Imagine losing everything in the wilds of the Northwest Territories. That’s what happened to Chris Larkin in the early 1980s. After surviving two winters in a cabin alone in the wilderness, his canoe capsized on the infamous Mountain River. Larkin lost everything except his knife, a few matches and the clothes on his back.
There were over 200 kilometres between him and civilization. 200 kilometres of relentless, wild terrain. The mighty Mackenzie River lay between him and salvation too. For the next ten days he struggled towards salvation. He made it. But only just. And to this day, he remembers those ten days as the most meaningful days of his life.
“The land is offering me freedom; freedom from being possessed by my possessions. The river has taken them all, save a few clothes on my back.“
“With emotion I think of all the important material possessions I have lost,” he wrote in his book, A Far Cry. “But with a still more powerful feeling I know the land is offering me freedom; freedom from being possessed by my possessions. The river has taken them all, save a few clothes on my back. Hungry and happy, I have never felt such elation, such perfect union.”
“I can’t remember the sequence,” he tells Colin Field in their conversation, “but my memory of each individual circumstance is very vivid. I do remember the noise of the river conjuring itself into this sort of barbershop singing, which was horrendous. I realized it was a lack of food and sleep so I just had to put up with it.”
After nine days of unbelievably rough hiking, a half-starved Larkin found himself at the Mackenzie River. He could see people in boats on the other side but the river is three kilometres wide here and he couldn’t get their attention. “I think it was a full 24 hours before a boat came,” he recalls.
“Over that time, I wasn’t really asleep. Only drowsy. I suppose I’d given up. The real factor here is that the will to live has a direct correlation with energy levels. It’s a physical thing, a biological thing. If the body isn’t getting heat, you’re just naturally going to die. Starvation is not an uncomfortable way to go.”
“My philosophy is that we, as human beings, are a part of nature. The further away from technology and human creations you are, the more worthwhile the experience. The knife and matches were fairly primitive technology, so I spent ten days in pure nature. There was no other element of man involved, nothing interfering between existence and the basic elements. The fact that you’re so close to death in such circumstances makes for life lived at a much higher pitch.”
Listen to the full conversation here.
