Butt End: You Can Take it With You

Stories

By

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August 1, 2008

Photo: Sandy Easton — Butt End: You Can Take it With You

I’ve been spolied when it comes to camp gadgets. Over the past few years I’ve done a television talk show circuit during which I show off the latest camp gear.

Before the interviews I head to the local outdoor store to borrow the season’s hottest items and then go on air to discuss the pros, cons and absurdities of everything from new mosquito repellent to solar radios to cold fusion-powered lanterns.

One morning a few years ago I arrived at a studio with a pack full of non-essentials—including a device that lets women urinate while standing up. The female co-host looked over the gear before the show and asked a few questions, particularly about the plastic tube-shaped fake phallus, called the Peemate.

The male host, however, hadn’t bothered. He walked on set just as we went live, made some arrogant remarks about how silly camping was, grabbed the Peemate and asked what it was.

“It’s a whistle. Give it a try,” I said. He did, and his co-host fell over laughing. Almost every talk show in the country phoned me the next day asking me to be on their show—provided I bring the Peemate.

To me, a camp gadget is a luxury item you can do without—but would rather not. A camp chair even qualifies, as long as it has a backrest and a cup holder and allows you to sit high up off the cold, wet ground.

I teased him about his chair—until he let me sit in it. He had to tip me out.

A friend once brought a camp chair on a one-month, portage-heavy trip. I teased him nonstop about packing such a bulky item, that is until he let me sit in it for five minutes one evening. He had to tip me out of it.

There’s no sense fighting it. We’ve been trying to increase our comfort and take advantage of the latest wonder of technology since we first went back to the wilderness.

I admire those campers who hold themselves to the primitive approach, but I suspect they have gadget-related jobs and so are desperate for an escape from the high-tech world. Or perhaps they are atoning for something.

Of course, it’s possible to get carried away. I never want to skewer a marshmallow by the light of a laptop. But if you follow the simple rule, “If you want to use it, you carry it,” we should be able to keep things below the gunwales.

This article on gear was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Camping Clothes

Stories

By

Scott MacGregor

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August 1, 2008

The dermatologist assured my mother and me that many other 10-year-old boys also suffered from what he called crotch rot. In case you avoided this itchy ailment, blue jeans and cotton swimsuits don’t dry quickly and where things don’t dry, fungus grows. Trust me.

The treatment was a small jar of white cream, applied liberally twice daily. The solution however is to spend more time—and sometimes money—when shopping for kids’ outdoor gear.

A friend of mine is a manager in a very posh ski shop north of Toronto, a place where the skintight ski suits are trimmed with furry hoods. Yet many of her well-to-do customers refuse to spend $59 on snowboard helmets for their kids. Why? Because they say they’ll just grow out of them.

I want my two kids to enjoy their time camping as much as we do and outfitting them with good gear has been worth every penny.

To me, helmets for kids are a no-brainer in any gravity or action sport. of course they will grow out of them, but what about now? Aren’t their heads worth protecting no matter what size?

Nobody runs, jumps, falls, rolls and climbs more than camp kids—rain or shine. In my mind we should be dressing them in hard-shelled, quick-drying, fuzzy, waterproof, breathable, cool, bug-proof and rugged clothing; whatever it takes to protect them, but also whatever it takes to make their time outside as enjoyable—and rash free—as possible.

The sun is probably the most dangerous and underestimated hazard our children encounter. Too much sun can ruin any camping trip, not to mention cause long-term damage to their skin and eyes. Properly fitting sun hats with good coverage and SPF-rated beachwear are worth it. After five summers guiding whitewater rafts I can barely open my eyes on a sunny day without a good pair of shades. Some parents don’t bother with sunglasses for their kids because they say they’ll just break or lose them.

Do you remember being dressed in a garbage bag instead of a raincoat? How expensive were raincoats that it made more sense for our parents to blow through a box of garbage bags every camping trip? Not to mention the fact that plastic sacks with three big holes cut in them really aren’t that dry.

Socks that fall down in boots are not only annoying, sweaty bare feet in boots get blisters. Companies like Smartwool and Wigwam have virtually eliminated this childhood nuisance, not to mention that these socks dry quickly and resist odours.

Smart shoppers save money by buying clothes that will serve double duty, like long underwear for camping in the summer and skiing in the winter. They choose colours that both boys and girls will wear as they are passed down, or ferret out other outdoor families through the scouts or ski clubs and buy, sell or trade clothes. shopping out of season can save you up to 50 per cent. While rooting around at a used clothing store we found a $28 MEC sunhat for $3. Don’t limit yourself to camping brands; just consider the styles and fabrics that will keep kids dry and warm or cool and shaded.

I want my two kids to enjoy their time camping as much as we do and outfitting them with good gear has been worth every penny. I’ve stopped thinking of this as an expense, but rather an investment. If we don’t invest and outfit our kids with gear that allows them to be warm, dry and safe it won’t only be the clothes they grow out of, it will be the outdoors.

