The night air is cold and clear. A three-quarter moon shines a ribbon of silver along the top of the frozen river. In the distance comes the roar of a snowmobile-a lone driver rounds a bend in the river, where it widens, and stops the sled hard in a flurry of loose snow. The ignition cuts out, and the abrupt silence envelopes Dwayne Mattinson as he flips up his visor, taking slow, deep breaths in the chilled air.

Dwayne pulls off his helmet and turns around on the seat of his snowmobile in order to lean against the steering column. As he gazes up at the stars, his ears adjust to the sounds of the frozen river at night: the whisk of wind through the needles of the spruce trees that grow along the shore, the muffled gurgle of frigid water and the snapping of the ice as it shifts beneath man and machine. He is not afraid. He knows this river; in any season, he knows how it will behave and what to expect from it.

With wisdom gained from a lifetime along these shores, he knows that this long, winding river-part fresh water, part salt water-is to the Earth what veins are to his body.

"I love the river," Dwayne says, his lined face pensive as he considers his 52 years of living along the River Philip in Nova Scotia's Cumberland County. "I loved it when we were fishing on it, swimming in it, and in the winter, skating and hauling wood.

"When we got the snowmobiles in the 60s, the river was a highway. I remember in the evenings, after chores, going down to check out all the guys who were fishing smelts through the ice. It was like a little village, with the gaslights hanging on poles by the nets. Me being a young fella, I could always get a cold beer out of the older guys."

Not much changed over the years for a man who relishes fresh air and speed. "I'd say to my friend Andy, 'River's frozen and I'll be up to your place tonight to go snowmobiling,' but Andy wouldn't go," Dwayne says. "He'd say the ice wasn't safe. But I knew it was. I knew by the coldness, by the type of weather we'd been getting, and the roll of the ice on the shore. If there was no snow and it was cold, running 30°F to 35°F below day and night for three and four days, ice would build like crazy."

That kind of wisdom comes not merely from someone living next to a river-it's been passed down to Dwayne from his father and grandfather. "In the wintertime, Grampy would sit in his rocking chair over the big, old register above the furnace and tell tales," he says. "When Grampy was 10 years old, he would leave Mount Pleasant, where his home was, and walk down to the River Philip. That would be five miles.

"He'd have his gun and his dog and he'd leave for three or four days, hunting partridge and rabbit. One time he found this point on the river and when he returned home, he told his parents that some day he would live down there on that point and raise a family."

It took 16 years but shortly after he married, in 1920, Floyd Mattinson bought the point's 54 acres, which included a house and barns. He and his wife, Margaret, had three children. Dwayne's father, Donn, was born in 1925; for him the river was a source of food in summer and a method of transportation in winter. It also provided a venue for entertainment. Since the Mattinson property is close to the river and clear of trees, it was the perfect place to gathe.

"It's good and straight along here," Donn says, "and handy to the house to come up. Kids from Port Howe would skate down to here and we'd have a great big bonfire. You could skate right into the shore around the banks, where an old tree had lodged. Two or three of us would grab a hold of it and break it off, dragging it down to the fire. It was some nice to have a fire to skate around and get warmed up."

Donn's recollections move up the bank towards the house. "Gran was living then, and she and Mother would make a god-awful amount of fudge. We'd all crowd into the house," Donn recalls. "Sometimes we'd have a bit of music and a dance or something."

Of the three children, it was Donn who remained on the river alongside his parents, shifting the farm from dairy to beef cattle, and moving another house onto the property for his family.

Both Floyd and Donn were men of their time: carpenters and woodsmen, farmers and truckers. For them, the river was a way of supporting their families with food and income. Dwayne, and his older brother, Adair, were the third generation of Mattinson men to work in the woods across the river from their farm, and until the family stopped logging for income in 1992, their own sons briefly worked alongside them.

"My first memory of the river is hauling wood across on the ice with Dad," Dwayne says. "I was six or seven years old. Not likely doing a lot, but I was there. It's in my blood to go to the woods on a Saturday to cut wood."

Early on, horses brought the wood across the frozen river on sleds; then from the 60s on, a tractor was used.

"It didn't matter how cold it was, you went to the woods," he chuckles. "I remember one morning, when I was 14. I don't know how cold it was but it was cold as hell. Adair and I didn't want to go. When we got across the river to the woodlot, the power saw wouldn't start because it was so damn cold. Dad changed plugs and spark plug wires, and tried heating the carburetor up with a lighter. It wouldn't start, it wouldn't start, and I kept thinking, 'Don't start!' It was the only time I've ever seen my dad really mad. He grabbed the power saw by the blade and chain and beat it against a tree, smashing it.

