I Dislike Golf

I had a pleasant revelation this morning while leaving the house. The weather was cool and I pulled on a jacket as I went out the door. I thought, “this would be the kind of day when it would be good to have a jumper in your golf bag.”

Then I thought, “God, I hope no one asks me to play golf today.” 

I have this thought a lot lately. Particularly when talking to friends, bosses and business colleagues who I know like, nay, love, golf. When they ask me if I enjoy the game (the question mark is a formality), I always respond perkily “Oh yeah! Heh, heh! I love a round every now and then. But man I suck! Ho ho! (insert slap on the back / crude golf reference here)”

This is my standard reply and it is carefully calculated to assure my questioner that while – since I am a man, man, man – I play golf and dearly love it like every other real man in this man-eat-man world, I am so horrid at the game that inviting me to play with you would be a chore on par with helping your poor old Uncle Stew pee when he comes over to the house for Christmas.

This usually works. I am invited to play golf rarely. When it comes up at work, I always accept tentatively and work like a Spartan to find a sub (“Now luckily Ryan in Tax is available. He’s the man! Shot 83 last week at PigeonFoot. Yes! PigeonFoot!” I never can remember the fancy club’s name but find that if you make one up, your listener will nod sagely).

When I am forced into a round, I happily take on my designated role of smart-ass in the foursome, taking and setting myself up for the jokes about how shitty I am (“Hey Bob! If there’s anyone in this tournament who’s pissed you off lately just point’em out to me and I will not aim for them with this drive! Ayooooh!”).

I don’t own clubs. I don’t own cleats. I don’t own a car. I went as far as buying a hat once that had the word “PING” written across it in large font, but that just made me feel like I was wearing something that would have gotten me beat up in junior high. Again. So my day on the course typically leaves me somewhere north of Toronto, Arctically north of par and wondering why the hell I just paid about $200 for this experience.

The worst thing is, over the years, I have actually deluded myself into thinking I like golf. That I just need more time at it / just need to learn more about it / just need to play it in the right setting.

That’s bullshit.

This morning I finally admitted it – I dislike golf.  God, it feels good to say it.

Now, the temptation is to title this blog “I hate golf.” But that would be inaccurate and, based on the 28,800,416 hits when I googled that quote this morning, repetitive.  Hate is too strong a word for how I feel about golf. I feel about golf the way I feel about gardening, tepas and the name “Brian”. I just don’t get the allure and I don’t know if I want to spend much time figuring it out (sorry Spain).

I’ve tried looking at it from a bunch of angles. One friend of mine raves about the strategy of the game. Seriously? How much strategy is there in facing a 90 mph westerly wind and saying “Hmmm… better compensate for this…” Aren’t the number of golfers killed by lightning while taking shelter under a tree with a bag of metal rods argument enough against the idea that the game is the domain of master tacticians (sorry Widow Flannigan)?

And c’mon guys, it is a little friggin’ long don’t you think? Any sport that takes 5-6 hours to tell you that you suck at it is heading for cricket-ville (sorry India). I mean, even if you like the walk and everything, how often do you go walking for 5-6 hours; on a Saturday?

Which brings me to the exercise element of the game. There is none, relatively speaking. Sure, I know you’re tired after 18 holes, but so is the kid who just worked the same amount of time at Winners and I know they sweated more than you.  As one fellow disliker (identity protected) said to me this morning while we held hands on the way to the subway, “It’s great exercise. If you’re 82 and can’t walk anymore.”

Now I’m veering towards the hate side of the spectrum, I know. Let me pull back. I still only dislike golf. Chances are, I’ll continue to play it once or twice a year for the rest of my life. In fact, I’ve signed up for a round at a premiere club when I travel to Jasper later this month. What could I say? I was asked sooo nicely and I don’t know anyone willing to fly to Jasper to sub for me. Ryan’s busy.

Luckily, I hear it’s one of the nicest places to dislike golf in the world. So I’ll play, endure the jokes about how easily my kid sister is out-driving me and comment gamely on what a lovely mowing job they’ve done on the 8^th fairway this season. All the while, I’ll think about the kids playing Ultimate on the lawn across from the clubhouse, how I could have hiked a good way up any one of the surrounding mountains in this amount of time, and how Mark Twain was right – golf is a nice walk spoiled.

But I’ll be honest with myself and the rest of my foursome. I might be having fun, but I’m not enjoying it.

