Skills: Fast and Fresh Dinner

Skills

Photo: Ian Merringer — Skills: Fast and Fresh Dinner

By day 10 on the Coppermine last year, even the non-fishers were angling for pan-fried char. But how exactly does that slippery critter get from your hook to the plate? Filleting a fish removes the flesh from the bones and makes cooking easier.

Fillet your fish on a flat rock or piece of wood away from the campsite and near the water’s edge so you can rinse away the evidence.

Using a sharp, long, thin blade, slice just behind the gills to the spine as if you were removing the head. Then make an incision along the back of the fish, as close as you can to the dorsal fin. You should be able to feel the dorsal bones, which protrude from the spine, with the tip of your blade. If you can’t feel the dorsal bones, you’re leaving some flesh behind.

Hold the flesh back as you slice and continue until you’ve cut down to the spine all the way from gills to the anal fin. This is where the ribcage ends and you can begin cutting deeper than the spine. With your blade angled down toward the spine continue with a sawing motion to separate the tail portion of the fillet from the spine.

With the fillet detached—except for where flesh meets ribcage—repeat on the other side, cutting to the spine on the other side of the dorsal fin and bones.

The hardest part is removing the fillet from the ribcage. While holding the flesh you’ve already separated and with the blade angled down toward the ribs, gradually slice the flesh away from the bones. The flesh is thinnest over the ribcage but with patience you can get most of the meat from these bones. When you get to the end of the ribs slice along the belly and around the anal fin and anus to remove the first fillet. Repeat on the other side and you’ll have two fillets ready for the pan and a very thin fish that can go back to a deep spot in the lake.

You can cook fillets with the skin on but I prefer to remove the skin from fish with large scales. Hold the fillet near the tail with the skin down and slice between the skin and the flesh. Work the knife back and forth with the blade on a slight angle toward the skin. The skin will neatly part from the flesh, leaving you with nothing but fresh flesh and very few bones.

Mark Scriver is a Black Feather guide and the co-author of Camp Cooking.

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

Betcha Didn’t Know About…Aurora Borealis

Stories

Photo: istockphoto.com/Shauni — Betcha Didn't Know About...Aurora Borealis

The aurora borealis, also called the northern lights, occur when charged particles collide with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen 80 kilometres above the earth’s surface. Enough collisions result in a release of light energy, in a process similar to that in a fluorescent light bulb.
In an early nod to multiculturalism, the aurora borealis were named after the Roman goddess of dawn and the Greek god of the north wind.
Displays of the aurora borealis are most often observed within a 2,500-kilometre radius of the magnetic North Pole—not the true North Pole.
The lights were once known as “herring flashes” in Scandinavia where people believed the atmospheric glow was caused by light being reflected off schools of fish.
Don’t believe those who say they’ve heard the aurora borealis. Physicists say the lights make no sound, since they occur in the vacuum of space.
Northern Lights was the name of a group of Candian singers that raised $3.2 million in 1985 for famine relief with the sale of their single Tears Are Not Enough. The group featured luminaries such as Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and, um, the guy from Loverboy.
Aurora borealis are most commonly observed around the equinoxes, when sunspots are most common.
Suspicious Russian men once associated the lights with a dragon that seduced women in the absence of their husbands.
Curtain-like waves of the aurora borealis always follow an east-to-west pattern.
Aurora Borealis is a European record label. Their corporate motto is: “We who live on the edge of the Earth…have to this day been protected by our remoteness and by the mystery and fear created by our name.” They have yet to sign a polka artist.

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

Online Learning

Skills

Attempting class IV and V whitewater is an exciting and major step in a paddler’s progression, best carried out under the tutelage of good mentors and skilled paddlers. As this transition can be one of the most difficult and potentially dangerous periods of a kayaker’s development toward more advanced challenges, good advice and quality instruction can save you some hard knocks. In my own paddling career, I had the good fortune of having a mentor in Oregon kayaking pioneer Eric Brown. From paddling with Eric I learned some of the most important river-running tips—tips I rely on whenever I am most concerned with paddling the cleanest lines.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

The bigger the water and the longer the rapids, the more forces there will be to push you off your line. Keeping your eyes ahead of the next move, or ideally two or three moves ahead, will allow you to better anticipate what’s coming next and have well-planned, and therefore, better-placed strokes. Steeper water moves faster so the habit of looking ahead to identify where you want to go will in essence slow things down, giving you more time to react. Combine this with sound paddle technique, namely keeping an entire blade in the water and good forward stroke mechanics and you have potentially the most important skill for tackling higher gradient.

