Ten boatmen converge, arriving from the country’s wildest rivers, and descend on our yellow school bus to outfit it for a trip to Alaska. The white water rafting season just ended on the Rogue River in Oregon and our bus is designated for the road trip. For the next few hours, boatmen crawl all over two buses transferring gear from one bus to the other. The guys remove the back few rows of seats to hold gear and food for the professional trips. Boats, bright orange life jackets, and oars soar to the roof. A fabulous sound system is installed; the Beatles bellow through the windows.

It’s 1977 and I’m one of the first female white-water river guides. I’ve heard the stories and been dreaming of Alaska for years. I drive to the nearest payphone, jam in a fistful of quarters, and call my boss and ask if I can join the other boatmen. In exchange for passage to Alaska, I offer to drive the first shuttle for free. The answer is yes.

I gather up my Rogues season’s earnings of $28 a day, stuff some clothes in a duffle bag, find a place to leave my car, and an hour later board the ‘Magical Yellow Bus’ headed north.

The Alaska Ferry buzzes with the sight of twelve scruffy, tan water-worn boatmen. Ripped cut-offs, frayed sneakers, or chewed-up flip-flops and sunglasses. This is long before raggy denim and rock-hard bodies are the rage. Our clear eyes and carved bodies exude confidence and a core connection to nature’s wildness.

On the top deck of the ferry, we pitch three prototypes of the first dome tents. People have never seen a tent that stood up on its own before. Dome tents plopped down on the upper deck appeared to have arrived from outer space.

We become the talk of the ferry passengers. Some people smiling, others with looks of disbelief, disdain, or utter disapproval.

After landing in Haines we camp for two nights under a huge tree filled with forty or fifty bald eagles. One of the boatmen commented it was the first time in the past two years that he had slept in the same place twice.

On the first shuttle, after the passengers and gear are dropped off, I drive the bus up the winding tricky road to the Alcan Highway alone. I hike into the wilds and camp under high mountain peaks near a spectacular icy-blue glacial-fed lake for a few days.

Later, at a rest stop on the Alcan Highway, a car screeches in, the family jumps out, kids screaming, ‘There’s the Magic Yellow Bus we saw on the ferry.” I invite them in.

Glenda’s homestead is nestled in the boonies, totally off the grid, no running water, occasionally at night electricity run by a gas generator, utter quiet. Glenda and I recognized each other on the ferry. We both used to live in Berkeley, CA and she invited me to stay with her family in their log cabin in the outskirts of Haines.

Alongside the wood-framed rustic house is a large greenhouse to grow food and enough pot to store for the winter. On the other side of the summer garden is a sauna for the weekly family cleanse. The house is outfitted with hand-made furniture, a heavy cast-iron wood-burning stove, and thick rugs. A fur-covered toilet seat hangs near the back door for the freeze your-ass-off winter treks to the outhouse.

Fresh caught grilled salmon and just picked blackberries crafted into pies appear as the house fills with people. The locals arrive for a party bringing the most succulent food I’ve ever tasted. Live heart-pounding body-rocking music reverberates through the landscape.

Out on the balcony of the unfinished second story, majestic colors illuminate the starry sky. A crescent moon hangs above a silver ribbon of a river; the sky streaked with iridescent pinks, blues, and purples of the northern lights. It is here on the balcony that I meet Matthew, an attorney from Manhattan. We marvel at the incredible beauty.

Downstairs I meet his friends, Joe, the Haines doctor, and Peggy, the owner of the local pizza parlor. Joe and Matthew, buddies from Yale, have black labs from the same litter. In this magical moment, we all decide to take a river trip down the Alsek and Tatshenshini rivers, known as the Tat.

In 1977 few people have ventured down this 140-mile river that runs from Dalton Post, Canada to Dry Bay, Alaska. A woman rowing a single boat, with no other boatmen is unheard of. Four people, two dogs, two rifles loaded in one boat head out into the untouched Alaskan wilderness.

This is my first trip down the Tat. I’ve heard stories about the sand waves and eddy lines, but that is totally different from real-life experience. At put-in I watch a grizzly bear saunter into the river, scoop up a salmon in its paw, hold the flailing salmon in his mouth and meander away. Later checking out his tracks, I easily fit both my feet in one paw print. I’m excited, intimidated, terrified, and a bit nervous to row this river.

On day one in the Tatshenshini Gorge, I row a fabulous section of perfectly formed sand waves made up of glacial silt. It is so yummy to ride the delicious curving waves that continue, long after most rivers peter out. At the bottom of the rapids, the boat scrapes over an unseen sharp boulder. The river carries a level of glacial sludge that makes it impossible to see an inch below the surface. I pull to shore and analyze the eighteen-inch gash in the bottom of my boat. I now fully realize why it is inadvisable to take a single boat down the remote regions of the Tat.

