Tuesday June 11, 2014
In East Hidden Bay with a citrus swallowtail drifting by. This afternoon I paddled to the top of Comeback Bay at the top of the East Channel to measure time and distance for when I paddle across the lake from the mouth of Miridian Creek.
A mossy dome of rock ahead of me is dappled with sunlight and a pale yellow log chewed by beavers to resemble a paddle, floats in the shallows. The sun singes my skin.
The peak of Comeback Bay is sandy which clouds the water. Odd where one finds beaches in this lake. Though I sailed this way with Adam I have never paddled beyond Wolverine and never found this bay, so this counts as part of my final lake exploration.
July 30, 2014
I’ve had supper and now enjoy the coming of nightfall on an island south of Dad’s Narrows. The weather is so calm it made sense to do an overnight exploration of places I’ve not been: the upper North Channel and Hannay Bay in the west channel where I hope to locate the portage with Crater Bay. I brought my wheels just in case it is a workable portage and found they seemed to catch on the cords for the rudder release. I could find nowhere to stop and fix this until I landed on Indian Island where I ate my lunch.
Getting the kayak packed for camping is a lengthy ordeal and I hope Monday will be easier thanks to this jaunt. The paddle has relaxed me. A beaver made a leisurely pass ten feet from the rock where I sit and circles to take a second look at me. There is moose scat in the bush behind my tent but this late in the season I have no reason for concern.
I saw a pair of young otters earlier and an Osprey magnificent in flight sailing up Magdalene Creek.
Leaving Denare Beach I saw five kayaks. When I began this exploration I only knew of two. Back then there were a couple of houseboats and pontoon boats were unheard of. Now they fill every bay within easy reach of the village. Once in the North Chanel I saw two motor boats and not a single fisherman at Dad’s Narrows. High summer is no time for Northern Pike or Walleye. This spot has no sound or sight of other humans. For how many years will this continue?
Paddling the bays of the North West corner of Amisk Lake I saw Bowes Cabin and then noticed another on the map and went in search of what I hoped was a tumble down log structure.
After following a trail through wild rice I found the old dock from Main Beach decked with lights powered by a solar panel on the roof of a stylish structure.
I didn't want to stop though it looked deserted. There was an unpleasant feel to the place and I was glad to get back to open water.
Friday July 31, 2014
I went to sleep in the humid tent with mosquitoes humming like overtaxed hydro lines overhead. A large flying insect bombarded the fabric periodically and this morning I could identify it as some sort of spruce bug mottled white and grey. A female perhaps?
I forget how the forest amplifies the sound of wind and thought I would exit my calm tent to enter a hurricane. Not at all. The wind is light but has changed back to default North West and the clouds rumble among the decreasing patches of blue sky. I’ve dried my tent fly on a sunny rock and should pack it up before rain comes, though urgency must be balanced with pleasure at these times. I can take time to savour a steaming mug of Bengal Spice tea.
This I’ve chosen instead of the usual Red Rose Orange Pekoe as I’m cutting milk out of the camping mix and finding bonuses for so doing: My coffee flask taints regular tea but adds a certain piquancy to Bengal Spice. I’ve brought beans from the garden and used the water for boiling them to make tea – what other surprise awaits?
A chipmunk dashes over a rock beyond the kayak. What I thought was a fox sunning herself on a neighboring island turns out to be a stump. The largest creature today is the beaver whose spashings I heard late in the night when it was cold enough to get into my sleeping bag.
This spot has served me well so I’ll note it for other paddlers. It’s doubtful I shall come this way again as the North Chanel can be a problematic paddle, but more problematic is my left wrist. I had X-rays and blood tests on Wednesday for what looks like Osteoarthritis at the base of the thumb joint. It only bothers me when getting out of the tent, hauling gear, scrambling up rocks, rolling the mattress pad, in fact everything to do with camping but otherwise stays curled up, a growling ache like a sulking hound, waking in an instant to bite. The thought of a degenerative condition prompts my determination to complete the lake's exploration.
A light rain begins falling causing the tent packing to happen summarily. It increases in intensity enough for me to consider Plan B (head back home the way I came, excursion cancelled) , but when 9 a.m. comes the sun is spreading its watery light across the lake, crows call, a squirrel broadcasts its neighborly chatter and optimism rises.
