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Peregrinations

“Not all those who wander are lost.”[1]

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

There is no grand logic to my recreational travels. It is fair to say that my self-propelled travels (mostly by canoe in these pages) are wanderings largely based on wonderings. I follow the whim of a good story, such as Wendell Beckwith at Whitewater Lake. I follow the excitement of friends for a route, such as the Mara and Burnside rivers or Lake Superior’s northern shore. The story might be a pleasant surprise discovered when on the trail and researched later, such as Franklin’s knowing about the Burnside River as a choice route to return to Fort Enterprise, or Francis Simpson’s comments on a near canoe swamping at Recollect Falls. However, the most common scenario is that imaginative spark of a story leading to a trip. I had wanted to hunt for Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s cabin at Coal Creek on the Horton River long before the conception of that trip.

The stories are usually heritage stories, the ways of earlier travellers or dwellers in a remote environment well-suited to outdoor travel. Here the integrity of the land and the water is often something to revel in. What a country we live in! The stories in some cases are more dream-like than concrete heritage finds. A concrete find is seeking out Raymond Patterson’s wood stove on the Wheatsheaf Creek of the Nahanni River. A dream-like story is pondering the Penny Ice Cap, vestige of the last ice age, while ski-touring on Baffin Island, or contemplating all those who have struggled in spring’s semi-ice-covered lakes throughout the north.

But there is never a sense of being aimless or lost. What is sought and often found is the joy of entering a story. I, like many, seek to be a participant in the story and in the evolving, ever-emerging landscape, which is enlarged with each new story added. When I have travelled with a good story, I become a livelier storyteller. And, like Thomas King said so eloquently, “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.”[2]