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Boundary Waters Fur Trade Route (2000) Elk-Thelon Rivers, NWT (2001) Peace River (2003) 2008 David Thompson Brigade Blue Lake Provincial Park (Old Guys Trip) (2012) Churchill/Sturgeon-Weir River (2013) Barren Lands, NWT (2013) March Canoe Trip (2014) North Saskatchewan River Canoe Trip (2014) Missouri Canoeing (2015) White Otter Wilderness (Old Guys Trip) (2015) |
Headwaters Missouri River (2016) Canoeing Pictures (2016) Celebrating Canada's Sesquicentennial (2017) Canoeing Montana's Yellowstone River (2018) Habitat for Humanity on PEI, Labrador Coast and more... (2019) New Mexico Scout History Projects Family Stuff* |
Sometimes we, and others, wonder why we love canoeing so much. Douglas Wood in his book Paddle Whispers (Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers, 1993, p 107-115) states that a canoe trip can be "an endlessly repeated exercise in various modes of misery [portaging, paddling, pull-overs, wadding, lining, the list goes on], each one a contrast--therefore, a relief, albeit tempoary--to the misery preceding it." He then asks "So why . . . why go through it? Why even be here?"
Wood says "The second answer is easy. Because 'here' is where the beauty is. Here is where the sunsets are. Here is where the campsites and campfires are, and the clear, deep waters and the loons, and the pines, and the islands. And yes, the storms and the big winds and the rapids. Here is where the journey is. "But why go through it? Why do I . . . why do I go through it? I think because no one else can go through it for me. And because the modern city-world system uses people to get work done. Important work, supposedly. That's the whole idea. That's why we get paid. But here--here I'm using work . . . to get myself done. What better work is there than that? "Or maybe . . . maybe it's enough to say that I am here, as another voyageur once put it, 'to iron out the wrinkles in my soul.' "And maybe it is only on the trail to nowhere-in-particular that you find the most important thing of all. Yourself." |
the Blaeberry River, British Columbia |
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Invermere, British Columbia |
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"Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing." (Henry David Thoreau)
"I PADDLE because the voices in my head tell me to" (Adobe Whitewater Club of New Mexico t-shirt)
"Canoes are like good friends, you can't have too many" (Cliff Jacobson)
"You can't buy HAPPINESS, but you can buy a CANOE...and that's pretty close" (From decal sold by Northern Tier trading post, Boy Scouts of America)
"What sets a canoeing expdeition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute. Pedal five hndred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically bourqeois. Paddle a hundred miles in a canoe and you are already a child of nature." (Pierre Elliot Trudeau...display at Canadian Canoe Museum)
"The paddle whispers, the canoe glides. So much water, so little time" (Bill's e-mail signature)
On 2008 David Thompson Brigade