This article on clothing for kids was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Paddle to Cuba

Stories

By

James Raffan

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August 1, 2008

Photo: Foundation For Nature and Humanity — Paddle to Cuba

It took a trip to Cuba for me to appreciate, a quarter century later, the legitimate genius of Don and Dana Starkell’s canoe trip from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the mouth of the Amazon River.

I was invited to Cuba by the Foundation for Nature and Humanity to help develop a training program for environmental teachers. All was on track until my host casually referred to Cuba as a “canoe culture.” If I looked surprised when he said that, I was speechless when he said, “If you don’t believe me, come check out our canoe museum.” Canoe museum?

There in a back room of the foundation’s Havana office was one glorious canoe—a 42-foot dugout canoe called Hatuey (named after Cuba’s first national hero, a Taino Chief who had warned the residents of Cuba of the impending arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century). Inside the canoe were paddles carved in exotic rainforest leaf patterns. Surrounding it, in glass cases that lined three walls, were fascinating Latin curios including a still-menacing stuffed piranha and, so my host said, the world’s largest collection of erotic pottery. So they not only had a canoe museum, they appeared to have a Cuban angle on the whole love-in-a-canoe theme as well!

But the story got better. In the years leading up to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ conquest of the Americas, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, the scholar and naturalist who had inspired the creation of the Foundation for Nature and Humanity, decided to play down the European “discovery” of the New World and celebrate instead how people came to Cuba in the first place, long before 1492. That migration, research revealed, was by canoe from high in the Andes in what is now Ecuador.

So they not only had a canoe museum, they appeared to have a Cuban angle on the whole love-in-a-canoe theme as well.

Jimenez commissioned five 42-foot dugout canoes and corresponded with people all along the migration route. In the late 1980s he led an historic reenactment of the founding canoe trip, down the Napo River to the Amazon, along the mighty Amazonas to the junction of the Negro River, then upstream to the height of land in what is now

Guyana, over the divide, and down the Orinoco River to the Caribbean Sea. There, they tied outriggers on their canoes and made their way over open ocean among the Antilles and eventually to Cuba.

As I stood at a map in the Cuban Canoe Museum, listening to my host recount this amazing tale (and yes, he explained how the erotic pottery, the canoe, and a powerboat called Love all factored into the story), I recalled that this term “canoe” that is so near and dear to the hearts of Canadians is likely indigenous to the Caribbean, probably derived from the Arawakan term, canaoua. I wondered why we acknowledge that north-south linguistic connection so rarely.

So often Canadians assume we have the corner on all things canoe. True, considering our own history and the role that the canoe, particularly the uniquely Canadian birch bark canoe, has played as an east-west transportation and communication link, there is a temptation to think that there ends the story. Not so. Remember that crazed guy from Winnipeg who loaded his two sons in a 22-foot fibreglass canoe called Orellana and set out for the Amazon?

It took them two years. One Starkell son bailed out near the Gulf of Mexico. But Don and Dana Starkell covered a large portion of the route through South America that Jimenez and his crew would travel a few years later, rejoining the historic canoe connection between North and South America. Starkell, in his bones, knew that our canoe culture and theirs were related, and that to understand one, we are obliged to appreciate the other.

This article on paddling to Cuba was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

On The Line: 11-Week Canoe Trip Through the Boreal Forest

Stories

By

Frank Wolf

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August 1, 2008

All Photos: Frank Wolf — On The Line: 11-Week Canoe Trip Through the Boreal Forest

“Draw! Draw! Forward hard! Hard! Hard!” Taku has never been on a canoe trip before so I call out his strokes like a coxswain. He reacts instantly and the canoe slips around a pillowing rock the size of a Smart car before we bash through a series of waves that high-five Taku’s face.

With his hair slicked back into a pompadour care of the Albany River, Taku looks like an Elvis impersonator from Tokyo as we spin into the eddy. Born in Japan and raised in the dirty streets of Chicago before becoming a West Coast boy, Taku had been slow to try out the oldest North American pastime. From backcountry skiing with him in B.C.’s Coast Mountains I knew he had the temperament required for an extended wilderness trip so I asked him along on my 75-day paddle through the boreal forest—there’d be plenty of time to teach him about canoeing along the way.

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Five seven five. Every evening by the water Taku writes haiku in Japanese and Chinese characters using a brush dipped in a well of black ink. We’re 25 days in at the base of Kagiami Falls on the Albany River. Taku sits and writes. His newness to tripping is refreshing—everyday he learns something, sees it in a different way than I do. I want to learn more from him so I press him on his ritual. Looking up from his script to the setting sun, the words come calmly.

“Your daily existence in the boreal is simple—it consists of moving forward and doing what’s necessary for survival and comfort. In the city, all the annoying details of life are a distraction. The isolation of the wilderness removes the clutter and makes me more reflective and meditative.”

