The next day we were all careful to give due respect to Sun Rapids’ now infamous canoe-eating boulder. It wasn’t difficult to spot, given the fact it was the only rock in the river with a wide strip of red paint on it. While the others lined the canoes down river left, I cautiously navigated my vessel through a kayak-friendly channel. The ensuing Barrel Rapids was also handled with kid gloves.
At last we arrived at the marshes of Peterbell, home to a wide variety of northern Ontario flora and fauna and the border of the Chapleau Crown Game Preserve. Years ago Peterbell was a thriving logging outpost community, but now it is completely devoid of human inhabitants. A VIA Rail train passes through it three times a week, and if a canoe party is waiting by the tracks the train stops and picks them up. We dragged our provisions ashore and set up camp in a field. Our plan was to get up early the next day and schlep our stuff to the tracks. When the train made its scheduled mid-morning appearance we’d be home free. We got a good blaze going, ate supper under a molten sky and traded war stories about prior canoe trips.
At 10:30 that night, Larry, Will and John turned in. Yves and I were still wide awake, so we stayed up late kibitzing. Shortly after 11:00 Yves stepped beyond the perimeter of flickering light cast by the fire to empty his bladder. A minute later he was back.
“I just saw a dog,” he said.
“Yves, we’re at least a hundred klicks away from the nearest house. Are you sure it was a dog?”
“Uh-huh. I think I’ll go call it. Maybe it’s hungry!”
Before I could say another word he turned around and was engulfed by the darkness once again.
“Here, doggy, doggy! Here, boy! Here… . Sacré bleu!”
In an instant he was back beside me. He looked totally freaked.
“What?” I asked.
“That was no dog!”
“What was it?”
“A wolf!”
“Yikes!”
We put another armful of dry logs on the fire and stayed up an extra hour before retiring to our sleeping bags.
At 0-dark-30 hours I was awakened by the sound of Larry climbing back into our two-man tent after the traditional early morning if-I-hold-it-any-longer-I’ll-explode pee.
“Hey,” I mumbled groggily, “While you were out there, did you happen to see that wolf?”
“What wolf?”
Just then a piercing, high-pitched howl began. It was so loud, it sounded like it was coming from the outside flap of our tent. Larry’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered.
“A wolf. Yves saw it last night.”
The howling stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was almost as jarring as the unexpected wolf call had been.
“Should we – ?”
The howling began again, except this time it was eight times louder because many new voices were participating. The blood-curdling, ululating chorus went on and on, from every possible direction. Then it ceased, leaving echoes ricocheting around the insides of our skulls.
My heart was jack-hammering in my chest. Talk about a dramatic wakeup call! If those critters were hungry, our thin polyester tents weren’t going to be much of a deterrent to them. We armed ourselves with flashlights and unzipped the tent flap.
Yves, Will and John spilled out of their tent just as Larry and I emerged from ours. It was still dark enough to prevent us from seeing much past the glowing embers in the fire pit. Larry flicked on his flashlight and cast its beam of light northward into the gloom. A pair of green wolf eyes stared back at him. He aimed his flashlight south. Another wolf. East, west and several ordinal points in between – you guessed it. We were surrounded by a wolf pack.
“Say, guys,” I said, hoping no one noticed my voice’s sudden ascent to castrato. “Do wolves ever, um, eat people?”
“I… don’t think so,” replied Will.
“Are you sure about that?”
“No.”
The wolves stared at us silently for a long time before melting away into the shadows.
Not surprisingly, no one wandered off by themselves to wash their face in the river that morning. Instead, we skipped breakfast, set a new world record for disassembling a campsite and double-timed it to the train tracks. We were all very happy campers when the VIA train finally appeared in the distance.
Can’t wait for next year’s trip!
Tabula Rasa
Could someone please remind me why we strive so hard to keep Harry alive?
Harry is a severely handicapped middle-aged man. Cauliflower-shaped tumours burst out of his scalp and protrude through his patchy hair at irregular intervals. He grinds his teeth incessantly. It’s a loud, grating noise that makes you want to scream.
He has no intelligible speech. To be honest, he has nothing even vaguely resembling any sort of communication. He is unable to use his limbs in any purposeful manner, so he is permanently diapered and confined to a wheelchair.
Despite his group home attendants’ best efforts to feed him carefully, he still has frequent episodes of food aspiration and chest infections that leave him wheezing and gasping for air. Whenever this happens, he is immediately brought to our emergency department for treatment. We dutifully admit him to the medical ward and start him on oxygen, regular suctioning, bronchodilator inhalations and intravenous antibiotics. Sometimes he becomes so ill we have to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.
He has some relatives who have power of attorney over his affairs. They live less than an hour away. In the nine years I’ve known Harry they haven’t visited him once. I’ve called them on two occasions to ask whether they’d consider switching his code status to “do not resuscitate.” Both times their answer was the same: “Keep him alive, doc – we’ve been thinking about coming up to see him sometime.”
So the battle to save Harry continues. Day after day I go into his room and watch him struggle to breathe. It’s a Greek epic being played out in a hospital bed; an endless tragedy with a cast of one, viewed by an audience of one. To me, Harry embodies the combined suffering of Prometheus, Tantalus and Orpheus. Sir Laurence himself couldn’t evoke such pathos.
He cranes his head to the side in an attempt to look at me whenever I place my stethoscope on his misshapen chest. His moist, cow-like eyes roll in all directions. I often wonder if he’s going to bite me. It’s an irrational thought; Harry is wholly incapable of aggression.
Does Harry have thoughts? If so, how does he perceive this world? Is it a magical place or is it an unending horror? Are we his saviours or his tormentors? Does he admire us or despise us? Does he hope for life or death?
It may well be that his mind is a blank slate. If that’s the case, perhaps we shouldn’t stand in his way the next time we see him lumbering towards the brink.
Some Patients Are Never Ready
Two years ago Max noticed a trace of blood in his stool. Colonoscopy revealed bowel cancer. Staging investigations didn’t show any evidence of tumour spread. It was felt he had a good chance of surgical cure, so arrangements were made for a bowel resection.
The surgery went well. To everyone’s relief, the sampled lymph nodes came back negative for cancer cells. In the weeks following the operation it became evident that his surgeon and his oncologist held opposing views regarding the potential benefits of adjunctive chemo. After carefully considering both options, Max declined chemotherapy.
Six months later I was in the radiology suite looking at a surveillance x-ray of Max’s chest when I noticed a small lesion near the apex of his right lung. Uh-oh. Hard times ahead.