Keep Your Strokes Forward

One of the most common sights instructors see when introducing kayakers to more advanced whitewater is the classic deer-in-the-headlights effect. This phenomenon is easily identified by a tense, uncertain or fearful expression, slight paddle dips from a horizontally oriented paddle, and a slouched or stiffened torso, depending on the paddler’s level of anxiety. Maintaining a good forward stroke, planted well forward, forces you into an aggressive stance. Extending your forward-reaching hand by opening your torso further streamlines your body toward oncoming whitewater, allowing you to punch holes and waves more effectively. It also puts your paddle in the ideal position to be planted into the downstream current.

Mind the Prerequisites

Take note that the first step mentioned is the presence of a skilled mentor or instructor. Find someone you trust to introduce you to big whitewater, but more importantly, find someone who really knows how to paddle. It should be a given that if a kayaker has good technique, he or she has put the time in to develop that technique, and will have the experience to show you the ropes safely. Beware of the self-proclaimed expert; take a look at their resume first! If you need to, hire a good instructor. Their dedication to the sport will assure that you are getting good feedback. Sequentially, make sure your technique is sound and that you have the experience to move up in class, not just the guts. Making subtle improvements to your forward stroke should be an obsession and perfecting new strokes should always be a consideration. Finally, to do it right, paddle flat-water or slalom gates in your creek boat or river runner to develop technique and control. This is especially true if you are a weekend warrior or need to mentally and physically prepare for a tough run, but nothing besides the real thing can provide for a more appropriate workout, or headspace.

This article on big water paddling was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

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

Buying and Saving

Stories

Fran Bristow hopes you use this canoe buyer’s guide to buy a canoe. She has no financial interest in the matter, she just knows you’ll need one to paddle the Romaine River this summer. And she passionately believes you should paddle the Romaine.

I first heard from Bristow last spring. She was working for an outfitter and looking for a new river to paddle. She had read a Canoeroots article I had written about a trip on Quebec’s Romaine and wanted to know more. With a certainty usually reserved for the religious I told her to paddle it—because it is even more beautiful than challenging, and because time might be running out.

Getting more paddlers on the Romaine is one part of Bristow’s campaign to publicize Hydro-Québec’s plans for the river. After paddling the Romaine last summer she banged on the door of the Sierra Club’s Quebec chapter and told them that with their help she was going to make sure more people knew what will be in store for the river if the corporate-ladder-climbing engineers at Hydro-Québec get their way. She is spreading the word through the media, wading into an environmental assessment process that makes the Romaine’s lengthy rock gardens look easy and trying to get as many people as possible to see the river from the seat of a canoe.

Her drive is inspiring, but her task is daunting. Hydro-Québec operates under few constraints. If it wants to skip environmental assessments, then the provincial government writes a law allowing it to do so. It often goes through the motions by commissioning the studies required by environmental assessments, but since the presiding authority for those assessments is the same provincial government that receives more than a billion dollars a year from Hydro-Québec, the outcomes rarely surprise anyone. The government gets paid when Hydro-Québec dams rivers because it happens to be the only shareholder of this for-profit corporation.

It would be easy to see the Romaine as doomed by this political-economic juggernaut. Hydro-Québec has already spent millions surveying sites for four planned dams, which together would effect a $5-billion transformation of this river into a 270-kilometre-long series of reservoirs extending nearly the whole way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence north to Labrador.

