Succession Planning: Guides of the Future

Stories

Photo: Trailhead Archives — Succession Planning: Guides of the Future

The generation that created the river industry, and much of paddling as we know it today, is greying. After 30 some years and the switch from canvas packs to barrels, retirement is just around the next bend. As the paddling guide industry faces the end of an era, I thought we should look back—something we’re just too young to have done before.

Mountaineers can point to 1899 when the Canadian Pacific Railroad hired two Swiss mountain guides to operate out of its glacier house hotel, starting a long and distinguished tradition of recreational mountain travel. Rivers, on the other hand, have been travelled since the beginning.

For several hundred years first nation guides were the cornerstone of European exploration of the continent. Voyageur guides picked up where they left off by driving the fur trade up and down the waterways, to be replaced by logging’s river drive foremen. guides yes, but the purpose was cartography, furs and lumber, not recreation as we know commercial river guiding today.

Rather than being born, recreational river guiding spawned and hatched slowly. sometime in the 1800s fishing guides, relying on the canoe, began tak- ing paying clients into the wilderness. At the same time, summer canoe camps came into existence, building their programs around canoe tripping and skilled trip leaders. simultaneously the opening of the west’s rivers, such as the colora- do, created an enamoured public and capable boatmen looking for post-exploration employment. Across the continent scruffily bearded, young adventurers started scratching out a living by guiding others down rivers.

By the late 1960s and early ’70s, buoyed by summer canoe camp graduates, advancing gear, huge numbers of then-young baby boomers and an emerging environmental awareness, canoe outfitters and whitewater rafting businesses sprang up everywhere. they grew from backyard sheds into what is now substantial business—adventure tourism.

Operating Black Feather out of his mother’s basement, in 1971 wally schaber was on the leading edge of river-based adventure tourism. Then, $700 would get you several weeks on the nahanni, where schaber was the first licensed canoe guide. “We were cheap and there were a lot of young boomers with some skills. we offered them adventure. At the time, running whitewater was considered pretty extreme,” remembers schaber with a chuckle. Now that same Nahanni trip costs $5,500.

In retrospect the baby boom makes everything sound easy. but really, the intervening 35 years—between basements and big business—the pioneer guide services had to literally create paddling in the minds of the public. The Nahanni and Colorado rivers, if heard of at all, sounded mysterious and dangerous. whitewater rafts and kayaks were unheard of. Spending good money on a river trip as a vacation was a new idea and not an easy sell.

To survive, river guides were forced to become marketers and salesmen. It was an uncomfortable transition and many of them packed it in or went broke. Trip plans gathered dust while business plans were patched together. Trade shows replaced exploring new rivers. Getting down the rivers was the easy part, getting deposits for summer trips was the real challenge.

The business of guiding grew beyond its cottage industry roots, and with it came mainstream recognition, laws, permits, insurance and regulations. Now in their 50s and 60s the founders of the industry have seen it all develop before their very eyes—indeed driving this development, whether they liked it or not.

Although their tenure may nearly be over, many who created river guiding are still standing at trade shows signing up new clients. After all, the industry is quite literally their life’s work.

Every paddler I know is a paddler because of this history. The rivers we paddle, we can paddle because these greying pioneers and their thousands of paying clients lobbied for river conservation and preservation. The question we have to ask is, with the Baby Boomer heyday gone and the number of regulatory hoops, will anyone step up and guide us for the next 30 years?

I hope so.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of outdoor adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Editorial: The Olympic Dream

Stories

Photo: Tanya Shuman — Editorial: The Olympic Dream

Whitewater rodeo became freestyle about the same time paddlers starting calling themselves athletes. Which was about the same time paddlers like me stopped giving a shit about rodeo—we didn’t know we were supposed to call it freestyle—mostly because we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making our national team. There was a time when I and a hundred other average-Joe paddlers had a chance. We could spin, cartwheel, split, clean and blunt, and in 1999 if you could link a bunch of them together, it was all the tricks you needed to win at rodeo. for the record I can still spin, cartwheel, split, clean and blunt: too bad for me, I suppose, that my local river doesn’t have a behemoth wave to train on. The Worlds have passed me by.

The buzz coming out of the last World Freestyle Championships in Australia was the changes in the scoring system and the structure of the event made with an eye to freestyle becoming an olympic sport. Rules were changed to encourage more variety of moves and a World Cup series now replaces an off year Pre-Worlds event. According to the International freestyle committee, freestyle kayaking could be in the olympics as early as 2012 and they say, a large step in the right direction.