Time to pack the kayak. All essentials are close at hand: the intense smelling environmentally pleasing insect repellent which only works the minute of application; (though the smell remains the mosquitoes bite); my recorder which I play to dispel nerves at night and to inform any mammal with half an auditory sense that a human to be respected is here; a zip-loc container of salt, not for flavoring food but removing leeches. Eight adhered to my toes when I removed my plastic Crocs last night;camp shoes, a stout pair essential for keeping ankles in alignment on rough island terrain; umbrella providing not only sail but a roof for the writer on land surprised by rain and a paddler needing to keep self kayak interior dry. I get the feeling I shall be using the umbrella on and off during the day, but the scene for the next half hour is sunny– Plan A is intact.
Coming through Monarch Narrows I stopped to take a photo and heard an unfamiliar chirping accompanied by a low cough. This proved to be a family of otters, three little ones twisting themselves in happy knots while mother fished nearby, her grunting bark informing them of her whereabouts. Rain came and went while wind increased. In Hannay Bay I found what I thought was the portage to Crater Bay but it was overgrown and I could not make out much of a trail.
As I left the bay a motor boat pulled up alongside me and I don’t recognize him though he seems to know who I am.
“You’re a long way from home,” he said.
It would have been too much information to tell him this was a bay I had missed the three times I’d been around Missi Island.
The wind picked up after turning east at Hudson Bay Point so much so that I took the south side of Crater Island, stopping at the beach there.
Near Pipestone Narrows rain caused a delay and I had to put on rain gear and don the spray skirt.
From then on it was cross winds and wild waves which never let up as I had missed the more sheltered northerly passage and kept having to cross wide bodies of water. It calmed as I neared home, exhausted after twelve hours of continuous paddling.
How bleak I felt when I awoke in the night with my right arm numb from shoulder down which no amount of shaking changed. Gradually sensation came back to my thumb and forefinger but not the other three fingers. I began to wonder if I was wise to attempt the McKenzie Bay trip even if the weather was good, but a dinner invitation and a chat with fried Edgar set my mind at rest.
Numb thumb and forefinger would have suggested Carpel Tunnel, he said, but mine looked like poor shoulder alignment – slouching when I paddle. I had to agree:indeed I do,especially when waters are rough. He also said my arms should be at my sides when sleeping, not bent – a plan to survive the next thirty years, as he put it. Timely advice.
Monday August 4, 2014
Buz loaded the kayak in the truck so I could set off from the mouth of Meridian Creek and head due west, cutting out the wide lower reaches of the lake. I would be his mother’s birthday today, as well as the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I. Buz told me 4 year old Betty had quite a grievance that war’s declaration put the kibosh on her birthday party.
Buz’s thoughtfulness and pride in seeing me off gave me pause for how easy it has been to blame him for what I fail to do. What stories my mind makes up, what false beliefs a mind can create.
As I paddled out of the creek and set my compass point I watched my shoulders and found no numbness developing though the paddle was grueling. This is my compass point, midway across.
As I reached the far shore a boat drew up and a Cree woman called to me, offering a bottle of iced water. She asked how long I had been paddling and I said three hours but perhaps she was thinking days. Then she asked if I was Buz’s wife. Do people know me from all the myriad paddlers now on the lake?
I couldn’t find the island I’d camped on the first abortive trip but finding the river was easy.
Cabins abandoned when Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs moved this population to Indian Island west of Denare Beach in the ‘Fifties are now used again in summer.
I stopped at the DNR cabin where a large poplar had fallen. The building was undamaged and when I looked inside all was clean and orderly. I could see an area of grass had been flattened for tents and full garbage cans by the dock. I wondered if campers from St John Boscoe – the wilderness camp my granddaughter completed last weekend - had stopped here.
It would have been an easy place for me to camp but I felt like a trespasser and besides garbage and bears go together, so I paddled instead to Berry Island which has satisfactory rocks and just enough space to pitch the tent. My hatchet came in useful, clearing young poplars.
It is a hot night and the light wind has disappeared. I’ve not put the fly over the tent and wonder if a thunderstorm or heavy dewfall may give me come-uppance.
My tent this day in history has me remembering my Dad’s canvas tent, one of the few things he kept from his military service in the North Africa war. We often sent the tent up on our front lawn in Rhodesia. I can smell it, scents of dry grass and hot fabric. His sky in the desert would have had this same grey caste, there from dust, here from humidity and disstant forest fire smoke. The sun would have been the same deep orange.
Tuesday August 5, 2014
I woke to bird song and grey sky at five am.