A Hydro-Québec spokesman told me that the 1,500 megawatts of power expected from the Romaine are needed to stave off a looming power shortage in Quebec. Except that their own 2004-2008 strategic plan indicates that 45 per cent of the power they produce is exported to Ontario and the United States. And in January Hydro-Québec started paying a subcontractor to mothball a brand new power plant near Trois-Rivières because of oversupply in the provincial power grid. I’m beginning to doubt the man’s honesty—and the need for the Romaine project.

It’s a mystery how some environmental causes gain momentum among people and plow through even the most comfortably entrenched political and commercial fronts. But it happens.

If enough people buy into Bristow’s campaign to save the river, perhaps the Romaine will remain, as it has for thousands of years, a wild and beautiful river, and not become just the latest victim of the widely destructive coupling of ambitious Hydro-Québec engineers and their venal political enablers.

With Quebec’s present overcapacity of power, and with the enormous potential of energy conservation now being appreciated across the continent, maybe Bristow is starting her campaign at just the right time.

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

River Alchemy: Current Philosophy

Stories

Photo: Darin McQuoid — River Alchemy: Current Philosophy

Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote famously, “You can never step into the same river twice.” While this is an impressive line for any river guide to quote, without context it means very little.

Consider that only about 100 sentences of Heraclitus’ work have survived through the ages, and this is the only one anybody would recognize. He marched to a different drummer in an era when his peers (that go by such unpronounceable names as Xenophanes, Anaximander, Pisistratos, and Pythagoras—yes, the Pythagorean theorem guy) all understood the world as one of opposites. It was commonly thought human experience was a battle between good and evil, light and dark, right and left.

Heraclitus, on the other hand, was all about “going with the flow.” What he was getting at with his no-double-dipping rule was that change was constant. We can’t step in the same river twice because the flow of the river has replaced the water. If you put your foot in the same spot again, it will be a different river. So enjoy the moment, he argued, when it is gone, it’s gone.

Recently, a 30-hour drive west for a season of work on the river was plenty of time for me to mine my memories. I didn’t know what to expect when I rolled up to base camp; more than 10 years had passed. That’s a long time in the river guiding business. According to Heraclitus, the river had turned over millions of times. And so had the staff; I knew no one there.

The rivers and the canyons were as beautiful and sublime as I remembered.

It’s easy to fall into the rhythm of multi-day raft trips: wake up, eat, rig, float, run rapids, de-rig, eat, sleep. I remembered the river and looked expectantly around every bend, anticipating familiar views, proud I could visualize and hit the lines after 10 years away. But something just felt different.

When I was younger and guiding full time, living out of my truck, chasing the seasons, dirt-bagging it, I resented the part-time old guys who parachuted in, like I was doing this time. Their shorts were the wrong length and their sandals too old; they slowed down rigging with their “back-in-the-day” stories. They weren’t full time, didn’t need the money—they took vacation time to work for christ’s sake.

Thankfully, I could row better than all of the young dudes and I was careful to bite my tongue while rigging my boat. But my shorts were wrong and I took too many pictures. coming off trip, my young co-guides would drink, swing in hammocks and change the oil in their dusty Subarus. I had email to check, an article and conference proposals to write, a course to plan, a family to catch up with, bills to pay… and longer shorts to buy.

When I pushed off from the boat ramp to start my second trip, I thought of Heraclitus. I had no intention of coming back here to relive my dirt bag days. Nor was it for the adventure; I’ve logged more than 25 trips on this five-day run. But I became aware of the different place each of us was in. For the clients, this was all excitement and terribly death defying. Even for the young guides, they were still stepping into the proverbial river for the first time—face into the current, fully immersed in the moment.

I on the other hand was stepping here for the second time, and even then only with one foot. I felt the change of which Heraclitus wrote, and I realized it is okay. Only by stepping into the river a second time could I see (or remember) where I was the first time—it was like returning to a milepost and seeing how far I’d come. I too was fully immersed in the moment at one time—the single mindedness of my life then makes me smile, but I don’t miss it.

Heraclitus’ line is often used to express regret; failing to seize the moment. But that is only if you assume there is only one river in which to wet your feet. If change is inevitable, then the next river promises more than the first. It is not with regret that we can’t go back, but promise that we can go forward. Investing a passion across a variety of currents reaps more rewards.

