“It was the happiest time of my life,” says Chris Larkin. “Undoubtedly.”
His answer is instant. There’s no hesitation. The best time in his 65 years on earth was 31 years ago. It lasted ten days. It was that time he lost absolutely everything in the Mackenzie Mountains.
The idea of getting away from it all lies at the root of exploration. It is, for most of us, a path to a particular kind of freedom, as it was for all explorers whether they were searching for a new home, spiritual salvation or glory. Most outdoor pursuits claim some kind of ‘ultimate freedom’ but what does that actually mean? Skiers will tell you it’s a bottomless powder turn, surfers will say it’s getting barrelled, but Larkin’s take is different. He found what we all seek after dumping his boat on the infamously dangerous Mountain River in the Northwest Territories in June 1985.
Luckily his wilderness experience was extensive. Really extensive.
He was on his way back to civilization after spending two winters alone in the wilderness. He’d left Fort Simpson in 1983 on the MacKenzie River, with two canoes loaded with gear. He travelled up the Keele River to the wildlife cabin and spent the winter there. In the spring of 1984, he headed further upstream, dragging, pushing and forcing one fully-loaded canoe to the source of the Twitya River at Mountain Lake. An epic, and perhaps mule-headed feat in itself Larkin then built himself a cabin and spent the winter. Then, in March of 1985 he began his descent of the Mountain River, intending to arrive at the Mackenzie and paddle on to Fort Good Hope. The guy knew his way around this wilderness.
But the Mountain River was raging. The sheer volume of the spring runoff expressed itself in 16-foot waves barrelling off the inside of the canyon walls. It was no place for–what Larkin would call himself–an inexperienced paddler. The Class III rapids had no problem capsizing Larkin. With the frigid water threatening hypothermia, he was lucky to get ashore at all. He had his life, but he’d lost everything else. His sole possessions were a life jacket, a sheath knife, a container with 20 matches, gaiters, rubber boots, and the clothes he was wearing. Everything else was carried downstream with his canoe or ripped from his pockets by the mighty torrent of water.
“With emotion I think of all the important material possessions I have lost,” he writes in his unpublished book about the trip, A Far Cry. “But with a still more powerful feeling I know the land is offering me freedom; freedom from being possessed by my possessions. The river has taken them all, save a few clothes on my back. Hungry and happy I have never felt such elation, such perfect union.”
He was 110 kilometres from the Mackenzie River and 100 kilometres further from Fort Good Hope. The only things between him and a cold beer were 210 kilometres of unforgiving terrain, one of the widest rivers in Canada and millions and millions of hungry mosquitoes.
Over the next ten days, Larkin ate next to nothing. On day one he managed to find some shrivelled cranberries from last fall. No more than 12. On day two, he was lucky enough to stab a porcupine in the head and roast it over a fire. On day three he ate some ants. And some mosquitoes. And another six cranberries or so. On day four he was eating poplar bark. Then his memory gets hazy.
“I can’t remember the sequence of those ten days, but my memory of each individual circumstance is very vivid,” he says. “I do remember the noise of the river conjuring itself into this sort of barbershop singing, which was horrendous. I realized what it was; it was a lack of food and sleep so I just had to put up with it.”
After nine days of hiking through mud, landslides and impenetrable bush, Larkin finally arrived at the MacKenzie River. But where the Mountain River converges with the MacKenzie, the MacKenzie is over three-kilometres wide. He could hear and see boats on the far side, but he couldn’t get their attention. And it was pouring rain.
“It took me all night to start a fire and when I did I had to lean over it to keep it going,” he recalls. “I think it was a full 24 hours before a boat came over. That 24 hours, I wasn’t really asleep. I was drowsy. I suppose I had given up. The real factor here is that with diminishing energy levels, there’s no will to live. The will to live has a direct correlation with energy levels. It’s a physical thing. It’s a biological thing. And if the body isn’t getting heat, you’re just going to naturally die. Starvation is not an uncomfortable way to die.”
Larkin, who is a deep thinker has pondered those ten days for decades.
The cabin Chris Larkin lived in during his winter stay in 1981 on the Broken Skull River.
“My philosophy is that we, as human beings, are a part of nature. The further away from technology and human creations you are, the more worthwhile the experience is going to be. The knife and the matches were fairly primitive technology, so I spent ten days in pure nature. Where there was no element of man involved at all. You’ve got nothing else interfering between your existence and the basic elements. And the fact that you are so close to death, makes life lived at a much higher pitch.”
It’s that higher pitch that Larkin loved.
“I’ve never done the wingsuit thing,” he says, “but the analogy might be that instead of doing that for a minute, a couple minutes, you’re doing that for ten days. It’s ultimate freedom.”
While he admits that forcing yourself into a survival situation is foolish, he believes this was the ultimate way to end his two years in the bush. An adventure that he refers to as a freedom trip.
“If one looks at this canoeing accident in the context of a two year trip, I say it’s a perfect ending to those two years. I still remember it with a lot of happiness, with joy almost. I think it was the most worthwhile thing I ever did in my life.”
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