“Let’s hope not. Anyway, your cholesterol’s still quite high, so – ”
“Oh, and supper! What we eat depends on what day of the week it is. Usually Monday’s spaghetti night, but sometimes we have… doc? Where are you going? Doc?”
The Call of the Wild (Sorry, Jack!)
Last September I went on a canoe trip with four colleagues. I’m not much of a voyageur, but I figure if you live in northern Ontario you may as well get out and enjoy the great outdoors once in a while. Sometimes the wild north gets a little too wild, though… .
It was close to 4:00 on a chilly Wednesday afternoon by the time we finished cramming our supplies into the back of the truck. The drive from our town to Missinaibi Provincial Park was upwards of 400 kilometres, the last one-fifth of which involved slaloming down an unbelievably bumpy logging road.
When we were about 30 minutes from our destination a host of ominous-looking black clouds began boiling across the sky. By the time we arrived at the main entrance to the park it was raining torrentially. We’re talking biblical here. Noah. The floating zoo. A Farewell to Unicorns. You get the picture. We scoured the grounds for a vacant campsite. At last we found a cramped spot with a multitude of rocks and tree roots protruding through the grass. Welcome to Trump Towers! We pitched our tents in the pouring rain, ate a cold supper and crawled into our sleeping bags. As I prepared to enter the Dreaming I tried not to think about the warm bed I had left behind.
The next morning was cool and overcast, but at least it wasn’t raining. We broke camp and trooped down to the dock. The lake was steel grey. The small cove the dock jutted into was calm, but the rest of the lake looked choppy. As we loaded our provisions into the two canoes, a gnarled old Grizzly Adams look-alike hobbled over.
“Goin’ out on the lake?” he queried.
“Yes, we have a four-day trip planned,” I replied. “Can’t wait to get started!”
“Dern cold out.”
“You’re right, it is a bit nippy.”
“Ah’ve been out here more’n 25 years, an’ you wouldn’t catch me goin’ out on a mornin’ like this!”
“Oh. Well, according to the Weather Network – ”
He pointed at the kayak I had borrowed for the trip.
“Which one of yehs planning on using that contraption?”
“I am. As a matter of fact, this will be my first trip in a kayak!” I declared proudly.
For a moment his rheumy eyes widened in disbelief. He then snorted derisively and stumped away. I could have sworn I heard him mutter something about “dern city fools” under his breath.
While the canoes launched I zipped up my water-resistant windbreaker, secured my life jacket and pushed the kayak into the lake. Although it was light and handled easily, I found it hard to keep up with the canoes. After several minutes of paddling we got out of the cove and into the main body of the lake. Out there the winds were much stronger and the water was rough. Our progress slowed to a crawl. I conjured up a mental image of our trip map. We had to paddle approximately half the length of the lake before we got to the origin of the Missinaibi River. At our current pace, that was going to take four or five hours. If we hugged the shoreline there would be much less wind to contend with, but we’d be adding a lot of extra mileage to the trip. I had no idea how to do that clever barrel-roll manoeuvre that allows you to remain seated and flip a capsized kayak right-side up, so if I ended up in the drink I’d have to swim for dry land. I was therefore hoping the canoeists would stick close to shore. Instead, they chose the low-mileage option and headed straight for the centre of the lake.
Kayak paddles have a nasty tendency to dribble water onto you with each stroke, so by the end of the first hour I was soaked. By the end of the second hour the canoes were two tiny dots bobbing on the horizon and I was starting to wonder what the hell I was doing out in the middle of a freezing-cold lake in a kayak. Right about then I mistimed one of my strokes and plunged the paddle deep into a trough instead of a crest. This brought my centre of gravity way outside the kayak, which caused it to tilt nearly 90 degrees sideways. I spent the next two or three eternities staring down into the churning water and wishing I owned a caul as my vessel teetered on the verge of rolling over. It then made a loud grinding noise and shuddered back to its normal axis. After that I quit daydreaming.
An hour later we stopped at an island to rest. I was completely drenched. While I wrung out my clothes and poured lake water out of my ducky boots, my friend Will passed some mugs of soup around.
“Th-th-th-thanks!” I stammered. My teeth were chattering so badly it’s a wonder I didn’t bite my tongue off. The soup was piping hot and it warmed us up quickly. Before long we were back in the water, full of enthusiasm and ready for anything.
By the time we entered the Missinaibi River the wind had died down considerably. We put ashore for a planning conference. According to our trip map, Quittagene Rapids was just around the bend. Although it was listed as only a Class II rapid (Class VI being Niagara Falls), the notes warned it became trickier and more technical when water levels were intermediate. We scouted it out, took an informal vote and decided to try running it. Will and Larry volunteered to go first. They started off promisingly, but a short while later they spun out in an eddy and ended up facing backwards. Unless you’re Super Dave Osborne, going back asswards through rapids is highly discouraged. They wisely abandoned the attempt and returned to the riverbank. From there they used the canoe’s painter ropes to manually guide it safely through the foaming whitewater.
I was considering doing the same thing with my kayak when Yves winked at me and said: “Chance of a lifetime, man! You can do it!” Of course I had to take the challenge. We men are kind of stupid that way. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t as terrifying as it looked – the kayak seemed to naturally seek out the less riotous channels, so all I had to do was provide a little muscle and take evasive action whenever it looked like I was about to have a close encounter with a pointy rock. Ducking to avoid the overhanging sweepers and blasting out between the final set of boulders at the bottom was a real rush! A few minutes later the second canoe made its way through. We paddled for another hour before calling it quits and setting up camp for the night.
The next morning dawned cold. A beautiful ghost-like mist cloaked the river. Eventually the sun rose high enough to burn the haze away. We ate breakfast, packed up and slid our vessels into the water. The wind was at our backs and we had no major portages that day, so we made excellent time. By early evening we arrived at our new campsite. We pitched the tents, started a fire and ate a hearty supper. That night a thousand stars filled the heavens.
Saturday was our designated rest day. Activities included reading, writing, swimming, hiking, bird-watching and fishing. After lunch Will and John decided to paddle 30 minutes downstream to recon Sun Rapids. It was listed as a Class II technical, so they figured they wouldn’t have any trouble running it in an empty canoe. Several hours later they were still missing in action and the rest of us were beginning to worry. We were just getting ready to go search for them when they paddled into view. They were sodden and their canoe was sporting an impressive array of fresh dings and scrapes. It turned out they had run the rapids twice. The first time they selected a route that had them pass to the right of a huge boulder in the middle of the whitewater. The second time around they attempted to pass the boulder on the left, but the current caught them broadside and slammed them against it. At the moment of impact they were both catapulted into the turbulence and their paddles floated away. The incredible force of the rushing water pinned the canoe in place and bent it into a U-shape, inside-out, around the rock. Amazingly, it didn’t snap in two. While Will swam downstream through the rapids to retrieve the paddles, John stood in the pounding, chin-high water and struggled to pry the canoe loose. It had taken a unique combination of prayers, curses and Herculean effort, but eventually they were successful in both finding the paddles and freeing the canoe. Thanks to the Royalex material the canoe was made of, it sprang back into its normal shape as soon as it was off the rock. The journey back to our site depleted whatever little energy John and Will had left. They both slept like logs that night.