When in doubt, keep the open end up, and the pointed end forward. –Signature from online canoeing forum.
Voyage upon life’s sea, To yourself be true, And, whatever your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe. - Sarah Bolton
Paddle solo, sleep tandem. - Caroline Owen
Love many, trust a few, and always paddle your own canoe. – Anonymous
From Royalty Free Canoe Clipart.
Sometimes it is better to paddle your own canoe….or at least head in the same direction….however sometimes we should be thankful for differences. It is the Friday before the Thanksgiving weekend….our last long weekend before Christmas….the weather will be great all weekend here in southern Ontario….sunny and warm….the fall colours should be great too….so I hope you get a chance to get outside….to enjoy the Great Outdoors….maybe go for a hike….or paddle your canoe….and give thanks for a great place to be….for family and friends….for Mother Earth and all her natural beauty…. It’s a great time to ‘get away’ from it all:
From Clipart: Thanksgiving Turkey Bird Escaping From Being Butchered.
We have many reasons to be thankful:
There is nothing that is so aesthetically pleasing and yet so functional and versatile as the canoe. – Bill Mason
The canoe is the most practical, efficient and satisfying way to travel through wild country, particularly on the Canadian Shield, where you can go almost anywhere. I think of that country every day of my life. One of the things I like best about canoe travel is that you are completely self-reliant. There is no dependence on mechanical devices. It is utterly simple. For me, the canoe means complete freedom – the ultimate escape. - Alex Hall
It’s pretty hard for me to go more than a few days without getting a paddle wet somewhere. For me, that stepping into the canoe and pushing off is a very special spiritual and physical experience. Bill Mason had it right: it’s like walking on water. It transports you to another way of being, another way of feeling – it restores my soul. – David Finch
I like to encourage people to paddle because it gives them a different way to experience the river, the landscape and…life. – David Finch
It is such a great way to take in a wide range of experiences. When we paddle, the experience of place moves from the brain to the heart, making it a life-forming experience. – Kevin Redmond
Nothing like paddling a canoe to restore the spirit and reconnect with this gorgeous planet that sustains us. - Dalton McGuinty, Ontario premier in twitter to Badger Paddles folks.
Give me a good canoe, a pair of Jibway snowshoes, my beaver, my family and 10,000 square miles of wilderness and I am happy – Grey Owl
We sit in silence drinking in the radiant glory about us. Words would have been sacrilege. – Sigurd Olson, “Describes Cruise Thru the Woods,” Nashwauk [Minn.] Herald, circa July 1921
This last quote is from the first article written by Sigurd Olson to be published….in the Nashwauk (Minn.) Herald, July 22, 1921….I thought it touched on the reasons we should be thankful so much….and did so better than anything I could write that I thought I’d share this article in its full length. From Sigurd F. Olson Website: Describes Cruise Thru The Woods is the following:
This is Sigurd Olson’s first published article. It appeared in the newspaper of the small town in northeasternMinnesotawhere he was living and working as a high school teacher. A slightly different version of the article was published nine days later in The Milwaukee Journal, where his older brother Kenneth worked as an editor. He probably was at least a little disappointed with this first version, because he didn’t get a by-line. But still, there, for the first time, were his words in print….
After making a month’s cruise in the north woods and lakes, Sigurd Olson, Charles Sollonen and Henry Hanson returned and stated that it was one of the finest trips ever made. The following article was written describing the trip, the scenery and the rivers and lakes passed through:
Cruising Through God’s Country
When the great Creator had almost finished our wonderful country he stopped in his labors and pondered. There was one thing lacking, a spot more beautiful than the rest where his children could come and soothe their weary spirits, far from the smoke of cities and the discordant glamor of industry, unsullied by the hand of man. God saw all that was to happen. He saw the ravaging of our beautiful forests, the despoiling of our streams and lakes by the greedy, sselfish, unthinking hands of those who know no beauty and see only in the wonders of nature resources for filling their own already bursting coffers. He also knew that some of his children would love nature and its beauties as they should; that the trees would be their temples and the glories of mountain, plain and forest, their religion. He knew that they would weep at the wanton destruction of the nature that means to them life itself. For those who deeply love and who truly understand nature in all its moods, God set aside a little bit of Paradise unaccessible for those who would despoil it. East of the Rainy Lake country and north of the rugged shores of Lake Superior lies a virgin wilderness almost too beautiful to describe. It would be as easy to paint a perfect sunset or the northern lights as to do the country justice. Imagine yourself in a primitive wilderness of lakes and streams and mountains where the only sounds are the laughing of the loons, the slap of the beaver’s tail and the slashing around of moose and deer in the bogs. It is today as it was before Columbus discovered this country, untouched, untarnished. The winds still whisper through the virgin timber, the waves on Big Saganaga still lap hungrily on the shore. The cry of the great northern loon echoes and re-echoes from Lake Superior toHudson Bay. The moose and deer come down to drink, down trails well worn through centuries of use. Everything is perfect. God had planned well. All is still, the water is smooth as glass except when disturbed by the jumping of the lake trout. The heavily timbered shores are reflected as from a mirror in the waters of the lake. As you gaze you