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

107(ri Moods Ra idsand IslandsThe antics of memory are very strange. I realise as I re-readmyAlaskannotes and diaries, trying to elicit from them a true and connected account of ourjourney, that memory will often distort or discolour truth and it is not easy, evenwith the help of jotted notes, to recapture from the past the story of any adventure,as it really happened. One thing strikes me forcibly and that is the enduringquality of spiritual experience as compared with factual events.Were it not for the diary I should have completely lost the memory of so manydetails of our travels. This bird and that flower, some bend of the river, hillslooming ahead, tributaries entering the main current, sand or pebbles on someisland shore affording us flat ground for our tent and sleeping bags, the food weate, our broken talks with the guides, the chunks of ice falling with a "plosh"from overhanging banks into the river. So many of these things are left behind inthe immeasurably distant time of over 30 years ago, when we crawled slowly upthe Rat River, and now only a shadowy outline of each experience remains in thejottings of a paper volume. Yet our moods and feelings we have never forgottenand, after all, what is a mood but a prolonged spiritual experience? Sometimes,it needs only a phrase or two in that shabby little volume to re-awaken our moodsas if we suffered them, or were buoyed up by them only yesterday.Once again we set out in a mood of high exultation, kindled by the explorer'sinner light; hardship is to be welcomed, there shall be no limit to powers ofendurance, we shall move in a world beyond the pin-pricks of daily life. In theearly stages of the journey even hardtack is a delicacy, mosquitoes are a joke, wetfeet and aching limbs a part of the game. Then the river rises, holding us pris-