We reach camp, the fresh breeze, the welcome hard ground of the gravel beach, wade into the icy river for a drink, then a shampoo, a bath—ladies upstream, men downstream.

Shivering in the wind, I dry myself with my cleanest dirty shirt. Forgot to bring a towel. The wind is coming up the river, as usual, from the north and the frozen Arctic Sea; I can feel that chill malignancy penetrate the marrow of my bones. Hurriedly I dress, layering on a shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and a parka. When I feel warm the wind stops.

And they come out again. I wait. One slap on the arm kills nine. Forgot to bring cigars. I reach for the repellent.

We have a Mexican dinner for supper, preceded by a pitcher of margaritas. The margaritas we ice with snow carried down from the mountain in a daypack by Mike, a thoughtful and foresighted man. We drink to his health. Life is rough on the Last Frontier. Don’t feel quite right myself, but it’s only a matter of acclimatizing: when I left Tucson three days ago the temperature was 106 in the shade; at Salt Lake City, where we paused for a day and a night, it was 65 degrees and stormy; at Fairbanks (elevation 440 feet), where I stayed for two nights, the air was hot, humid, muggy, close to 90 degrees and hotter than that in my little cell at the El Sleazo Hotel on the banks of the Chena River; from Fairbanks by DC-3 to Barter Island, on the edge of the Arctic ice pack, we found ourselves in the heart of the wind-chill factory—even the Eskimos were wearing their parkas; and now on the river, where the wind comes and goes, the temperature seems to fluctuate from subfreezing to 80 and back again. But no one complains about the weather except me, and I do it inwardly only; can’t let the others know that the most sissified rugged outdoorsman in the West is now squatting among them on his ammo can, huddled in thermal long johns, wool pants, wool shirt, flannel sweatshirt, wool ski cap and a flannel-lined hooded parka.

Before turning in for the sun-bright night I requisition a handful of aspirins from the expedition infirmary; Mark also doses me with ten thousand milligrams of vitamin C and other huge jellied capsules, spansules and suppositories, each about horse-size. “Can’t get sick on us, mate,” he says; “you know there’s no germs north of the Arctic Circle.”

“Of course not,” I agree. “But one could always show up.” Crawling into my geodesic tent, sliding into my antique, greasy, duct-tape-mended mummy bag, I say to myself, No germs, eh? Well, if I was a germ I wouldn’t want to live here either.

The sun shines all night long.

JUNE 26— I awake by degrees to the sound of robins chirping in the cherry trees. Impossible. But when I emerge from my cocoon the first thing I see is a fat robin redbreast bouncing along on the gravel bar. How could such a small, harmless, innocent bird travel so far? Or, as Jensen says, how many FPM (wing flaps per minute) to cover three thousand miles?