Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/112497
I���m happy to have made it here for other reasons. Forty years ago my grandfather settled in nearby Wells, population 250 ��� where Jorgenson and Macarthy now live ��� working a placer-mine gold claim on French Creek. What little I know of my grandfather���s life in the Cariboo as a hunter and gold-miner has, since childhood, given the region a largerthan-life, Jack London quality in my imagination; coming here is a long-delayed ambition and this wolf-kill scene fits right in with the mythos. A few minutes later we���re out in the pure Canadiana of the lake: all snow and skis and wide-open spaces. But something about skiing the flat lake makes it feel foreign ��� as if the six of us, spaced out in our shared track over a half-kilometre, are traversing the Siberian taiga. It���s not a familiar landscape. The winter rainforest also smells different than the salty coast I���m used to; faintly sweet in the dry air, like frozen sap. AS A FIRST TRY AT CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING, this 56-km multi-day tour sounded like a potential disaster. Fortunately, the basics of Nordic skiing are easier to master than downhill skiing, or even ice-skating, at least for me. Hauling our gear behind us on runner-less plastic sleds ��� while breaking trail through drizzlesoaked snow a foot deep ��� can be like pulling a canoe into fifteen-knot headwinds. But when the fresh snow is dry and squeaky and the under-pack solid, as it is today, sled-bearing skiers breeze down the lakes. Making our way across Kibbee, I sink into the lulling Nordic rhythm of kick-glide, kick-glide; as a meditative practice, one could do much worse. We make good time, and during a second forest portage ��� gliding over wolf and otter prints ��� stop for lunch in an open glade of bottlebrush spruce. Jorgenson and Macarthy prepare our artisan fare ��� pastrami, avocado and mushroom on ciabatta ��� while the rest of us lounge and take photos. Harris tends toward sweeping vista shots; his friend Mike Duffy, who has a background in mathematics and aerospace engineering, prefers close-ups. There are few birds this time of year and no flowers, and in their absence the eye catches flashes of colour in the lichens on branches and boulders: highway-sign orange, shades of sage and chartreuse. Duffy is a fan of these lichens, not only for colour but form. Though ���fan��� may not be the right word; he is a votary, fanatical. Lichens contain, he insists, the core mysteries of creation. He recruits for the faith. ���You see this 30 W E S T W O R L D p28-31-44-45_Hut.indd 30 >> here,��� he says, aiming his lens at a long, yellow-green beard of lichen. ���Come look at this. You���ve got to see this, it���s amazing. This is a goddamn fractal, this right here; a perfect fractal. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand what I mean by that, that this right here is a goddamn fractal?��� His passion rubs off. Later, some iPhone googling verifies that lichens are an underrated presence in the woods, a kind of flora so diverse they should be considered terrestrial coral. In the Cariboo they show up as long and wispy ���witch���s hair���; ancient, slow-growing scabs used to measure the dates of glacial retreat; or as Lobaria lungwort, which looks like a slimy leaf of savoy cabbage and also happens to grow in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Several are crucial winter forage for moose and the red-listed local mountain caribou. Fractal, humble and essential. Over our decadent sandwiches, Jorgenson tells us that Kibbee Lake was named for Frank Kibbee, a backcountry guide and trapper who arrived here from Montana sometime in 1900. The local legend is best known for surviving a mauling by an enraged grizzly caught in one Kibbee���s traps. As the story goes, the injured bear, dragging both the steel trap and its heavy log toggle, charged Kibbee and broke three ribs from his spine. According to Cariboo author Richard Wright, the bear then tore at Kibbee���s head with its teeth, splitting his jaw and shredding his scalp as the trapper fended the animal off as best he could with one arm. ���I give it to him to ���chaw��� on so���s he would let my head alone,��� Kibbee later explained. ���My face never was one a woman would look at once, let alone twice, but it was the only one I had and it suited me all right. I wanted to hang on to as much of it as I could.��� The area is rich with such stories, dubious and otherwise. On Indianpoint Lake, the longest crossing of the day, the sun disappears for a couple of hours and the wind whips up clouds of snow-dust. I keep eyeing the treed lakeshore, scanning for moose. It���s an attempt to connect, in some attenuated way, with my grandfather. Unlike Kibbee, women did give him second looks, which proved fatal to his marriage. In photos from his Cariboo days, his slicked-back hair and pencil-thin moustache bring to mind Clark Gable in his vintage years, circa Across the Wide Missouri. His nickname ��� ���Spud��� ��� was less illustrious, a genial slur on his Irishness, most likely, but fitting. It placed him in the company of his In 1925 the Bowron area was approved as a 62,000-hectare game reserve, over the near-unanimous opposition of local residents who trapped, hunted and ���shed the lakes year-round; in 1961 it was expanded to a provincial park. WINTER 2012 12-10-26 7:35 AM