Northern Exposure
The cry was repetitive, full of alarm and desperation, the kind of sharp, guttural shriek typically reserved for life-threatening situations. At first the sound was just a curiosity, a babble toying with my slumbering consciousness. It was like a lucid dream, where I recognized my name being called, but couldn’t figure out an appropriate response. Almost instinctively, I let lose a belligerent “WHAT?!” The response was simple, understated, and calm: “We’re flooded.”
Initially, our chosen camp had seemed idyllic. A mile up from the ocean, sitting at the confluence of two enticing steelhead rivers, this Alaskan beachhead would have typically been unreachable via ocean-going kayak. Buoyed by an exceptionally strong mid-day tide, my partner and I marveled at our good fortune in being swept upriver by the power of the current. Having reached our landing site at dead-high tide we thought it a bit odd that moist sand still remained just below the sun-dried beach. But we dismissed it as just more permanently soggy ground in the world’s largest temperate rainforest.
Bryan woke first, unprotected from the flood. As he sounded the alarm, I rolled off my cot onto the waterbed that had been my tent floor, and realized that I shouldn’t have so easily dismissed the Alaskan tide. The ocean had inundated us, infiltrating every corner. Water was mid-calf and rising, all of it the temperature of snow-melt. Clad only in boxers, I stepped into the blackness and began to gather what gear I could. A wellplaced knoll 100 yards
