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INEPTITUDE

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

— Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Years ago I was privy to an experience that changed the way I looked at human intellect under certain extreme conditions. There was a grass fire raging near some country homes located just off the southern rim of the Oak Ridges Moraine, and it had yet to be contained by the firefighters. We were watching nervously from my friends’ house as the fire swept up close to a neighbour’s yard where a team of firefighters tried to hold the front line but were having difficulty. A woman suddenly ran from the house clutching her baby to her chest, screaming hysterically, and headed directly toward the oncoming inferno. Only metres from the encroaching flames, she had to be tackled by one of the firefighters and pulled to safety.

My thoughts on how people deal with panic situations has been manifested through years of wilderness travel and related research. Canadian history books are resonant with stories of human stupidity, particularly when speaking of wilderness travel and survival. The first Europeans to set foot on Canadian soil were shamefully negligent at surviving, and too stubborn to seek the wisdom of the aboriginal inhabitants. Centuries later, reports of deaths in remote places still surface, often, and their causes born from stupidity and ignorance.

Not long ago, four young paddlers finish a paddling trip down the Albany River in northern Ontario. Not a difficult or technical river, the Albany terminates at the Cree village of Fort Albany on the coast of James Bay. From there, canoeists normally fly the short distance south to Moosonee where they can then take the polar bear express train back to their point of departure. It’s not that expensive a flight. Instead, the paddlers decide to sail the two hundred kilometres down the coast in order to save money on flight costs. Believing that if they tied their two canoes together they would create a more seaworthy craft, it wouldn’t be a problem. Safety wouldn’t be an issue. Fort Albany locals tried to dissuade them, even offering to boat them down to Moosonee in a motor launch. It was a stretch of coastline that was incessantly hammered by north winds with little shelter along the way. Deaths and disappearances were common enough along the James Bay coast. They set off from the village headed for Moosonee even though the weather was turning to the worse. Two boys and two girls, all in their early twenties, never showed up in Moosonee, and their bodies were never discovered. Life jackets and other remnants of this mishap were discovered scattered along the beaches some time later. What it must have been like for these young paddlers, as their craft faltered and broke apart in heavy seas, and the ice-cold water, must have been horrific.

Self-assuming decisions, like this one made by inexperienced paddlers, cost them their lives and forever affected the lives of their families. In the outdoors, in the wilderness, crass and thick-headed decisions are often made with a particular zeal reserved only for vainglorious attempts to defy Nature. It’s far easier to make a stupid decision than to think things out, to strategize, or to weigh the consequences; but the question arises, most assuredly, why in the wilderness is it so easy to construct your own death? Assumptions prevail, but it may rest on the fact that we often transport our city-evolved complacency with us when we walk the backwoods trail. Racing down the freeway at 120 kilometres per hour, weaving in and out of traffic in a tiny bubble of metal, cellphone or coffee cup in the free hand, is something we all do mindlessly and without fear. We worry more about getting caught speeding than the circumstance of a possible crash. We are inviolable. Armed with the same mindset, adventurers will descend upon the wilderness with a protracted cognizance of their own safety. I’ve often heard debutant whitewater paddlers exclaim to me, “how hard can it be!” and with absolutely no training, push off down a rapid with frightening faith — a dogma that almost always terminates in disaster, sooner or later. This particular adherence to passive self-destruction is rampant. Today, along the wilderness path there are no stupid decisions … all actions are commandeered under the auspices of “adventure spirit,” primed and manifested by television shows that epitomize life in the wilderness through extreme survival programming. This form of entertainment does nothing to prepare us for the realities of trail life, true adventure or, most importantly, the necessary smarts to stay alive. The actors engaged in bringing us this form of perverted amusement well know that they will be rescued (getting voted off without usurping the money prize is the worst that could happen). Most television survival-themed shows rely on creating stunts that are simply theatrical acts of stupidity. And because of our insatiable hunger for this type of entertainment pleasure, it is the very reason why we take this form of evolved survival mentality with us to the woods. We forget to think. In the wilderness the only safety rope is the one you knot or cinch yourself, and there is no lunch wagon parked behind the film set.

