Northern Tier Canoe Base Expedition

July 10 - July 20, 2002

Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Growing Up

A very good day! It seemed like there were only one or two portages to negotiate for the entire trip to our next campsite. We took a short mid-morning break for some impromptu fun. We'd come upon a stretch of relatively tame rapids, and instead of portaging around them we'd just walked along the bank of the river and pulled the canoes through via the bow lines. Once we were through them we decided it would be safe enough to float back down the rapids in our life vests. I say "we", but in reality I was still a little nervous after the previous day's unscheduled swim. Eventually though, I decided to go for it. It was fun! Later, after lunch, while traversing a small lake we met another group of people. We'd not seen another human other than our own crew for six days. These folks were either stopping to rest or stopping to make camp on the shore of the lake, and were from somewhere in Saskatchewan. We all greeted them. I told them that after careful consideration we'd decided that we didn't like their mosquitoes. They laughed, agreed, then laughed harder when I said that if I had a saddle I'd ride one. The last portage of the day was a breeze, and a welcome break from the paddling. Compared to some of the trails we'd been over this one was like an eight-lane highway and getting over it was a stark contrast to the difficulties we'd had the first two days. One last stretch of paddling and we arrived at our next campsite. This was the one we'd been looking forward to all week. This spot was where we planned to spend Day Seven as a layover day, and the spot was gorgeous. What it was, was an island in the middle of the Bloodvein river, which split and formed rapids on both sides of the island as it flowed around the island. The campsite itself was about forty to fifty feet above the water and was large enough that we could spread out quite a bit with our tents. I'd paddled hard to get to the campsite first ahead of the other crews, for no other reason than just to get there first, and as a result my shoulders were screaming obscenities at me. No matter though, the place was absolutely beautiful. Dinner was good, the evening was good, the bugs were merciful. My son turned the tables on me. Instead of me encouraging him to keep going and to help get our tent pitched and our camp squared away, he was encouraging his tired dad! That moment alone was worth the entire trip for me, but then I'm like that. It was an interesting mix of feelings that night. On the one hand I was starting to miss being home but on the other hand I didn't want the trip and the time with him to ever end. After dinner, I got a big scare. He went down to the river to re-fill a water bottle. Some time went by and I decided to go down to check on him, and he was gone! He wasn't back at the camp site either. Thinking about how serious and treacherous rapids can be wasn't helping my state of mind any. A few minutes later he came wandering into camp from the opposite direction. Apparently I hadn't noticed when he came up from the river earlier and headed off into the brush to answer the call of nature. He told me it had scared him too a few days earlier when I'd jumped into the river to retrieve an escaping paddle, probably too close to the current near a stretch of rapids. Lesson learned. Just after we got to bed we heard the sounds of other people in our campsite. Another crew had just landed, and it was their first day on the water. As it turned out, they were from Hillsboro, Texas and judging from the looks of shocked desperation in their eyes they were having a Day One experience that was very similar to the one we'd had. We all pitched in to help them unload their canoes, welcomed them to share our campsite, and did our best to offer encouragement that it would indeed get better. Their wilderness interpreter, a young lady, said that they'd gotten a very late start because all the floatplanes had been tied up ferrying firefighters back and forth to fight the forest fire. Forest fire? What forest fire? We'd noticed the haze earlier in the day but hadn't thought any more about it. A few of us got up the next morning with the Hillsboro group when they left, and wished them well.