He glances at Kagiami Falls then returns to his haiku. In a few words, he has captured this place. Five seven five.

Our 3,100-kilometre trip began in downtown Winnipeg. Carrying our gear down the aptly named Portage Avenue, we parted gawking lunchtime crowds and put in at the Red River. Our route would take us to Parry Sound on Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay via Lake Winnipeg, the Bird River, Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, Lac Seul, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany, Kenogami, Kabina, Pivabiska, Missinaibi, Mattagami, Grassy, Sturgeon and French rivers. The route dances above and below the 51st parallel, the partition that separates pristine boreal forest in the north from the industrialized south. It’s a line on the map you might be hearing more about soon.

A globally significant swath of green, the boreal is like a giant carbon bank, holding 67 billion tonnes of the element in deposit.

In summertime, worldwide carbon levels measurably drop as this great lung of our planet takes in a deep breath for us all. Due to its remoteness, the zone north of this latitude remains the greatest area of undisturbed boreal forest in Canada. The First Nations of this region called for a moratorium on development in 2005 as forestry, mining, and hydro interests began creeping north.

On day 21 we pick up our food parcel from the post office in the Mishkeegogamang First Nation at the head of the Albany River.

The owner of the general store is a sharp-featured woman with dark, curly hair named Laureen Nassaykeesic. She is a former member of band council, well versed in local politics and firm in her opinions. Laureen speaks softly as she twirls a daisy in her hand. “We are prepared to fight to make sure they don’t come and develop the area. The only benefit would be a stumpage fee, which would be nothing. Then, what, wait 100 years for a new set of trees? I have grandchildren and I’d like them to enjoy the green forest and the natural way of things. We’re very lucky to live here.”

Taku is wolfing down pork chops and mashed potatoes provided by our host Norman “Dude” Baxter. We are one week down the Albany at the Marten Falls First Nation. Dude is a fishing and hunting guide with a drill sergeant buzzcut. He found Taku wandering around the village and invited us in just as a ferocious sideways storm swept in. Sixty years ago, his father would spend two weeks paddling from Marten Falls to Calstock to trade furs for supplies. There are no roads even today, just waterways.

“The Albany is our highway,” Dude explains. “It gives us our fishing and hunting—it’s everything.”

Despite the Albany’s status as a provincial park, the Ontario Power Authority has proposed that two major dams be built on the river by 2020, one of them at Kagiami Falls. The projects would carve up the surrounding boreal wilderness with roads and transmission lines as well as flood existing habitat and hunting grounds. A current agreement between the province and First Nations limits power projects above the 51st to 25 megawatts but as power demand increases, so does pressure to renegotiate the deal. Apparently everything is negotiable; everything is on the line.

The first big boulder to catapult its way into the region is the Victor diamond mine on Ontario’s Attawapiskat River, spearheaded by international giant de Beers. The project, already underway, will clear 5,000 hectares of forest, generate 2.5 million tonnes of leeching waste per year and pump 100,000 cubic metres of salty water from the pit into the attawapiskat daily. In all, the entire project will affect an area 22 times the size of Vancouver. All for a mine forecast to produce for only 12 years.

Rounding the corner at the confluence of the Missinaibi and Mattagami rivers we turn away from James Bay and head back upstream into the heart of the Boreal. Taku is not the only one being meditative. Staring down 450 kilometres of upstream paddling makes you live in the moment, fixating on how each stroke—and all too often each stride—gets you closer to the next height of land.

Taku’s head is down as he tracks the canoe and stumbles repeatedly over sharp, slippery rock. The wide, shallow Mattagami River is too low to paddle and seems to stretch endlessly ahead. We are travelling through the industrialized wilderness that exists south of the 51st parallel—still remote, mostly unseen and yet bent sharply by our desires. there was little joy yesterday and today is the same. Taku’s haiku tonight will be a sad one.

The Mattagami drops and rises based on the electrical demands of people who have never heard of it. the water is coffee-coloured with brown foam lining its edges—like a bowl of cappuccino. Fish are inedible due to mercury leeched from flooded ground, upstream mines and mills mean drinking water has to be drawn from feeder creeks.

On the morning of our third day up the Mattagami I peer through the mesh of our tent to the other side of Grand Rapids, but the river is gone. All i can see are piles of broken limestone. Wet streaks between rock piles are the only indication that this was a river the day before.

Three hours later, galaxies of lights and computers turn on far to the south as the workday kicks in. Four unseen dams release and water begins to fill the quarry-like riverbed. It steadily bubbles back to life. The level rises half a metre—enough for taku and i to begin our slog for the day, looking around each point for a feeder creek to fill our water bottles. We pull our canoe up the rest of this formerly great rapid, one the voyageurs used to sing songs about as they pushed to James Bay.

As the collective demand for more comes from the south the Mattagami responds and by midday the water is deep enough for us to paddle. the river is running hot now—an alien high tide with the power grid acting as full moon.

