Читать книгу Paddling the Boreal Forest - Stone James Madison - Страница 12

3 Interlude: En Route Destination Lebel-sur-Quévillon

FOR A GUY THAT HAS GONE on a lot of long canoe trips, I'm still a pitiful jumble of jelly when it's time to leave. This trip has been one tough departure. It's hard enough leaving my dog, Mica, not to mention our three-year-old first-born son, Isaac, my very frail 89-year-old mom and, of course, my wife Connie. Of the four, I worry most about my mom, Rose. She is “as sweet as the flower, and as thorny.” She lives in a retirement home, and I know she will get good care when I'm gone. I explain to her that I'm going on a long canoe trip, and she asks me the usual questions:

“Where are you going to sleep? Are there any motels?”

“Well, not once we start paddling, but maybe we'll find a cabin now and then,” I say, with a hopeful smile.

“What are you going to eat?”

“You know, Mom,” I sigh. “The same stuff I eat all the time, but maybe we'll catch some fish and pick lots of blueberries.” And that perks her up.

“What about the bears and wolves?” she asks quietly. I have to lean close to her to hear, but talk very loudly for her to understand, as she refuses to wear her hearing aid.

“Mom, there's nothing dangerous up there,” I reply, trying to convince myself as well. I'm not worried about the bears, but I am worried about the bugs, the weather, and the rugged terrain. I'm not convinced I'm equal to the demands of this trip.

“I'll miss you,” she says. Her skin is so pale, and she looks so frail and tiny in her wheelchair. She is hardly there. I can see her physical presence diminishing day by day. In photographs she appears almost transparent, as if she's not quite all in this world. But she recovered from a bout of pneumonia in the spring, defying the predictions of doctors and nurses, and doesn't show any signs of departing from this world any time soon. “Don't worry about me,” she adds. “Just take care of yourself.” I kiss her on the cheek, and give her a gentle hug, so as not to break any of those frail bones. I didn't suspect that this would be the last time I would see her.

Now here I am, two days later, lying on top of a worn red bedspread in a roadside motel in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, a small town in Quebec on Highway 113 on the way to James Bay country. Jim, and our friend Don Haines, who is driving up with us in his car in case Connie's rusty old Toyota Tercel doesn't make it, are with me.

I have a somewhat treacherous mind when it comes to travelling, a mind that can pull off all kinds of neat stunts to make a difficult trip even more difficult. In addition to psychological misgivings about leaving my mother and family, I have several nagging physical ailments that refuse to heal. I sprained my right index finger weeks before, demonstrating to Isaac how to go down the natural waterslide at High Falls on Algonquin Parks' Barron River. I tore a hamstring muscle while jogging. I have a stiff neck that came on months ago while driving in the middle of the night in the middle of a rainstorm. My masseur friend, Ton, worked out the kinks, but they are all coming back tonight. Lastly, I am developing a nagging toothache, which is getting worse the farther we go from Ottawa. I buy some “gum number” at a pharmacy in Chibougamau, a mining town about 100 km south of Mistissini, and extra painkillers. My lower back is sore and stiff, and I have a hard time lugging around our three huge packs.

Jelly-brained and up to my ears in self-doubt, I'm torn between having new adventures and following new rivers to the sea, and leaving my cosy comfortable life in Ottawa. Bogs and bugs, or beaches? Warm sunny days or cold rainy ones? Connie and Isaac and Mica to snuggle up to in the morning or Jim's stubbly face? But the view from the other side of my brain shows clear, clean water and endless spruce forests instead of pavement, the call of loons and wolves instead of the sounds of traffic, the freedom and boundlessness that canoe trips bring versus the daily slog to the office.

All our lives seem to be a struggle between the need for love and security and the need for adventure, independence and freedom. Perhaps this tension is the force that holds the universe together. Is true enlightenment being able to live in a state where all these needs are met without having to weigh one against the other, when you find out that these seemingly mutually exclusive needs are, in fact, not mutually exclusive at all? A.P. Low lived a life of adventure, but he also had a wife and family, a government job and a strong penchant for sports. I wonder how he reconciled this struggle between love and security, adventure and freedom? In his copious journals and writings, such intimate thoughts are never revealed. A.P. Low was a private man. The details of his personal life will likely always remain a mystery.

Images of warm sunny days and idyllic evenings, abundant wildlife and endless black spruce horizons filled our minds.

I know Jim is having the same misgivings. His wife had been seriously ill this winter and was better now but…. Although he didn't mention the possibility of not being able to go on the trip, I know that there were times when he felt he had taken on too much. Was he wondering if this was not the right time to be leaving his family?

This is a story about an explorer and a canoe trip, but our adventure really started on the drive from Ottawa to Lebel-sur-Quévillon. One doesn't have to head very far north of Ottawa before the country begins to take on a “northern” flavour. Highway 105 leads straight north out of the city, leads up the Gatineau River valley and then heads north to the mining town of Val d'Or. Just over halfway there, in the Réserve Faunique de La Vérendrye, the highway crosses over the height of land separating the waters flowing south and east to the Atlantic Ocean from the waters flowing north to James Bay. The highway has been greatly improved in recent years and, according to my observations, so have the drivers.

We are amazed at the ease of driving into the boreal forest. The farther north we go, the better the highway becomes. We stop at the gas station and outfitting station in Le Domaine in the Reserve. From here the mixed-wood forests we are familiar with in the hills north of Ottawa noticeably begin to change to a dense, dark green wall of spruce, fir and tamarack, with patches of aspen standing out with their creamy bark and light green leaves fluttering in the lightest of breezes. It takes a while before I realize that the purple haze over the ditches and open areas that was purple loosestrife seen at 120 km/hr is now fireweed. Road signs announce that we are in the Municipality of James Bay, which includes communities as far north as Chisasibi, at the mouth of the La Grande River on the east coast of James Bay, where the trees are small and stunted.

I lie down on the bed, and take out the envelope that Connie slipped into my hand when we left. Inside is a card, with two photographs — one of me and Isaac and Mica standing in front of the falls at the ruined mill of “Carbide” Willson¹ on Meech Creek, in our beloved Gatineau Park just north of Ottawa. It was taken in the spring when the falls were swollen by melt waters. I remember the day well. Isaac's laughing when I told him to “DUCK!” as the current in Meech Creek swept us under a low bridge, Isaac pointing at the mink that ran along the rocks at the edge of the lake. The other photograph is of Connie and Isaac sleeping together in a hammock. The caption is “Wherever you are, I am with you.” I tape the card to the inside of my journal.

As I drift into sleep, inspired by the verse (doggerel really) that A.P. Low penned in his journals, I write this bit of questionable poetry:

Where-ever I go, you are with me

my love, my son, and my dog,

though the days be buggy and dreary,

and I'm stuck in a leaky tent in a bog.

Though the bannock be soggy and the portages boggy,

And clouds of blackflies hide the sun,

Wherever I go you are with me,

In the circle of rivers, we are one.