MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2017

60 ML BLUE FALL 2017 heavy, especially when it becomes waterlogged on a rainy day, but that’s easily overcome with a tumpline—that ancient headstrap used by people around the world to carry extraordinary loads. Canoeing skill and caution (namely, wet feet) erase its apparent delicateness. Best of all, wood-and-canvas canoes were designed to never end up in a landfill: dings and leaks are easily patched in the field with cloth and contact cement, and the canvas skin is meant to be replaced, at which point wooden components can also be refurbished, after a decade or so of use. My canoe is as good as new after its fourth rebuild. I feel most at home paddling a canvas canoe, packing an old-fashioned grub box known as a wannigan, and cooking over open fires in Temagami because this mosaic of lakes, rivers and tall pines remains a stronghold of traditional tripping. From its base on Lake Temagami, Camp Keewaydin has outfitted youth trips for over a century. After starting out with Ojibwa-built birchbark canoes, their fleet hasn’t evolved past wood-and-canvas. Keewaydin continues to send girls and boys on multi-week expeditions throughout canoe country, from Temagami’s well- established routes to the endless boreal forest of Ontario’s far north and the powerful, unknown rivers of northern Quebec. After all this, it is no stretch to rank Keewaydin alumni amongst Canada’s finest canoeists. I wasn’t fortunate enough to attend a canoe camp like Keewaydin, but I feel a kinship with the generations of youth who have experienced the old ways. Handling a wooden canoe in rock-studded waters comes with certain responsibility. It’s similarly rewarding to kindle a cook fire in a driving rain or to master the fickle tumpline to portage an impossible load. Plastic canoes and gas stoves are prostheses designed to conquer the wilderness; on the other hand, relying on skill and simple, time- tested equipment instils a profound sense of humility—and pride at trip’s end. Because of its steep, bouldery portages, the Lady Evelyn River is said to be one of Temagami’s toughest canoe routes. Yet it’s a typical trip for Keewaydin campers in junior high school. Exhausted after a day of hard carries, I set up camp beneath red pines at the river’s edge. Keewaydin’s trip reports often allude to their battered green canoes as living entities, identified by the number stencilled on each boat’s bow. These canoes are great companions, I think, as I begin the nightly ritual of gazing longingly at my canoe, which rests overturned on a smooth rock. Like nothing else, this triggers memories of past trips and dreams of future adventures. It brings to mind the mariner’s saying: “A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.” Perhaps it’s because of the outdoor industry’s message of “ultralight and indestructible” that I cling so stubbornly to a heavy and fragile wood-and- canvas canoe.