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Following Blazed Trails

“The many become one and are increased by one.”[1]

— Alfred North Whitehead

I cut a blaze — an axe-cut wedge — out of a prominent tree to mark a portage trail at a tricky canoe portage takeout. It was 1980. Little did I know then that I would be returning to this same blaze every year from 1982 to 2010. Blazed trees as trail markers have always symbolized for me the proud old ways of the bush: ways tried, tested, and true. Each time I return, eight students and I pause in canoes at the portage takeout to consider where the trail begins. Usually they opt for an open band of rock, a rising boulder field that inspired my decision to cut a new trail in the first place thirty years ago. I point out the blaze on an aging white birch. Now a faint trail heading obliquely up from the lake becomes more evident.

I mentioned the long tradition of cutting blazes to mark and follow trails. The white birch decayed and fell to the ground in 2009. This is how portage routes were traditionally opened up, that is by fire rangers, trappers, and early summer camp groups here, north of Sudbury, and throughout the woodlands of Canada. Likely the first survey crew through this particular route in 1900 followed Native blaze markings.

Reading blazes is a good observational skill to learn. “Perhaps you’ll need to follow the blazes later on the trip,” I suggest to the students. The skill already proves useful at this first portage. We unload the canoes for our portage, carrying all our supplies and our canoes. Here, I often muse, students might be thinking, “I’m a long way from home.” I often wonder, “Does this adventure of the inner spirit and the outer physical body feel like a strange homecoming? In other words, despite being a new experience for many students, does this feel strangely natural?” I also pause to acknowledge the satisfaction I feel in returning to that same blaze and that heritage-laden pedagogical moment year after year. Some things are changing and some things stay the same.

A blazed tree marking a trail in the Skoki Lodge area.

Finding one’s way by following blazed trails: I have much enthusiasm for such an experience. Each axe cut is a thing of beauty to me. I feel like an old-timer (and I’m not even sixty) when I consider all facets of the art of marking a trail by blazing axe marks on both sides of a prominent tree. Is following a blazed trail a dying skill?

Recently, on a Skoki Lodge cross-country ski outing just east of Lake Louise, Alberta, our group came to an abrupt stop: a fork in the trail. The more used trail went straight, but the less used trail (of the last few days, anyway) went off to the left. There were pink streamers marking the route to the left. I scouted ahead and saw glorious blazes on trees on the left route. As it turned out, the straight fork was only short-lived and joined the main trail. There is a reason to pause here. Why the streamers? The well-blazed trail offered plenty of directional guidance for a ski trail. The fork represented a few groups getting off track but rejoining the correct trail around a knoll and down a hill. Today, perhaps we need pink ribbon because old school blazes are not enough. I imagine Ken Jones and Lizzie Rummel, early guides for the 1930s–40s lodge, rolling in their graves at this need for more navigational aid. Or am I becoming a crotchety, even arrogant old-timer (hmm, more a mid-timer with old-timer sensibilities, I think)? But these old-timers I’m thinking about are mostly gone now, and the blazed trees they left are slowly coming down too. Heck, Ken Jones likely cut out those axe wedges in the 1940s when working at Skoki.[2]

There is a lesson in following blazed trails. The pink streamers certainly added a practical quality to that forked trail decision, but it irked my aesthetic sensibility in the woods that day. Those streamers took something away. If we lose the ability to follow blazed trails, we lose certain wisdom of the old ways of the bush. We lose knowledge of a time when more people lived, worked, and travelled in the bush. New materials can change, even improve, some things, but there is something lost in not being able to identify old blazes and not knowing something of the type of folks who cut them and of their times on the land and water.

This book is about following blazed trails back in time, mostly to gain that special wisdom of feeling connected to and energized by places, stories, people, and practices. And why is feeling connected to and energized by old ways, old times, and old-timers valuable? Well, as Canadian ecologist John Livingston used to say about ecology: it is possible to feel “part of a greater enterprise of life.”[3] Or, as educator Peter Higgins has asked, “Is it better to be a small person in a large landscape, or a large person in a small landscape?”[4] Knowing the stories of past travellers and dwellers helps us put ourselves in perspective and find our place in the place, so to speak. As we gain perspective this way, we gain an understanding of this greater enterprise. We enter a larger landscape as a richer self. It is a worthy goal, and one central to this story. The working premise here is that it is very good to be a small person in a large landscape. Thanks for that, Pete.