When I was young and in the thick of guiding, and being 20-something, I didn’t understand Heraclitus. But I did sense those old boys had something else going on and I was curious about what lay around the bend. Going back, I realized my role there on the river was making it okay for others to take another step out of this river and into the next.

This article on guiding was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

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

Paddle Profile: Guiding Conscience

Stories

Photo: Katie Urban — Paddle Profile: Guiding Conscience

With two powerful oar strokes 90-year-old Martin Litton squares our dory to the boulder-strewn rapids of oregon’s Grande Ronde River. “Stay dry,” Litton says wryly as the bow leaps and crests each wave at his whim. After a half-hour of steady paddling, Litton makes for shore and a chance to reflect on the run with passengers and crew of Sundog Expeditions.

“Isn’t it great to be out here on this river without evidence of human disturbance?”

The white-bearded Litton asks, surveying the towering ponderosa pines that surround our camp. this place is typical of the hundreds of places he has guided and worked tirelessly to protect for more than 50 years.

The Grande Ronde and many of the most popular whitewater rivers up and down the western U.S. are relatively undisturbed because of Litton’s uncompromising efforts to stop dams and development. He takes people down rivers for thrilling adventure, but more importantly for him, to educate them about the West’s endangered places and entice them to join the fight. He spins captivating river-running stories and charismatic wilderness sermons while rowing passengers in his dory or holding court around the campfire.

“Every person that Martin Litton has taken down these rivers is another brick in the wall of protection that’s going to ward off the dam builders, timber industry and developers,” says Ric Bailey, a river guide and environmentalist who has worked with Litton for the last 20 years.

This afternoon along the Grande Ronde is no exception. Litton is enlisting his audience to help him in a number of battles, from stopping logging in California’s Giant sequoia National Monument to opposing dams that are driving the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon to extinction.

His track record is impressive.

He’s led successful fights to stop dams that would have thwarted the Colorado River’s free-flowing run through the Grand Canyon, flooded Dinosaur National Monument and blockaded the Lower Salmon River in Idaho. Along the way, Litton started Grand Canyon Dories in the 1960s—the first outfitter to offer strictly oar-powered trips through the Grand Canyon—and taught generations of guides to row and to fight for the wild waters they may otherwise have taken for granted.

Litton, now 91, is the oldest person to row the Grand Canyon and has no plans to stop running whitewater rivers—not only because he loves the challenge, but because he believes there’s so much work left to do.

“This is what counts,” Litton says as he settles back behind the oars, “saving every bit of wild country that’s left.”

This article on Martin Litton was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

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

Rock Paper Scissors

Stories

Photo: Patrick Camblin — Rock Paper Scissors

While athletes trained for the World Rock Paper Scissors Society’s RPS Championships in Toronto, Tyler Bradt and Rush Sturges stood above 105.6-foot Alexandra Falls, just north of the Northwest Territories-Alberta border. They faced one another, pumped twice (official North American rules; in Europe they pump three times) and delivered their throws to decide who’d be first off the lip.

It’d been nearly a decade since Tao Berman set the world waterfall record with his 98.4-foot descent of Upper Johnston Falls outside Banff, Alberta. In 2003, steep creeker Ed Lucero ran Alexandra Falls, the highest waterfall attempted and survived, but he was spit from his kayak so many discounted this as a record.

“It’s a pretty serious waterfall, but I saw myself taking it clean,”

Bradt says from his cell phone, somewhere on US Route 89 between a creeking expedition in Mexico and his home in Montana. “Poor Rush felt the same, but we leave it up to fate and make all our decisions with Rock Paper Scissors.” Bradt threw scissors to Sturges’ paper and so climbed into his Dagger Nomad to break the world vertical waterfall record.

It is worth noting the Official Handbook of RPS Play states, “The result of a game is considered a binding agreement between the players.” Although a word of caution, it also states, “Think twice before using RPS for life-threatening decisions.”

