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. 

• The first turtles are thought to have (slowly) roamed the earth 215 million years ago, before lizards and snakes.
• Painted turtles spend the winter buried half a metre deep in the mud at the bot- tom of lakes and ponds. They breathe through gas-exchange sacs below their tails.
• Turtles play a key role in many aboriginal creation stories. According to Ojibwa legend, North America rests on the back of Maukinauk, the great turtle.
• Baby painted turtles often spend their first winter in a semi-frozen state, with their heart and breathing stopped.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a comic series, television show and movie in the 1980s and ‘90s, told the story of four turtles that evolved from sewer ooze and fought evil with martial arts. It was inexplicably popular.
• Courting wood turtles dance side to side for up to two hours before making things official.
• According to the book Up North, the Soviets sent the first spaceturtles around the moon in 1971.
• Snapping turtles can live to be 90 years old.
• An overturned turtle can lever itself back upright with its neck.
• Since turtles can’t expand their ribcages, in order to breathe when out of water they use an air pump to draw in air.
• Four of Canada’s 15 species of turtles are listed as endan- gered under the federal Species at Risk Act.
• Nestlé Turtles blend caramel, pecans and cashews inside a milk chocolate shell. Each turtle contains 90 calories— enough energy to paddle a canoe for about 20 minutes.
• A group of turtles is called a bale. No deaths have ever been attributed to stampeding bales.
• A turtle’s shell, just like a geo- desic tent, gains much of its strength from its dome-like shape.
• Californian pop-rock band The Turtles were originally called Crossfires from the Planet Mars. They crawled to the top of the Billboard charts in 1967 with the single “Happy Together,” dislodging a song called “Penny Lane” by another band known for its hard shell. 

Things in the next moments happened very, very fast. The sky did strange and awesome things. The air temperature plummeted to that of a blustery November day. Boiling clouds of purple and green rolled towards the surface and us with the action of an exploding fireball.

I fixed my eyes on my son and—wham!— at that split second, it hit! This force of air was so violent that it blew me over. I struggled to brace and roll up into the maelstrom.

The low, green sky said “take shelter” to anyone from the Midwest. We knew this, yet there was no chance of shelter. Ex- panding contorted clouds, looking as they would burst, only acted as a harbinger of worse yet to come. The sheets of rain found us and giant drops stung as they hit, then hailstones added blows to the head.

Again I swung my gaze toward Jason. One cloud beyond him caught my attention. An ominous spin had begun and soon a funnel hung. The father instinct kicked in and I sprinted toward my son. I yelled to him to raft up but he could not hear.

The funnel, for some reason, held at a distance above the water. Below it, spray began to blast up from the seas as if some giant, invisible food processor had touched the surface. Blasts of spray began to rise and spin. Then, for a short moment, it all seemed to stop until—“whoosh”—the spinning spray jumped up and joined the cloud. Georgian Bay was being sucked up into the sky. The birth of a waterspout, right before our eyes!

For such a giant in river conservation’s history, from the water he looks frail and diminutive—just a very old man sitting on a stool, in his thin and fraying best suit.

If someone were to write a book about me, I would want a title as good as the one written about David Brower: Encounters with the Archdruid. As a founding member of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and the Earth Island Institute, Brower was three times nominated for the nobel Peace Prize. He famously defeated the damming of the grand canyon in 1966, and in doing so launched the environmental movement.

David Brower has more to do with how we think about the environment today than any other factor

Written in 1971 by the incredibly prolific John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid is now in its 27th printing. It confirmed Brower as the articulate, driven and absolutely fearless spokesperson for the environment. At a time when the idea of “the environment” was only just beginning to have a place in public consciousness, McPhee somehow convinced Brower to spend a week rafting the Grand Canyon with Floyd Dominy, the man in charge of damming the west’s rivers. McPhee’s genius as a journalist captures the interaction between these polar opposites and ideological figureheads and captures Brower at his best.

One of the rivers where I guide is still flowing because of David Brower. In 1954, he made it his personal crusade to keep Utah’s Echo Park in Dinosaur national Monument from being dammed. It is a magical place on the Green River of serpentine sandstone canyons. It is a place that enchants clients and lifetime guides alike.

Before we reach the proposed dam location four days into a trip, I always make a point of stopping on a beach just upstream. In the sand I draw a big map of the west and make mountains and canyons and use blue cam straps for rivers, red ones for state lines. By the time I’ve finished, clients have gathered to see what’s going on. I use the map to tell the story of the damming of the west, and how the place where we are standing would be under water if it wasn’t for the impassioned defence of David Brower. People are always hooked by the presentation, and I hope it changes the way they view our endangered rivers.

There is one trip in particular I’ll never forget

The dam talk went as usual, with the usual client reaction of disbelief and anger and promises to do something themselves. Also, as usual, the next day and last on the river, the showers and thoughts of home replace yesterday’s resolutions. Except this time, as we neared the take-out, there was a commotion on the riverbank. there were drop screens, photographers and lighting assistants working around an old man hunched on a stool with his back turned to us.

My raft was the last to scrub to shore. Excited clients whispered the same urgent question back to me: “Is that David Brower? Is that the guy who saved our rivers?”

I couldn’t tell.

As we pulled to the boat ramp the old man was off his stool and gingerly over the rocks to meet us. he was pale and thin; his crystal blue eyes clouded with age. I’m not sure why, but I remember his cheap Velcro running shoes and threadbare suit.

Thank you for everything you’ve done

Before he had a chance to speak, my clients surrounded him. “Thank you Mister Brower. Thank you for everything you’ve done.” They lined up to shake his hand, and one by one all thanked him.

Brower’s eyes welled with tears. He just stood there, surrounded, flooded by an outpouring of appreciation. I stood at a distance tying up my raft. I was speechless and deeply regret not thanking him myself. Quite frankly I couldn’t. A little more than a year later he died at the age of 88. A giant indeed. I still don’t know how the clients knew it was him.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, ON 

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Rapid Magazine.