Alone Against the North (24 page)

IN THE MORNING
I put on my wet clothing, skipped breakfast, and resumed my portage in the sodden forest. Just walking a few feet through the rain-soaked brush further drenched my already wet cargo pants, boots, and socks. The sky above me remained grey and overcast, offering little hope of drying anything. But the Again's headwaters were near at hand, and within a few hours I had completed what I had failed to do three years ago with Wes: I successfully carried the canoe and all my gear across the last terrible portage, which, counting all the doubling back, totalled nearly fifteen kilometres. The final stretch—the remaining three hundred metres or so across the muskeg—was the most difficult
of all. I loaded my canoe with everything aside from the plastic barrel, which I strapped onto my back, and began dragging the whole assemblage forward. As I sloshed onward, the ground visibly sank beneath me, causing pools of cold water to form around my feet. But the sight of what lay before me—the mysterious mist-shrouded headwaters of my long-sought river—gave me the strength to finish the task.

When I reached the marshy lakeshore, I pushed the canoe into the water and hopped into the stern. A thick mist made it impossible to see the far shore, or much beyond the canoe's bow. The water was shallow—that much was plain from the green rushes sprouting up from the lake. It was still a large body of water, though, probably more than a kilometre across, and as such I was wary about venturing too far from land into the mist, for if a storm were to strike, my shallow vessel could easily swamp. By paddling off into the misty lake, I had crossed my Rubicon—there could be no retreat now. The idea of attempting to portage back was unthinkable—no matter what the Again River contained, I was irrevocably committed to continuing.

[ 11 ]

RIVER OF MYSTERY

Fearlessness is better than a faint-heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.

—
Skirnir's Journey
, Ancient Norse Myth

I
PADDLED THROUGH THE MIST
to the far side of the lake and then skirted its shoreline, searching for some sign of the Again River. At first there seemed to be nothing but an uninterrupted shore of cedar and spruce trees. Had I made some mistake and come to the wrong lake? Anxiously I kept paddling through the mist and rain, trying to find an outlet somewhere. At last, I spotted a black stream, little more than a creek, flanked by alder bushes and swampy woods on either bank and covered in lily pads, arrowheads, and rushes. This
was it
—the start of the unexplored river that I had dreamed about for years. I had stared at its vague outline on those old maps, trying to picture what it looked like and what it would be like to paddle. Even now, I half doubted that I had really found it—it was hard to believe that after so many false starts,
I had finally made it
.

The river itself, despite the ancient forest on either bank, could have been one of the creeks I had paddled in the countryside
where I grew up. I actually imagined that the hardest and most dangerous part of the journey was now over—that the challenges ahead were nothing compared with the navigational complexity and sheer endurance required to complete the trailblazing portages. So, despite the fact that the skies in all directions remained one unbroken mass of unfriendly grey clouds, I felt sanguine. I paddled downstream in the drizzle, unfazed by a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around my head. If I had known what awaited me downriver, I would not have been quite so confident.

Soon I encountered large beaver dams, which I had to lift the canoe over, but I did so with relative ease. The dams were of such solid construction that I could stand right on top of them while hoisting the loaded canoe up and over. More problematic were shallow, sandy stretches of river that required wading and dragging to get the canoe through—but they were nothing unusual. The river seemed to be an untouched sanctuary for wildlife—beavers, otters, muskrats, moose, and waterfowl were all around. A kingfisher glided low over the water before disappearing into the woods. Freshwater clams were scattered along the river bottom, a good meal should I need it.

The river's meandering course passed through several weedy lakes, which I paddled across in the rain, hoping that the waterway would grow bigger and spare me from more canoe dragging. These lakes were of considerable size, spanning several kilometres. Nevertheless, after passing through another big lake, I found that the river remained little more than a rocky creek, hemmed in by lush cedar trees and too shallow to paddle. The only way forward was to carefully wade in the swift current and drag the canoe behind me with a rope. But as I slogged along, cautiously
balancing in the rushing water, my hopes were dashed—ahead the river vanished entirely. Instead of flowing water, all I saw was a dry creek bed covered in rocks. The river, I soon realized, was still there, flowing beneath the rocks as little more than a trickle. I had no choice but to do another exhausting portage, carrying the canoe over my head and all my gear forward until the river re-emerged.

Fortunately, a pool lay just beyond the dry stretch, only a hundred metres away. Beyond that, the river remained deep enough to either paddle or wade. In a few more hours I had navigated through a calm stretch that resembled a small lake, and then squeezed through another narrow gap no wider than my canoe that was choked with a rock-strewn rapid. Beyond this rapid the river transformed again—it now flowed into one of the prettiest lakes I had ever seen: clear blue water studded with spruce- and cedar-covered islands with yellow sand beaches. The islands were so picturesque that they seemed almost surreal—compared with the muskeg and swamp, they were an enchanted paradise. I made camp on a beach on one of the islands, the moon rising above me in the twilight. Taking it all in, it felt as if I had stepped into the frame of a Group of Seven landscape painting and left the nightmarish swamps far behind.

PEOPLE OFTEN ASK
me, “Aren't you afraid, going out into the wilderness all alone? Don't you worry about something bad happening?” There are no easy answers to such questions. As William “Doc” Forgey, the guru of wilderness first aid and a veteran of many canoe journeys, once explained of his own experiences:

Somehow on long trips, the uncertainty of the next day's travel, the food supply, the amount of time, all seem to gnaw at me…. Perhaps I'm not cut out for wilderness travel. I asked Sigurd Olson one day about this. He laughed and said he'd put the same question past Camsell at the Explorer's Club one day. Camsell replied that he'd spent most of his adult life exploring the bush and had been scared during nine-tenths of it.