Then there is the stigma attached to those who may be incompetent, or novice, or inexperienced and won’t admit that they just don’t have the skills. And this is problematic for the guide, the instructor, the leader, or for general group dynamics. Particularly for outdoor travel in the wilderness, techniques have changed, and the quality of outdoor gear has improved. Post-Boomers who spent one or more memorable summers at a canoe camp when they were kids, now want to descend on that same wilderness loaded down with kids, a catatonic wife, and forty extra pounds around the midriff. What seemed to be an uncomplicated family adventure often turns out to be a disaster. The twenty or so years that have lapsed between youthful camp days and the present weren’t likely spent on the trail honing outdoor skills. When Dad tries to recreate the good old days and suddenly realizes he doesn’t quite know what to do to facilitate the basic needs of his family, the adventure quickly turns sour. And it doesn’t take much to create dissent amongst the ranks.

The axiom that implies that all food cooked in the great outdoors tastes better is a gross misnomer. It’s easy to kill bannock bread fried over a fire that’s too hot, and the beans and rice you had as a kid camper just doesn’t appease the appetites of picky kids, and instant coffee isn’t the same as the roastery blend mom buys at the market. If dad doesn’t cook at home, and suddenly becomes the bon vivant of the backwoods, then trouble is brewing in the stewpot. Then there’s the thing with the tent that leaks because it’s sitting in a depression that fills with rain … and the bugs!

Family camping is wonderful, and kids are malleable when it comes to adapting to new environments, so long as all their basic needs are met. Knowing what gear to take along and packing for rainy days builds a strong foundation for success, but I’ve seen too many Type-A achiever dads bull ahead into the unknown, family in tow, trying to recreate something that appeared to be simple during their camp days.

Good camping and wilderness travel skills take time to perfect, at least to the point that transcends raw survival tactics employed by the unpracticed. There are so many tricks to this trade that make life so much easier and enjoyable; the secret is in the planning and prevention. In the survival mode, all basic elements that are required to sustain life could be compromised, one by one, and very quickly depending on the situation. This may happen when a canoe capsizes and gear is lost, or soaked through because it wasn’t waterproofed and secured. It could be raining, windy, cool or worse, and everything is sodden — even the spare change of clothes and you can’t get a fire going. Tents may not be secured or pitched taught; that sag in the rain fly is enough to pool the water where you don’t want it. No axe or saw? After three or four days of cold rain in September you’d wished you had brought them along. But even if you did, you may not have known how to get dry wood, anyway.

I’ve passed many people on the trail in various stages of wretchedness, and their misery was most often the result of poor leadership and planning: forgotten equipment, trip was too hard, no protection from biting insects, lousy food, wet and cold — all things that are generally the responsibility of the trip leader to know how to remedy. But, in most cases, the appointed chief never admitted his shortcomings, whether too embarrassed, stubborn or indifferent. How hard can wilderness trekking be? Well, it can be very hard.

When I took my wilderness first aid course it was at a well-known canoe and kayak school. I was there for eight days. They call it a canoe school but their techniques are predominantly aggressive whitewater kayak that they’ve cross-pollinated with canoe techniques. On the last day of my course the school had bussed in a load of fresh kayak students, mostly older high-school kids, full of beans and high expectations. The first thing the school did was to perch them in front of a theatre screen to watch a film showing kayakers vaulting their boats off cliffs and waterfalls.

Now you have to ask yourself, first of all, unless you were vying for the universal Darwin Award, why you would want to kayak over a waterfall? But you could see such delight on the faces of these inner-city kids, watching as kayak after kayak plummeted over steeper and gnarlier precipices, shouts of “Right on!” and “Totally, dude!” resounding in the auditorium. Extreme films showing extreme stunts are slick marketing tactics of the gear companies, again, steering trends toward a particular mindset. And there are more people buying kayaks than canoes today, for two reasons: the younger crowd aspires to paddle over waterfalls and dangerous rapids (canoes are no longer sexy); while the more conservative market purchase the “sit-on-top” and sea-kayak because it takes little skill to get the boat to go where you want it. For most novices it is difficult to learn how to solo paddle a canoe and stay in control, especially in the wind; but with a kayak there’s no need for a “correction” stroke and you’re already placed in the appropriate position just behind midpoint. The first inclination of a would-be solo paddler is to sit in the stern seat, at the very back of the canoe where one would normally steer the boat from if there were two people paddling. This causes the bow, or front, to rise out of the water, which acts like a wind sail, destabilizing the canoe, causing the occupant to be blown down the lake, no matter how hard they try to fight against the wind. Yet again we find ourselves fighting against Nature instead of adapting to it.

