True, proper wilderness trip preparation should plan for a range of eventualities, but I’m not feeling too badly about the reason we’re stranded on this beach. The bush pilot scheduled to pick us up today was arrested yesterday for being involved in a pornography scandal. I’m not sure I could have seen that one coming.
Now our crew of six paddlers is waiting as patiently as the cold and wet will allow for another pick-up, which we were told could be two or three more days. Our food supply consists of half a bag of GORP, a package of instant potatoes, a dozen prunes, and, possibly, a trusting cottontail who’s hanging around our camp looking for companionship.
I hope the float plane pilot is a law-abiding Baptist minister with a family filter on his web browser
The battery in our satellite phone is on its death bed because one of our group insisted on calling his wife twice a day throughout the trip for conversations that usually ended in heated marital discussions at four dollars a minute; another is green from trying to drown his sorrows with the majority of our spirits; and we were informed by the air service that the tires on both shuttle vehicles we left parked at the end of an 80-kilometre dirt road were slashed by some local militants who had a dislike for canoeists intruding on their secret fishing grounds.
It’s not a good day. The truth is, it’s not been a good week. We’ve been paddling upstream the entire trip, when there was enough water to actually paddle. Water levels were low enough that we left a trail of Royalex shavings on the river bed like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs through the Black Forest. The only way out is to paddle six more days or wait for another float plane to arrive. I hope it’s flown by a law-abiding Baptist minister with a family filter on his web browser.
I spend a lot of time travelling the bush, and I spend my fair share of time worrying about marauding bears, violent storms and becoming hopelessly lost. Never have I worried about being stranded in the wilderness with an overly communicative husband and a tapped-out drunk due to a pervert and some insecure fishermen.
I guess it just goes to show you that the ugliness you’re trying to escape back home can still reach you out here. I think I’ll stop worrying so much about bears, storms and getting lost.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
