This article in iPhone photography on the river was first published in Rapid magazine.
The next time you paddle into a scenic locale, don’t be surprised if there isn’t a single camera in sight. It’s not that paddlers with an eye for photographic flair have given up sharing their vision—and exploits—with the world. Many river shutterbugs are finding a better way to shoot, edit and upload images without the need for a bulky SLR, laptop or high-speed Internet connection.
As long as paddlers can get signal bars on their phones, that is.
“I think it’s pretty cool that I can take a photo on my iPhone and upload it to the world, pretty much instantly,” says Matt Hamilton, a 36-year-old paramedic and former Canadian Freestyle Kayak Team member.
Hamilton isn’t alone. With on-board cameras and quick Internet access, mobile phones are increasingly becoming the ultimate all-in-one devices. In April 2012, National Geographic reported that consumer surveys showed camera phones accounted for 37 percent of Americans’ digital photos in 2011. By 2015, the share of images made with phones could be close to half.
The iPhone is one of the most popular and capable smartphones.
“If I’m hanging out at a wave with friends, I’m shooting with my iPhone,” says professional photographer and avid kayaker, John Rathwell, 25, adding that he still pulls out his SLR for professional work.
Hamilton also shoots with the more capable Canon 30D SLR, and his Olympus waterproof point-and-shoot is always in his lifejacket. But his iPhone, compact and equipped with a relatively inexpensive waterproof case, sees about half of all his outings.
“Everybody seems to communicate through Facebook, Skype or texting,” says Hamilton, who enjoys the immediacy of uploading directly to friends and paddler groups on Facebook.
For self-proclaimed “techno idiots” like Hamilton, simplicity is among the reasons for going with the iPhone. Applications like Instagram boost the accessibility of mobile phone photography even more. In just over a year, the free photo editing and sharing app has gained over 30 million users and won several awards, including a highly esteemed Webby—a Best of the Web award hailed by The New York Times as “the Internet’s highest honor”—for Breakout of the Year.
Phone cameras are not without limitations. Take away the networking capabilities and downloadable apps, and even the top-rated iPhone’s camera is about par with mid-range point-and-shoots. The camera has no manual settings for ISO, aperture or shutter speed, and relies solely on downloaded applications to adjust photos.
Still, it’s possible to capture professional quality photos with a phone. In 2005, award-winning photographer Robert Clark published Image America, the first photo book to use only images from a camera phone. Two years later, Clark shot images for National Geographic’s pioneering how-to guide, The Camera Phone Book.
According to Rathwell, static settings are the biggest downside to shoot- ing with an iPhone. “You’ll quickly find that it shoots only wide angles,” he says. “If your kayaker subjects are far away, you’re not going to get a very good shot.” But it’s exactly this lack of control that forces professionals and even novice shooters like Hamilton to get more creative with their shots. “It gets you thinking a little bit differently,” says Rathwell. “How you can get closer to the action, or how you can use the landscape and scenery to make the photograph work.”
Canoeist Becky Mason and musician Ian Tamblyn unite to combine their artistic talents in this remarkable convergence of video, audio and paddling talents. Alone in her red cedar-canvas canoe Becky takes you for a wild ride above and below the crystal clear water of Lac Vert, Quebec. With Tamblyn’s original score as the backdrop and using some astonishing underwater camera angles Mason gracefully links a myriad of strokes and manoevres together into what can only be described as a canoeist’s visual and musical feast.
Director and Producer: Becky Mason and Reid McLachlan Website: www.redcanoes.ca
This review of square stern canoes originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
When hunters and anglers head out on the water, they are often looking for something different than the average canoe. Square stern boats affer a larger cargo capacity to help carry gear and the catch. They have shapes that can be paddled or motor driven, and come in durable materials. Here are three current options.
ESQUIF
Rangeley 17
Designer Notes: Based on the traditional Rangeley concepts from the turn of the century, its hull excels at rough water handling on large windy lakes. With a 49-inch beam, the boat allows for safe, reliable cruising under power as well as tremendous efficiency when paddled. With a very high capacity, the Rangeley 17 is a wonderful option for those looking for a hunting or fishing boat.
