My father always told me never to judge a book by its cover. Well, that’s not exactly what he said. My dad was a professional boxer and he actually said you shouldn’t judge a fighter by the colour of his trunks. But you get the picture.
I was reminded of his wisdom last week. Some tripmates and I were finishing up a remote route through Ontario’s Penokean Hills region. It’s a network of aqua blue lakes and clear streams north of Lake Huron’s North Channel that’s alive with feisty trout. It was a perfect trip, one that was to come to a tidy end when we reached the fishing lodge where we had scheduled a bush plane to pick us up. Poor weather made that impossible the first day, then the second, then the third. When rain changed to snow, we began looking for an alternate means of escape. That’s when the guides at the lodge, Chris Moose and Peter Roberts, suggested they drive us out by ATV.
Imagine, a bunch of snobby canoeists being rescued by ATV, the devil’s own bush buggy, the arch nemesis of canoeing. ATVs emit more greenhouse gases then any car on the road, their noise pollution ranks down there with personal watercraft and car alarms and those complaints are nothing compared to the way they tear up the ground while breaking down the barriers that keep remote areas remote.
The problem was, we all had jobs and families to get back to and waiting for another couple of days until the snow disappeared didn’t seem to be an option. So we took deep breaths and two-stepped over to the four-strokes for a ride back to civilization.
It wasn’t a pleasant trip. The so-called trail was 28 bone-jiggling kilometres long. Three hours later it ended at a river we had to ferry across before Moose could hitchhike down a dirt road to pick up his truck, a 1991 Ford with no working tail lights, tires that were balder than Bruce Willis and a stereo that had to be hit twice on the left and three times on the right before it would pump out a mix of Culture Club and Pet Shop Boys.
Arduous as the effort was, it worked. We got back to our own vehicle and made the seven- hour drive back to our jobs and families.
Moral of the story? Yes, ATVs can be a menace to wilderness areas. But so can canoeists trying to squeeze in wilderness adventures between strictly scheduled bush plane flights. It’s not the way you enter the wilderness but how you interact with it while you’re there that’s important. That’s another thing my father tried to teach me. Don’t look upon wilderness trips as something to squeeze in between appointments you aren’t prepared to miss.
We got to know the drivers of the malevolent machines during our joyless ride out to civilization. It was obvious that both guides loved the Penokean Hills region and would be dedicated to preserving it long after we had left. Moose and Roberts aren’t jockeying for the devil; they are the boxers who wear camo trunks and end up knocking down their arrogant opponent in the first round.
This article first appeared in the 2009 Late Summer issue of Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine. Read the issue in our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it online here.
