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Confluences

By Jennifer Sinor

There was no way to communicate with the rest of the world once Jerry and his brother started their journey down the Alatna River in northern Alaska. They would have to paddle for days to reach a satellite phone 60 miles downstream. Jennifer Sinor tells the story of the two men—her uncle and father—in our Winter 2008 issue. Only her dad made it back alive. Later, while reading her father’s journal, Sinor felt grief and joy. At almost the same moment that her uncle died, her son was conceived, “so that for the briefest moment,” she writes, “the past, present, and future stood together and recognized one another.”

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