The well-known rhythm of sewing helps ease my mounting fear about the remoteness of our situation. Mosquitoes, the size of flies, swarm biting everywhere. My mind races through the worst-case scenarios if the mend doesn’t hold. Sewing the waxed thread in and out I go through a mental checklist. We are near an open patch of sandy beach. We have plenty of food. One of the passengers is a doctor. After eight days the bush pilot will miss us at takeout and search for us. We can build a smoky fire, I can signal with the mirror in my ammo can. I don’t want the others to know the depth of my inner panic. I meticulously sew, patch and duct tape the boat; this patch has to hold.

We camp on a sandbar with views of hanging glaciers dripping off high mountain peaks. We are rafting through twenty-seven million acres of nature preserves, the largest contiguous wilderness area in the world. The mythic proportions of the landscape intensify my feelings of vulnerability. Clusters of flaming fireweed and purple lupine along with a vast array of animal tracks blanket our campsite. We are tender morsels to the mammals roaming these parts. The dogs sleep in the tents with us; the guys sleep with rifles nearby.

Over the next days, the valley continues to open while huge tributaries pour into the Tat, transforming it into an immense river. Silt, sand, and glacial debris create channels in the river that snag the boat. A panorama of sweeping awe-inspiring vistas surrounds us on all sides. Fluttering birds’ wings, bald eagles screeches, scurrying animals, breaking twigs, howling wolves, and the deep sandpaper sound of rumbling glacial silt etching the bottom of the boat, are engulfed in the massive silence of vast untouched space.

We are in real nature, untouched by the human hand. There are no human thought waves imprinted in the surroundings; nothing has been stamped with the consciousness of humanity. I row free of the choking human patterns that shut down my brain waves and nervous system.

At the confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek, the size and hydraulics of the river are impressive. The river swells to over a mile wide. Ribbons of woven glacial sludge create mid-stream sandbars. Eddy lines stand tall.

An eddy is a swirling of water in the opposite direction of the main flow of a river. A sheer line forms that divides the slower water spinning upstream apart from the downstream current. On the formidable water of the Tat, the zone between the screaming downstream current and the upstream spin creates eddy lines several feet high. I’d heard about these, but I gasped when I encountered the hydraulics of this river.

Take a moment and put your elbow on a table. Point your fingers to the sky and measure twenty-four inches up from your elbow. Imagine that the table is water forcefully flowing upstream and the mark two feet up is water churning downstream in the opposite direction. A straight sheer wall of water stands, like your arm, between the two levels of water. That is what the eddy lines or eddy fences are like on the Tat.

On day six after camping on a glacial moraine, we secure the gear and gather up the dogs. Out of the blue, a massive grizzly pulls up to shore. Grizzly bears move at a speed of twenty-seven to thirty-five miles an hour. Panic sets in. There is no way in hell I can out-row a grizz. The guys dig for the guns, Peggy grabs the dogs and I row for dear life. Interwoven sandbars catch the boat. The grizz stands up on his hind feet, raises his paws up to the sky exposing a nine-foot frame and lets out a husky roar that reverberates throughout the wilderness. He turns and ambles back into the backcountry. It is then that I learn that grizzly bears don’t like dogs.

Still shaking, I row as fast as possible. Low-hung clouds blank out the mountains. The arctic chill clamors up our legs. An eagle dips into a close-up view as if it is checking us out. The braided river keeps snagging the boat. Huge eddy lines appear and disappear as we float by. Moose grazing close to the shore look up and track our lone boat drift through the vast untouched expanse. The frigid air is somber and pensive. A wolf howls.

The next day snowcapped 15,300’ regal Mount Fairweather crowns the St. Elias Mountains, the largest concentration of high peaks in North America. An iceberg the size of an ocean liner blocks one of the entrances to Lake Alsek. I find a pathway through the ever-shifting icebergs.

Massive curving glaciers spill into Alsek Lake. The calving glaciers thunder as huge chunks of ice the size of large buildings plunge into the lake. The ice crackles, like the sound of pouring hot water on a tray of ice only deeper, and ricochets through the icebergs.

I wind my way through the largest non-polar ice field in the world. To my right an iceberg flips over, creating rippling waves that rock the boat. Mysterious shapes of ice radiate a chilling luminous blue light. Gargantuan holes, twisted shapes, and rounded contours etched in the icebergs testify to the howling winds that whip through this valley.

After eight days on the river, we land at the fishery in Dry Bay. The next morning a bush pilot flies in, loads our gear, and we have a spectacular flight over the rugged magnificent country back to Haines.

An excerpt from my memoir, Unseen Connections: A Memoir from Pain and Violence to Joy.