We paddle hard against the steady outflow.

Hugging the shore, we strain through the current at the tops of eddies. Sometimes the paddle strokes seem futile, and i think of the Albany. Sitting in a 16-foot canoe I felt helpless against the current of that great river; on the Mattagami i feel helpless against the current of a society that seems bent on pushing ever deeper into wilderness.

But we keep cranking, because if more people know about what the Albany is like, and what the Mattagami has become, there will be hope for the boreal above the 51st. Stroke after stroke we strain against the current. We know easing up means going backward.

This article on a canoe trip through the Boreal Forest was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Editorial: One Trip Wonder

Stories

By

Ian Merringer

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August 1, 2008

Photo: Peter Mather — Editorial: One Trip Wonder

Something valuable from my childhood canoe trips has been lost. It’s not the Swiss Army knife my dad gave me when I was nine (that’s lost too, but don’t tell him). It’s not the oversized poncho that was supposedly the only piece of raingear a growing canoeist needed (I finally outgrew it).

What’s lost is the single portage carry. Time was we would land at a portage, each paddler would shoulder a canoe or a pack and two paddles and walk the portage trail exactly once.

Canoe tripping should be about leaving not just civilization behind, but its trappings too.

Now we get to a portage and become beasts of burden. We hoist a pack full of video cameras, stoves, sleeping pads, hammocks, water filters, solar chargers, cameras and coffee makers. With knees about to hyperextend we bend over and collect a few handfuls of Pelican cases, water bottles and fishing rods before shuffling to the end of the portage. After dumping the first load we retrace our steps to see if the pile is any smaller. Countries have been invaded with less sophisticated supply lines than those on modern-day portage trails.

Ray Jardine would not approve. Jardine has sailed around the world, hiked the longest trails in America and once pioneered the world’s hardest rock climbs. He has sea kayaked the Northwest Passage and canoed many northern rivers including the Kazan and Coppermine.

Through it all he saw himself and others suffer from bent spines and cluttered campsites. In 1992 he self-published The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker’s Handbook, a trail guide that tells readers not just where to hike, but how to hike. Jardine thinks if hikers are carrying more than 12 pounds of gear they are missing the point and might as well stay home. Why bother lugging around a sleeping pad when you can sleep on “leaves, pine needles, and duff” he wonders.

No doubt most canoeists would dismiss that with a snort between laboured puffs into a full-length Therm-a-Rest (the one with a fuzzy top). But it wasn’t long ago that that was how it was done. Until I was 11, when I first saw the temptress that was a roll-up drybag, everything I needed for a canoe trip would fit into a bedroll that rolled up smaller than a rugby ball.

True, it was wound pretty tight, you wouldn’t want to be nearby when it sprang open, but everything I needed for two weeks of lake-hopping north of Superior was packed in the folds of that thin sleeping bag. Taking my reliance on gear as a measure, I was more of a man then than I am now, and I hadn’t even hit puberty yet.

I’ve since been so seduced by stuff sacks full of supposed essentials I’m little more than a burro on the portage trail and an equipment manager at the campsite. These aren’t roles that lend themselves to enjoying the outdoors. Canoe tripping should be about leaving not just civilization behind, but its trappings too.

As Jay Morrison points out in his feature on shedding pounds, the ability to reclaim a fast and light style of travel in the wilderness requires just a little discipline. I’m going to take his advice and try to be more like my friend Dave. When we paddled the French River over Thanksgiving a few years ago Dave showed up with a drybag not much bigger than my bedroll of yore. I think he enjoyed the trip, but I can’t be sure; I was too busy fussing with gear to notice.

If I ever find my Swiss Army knife, I hope I have the sense to leave it behind in favour of a knife that doesn’t have a corkscrew, magnifying glass and toothpick.

This article on portaging was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Editorial: The Right to Bear Paddles

Stories

By

Ian Merringer

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May 1, 2008

Photo: Gary McGuffin — Editorial: The Right to Bear Paddles

Imagine a smiling figure walking to the front of a crowded hall. Those nearby slap him on the back while the rest cheer. Stepping onto a stage he squints into rapid-fire camera flashes.

He grabs a paddle, raises it above his head and tells the crowd that if someone wants to take the paddle from him they will have to pry it from his “cold, dead hands.” The crowd roars; the politicians fall in line.

You probably have an easier time picturing a gun-toting Charlton Heston—movie star and former president of the National Rifle Association—in this situation rather than Paddle Canada president Richard Alexander. Here’s hoping Paddle Canada finds a way to put a little NRA firepower into its organization. The time may be coming.

As reported in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots, Paddle Canada has entered a braided section of river and chosen what it hopes is the channel with the strongest current.

At first we were gun-shy about reporting on Paddle Canada’s political manoeuvres. Paddle Canada owns Kanawa magazine and the Waterwalker Film Festival, two ventures that compete, however politely, with Rapid Media’s magazines and our Reel Paddling Film Festival. We were wary of being seen as biased, but in researching the story I came to appreciate its importance.