I just checked the website of London’s Olympic Delivery Authority. It is moving forward with plans for a new whitewater canoe slalom course at broxbourne, which will serve as the host venue for the london 2012 Olympic Games. There was, however, no mention of freestyle kayaking on the list of demonstration sports for 2012, nor was there mention of the slalom course including a monster-sized wave most North American athletes say is the real future of freestyle.

Even with whitewater freestyle now under the wing of the International paddling events—I doubt they have deep enough pockets in their train- ing shells to bribe the Ioc into accepting our fringe sport into their olympic Games. And even if the IFC was drop-shipping kayaks full of greenbacks, does anyone really think that host cities like London are going to build a Bus Eater wave? Not a chance.

If whitewater freestyle does make it to the Olympics, athletes would surely be competing in manmade pour-overs or flushy little waves at the bottom of concrete slalom courses, like main Wave at the Penrith Olympic Stadium, home to the poorly attended Worlds in 2005 and the target of much criticism.

So, you have freestyle athletes and boat designers driving the sport toward bigger, more awesome waves they say best showcases the sport. meanwhile, the competitive organizing committee is setting the groundwork for freestyle to qualify for the Olympics, something that would surely set the sport back in the hole by 10 years.

Either no one has noticed this crazy contradiction or the olympic dream is really about pro athletes accessing funds from national sport associations and government agencies, not about moving the sport forward at all. Which is fine with me, but with every other olympic athlete making public statements about their under-funded national sports programs, I can’t help but wonder if it’s worth it.

Personally, I’m all for whitewater freestyle in the Olympics. I’d buy back my Wave Sport XXX and practice my spins, cartwheels, splits, cleans and blunts on my local river. If I link them all together on the right day I may find myself on a plane to London to make my country proud.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Ready, Set, Trip! Why Real Canoe Tripping Can’t Be Rushed

people at a lakeside campsite with a red canoe — First order of business upon arriving at camp: press play on the loon soundtrack and light the campfire scented candle. | Feature photo: Rob Faubert

Any tripping partner of mine has to understand that, no matter what schedule we are on, sometimes I like to take the time to have a quiet morning paddle before breaking camp.

Instagram Vs. Reality When We Go Canoe Tripping

Ready, set, trip! Why real canoe tripping can’t be rushed

It was on one of these paddles one morning that my deep breathing was interrupted by the sound of a studio-recorded wilderness soundtrack. I rounded a point and saw the source: a middle-aged couple sitting on folding lawn chairs and listening to a cacophony of loon calls and orchestral melodies bellowing out of a waterproof boom box.

My curiosity got the better of me. Rather than pass their camp as quickly as possible, I paddled toward shore and called out the standard opener: “How long ya out for?”

“Seven hours, maybe eight if we’re lucky,” was the response.

Apparently it was a weekend outing. They had fled the city Saturday morning, got caught up in traffic and arrived at the launch just before dusk. They made camp at the first available site and had gotten up early, planning to get back on the highway before the traffic got bad.

I guess the boom box was just some insurance, in case they didn’t have time to hear a full complement of loons, wolves and white-throated sparrows during such a short trip.

I paddled away knowing canoe tripping had entered a new era.

The ever-shrinking average trip

In North America, we work too hard and too long, and it’s at the expense of time spent paddling. For proof, look at the history of paddling guidebooks. Editions in my collection from the 1930s have routes averaging a month in length. In the 1970s they featured seven- to 10-day trips. In the 1980s they were reduced to five. Now, the average trip promoted is two to three days.

[ Plan your next canoe trip of eight days or more in length with the Paddling Trip Guide ]

The problem, as any tripper knows, is that you’re not even into a good rhythm until the fourth day. Your urges for television and fast food fixes don’t begin to dissipate until day five. It’s not until the ninth day you’re actually at ease with your surroundings.

asking to play with a brown bear cub, pictured, is one of the stupidest canoe tripping questions

12 Stupidest Questions Asked By Canoe Trippers

I say, cases of constipation aside, if the trip isn’t long enough to require the use of a toilet trowel, it’s not a real trip.

Later that afternoon I heard flute-like wailings come from down the lake. I couldn’t tell if it was a wood thrush, or the latest release in the Sounds of Nature oeuvre. I like to think it was the latter and that the couple had decided to wait until after the late-afternoon rush to get back to the city.

Fun fact: although Kevin Callan is known for his longtime Butt End column in Canoeroots, his debut article was published in the second issue of Rapid in the spring of 1999. His Butt End column kicked off in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots.

Cover of the 2023 Paddling Trip Guide This article was first published in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine and was republished in the 2023 Paddling Trip Guide. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

First order of business upon arriving at camp: press play on the loon soundtrack and light the campfire scented candle. | Feature photo: Rob Faubert

Canoe Racing: Tactical Attack

Stories

Photo: Ian Merringer — Canoe Racing: Tactical Attack

Halfway through a month-long, 1,300-kilometre canoe race from Chicago to New York, I was locked in a grim struggle with a father and son team I had dubbed the Fighting Fitzgeralds. Fitzy Senior had gone to the Olympic trials in sprint kayaking but his bullish 20-year-old son in the bow didn’t believe father always knew best. Deep into a gruelling stage on the Erie Canal, we eyed our final portage and the pace quickened. Junior wanted to hammer ahead and take out first. Pops told him they would chill on my wash and pass me on terra firma. While they bickered over what to do, I hustled out and start- ed running. I glanced over my shoulder to see Senior whack Junior upside the head with his carbon fibre bent-shaft.

That was 14 years ago, my first year as a marathon paddler. The Fitzgerald’s deliberations were my introduction to tactical thinking. Non-racers often figure the fittest, fastest teams finish first. Not so. The sport is so tactical, the strategy so subtle, that guts and guile often triumph over speed and strength.

Here are the key elements governing canoe racing’s tactical manoeuvres.

LINING UP: With amped, anxious paddlers going berserk off the line, you’re guaranteed large, confused waves. In races that begin against the current or into the wind, cagey squads jockey for position along the bank. Peter Heed, co-author of Canoe Racing: The Competitor’s Guide to Marathon and Downriver Canoe Racing says your position will depend on your strengths and weaknesses. “If you don’t have good acceleration or are unstable in big waves, don’t put yourself in the centre of the storm. If you have good speed and boat handling skills, line up near the fastest boat in the field.” That way, you can latch onto the wave of the speedier boat and be guaranteed a great start.

WASH RIDING: Riding the wash—surfing the stern or side wave of the boat in front of you— may be the most essential skill in the sport; it’s nearly as important as drafting in a bicycle race. “Finding the sweet spot on a wave can save you an enormous amount of energy and pay huge dividends over the course of a race,” says heed. generally, your bow should be sniffing distance—as close as you can get without rear-ending your competitor—behind the canoe in front of you. But, heed warns, “You have to keep adjusting because the wave lengths change according to the water depth.”

UNEASY ALLIANCES: A marathon is far less a steady grind than a series of sprints linked by periods of recuperation. during these recuperative stages, race management is a large part of the game. This means you’ll need to work with your fellow racers. heed says: “You want to be aggressive without being a pain in the ass. if you’re an irritant they’ll try to get rid of you.” Preferred tactics for getting rid of unwanted canoes include sprinting ahead or forcing teams into the bank or a bridge abutment. “If you pull your weight by taking turns in pulling and letting others ride wash, then the stronger team will work with you. It’s a constantly changing and uneasy alliance.”

USING THE WATER: Reading the river means being able to seek out the fastest water and is a skill born of experience. heading around a tight downstream turn, you’ll find the fastest water on the outside of the turn. Carving a smooth turn is a skill that requires seamless teamwork, which is why bends are another spot where teams often try to break away. Expect the pace to quicken as you approach a tight turn on an upstream leg. Because you’ll be single file along the bank where the current is most favourable, it’s imperative to keep your bow glued to the stern of the boat ahead of you. Approaching a shallow section, savvy teams inevitably sprint just before the river changes depth so they can “pop”the boat, a skill which allows a team to ride their own wash as their canoe slows and their stern wave steepens in response to the shallow bottom. get caught off guard and you can get dropped faster than you can say Mark Twain.

THE END GAME: “Heading into the finish the question comes down to who sprints first and where,” says Heed. “If the other team has a faster sprint, you must try and drop them earlier, say in the shallows or on a corner. If you’re zippier, you should wait until the last minute.”

At the end of the race, the team that stands highest on the podium is the team that can both suffer greatly and think clearly at the same time.

Joe Glickman is a two-time member of the U.S. Marathon Kayak Team and has competed in scores of pro canoe races. He is the author of The Kayak Companion and To The Top.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Canoe Fishing: Over the Hills and Far Away

Stories

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Canoe Fishing: Over the Hills and Far Away

Thirty kilometres as the crow flies from my front porch is a blue hardcover notebook on a worn pine kitchen table, in the middle of a mossy log cabin overlooking a small lake. On the first page of the notebook it reads: “Welcome to our fishing camp. You may use our camp and you are welcome here. Please leave the camp as it was and treat it like it’s yours. Please leave your name, the date and how your fishing went. Good luck fishing! P.S. The toilet paper is in the fridge.”

The lake is well known in my area for its speckled trout. For two summers my neighbour Bobby and I have been planning a trip in to try our luck.

I’m more of a hump-my-gear-through-the-woods canoe- ist and Bobby is more of a tow-his-motorboat-to-the-lake fisherman, but our sense of adventure and our craving for speckles (not to mention his beer fridge) brought us together in his workshop on winter nights to dream about our fishing trip.

Finally, on the last Saturday of trout season we loaded Jellybean—an old, heavy and stable fibreglass square- stern canoe—and a borrowed electric trolling motor onto Bobby’s Yamaha Rhino ATV. In a cloud of dust I’ve never before kicked up on a portage, we tore off in the direction of the lake.

The ride to our trout lake is much further by logging road, snowmobile route and bouldery four-wheeler trail than it is for the straight-flying crow. A journal entry in the cabin’s notebook describes the trip quite well, “Broke one beer on the way. Shook the shit out of the rest.”

Finding our way back to the lake turned out to be as much fun as the fishing. With the help of a topographic map, GPS and directions sketched on the back of a Coors Light label we rolled up to the cabin around noon. Bobby bagged two partridge on the way (we had a shotgun along in case the fish weren’t biting). Once we found the lake, it wasn’t long before we had Jellybean in eight feet of water and we were marking trout on our sonar.

In our district, it is Darwin Rosien’s job to release 16- month-old trout in 123 lakes as part of the Ontario Min- istry of Natural Resources’ fish-stocking program. In early May, when the water temperature is just right, Darwin bajas into the lakes he can in a five-ton truck balancing a highly specialized fish bowl on the back. Some lakes, like ours, are just too remote to get to by truck so the lucky fingerlings are chauffeured by helicopter to their new homes.

Lakes that are too inaccessible to stock by truck are often too far away to portage a canoe or too remote to tow a fishing boat into. These are just the kind of fishing destinations perfect for old Jellybean, Bobby and me.

DECORATED BY THREE GENERATIONS OF MEN’S MEN

With enough speckles for dinner, Bobby loaded our gear back into the Rhino and I wandered up to explore the little log cabin. There are hundreds of these rustic fish and hunt camps on Crown land and many you’ll find—if you find them at all—are left unlocked and well-stocked, like the lakes they’re built on.

This cabin is a tidy two-room affair, furnished and decorated by no less than three generations of men’s men.

The liquor cabinet is a rusty and dented breadbox, stocked with an uncracked bottle of Crown Royal and a six-pack of Bud in cans with two empty rings.

Old fishing rods and broken cross-cut saws hang on the walls and a transistor radio on the windowsill is tuned to the local country music station. In the cupboards there are bags of potato chips, cans of coffee, whitener, sugar, decks of cards and two cribbage boards with toothpicks for pegs.

In the kitchen, 10 frying pans—yes 10—hang on the wall. And above the propane stove rests a box of Red Bird matches and the largest roll of aluminum foil I’ve ever seen. This is the type of kitchen where fresh fish is always on the menu.

There was a battery in the deer clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. It was 4:30. Meaghen, Miss June 2004, watched me sit down at the kitchen table and log our trip in the notebook:

September 23, 2006. Scott and Bobby were here. They were really biting well; we kept four nice ones. I write for a canoeing magazine and I’m going to write about our ATV trip into your camp. I’ll bring a couple of copies when we come back in the spring. It’s gracious of you to leave your camp open for others to enjoy.

P.S. Don’t worry. I won’t mention where it is.

Scott MacGregor is the publisher of Canoeroots & Family Camping. Look for his latest project, Kayak Angler magazine, in fishing and paddling shops. and in case you’re wondering, the toilet paper is kept in the fridge so the mice can’t get at it.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

The Longest Journey: Linking the Past and Future

Stories

Photo: Amman Jordan — The Longest Journey: Linking the Past and Future

“Don’t paddle the canoe. Pull it, long and deep, in rhythm with the pacer. And one more thing, don’t call it a boat. Ever.” Rudy stares at me, before his thin lips turn into a smile and he introduces himself, listing a little on a spine wilted from fetal alcohol syndrome. We have gathered for the Tribal Journey. We leave tomorrow.

Every summer the Quinault Indian Nation sponsors its youth to take part in the Tribal Journey. Native tribes from Oregon to Alaska send paddlers in dugout canoes to honour centuries-old traditions of transport, festivities, and trade.

This year, 70 canoes, weighing up to 1,400 pounds and powered by 11 paddlers, will average 56 kilometres a day for three weeks as they make their way north along the Olympic Peninsula then east into the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Seattle and north to Sand Point.

This year I will join them. Though I was never actually invited to take part. It just seemed to be assumed I would participate.

I had recently moved to Quinault with my partner Steph who was working in the community health centre. The Quinault’s acceptance of non-natives is confused. In truth, much about the Quinault is confused—or worse. Many children are born to young, disadvantaged parents, too many babies nurse on Pepsi instead of breast milk, adolescents play with meth addiction and adults struggle with diabetes.

But there is also hope. You can see it in the eyes of the proud, many of whom have been busy for the last several weeks refurbishing Quinault’s new dugout canoes.

The last of Quinault’s traditional dugouts had disappeared early last century, under the watchful eye of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Folklore kept a faint ember of memory glowing and in 1998 a Quinault elder and his son decided to act on the stories of his childhood and gathered from the elders what they could about shaping the ancient cedars.

They used deer antlers to carry glowing pumice from a nearby fire to reduce the tree’s 700-year-old belly to smouldering embers. Then they chipped it away with sharpened rock and steel until a canoe took shape—and a community began to remember.

Now four dugout canoes sit on the banks of the Quinault River waiting for their crews and high tide, both of which will come early the next morning.

“Circle up pullers!” our skipper Ritchie belts as excited kids crowd around, shaking off the damp cold in the dawn’s faint shadows.

Ritchie tells Don he will be sitting behind the pacers. He has known Don his whole life and knows that Don will put his head down and pull with all his strength all the way to Sand Point. In the last year Don has educated himself about nutrition and exercise. This is Don’s first journey, and I suspect not his last.

SEPERATE CANOES, SEPERATE TRIBES ON THE SAME JOURNEY

Ritchie chooses me as a thruster and I sit in the rear of the canoe. Ritchie knows from the silence we have shared while carving paddles in the boathouse that I am determined and strong. When we push off I pull as hard as I can as the canoe leaves the steady flow of the river and pushes into the waves of the Pacific.

Ancient songs echo off sea walls while grey whales breach and sea otters play. When each sun sets we take shelter with the other tribes.

As the days pass we fight against the current and the swell. Then, two days into the eastern leg a summer storm whips up two-metre waves that capsize a Makah canoe, killing a Nuu-chah-nulth chief named Jerry Jacks and hospitalizing three of his crew.

We were from separate tribes, in separate canoes, but we were all on the same journey.

That evening, I walk into the community centre where the paddlers have gathered. To look into their eyes is to see fear and confusion. These nations are rediscovering pride and the death of a chief of the most intact tribe during this symbolic journey is crushing. All mouths are wondering, “Do we stop for three days to show respect? Or do we continue with renewed inspiration?”

The children continue to play, the police continue to patrol, the adults continue to speculate, and the elders chant and pray. The prayer tonight is for clarity, and confidence in whatever guidance we are offered.

We take the evening to mourn, and then we continue. We are determined to let Jacks’ passing inspire us. Determined to make it to Sand Point. Determined to show the world that it can take away the Quinault’s past but it cannot take away its future.

Amman Jordan is a professional filmmaker.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Who Said That?: Mentally Unravelling on the Solo Trip

Stories

Photo: James Smedley — Who Said That?: Mentally Unravelling on the Solo Trip

Solo canoe tripping evokes noble images of earnest trippers reaching the height of outdoor purity. We can all picture it: mountains rise on the horizon, trees flood the foreground, and into this pristine wilderness paddles a lone canoeist across a lake so calm it resembles a sheet of glass.

There’s something to be said for this ideal. When you are alone you don’t scare away the wildlife with incessant chit chat (more on that later), so it’s easier to connect with nature (I love you Mr. Squirrel) and, yes, connect with yourself (Hello Ben, it’s me, Ben).

A closer inspection, one that includes psychological analyses of first-time solo trippers, exposes the solo canoe trip to be not the soothing emotional balm we think, but an inevitable step by stop process of slow mental unravelling.

STEP 1: BOLD STEPS INTO THE BEYOND

You paddle away from the put-in. You’re bold and you’re prepared. You’ve triple-checked everything but you still feel like you’re forgetting something. And you are, it’s your sanity. Self-doubt wraps its cold arms around you as you set off, thinking to yourself “What was I thinking? I like company. I like the whole safety-in-numbers thing.” But you remind yourself you are prepared. You shrug off that shroud of worry and paddle onward.

STEP 2: THE ILLUSION OF CONFIDENCE

Once you round the first point the trip begins to go swimmingly. This is when the solo paddler shines. You make great time because you’re never waiting for anyone. When you finish your portage you just get in your boat and go, when you’re tired of paddling you break, when you’re thirsty you drink. There’s no outward debate, at least not this early in the trip. But little by little you begin to question your purpose—and yourself. The possibility that you are tripping alone not because you wanted to, but because no on else wanted to come with you begins to bob around in the back of your head. Like a shadow unzip- ping your ego, doubt slips in.

STEP 3: THE UNRAVELLING

Its not until the noises of your paddle being pulled through the water, the splash of the bow against the waves and the wind blowing over your ears stops that you notice that it’s actually not quiet out there. Not in your head, at least. Your thoughts echo uncomfortably against the quiet of the woods. You need to break the deafening silence, so you say something out loud, some- thing like “Where do I want to put my tent?” No one answers, but feeling more alone than ever you wish someone would. So you keep talking.

STEP 4: DARKNESS FALLS

Nervously, you busy yourself with tasks to distract yourself from yourself. You pitch the tent, make dinner, clean dishes. With nothing left to do you settle on a rock overlooking the sun setting across the lake. You feel you are finally flirting with the solo tripping ideal. But that gorgeous sunset segues into night—the crucible of the solo trip. You crawl into the tent quickly, before it gets dark, well before it gets dark. You’ve emptied your bladder, several times, because no ones wants to wander in the woods at night to take a leak—that’s when they’ll getcha! And then the blackness creeps in. Sounds are amplified. Something crunches nearby your tent, you click on your flashlight, spastically waving it back and forth through the mesh door searching for that bear you just know is out there. Seeing nothing you crawl deeper into your sleep- ing bag and wish there was someone snoring like a chainsaw beside you. With eyes wide open staring into darkness, you begin to pray for the first time in a long while.

STEP 5: DEFENSE MECHANISMS

As you become familiar with this pattern over the first few days you begin to master the techniques of solo travel sanity: bringing the axe with you into the tent to sleep, the art of peeing in your canoe cup at night so you don’t have to leave the tent. You’ve learned that if you are going to ask yourself a question out loud you’d better have an answer so you don’t appear dumb. Sometimes you give yourself an accent to make your compulsive conversations seem like a joke. I prefer British ones (‘Ello Ben. Fancy a cuppa?).

STEP 6: FALSE SECURITY

But of course, when you spot the take-out, the fear that has been pecking at you flies off to find another lost soul looking for some peace in the wilderness. You feel cleansed, empowered. You feel like you have overcome a great obstacle. You are sure people will respect you more as a tripper. In fact, they probably want to trip with you now.

You make a mental note to ask them earlier next season.

Ben Aylsworth is unsure if he travels solo because no one likes him (except bugs, bugs love him) or because he’s mad about the empowerment, freedom and strength it brings him.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

The Love Boat

Stories

Six years ago, I met a girl who wanted to go canoeing.

That our first real date was going to be a canoe trip seemed like a very good sign. Being a graduate of many years of summer camp, I thought I was very good at canoeing. It seemed like the best chance I could ever hope for to impress a woman. We had both moved from Ontario to British Columbia for university. The date came about because we had learned that we were both canoeists. She knew someone in Victoria who owned a canoe, so we drove my truck to the house where the canoe was stored, free for the taking, beside the garage.

My heart sank. 

Here was a canoe of the type I had always disdained. Underneath a veneer of moss—it had been sitting out in the West Coast rain for that many years—was a disturbing sight to a canoe snob from the land of the silver birch and the cedar canvas Prospector. The keel looked like it had been moulded by laying a broom handle the length of the hull and casting it in a bloated, white, fiberglass ooze. The potbellied hull had the squat lines of a craft I imagined was designed for uncoordinated, pear- shaped people who knew nothing about canoeing.

And then there were the paddles. Ouch. At summer camp I had learned that equipment mattered. Every year, a paddle carver used to visit our camp and lecture us about the importance of carefully chosen wood, a delicately shaped handle that fit the palm of the hand just so, a butt end so gently sanded and oiled and protected from touching the ground that it would always feel like satin in your palm.

These paddles were not like that.

When we got to the lake, the object of my desires asked which of us would stern.

“I will, because I’m the man,” I said. I meant it as a joke.

She had been to summer camp for many years too. Except her summer camp was an all-girl camp. And at girls’ camps they teach young women that they can do anything, including a J-stroke, better than most men. At girls’ camps it’s not funny to joke that women belong in the bow. Nope, not funny at all.

“Before we touched land, we were in love.”

We decided to take turns in the stern in the spirit of equality. She showed me her J-stroke and then I showed her mine. Both were very sexy. I became grinningly pleased that I could put my head down in the bow and trust that she could keep that canoe going straight no matter how hard I paddled. When I was in the stern she said, “With you, I don’t mind paddling in the bow, and I can’t say that to very many people.” Bliss.

We pulled up on the shore for lunch and continued our mutual admiration. She commended me on how organized I was with the food. I observed how impressed I was that she knew not to wash our dishes in the lake. Here, I realized, was a woman who really knows how to trip.

We paddled to the end of the lake and fought a headwind back to the car. Our homely canoe was stable and true in the chop. We kept saying things like, “It sure feels good to be out canoeing again.” The cheap paddles with their frayed and waterlogged ends burned our city-softened palms and made our arms feel like we’d paddled together a hundred miles. Before we touched land, we were in love.

Three years later, we went camping together again and got engaged. In the spirit of equality, it was she who proposed. 

What I learned on that first date—besides the fact that sexist jokes aren’t always funny—is that equipment doesn’t matter so much. Now I will say, to anyone who asks, buy the canoe you can afford. Buy a canoe with gunwales that will never rot and a hull that will last forever. Buy a canoe that you can keep by the lake, on the roof of the car, on the dock at the cottage or at the side of the garage—wherever it will be seen and be paddled and inspire, where it will be kept unlocked for friends and acquaintances and would-be lovers to borrow and paddle together. And I would wish for their sakes that its little hull tracks straight enough to make any paddler look good in the stern, that its short length be conducive to easy conversation, and that its initial stability be sufficient for making love.

Tim Shuff and his partner are going on a canoe trip for their honeymoon. They will be taking turns in the stern.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Skills: Hang Ten

Skills

Photo: Gary and Joanie McGuffin — Skills: Hang Ten

If you think you need a floral shirt, bleached hair and Californian accent to surf you are wrong. Surfable standing waves form whenever fast-flowing water meets a slower current on a river. When you position your canoe on the sweet spot of a wave the force of gravity pulling your canoe down the wave and the force of the water pushing your canoe back up the wave balance out. When that happens, all you have left to do is hang ten.

Set up facing upstream beside the surfing wave and leave the eddy as if you are intending to ferry across the river.
As gravity draws your bow into the trough the stern paddler should rudder to keep the canoe parallel to the current so the bow isn’t swept downstream. The bow paddler should provide power to keep the canoe from being pushed downstream.
If you are in danger of sliding off the back of the wave, lean forward to increase the canoe’s speed down the wave. If the bow is diving too deeply into the trough, back off by weighting the back of the canoe.
The stern paddler rudders to hold the canoe in the parallel surf position. The bow paddler uses forward strokes or draws to maintain position on the wave’s sweet spot and keep the bow upstream.
When all forces acting on your canoe are balanced you can surf the wave effortlessly while the river roars by.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Canoe Trip Diary: Two Solitudes

Stories

Photo: Jock Bradley/The Helicona Press — Canoe Trip Diary: Two Solitudes

Tom and I went on our first canoe trip together last summer. We’d been engaged for a while, but we had never pushed off for a long trip. Both of us are paddlers, so we had nothing short of a lifetime of shared happiness—or misery—on the line.

