whitewater in a canoe … but it’s absolutely necessary.
We ran Deaf Rapids at eleven o’clock at night, when the tide was full and it was still light enough to navigate up the coast to the sanctity of a goose-hunt shack (safe from polar bears). The next day, at low tide, another canoe group arrived. They were in a sorry state, having dumped in the rapids with near-death circumstances. The leader, as it turned out, had no maps at all but was relying on his GPS for directional prompting. Unable to determine exactly where he was, he had inadvertently led his group into the vortex of Deaf Rapids where they all capsized. Even armed with the most expensive global positioning system, the guide was lost, albeit momentarily, but enough to put his group in peril.
The inherent problem, and the primary reason people get lost or turned around, even when armed with topographic maps and GPS, lies in the fact that they have trouble interpreting information on a map. For some, it’s a distance/time enigma — judging how far you’ve travelled in a specific amount of time — for others, it’s a direct interpretation perplexity — computing real, three-dimensional landscapes onto a two-dimensional map. The accuracy of the GPS is astounding, but you are still expected to have a certain comprehension of eye-visual-to-map understanding. And like all outdoor skills, map reading comes with experience.
Canoeists get lost constantly while portaging their gear. It happened to me, years ago, but it’s frightening how easily it can happen. And in the Canadian wilderness there is no such thing as a shortcut; trying to locate an easier, shorter way to arrive at a destination usually besets a world of trouble. Canoeists today are notorious for trying to find an easier or quicker way around obstacles because of their latent distaste for portaging.
On my first canoe trip to Temagami in 1970, I was solo paddling with the accompaniment of a couple of friends. We ventured up the torturous portages of the north channel of the Lady Evelyn River and had decided to portage (bushwhack) cross-country to the south branch of the river instead of continuing upstream to the lake that divides the two. My friends went off with their packs, which was the wiser thing to do, but I had decided to carry my canoe over unfamiliar ground where there was no trail. The stretch on the map showed a shortcut of about four hundred metres, but after trudging twice that distance through a mélange of deadfall, rock, and impenetrable tag alder, I eventually heard the sound of running water. Thinking I was near the other channel, I pushed on; but when I reached the shore of the river, I was perplexed as to how I managed to get to the opposite side of the rapids and why the current was flowing in the wrong direction. I put down my canoe. About fifty feet away I noticed a pack sitting by the shore. It was mine. I had gone full circle and returned almost precisely to the spot where I started portaging! Embarrassed and not wanting my friends to know of my error, I grabbed my pack and ran to catch up with them.
This kind of directional miscarriage is not always reserved for the individual. I’ve seen whole groups get lost while portaging across a prospective shortcut. One of my regular customers while I was in the outfitting business was the Queen’s Fifth Regiment from England. This elite group of soldiers, about twenty crack militiamen, was to go on a “work” vacation — a wilderness canoe trip in Canada. I outfitted them and designed a route that would challenge their abilities. One week into their trip, they decided to make a shortcut over a swath of land that would cut short their trip by about five kilometres. The distance would be about one kilometre overland. Carrying their gear from Point A to Point B seemed to be a simple matter. Half carried packs while the others shouldered canoes, and off they went in more than one direction. After wandering for about an hour, the soldiers who were still more or less banded together dropped their gear midway across the shortcut and tried desperately to find their way back to the start point. After some time they located the remainder of their gear along with a few confounded compatriots, loaded up and trekked off in what they thought was the direction of their selected target. Another hour had lapsed but they arrived, with some difficulty, at the lake where they were supposed to be. But there was no sign of the others. Striking off in the direction of where they thought they left their first load, they got thoroughly confused and ended up back in the same place. After much shouting, the men finally began to assemble on the far shore but without most of their packs and tents which had been left somewhere midway along the shortcut. They spent a rainy night without their tents and a good deal of their personal gear, huddled under canoes at the end of their shortcut. They retrieved their lost gear the next morning. The one hour it would have originally taken to remain on their original route, took almost an entire additional day to sort out the mess they created by attempting a shorter route.
NINE
ANIMAL ATTACK
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
— James A. Froude (1818–1894)
I worry about Tony. He’s a big man and shows absolutely no fear in the presence of large predators, or for that matter, any animal either above him on the food chain, or physically larger than he is. Tony Grant manages the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Muskoka, Ontario, a quarter of a kilometre down the road from where I live. Tony is the only one who works there that can get in the cage with the captive lioness and play with her. Sometimes she lies on top of Tony and won’t let him get up for half an hour. He hand-feeds her raw chicken and she pines when Tony is away. She could kill Tony in a flash of nail and claw anytime she felt like it. I worry about Tony because animal trainers and handlers get killed often enough, eventually, and it’s simply the immutable law of the wild. I look at animal handlers as I do mountain climbers and other extreme adventurers who live on the edge and sometimes push the limits — they invariably forget about those laws. And you only have to lift your guard once. So, I worry about Tony because he’s a good neighbour.
I live in Muskoka, or cottage country, known for its million-dollar summer homes, voguish shops, executive golf courses, and fractional ownership developments. Strangely enough, I’ve seen more wildlife out my back window at home, and had more close-up confrontations with wild animals than in any of my far-flung travels across the Canadian northland. I live on the fringe of settlement; it’s a congenial mix of forested and open land, perfect for coyote, wolf, moose, deer, bear, or any wild species you would normally find ranging around more northerly regions of the province. I can look out my window and watch deer grazing in the field, moose rutting in October, or have black bears ravaging through my compost box in the backyard. Last month two black bears killed all my chickens. I had to dispatch one of the more aggressive male bears because it was unpredictable, testy, and a threat to my children who play in the woods adjacent to the house (and compost box). And I don’t want to get rid of my compost box. My daughter’s lunch bag and schoolwork pack was hauled out of the back of my pickup truck by a bear. And bears are known to drag off rather large items, including dogs, kids, and full garbage containers. The teacher reprimanded my daughter for making up the story and not doing her homework; it wasn’t until we sent a picture of the bear to the school, standing on top of our kitchen stove in the house, that my daughter found any closure in the matter.
What do we really know about Nature?
Any wild animal is unpredictable; and we think we know more than we do about Nature, thanks to Disney and the world of anthropomorphized animated characters. A caged animal in a sanctuary that may have shown only the friendliest attitude toward humans may have some rogue primitive spark in their cerebrum that initiates an unprovoked attack. Or maybe it was just having a bad day. The case of the young handler who climbed into the wolf enclosure at the Haliburton wildlife sanctuary, unsupervised, thinking that the pack alpha female wouldn’t mind at all, was one of tragic misconception. As a result, she suffered a horrible death … and all the wolves were shot by local police in retaliation.
My brother was a cop for York Regional police back in the early 1980s. He was called to a country property, the home of a renowned bear trainer, where a woman had just been killed by a “pet” black bear. The trainer was in the habit of letting