Happy Canada Day! That’s not the first thing that came out of my mouth in the morning, it was more like “uhh, stupid David” as he bellowed out the morning wakeup call, which degenerated into a fit of laughing as Naomi ticked him. For you see, it was Sabbath, a day we traditionally have off, and I didn’t exactly feel like paddling. But then I remembered the scrumptious corn pancakes that were left over from the night before, and I thought that I better get up to eat them, or someone else would. So I got up and performed the morning routine, which had our canoe packed and ready to go before a few people were out of their tents yet. That left Lauren and I with a bit of time to kill, so we decided to clean up the camp site we had stayed in that night.

We picked up trash and stacked sticks and then took on the biggest challenge; the fire pit. You see, this fire pit was one of those fire pit that started out nice and round and cozy, but then over the years the ashes sort of spilled out over the rocks and turned it more into a fire mound, about 4 feet across. Since there was nothing else to do, we began to scrape the ashes back into a single pile. It didn’t work, there were just too many ashes for that little pit to contain. So we ended up getting our bailing bucket, the savaged remains of an orange juice container, and started to bail. I’m not exactly sure how many times we filled that brave bucket and spread the ashes in the forest, but it was a lot. After we got most of the ashes out we moved the rocks and raked all the soot up and replaced them. It was once again a neat and tidy fire ring after we were done with it, and we were still not the last ones ready to go.

Once we got on the water we discovered that our “relaxing” day of a mere 30 kilometers was going to be anything but. For you see we had a headwind. In our first 50 minute segment of paddling we worked much harder than should be allowable for the warm up segment, and went about half as far as we should have, so much for relaxing. We struggled on a few more segments to where the river broadened out into a large marsh with numerous side bogs and channels. There was one particular channel that rejoined the main channel some time later. So being the slacker that I am, I thought that it would be an easier time without the big rolling waves of the main channel. Mark and Anita, well known for their adventuring spirits agreed that it would be fun to take it. So we took it. It was a bit easier, the tall willows blocked the wind somewhat, and the small channel size didn’t allow big waves to build up. It was a very beautiful place to paddle. There were lots of water lilies and other flowering swamp plants. We paddled the 2 km expecting to rejoin the others at the main channel. There was only one problem; they hadn’t seen us slip into the side channel. We waited. They waited. We waited. They waited. Finally we decided to paddle back upstream to see if we could find them waiting for us. We started on our way when suddenly, out of the blue, 6 boats all came past within 10 minutes of each other. Mark, being a smart guy, thought to ask one of them if they had seen any canoes downstream. They hadn’t, so he asked them to tell our group that was waiting to hurry it up and get on the move if they saw them. The nice speed boat people happily obliged, and even came back to tell us they had found them waiting and that they were on the way.

After that was all over it was nearly 5 o’clock, and we had almost done our 30 km of the day, so we decided to start looking for a campsite. Let me tell you something about mile wide marshes, not too many campsites are nestled amongst the weeds. We paddled and looked longingly at the forest edge, hundreds of meters away. We kept paddling, hoping that the river would reveal the perfect campsite just around the next corner. Finally we took to the side channels that ran closest to the marsh edges, we actually got closer to the forest, but there was always impassable marsh between us and it. Around 8:00, we took an eating and rest break, which was much needed. We pulled into the cattails, where the still blowing wind wouldn’t push us back upstream. As most of us ate and relaxed, David started plucking the cat tails and weaving them together, within 10 minutes he had a cute, pointy sun visor. At that moment, everything changed. Boats that had been deemed loaded to the brim, suddenly sprouted new cargo room. Foot room turned into a veritable jungle of cat tails and reeds, decks were adorned with piles so high, I’m not sure how the stern paddler could see over. Everyone wanted to make something. I tried my hand at the sun visor, I’m not sure what happened, but when I put it on it was more like a Scandinavian war helmet than a visor, but that was ok too.

Some time later, after all the harvesting was done, we decided we had better get moving and find a camp site before dark. We headed out and found a good spot not too much later. By the time we had hauled all of our assorted gear up the 30 foot embankment we were treated to a wonderful sunset. A good close for a good Sabbath day.

By Michael Gregory

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