BRINGING IN ADVOCACY AND LOBBYING

Paddle Canada was formed in 1976 to promote four pillars of recreational paddling: instruction, safety, environmental awareness and appreciation of our paddling heritage. It had struggled lately and some doubted it could continue fulfilling any part of its mandate. The 2006 sale of its member-built Ron Johnstone Paddling Centre headquarters and the liquidation of its inventory of boats, computers, staplers and a few paper clips fuelled the worries.

Alexander told me Paddle Canada will run a surplus this year for the first time in five years. He understandably feels a huge sense of accomplishment and credits the strength of the money-generating instructional program. But when I asked about the other quarters of Paddle Canada’s mandate the conversation slowed while we checked the website to remind ourselves what they were.

“Advocacy and lobbying are not primary purposes of this paddling organization,” explained Alexander.

Perhaps not now, but if Alexander continues to strengthen Paddle Canada, why couldn’t they become more a part of its purpose? Imagine for a moment if paddlers had a vehicle for wielding political influence. That’s where the famous scene with Charlton Heston comes in (the one from the NRA convention, not when he finds the Statue of Liberty on the beach in Planet of the Apes and goes ape).

The NRA marshals more than four million members, claims an 86 per cent success rate in helping the politicians it endorses get elected and is routinely ranked by members of Congress as the most powerful lobby group in the United States.

Paddle Canada could be similarly influential. After all, if the NRA can convince politi- cians not to renew a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, which it did in 2004, then surely an activist paddling organization could lobby for more palatable things like fewer dams, more parks, rights of access and a halt to the creep of canoe licencing fees.

If we found our voice we could have politicians pandering to canoe-owning voters by promising chain gangs for portage clearing and long weekends every other week from May to October. Wide-brimmed Tilley hats would become a symbol of power and prestige.

What’s more, if we model ourselves after gun owners, our bumper stickers would become way more interesting.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Betcha Didn’t Know About the Hudson’s Bay Company

Stories

By

James Raffan

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May 1, 2008

Photo: Algonquin Park Archives 5573 (MNR) — Betcha Didn't Know About the Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) is the oldest incorporated merchandising company in the English-speaking world. When you buy socks at The Bay you’re continuing a 338-year-old tradition.
During the first half of the 19th century, the HBC held sway over 1/12th of the earth’s land surface—allowing HBC overseas governor Sir George Simpson to be introduced at a fancy 1838 dinner as the “head of the most extended dominions in the known world, the Emperor of Russia and the Queen of England excepted.”
Although HBC are the initials of English heart-throb actor Helena Bonham Carter (who has never portrayed a beaver but did appear as a chimp named Ari in Planet Of The Apes), HBC also once stood for “Here Before Christ” in the minds of traders frustrated by the company’s monopolistic ways. Those who found themselves inside isolated fur trading posts often left thinking HBC stood for “Horny Boys’ Club.”
In a related story, it is rumoured that Sir George Simpson sired 70 children between Quebec and the Pacific during 40 years with the HBC, lending legitimacy of a sort to his title of father of the fur trade.
The original Latin motto of the HBC, pro pelle cutem, meaning “a skin for a skin,” sounds benign enough for a fur trading company, until one realizes that these words were interpreted by employees to mean that to join the fur trade they had to trade their own skin for the brutal and short life of a fur trader.
The iconic voyageur canoe paintings of Frances Anne Hopkins notwithstanding, after 1820 most HBC freight was carried not in canoes but in boats fashioned after Orcadian dories that were rowed, not paddled.
Though many assume that 19th-century Canada was buzzing with folk-song-singing French-Canadian and Métis voyageurs, 80 per cent of HBC employees at the time were stolid Scots from Orkney, who had as much trouble carrying a tune as they did their heavy dories.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Family Camping: Creek Walking

By

Scott MacGregor

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May 1, 2008

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Family Camping: Creek Walking

Long before I should have been out of a booster seat, I’d go on rides with my dad in his transport truck. Perched high above traffic in the air-ride seat of his freightliner, I’d watch him double clutch and shift through the gears of the 10-speed fuller transmission. I even had a belt buckle that read, “My Daddy’s a CBer” to hold up my Toughskins.

What does driving an 18-wheeler have to do with family camping? I’m sure taking me on rides was my dad’s way of giving my mother a break, but my parents were inadvertently planting seeds. The seeds I’m talking about are the early experiences that grow with us as we become teenagers and adults.

At age 18 I wrote my truck-driving licence and put myself through school by rolling up and down North America’s highways. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been a driver, yet I maintain the licence, mostly for nostalgic reasons. I love the smell of diesel fuel, the PISSSST sound of air brakes coming on, and the blue-collar charm of truck stop waitresses everywhere who always ask, “What can I getya Honey?”

