I parachuted from an airplane once.

    Of course, this has nothing to do with my 255-kilometre rafting trip of the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers.

    But I need a way to compare the feeling I had standing on the bank -- decked out in rubber boots, rain suit, life preserver, sun screen and a sensible hat -- watching the big water of this fabled northern river surge by at 16 kilometres an hour. From the sub-Arctic region of the Yukon, through the highest mountain ranges of British Columbia, I would be swept to the Pacific Ocean's coast along the Alaskan Panhandle.
    Eleven of us were about to trust our lives to the rafts that were being expertly prepared by three river guides. These rafts had to stay together even if they were careening off canyon walls upside down. From Dalton Post, Yukon, we faced an elevation drop of 615 meters riding three times the volume of water that flows through the Grand Canyon.

    My mind was thrown back 12 years to the moment I asked the parachuting instructor to pull that one strap even tighter. Because once I jumped out of that airplane there was nothing (nothing!) that would save me except for the training I received and that funny back pack thingy.

    Rafting is a lot like parachuting: They both only go one way. And once you shove off you have no contact with the outside world. You are totally dependent on your training and the equipment you bring with you.

    But for rafting that isn't exactly true. We did have a satellite phone with us and a Global Positioning System. A helicopter could pluck us from a rock within 30 minutes of breaking a leg.

    And we were in the care of Nahanni River Adventures' river guides who were prepared to do everything but chew our food for us.

    After a safety chat we headed to the rafts and were pleasantly surprised with the comfortable seating. Rafts are full of air, after all, and there were lots of packs to lean back on.

    There is no sensation of moving when you are in a raft, nor when you are falling from an airplane. But just as I watched that airplane shoot skyward and away from me, I watched the bank drift away. The force of the Tatshenshini forbade that perch to the outside world just as determinedly as gravity prevented me from jumping back onto the plane. I won't see my world again until I land ... but this time it will take 11 days, not just three minutes.

    But we were headed forward and that's where my thoughts returned.

    Right away we found out why they call this an "adventure tour". The idea was to stop and camp along the banks after only two hours of rafting. But our intended campsite was flooded by the more than expected spring run off from the St. Elias Mountains.

    "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" doesn't work out here. Helmets were passed out as we were told we would be hurtling ourselves through Lower Canyon a day sooner than was planned.

    A more intense safety lecture was presented. As amiable and goofy as our river guides could be, we all understood that nobody would be hurt on their tour. We all gleaned from the lecture that these men had a tremendous respect for the power of "The Tat". They knew it was in charge, but they also knew the rules.

    They also knew the laws of the Venturi Principle: A constricted flow of water will compress and/or speed up. The Tat under pressure was a powerful example.

    As the canyon walls closed in, The Tat was furious at being constricted. It built up energy in waves leaving horrific voids to be crashed into just as the next wave threw our rafts into the air again. Outcroppings caused eddies; rocks on the river bed caused even more waves. A boulder protruding the surface formed a dreaded "hole" as a waterfall was impossibly created heading upstream to fill the vacuum behind it.

    Soaking wet and numb from excitement, we landed at Silver Creek and helped unload the rafts and then pitch our tents. Dry once again we ambled back to the kitchen area and were surprised once more by our river guides. After battling the worst The Tat had to offer and bringing us to this safe harbour, they had already set up benches around a cheery fire.

    Bob Hanley, the crusty but lovable lead river guide from Whitehorse, Yukon, savored the shocked look on his guests' faces as he offered a tray of appetizers of smoked halibut, crackers and cheese.

    Behind him, Perth, Ontario's Trent Abbott and Ron Morrison, of Whitby, Ontario, prepared a salmon with two different sauces and had already whipped up a tangy, yet sweet, salsa. And for dessert (surprise, surprise) a delicate banana cream pie.

    We were all confused. But surely, we told ourselves, this was the last time we would see fresh vegetables, fruit and meat on this trip. We would be proved wrong everyday as the rafts' coolers were stuffed with all of the good stuff.

    The next morning I awoke under a carnival of colour and shapes as my canvas ceiling glowed with the morning sun. Although I had slept for 10 hours, The Tat still roared outside my tent. But it was a blessed substitute for my clock radio back home telling me my team had lost again, and, oh, by the way, it's time to get up and go to work.

