C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

2 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATSome I2 years later Gwen Dorrien Smith and I were sitting down with an atlasbetween us discussing the wild places of the earth. I quoted some of those poemsand we turned the pages of the atlas to North America.What about Alaska for our next journey? We had tried each other out in arough trip through the Balkans in 1924 and we each considered the other to beadequately tough for a new, a longer and a more exacting adventure.In the event we did, both of us, prove to be adequately tough, and the adventuredid prove to be more exacting.Looking back now on this journey, I find it difficult to connect it with myselfat all. I see our two selves, a pair of strangely small, foreshortened figures, settingoff to travel steerage across the Atlantic and second class across Canada;consorting, on a steamer journey down the Mackenzie River, with characters asremote from our own way of living as characters in some ancient book; donningbreeches, puttees, Everest cotton coats, broad-brimmed hats and mosquito veils,and setting off by canoe with two Indian guides into country that held no humanhomes for a stretch of 300 miles. We had cut ourselves loose from all ourcustomary habits, occupations and preoccupations.Then I see us as two human atoms in a vast country, paddling our canoe alonedown a river bathed, at midnight. in golden sunshine. Paddling whence?Paddling whither? And for what purpose? Perhaps it was for the sole purpose ofremembering always the silence of the Yukon, a silence that was broken only bythe echo of some northern raven croaking, and that echo travelling away from usthrough leagues of forest towards the North Pole and the land of permanent ice.That journey, seen now in retrospect, does not seem to have any connectionwith the life that we lived before and after. We can only view the scenes dispassionately,as onlookers. Moreover, in re-reading my diary two things strike meforcibly. Among all the people that we met I cannot remember any faces exceptthe face of Professor Innis, yet certain rivers, mountains, forests, glaciers, birdsand rapids, remain vivid as if I had seen them this morning. Also I realise thatthere is a great gulf between the "I" of today who is writing this book in a retrospectivemood and the more superficial, younger, irresponsible "I" who madethat journey so many years ago.Given this lapse in memory and this gulf in time, how can I be sure that I havedealt truly with the story. that I am not crediting the "I" of yesterday with thesomewhat wider outlook of the "I" of today?