sometimes catch yourself wondering which is which, the reflection or the shore. A white throated sparrow calls so far away and sweetly, one can hardly believe a note could be so clear and faint and still be heard. You stand there in awe, the silence almost overcomes you, a queer feeling comes to your throat. God, how beautiful it all is and your soul unconsciously goes out in gratitude to the Creator that has saved this little bit of heaven for you. Suddenly you are startled. A wild, weird screaming peal of maniacal laughter rends the silence like a knife. Not only once but peal upon peal, each more exultant than the first. A cold shiver travels up and down your spine. You wish you could kill that thing that spoiled it all. It is the call of the loon and is answered far off to the north and you wonder how far that call will travel; perhaps way up to Hudson Bay, who knows. As the echoes come back again and again from nameless lakes far away and finally cease, the silence is deeper than ever. Everything has a place in God’s plan, even the laughing of the loon. It is almost dark, the sun has set leaving the west a lurid tumbled mass of burnished gold. The sunset seems almost fierce in its intensity. It is not peaceful and glowing, but a sullen, angry red. I wonder if it will rain tomrrow. The tent gleams ghostly in the shadow of a huge spruce. Dan has been cooking supper. The odor of bacon and coffee assails my nostrils and I remember I am still alive and ravenously hungry after a long day of paddling and portaging. Dan asks where I’ve been and I answer, “Just dreaming.” He smiles; he, too, understands. After supper, our pipes. The smoke curls up and its fragrance adds the final touch to a day that has been lived but not existed. I take out my map and by the light of the campfire find we are on an island inOttertrack Lake. It is the most beautiful we have struck so far and if it were not for the call of “Something lost behind the ranges, lost and waiting for you,” we would camp here but like Kipling’s explorer we must look behind the ranges to see what awaits us there. We are sitting smoking in front of our tent. The smoke from our dying campfire curls lazily upward. It is almost dark, but over toward the east the tops of the spruces are faintly illumined. Watch expectantly up the waterway. A thin rim of silver, then slowly, majestically golden mellow, a glorious summer moon rises dripping out of the dark placid waters of Ottertrack. The spruces are sharply silhouetted. The wildeness seems bathed in mellow moonlight. Even the sharp old stump over on the shore has something beautiful about it. We sit in silence drinking in the radiant glory about us. Words would have been sacrilege. The mournful wail of a timber wolf comes down from the north and I shiver a little. We are not yet so civilized that we don’t recognize and fear the howl of the wolf. A silver waterway leads directly to our little island. Not it is smooth and polished and now strewn with a million diamonds as a riffle of wind roughens the surface. Peacefulness and contentment are mine. I am happy and why should I not be? I am no millionaire and in fact am poor in worldly goods, but can anyone else love the forests, lakes and streams any more than I do? My body is strong and full of the vigor of life; I enjoy my sleep, my meals, my work, my play. I look forward to years of happiness. Life is good to those who know how to live. I do not ever hope to accumulate worldly wealth, but I shall accumulate something far more valuable, a store of wonderful memories. When I reach the twilight of life I shall look back and say, “I am glad I lived as I did; life has been good to me.” I shall not be afraid of death because I will have drunk to the full the cup of happiness and contentment that only close communion with nature can give. Most of us do not live. Convention looks down on modern man and says, “There is my product, a creature bridled by custom and tradition.” He is not natural, even his emotions are superficial. He is a creature happy in a sense, a misguided sense, living and dying without knowing the joy of one natural breath. Our pipes are out and the moon is riding high in the heavens. We turn in for the night and sleep soundly on a fragrant bed of balsam. Awake at dawn, for dawn is the best part of the day in the wilderness. The trees and brush are dripping with dew. The birds are bursting their little throats with warbling melody. Everything is fresh and clean. A dip in the icy clear waters of the lake and our toilet is complete. The sun is just coming up over in the bay toward the east. The faint white, low hanging mist quickly disappears before its warming rays. A bull moose that we had not seen before is revealed, standing up to his knees in the water of a bay 500 yards up shore. He has not seen us and is busy eating lily pad roots. Every once in a while he ducks his head and neck under water, coming up in a shower of spray, the lily roots dripping in his mouth. The sun glints on his widely spreading horns and he is every inch a monarch as he stands and looks in our direction. He watches us a little while and then leisurely steps out of the water. We can hear the brush crack as he works his way up over the rise. We get our last glimpse of him as he stands on top of the ridge and looks down defiantly as if to say, “Who are you that you dare to come and disturb the peacefulness of my kingdom?” The trout are jumping and a pair of loons are laughing and splashing water with their wings. The water is so clear that we can see the fish feeding along the shore. After breakfast we break camp, dip our paddles and we are off for new country and new adventures. We paddle close to shore as there is always more of interest there than anywhere else. A mallard hen flies out in front of the canoe, quacking and making believe she is crippled. We soon see the cause of her discomfiture. A flock of little brown chicks are skittering for the shore as fast as their little legs and wings will take them. They ride in all sorts of nooks and peep out timidly at us thinking they are hidden. We paddle along through lake after lake, sometimes making