Jason Murphy dislikes golf but loooves procrastination

 

Missinaibi River Conclusion – The Facts of Life are Soggy

“Let’s play a game,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

We were bobbing on Brunswick Lake at the end of a six hour rainstorm. Everything about us was wet – our skin was pruny and seemingly every piece of gear from our sodden campsite dripped with moisture. We had changed our official team name from Team Screaming Eagle (easily the coolest paddling team name ever ) to Team Soggy Eagle (still cool, just damper).

Now the sky was finally beginning to brighten. I suggested we each sing a song from a classic television show.  Janine and Sean agreed to play along.

I sang the themes from “Cheers” and “Transformers”. The latter was a big hit with Sean, who, while bobbing his head silently to a variety of internally hummed tunes, could not remember a single word of a single t.v.  theme.  “I can hum the theme of ‘House’,” he said hopefully. “Does that count?”

“No,” I told him. Because as fun as singing your favourite t.v. theme is, crushing a child’s budding enthusiasm is even better.

It was Janine’s turn to take the spotlight. “I’ve got one!” she said happily. But then her expression wavered. “Oh, I don’t know all the words.”

“That’s okay,” I encouraged (Crushing a child’s budding enthusiasm is fun. Crushing your wife’s is just stupid). “ Just sing what you know.” Sean absent-mindedly nodded his agreement with this rule change, still tapping out a half-remembered tune on the side of the canoe. A pair of loons, bobbing, watched us from near the weedy shoreline.

“Okay!” said Janine, clearing her throat.  “Doo dee doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, The Facts of Life!  The Facts of Life!”

And that’s how our trip got a theme song.

***

Funny thing about rapids. You can run a C3 that you probably shouldn’t and come through it as dry as a cork. But you can flip while sideslipping down a burbling C1. With skill and planning you can run just about anything in your skill level with a high degree of safety. But the water is its own master. And sometimes, it’s a bit of a prick.

We’d had a fantastic 2 days of rapid play, including a cute run down the C1-filled Brunswick River, an exciting ferry past a roaring ledge at Two Portages Falls, and a zig-zagging thrill ride at the Devil Shoepack Rapids. By the end of today, our confidence was high. We hadn’t had a bad experience yet. Now we faced our final obstacle of the day – a ledgy C2 at the bottom of the 5km Albany Rapids. Our guidebook said there was a centre channel that was runnable.

We scouted it to be sure. After some serious discussion, Team Soggy Eagle agreed that the centre could be run, provided we hauled some serious ass to the right at rapid’s bottom to avoid a big curling wave. We’d already run tougher-looking stuff this trip. Pushing off from shore and ferrying back up to the centre of the river, we shouted our game plan one last time, gave the Eagle cry (a cool scream that is a dead ringer for an eagle screech) and headed down the dark, churning water.

I still can’t figure out what flipped us. All I know is, one minute we’re at the bottom and just about out of the big rollers and the next we’re swimming in the tea-coloured waters of the Missinaibi.

The team took it very well. Sean claimed that he found the whole experience kind of cool. Janine looked a blend of shocked embarrassed and highly amused.

Luckily, the rapid emptied into a particularly calm, though particularly wide portion of the river. All we had to do was swim and tug a fully-loaded capsized boat 15 minutes to shore.

As I breast-stroked and frog-kicked my way towards the beach, I was annoyed, but generally relieved. We were safe, the canoe was still floating (upside down, but that counts too, right?) and all our gear appeared to be still inside. The sun was out and we’d be dry again soon enough. This would be more of an inconvenience than anything else – a humorous anecdote to tell Sean’s parents the next time they were thinking of leaving their only child alone with us.

I stroked, kicked, kicked and tugged the boat a little further towards the bank. “The Facts of Life. The Facts of Life. Doo dee doo doo doo doo doo ……..”

***

Later that night – our last of the trip – I lay in the tent, reflecting on the trip, thinking that I’d enjoyed it as much for the company as for the river itself. I figured that, years from now, I’d probably remember more about our little group’s fire side chats and board game sessions in the tent than I did about the river itself. Maybe that had something to do with the river itself. Despite its latest little surprise, we’d grown comfortable with it; thought, maybe, we even knew it a little.

