The Boy is outdoorsy and can carry canoes. I enjoy lazy long lie-ins on real beds. Nevertheless, we went on a little canoe trip last week in the Southern Corridor of Algonquin Park (Access point #9, Rock Lake, to Clydegale Lake via Pen Lake, and back), and it was a lots of fun! Well, the Boy did far more work than I (my main job was to pump water; he set up tents and tarps and cooked in the rain, and even sorted out a groundsheet situation without having me leave the tent), but he’s been camping since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, so it made sense. But one day, I will learn!
I learned how to set up the tent once we returned to the city! Perhaps I’ll be more useful next time.
It rained almost the entire three days, and the water was too cold to swim comfortably, but it was super pretty paddling along miles of densely forested shorelines, not even spying another canoe for hours at a time. And even though it was so wet and windy, I felt even more Canadian — you can Internet your life away in Los Angeles or London or Mumbai, but you can’t canoe through uninhabited wilderness in most other countries.
The view from our Pen Lake campsite.
While we were paddling on the second day, I commented to the Boy that the island in the distance never got any bigger and it seemed as if we were going nowhere. Ever the experienced canoeist, he told me to look at the shore, and lo and behold, the trees on either side of us did seem to swoosh past. The Boy went on to say that it was a metaphor for life — get caught up with where you want to end up and you’ll miss the details of each day, but if you focus on those details alone, you can forget where you’re going. Is there a book on Camping Philosophy?
But perhaps the most exciting — and Canadian — part of the trip occurred before our second portage on the first day, between Pen and Clydegale Lakes. We were approaching the end of the lake and the Boy spotted a little black bear cub walking across the dam. I’d just read a news story of two Nova Scotian women who’d run from a bear for three hours, so I was terrified. I did not want to do the portage (do you “do” a portage? So not up on my camping terminology!) and begged the Boy to let us paddle back and camp on Pen Lake. But he said no: You have to book a campsite by lake, and if we took a spot on Pen, some other group might be out of a home for the night. Ugh, morals. And so, armed with a paddle, I scurried after the Boy as he carried the canoe and barrel the 300 metres of the portage (I managed to carry the pack).
I’m very impressed that the Boy can carry a canoe. And me. And a tune.
We didn’t spot the bear again and needless to say, we weren’t eaten, and it does make for a good story, but I’d be very glad to stay away from Monsieur White Fang forever more. Although that does mean the next trip should be further into the wild (fewer people = less waste = less to attract bears).
Players of Prince Arthur 