Much has been written about Richard Louv’s sociological book, Last Child in the Woods. Louv writes about why our children are losing touch with nature and what it will mean for nature as today’s children become tomorrow’s recreationalists and environmental policy makers. He asks, if kids don’t care about wilderness now, why will they care later as politicians, developers or parents? Louv asks critical questions and explains societal influences but offers few practical tips for parents and educators who wish to reverse this trend.

CREATING TOMORROW’S ADVENTURERS AND STEWARTS

This winter I received an advance copy of A Natural Sense of Wonder by Rick Van Noy. Where Louv looks at the problem, Van noy offers solutions in an easy to read how-to guide. The book is a series of essays about how he engages his kids in nature. My favourite of his essays is “Creek Walking.”

My kids were playing in creeks long before they could walk. As a paddler I had my kids in canoes and kayaks and floating in rapids soon after they were born. When you’re two-feet tall even a small river is an ocean—too big to understand and too dangerous to explore on your own. But a creek is perfect.

Our creek adventures began as a game. I’d gather rocks in a bucket for them and they’d bomb stick boats anxiously floating below.

As soon as they could walk this progressed to full-stream-ahead exploration. Gathering rocks turned into finding critters underneath them. Pockets are now for frogs and buckets for minnows. rubber boots last as long as their first soakers and then they’re stripping their clothes and turning a shallow pool into a gravel-bottomed bathtub. Do I care if my one- and three-year-old are buck naked in Little Eneas Creek? Not one bit.

A Natural Sense of Wonder is a practical guide for parents who want to get their kids playing outside and off concrete. Creek walking is just one of Van Noy’s suggestions. He also writes about the almost forgotten joys of walking to school, skating on ponds, building tree houses and getting dirty.

To me it’s a gardening book; a book about planting seeds and growing healthy and happy wildflowers. I hope my wildflowers grow up to be lifelong family campers, adventurers and stewards who will appreciate the natural environment the way I do a plate of greasy bacon and eggs.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Eating Outdoors: Full Day Menu

Stories

By

Dave Quinn

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May 1, 2008

Photo: flickr.com/oskarlin — Eating Outdoors: Full Day Menu

So you have proven them all wrong – your camping trips and adventures didn’t end when kids entered your life. Not only do you still get out, your kids enjoy it as much as you do. But getting children to eat healthy foods is always a challenge for parents, especially while camping when they’re out of their normal routines. While in the backcountry active parents are often left wondering what to feed their kids to ensure they are getting the energy they need and are laying the foundation for a lifetime of outdoor enjoyment and healthy eating.

As with anything in Kidland, the only way to ensure a long-term connection with wilderness and to encourage healthy eating is to make it fun. Bad weather, cranky youngsters or parents, and leaky tents can make an outing difficult, but poor camp food that no one eats can outright ruin the entire trip.

Roll up your sleeves, unleash your creative spirit, and start your kids’ lifetime of wilderness appreciation the right way, with good food. Here are a few ideas—a day’s worth of recipes— that will help you and your kids have more fun and eat better in the campground or backcountry. Bon appetit!

BREAKFAST: SUPER GRUEL

Porridge. Oatmeal. Gruel. Slop. Sludge. All these lacklustre names have been slapped onto this classic trail breakfast. Like most of my generation, I had econo-mizer parents who fed their offspring nothing but boiled oats for breakfast, every day. As a result, I grew to despise porridge with a passion normally reserved for rival soccer teams in Latin countries. That is, until I discovered Super Gruel. This recipe serves four hungry campers.

Ingredients:

2 cups instant or regular oatmeal (1/2 to 3/4 cup dry oatmeal per person)
3 tablespoons butter
Chopped dried or fresh fruit; mango, peach, apple, banana, or even raisins will do
Magical flavours such as a pinch of cinnamon, a wee dusting of nutmeg, a splash of vanilla, and, for the adventurous, a dash of ground cardamom
Decorations or disguises such as almond eyes, chocolate chip freckles, cookie noses, licorice hair, brown sugar beards, blueberry dimples

Directions:

Boil roughly twice as much water by volume as you have oats. Add dried fruit first and let boil for several minutes to re-hydrate.
Add oats and simmer until soft. Stir in butter and magical flavours.
When cooked to your preference, remove from heat and either decorate the entire pot or individual bowls with various fruits, nuts, and cookies. Serve with milk or unwhipped whipping cream.

LUNCH: MUD BURRITOS

In the backcountry, lunching usually starts right after breakfast and continues to dinner, especially for little ones with the metabolisms and attention spans of hummingbirds. When you’ve hidden the last of the jelly bellies along the trail and the last animal cracker lays beaten in a mushy pulp on the bottom of the canoe, it is time for a real lunch of Mud Burritos.