Before clicking off my headlamp, I reread one of my favourite passages from Grey Owl:

And so, day succeeding day, we go forward. And as we penetrate deeper and ever deeper into this enchanted land, the River marches with us. More and more to us a living thing, it sometimes seems as if it were watching us, like some huge sleeping serpent that observes us dreamily, lying there secure in his consciousness of power while we, like Lilliputians, play perilously on his back. Until, to our sudden consternation, he awakens, as though some austere immovable landmark that you had passed a thousand times before should rise one day and look you in the face and ask you what you did there; so does this serpent, that is the River, turn on us unexpectedly, and writhe and hiss and tear and lash out at us in fierce resentment at our audacity.

I now know that you should never read ominous prophecies the night before the end of a trip.

***

“I still don’t see a ‘clear deep channel’,”  I said, wiping a film of water off the top of my map case, reading Hap Wilson’s description of the last rapid on the Missinaibi before our end-point at the town of Mattice.  Though I certainly saw the drop that Wilson warns you to watch out for at the end of this C1 tech. The only problem was, the “drop” seemed to be a rather rocky ledge that extended across the whole river.

Janine and Sean said little. Like me, they were wet and tired, done with packing up wet tents on grey mornings, and just wanted to get this thing done. Not the best and sharpest frame of mind in which to run white water.

We ran an easy swift near the top of the rapid on river right, then grabbed an eddy and paused. The rest of the ride on this side of the Missinaibi seemed to terminate in a ledge – a smooth black line marking its edge a few dozen yards ahead of us. But over on river left there seemed to be a gushing vein of beige water moving between two large rocks. We ferried across and sized it up from the boat while tucked into another eddy. We’d have to thread the needle between those two rocks just right, but otherwise it looked doable. We peeled out and headed for the roaring “V”.

The current made a determined effort to dash us on the left-most rock, but we hauled determined to the right and scooched down between the two obstacles.  We were screaming instructions and whooping for joy when my heart dropped instantaneously into my guts.

There was another rock. A big, big rock. Cunningly hidden just below the “V”, which, from below, you would see was splitting smoothly around it. But from the top of the rapid, it was invisible. Well, I didn’t see it anyway. Not until it was too late.

“Right! RIGHT! RIGHT!!!” we yelled. “ROCK! SHIT!”

We nearly made it. But the canoe grazed the rock side ways enough to tilt it facing up-stream. Janine and most of our gear were immediately jettisoned out of the boat by the funnelled water and into the pool below. Sean and I gamely leaned down stream for a second in an effort to keep the canoe’s gunwhales from dipping. But the battle was lost almost immediately, and we hopped out of the boat and onto the rock just as the water filled our little craft with hundreds of litres of liquid and unfathomable pounds of pressure, molding her around the rock like so much silly putty.

I have a good crew. Janine, still bobbing in the water, couldn’t hear any instructions I shouted to her. But as soon as she understood that the canoe was a goner, she began swimming after our gear, particularly our sat phone. I got to tell Sean, officially, that we had to abandon ship, and with that little official pronouncement, we hopped into the river and started swimming for shore.

We were about an hour from town.

***

Owen, the owner of Missinaibi Outfitters, who had shuttled us to our starting point on the river 10 days ago, listened intently to our plight over the sat phone.  He didn’t hesitate. “I’m on my way,” he said as soon as I described where we were. “I just gotta get the engine on my boat.”

He must have bolted from his house in Mattice. Because within an hour, we were sitting in his boat and motoring back downstream towards his camp. We knew from our initial shuttle ride with Owen that he was a friendly and knowledgeable guide. Now, he elevated himself in our eyes to God-send level. 

He eyed the rapid expertly. “This one has changed a lot,” he said. “Last year, I drove my boat up the middle of this rapid to bring a prospector up the River. Now it’s completely different. The ice break up comes through here like a giant bulldozer see? It can move around the big rocks like they’re nothing.” He tutted and shook his head at the water. “And this rain! The river’s two feet higher than normal for this time of year.”

He drove me out to the wreck of our canoe and tried to pry it off with me, but it was useless. Trying to move a canoe pinned like that is like trying to push a car sideways.  Our boat was as finished as our trip.

Besides the canoe though, we had come through the accident relatively unscathed. Sean was out one boot and we’d each lost a fishing rod. Otherwise, everything else was intact except our pride.  We’d actually been incredibly lucky – the Missinaibi is a terrible river for rescue. Float planes generally can’t land on it and the shore is too thick for easy helicopter rescue.  If we’d dumped anywhere else, we could have been in for a truly uncomfortable (not to mention expensive) experience. As it was, Owen, exhibiting true Northern Canadian hospitality, wouldn’t take a cent for all his troubles in getting us out of the jam.

