I am drawn to wild rivers. Rivers are the highways of the boreal forest, and the canoe is the perfect vehicle. For me there is nothing like tracing a river from source to outlet, sampling its various moods along the way. When you dip your hand over the gunwale you can feel the river pulsing with life.
On placid stretches, we lie back and let the current do the work. The canoe becomes a piece of driftwood, pushed wide on the bends, spun slowly in swirling eddies. Putting paddle to water is a means of imposing your will. There is risk in this, as it can cultivate an attitude of fighting against the river. To paddle is to eventually learn that the river cannot be conquered; it is bigger and deeper and more powerful than we are. It is best to work with the river, to use the inexorable current to help us place our canoe where we need it. This can involve some paradox; if we are caught in a fast moving stretch of water, and need to move towards the left bank of the river without slipping further downstream, we cannot simply paddle harder to power our way over, though this is a common instinct. If we do, we will get flushed downriver more quickly, toward the very thing we want to avoid.
The best strategy is to paddle backwards, keeping even with the shore—neither slipping downstream or working our way back upstream—and to angle the stern of the canoe towards the place we want to go (in strong current the angle needs to be small, lest we get spun around). As we paddle to keep the canoe in place, the current catches on our angled stern and ferries us to the spot we need to be. At the first few backward strokes, when we are trying to halt the canoe’s momentum, we will feel as though we are fighting the river—surely this can’t be the right strategy. But when the current grabs that angled end and we sense ourselves being moved to the left without so much as a stroke in that direction, we know the river is on our side, that canoe and water are one.
At the approach of rapids, I get a hollow ache in my gut, something like an acidic spurt of acid courses through my system. I am not an adrenaline junky; the river is not my wild version of an amusement park ride. I hear the rapids before I can see them, like a train in the distance. As I gaze ahead, moving slowly now, careful not to drift past the point of no return, I spot the dancing waves glinting in the sunshine. We pull over, drag the canoe half out of the water, and make our way downstream on foot, hopping from rock to rock, or bashing through thick riverside alders. It is important to go all the way to the end of the rapids, no matter how laborious, and asses it from the bottom up, plotting a strategy and gauging landmarks as we go. If the rapids are too big or complex, it is time to take to the woods and hope for a well-worn portage trail. More than likely, however, the portage will be a faint meandering thing, thick with mosquitoes and chock-full of blown down trees. No matter. Better to spend a grueling hour to get past 100 yards of churning river, than lose our boat and gear in a capsize.
If we do decide to run it, there is always fear in the gut and a hollowed out feeling in the arms. Back in the canoe, at the top of the rapids where the current runs strong and black, before the frothy turbulence, nothing is as it seems. The landmarks that stood out so clearly from the riverbank are obscured by our water-level vantage point. Often, at the brink, one of us is forced to stand—a frantic, wobbly move—in a last attempt to get our bearings. By then we are committed, and plunge into the dancing waves.
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On the last night of our honeymoon, close the terminus of where the river flows into Hudson Bay, 10 miles or so upriver from the little town with its little airstrip where we would be ending our trip, we camped on a small island covered in long, swaying grass. It was early September and the nights were getting cold. We went to bed early with that feeling of anxiousness and excitement that accompanies transitions. We had been on the river close to a month; our daily routine had become a lifestyle, as automatic as breathing.
Sometime in the night I awoke, unzipped the tent, and gazed out. Our tent faced upstream, only a few feet from the water’s edge. The river was swift and shallow, undulating in the moonlight and spilling past our little island on its course to the bay. Tomorrow we would rejoin the flow, but tonight we were perched on the edge of it. I looked upstream to where the river turned round a bend, and thought about the miles that had led us to this spot: the glass calm lakes, the damnable wind, the days of bright, unbroken sky, the calluses etched on our hands from thousands of paddle strokes. We had spent days paddling in silence, had learned to make decisions with an unspoken nod, had started conversations that lasted for a week or more. I felt sure, sitting there in the moonlight on that little island, that the river had worked its way into us somehow, that we were all forever intertwined. Though we would leave and fly away and the river would freeze and thaw and flow again, I knew we would still be able to draw strength from it, even years from then.
And I was right. We did. We do. I gave silent thanks to the river, zipped the tent shut, and went back to bed.