This dew fall on the tent roof had not dripped through and I was comfortable and plenty warm enough without the fly. However I’d had periods of nausea and brought in a saucepan in case I vomited - something my son and two of his younger children experienced recently. It did no more than slow me down, and the aroma of spearmint with its pretty mauve flowers took care of the nausea.
Once again I’ve had leaches – sucking on my foot through the neoprene sock! I can hear their delight every time I load or unload the kayak: “Mammalian blood! OMG!” What would a cartoon leach sound like, I wonder. Like the voice of Monster Mash?
I’d realized last night that the site of the Franklin expedition’s overwinter must be on Moody Bay not McKenzie and sure enough I found first one beach reminding me of what Russell had told me after a sailing trip with Glen.
A short walk in from the beach this hunting hide.
Then I found a second beach with a red triangle indicating the Balsam Lake Portage.
This I believe is the site of the Franklin Expedition though I saw nothing that said so, just an old sink and a big fire pit made of limestone. I wandered up the portage which had been cleared for a section, but gave up when fallen trees made the going tough.
McKenzie Bay proved a Wizard of Oz scenario. After all these years striving to get here, what a let down! Wild rice in great swaths and none of the birds which made Moody Bay merry , though I did see otters and a magnificent beaver dam. But otherwise, nothing but a rice paddy.
As I paddle east the limestone formations of the shoreline enchant me
but I soon become anxious when I don’t find the spot I camped the abortive last trip to McKenzie Bay. I’d all but given up when I found this spot: flat slabs and easy unloading of the kayak. Only one leach! It is after 9 pm. I’ll eat first then put up the tent.
Wednesday August 6, 2014
No dew fall on the tent and no mosquitoes with the dry light breeze. The sun is bright white. Overhead the flight from Juno Alaska is on its polar circuit way south. Today’s water bottles are filled from last night’s boiling and today I brew Bengal Spice in the thermos and mug.
The ideal nature of this spot keeps revealing itself. The kayak, instead of being pulled up close to the weedy land of leeches and slimy rocks, rests on the water and I can pull it into position to unload and load. The tent is on as horizontal a patch as I could find anywhere and I can putter around in bare feet able to wash in clean water inches from my chair, and there are gentle steps from the water onto dry land.
Anxiety over where to camp in this south lakeshore dogged me yesterday. After five o’clock I paddled with nothing in mind better than a spot big enough to put a tent, rejecting one place after the other. The way the dry pack and my life jacked sat on the front of the kayak gave the impression a watcher constantly examining the shore. I saw possibilities with difficult landings but this collection of blackened slabs drew an instant Aha! What can I say about the helper, the friend I’m so conscious of when paddling? No better than Rumi. As a child I heard about the Guardian Angel from my Grandmother Phoebe. What is the provenance of that Guardian, I wonder?
The Juno-bound flight passes over and the waves increase, sending the kayak beating against the rock beside it. That sound created anxiety in the night. Anxiety seems the curse of creative thinkers – what if? the default response. What if the kayak breaks loose its mooring? What if it fills with water? What if the wind gets stronger, a storm comes and I’m stranded? A litany of negative stories.
To stem the troubling questions I tried to hear all the night sounds as a chorale. In the water swirling in the cracks and caverns below me I heard children laughing as if tossed here and there on rides in a funfair. I imagined women’s voices, playful and joyous which made me think of the otters I’ve seen every day of this trip, their light-heartedness always lifting my spirits, but this happy theme is syncopated with another, intense and sung by tenors, earnest and workmanlike, like the beaver, always striving: water breaking down rock with dogged persistence. Strife and play in never-ending conflict as water sloshes in the cracked limestone of my temporary home. Bases sing the deep roar of wind resonating in the forest and the kayak beats the drum in urgent counterpoint: Arbeit! Arbeit! Arbeit über alles! Like my own nature, the need to work and get things done is always at odds with the thirst for play. And when the sun rises, clarity and fresh perspective washes all anxiety away.
Time for tea and another positive about not using milk: hygiene. I use no soap on the lake and prefer a rinse for a quick clean-up. Other simplicities: heating left-overs which I brought frozen in a cooler, heated in an improvised double boiler, the bottom section boiling water for the next day. With limited fuel and a small camp stove this works well. While I like making a fire when time is not a factor, an exploration like this gives time in the morning but not the evening; letting a delicious meal heat while supping a glass of Cranberry cocktail and moonshine allows time to write. It pleases the palette too. Last night I had vegetarian lasagna with olives and zucchini; the night before, chickpea curry with raisins, yams and spinach; heavenly!