As we got into our car, Owen told us that, if he could make the time, he’d go and check on the rapid in a couple of weeks and make an effort to retrieve the hull of our boat. Though hopes were dim. “It’s really a shame,” the big man said genuinely, shaking his head.

We should have been more down. But we’d just changed into dry clothes for the first time in three days. There was a poutine stand just a couple of kilometres down the road. And for some ironic reason, it had just stopped raining.

“Don’t worry about it Owen,” we told him.

This kind of thing’s just a fact of life.

 JM

 

Missinaibi Days 7 and 8 – Where we’ve been all this time

We have taken yet another rest day and are not apologizing to anybody.

Our residence (and I think we’ve been here long enough to call it that) is an island in Brunswick Lake. Its granite shores slope steeply up to a flat campsite bristling with Red Pines. The height allows the lake breeze to keep the mosquitoes at bay and affords a magnificent panoram of the waters and neighboring islands.

To get here, though, we had to walk the Brunswick Lake Portage, or rather, the 1.5 km muddy creek posing as the Brunswick Lake Portage. By the time we’d finished that shoe and soul sucking quagmire, we were questioning our sanity in leaving the river in the first place. But the camping, the fishing (20 in 2 hours) and the prospect of shooting the Brunswick river to its confluence with the Missinaibi make it all worth it.

So today we relaxed, played a boardgame, drank silly amounts of tea, jumped in the lake, read, baked bannock over an open fire, fished and talked about how great life was. About how we think we like these trips almost as much for the camping as anything else. We said that while pushing on might have got us home a day earlier, 10 years from now we wouldn’t remember that extra day at home. But we’d sure remember an extra day in a place like this.

JM

Postscript: Just how muddy is the Brunswick Portage? We met a group of paddlers from Texas today who had just finished doing the trail themselves. One of them told us that, near the trail’s end, he fell hip deep in slimy bog hole and came out without a shoe. On the other side of the hole, he put down his load and then went back to try and retrieve his footwear. He reached into the peaty mess and pulled out a sneaker. It wasn’t his.

 

Missinaibi River Day 6 – The Best Intentions

I know. I had you all psyched for my fireside rest-day musings. And certainly, I had many: the nature of life, why we seek the wilderness, leeches.

I planned to share all of this with you, dear reader. But there’s something about a rest day. The rest just gets its own slow momentum, like a lazy locomotive, until, before you know it, you’re sitting on your ass before a driftwood campfire looking out at Thunder Falls, sipping your 8th cup of tea, savouring the last of the smallmouth bass you just roasted on the coals, and noticing that the sun is very low on the horizon indeed.

And you realize that perhaps you should have jotted down a few paragraphs instead of taking that second swim. Or maybe when Sean and Janine were catching all those fish down on the riverbank. Or perhaps you could have blogged instead of taking that evening paddle out to the foot of the falls.

And certainly when you climb in the tent, you remember that you’ve promised to diarize all the important self-awareness you’ve gained on the trip so far. But you did promise your nephew that you would play a board game with him and your wife before bed and that does seem much more important that your philosophical musings somehow. So you play, and your nephew wins and you regret playing and remind everyone that they ought to appreciate you taking the time to play because you have a very important blog to write. So you start writing, but by then most of the revelations have kind of gotten hazy anyway.

Farewell revelatory post. Hello, lazy post. And goodnight, dear reader. Goodnight.

JM

[tag jason, janine, sean, missinaibi, river, ontario, paddling, canoeing]

 

Missinaibi River Day 5 – A story about Sean

Sean is our 13 year old nephew, accompanying us down the Missinaibi. His parents – specifically his mother – have been harassing me via text messages on my sat phone, demanding that more information about him appear in the blog.

Very well. Here is a Sean story.

It was an exciting, vigorous beginning to the day. A gruelling 1500 meter portage around fearsome Greenhill Rapids followed by a series of long and technical class 2 runs down Calf and the souse-hole-filled St. Peter Rapids (we assume the latter is named after the person you meet if you go into the souse hole).

But after the rapids and a portage around the rumbling beauty of Split Rock Falls, the river grew quiet, and the last stretch of water to camp became an anti-climactic, 2 hour slog.