Designer Notes: Created by—and for—hunters and fishermen, this rugged performer marries a triple keel for superior tracking with integrated hydrodynamic side sponsons to deliver remarkable stability along with a 1,000-pound capacity. The Missourian’s square stern easily accommodates motors up to five horsepower. Each canoe can sport a unique camouflage design.
Designer Notes: The MacKenzie Sport 15 offers a stable hull design appreciated by hunters and anglers. The 37-inch beam and 15- inch center depth provide over 1,000 pounds of capacity with seven inches of freeboard. Its efficient hull design provides excel- lent performance with a two- to three-horsepower outboard.
This feature article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
“We like to do a bit of a test whenever we bring guests out here,” said Jeremy Ward, Curator for the Canadian Canoe Museum and one of our three hosts for the day. “We get a pretty good idea of how much fun we’ll have judging by how wide-eyed you are when you first walk through the door.”
He was only half joking. Apparently some of the people they take through the museum’s archives don’t even bat an eye as they cross the threshold. They go right on talking as if they have just strolled into a Walmart, and walk out barely noticing the significance of the collection.
Wondering how one could be anything less than floored I asked, “How’d we fare?”
“You guys looked pretty amazed.”
From the exterior, the 30,000-square- foot warehouse is nondescript. It used to serve as a factory for Outboard Marine, a motor manufacturer and part of Peterborough’s long boat building history. After the industry faltered in the ‘60s, the company eventually went under and the building and all the equipment inside were essentially left to collect dust.
“When we first moved in, all the boats were stored wrapped in plastic and sealed off to preserve them from exposure to the dust and decay of the rest of the building,” said John Summers, the museum’s General Manager. “It was quite a process to get it to where it is today.”
After the remaining forgotten factory equipment was removed, the local fire department came in and literally hosed the building’s interior down, floor to ceiling. A small army of volunteers made up mostly of university students on their summer holidays whitewashed the walls and resealed and painted the sprawling concrete floor.
Today, natural light washes in from the rooftop windows, bathing the hundreds of boats in soft sunlight. Ancient-looking dugouts line one outside wall on shelves rising up 20 feet. Racks loaded with some of the museum’s 500 curious paddles of all shapes, sizes, materials and ages sit near the warehouse’s entrance. Along another wall is a drop sheet, hung to create a makeshift photo studio for the cataloging of each piece in the collection. Twenty-foot wood-plank boats and fragile birchbark war canoes on dollies crowd aisles lined by rows of stands on wheels. Each stand holds nine canoes in various stages of repair and preservation, each canoe with its own manilla tag stating a name and item number.
Ward pointed out the Starkell’s Orellana of Paddle to the Amazon fame; then, a canoe carved by First Nations to commemorate the Hudson Bay Company’s 300th anniversary that required painstaking attention to detail in fabrication but had apparently never actually seen water.
Ward shared the history of the gold medal-winning K1 from the 2004 Olympics in Athens; a miniature decked Fijian outrigger outfitted with a crab claw sail; and the Père Lallement—a 22-foot cedar canvas Chestnut canoe that capsized almost 35 years ago on a school trip in Timiskaming, resulting in the death of 12 boys and their master.
Each of the dozen-or-so canoes I recognized had such incredible stories behind them. And there were hundreds more boats with stories I could only guess at.
“In each story is a lesson of cooperation between people,” explained the museum’s Executive Director, James Raffan. “They’re all about people’s relationship to place, and about remembering.”
Like an inquisitive child, I jumped around from boat to boat, asking about their origins, the most peculiar looking ones really catching my attention. There is a definite international flavor in the materials, shapes, designs and techniques used to build many of the boats.
“What I find very exciting as we look at canoes from California or from Samoa, from Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands or South America, is that only a certain portion of each canoe is functional,” explained Ward. “Of course it needs to perform, it needs to paddle, it needs to be maneuverable or strong-tracking, but so much of each boat is just the artistic, the cultural art form of the community it came from and it’s so distinct.”
“There are some strange looking watercraft in here,” he added, “but they all have a family resemblance. Each one has its own individual story but, as an aggregate, they all link together.”
He and his team use these links to create the imaginative exhibits in the museum’s main display area. “This is an idea factory,” Ward beamed.
Like his colleagues showing us around, he could happily go on all day, revealing details of workmanship, design and history. We would happily follow.
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I had to ask about the many racks holding dozens of what appeared to me to be run-of-the-mill cedar canvas canoes. Ward smiled, knowing what was coming before I could even get the question out. It’s clear he’s passionate about the eccentricities of every piece, but all three of our tour guides acknowledged that there is some replication in the artifacts.
“The collection is filled with the idiosyncrasies of its founder, Kirk Wipper,” said Summers. “Because it started as a private collection, it was really just his collection of boats. He didn’t necessarily have the same bigger-picture outlook that we need today to run the museum.”
In 1957, at a summer camp north of Minden, Ontario, a friend presented camp owner, Kirk Wipper, with a dugout canoe from the 1890s. Ten years later, his collection had grown to over 150 boats housed in log buildings and dubbed the Kanawa Museum.
As Summers suggested, Wipper’s collect- ing habits were very organic. Friends would keep him informed of interesting watercraft as they became available. He would scoop up a freighter or a cedarstrip as they would cross his path. He would take on debt to invest in truly unique artifacts.
“The collection is filled with the idiosyncrasies of its founder, Kirk Wipper,” said Summers. “Because it started as a private collection, it was really just his collection of boats. He didn’t necessarily have the same bigger-picture outlook that we need today to run the museum.”
Through it all, he was guided by a feeling of responsibility to continue collecting in order to share the whole story of canoeing and kayaking, and their relationship to the environment and the history of North America.
His dedication was tireless. No Haida dugout canoe had been carved within living memory until Wipper commissioned one in 1968. He negotiated the $150,000 purchase of 44 canoes from New York’s Museum of the American Indian. He transported a 53-foot dugout canoe from British Columbia to Ontario on the roof of his pick-up truck.
By the ‘80s, the Kanawa Museum had outgrown its home. After hearing that Wipper was looking for a new home for his 600 boats, a group from Trent University set out to bring the collection to Peterborough, home of the famous Peterborough Canoe Company.
In 1989, a board of directors was formed and by 1994, after several summers spent transferring the collection, the artifacts were in the hands of the newly established Canadian Canoe Muesum. The doors to the current location opened to the public July 1, 1997.
As our hosts sealed up the archives and we made our way back to the museum’s main building—the one with all the exhibits—conversation turned to the present.
While this museum is truly one of a kind, its inception really isn’t that out of the ordinary. “A crazy collector is behind the founding of a lot of museums,” said Raffan, “look at the Smithsonian. What’s not so well known is the fact that this is a living, breathing organization.”
Raffan, Ward and Summers manage the collection with a clearer mandate as far as accepting artifacts goes, but they also continue to reflect Wipper’s goal of telling the entire canoeing story.
Over 100 boats are on display in the main exhibit area, along with hundreds more artifacts. In the warmth of muted museum lighting, visitors explore a salon dedicated to cedar Chestnut and Peterborough Canoe Company boats from the heyday of recreational canoeing in the early 20th century. Around the corner, behind glass, sits Pierre Trudeau’s iconic deerskin coat across from a screen playing Bill Mason films.
Upstairs, Hudson’s Bay blankets, casks and muskets are arranged in a birchbark canoe; plaques describe life as a voyageur during fur trade times. A group of middle school students sit in a circle on the floor nearby amidst skin-on-frame kayaks, learning about the primitive materials and craftsmanship from a volunteer. “The museum isn’t just about the past,” explained Summers. “It’s about what people do with their families today.”
“The canoes are physically old, but the things that make them what they are, are as fresh and new today as they were when the boats were first made,” he continued. “One of the things we like our visitors to come away with is how connected this all is.”
In contrast to the birchbark and cedar is a polyethylene Dagger freestyle boat hanging from the ceiling—a prototype from the days when whitewater paddlers were parking cars on the bows and sterns of their boats to flatten them out to improve performance in a hole.
In another corner, there is a fully operational workshop where Ward and a crew of volunteer artisans build and repair boats, paddles and other paddling paraphernalia while visitors watch, ask questions and even participate.
“It really is amazing that we’ve created all of this from next to nothing,” said Raffan, referring to the fact that the museum continues to run exclusively on funding from private sources and membership. “We truly are a world-class museum destination and there continues to be no funding from the federal government.”
This has caused some instability over the years. In 2003, they were forced to close their doors due to financial problems. The following year, an anonymous donor stepped up and paid off two-thirds of the museum’s debt. Under this momentum, they were able to bolster membership and reopen the world’s largest collection of ca- noes and kayaks.
Financial hardship may seem like an economic reality inevitable in the world of special interest collections. But if you put the museum into context, it becomes clear that someone has dropped the ball when it comes to public funding.
The canoe is inextricably linked to North American history. The Canadian Canoe Museum chronicles the evolution of a civilization as much as it does boats and paddles. In 2007, the canoe was voted as one of the Seven Wonders of Canada as part of a reality TV series. In commemoration, the museum has established National Canoe Day, celebrated every year by thousands of people across Canada and around the world.
Today, the museum has a staff of nine, and a crew of 120 active volunteers who Raffan credits as being at the heart of a lot of the day-to-day operations. The artifacts, facility and events have been established as world-class without the help of any significant government backing. Working under this reality has forced Raffan, Summers and Ward to be creative.
“Take five zeros off the budget of a big museum,” said Raffan, “then take 10 per- cent of that and it would make a huge difference to what we do.”
Still, members get some wonderful perks beyond the usual gift shop discounts and unlimited admission. Among other benefits, Raffan recently announced a members-only online exhibit—a unique, exclusive web museum filled with content visitors to the bricks and mortar museum can’t access.
They are also optimistic looking into the future. Raffan and Summers share medium-term plans of moving the museum from its current location just off the highway, bookended by plazas and industrial parks, to Peterborough’s picturesque waterfront, giving them the opportunity to offer an on-water component to the museum in a purpose-built facility.
As we wrapped up our behind the scenes tour, we shook hands and promised to return soon. Exiting through the foyer, we were thanked by the retiree volunteers manning the museum’s front desk and gift shop.
We all know that canoeing is about more than just boats and paddles and this museum reflects that. Raffan’s words summed it up perfectly. “These are lessons that I think go forward—lessons about paddling together, about working together so that we can make sense of what’s happening today and chart a course for tomorrow.”
– For more information on events, exhibits and how to become a member of the Canadian Canoe Museum, visit www.canoemuseum.ca.
This Family Camping article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
We’ve all been one or know one. Memorized the impossible, seven-syllable names (try saying Archaeornithomimus three times fast); pretended the backyard was Jurassic Park (and known that, to be perfectly correct, it really should be called Cretaceous Park); slept between dinosaur-motif bed sheets. Yes, I’m referring to the part-time paleontologist, the fearless fossil hunter in your family. Whether it’s you, your son, grandson, sister or dad, a fascination with the creatures that walked, crawled, swam and sprouted long before we appeared can inspire a fun theme for your next family adventure.
MISTAKEN POINT ECOLOGICAL RESERVE
NEWFOUNDLAND
Newfoundland is world-renowned for its fossils. Long ago set adrift from what is now Europe, the Rock’s sheer bounty of, well, rock is home to ancient marine organisms spanning 320 million years of geologic time. Most famous of these fossil beds is Mistaken Point, a wave-battered crag that takes its name from the deadly result of sailors mistaking it for the safe harbor of Cape Race. Buried in fine volcanic ash 565 million years ago, the creatures now exposed here in tennis court-sized slabs of sea cliff are not only the most ancient deep-water marine fossils in the world, they’re also the oldest diverse collection of complex organisms ever discovered. And they’re controversial, too. Only a handful of the frond-like, leafy forms resemble known living animals— most are so radically different that some scientists insist on assigning them to their own completely separate kingdom.
STAY AWHILE: Reached by dirt road and a six-kilometer hiking trail on the tip of the Avalon Peninsula, Mistaken Point has an edge-of-the-world feel that’s worth visiting even if you’re not a fossil buff. Between June and September, don’t pass up a whale and puffin-watching boat tour 90 minutes north in Witless Bay.
INFO: The point is two hours south of St. John’s, off Route 10. Meet your guide at the interpretive center in the coastal village of Portugal Cove South for a daily tour (departs 1 p.m., May–October, 3–4 hours). 709-438-1100, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve
DINOSAUR PROVINCIAL PARK
ALBERTA
When dinosaur fanatics dream of Nirvana it looks a lot like southeastern Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. Here the Red Deer River Valley carves through Canada’s largest badlands, revealing haunting hoodoos, isolated mesas and the greatest concentration of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils ever found. Every known group is represented, including favorites like Triceratops, Hadrosaurus, The Lost World’s battering ram Pachycephalosaurus and, of course, the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex. Seventy-five million years ago, this was low swampy country with a steamy subtropical climate, and the dinosaurs rubbed shoulders with fish, turtles, crocodiles, amphibians and even marsupials. Since the first paleontologists began digging here in the 1880s, more than 23,000 fossils have been collected, including 300 dinosaur skeletons. Some of these now reside in museums around the world, but the greatest collection is housed just a two-hour drive away in Drumheller, Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
STAY AWHILE: Explore the stark beauty of the badlands on the six-kilometer Great Badlands hike. Join one of the park’s paleontologist-led family or kids’ day programs, including an authentic dinosaur dig, prospecting hike or dinosaur day camp.
INFO: The park is three hours east of Calgary, off Route 544. Dinosaur Provincial Park, 403-378-4342 ext. 235, Dinosaur Provincial Park
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK
SOUTH DAKOTA
South Dakota’s White River Badlands are to the study and understanding of ancient mammals what Alberta’s badlands are to dinosaur research. Since 1846, paleontologists have uncovered the remains of camels, three-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, rhinos, rabbits, beavers and more, providing the most complete snapshot of mammalian life in North America during the early Age of Mammals 36 to 28 million years ago. But that’s not all. The extensive erosion that has produced this landscape of buttes, pinnacles and spires amid the prairie has also revealed even more ancient fossils dating from the Cretaceous. During the Age of Dinosaurs, however, a warm shallow sea covered the Great Plains. Since dinosaurs were land creatures, none have been found here. Instead fossil hunters have unearthed giant marine lizards called mosasaurs, along with fish, turtles, nautiloids (shelled mollusks) and ammonites (ancient squid).
STAY AWHILE: Bison, bighorn sheep and prairie dogs may be seen from the park’s trails. Hike 1.5 miles to the Notch, a dramatic overlook of the White River Valley—watch your step, the trail climbs a log ladder and skirts drop-offs.
INFO: The park is 75 miles east of Rapid City on Route 44. Badlands National Park, 605-433- 5361, Badlands National Park
BURGESS SHALE
YOHO NATIONAL PARK, BRITISH COLUMBIA
The word Yoho comes from the Cree language. Probably the best translation is “Wow”. Native peoples and modern visitors exclaim at the stupendous Rocky Mountians, emerald lakes and 833-foot Takakkaw Falls (another Cree word meaning magnificent). But it is likely that paleontologist Charles Walcott also breathed “wow” in 1909 when he discovered the fossil bed now known as the Burgess Shale. In seven years, Walcott collected more than 65,000 fossils, many of which were unknown. Declared a World Heritage Site in 1981, the Burgess Shale is still regarded as the finest site for Cambrian age fossils. Join a daylong guided hike—the only way to view the park’s two fossil beds—to learn how these half-billion-year-old marine animals hold important clues to evolutionary understanding. Mount Stephen’s famous trilobite beds are accessed via a nine-kilometer hike, while Walcott Quarry is a strenuous, 22-kilometer round-trip to a spectacular subalpine ridge.
STAY AWHILE: There’s no shortage of things to do in Yoho. View some of the park’s abundant wildlife and lofty peaks while hiking one of the dozens of trails, canoeing on aptly named Emerald Lake or staying at a historic backcountry lodge.
INFO: The park is a short drive west of Lake Louise on Trans-Canada Hwy 1 and borders Banff National Park to the east. Yoho Visitor Center, 250-343-6783, Burgess Shale
WHAT IS A FOSSIL?
Think of fossils and the first thing that comes to mind is probably a dinosaur skeleton. But fossils come in every shape, size and age—the oldest fossils are 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites while the youngest are just 10,000 years old.
Mold and Cast Fossils form when a skeleton is buried by sediment. Over time, the sediment turns to stone and the entombed bones begin to dissolve, leaving a cavity in the shape of the original skeleton. Water rich in minerals enters the cavity and the minerals deposited in the mold form a cast that has the same shape but none of the internal features (or DNA) of the original skeleton. Most of the fossilized bones, shells and leaves we find are mold and cast fossils.
Replacement Fossils are made up of minerals that have taken the place of the original organic material while preserving the internal structures. For example, petrified wood is actually rock—silicon or calcite crystals have replaced all of the organic matter down to the last cell!
Whole Body Fossils are unaltered, intact organisms like mammoths caught in ice or tar pits, or insects trapped in amber.
Trace Fossils record the activity of an animal, rather than the animal itself. These include footprints, tracks and coprolites (fossilized poop!).
– Sweden is the world’s leading exporter of matches, manufacturing around five million boxes daily—the equivalent of about 250 million matchsticks.
– The original matches—small sticks of pine impregnated with sulphur—were first used in China in the sixth century.
– Matchbox collectors are called phillumenists.
– “Third on a match” means bad luck. The superstition dates back to WWI when it was believed that if three soldiers lit their cigarettes using the same match, a sniper would see the match strike, take aim at the second soldier lighting up and pick off the ill-fated third.
– Five hundred billion matches are used each year.
– A lawsuit was filed against Match.com in 2005, claiming that the dating website secretly employs people as bait to send fake messages and go on as many as three dates per day to keep paying clients returning. Both the suit and the plaintiff’s love life failed to ignite.
– Up until the early 1900s, matches were made using toxic amounts of white phosphorous, causing an epidemic of a deadly bone disease known as phossy jaw.
– The safety match separates reactive materials, with red phosphorus on the matchbook’s outer striking strip and potassium chlorate on the match head, making undesired ignition virtually impossible.
– Most wooden matchsticks are made from aspen or white pine with a single tree yielding anywhere from 400,000 to one million sticks.
– If all of the three-inch Matchbox toy cars ever built were parked bumper to bumper, they would stretch around the equator more than six times.
This essay originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the Olympic fanfare and it’s impossible to miss Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt but you probably don’t know any sprint canoeing heroes. Relative to the deeply entrenched canoeing culture in North America, top-level racing has a weak following.
With marathons, outriggers, war canoes, even dragon boating, there’s no shortage of competitive spirit amongst recreational single-blade paddlers in North America. This has not, however, been translating into more and better athletes canoeing at an Olympic level.
Pam Boeteler is the president of WomenCAN International, a collective focused on gender equality in canoeing at the Olympics—an issue that she suggests is partly behind the waning interest in elite canoeing events. “There are no women’s open canoeing events at the Olympics,” says Boeteler. This despite the fact that 36 countries have established programs for women at various stages of development.
“On top of that, nobody just goes out and high-kneels recreationally,” Boeteler points out, referring to the trickier stance that elite sprint canoeists use to gain power. “We have a population who want instant gratification and don’t necessarily have the time to learn an entirely new skill.”
Paddling, unlike most elite sports in North America, doesn’t have a recreational stream to draw from.
“I started looking at the industry as a whole and over time there was this disconnect between recreational and elite paddlers,” says Wade Blackwood, executive director of the American Canoe Association. “When the ACA and USA Canoe/Kayak (USACK) split in the ‘90s, performance dropped off, medal counts dropped off and participation at the elite level dropped off.”
As a result, the ACA is once again working together with USACK—the national governing body for paddlesports racing and a member of the national Olympic committee—in an effort to reduce the obvious disparity.
The ACA has 5,700 instructors and Blackwood hopes that by introducing the idea of competitive canoeing into beginner courses, people will become aware that they can get involved in elite paddling disciplines.
In the end, both Blackwood and Boeteler agree that increased exposure and support for local competition are the keys to bridging the gap between recreational and elite paddlers. Extending the canoeing culture leisure paddlers love into the competitive sphere is healthy for both camps.
They’re not scientists, lawyers or full-time conservationists, yet these three paddlers have charted courses through wilderness protection, tumped long portages through dam relicensing, and urged the public to dip their paddles in the turbulent, challenging waters of environmental protection.
Kate Ross
PORTLAND, OREGON
After working as a kayak guide and instructor, Ross volunteered to help organize the Clackamas River Cleanup. The cleanup grew and she became a founding board member of We Love Clean Rivers, which helps others orchestrate river health events. She eventually parlayed this experience into a job, going from paddling instructor to the Outreach Coordinator for Willamette Riverkeeper. At WRK she gets people on the river and advocates for the river’s health. She won the Outdoor Industry Women’s Coalition First Ascent Award in 2011 as an emerging conservation leader.
Words of Wisdom “Make the river accessible. Traveling on the river is much more intimate than standing next to it, and people become exponentially more
committed to protecting rivers once they float them. We provide boats, organize shuttles and make it easy for people to experience the river.”
Jay Morrison
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
Morrison retired from the Canadian government at 57 and spent two years paddling across Canada. In 2003, looking for something to get involved in, he joined the board of the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society, where he chairs the volunteer-driven campaign to protect the Dumoine River. He spends untold hours doing the non-glamorous work of river conservation: meeting with first nations, user groups and agencies, and testifying at hearings. The Dumoine has received interim protection, and he thinks they’re on the verge of a permanent win. Wondering whether his young daughter will have clean air, water and wild places after he’s gone keeps him motivated.
Words of Wisdom “Believe it or not, conservation is actually easy. Don’t be intimidated. Environmental groups need skills of all kinds and you probably have valuable skills you’ve developed elsewhere. Join a group, get involved and you’ll learn how to do it from professionals.”
Charlie Vincent
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
An engineer by training, Vincent led river trips with the University of Utah. Talking about the Green and Colorado rivers forced him to hone his knowledge of ecology and environmental impacts. He volunteered with American Whitewater in one of the most notoriously byzantine environmental processes: representing them in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission dam relicensing processes. His background as an engineer was a good match for the FERC process, and despite the multi-year relicensing process, they were able to secure flows for improved habitat and river recreation.
Words of Wisdom “It’s surprising how much impact you can have on the process. Maybe not at the first or second meeting, but it happens if you carve out the space and stick with it. If I’d known how long it would take, I might have been scared off, but I’m glad I wasn’t.”
– Neil Schulman is a paddler, writer and co- founder of the Confluence Environmental Center, which develops future environmental leaders.
Aldo Leopold was a man who wore many hats: writer, philosopher, forester, professor, wildlife manager. And canoeist.
Born in Iowa in 1887, and a graduate of Yale’s School of Forestry, Leopold spent his early professional days in the American Southwest. But he is best remembered for his later years in central Wisconsin, the scene of his classic literary work, A Sand County Almanac.