With all these skills learned I am leaving these excursions on the lake behind. Today after I have explored Warehouse Bay, I will have finished my circumnavigation, marking the end of these trips. I’ve waited three years for this completion. The south of this lake can be deadly for small craft, and for two years I contented myself with sojourns on favorite islands in the north because the weather was too wild in these wide open waters. Now it is over. My need for solitude is met in different ways and summers are for family and grandchildren. These kayak travels have taught me to follow the trail as it reveals itself, as it always does if ego doesn’t take control. The majesty of this watery paradise tends to keep a check on her.
It is now shortly after three and heavy waves and an amorphous grey mass in the sky above has prompted taking shelter on the back of this little cape. There is a red Coleman canoe on its side, filled with water but in otherwise perfect shape. There is a wide expanse of water to cross and the waves are getting quite wild enough, plus I’d have to take them at an angle to work toward the eastern shore. Strong following waves are the most troubling in my experience and I can easily get worn out. In the back of my mind an idea is growing about how to approach waves, as I review this afternoon’s paddle.
I entered Warehouse Bay along its eastern shore which is reedy but free of wild rice. Outcrops of limestone slabs are rare here with most rocks along the shoreline rounded. The lake floor I noticed while working through reed beds, is sandy and not surprisingly I found a narrow beach for an easy lunch stop.
A grebe and ten little ones exploded in splashing and nasal quacking in response to a Bald Eagle that erupted out of a tree at the kayak’s approach. I found the grassy promontory where the Hudson’s Bay Company had its factors from the Orkneys set up a warehouse or factory on this most beaver-rich lake, all to keep men in Europe in their stylish hats.
The Orkney boys were chosen for their ability to withstand harsh climate and isolation plus their seamanship in small craft and their numeracy from an enlightened Scottish education. I look at this shoreline through their eyes, imagine them paddle with the Cree families they married into and gave their Orkney names: Flett, Linklater, Beardy, making this land, this lake their own.
I sit beside this pool and look across at the final short stretch of shoreline left to explore.
9.15 pm. Restlessness would not let me stay but when I left and saw five pelicans the penny dropped: this was the place I holed up in my last attempt at McKenzie Bay! How had I forgotten? No doubt because those rainy hurricane days I spent in the tent!
As I paddle the final stretch, try as I might I can see none of the petroglyphs that knowledgeable folk say are in this bay. Rather I see what looks like a frog, a dog, a lizard, a bird and all manner of circles and lines but can’t tell if they were due to erosion, imagination or human hands. I need someone to point them out. There is pink tagging beside some rocks which makes me look at them even more closely but realize the tag indicated a humane animal trap.
For the first time ever the waves don't dictate my route. I finally begin applying what I’ve known all along about kayaks: they handle lateral waves well, so very well in fact I feel guilty when motorboats courteously slow down to stop their wake troubling my craft. A Kayak bobs as lackadaisically as a feather on sideways waves, unlike canoes which are top heavy.
Instead of facing the direction of the waves or cautiously creating a gently angle towards where I want to go, I turn and travel along the waves, letting them rock me from side to side as I watch for the breaker which would require a quick turn.
Instead of facing the direction of the waves or cautiously creating a gently angle towards where I want to go, I turn and travel along the waves, letting them rock me from side to side as I watch for the breaker which would require a quick turn.
How well it works. How long have I known this about my craft and have not applied it? How often do we do just this, know something and not act on our knowledge?
Myrna and Glenn had warned me about the ocean style rollers of the lake’s south so I’m not too surprised when I find myself looking down the bow at what feels like forty-five degrees but I do breathe a sigh of relief when I level out only to be lifted even higher, and again, and then a rogue wave slaps me from my right. Instantly I struggle for alignment with paddle and foot on the rudder. The next wave is gentler and I continue heading across them until the next sequence of giants strikes.
It gets steadily worse and I have the most demanding yet exhilarating paddle of my life. I’m soaked through when I finally make landfall and sponge out the water I’ve shipped, then work my up to Meridian Creek, the waves seeming to grow with each barrage. When I look for an island to camp, a wave dumps the kayak on a submerged rock, drenching me and I count my lucky stars this didn’t happen miles from land. A sheltered domed rock appears where I can pull the kayak right out of the crashing water, and though I can see hydro wires along the road to my left, I’m grateful to bale out the kayak, change into dry clothes heat my food and set up my sleeping spot.