portages from one lake to another. Some of the portages are steep and rocky so a man with a pack and canoe has all he can do to keep his footing. In some places beaver dams have to be crossed and marshy places waded through, not wet enough to float a canoe but too wet to walk upon. The beaver are very active and evidences of their logging operations are to be seen everywhere. They are so tame that we see them swimming about in broad daylight. When we get too close, down they go with a mighty flap of their tails. We are paddling easily along when the sound of a waterfall reaches our ears. We paddle in toward shore, leave the canoe and follow up the sound. It must be small because we hear only a faint trickling over the rock. After a hundred yards or so we come to a steep face of rock nearly perpendicular and perhaps 100 feet in height. A spring ged brook breaks over the top and spreads over the face of a rock like a thin transparent veil. The sun breaking through the birches seems to touch the veil with silver light so we called it the “Crystal Sheen.” The little falls is in a grove of slender white birches. The ground and the rock itself is carpeted with the most delicately tinted green moss. Everything is so exquisitely beautiful that I cannot help but wonder if this is not a fairyland. Some tiny fairies with gauzelike wings bathing in the spray of the Crystal Sheen would have made the picture perfect. We leave reluctantly and resume our paddling. The steady swish, swish of our paddles soon carries us many miles northward. It is a pleasure to watch your paddle in the clear water, and the little ever present whirlpool that you make with every stroke. We go through a narrow neck and presently the water becomes swifter. We are in a river and before we know it we are racing along very swiftly. White water breaking over jagged rocks warns us to keep our distance. A sharp rock almost seems to leap at us out of the foam, but a quick swerve of the paddle and we flip past. Now we are bounding and shooting through spray and white water. It takes quick thinking and quicker acting to keep away from the rocks now. The trees on shore seem to shoot past and the rocks are getting thicker. A patch of white water shows up ahead. I try my best to head the canoe to one side. Now we are in it. The sickening sound of a rock grating on the bottom of the canoe and we stop in mid stream. We paddle desperately, the canoe starts to swing. Two more feet and we are done for. A last desperate stroke and we slip off and into the current. The water becomes more quiet and soon we are cruising smoothly along through a lake ever northward. This lake is dotted with rocky islands covered with spruce and Norway pine. Gulls are flying around screaming and flying low over our heads. Evidently this must be their nesting ground. We are both tired and so head the canoe for a pretty little island near the center of the lake. It is a good camping place and the wild beauty of the lake with its many rocky islands and screaming gulls appeals to us so we decide to stop for the night. The rock is covered withheavey lichen, which makes a fine bed. The tent is soon up and supper on the way. After supper our pipes alight, we lay on our backs and gaze at the lazily drifting clouds. The lives of those who live close to nature in the northland are filled with adventures every day, and to the men of the north they are life. This struggle for existence and the fearless battle with the elements is what makes the manhood of the north big and clean and strong. The north asks for strong men, not weaklings, for here manhood is tested down to the core. To those whom she selects she reveals all her riches and if she does not give them riches in gold she gives them riches far more worth while that mean happiness and contentment. And so we traveled through hundreds of lakes and rivers, drunk in the beauties of countless waterfalls, rapids and virgin forests, saw naked grandeur as God intended it to be, unscathed by the hand of man. When we ended our cruise and our canoes grated on a sandy beach for the last time our hearts were heavy and yet how happy. We were ragged and unkempt, but what mattered that; our hearts were filled to overflowing. We came back empty handed, but oh how rich we were. We could say with Kipling’s explorer on his return: “Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget? No, not I. Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn’t understnad it. You go up and occupy.”
Well we celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend here in Canada….yes, we are ahead of our American neighbours on a few things it would seem LOL LOL. It is also a good weekend to get out and enjoy the natural world too….cooler air….sunny skies mixed with few clouds….leaves starting to turn colour. This is a time of change….birds have already started to migrate south….other animals preparing for the cold winter ahead by getting ready to hibernate or just building a warmer abode….and the leaves changing. Yes, that’s the second time I mentioned the leaves changing. The autumn colours are here. Check them out by going for a drive in your car or riding your bike….or better yet going for a hike. Take your camera along too. You can get some great shots of the reds, oranges, and yellows many trees wear this time of year. Great places to check out the finery of fall are: Haliburton and Algonquin Park; Caledon (especially around the Forks of the Credit); the hills south of Georgian Bay such as near Collingwood or Owen Sound; the countryside of the Kawarthas; north of Belleville or Kingston along Hwy. 7; the Madawaska Valley or around Bancroft; and many of the ravines or other “wild” spots in and around Toronto (like the Rouge and Don Valleys or High Park). So if you don’t normally get out especially once it starts to turn cooler, think about doing so….don’t hibernate quite yet in front of a fire….get out and enjoy the colours. For a change.
Paddles up until later then….and enjoy the Thanksgiving weekend….preferably as much outdoors as possible….and give thanks for such an opportunity. Especially change. Now I’m off to go paddle….