To pass the time, I quizzed Sean on his desert island picks. First, I told him he could bring 3 books to the island. To make him howl with greater anguish, I told him trilogies counted as 3 books (Eat it Lord of the Rings fans! My trip, my rules!). To increase his anguish, I told him every other book in the world he didn’t choose would be burned (it’s a freaky island). Sean twisted and squirmed in the canoe’s middle seat and with time running out (it’s a time-limit question – it’s a cruel island), chose Grey Owl’s Tales of an Empty Cabin (“because it’s good and I haven’t read it yet”), Fellowship of the Ring (“because I know the movie was good”) and the Peterson Field Guide to Sand (“because you told me it’s a sandy island”).

It was 35 degrees today. The air seemed as thick as the water at times. Still, I ratcheted up the heat on my nephew. Now it was time to choose 3 movies. All movies not selected would be taped over with copies of Sean’s most detested movie – High School Musical 3. By the way, Sean asks me to tell all readers that he has not, nor will he ever actually watch High School Musical 3. Sean chose “I am Legend”, Get Smart” and “Iron Man”. Sorry Dr. Zhivago.

Finally, the toughest question of all. I told Sean he could take 1 person to the island with him. I knew this would place him squarely between his parents, both of whom he adores, so I gave him only one minute to decide (it’s a friggin’ cruel island). Everyone not chosen to accompany Sean would be melted. “60 seconds,” I said, clicking my Ironman stopwatch. “Go.”

Sean hesitated, his plum red hair twitching one way and then the other. Janine was as silent as I was, curious to see who the lucky parent would be. I paddled with one eye on the river and one eye on my watch, counting off the 45, 30 and 15 second marks.

With 8 seconds remaining, Sean’s body suddenly straightened with purpose. He had his answer and he was comfortable with it.

He would take his dog to the island.

Sean melted both his parents.

So there you have it Suzanne and Al. – a story about your son from the trip.

Be careful what you wish for.

***

We are camped tonight across a deep pool of water from Thunder Falls, one of the scenic highlights of the trip. But I will write more about this place tomorrow, as we have decided to take a rest day here. There’s so much more to tell you about than just Sean stories, though those are generally entertaining. For example, I simply must write a diatribe about how no guidebooks mention that the Missinaibi is the most leech-infested river in Ontario. But it’s late and that’s a breakfast blog post if I ever heard of one.

Goodnight. I just asked Sean if he had anything he’d like me to pass on to his Mom and Dad before I send this post off..

He smiled and said cheerfully, “not really.”

jm

[tag jason, janine, sean, ontario, missinaibi, river, paddling, canoeing]

 

Missinaibi River Day 4 – From A Good Good Day

This will be a short description of a perfect day. It will be short because, in addition to being perfect, the day was tiring.

The sun was well above the pines and birch of the Peterbell Marsh before we finally left the tent for breakfast – multiple cups of tea and bannock cooked over a snug morning campfire. Somehow, the temperature was just right – too hot for blackflies, not quite right for mosquitoes, cool enough to sit comfortably in the dappled shade of a tree. Only the barest smudge of muskol was needed to enjoy our meal outside the protection of the dining tent. Reluctantly, we agreed we had to leave sooner or later and that the second option was the only one we had left.

But first we swam. If you can call our combination of belly flopping, dunking and breath holding contests swimming. I do. And I am an expert swimmer AND belly flopper.

Finally, we agreed that it was now neither sooner, nor later, but after that. Time to go.

Down the Peterbell Marsh, we passed a huge bull moose whose rack was at least three feet across. Grazing in the weeds, he looked up at us like a mobster disturbed from his antipasti as we floated by.

The Marsh ended with a roller coaster ride down the Swamp Rapids. With Sean taking the bow, we then played in a series of class 1 waves that took us most of the way to Deadwood Rapids. Here Sean took a look at the flood swollen C1 tech and ceded the front chair back to Janine. We rode throught he frothing haystacks without incident and paddled down to Allan Island, bypassing its broad chute on a slightly overgrown portage.

Next up, we rocketed through the heavily haystacked Wavy Rapid. Though scary, it had the convenience of dumping enough water on us that we didn’t have to change our underwear at the end of it.