    I was still luxuriating in those first-day-of-vacation feelings when I heard "Coffee, hot water for tea, hot chocolate" wafting up from the kitchen where a fire was already warming the early risers.

    Yep, that's much better than a clock radio. But I still had to get my mind around the fact that for the next 10 days I won't have my day start with an alarm, or I won't have to fight traffic, or I won't have a newspaper to read, or a radio to listen to, or even a CD player, or a video game. My leashes in life (cell phone, pager, emails) and chains (time, intentions, obligations, design) were all gone.

    Yep, this is the only way to vacation (if I may use that word as a verb). I dressed in my own sweet time and headed down for fresh-brewed coffee, juice, a light and airy omelet and a chat with all of my new friends.

    On the water once again, I realized rafting is the only way to enjoy nature at its wildest. Build a highway through the bush and you can't see the trees for the sign forests. A train is too noisy and too fast and you can't get "up close and personal" from a plane. Hiking and biking paths would be impossible to maintain so far from civilization.

    Lounging in a raft sweeping silently along at 16 kilometres an hour is smooth enough to hold your camera still for pictures, doesn't scare away the wildlife and gives you time to let it all sink in.

    It is crazy to think the world almost lost this "River Wild" to a copper mine in the1980s.

    The toxic fallout would have threatened the 50 mammal species that depend on this river. Roads and construction would displace grizzly bears, dall sheep, mountain goats and wolves. Tailing ponds and dams could not be counted on since Windy Craggy, the proposed site, is in the most seismically active area in North America. As one of only three major salmon-bearing rivers on the northern Pacific coast, the bald eagle population was equally threatened.

    Lobbyists for the mine argued that only a pampered few would ever see this river system. I looked at my fellow guests and saw a nurse, civil servant, teacher, small business owner and an administrator. None of them seem pampered.

    One thousand such people see this river each year, mostly as guests of river guiding companies. At the urging of Tatshenshini International (a coalition of over 50 conservation groups), the governments of British Columbia, the Yukon, Canada, Alaska, the USA and the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations co-operated to create a Class A wilderness park.

River Guides

They can tell the difference between Fireweed and Purple Vetch at 20 paces; fold filo pastries with one arm tied behind their backs; and anticipate the mood of a bear by which season it is.     They are river guides. A tenderfoot's best friend.     It is amazing how much of our common sense leaves us the moment we are placed in an unfamiliar situation.     Rafting a big river like the Tatshenshini and Alsek is the exact kind of situation you need all of your senses working at peak efficiency. This is why the river guide is so important.     Certainly the guide must know every bend in the river, be skilled and strong enough to paddle safely through Class IV white water and be certified for field first aid.     But they must also have patience with beginners, have a great sense of humour and the bush smarts of a mountain man.     And because guests on their trips ask questions, they need a working knowledge of botany, geology, ornithology, anthropology and natural history.     River guides don't need to be good singers, but it helps.     They do need to be handy with a tool kit. If the propane stove doesn't start or the raft springs a leak or the water purifier sticks there is nobody else around to fix it except the river guide.     They need to be tactful enough to discuss personal hygiene with a woman twice their age.     In the kitchen they need to know at least two recipes for roasting lamb, which wine goes best with it and how to bake bread over a camp fire.     Here's the amazing part: Nahanni River Adventures has managed to find 40 such guides who can do all of this, be all of this, 18 hours a day for 11 days straight. And they get at least two applications a week.     River guiding is a lifestyle. These men and women enjoy the outdoors and they enjoy showing it to guests. Asking a typical river guide to put on a tie and punch a time clock would be like putting them in jail.     Neil Hartling, owner of Nahanni River Adventures, says 40 percent of his business are repeat customers and 30 percent are from referrals. That makes his river guides crucial to the success of his company.

    The St. Elias-Tatshenshini World Wilderness Reserve is now 8.5 million hectares of pristine nature that will never be developed. It is the largest reserve in the world.

    I looked at the passing scenery of spruce, willow and birch trees with renewed interest as I imagined my great-great grandchildren experiencing the exact same sight that I was enjoying right then.

