only one small bag.”