Bradt’s chosen line was from river left, landing him in what he called a cushy foam pile. “It was a lot softer landing than I expected,” he admits. “The main thing I felt was a big slap in my face as my skirt exploded. I surfaced so fast there was hardly any water in my boat.”

Sturges landed to the right, his skirt imploded on impact and he was sucked behind the falls. After a squirrelly 30 seconds and several attempts to swim through the curtain Sturges emerged safely downstream.

Bradt says it’s these equipment failings that prevent the record from climbing much higher. But he hopes to change this.

Before kicking off the African Revolutions Tour in January, Bradt worked with the Department of Physics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, on its study Impact Forces Associated with Whitewater Kayaking.

This study uses data from NASA and an accelerometer within a kayak to calculate the G-forces acting on the human body off of a variety of waterfalls. The researchers say the vertical waterfall limit physically possible in kayaking is 186 feet (60 metres), taking into account current safety equipment and gear.

“Of course there are a lot of variables to consider, but theoretically we could push this beyond 266 feet,” Bradt laughs sinisterly. “Our equipment and boats just aren’t there yet.”

On his Revolutions Tour Bradt is testing under-seat suspension to absorb impacts and an implosion-proof skirt using a cable-release system.

“It’s a progression we need so we can achieve another level of safety for everyone, not just guys running the big stuff,” Bradt says. “Obviously there’s a lot of quirks and limitations but we need to discover those so we can usher in a new stage of development for creeking.”

This article on waterfalls was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

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

Ten Great Years

Stories

Photo: Craig MacGregor — Ten Great Years

TEN YEARS AGO I sat in a duct-taped faux leather office chair and wrote, “The internal voice of adulthood is no longer a soft whisper as I ponder what I should be doing with my life at 27 yeas of age. I want a career in the paddling industry and Rapid is the fantastically naïve idea I’ve been looking for.”

I tell the story of Rapid’s conception often. As a paddling instructor and raft guide with no writing experience, almost everyone asks me, “How and why did you start a whitewater paddling magazine?”

It started at a roadhouse bar (as do many conceptions) after a mid-winter paddling show. Someone sitting at our table suggested we start a kayaking magazine —

“Well, you love paddling and have a camera, don’t you?”

We slid the mustard, ketchup and pitchers of beer aside and with a bucket of Crayolas we sketched the first year’s worth of editorial on the paper tablecloth.

We thought our new whitewater magazine would be called, The River Rag. We envisioned a slightly trashier newsprint Ottawa River tabloid wrapped around a “fun, hip, adrenaline-junky style magazine with intelligent, informative and comprehensive coverage of whitewater news, issues and events.”

Six months later, when it came time for a real business plan and the first issue, I wrote, “With the faint hope of my parents’ income and romantic images of paid-for paddling trips, boats, gear, a Suburban, hot-ass camera equipment and smok’n computer, the project begins.”

I borrowed $2,000 from my mother to buy my first Apple computer. Then I proposed marriage to my ex-girlfriend Tanya. I loaded both into my rusty Isuzu Trooper and drove to a rented cabin in the Ottawa Valley where we would set up shop and begin our life together with Rapid.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was following the lead of another great publisher, Hugh Hefner. Hefner and I (although with a slightly more modest magazine) agreed on two things.

First, we were creating lifestyle magazines that we would want to read. “My market strategy was to put together a magazine that I myself would enjoy as a reader,” wrote Hefner. “I edited the magazine for myself.”

And secondly, we knew we couldn’t create them in sterile downtown office tower complexes. Each of us had to live the lifestyle of our magazines. For Playboy it was a mansion, bunnies and silk smoking jackets, and for Rapid a remote cabin, boats and floral board shorts.

Looking back over the past 10 years, we’ve remained true to Rapid and its readers.

Rapid is still located in Palmer Rapids, on the Madawaska River. Rapid remains North America’s only whitewater magazine — so you don’t have to filter through sea kayaking, lakewater canoeing or kayak fishing (we’ve since started other magazines for that) to read about rivers. And even now with two children I manage to paddle as much as ever. The secret I realized, like Hefner, is to surround yourself with what you love.

