Kabloona

Reaching Kabloona

There are places in the world that, once visited, become a part of you. They reach inside, infecting your blood with something more powerful, more raw than anything you've known before. Nothing changes this, not distance or time, or experience. I didn't know these things before I reached the Yukon Territory of Canada. I found out later that it's a common ailment of those who visit the far north. We become addicted and the only fix is to return as soon as possible.

When I reached the Northwest Territories, it got even worse. That was in 1999, my second trip above the 60th parallel, driving alone from Denver, Colorado in an old Toyota 4Runner, kayak strapped to the roof. I wasn't much of a kayaker, but it didn't matter-- the calm waves and currents of those northern lakes suited me fine. When they got rough, I got off the water.

During that same trip, on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake in a Hay River bookstore named Snowy Owl Books, I came across Kabloona in the Yellow Kayak by Victoria Jason. A grandmother of four, she was the first woman to kayak alone through the Northwest Passage. I opened to somewhere in the middle of the book and read, "It should have been enough to have lived, to have been able to hope and dream, but the Arctic had captured my heart. Try as I might, I could not make a serious commitment to another. All I could concentrate on was returning again, on my own terms."

I purchased the book immediately. A few days later, surrounded by some locals in a Park Ranger's cabin near Louise Falls, Northwest Territories, I read excerpts to them from her book. She had written about what I was experiencing for the first time but my friends already knew: Louise Falls drops 50 feet in a spectacular series of rock-cliffs, that the current of the mighty Mackenzie River is fierce, that traveling alone can be overwhelming but never so frightening as staying at home and doing nothing.

Kabloona is the Inuktitut word for stranger. But Victoria was never a stranger for long in any place she visited. As I read about her kayaking adventures, the people she met grew familiar to me and Victoria herself evolved into an old friend. Somewhere in my mind was the thought that we would meet someday and she would tell me firsthand how blue those icebergs appeared, how daunting were those polar bear encounters, how wonderful it was to paddle north of the Arctic Circle.

Having been infected with the Northern bug myself, I knew that Victoria would revisit the Arctic, and I was anxious to read the sequel. But though the back cover promised "Kabloona" was only her first book, it was also to be her last.

Perhaps death is the only thing that can separate us from this particular love which causes us to return again and again. Victoria Jason passed after a long battle from brain cancer and strokes on May 24th, 2000. She was only 55 years old.