It took us a while to agree on a plan. He wanted to paddle the Nahanni or race in the Yukon River Quest. I wanted to disappear for a few weeks in Temagami, Kipawa, or Quetico. We settled on a two-week lake trip in Quetico Provincial Park so Tom could at least check off an area he hadn’t been to before. I felt a twinge of alarm when I loaded the paddles in the car; his a gleaming bent-shaft racing paddle, mine a battered old Lolk.

As we pulled away it was like paddling with a machine. Tom hauled gallons of water with each fierce paddle stroke. He pad- dled so fast I had to either cut my sterning stroke to a quick draw or pry or ignore his pace completely. I didn’t know any camp songs fast enough to match his rhythm. I tucked my head down, and dreaded the next 14 days.

On day two Tom kept looking down to check on his GPS and heart rate monitor. Apparently this trip was part of his training for the New York marathon and we weren’t covering the kind of ground he thought we should. His day-two journal entry reads, “Today we paddled hard but we also stopped a lot so, although I measured our top cruising speed at seven kilometres per hour, and we covered 3.5 kilometres in our first 31 minutes, we only covered 22.5 kilometres in eight hours.” I read the entry with horror. Later, he slept while I lay awake for hours. Fretting.

WHITEWATER VS FLATWATER

To Tom, lake trips are only a step above car camping. All those flat, featureless kilometres of lakes bore him. Tom trips to conquer the outdoors. In the morning he’s packed and out of the tent while I’m still horizontal and thinking, “shorts or pants?” On portages he isn’t happy until he’s loaded down like a packhorse and running up the hills.

And, of course, Tom loves rivers. He likes how the adrenaline forces him to be in the moment. Tom says rivers are a metaphor for life: they have a destiny, and they flow by like time.

The way I see it, whitewater wrecks an otherwise perfect canoe trip. I like listening to the wind in the trees. I want to look around. I dread the frantic paddling and shouting of rapids. Rivers and I work at cross purposes. They crank a trip into fast forward, while I want to slow things down.

My defence against Tom’s driven approach varied. Some days I tried to keep up, some days I resorted to sabotage. My methods included: picking fights, sex, cooking blueberry pie, swimming, complaining, getting us lost, sleeping in, searching for my camera and (my favourite) repeatedly turning around when in the bow to talk to him.

A tiny island rising out of the southwest corner of Sarah Lake provided some common ground. I heard the Hallelujah chorus when our canoe touched gravel that afternoon. It was the ulti- mate lake campsite. A small fire pit, swimming rocks in clear water, a pile of beaver-prepped firewood. The sun set upwind and we stayed up late drinking Labrador tea and counting stars.

That night we agreed on a few things. We both like islands with good swimming rocks and we both like to read in the ham- mock. We also sorted out our route. We agreed on fixed goals for him, and included some short days for me. Days four through six were lovely.

Day seven was another matter.

MAKING COMPROMISES

It was late afternoon and we were heading south from Kawnipi into Kahshahpiwi Creek. Tom had the map. I heard a sloshing coming from downstream. We pulled out to take a look. It was a set of rapids about 30 metres long with tall standing waves and a dark tongue of river cutting between sharp black boulders. He said, excitedly, “It’s totally runnable.” I said, “No, it’s dangerous.” He laughed. Then he stopped—quickly. And we walked—quietly.

A few hours later after much crying, shouting, and stubborn defensiveness we agreed to conditions under which I will learn to paddle whitewater. None of them include a loaded, borrowed canoe and the end of the day.

Tom never made an explicit concession to my way of paddling, but after a rest day on day nine I was no longer worried about his appreciation for still water. The island we camped on curved like a horseshoe in the middle Kahshahpiwi Lake. We ate pancakes, wrote letters, fished and dozed in the hammock. Tom wrote seven pages in the journal that night as testimony to his transformation: “I woke up and watched a bald eagle and a heard a loon calling across the lake. I sometimes forget how the routines of trip are charmed by nature: the weather, wildlife, light, fire, stars.”

I never saw his heart rate monitor again.

Tory Bowman, in the spirit of compromise, has consented to taking a course in whitewater canoeing.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.