Ingredients:

1 whole wheat burrito shell or wrap per person
1 jar Nutella or other chocolate-hazelnut spread
1 jar of nut butter such as almond or cashew butter
1 handful of fresh or dried fruit of your choice such as banana, apple or pear

Directions:

Pretend you’re a family of beavers making their winter home. Smear layers of mud (hazelnut-chocolate and nut butters) on the burrito shell and lay a line of fresh or dried fruit down the middle.
Roll it up like a big burrito and eat whole or slice into bite-sized swirls.

DINNER: PARENTAL POLENTA

This is a simple dinner that most kids and adults will enjoy. The restaurant version is very upper crust, as they say, served in individual slices with all kinds of fancy garnishes. Backcountry polenta is a deep-dish, layered pie—a true mess, which is a prerequisite for fun for most kids!

Ingredients:

3/4 cups polenta, a fine ground corn meal, per person
1 veggie bouillon cube, or use chicken or beef for carniphiles
1 small pile grated cheese of your child’s preference. I prefer Asiago but most younger kids will prefer mozzarella or cheddar
Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon butter
1 bag or small can tomato sauce of your preference; the bags of sauce found next to the fresh pasta at the grocery store work well for this

Directions:

Boil twice as much water as you have polenta. Once boiling, stir in polenta and bouillon cube.
Continue stirring to avoid burning the polenta, especially if you are cooking on a backcountry stove that doesn’t simmer.
As the polenta begins to thicken, stir in butter and remove from heat. Cover the polenta with an inch or so of grated cheese.
Heat the tomato sauce and pour over the cheese layer. Cover this with a thin sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.
Cover the pot and let sit for 3–5 minutes to melt the cheese layers. Serve by digging deep to the bottom to ensure that everyone gets polenta, sauce, and both cheese layers.

DESSERT: ORANGE CAKES

Like most of the cool things I’ve learned in life, I learned this one from a kid. This backcountry dessert is inspiring in its simplicity.

Ingredients:

1 large fresh orange per person
1 package instant lemon or chocolate cake mix—check the box before leaving town to see if you need milk or eggs for the cake mix
1 roll tin foil, enough to wrap the oranges
1 campfire with lots of hot coals

Directions:

Carefully slice the very top off the oranges making a hole just big enough to allow you to scoop out the orange juice and pulp with a spoon, which makes a healthy appetizer for this dessert. You should have empty orange skins with orange skin lids like miniature uncarved jack-o’-lanterns.
Mix the cake mix as per directions on the package.
Fill the orange skin pots with the batter. Put the orange skin tops on and wrap them in tin foil with the shiny side in.
Carefully place them in hot coals. Allow them to bake for 10 to 15 minutes.
Allow to cool then carefully unwrap the oranges. Open and enjoy your freshly baked orange cakes.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Paddling The Stikine, The Fastest Canoe River In The West

By

Dave Quinn

-

May 1, 2008

Canyon with river running through — Don't paddle or you'll miss it. | Photo: Dave Quinn

“The Stikine is huge, man. And fast,” exclaimed a canoe guide I know when I told him our plans to spend 10 days paddling 240 kilometers of the Lower Stikine River.

“The river just rips by, all those huge boilers and whirlpools. My advice: don’t paddle, or you’ll get to the end too soon.”

With this bizarre warning, we piled our gear—paddles included—into the truck and headed north.

The fastest navigable free-flowing river

The Stikine rises on the Spatsizi Plateau in northwestern B.C. before squirting violently through the unrunnable (for mere mortals, at least) 100-kilometer Grand Canyon of the Stikine.

From the bottom of the canyon at Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, to its communion with the Pacific at Wrangell, Alaska, the river drops nearly 1.3 meters per kilometer, a grade that makes it the fastest navigable free-flowing river in North America.

Even at our put-in at Telegraph Creek the size and strength of the Stikine stuns us—a 200-meter-wide channel of silt-laden water churns by at more than 20 kilometers per hour.

The Stikine’s cargo of salt

In 1879, legendary naturalist John Muir visited the Lower Stikine, calling it, “a Yosemite 100 miles long” whose “views change with bewildering rapidity.”

As we leave the drier pine forests of the interior behind and enter into the granite and glaciers of the Coast Mountains, we understand this to be a great compliment to Yosemite. Here the river becomes a boiling, coffee-with-cream-coloured waterway several hundred meters wide. We heed my friend’s advice and stow our paddles, feet dangling over the gunwales in the icy water.

Our canoes spin a lazy dance, showcasing a 360-degree panorama of peaks. The ABS bottom of the canoe hisses through the Stikine’s cargo of silt, and the cool air hints at the scent of pulverized granite in icy water. Bewildering indeed.

The wildness of this valley is etched on every sand and gravel bank we visit. Wolves, grizzly, black bear and moose have all scribbled their stories here. In Little Canyon—a notorious challenge both to modern canoeists and the sternwheelers that ferried 19th-century optimists inland to the Cassiar and Klondike gold rushes—we spot what looks like a bear swimming the confused waters of the 100-meter-deep rock cleft. Instead we realize that in this boiling, whirlpool-filled canyon, 170 kilometers from the sea, we are seeing our first seal.

