Cover
TRAILS and TRIBULATIONS
On the water trail, time is measured not by the hands of a clock, but by distance accomplished without thinking about it.
TRAILS and TRIBULATIONS
CONFESSIONS OF A WILDERNESS PATHFINDER
HAP WILSON
Illustrated by Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner.
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS
A MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUP
TORONTO
Copyright © Hap Wilson, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Copy-edited by Allison Hirst
Designed by Courtney Horner
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wilson, Hap, 1951-
Trails and tribulations : confessions of a wilderness pathfinder / by Hap Wilson ; illustrated by Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner.
ISBN 978-1-55488-397-4
1. Wilson, Hap, 1951-. 2. Outdoor life--Canadian Shield.
3. Environmentalists--Canada--Biography. 4. Travelers--Canadian Shield--Biography. 5. Park rangers--Canada--Biography. 6. Outfitters (Outdoor recreation)--Canada--Biography. 7. Canadian Shield--Description and travel. I. Zschogner, Ingrid II. Title. III. Title: Confessions of a wilderness pathfinder.
GV191.52.W54 A3 2009 796.5092 C2009-900293-0
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
www.dundurn.com Published by Natural Heritage Books A Member of The Dundurn Group
To Alexa and Christopher Wilson — two gentle spirits who light my way through the shadows; and to Ingrid, whose energy is matched only by her talent and beauty
To know that one’s trail possessions are packed easily in two loads over the shoulders lightens the burden of care and the want of excess.
INTRODUCTION
One smooth path led into the meadow, and here the little folk congregated; one swept across the pond, where skaters were darting about like water-bugs; and the third, from the very top of the hill, ended abruptly at a rail fence on the high bank above the road …
— Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill, 1880
As a kid growing up in rural southern Ontario, I was privy to the numerous trails surrounding the Summit View Golf and Country Club, about forty-eight kilometres north of Toronto. The trails date back to the 1920s, and when my parents bought our house — a heavily treed lot across from the golf course — one of the old ski trails passed through our property. silver birch trail was stamped on a diamond-shaped piece of tin, nailed, of course, to a silver birch tree. The tree had grown considerably since the sign was nailed up and was pushing the tin outwards, like butterfly wings, and the printed name was barely discernable. The trail led away from the driveway, not far from the front door of the house, and up a flight of stone steps built to adjust to the steep slope of land that had been bulldozed away some years past.
Up until I had moved there from the outskirts of Toronto, my life had been confined to paved suburban streets, sidewalks, and the school tarmac. And there was the monthly walk to the Willow Theatre on Saturdays where we would watch double-feature Buck Rogers films for fifty cents, stopping along the way to explore the numerous housing developments evolving out of what vacant land was left. Luckily, we had our grandmother’s cottage to escape to in the summertime. Here there were trees, at least, beneath which there were acorns scattered on the ground to collect, low-branched maples to climb and build forts in, and pine trees that proffered fallen dead sticks to brandish as swords and provide kindling wood for the cottage stove.
Across from the cottage road was the dark forest; impenetrable, menacing, glowering, yet strangely beautiful and beckoning. There were no trails to follow so we kids didn’t go there. When my father started producing survival films for the Department of Lands and Forests in the late 1950s, he had hired a Native woodsman from the Curve Lake Reserve to work on the film with him. His name was Charlie, and everything he did was magic. He was the first real “Indian” I had met, and he was not at all like the ones on television. When he wasn’t working with my father on the sets, Charlie would spend time with my brother and me, showing us how to paddle a canoe, light a campfire, boil water in a birchbark bowl, and most importantly, how to blaze a trail where there was none. He told us that most people look but don’t see and that’s how they get lost in the woods. Being lost terrified me.
Charlie took us across the cottage road and into the woods to look for a stand of birch trees some distance away. He went about marking trees with a small axe. “A blaze,” he would say in quiet commentary “on both sides of the tree so you can find your way back, wassakwaigaso mitig.” He blazed the trees with a deft swipe of the axe, one downward cut, then a right-angled chop to sever the wood chip, revealing the white meat underneath. Sometimes the trees