The sky in the south is bruised and darkening and I’ve put on the fly and will rain-proof everything else before brushing my teeth. There’s a change in the weather and I’m relieved to be on this side of the lake where there are islands for shelter. Amisk has tested my paddling limits today but this was by no means the worst she can do. Close to civilization on my last night of exploring this lake, I am still rocking on the waves as I drift into sleep.
Thursday August 6, 2014
I patted myself on the back for the precautions I’d taken when a sprinkle of rain started within minutes of my turning in and later in the night when it poured. When morning comes I relish each dry garment as I pull it on. There is no need to light the stove as I have delicious cold chai to accompany my regular home-made granola, trail mix and apple sauce.
Packing the third morning is a piece of cake, and I do downward-facing-dog to give my tendons a good stretch as I get the air out of the super thick mattress pad. I’ve simplified the arrangement so that all food, cooking requirements, large water jug and garbage are in the back compartment along with my night pack. Chair, day pack and kitchen pack go on top. In the front goes tent and mattress pad with bedding in a dry pack on top with small water bottle, umbrella, hatchet, compass and map.
When I arrive home I can transport it all from lake to house in our yellow wheelbarrow which sets me thinking about refugees, mile upon mile of them abandoning all but the possessions they can transport. If I were ever to flee disaster like the thousands of my sisters currently on the move, this is what I’d want to take, these essentials for sustaining life, materials for writing and my recorder for music. But even as I contemplate this I am aware that in this part of the planet water routes are the best means of escape and a canoe or kayak the vehicle I’d choose, season permitting.
How truly fortunate I am, I realize as I paddle north through a garden of rounded islands softened by reindeer moss and miniaturized spruce, birches and willows, all silver greens with grey lichens. In a gap open to the swells of the great lake the kayak bounces and I hear the persistent roar of rollers to the west.
The grey green water turns blue as the haze lifts and the sun comes out, brightening greens and goldenrod. The white flash of a Belted Kingfisher sparkles against dark spruces.
Thanks to the south wind and my umbrella sail I have made good time and the irony of it makes me smile. I took up kayaking because Buz abandoned our canoe for his sail boat. Now his knees are no longer up to his Siren’s demands and he’s put it up for sale. As the Denare Beach microwave tower comes into view I sail past the green slopes where Split Island meets Hamm, where Silo Beach was the destination of many flotillas, Buz arriving by sail and me by kayak, I picture us after a twenty year canoeing hiatus, paddling with our current dogs, following the split through the island and landing on the beach.
Buz gives me a wonderful welcome home, but it is Thursday night and time for Bridge and I take the dogs along our bay’s shoreline to Myrna and Glenn’s. Our Commodore is recovering from hip surgery so sailing is out of the question, but he is eager to follow the map where I have been, and recalls trips with Russell to the places I point out. Myrna talks about her plan to paddle a canoe around the lake in one go, not caring how long it might take and with a shake of her head says it’s unlikely to happen. But mine has, four days as a time. She raises her glass in a toast.
I tell her about being a immigrant, not knowing names of trees here, what cloud formations meant. Even the constellations in the night sky were foreign, and the pied crows of my childhood had more in common with ravens than the diminutive crows here. Would I ever stop feeling a foreigner? Would I ever belong?
Even after raising my children I still heard myself referred to as a newcomer. Getting to know every inlet and island of this lake was my way of getting a sense of belonging, and yet how the picture of refugees haunts this thought. Who of us can forever hold onto what they call their home?
Myrna talks about DP’s, the Displaced Persons who came to her hometown of The Pas Manitoba after World War II. Her mother warned her to stay away from “those people.” Recently on a local web forum these words spoken against someone with a differing viewpoint: “MY family’s lived here for over fifty years.” As if they can never be displaced by fire, flood or mayhem.
I heard those very words in bygone Rhodesia and they held the same bullying tone, and where are the speakers now? If this lake exploration has taught me anything it is that where we live is a paradise as fragile as any on earth and all of us are mere visitors. As the forest has overgrown Beaver City, decay has erased the Hudson Bay’s post on Warehouse Bay, portages have been obliterated, so all we hold dear can disappear as surely as we will. What will remain? My guess is the truly great feats of our kind, one being the creation of long dead Inuit: their brilliant design of this magical craft, the kayak.