That would be
the
Charles Camsell, founder of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a man born and raised in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories. If a man like that was afraid nine-tenths of the time, there surely could be no shame in admitting to feeling fear. On the other hand, William Hunt, better known as “The Great Farini,” an explorer of Africa and a daredevil tightrope walker, said of his many adventures, “I have never known fear.” With others, such a claim might ring hollow—but with Farini, few could doubt it. A farm boy from the backwoods of Upper Canada, in 1860 Farini walked across Niagara Falls on an amateurishly rigged tightrope with no safety line while performing all sorts of stunts in the middle of the rope. In 1885, bored with life, he plunged into the wilds of southern Africa to explore the Orange River, scrambling and climbing over sheer cliff faces and around waterfalls with the same serene indifference he exhibited above the torrent of Niagara. If Farini had merely been an adventurer, his fearlessness could perhaps be explained away as the exuberance of a rash man with more brawn than brain—but Farini was no fool. Fluent in seven languages, he presented his expedition findings to both the
Royal Geographical Society and the German Geographical Society, addressing the latter in fine German. He patented several successful inventions, authored books on such esoteric topics as techniques for growing geraniums, and despite his death-defying exploits, lived to the ripe old age of ninety.

As for myself, I am too in love with adventure and the allure of the unknown to let fear stand in my way. So, while I certainly have felt fear in the wilderness, most of the time, I ignore it. Or when I can't ignore it, I embrace it. Fear just adds to the adventure. At least, that is the sort of thing I tell myself when I'm in a tense situation—such as when a bear is outside the tent, I'm paddling a raging rapid, or I'm caught out in the open in a lightning storm. But on the Again River, things were slightly different—I was so possessed by a mixture of curiosity, ambition, and excitement that little room was left for fear.

When the next morning dawned and I awoke on the island's sandy shore, it was not with any sense of foreboding about what might await me downriver. After a breakfast of oatmeal, I packed up my camp and set off into the lake, heading for the distant shore. I paddled hard into a stiff headwind, riding over sizable waves and scanning the dark woods with my binoculars in search of the river's outlet from the lake. At first nothing was visible—the shore appeared to be one unbroken wall of grim black spruce. This was puzzling—surely the river had to flow out somewhere. It took half-an-hour to paddle across the lake, battling the wind. Only then did I discover that the river's outlet was hidden from view behind high weeds that shot up from the water. As I nudged the canoe into the reeds, an arctic tern soared above me—the first tidings of the salt water that lay to the north on stormy
James Bay. I took a last glance back at the lake as the tern glided away. This was the final lake on my journey—from here, the Again River flows uninterrupted through the Lowlands, to where it eventually joins the much larger Harricanaw River, which in turn drains into James Bay. My hands were cut and scraped from the portages, my body was riddled with blackfly bites, a rash had developed on my feet from the constant wetness, and that morning the handle had broken off my water purifier, rendering the device useless. But, staring ahead at the unexplored river that awaited me, a smile lit up my face, and not for anything in the world would I have wanted to be doing anything else.

I pulled my paddle through the water, drawing the canoe into the current of the river, eager to see what lay beyond the next bend. There was, it turned out, a nearly endless stretch of rocky rapids. I ran as many as I dared, but more often than not I had to climb out of my canoe, plunge into the water, and guide the boat forward with rope to get around jagged rocks. Sometimes I would be in ankle-deep water, only to take another step and find myself waist-deep in a hidden pool. In places, I had to lift the canoe over serrated rocks, and my hiking boots would sometimes become wedged in crevices concealed beneath the dark water. By the afternoon the sun had disappeared behind rain clouds, which didn't trouble me much, as rain would raise water levels and help spare my canoe from the rocks that lined the river bottom. Hopefully, it would also put out any nearby forest fires.

The river was strikingly different from the Little Owl River I had explored the year before, or even the Kattawagami. It had a more southern character, with a greater variety of trees and higher banks. At places the landscape resembled Algonquin,
with granite rock outcrops along the shore covered in caribou lichens and blueberries, as well as juniper bushes and wild rose. The tall jack pines that overlooked the river reminded me of one of Tom Thomson's paintings. In more tranquil stretches, beavers swam in the river and noisily slapped their tails on the surface of the water as I passed, a warning to their friends that a strange intruder was drawing near.

That night I camped on a slab of granite overlooking the river beside a large rapid. The blackflies were atrocious until I got a fire going to keep them away. Beyond the rock outcrop, the forest was thick with spruces, their spindly branches interlocking to form a barrier that precluded hiking inland. In the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of a violent thunderstorm, which made me rather uneasy. I was surrounded by tall trees, and there was not much I could do to minimize the risk of a lightning strike. I simply had to hope my luck would hold—it was, after all, the thirtieth or fortieth thunderstorm I had endured in a tent.

IT WAS A
cold, miserable day with steady rain. Clad in an old army rain jacket and wearing a helmet, I spent all morning running whitewater rapids and occasionally wading through dark, swirling water. Grey boulders the size of small cars loomed out of the river, which I weaved around in the canoe. The river was narrow most of the time, less than forty metres wide, and while it included the occasional deep stretch, most of it remained shallow. Small hills and, in a few places, granite cliffs enclosed its course. I shivered as I paddled along, chilled from frequently wading in the water and pulling the canoe to avoid damaging it
on the rocks. Given how shallow the river was, it appeared that I wouldn't encounter any terribly dangerous whitewater.