Turk - Crocodiles and ice: a journey into deep wild

CROCODILES AND ICE

I totally buy Jon Turks argument that we have lost our connection with the wild, and that environmentalism must proceed via ecstasy and rapturous immersion in nature, not an agenda of fear-driven ideas. A spiritual connection with nature is the only thing that will save us because it will hook us and engage us in ways that mere rational arguments cant.

-Marni Jackson, author of Dont I Know You? and Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign.

CROCODILES AND ICE

A JOURNEY INTO DEEP WILD

BY

JON TURK

OOLICHAN BOOKS

FERNIE, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

2016

Copyright 2016 by JON TURK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system , or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper or magazine or broadcast on radio or television; or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying , a licence from ACCESS COPYRIGHT, 6 Adelaide Street East, Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council through the BC Minis try of Tourism, Culture, and the Arts, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, for our publishing activities.

Published by

Oolichan Books

P.O. Box 2278

Fernie, British Columbia

Canada V0B 1M0

www.oolichan.com

eBook: tikaebooks.com

Printed in Canada

To Amos and Pearl, who lived a long time but didnt quite hang in there long enough to read this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

The iceberg drifted lazily in the current, surrounded by a phalanx of smaller floes and basketball-sized bergy bits, compressed into a daiquiri-thick slurry. Then, as if the Himalayan Mountains were rising from the sea, the iceberg slammed into the cliff, stalled, shuttered, cracked with a loud groan, and smeared vertically against solid rock.

Boomer and I were trapped.

Below us, our yellow and orange kayaks were lying on the beach, flimsy shards of day-glo plastic. If we slipped into the cockpitsright nowand paddled bravely out into the current, the ice would crush us within seconds, as it flowed inexorably southward, propelled by the heat of the sun and the spin of the earth, planetary forces, powerful beyond comprehension.

We were low on food, the season was progressing toward Arctic winter and we had 600 nautical miles of Arctic wilderness to traverse before we returned to civilization: houses, people, food, warmth. There must be a way through this mayhem. There has to be a way.

I had persevered before, on so many adventures, through a mysterious cornucopia of patience, boldness, skill (perhaps) and luck. Yes, you cant discount the times I had exhausted all the tools in my bag of tricks and then been pulled out of trouble by blind, old-fashioned luck. Ill take itwithout apologiesif it brings me home alive.

The ice would relax for us, and we would make a mad dash through the gauntlet. Or maybe it wouldnt. I looked across at Boomer, the young, blond, alarmingly blue-eyed Scandinavian powerhouse that he was, and I thanked the fates that at least I had him beside me. Just wait, and make your move when the time is right. That strategy had worked before, to emerge from that prison in Jordan, and to escape from the jaws of the crocodile.

CHAPTER 1

FROM A PRISON IN JORDAN

TO THE JAWS OF A CROCODILE

HOTEL ROOM SOLOMON ISLANDS

OCTOBER, 2009

I woke from a deep afternoon nap. You know the kind. When you open your eyes, you think: Where am I? What day is it? Whose bed am I sleeping in?

Then I focused on the ceiling fan, revolving slowly whompata, whompata, whompataswaying on a frayed wire beneath the cracked and peeling ceiling paint, as if it were about to fly off its moorings and crash down on my nose.

Right. Im in a run-down hotel in Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, in the tropical South Pacific. Im naked. Slimy with sweat. Stuck to the sheets in dried blood.

Okay, lets see; I need to focus here. Its Tuesday. My return flight to Montana leaves on Friday. Three days. Seventy-two hours. How am I going to pass the time? Then, after a moment of contemplation: I have to pee.

To accomplish this, I had to peel myself off the bed, ripping off the newly dried scabs, like yanking a hundred Band-Aids off at once. The slow, millimeter by millimeter approach wasnt going to work. I lay there for some time, building up my courage, and then in one swift smooth motion, rolled off the bed and landed on the floor, kerplunk, on all fours. The pain wasnt totally debilitating, but enough so that I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. While I was down there on the floor, I looked around, swaying my head back and forth, to shake off the pain.

Wait. Something is wrong with this picture. Im sure of it. Absolutely positive.

I looked again to be certain I hadnt missed anything. But no; my initial assessment was correct. Before I went to bed, Id raced around the room, smashing cockroaches with my flip-flop. And then, in a rare act of domesticity, Id swept all the dead carcasses under the bed. Now, they werent there. Gone. Every last one of them.

I pondered this mystery for a while, but, really, I had to pee. So, using the bed as a support, I slowly lifted my worn, injured, 63-year-old body until I was more or less vertical and trundled off to the bathroomwhere the mystery was solved.

There, oblivious to my presence, a long column of ants was carrying the last of the dead cockroaches down that suspicious yellow-brown hole next to the toilet. Every time I had used the bathroom, I was afraid that the toilet and I would fall down into this holean inglorious ending for me, after surviving the crocodile attack, monster waves, and all that. But now I understood that the mystery hole had a purpose; this was where the ant clean-up crew lived.

As the insects made their exit, I took care of my business and, with nothing better to do, went back to bed.

Brains are handy things sometimes, such as when you have to take a drivers license exam or do your taxes. But brains can be a down-right pain in the neck when youre trying to fall asleep, for the second time, on a hot afternoon, in a run-down hotel in Honiara. My mind fired off, doing what evolution has trained it to dothinkeven though thinking was neither necessary nor desirable at this particular moment. So, my pesky, know-it-all-think-tank started ranting on and on, and the thoughts drifted up into the blades of that creaky old fan, where they got chopped to pieces and got spun around, with a definite and annoying woe is me overtone.

What are you doing here, Jon, all banged upagainin pretty sorry digs, alone and exhausted, in this rank and dirty hotel room? Youre an old man. You dont see very well. Youre half deaf. You pee too much. Shouldnt you be in some fancy resort sharing a Mai Tai with your charming and beautiful wife?

I tried to argue that I had lived a wondrous life of high adventure. I could close my eyes at any time and see lonely oceans, colorful kayaks, sparkling mountains of untracked powder, spindrift cascading from limestone cliffs in a soft veil, the snow bouncing off the rock and falling upward in the storm. Just over the past weeks, my sea kayak adventures had taken me on long, exposed, open ocean crossingsgloriously alonean infinitesimal, improbable speck on the tropical ocean. I had camped in mysterious jungle villages, slept in grass huts, gotten stoned on kava with elders and Rastafarian hippies, camped on uninhabited white coral sand beaches and survived a potentially lethal crocodile attack. Occasional injuries and frequent suffering aside, what more could a man want out of life? I was exactly where I wanted to be. But my think-too-much-know-it-all brain was having a bad dayweve all been there. So, it decided that it was high time to tally up my egos rsumyou know, that worthless list of accomplishments, possessions, and failures: