The next morning brought a new angle on his tirade. Now we had ruined his lay-in. I left my buddy to play diplomat as I walked up the beach to get some fresh air. We left for our paddle with our plans intact to move to the meadow. Returning, we found the island vacant. The meadow dwellers had jumped on water taxis and zoomed away. Our grumpy neighbour was also gone and could be seen paddling across the channel, leaving a final list of grievances scribbled on a bit of paper pinned to one of our tents. 

Publishers often send us new kayaking books to review. When I got Jon Bowermaster’s latest from National Geographic, Descending the Dragon: My Journey Down the Coast of Vietnam, I was struck by something very odd. I counted 78 photographs between the covers, exactly six of which showed any sign of the paddlers or their kayaks. That’s less than eight per cent of the images in a kayaking book having anything to do with kayaking. What’s going on?

The late photographer Galen Rowell wrote about a concept called “image maturity.” He said that when a subject is new to the audience, you offer them the photographic equivalent of a two-by-four to the head— obvious photos that are a direct depiction of the subject. In Rowell’s example, the popular photo for stories about Nepal trekking in the 1980s was a portrait of a Sherpa. In recent years, editors passed over that image for ones that they previously thought “too subtle.” As trekking became more familiar, the maturing audience got the same message out of increasingly abstract pictures while the old images became ho-hum.

By this definition, Rob Howard’s photos in the Vietnam book are very mature. Like the one printed above, they are pictures of the world Bowermaster’s team saw from the seats of their kayaks. Images of fishermen, streetside merchants, bicycles, fishing nets, floating villages, rowboats, bamboo boats, dogs, schoolgirls, war memorials, Buddhist monks, sandals, cows, jellyfish and pagodas. Images far more diverse and informa- tive than the so-called lifestyle photos in a kayaking magazine.

In Rowells term’s, this magazine has some growing up to do. Eighty per cent of the photographs in a typical issue of Adventure Kayak include kayaks. Rowell points out that image maturity is audience-dependent. Meaning that a subject’s enthusiasts, like the readers of a kayaking magazine, should be the most sophisticated audience—in theory the quickest to be turned off by a visual cliché. And yet we usually just bonk readers on the head with pictures of kayaks.

But I’m not just talking about photos. Bowermaster’s text, too, focuses on the people, the politics and the culture of Vietnam, not the usual trip details of paddling, eating and weather. Bowermaster sees himself as a journalist first and a paddler second. He calls kayaks floating ambassadors. They’re a tool to see a place and meet its people.

I emailed Bowermaster with this observation and he replied, “I’m glad you got the message.” The message is a whole philosophy of travel, a way of being and seeing.

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 first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.