Wild Man Island Read Free

slightest chop. Still, my breath was coming faster and my adrenaline was up. No reason to get excited—in a few minutes I had cleared the point and was gliding into the calm waters of Kasnyku Bay.
    Immediately I could see the creek at the back of the bay. At the foot of a steep mountainside, it plunged outof the forest onto a strip of grassy tidal flats. I strained to spot Hidden Falls in the timber beyond, but all I could see through the trees was a hint of sheer gray cliffs.
    As I paddled toward the rear of the bay, I let my mind drift across the years. My father had been hiking down from Hidden Lake with a geologist when it happened. They were making their way down the cliffs by the side of Hidden Falls.
    My father had a geologist along because he was looking for a certain kind of limestone terrain called karst. Karst is known for ravines, sinkholes, underground streams, and especially for caves. My father was hoping to find caves on Baranof Island.
    Their search had taken them from tidewater on the west side of the island, across its volcano-studded backbone, to tidewater on the east side. We found out later that they didn’t find any caves; they didn’t even find karst. Now that I’d seen for myself how the forests on these islands blanketed the bedrock underneath them, I could understand what they’d been up against.
    My father, Alex Galloway, was an archeologist, a paleontologist, and a flintknapper. He was crazy about the past, especially about the migrations of human beings long before recorded history. He’d been to Africa and worked with the Leakeys, but his big passion in life was the Americas. Even when he was in college, my father had a hunch that people had been in North and South America for a whole lot longer than the experts thought.
    I beached the kayak and dragged it across the flatsand up above the high tide line. I drank from my water bottle and checked the time. It was 3:31 A.M. and broad daylight. It had taken me only forty-six minutes so far. I touched the tiny cedar paddle at my neck. There was time, but I had better hurry if I was going to make it back to camp before the changing of the tide.

3
    T HE ROAR WAS IN MY EARS as I bounded up the bedrock alongside the creek. I turned a corner into cold wind and spray. There was Hidden Falls, making a spectacular plunge over the full height of the cliffs.
    Two thirds of the way up, there was the narrow ledge he must have crossed so he could stand next to the plummeting water. I could picture my father resting his backpack against a tree and starting across the face of the cliff.
    One little slip. One fatal mistake. His world ended, and mine and my mother’s was changed forever.
    Why did you have to do that? Why couldn’t you play it safe, like the geologist?
    My mother always said that my father was adventurous, curious, full of the joy of life: “a man whose equal comes along rarely.”
    Through the rainbow mist, I could see him falling. All that I really have of his voice and his eyes and the rest of him are the old home videos, not that I can bear to watch them.
    For me, he never quit falling.
    Falling right there at my feet. Right there.
    I started crying, just weeping and bawling. Fourteen years old and crying like a baby. It hurt. It just hurt so bad. It was like the world was wringing out every organ in my body and stomping on what was left.
    My eyes fell to the bedrock. There was a large dark stain on the smooth rock at my feet. I let myself imagine that it was his blood, that nine years of drenching rain hadn’t washed it away.
    I knelt and put my hand on the stain. I said, “I’m here.”
    â€œWho is it? ” I could hear him asking.
    â€œIt’s your son, Andy.”
    â€œThat’s good,” came his answer. “I’m glad you came. Is your mother there too?” I was so emotional, it didn’t really feel like I was supplying his end of the conversation.
    â€œI