Whitewater canoeing down rapids is a white, European phenomenon brought to this country by the likes of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Time was money; and to get men, equipment, and trade items into the frontier, and furs back out in a timely fashion, river rapids were often run with loaded canoes because it was far quicker than carrying supplies over the portage trails. Native Canadians watched the white traders in horror, beguiled by the insanity of such stupidity and lack of reverence for the power of the river. People of the First Nations were not driven by greed or time constraints and treated their bark canoes as the frail things they actually were. And along some of the historic trade routes, like the French River in Ontario, treasure hunting divers have located a surfeit of antique guns and trade items at the bottom of rapids.

But I get caught up in the water play, too; it’s dangerous fun, but less risky if you actually know what you’re doing and keep within the boundary of your experience. Unfortunately, many fledgling adventurers want to skip the formality of learning the basics, and jump right in to the more aggressive or “exotic” exploits. These people have money. And they buy their way to the summit of Everest even if they have to be short-roped by a Sherpa guide and literally carried to the top. The professional super-achiever type mainstreamers tend to sway toward the immediacy of return benefits from extreme adventure.

Once revered as a male-dominated sport, whitewater canoeing has attained a more balanced gender definition. And in my business I’ve noticed that not just men have raging egos and rampant testosterone. This was evident one summer when I booked four women on a private whitewater trip down the Temagami River. They were friends, all from the same legal firm in Toronto, and had taken up whitewater canoeing just the year before. They went to a couple of weekend clinics (actually the same kayak school mentioned earlier) where they learned aggressive techniques. The Temagami River is an intermediate class whitewater river and it would be the women’s first river trip.

They arrived at my outfitting store in two BMW’s (one would have sufficed), dressed in expensive outerwear, money practically oozing out of their pockets. I was to be their guide and instructor. They looked me up and down, glanced at the beater-canoes with the rippled hulls and cross-hatched gouges, a look of total disdain on their collective faces, and asked if “this was a joke?” I explained that I hadn’t yet succumbed to the outdoor garment industry consumerism (I still bought my army fatigues at surplus stores and wore a thirty-dollar rain jacket), and that my canoes were beaters because I wouldn’t take a good Kevlar canoe down a bony river with novice paddlers.

“We’re not novice,” commanded the group of well-dressed women. And I was eyed with suspicion. “We have our certificates!” Politely I explained that a weekend clinic running the same rapid over and over again, and having lunch in a cafeteria, was not quite the same as plunging down an entire river system, fully loaded with all your camping gear.

We began the river trip at an adjoining lake which I preferred because I like to see if a paddler has basic flatwater skills and steering strokes first before getting into any fast water. I’m a firm believer in starting at the most basic of skills and working up to aggressive water play once you’ve mastered the primary strokes. The four women were in two canoes while I solo paddled mine. I wasn’t at all surprised to see the two canoes zigzagging down the lake, out of control in the light wind. They had no idea how to steer their canoes in a straight line. And when I tried to correct them, they were impatient and testy, telling me that they came for the whitewater and not the open lakes. I was firm and explained that I wasn’t taking them anywhere unless they learned how to control their boats; and I told them this because I know that you cannot work the rapids if you don’t feel the nuances of your canoe on flat water first. Whitewater paddling is somewhat like dancing with a good partner — it’s disastrous if you’re out of sync with each other; but if you can communicate through motion and finesse, there’s a lovely symbiosis and fluidity of movement.

Aside from the few whitewater strokes they had learned at the clinic, they knew virtually nothing about canoeing, and had no interest in the trip as an enlightening journey. I knew they had preconceived notions of exercising their new-found talents and were on a high at the onset of the trip. But I dashed their spirit with a heavy dose of reality, and they did realize that their ignorance of the demanded skills could have cost them had they struck out on their own. It wasn’t a good trip for any of us; they felt a bit overzealous and embarrassed, and I had to crush their hubris for their own good. Usually, at the end of a trip there are tears, embraces, exchanges of addresses and emails, but after this river trip there was barely a handshake.

Creating harmony in an outdoor lifestyle, first and most importantly, is realizing and admitting to your lack of knowledge; this lack of knowledge, if exercised in the wilderness, then becomes your ineptness if things go wrong. And just as there are no real shortcuts through the wilderness, there are no shortcuts in the technical craftsmanship needed to master any skill.