We’ve covered a decade’s worth of World Freestyle Championships. We’ve run hundreds of canoe and kayak technique columns and test paddled almost every new design since ’99. Not to mention almost being sued by a power generation company for publishing photos of someone running one of their dams (across one of our rivers).

In the early part of this millennium we saw whitewater participation peak and dry up almost completely. At the height of freestyle’s glory, I saw the blank stares of regular-Joe paddlers and predicted the return of river running, calling it freeboating. Over these years other whitewater paddling and river magazines have come and gone. And now—speaking of conception—we’re seeing another generation of paddlers taking to the rivers—the children of our very first subscribers.

Hefner once said, “Certainly it is a life well-lived and I wouldn’t trade places with anybody. My life has been so rewarding and so satisfying, I would be hesitant to change anything.”

For whitewater, for Rapid, and for me these last 10 years don’t mark the end of an illustrious legacy, I sincerely hope they are just the humble beginnings.

Thanks for reading Rapid.

[Please note the incredible self restraint exercised in this editorial against referring to anything we’ve done in Rapid as kayak porn.]

This article on the history of Rapid was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

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

Skills: Moving Your Hands For More Leverage

Skills

Photo: Martin Loritz — Skills: Moving Your Hands For More Leverage

When I first saw a Greenland paddle I thought that such a tiny stick would only stir bubbles in the water. Then in 1999 during the St. Lawrence crossing race, I hosted the famous Greenland paddler Maligiaq Padilla in Quebec. This talented young man introduced me to the wonders of this traditional paddling tool.

The Greenland paddle is handled by the tip while keeping the other hand in the centre, forming an elongated lever. Although I still prefer to use a wide, European-style carbon paddle, this leverage effect instantly made a lot of sense as a way to gain efficiency. I started to practice moving my hands along the shaft of my conventional paddle until it became a reflex.

I can now rely on a good extended grip and take advantage of the simple physics of a lever while sweeping to turn my kayak in strong wind.

On one long crossing I used an extended paddle grip for a couple of hours to beat a strong side wind. The same technique can be used to stay on course if a skeg or rudder fails.

I also use an extended paddle when surfing to get a stronger rudder. Sometimes I apply an extended sculling brace to get foolproof support in choppy water. And if my roll fails twice, my next move is to apply an extended paddle roll, also known as a Pawlata roll. You can apply the same techniques to a crank shaft paddle with a bit of adaptation and extra practice.

MIX DIFFERENT METHODS TO DEVELOP COORDINATION

To begin, just practise moving your hands on the paddle shaft. There are several ways to do this. The slipping method is one option. First slip one of your hands to the paddle neck (where the shaft meets blade), keeping the other one near the centre. Another method is to relax your grip on one hand and push or pull the shaft from one side to the other. At the beginning, you will have to experiment with how much to relax and tighten your grip to control or release the shaft.

The gripping method works too: move one hand at a time from one position on the shaft to another by opening your hands completely. This method lets you move a hand out to the blade tip for even more leverage. The disadvantage is that when you release the grip on the shaft, you open the door to a fumble.

Using any combination of these methods, try moving your hands slowly at first along the shaft to develop coordination and proprioceptive acuity. Then practise sliding them quickly to any position.

To develop a kinaesthetic awareness of the blade on the water, scull the power face of the blade back and forth over the surface without looking at the paddle. If the blade sinks, ad- just the angle right away so you have a slight lifting angle.

Now test your reflexes by bracing with an extended paddle grip on one side 10 times, then on the other side. Then try alternating braces on one side and then the other. Try to do a low brace one side and a high brace the other, increasing the speed. Then try it blindfolded. Intuitively knowing how your blades are oriented at all times is crucial in rough water.

Once you have mastered this, you can truly “extend” your paddling horizons by using your paddle as a lever in any situation.

SAFETY TIPS

Increase your reach gradually. Don’t exceed the leverage your body or paddle can handle (I have broken a couple of shafts trying this).
Protect your body by always keeping your shoulders and arms in a box shape with your elbows tucked close your trunk—not extended out over the water.
When holding the paddle by the blade, wrap your fingers around the edge for a positive grip on the wet surface.

