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  67. 3:46 a.m.

Now drawing Canoe is far easier than drawing Sneeze, or at least it should have been.

Opik stares at my drawing in the sand and shakes his head.

“It’s a canoe,” I tell him for the fifth time. “Ca-new.”

Meow.

“It’s not a banana.”

I wipe my hand over the dirt and try again.

I could see the outline of the canoe in my head, yet each time I etched it in the sand, something went wrong.

Meow.

“Murdock?”

Meow.

I laugh. “Right, no balls.”

Opik takes the stick from me. I watch as he expertly draws a canoe holding two people, each holding a paddle.

“Ca-new,” he says.

I nod.

::::

The sky is still more dark than light when we begin our journey back the twenty-five miles to the canoe. After twenty minutes, the sandbar returns. We run fast for the remaining time, then settle in and make camp. The magic anti-mosquito powder has lost its mojo and a swarm of black descends upon me.

After sucking me dry, the cloud evaporates and I plead with Opik to find me some more choking powder.

He shakes his head.

It must have been something he’d lucked upon just that once. I doubt I will ever would find out what it was.

As my last minute ticks away, I get to witness Opik’s fishing in action. He wades into the river with a stick and begins tapping the water lightly, then smacking the stick down with all the force he can muster out of his forty-pound frame. He doesn’t catch a fish in the time I watch, but I know he will have a couple waiting for me when I awake.

Which he does.

Opik’s head is resting in the crook of my arm and he has his hand wrapped around Lassie’s tail. I want to get up, to get a move on, but I find myself lying there listening to him breathe. I let them both sleep for another five minutes, then wake them.

By my estimate, it will be another ten miles to the Yukon River/Tanana River confluence, then another eight to ten miles to reach the canoe.

We eat as we run.

The next day is the same, the only difference the three less minutes of sunlight.

On the third day, the rains come.

According to Lassie, the storm rolled in twelve hours after I’d gone to sleep. An hour later, the heavens opened and a torrential downpour ensued.

Luckily, I’d fallen asleep high up on the sandbar, or I would have been at risk of being swept away by the rising water. It rode three feet higher on the banks than when I’d last seen it, and the river flowed at double the speed of the day before.

It is impossible to stay dry.