On placid stretches, we lie back and let the current do the work. The canoe becomes a piece of driftwood, pushed wide on the bends, spun slowly in swirling eddies. Putting paddle to water is a means of imposing your will. There is risk in this, as it can cultivate an attitude of fighting against the river. To paddle is to eventually learn that the river cannot be conquered; it is bigger and deeper and more powerful than we are. It is best to work with the river, to use the inexorable current to help us place our canoe where we need it. This can involve some paradox; if we are caught in a fast moving stretch of water, and need to move towards the left bank of the river without slipping further downstream, we cannot simply paddle harder to power our way over, though this is a common instinct. If we do, we will get flushed downriver more quickly, toward the very thing we want to avoid.
The best strategy is to paddle backwards, keeping even with the shore—neither slipping downstream or working our way back upstream—and to angle the stern of the canoe towards the place we want to go (in strong current the angle needs to be small, lest we get spun around). As we paddle to keep the canoe in place, the current catches on our angled stern and ferries us to the spot we need to be. At the first few backward strokes, when we are trying to halt the canoe’s momentum, we will feel as though we are fighting the river—surely this can’t be the right strategy. But when the current grabs that angled end and we sense ourselves being moved to the left without so much as a stroke in that direction, we know the river is on our side, that canoe and water are one.
At the approach of rapids, I get a hollow ache in my gut, something like an acidic spurt of acid courses through my system. I am not an adrenaline junky; the river is not my wild version of an amusement park ride. I hear the rapids before I can see them, like a train in the distance. As I gaze ahead, moving slowly now, careful not to drift past the point of no return, I spot the dancing waves glinting in the sunshine. We pull over, drag the canoe half out of the water, and make our way downstream on foot, hopping from rock to rock, or bashing through thick riverside alders. It is important to go all the way to the end of the rapids, no matter how laborious, and asses it from the bottom up, plotting a strategy and gauging landmarks as we go. If the rapids are too big or complex, it is time to take to the woods and hope for a well-worn portage trail. More than likely, however, the portage will be a faint meandering thing, thick with mosquitoes and chock-full of blown down trees. No matter. Better to spend a grueling hour to get past 100 yards of churning river, than lose our boat and gear in a capsize.
If we do decide to run it, there is always fear in the gut and a hollowed out feeling in the arms. Back in the canoe, at the top of the rapids where the current runs strong and black, before the frothy turbulence, nothing is as it seems. The landmarks that stood out so clearly from the riverbank are obscured by our water-level vantage point. Often, at the brink, one of us is forced to stand—a frantic, wobbly move—in a last attempt to get our bearings. By then we are committed, and plunge into the dancing waves.
********************************
On the last night of our honeymoon, close the terminus of where the river flows into Hudson Bay, 10 miles or so upriver from the little town with its little airstrip where we would be ending our trip, we camped on a small island covered in long, swaying grass. It was early September and the nights were getting cold. We went to bed early with that feeling of anxiousness and excitement that accompanies transitions. We had been on the river close to a month; our daily routine had become a lifestyle, as automatic as breathing.
Sometime in the night I awoke, unzipped the tent, and gazed out. Our tent faced upstream, only a few feet from the water’s edge. The river was swift and shallow, undulating in the moonlight and spilling past our little island on its course to the bay. Tomorrow we would rejoin the flow, but tonight we were perched on the edge of it. I looked upstream to where the river turned round a bend, and thought about the miles that had led us to this spot: the glass calm lakes, the damnable wind, the days of bright, unbroken sky, the calluses etched on our hands from thousands of paddle strokes. We had spent days paddling in silence, had learned to make decisions with an unspoken nod, had started conversations that lasted for a week or more. I felt sure, sitting there in the moonlight on that little island, that the river had worked its way into us somehow, that we were all forever intertwined. Though we would leave and fly away and the river would freeze and thaw and flow again, I knew we would still be able to draw strength from it, even years from then.
And I was right. We did. We do. I gave silent thanks to the river, zipped the tent shut, and went back to bed.
2 comments:
A month? I simply cannot imagine. The New River is such a huge part of life here, one that I know I need to explore (a canoe is forthcoming, from some friends). Still, the idea intimidates me somehow. Being on a river, being a part of it, as you describe here, is very different than observing it (no matter how closely).
You must be bored to tears by now by my obsession with canoeing. I can't seem to help it.
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