their respective adventures. On one such expedition, I was finishing up a trip on Diamond Lake; it was a nice campsite, quiet, in a sheltered bay. We had just finished dinner and were sitting on the sloped bedrock enjoying the evening calm. A group of six people paddled in and took the campsite across the channel from us — a stone’s throw away. I recognized them as a group I had outfitted the day before I left on my trip, Mennonites from St. Jacobs near Kitchener, Ontario. Nice people who booked an unguided complete outfitting package from me. We watched as their group set up camp. The canoes remained tethered along the shore, undulating against the rocks, wearing holes in the hulls. Two men brandishing axes approached a rather sizeable dead tree near the canoes and began chopping it down. It fell directly across the gunwales of a canoe, nearly folding it in half.
Now, I could have yelled out and warned them not to do this, reveal my identity as the owner/outfitter of the canoes, but I was more intrigued by the way in which they would explain this when they returned the equipment the next day. I also have a strict, personal policy not to yell out while on the trail. The purity of silence was paramount. When the canoe-crashers returned their rented gear to the outfitting base, they said nothing about the canoe incident even after being questioned whether the equipment met their satisfaction. I explained that I was the one camped across from them when the tree was chopped down over the canoe causing over three-hundred-dollars damage. They were mildly apologetic but refused to pay for damages contending that “they were renting the canoe, not buying it” and that my insurance should cover it. My insurance wouldn’t cover it, I explained, so I tacked the damages onto their bill. Their cheque bounced and I never recovered the money.
A group of jocks brought three new Kevlar canoes back almost completely destroyed. They had run all the rapids on the Temagami River in low water. It was also reported by another guiding company that my clients had filled their canoes with packs and skidded the boats over the rocky portages, not once carrying them across the trail. Since I always took a refundable cash deposit for canoes (usually not enough to pay for most accrued damages), I could at least hold back the deposit made. Not only did the jocks refuse to pay for damages, they insisted I give them back their damage deposit.
Tents would come back with knife slices in the floor, sodden with mud and with crushed mosquitoes pasted to the inside walls; pot sets would be caked with burned-on food, black with soot; packs missing straps that had been ripped off their seams; sweaty sleeping bags that needed dry-cleaning, sometimes too grungy to keep at all; broken axes and saws; lost life-jackets and paddles, trashed canoes … But it was the cavalier way in which all this gear was returned after the trip that really bothered me. Where was the sense of pride and care in the maintenance of equipment that was part of one’s essential kit — the survival material that one depends on? People just didn’t care anymore; they didn’t care because they knew their visit to the wilderness was transient, and that they would return promptly to their contrived and safe boxes in the city, and to their disposable-wracked lifestyles, dishwashers, and twice-a-week garbage collection. Trail lifestyle was hit or miss and lacked the finesse engaged by seasoned wilderness travellers, or those who cared. There were, on occasion, considerate clients who tended their rental outfit as if it was their own, but not enough of them to assuage the aggravation suffered through an almost constant barrage of malperforming neophytes seeking packaged adventure.
The Client would complain about almost everything, and it was usually about things in Nature that we have absolutely no control over — the weather, biting insects, the wind always in the wrong direction, the difficulty of portage trails and where was all the wildlife? As if they expected moose and bear and wolves to be lined up along the shores waiting for their pictures to be taken.
“When did you break camp?” I’d ask them.
”You mean pack up and leave in the morning?”
“Yes, what time?”
“Ten o’ clock or so, maybe later.”
As it turned out, most paddlers and other outdoor folk know little or nothing about wildlife habits or about the environment in which they live. Our modern expectations of the Wild — its nuances, patterns, complexities, peculiarities, and appearance, is governed by what the media feeds us — the Disney fixation — wildlife performing in unnatural ways. Actual or anthropomorphized animations of creatures fail to differentiate what’s real and what’s fantasy, and confound our ability to raise our consciousness about the outdoors.
Canoeists who sleep through the morning, the time when many species of wildlife are most active, miss out on a possible experience. Paddlers who bang their paddles on the gunwales of their canoes, or are inordinately noisy, also fail to “get the picture.” Campers who leave garbage or human excrement around their campsites, on the other hand, are sure to have a wildlife encounter sooner or later.
But not all outfitters are derisive about the business as I am. Some could overlook the slack-mindedness, almost innocent naivety of the modern adventurer and turn it into something positive. I tried. Times were changing. The backwoods trail attracted a new genre of explorer, bred from a narcissistic society and an ever-changing definition of wilderness. The good thing that came out of my occupation as a canoe trip outfitter was the number of people I would pump into the backwoods, and at a time when we needed to show strength in our own industry. And, in a way, that worked to the advantage of the environmental movement, at least to illustrate to the government that there was more to the woods than just stump value and hunting licences.
THREE
CONFESSIONS OF A WILDERNESS GUIDE
It’s the way you ride the trail that counts.
— Dale Evans
Although I had been guiding wilderness trips for several years as a park ranger, my first commercially guided expedition under my own company name wasn’t until 1984. My bush skills were adequate but my ability to knit people together in a group trip dynamic was deficient. I was eager to lift my new outfitting company off the ground and I took bookings for guided trips with insufficient client scrutiny. I was elated that I could book ten guys on a river trip in May, just after ice-out; any bookings in the pre-season was a commercial boon. Cash flow was paramount.
Bill was the client group-leader and he assured me that everyone who signed up had the required whitewater canoeing skills. The Makobe River in spring flood was a tempestuous little river and there was little room for error. John Kilbridge, canoe builder and former trail ranger, would be my assistant. Within the mélange of clients was a heart surgeon, company CEO’s, and one blind man. Terry was a musician, legally blind but could make out some vague outlines of rocks and trees. We were air-dropped to Banks Lake at the headwater of the river for a four-day flush downriver in ice-cold water with little time for instruction.
Let me tell you about stress.
Everyone paired off, the insurance man and the heart surgeon together in one canoe but sitting backwards in their seats, the bowman’s feet crammed into the tiny space behind what was supposed to be the stern seat. He complained about the lack of space for his legs until I corrected him as to which end of the canoe was to point forward. As it turned out, none of the ten men had ever run any moving water and only four had any experience at all.
“How hard can it be?” Bill the leader pleaded. John and I looked at each other in quiet consternation. It began to snow. We managed to nurse the first four client-canoes down the initial rapids, an easy class 1, but with one boulder in mid-channel to manoeuvre around. The doctor and the insurance man weren’t so lucky. Their canoe broached the only rock in the rapids, tipped upstream, and filled with water. The two men were able to step up onto the boulder but were now twenty-five metres from shore, stranded, cold, and wet. John and I beached our canoe and ran back up the shore. My new Kevlar canoe was wrapped around the boulder. John reminded me that the clients were more important than the state of the canoe — we’ d worry about the boat after we got the men safely