My sister Carly, then 10 years old and notoriously homesick, wrote a letter home from summer camp after her first lakewater trip in Algonquin Park. She wrote:
Trip was amazing! We went all the way to Pine Torch (way north) where none had gone for 3 YEARS! It was soooo hard! We got up at 6:15 am, left the camp at 8:15 am, and got to our campsite at 9ish that night! We did three portages that were longer than 3 km, and anything under a km was “just a shit.”
One day was freezing cold, (a record low) and we were paddling up Abacon—the biggest lake. It was cloudy, rainy and the waves were 1m high (no joke). We had to stop after the morning ‘cause it was so cold. Both our guides had no rain pants. We were all so cold but Dave was on the verge of hypothermia and he was so des- perate to be close to the fire he singed off all his leg hair! Another day we did 10 portages! None over 1.7 km though!
I’ll tell some more when I come home. Wonderful news! I have yet to be homesick!
My parents sent my sister and I to camp. Neither of them had ever left the pavement, so I didn’t think they would ever understand what they were missing. They just couldn’t get it. I thought describing a trip to them would take the shine off my experience.
At age 16, I did a 42-day trip in Temagami. When I got home, I holed up in my room for a week, scrolling obses- sively through trip photos, not talking to anyone. Canoe trips meant everything to me. I still have my unwashed trip T-shirt in a Ziploc bag in the closet. I defined myself by my accomplishments: I could carry a canoe for seven kilometres. I could light a fire in the rain.
My mom and dad sent us and we reaped the rewards. They paid the bills and we had the times of our lives.
Two years ago, my sister and I decided we wanted to thank our folks for enabling our freedom all those years. We made my dad a journal with photos of us on trips, complete with a poem:
Canoe trip epitomizes youth
Carefree summer days
Time kept only by the presence
Or absence
Of bugs
A smile worthy of the Cheshire Cat
That originates
Deep within the warm core
Of a body forever young at heart.
We proposed a trip filling the rest of the pages with a trip we’d do together, the four of us as a family. We wanted to show them. It was time for us to give them the opportunity they never had.
I made all the arrangements. They had no idea what they were getting into. We rented them a tent and gave them an elaborate list of gear. My mom bought herself neoprene paddling gloves and water shoes. My dad used his stained lawn mowing shoes and skier’s long underwear. Carly and I planned the menu—portobello mushroom burgers, marinated vegetable kebobs, orange juice and wine rationed at a half-litre per person, per day.
On the first night of our trip we were caught in the pelting rain with their gear strewn about the campsite. In the excite- ment of the storm they chucked all their gear higgledy-piggledy into their narrow, two-person tent, which then led to a miserable hour-long organizational effort in the cramped, sweaty dark. From outside their tent it looked like two people mud wrestling in a Twinkie. Their flashlights were deep in distant dry bags. They hadn’t even unrolled their sleeping pads.
The rest of the trip the mosquitoes tormented them over portages like a pack of wolves that had smelt fear. We misjudged the size of the packs we needed and almost everything was too heavy for his sciatica and her bulging disc. Their tent leaked. My mom forgot the toothbrushes.
It builds character we told them.
We ran out of wine.
But they learned. After the wet tent fiasco their tentmanship was immaculate. They bought their own paddles and a used 17-foot Chippewa canoe with ash gunwales. They plan to paddle down the Beaver River next spring. I never again had to explain why we love to go.
The alchemy of a canoe trip worked the dirt under their fingernails and wood smoke into their hair. The journal we gave my father is filled with new quotes, stories and photos. On one page my mom is standing down at the water in a pair of my old rain pants that at the beginning of the trip were deemed too stinky to put in her bag with her other camp clothes. They hang on her like a yellow rubber potato sack. She is wiping her dirty hands on her pants and smiling naughtily.
Tory Bowman moved on from summer camp to a job treeplanting, but never took her parents along with her.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