From Wavy, it was clear sailing to our camp above Greenhill Rapids. Dragonflies buzzed around us like a fighter plane escort, nipping at any lingering mosquitoes and blackflies. Ducklings trailed their mothers in obedient rows of fluff. A bear swam across the river in front of us, abruptly changing direction and returning to shore as soon as he saw us.

Evening was maturing as we pulled into camp. We ate supper quickly, talking over the idyllics of the day. Now we’ve hit the hay, both in fatigue and in anticipation of the early rise and 1500 meter portage around Greenhill tomorrow.

We’re tired, we’re aching, but we’re settling into a rhythm that is empowering and comforting. It’s a standard pattern on any canoe trip. By the time we leave, we’ll be just toned and at ease in the bush enough to want to stay for another week.

JM

 

Missinaibi River Day 3 – Swimming

Is there anything better than swimming?

If there is, it must be quite the activity. One capable of relaxing you, cleaning you and diminishining all the day’s rougher memories.

After a fun first half of the day spent running several class 1 and 2 rapids, our pace slowed to match the river’s languishing current. The sun burnt away all cloud cover and, as mid-day arrived, we were hit with the full brunt of the heat wave that has been forecast all week. The mercury shot up past 30 degrees and our skin became one third flesh, one third muskol and one third sunscreen, the latter two liberally applied in roughly equal doses.

There were few places to pull out and seek shade as the high waters have washed out most of the landings. So we paddled on, growing more drained and, in my case, cranky, by the hour.

But our campsite made everything better. Just past the railroad crossing at Peterbell, where the river should be at its marshiest, we finally came upon a classic rocky headland, speckled with tall pines and cedars. The water around the shelf was cool, deep and jumping with pike, one of which cost Janine a nice lure. With the temperature still in cooking range, we erected camp quickly and then got down to the important business of swimming. This was followed by napping. Then eating and then, since it was by then late evening and still as hot as mid-day, more swimming.

Floating on my back, horseflies and dragonflies buzzing around my head, a loon dipping and cooing nearby, I stared up at a stand of white birch near the shoreline, their green leaves standing out against the deep blue sky. I had a sudden powerful feeling that it was for moments like this that we go into the woods. To do good honest work that means something and to have that work enhance the little pleasures we allow ourselves once it’s done – the game of cards after dinner, the book in the tent, the extra oatmeal cookie that you traded an extra round of dish duties for.

Tomorrow, we run more rapids and make our first portages of the trip -
around Alan Falls and the mighty Greenhill Rapids, which in this flooded season, we dare not run. Judging by tonight’s sky, lugging the boat any distance overland will be hot, tiresome work.

But as long as we have an ending like today’s, I don’t think we’ll mind.

[tag jason, janine, sean, missinaibi, river, paddle, canoeing, rapids]

 

Missinaibi River Day 2 – Settling In

Back at the Missinaibi Lake put in yesterday, Dave, the park ranger had told us that the forecast for the next few days was heat, heat, heat. “Sun and 31 degrees,” he said cheerfully, behind a curly black beard and glasses.

My shoulders sagged at the thought of that kind of heat on a buggy portage. “How bad will that make the black flies?” I asked him, swatting away a small cloud of them with one hand.

“Oh, that kind of heat will burn’em right off,” he said confidently.

We liked the sound of that.

And so it was with anticipation that I woke up this morning, and slid out of my blue sleeping bag – clammy from the last night’s warm, wet weather – to peel back the tent door and look at the sky.

Grey. Misty. Hard to see across the river.

I crawled back into my sleeping bag like a child who had thought to see Santa downstairs, but only seen dad nursing a gin and tonic.

Eventually, we go up anyway and made our way to the bug tent for breakfast. There, over bowls of cream of wheat and tea that tasted vaguely of last night’s pasta, we agreed that a grey sky did not by itself constitute reason for a rest day. We packed up the tent, made a mental note to use more soap in the dishwater tonight and pushed off in the tugging current.

Most of the C1 rapids were washed out by the high water. But with our heavy load, even their light haystacks were fun to run and we stopped several times to bail out excess liquid. The fishing was lighter than hoped, but we still managed to catch a couple of pike, one of which (I won’t say who caught it since I write the blog and Sean sucks) was enough to feed all three of us for dinner.

Along the way, we passed the time talking about the kind of random things that pop into your head while paddling – favourite teachers, favourite Indiana Jones movies, favourite flavours of Skittles. The river banks flowed by in a succession of dense cedar and spruce groves. Duck families swam anxiously away from us when we rounded a corner. The ducklings paddling furiously, their mothers barking encouragement and occasionally feigning injury in order to draw attention away from the young.

