The Forecast:
There is a 95% chance today’s weather will be either too hot, too cold, too sunny, too rainy, or too windy. -From a desktop sign, Quetico Park Visitor Center.
In many ways a canoe trip is an endlessly repeated exercise in various modes of misery, each one a contrast — therefore, a relief, albeit temporary — to the misery preceding it. So there is always the illusion of looking forward to something that will most likely be... another misery.
A canoe trip could in fact be described as paddling — paddling until arms ache, back hurts, skin is burned, legs are cramped, and butt falls asleep. Finally, a portage and a chance to stop paddling, stretch legs, and get out of the sun. Also a chance to deal with black flies, deer flies, and various other versions of evil incarnate; a chance to climb up and down hills with loads that would crush a burro, that strain neck, back, and hamstrings and threaten to drive shoulder blades through hips; a chance to wade through mud, muck, and other corruption, to climb over and under dead falls and trip over stuff and to figure that death will probably arrive — mercifully — before this infernal trail reaches a sight of blue, open, sunlit water. Where, of course, the cycle begins again.
The great goal and end of this particular cycle is the evening camp, that blessed spot of rock and tree kissed by evening breezes and the last slanted rays of the sun. Having found the camp, at whatever stage of exhaustion seems appropriate to the lateness of the hour and rigors of the day, it is time to set up the tent, gather wood, gather water, start a fire, get out the food, cook the food, and... ahhh... eat. And drink. In a warm and happy trance of pure bliss and satisfaction. This lasts... some moments. With the arrival of the evening watch of mosquitoes, the cooking gear is up-gathered and washed, the food repacked; the pack hoisted and hung safe from bears, mini-bears (chipmunks), and micro-bears (mice); personal hygiene is attended to; the tent entered; tent-invading mosquitoes dispatched (except for three which are never found); the sleeping bag snuggled into and finally sleep. The sweet, dark, wonderful nothingness of... Rock. Root. Pinecone. These are nemeses that will be there, along with three renegade mosquitoes, all through the night. They will become intimate with back, sides, and stomach, with muscles, bones, and insides — and loom ever larger and sharper and more offensive in the imagination and the anatomy, until dawn cannot come too soon.
And with the arrival of dawn — the pack is lowered (mini-bears found it anyways), breakfast cooked, dishes cleared, tent taken down, the canoe loaded, and — back to paddling once more.
The Backcast:
So why... why go through it? Why even be here?
The second answer is easy. Because “here” is where the beauty is. Here is where the sunsets are. Here is where the campsites and campfires are, and the clear, deep waters, and the loons, and the pines, and the islands. And yes, the storms and the big winds and the rapids. Here is where the journey is.
But why go through it? Why do I... Why do I go through it? I think because no one else can go through it for me. And because the modern city-world system uses people to get work done. Important work, supposedly. That’s the whole idea. That’s why we get paid. But here — here I’m using the work... to get myself done. What better work is there than that?
Or maybe... maybe it’s enough to say that I am here, as another voyageur once put it, “to iron out the wrinkles in my soul.”
And maybe it is only on the trail to nowhere-in-particular that you find the most important thing of all.
Yourself.