    Delicate wild flowers blanketed the alpine tundra, yet we disturbed none of them. Our fires were built in fire pans to prevent scorching the ground, all of our waste was carried out and we even scattered rocks and un-used firewood to make it look like we were never there.

    But Bob informed me the river won't look like this in 100 years. It is the nature of all rivers to change. The Tat always seeks the path of least resistance, corroding away at the landscape as it flows downhill to the Pacific Ocean. I looked again at an abandoned river bed to our left, and at flooded trees to our right. Trees that already had the soil cut away from beneath floated along with our rafts. The Tat was changing even while we watched.

    You can't experience everything from the raft, so our second day found us camped beneath an unnamed mountain at Sediments Creek. The next day we had a choice: Some will stay at camp to relax and the rest will climb the first hill. Then the fittest will climb the mountain behind.

    It was our first look at the sweeping vista we've been floating through. The Alsek Mountain Range awaited us downriver. Its meltwater spilled into the Tatshenshini, along with the O'Connor River, to make it double in size.

    At our next camp, the mood became quiet. The excitement of new friendships gave way to the space we give, and the serenity we take, from old friends. People found quiet places to sit and think. Long walks along the shore and writing in journals, each were finally able to leave the concrete world for a while for some introspection. Years of hectic lifestyles were finally surrendered to the gentle nurturing of nature.

    We allowed ourselves to be treated like the guests that we were. On a trip like this you are never hungry ... but when food is offered, you eat. And you are never tired ... but when you lie down, you sleep.

    After a two-day stay, we floated down to Confluence, by far the most beautiful and serene spot on the river. This is where the Tatshenshini meets up with the larger Alsek River taking on the latter's name.

    They meet in a bowl of surrounding mountains where a glacier once sat. From this spot we could see 27 different glaciers hanging over the shoulders of these mountains, barely containing the world's largest non-polar ice cap. In all, there were 31 surge-type glaciers and 350 valley glaciers ... one of which we would get a chance to walk on at the next camp.

    It is called Walker Glacier, owing to the fact it is close enough to walk on. Approaching it we were in T-shirts, but once we climbed over a small hill and stepped onto the glacier we found we were in another world. We hastily pulled out sweaters against the cold of the ice and jackets for the wicked valley wind.

    Another look around and we saw the glacier had its own eco-system. There was moss growing on the ice and willows had planted themselves in the dirt pushed out of its way. Although the pressurized ice doesn't melt fast, there was a river beneath the glacier roaring towards the Alsek River.

    Ice crunched beneath our feet as we walked to the aqua-colored, craggy peaks of the mass retreating between the mountains. After half an hour it seemed we were not much closer, forcing us to realize it was much bigger than we thought.

    Our final two nights were spent on Alsek Lake, where the other face of an ice cap was exposed to us. Icebergs, having just calved from glaciers, floated in a field of frozen statues. From shore we could count at least a hundred. It was the first time in nine days we hadn't heard the rush of The Tat, but the eerie quiet was broken somewhere to the right of us as an iceberg flipped over in an explosion of splashes. The under-water currents melt the icebergs faster on the bottom than the sun from atop, but it happened so quickly it was difficult to decide which one just flipped.

    The next day we took a tour of the icebergs in the rafts. We took care not to get too close in case one flipped on top of us. Back at camp we enjoyed our last night practising loon calls, pretending we didn't have to return to the world.

    Just as my parachuting adventure began with an airplane, this adventure exploring one of the last refuges of nature ended with an airplane. A Hawker Sidley turbo prop came thundering through the trees onto an impossibly short and narrow runway at Dry Bay, Alaska.

    The technology and civilization this plane represented thundered into our consciousness, as well. It was a little too much, a little too soon. But as we settled into the cushioned seats and gave our snack orders to the flight attendant, we fought off sleep long enough to say goodbye to The Tat.

    We were shocked to be reminded that the river, which just recently seemed so huge and powerful, was just a thin ribbon of life winding through endless snow-covered mountain ranges ... the very granite crust of our earth. Beyond the farthest mountain was another mountain even further away.

    Looking down from the plane it now seemed small and fragile. But, after 11 days, it taught us we can find our real home only in nature. It is the only place a human soul can truly relax.