Serge Savard is a Paddle Canada sea kayaking Senior Instructor Trainer. In 2005 he completed the “Tour du golfe,” making every crossing in the gulf of St. Lawrence including Cape Breton to Newfoundland.

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

Rock the Boat: Time Out

Stories

Illustration: Lorenzo Del Bianco — Rock the Boat: Time Out

Iwant you to finish reading this article and leave immediately for a wilderness trip. My happiness depends on it, not to mention yours. I just told a friend about my plans for a two-week kayak trip this spring. He said, “Wow, that’s old school!” I never thought of myself as old school, but now maybe I’ll bring some itchy wool pants and pemmican on the trip.

The reality is that we spend less and less time in the wilds each year. My two-week trip is old school. The Outdoor Recreation Participation Study lays out the evidence in clinical fashion. In the past 15 years, the average length of a wilderness outing has gone from six days to three hours. The average North American camps away from their car just once a year. Backpacking is an endangered species, freefalling by 22 per cent in seven years. Look at gear—it’s for fast and light. Field guides are for short day trips. Our “wilderness experience” is now something we cram into half a day between working in the yard in the morning and a movie that night.

USING WIFI IN WILDERNESS AREAS

Some parks are now less about the wilds than the wi-fi. Seventeen parks in Canada have installed wi-fi networks. So have the California and Texas state parks systems. Oregon is considering it. See a bird you don’t know on your morning paddle? Just whip out your BlackBerry and Google it. Shouldn’t we be surfing waves instead of the web? What happened to all those nights under the stars and cooking pancakes with our pals?

Reasons for spending less time in the wilderness abound, but I know one. We’re busier. And, lest I sound like an out- of-touch curmudgeon, I’ll admit I’m busier too. I’m writing this article on a sunny weekend when I should be outside. We’re working more, and we have kids’ soccer games, lawns to mow, and friends to visit.

Kayakers still care deeply about wilderness. We have often-recited tales of past trips, and formative memories of playing around off the grid as kids. While we juggle weekend to-do lists, we’re still dreaming of the long trips we may take someday. But there are signs of trouble. Just look at the local parks and forests near you. To agencies that manage the wilds, kayakers are just a “user group” on equal footing with jet-skiers, snowboarders and mushroom collectors. If we spend three hours paddling, they manage the wilderness for short half-day trips and neglect the backcountry, no matter how much we value it in our hearts.

LESS WILDLIFE HABITAT, MORE PARKING LOTS

Mount Hood, my local back 40, is a perfect example. There’s heavy use of a few day-hike destinations, while trails into the backcountry are being left uncared for. Campsites are left to decay or are closed entirely. The Forest Service pays less attention to wilderness ecology and wildlife habitat, and more to parking spaces at a few popular trailheads.

And sometimes we do forget about the wilderness. Last year Oregon had the first serious wilderness protection proposal in a decade, and few noticed. Thirteen years ago, the last time a wilderness bill popped up—when we spent 22 per cent more time in the backcountry—there was a big stir, complete with a rally that filled downtown Portland and brought Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young to town.

If we don’t have time to vote with our feet, we can still keep that wilderness fire alive. When you’re not paddling—or when you’re logged onto wi-fi at your favourite park—let the agencies know that wild places are still important. The agencies measure what we do, not what we dream about—until they start getting lots of e-mails about it. Then they listen.

And remember that your sea kayak is perfectly designed to carry you and yours into the wilds. On the weekends when you can’t swing a trip to the wilds, go camping locally. Paddle a few miles out to your favourite local spot for the regular, two- day weekend. Instead of chauffeuring the kids to soccer, bring them with you, and the soccer ball. Sleep out under the stars, mess around on some nearby island, roast marshmallows. Eat blackberries, but don’t try to get online with one. The pemmican is up to you.

Neil Schulman is an Oregon–based paddler dreaming about a trip in the desert, and another one somewhere up in B.C.

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

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