For over forty years now, I have been travelling, reading, and writing about Canada’s travel heritage. This life passion found a healthy home in Every Trail Has a Story: Heritage Travel in Canada (2005), a book I had dreamed of writing for about twenty years.[5] The dream continues, or perhaps old habits die hard. Since 2005, I have continued to travel, read, and write on Canadian heritage travel themes. I would like to write a sequel, even a series following up on Every Trail Has a Story. While Every Trail focused on the three themes of places, practices, and people, More Trails, More Tales has shifted in focus toward peregrinations, perspectives, and personalities. In all cases, I am following blazed trails back in time, be it the trails of explorers, primary researchers, or energetic friends.

Peregrinations: I have not been a leader of northern extreme expeditions and adventures. Rather, I have travelled readily accessible northern routes and terrain more local to my Ontario home. It has been more wandering with historical curiosity as a major factor: day trips close to home and friendship trips with a “then and now” historical spark of imagination. My trips are friendly, playful outings with a heritage focus. Hardships and big challenges aren’t central. In this regard, whether in the far country or close to home, they are accessible in an “I can do that” way. Some trips here may get expensive, but high-end skills and taking out special insurance policies isn’t my game. Pleasure and gaining insights and comfort in a place are my game.

Perspectives: I have not been a research scholar in one or more narrow domains as historian or anthropologist. Rather, I have explored widely for the intriguing story that is little known. My attractions move me toward the stories that widen people’s perspectives and give us a bigger view of the land in time and space. There is mystery here — could it be that we are ignoring evidence that would rewrite our history? Why do we so readily avoid knowledge of our early settlement trails in our schools and communities? My studies that I wish to share here push conventional thinking to new levels of insight and inquiry. Largely, they involve an inquiry followed by a connection with the scholar or expert who broke the story. I perhaps serve as their storyteller, not that they need my help. Relationship building is a big part of my studies.

Personalities: I have never been a solitary traveller or thinker. Rather, I have learned from a wealth of friends who share in the varied passions of self-propelled travel with trails and tales. Whether it is around the campfire or over coffee at Tim Hortons, like-minded friends with their own specific attentions have informed my experiences and writing. My friends’ stories, with their heritage travel highlights, will be shared with that same “then and now” quality expressed in the peregrinations and perspectives sections.

More Trails, More Tales is a storytelling book. It draws widely from Canadian exploration travel literature and the following academic disciplines: history, geography, anthropology, literature, and philosophy. It is a suitable sequel to Every Trail Has a Story: Heritage Travel in Canada, with new content supported by a shift in terms of its themes.

Why? Why travel to places? Why explore one’s home terrain? Why write about all this? What is the compelling reason to want to be engaged in places and then share this feeling and knowledge? The Swedes have a word that helps, hemmeblind, meaning “home ignorant.”[6] This seems among the greatest travesties. In contrast, what this book does is feel the excitement of following those blazed trails and celebrate the imaginative connection to old ways that inspire and inform the present. The best I have ever heard these qualities captured is by my friend Dave Oleson, who lives with his family at the mouth of the Hoarfrost River in the East Arm of Great Slave Lake (where George Back started upriver to get onto the barrens in 1833). Dave eloquently writes:

I crave a history. I want to weave myself and my own story into the ongoing terse narrative of this place, a narrative I can only dimly discern … the country is full of vague leavings. Old camps in ruin, traps hung in trees, rock cairns on tundra hilltops … things surface … to move through a wild land and know nothing of its human history would be an impoverishment. An understanding of the past enables a clearer appreciation of the present. In a time of rapid change, historical perspective can help to place that change in context.[7]

I share the thesis that we need a historical perspective to help us understand both what we gain and what we lose with change. That small person in a large landscape is really an ever more humbled small person in an ever-expanding landscape. A big part of a historical perspective is an expanding humility. This is to say, a shrinking ego but a widening soul. There is nothing more ludicrous than a humble author, perhaps. Sure, I have something important to share, I think. But the humbling of spirit on the land leaves us with a clearer appreciation. The widening of the soul is that connectedness. Call it belonging, call it being part of the greater enterprise of the Canadian historical experience and being humbled by it.

Finally, following blazed trails is practical and metaphorical. It will keep you on track and keep you imagining the grander track you share in. How did Lawrence Durrell put it? “All landscape ask the same question in the same whisper. I am watching you — are you watching yourself in me.”[8] Those blazed trails on the land and the ones we will travel on together on paper really do whisper. That is, if we really do listen. I hope this book will help humble those who listen. Certainly I am compelled to write as I think about my trips, my studies, and my friends against the backdrop of the grandness of belonging: peregrinations so humble by comparison, perspectives so grateful to those primary researchers, and personalities — a mere sample here — so accomplished with a story to share.