Three men sitting on sand bar pouring scotch. — This sand bar is always open. | Photo: Dave Quinn

An artery of trade and travel

Like its scenery, the Stikine has a rich and storied past. An artery of trade and travel for millennia, local legend tells of a vast ice wall that once blocked the valley, under which the entire Stikine flowed through a gaping ice tunnel. To test whether their canoes could safely pass, traveling groups of the indigenous Tahltan would send an old woman through in a canoe. If she emerged unscathed, they knew the tunnel would offer safe passage downstream to trade with, or raid, the Tlingit villages on the coast.

Today a remnant of this ice wall lies in a pool of its own meltblood—a large iceberg-choked lake separated from the river by a thin, treed moraine. Resisting the forward push of the river, we portage to this hidden lake and pass a day of contrasts playing chess and reading in the warm white-sand beside grounded icebergs. Ten-thousand-year-old ice commands us to break out our supposedly well-aged scotch, and we toast the Tahltan, the gold rushers and the spirit of adventure that brought us here.

[ Paddling Trip Guide: View all paddling trips in British Columbia ]

The First Nations presence on the Stikine is strong. Fading pictograms dot the shore, while sandy eddies bristle with well-tended salmon nets hung from long pine poles. Five salmon species return each year to the Stikine and have been a source of conflict for decades. Alaskan, Canadian and First Nations fishers have all angled for the grizzly’s share of the catch. Although the so-called Salmon Wars ended with a 1999 treaty, it is an uneasy truce and tensions are still palpable on both sides of the border, each country blaming the other for declining salmon stocks.

The Stikine salmon squabble was nearly rendered moot in the late 1970s when B.C. Hydro unveiled a plan to build five immense dams along the Grand Canyon of the Stikine and the Stikine’s main tributary, the Iskut River. The hubris required to build sufficient dams along this river is hard to conceive of, and I’m happy it didn’t prevail. After nearly a decade of opposition by conservationists and First Nations, the dam plans were scrapped, and Stikine River Provincial Park was created.

A landscape still unscarred by modern industry

After another diversionary side trip upstream through Shakes Slough to the granite-girded and iceberg-laden Shakes Lake, we relent to the last leg of our journey and enter Alaska.

Here the river meets its match and finally slows as it runs into Pacific tidewater. And with the tides comes fog. We feel our way by compass through nomadic sandbars and finally across five kilometers of Pacific swells from the mouth of the Stikine to the barnacle-caked dock at Wrangell where we trade the wilderness of the Stikine for the rough-and-ready, deep-fried town full of bumper stickers reminding us of the driver’s constitutional right to bear arms.

The estuary at the mouth of the Stikine is immense—the accumulated energy of this river has created a sprawling finale that encompasses a 27-kilometer-wide delta. The Stikine here seems pristine and permanent; unbreakable. It has persevered through glacial assault, First Nations battles, two gold rushes, the Salmon Wars, and B.C.’s plans to shackle it with hydro projects.

But even B.C.’s most remote rivers are within range of the crosshairs of industry, and the scopes of two industrial giants are set on the Stikine. Shell Canada has announced plans to develop coal-bed methane fields in an area known as the Sacred Headwaters—the rolling, wildlife-rich plateau where the Stikine, Nass and Skeena Rivers come to life.

Downstream in the headwaters of the Iskut River, the Lower Stikine’s main tributary, Teck Cominco and NovaGold have permits to create in Galore Creek the world’s largest copper- gold mine—an open-pit operation involving more than 80,000 hectares of Stikine wilderness, processing 65,000 tonnes of ore a day. Skyrocketing access and construction costs in booming B.C. have led to the recent suspension of the project, although the mineral giants have promised to “reassess the project and evaluate alternative development strategies.”

As paddlers, we sought out this pocket of the old world, a place still unscarred by modern industry. We are like the gold seekers who came before us, searching for something rare and precious.

Like daring to paddle too hard on the already fast waters of the Stikine, if we rush to industrialize our last wild areas, we may find we come to the end of them too soon. The power of the Stikine is such that to paddle it is to appreciate the importance of knowing when to stow your paddle.

If you go

Access

The drive up the Stewart-Cassiar Highway and along the 113-km gravel road to Telegraph Creek is an adventure in itself. Park your car and rent canoes at Stikine Riversong Inn at Telegraph Creek. To return, arrange a jetboat shuttle with Riversong ($2,200 CAD).

You can also fly or take the ferry from Seattle to Wrangell and arrange a jetboat shuttle to Telegraph Creek with either Riversong or a Wrangell-based operator. Due to border bureaucracy, air shuttles are no longer available.

[ Further reading: Lake Of Two Skies: A Trip Through Great Slave Lake ]