"We went home for the day."

Like his father, Dwayne remembers when you could skate on the river. If a thaw coupled with rain and melted snow caused the river to overflow and then it turned cold again, it would be just like a sheet of glass. "We'd skate on it in the daytime, maybe Sundays, but I remember on a full moon, after we'd finished the barn chores, we'd walk down to the river and put our skates on. I remember skating as far as John Henley's-three miles-one night."

In more than 50 years, Dwayne says he's never been afraid of the river; he's always felt safe. Although there was that one time in 1977...

"It was the last year we hauled wood across the river with the tractor and sleds," he recalls. "It had been a good winter, lots of snow and lots of ice. It was April and it was mild. You'd go to the woods in the morning and it would be cold, but by 11 o'clock you only had on a T-shirt and pants, no cap, no gloves.

"Now, when ice goes bad in the river, it gets a grey colour, like it's rotting," he explains. "At noon, we took a load home, ate our dinner and unloaded. Coming back, Dad said, 'We're bringing the gear back because we're done. She's going out.' Twenty-four hours later, the ice was gone. I knew it was getting bad and so did Dad. That was close."

The river has changed slowly, yet profoundly, since Floyd Mattinson discovered his beloved point in 1904. And it keeps changing, generation through generation.

While Donn, Adair and Dwayne, along with their own sons, continued to log their woodlot across the river into the 90s, 1977 was the last year they used the ice for transporting the wood. They had lost their confidence in it.

"It never freezes as hard as it used to, or for as long," says Donn, now an 83-year-old great grandfather. "Back when I was a kid, it froze over in November and stayed that way until April. In the last 10 years, it's hardly been frozen over by the end of the year."

His son believes he knows why. "Our winters are changing-we don't get the savage cold like we used to," he says. "And, what's being dumped into the river in Oxford and on the mountain?" With a gesture of his hand in the direction of the river, Dwayne says, "That grass that's growing all over the river wasn't there 20 years ago. It wasn't even that bad five years ago but the river is just loaded with it now. That's all from the stuff coming down the river, be it sewage from town or fertilizer and pesticide from blueberry country."

Donn cites an earlier change: "The bridge put in across the river at Port Howe slowed the river traffic down," he says. "Back when the rum-runners were on, there were no bridges at all. The ships could sail over from Magdalene Islands and right up the river. My dad remembers seeing the boats coming up and loading off the liquor."

Perhaps even more than the thrill of blasting along a frozen river under bright, star-filled skies, Dwayne longs for something that no depth of cold could bring back. "Working in the woods was good, healthy work," he says. "And I miss hanging out with my dad."

Despite his deep connection to the river, Dwayne feels no urge to become one with it. "I don't want my ashes scattered on the river. The thing is, you throw me in the water, I could be upriver, I could be downriver. I want my children and grandchildren to be able to say, 'This is where Dad is.'"
He continues to consider it. "But I want to be buried next to the river. We still own that lot on the opposite side. Dump my ashes there under a tree, so I'm looking out over the river."

For a man born and raised along the river's winding shores, whose rugged face reflects the years of working and snow-mobiling in the sun and wind and cold, there is no escaping its lure.

Drivin'er on the river

Half a dozen photographs spill across the kitchen table. Dwayne picks up a black and white photo of himself as a young boy standing next to the family's first snowmobile. "I was 10 years old," he says. He picks up another photo, this one in colour. "Wow." In the photo, he stands on a snowmobile with King of the Road emblazoned on its nose. "Eighteen horsepower Olympic, single cylinder," he murmurs, lost in thought.

"My father gave me a snowmobile," he says. "You don't realize how lucky you are." He is quiet again as he studies the photo, then says, "It was Christmas morning. I was 14.  Along with all the other knickknacks and candy in my stocking was a note telling me to look outside."

His first rides were around the barns and through the fields, but it didn't take long for him to discover the exhilaration of driving on the frozen river. "You see deer and coyotes on it in winter.  At night, when you're alone, you just shut the snowmobile off and listen. On a cold crisp night, if the tide is lowering or rising, you hear the ice go 'snap,' echoing up and down the river."

Looking at the photo in his hand, the King of the River feels the echo deep inside him, like a second heartbeat.