The flies continued their assault whenever we left the canoe. But, sure enough and just as Dave predicted, when the sun finally burnt through the clouds in the early afternoon, they seemed to willt and then dissipate. By the time we reached camp at the end of a rolling kilometer long C1 rapid, the insects had significantly diminished and we enjoyed a peaceful late afternoon sit, supper and, in my case, swim by the shore without need of the bug tent..

It’s amazing what a difference a day can make. In our case just a few hours of sun has considerably improved our spirits. Our clothes and gear are dry. We’re clean and well feed. Sean is contentedly whittling a stick into shavings. Janine is contentedly reading the label of the inect spray to figure out the science of its claim to kill bugs for thirty days after application.

The forecast for tomorrow is positive.

jm

[tag jason, janine, sean, missinaibi, ontario, river, paddle, canoe]

 

Missinaibi River Day 1 – Quittanegene Rapids

“Why’d They Have to Eat *That* Ear?” – Janine

Finally.

That’s the thought that kept running through my head for most of the day. Finally after all the wishing and all the preparation, we’d be on the water today. On the Missinaibi.

Our shuttle driver, Owen, kept us entertained for most of the drive with stories of bears, expert lessons on hunting and trapping, treatises on Northern Ontario history and an explanation of why he hates beavers (it’s completely understandable really – they killed his best friend). The man should charge extra for his conversation.

After driving a final 87 km down a gravel road that Owen claims workers cut while following a drunk snake, we finally arrived at the put in. Owen had enjoyed his new truck’s capabiliites on the road (“Last time I
came down here with my wife, she vomitted all over the place!” he said cheerfully, taking a sharp turn at 80 km/h ) and Janine’s face nicely matched her green shirt as she exited the vehicle. Still, the smile on her face was genuine. I knew she was as excited to get started as I was.

A small crowd watched us assemble our pakboat (people up here care deeply about boats, I find, and are always interested in a novel watercraft). Once this was done, we pushed off into a light mist on Lake Missinaibi.

The blackflies had arrived in whirling columns as we’d unloaded our gear from Owen’s truck. But the open water and occassional rain gave us some relief. After a three hour paddle, we arrived at the start of the river proper and the first rapid – Quittenegene. Here, we set up camp in grass soaked by several days of almost continuous rain. The blackflies rolled out the welcome mat and were soon enjoying their dinner. Janine and Sean, who seem to react to blackfly bites particularly badly are already swelling up nicely and our shirts are already becoming polka-dotted with blood spots. Still, everyone’s in good humour with Janine only complaining that the flies had not bitten so hard on the ear she usually sleeps on.

Though a short paddle day, when combined with the drive, it was enough to wipe us out. Janine and Sean are already asleep beside me and I can’t wait to join them.

Tomorrow, our first rapids.

jm

 

The Long Drive

Greetings from Mattice, which, together with the title of this blog, may be the most uninspiring opening ever.

I won’t try to poeticize the drive here from Toronto. There are prettier drives in this province (the Lake Superior coast and hwy 60 through Algonquin park come to mind). Nor will I try to dress up the 11 hours of road time – you’re just too smart for that.

But I will say that it wasn’t as bad as some of you might think. There were the subtle pleasures of watching the forest change from deciduous to pine to spruce, of watching the land grow emptier as we passed the 49th parallel. The guilty pleasures of easting piles of junk food, which we justified at each gas station stop with declarations that “we’ll be exercising and eating well for the next ten days anyway!”

Barrie, Orillia, North Bay, New Liskeard, Kirkland Lake, Cochrane, Kapuskasing. 900 km, 12 Ipod playlists and 7000 calories later, we pulled into Mattice beside the tea coloured waters of the Missinaibi. Overlooking the river is a statue of voyageur portaging a canoe (I can’t decide whether the pained look immortalized on his bronze face is a reflection on the carry or the or the blackflies).

Regardless, as we stood on the banks looking upstream, we were excited. Tomorrow, we will be shuttled in a giant loop back south to the headwaters of the river at Missinaibi Lake. The lake is 236 km upriver as the duck flies. But it will take 8 hours of circuitous driving to make it there. It’s an indication of just how empty the country is up here.

Just how we like it.