Sand County is a month-to-month collection of outdoor observations and essays about wilderness, wildlife and the American land ethic. After its publication in 1948— ironically the same year Leopold died of a heart attack while fighting a brush fire on a neighbor’s farm—the book developed a life of its own. It captured an immediate and devoted readership and thrust Leopold into the same company as Thoreau and John Muir—men whose writings have had profound impact on the meaning of nature to humankind and the value of wilderness to our survival.
To Leopold, wilderness encompassed many things, tangible and otherwise, but more than anything else it was a place “big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and
kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottag- es or other works of man.”
In Sand County, Leopold lamented the fact that self-propelled backcountry travel was rapidly disappearing from the American scene. He wrote: “Your Hudson Bay Indian now has a put-in, and your mountaineer a Ford.” He implored those interested in opening up every last vestige of the country to motorized traffic to pause and reflect. “Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.”
When Leopold wanted to escape “from too much modernity,” he would seek relaxation on one of Wisconsin’s few remaining undeveloped rivers.
One of his favorites was a 50-mile stretch of the Flambeau within the 90,000-acre Flambeau River State Forest. His impressions then are hauntingly similar to those that paddlers experience today on many of America’s “wild” rivers.
“When I finally launched my own canoe in this legendary stream,” he wrote, “I found it up to expectations as a river, but as a wilderness it was on its last legs.”
Leopold was gravely concerned that civilization’s voracious appetite for wild land would ultimately threaten not only the Flambeau, but all areas that had yet to see a bulldozer, dam or timberjack.
Despite its shortcomings, he heaped praise on the Flambeau: “…at early dawn one can still hear it singing in the wilderness.”
It’s up to all of us to keep that song alive for future generations. Otherwise, as Leopold mused in closing his chapter on the Flambeau: “Perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters.”
– Larry Rice has canoe-camped on the Flambeau and is glad to report that its tree-lined shores, abundant wildlife and nice stretches of whitewater still make it one of the most beautiful paddles anywhere.
This essay originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
What am I supposed to be looking for out here in this canoe? I’m suspicious of how easy it is to zone out, rarely thinking about anything more profound than what’s for dinner.
It’s certainly not because I have all the answers to life’s more difficult quandaries. Can time spent in the Boundary Waters, Adirondacks or Algonquin really provide answers to my questions about life back home? Can hours spent on a webbed seat, kneeling, bug-bitten and sun-baked, really change my outlook on work? My relationships? My path in life? These things creep into my head when I’m out for a paddle.
Most of the time, however, I don’t think about them at all. Instead, I’m focused on the heat, the location of the next portage marker, the bugs, my aching shoulders or, most often, my next meal. My brain is just as scattered here as it is when I’m hours—or days—away, at my desk, behind the wheel of my car or lying awake at night. The meaning of life flits through my mind, then quickly gets pushed aside by the need to hit the shore for a pit stop.
I’ve spent entire Saturday afternoons contemplating the placement of a barrel and portage pack in my canoe, optimizing balance, tilt and access. Then, when I’m back at the car, tying down the boat, I become addled with guilt over not taking advantage of my surroundings to meditate on life.
Isn’t it enough to pick a route, enjoy a different place and relax with a paddle in my hands? Should I be trying to find myself? Is that really what I’m supposed to be doing out here?
So, I force the questions. I try more demanding routes to push myself, hoping to prove what I’m capable of. I slow down, be more mindful and write it all down in my Moleskine.
People are always talking about finding themselves while paddling. Bloggers broadcast mysterious deep sentiments revealed by cedar and canvas. Sales pitches promise journeys of self-discovery. People recently returned from trips glow with an aura that suggests a life-changing event.
This trip, these adventures, this paddle—they’re supposed to mean something. And maybe they do. But when I look back, I’ve never really been able to recognize a life-defining passage while it’s happening. It’s in sharing stories around the campfire circle on future trips, or in flipping back through old journals years later that I gain the perspective that I want so badly to find right away.
I snap myself out of it and focus. How much deep thought and soul-searching is enough to figure it all out? Do I really need to try so hard? I’m not sure. But I know I’m hungry. And, for now, that’ll have to be enough.
