2000
Adventures With Uncle Wally (Partners)
by Uncle Wally (a66)
Paddling has probably made for more strange bedfellows than politics has. By strange paradox, it has also nipped more promising romances in the bud than late frosts have taken out magnolia blossoms down south. Weird, isn't it?
Think about it. The long canoe voyage has an almost legendary capacity for turning strangers into friends. Take a bunch of folks canoeing for a couple of weeks and somehow, somewhere along the way, some serious bonding is gonna happen. It doesn't matter who's in the group. It can be women, men, wayward adolescents. Let people spend some time sharing a canoe, a portage, a rapids, maybe a few navigational errors and culinary miscalculations and by the end of the trip, they're bosom buddies.
But that same long canoe voyage has an equally legendary capacity for turning lovers into enemies. Take just two people of opposing genders and holding some level of professed fondness for each other. Take THEM canoeing for a week or two. Hoo boy! It's never long before those bonds of affection start snapping like dry kindling and the whole relationship starts going up in flames.
How many times have you seen this scenario played out? He talks Her into a canoe trip by tellin' Her how much fun it's gonna be and glossin' over a few, inconvenient details like bugs, bears, portages, and no flush toilets for the next 168 miles. He insists She paddle up in the bow of the boat where She can't see when He slacks off or screws up. He then proceeds to blame Her for everything that goes wrong, assuming an air of offended innocence for every rock hit, every turn missed, and every, little pitch and yaw of the boat. He yells at Her, She yells back, and then they both quit talkin' to each other. She concludes that 17 feet of canoe just isn't big enough for the two of them and never sets foot in one again. It's a shameful waste.
Come to think of it, it's pretty amazing that there are ANY women paddlers out there at all. They musta learned how from their moms or aunts or grannies. 'Cause if there'd been a guy involved in the learnin' process, they'd probably all be sittin' in a coffeehouse somewhere, ratin' recent movie releases with their girlfriends over lattés instead of bein' out on the water like they are.
Anyway, my paddling partners and I were once in passing witness as this unique process of backwoods separation was in painful and public process. We were doin' a loop up on the Lady Evelyn River in Ontario. The Lady Evelyn splits partway down its course, giving the paddler a unique opportunity to paddle up one arm of the river and down the other, doin' a grand tour of waterfalls without ever leavin' the river. 'Course, most folks these days just hire an outfitter to fly them in to the headwaters and pick them up on the lake. It's the Canadian canoe country version of valet parking.
That may be how the nice young couple we met along the way first started to run into trouble. They'd been flown into McPherson Lake and were workin' their way downriver to meet their water taxi pick-up out on Lake Temagami. It sounds easy, you know, goin' downstream all the way, as long as you overlook all the rapids that need to be run or lined and all the waterfalls that need to be portaged. Portages are not a thing to be left out of the calculations in this part of the world. And bein' picked up by motorboat at the other end sounds downright cushy until you realize that it locks you into an iron-clad itinerary. But I don't think either of them had figured that out yet when we met them at Helen Falls.
We'll just call them John and Jane Camper, since we never formally introduced ourselves to each other. They looked like they had just stepped, hand in hand, off the cover of the Eddie Bauer catalog. Only now they were both slightly rumpled from a few days on the river. And there wasn't much hand holding going on any more.
Helen Falls was their first, serious portage and they were feelin' every centimeter of it. They had rented everything for their trip, exclusive of judgment and experience. And they'd gone Full Canadian with their outfitting; wood and canvas canoe, wooden wanigan for the camp kitchen, Duluth packs with tumplines and no shoulder straps for all the gear. Heck! They probably even had an old, canvas, wall tent to sleep in. This is the sort of canoe country penance that is supposed to make a True Man out of you, pointedly ignoring the fact that at least half of humanity has no aspirations to True Manhood at all. By the time they had portaged Helen Falls, I think these two were beginnin' to have more fun than they could stand.
They were carrying their gear down to the water as we came up to the portage landing. John smiled and nodded to us in silent salutation. Jane, on the other hand, met us with an unstinted flow of animated conversation. Seems she really needed someone to talk to and John wasn't fillin' the bill just then. Maybe they'd already heatedly covered all available, verbal territory without reachin' any destination that either of 'em could like. She emoted over the rigors of the portage we were just starting. Clearly, it had been harder than anything she had ever done or even imagined in her darkest dreams. We didn't have the heart to tell her there was more where that came from, just downstream. She'd find that out for herself soon enough.
Well, we were headed upstream and they were goin' down. So we didn't figure we'd see 'em again. We circled on up the North Arm of the Lady Evelyn and down the South, touring waterfalls and enjoying ourselves on the rocky heights of the Canadian Shield. Eventually we found ourselves back in the lowlands, portaging ankle-deep in mud between Willow Island and Lady Evelyn Lakes. Knee-deep if we stepped wrong.
And who should we meet in this low-lying morass that afternoon but John and Jane Camper and their half-ton canoe kit! It had taken them two days to come down the same stretch of river that we had covered in one afternoon on our way UPstream. They were still miles and miles from their rendezvous point with their outfitter, where they were due in that very evening. And here at the nadir of their trip, they were not only not talkin' to each other, they weren't talkin' to anyone else either.
John was slowly and single-handedly ferrying their gear across the portage, stoic smile still cemented across his face. Jane was sitting, inert, at the near portage landing, languidly studying the patch of soggy earth between her boots. She was the picture of dejection. He was a mix of grim determination and functional denial. They were neither of 'em having what you could rightly call fun anymore.
The last of their gear was already on its way to the next lake on John's shoulders. So we couldn't really tell if Jane was sittin' there waitin' for her turn to be carried across or if she was just contemplating the relative merits of desertion from what was likely becoming a forced march. They obviously weren't in this thing together anymore. Whatever glue had held their relationship together had dissolved in this watery environment.
We didn't stick around to see what prodigies John had to perform to get his beloved (or was it now former beloved?) across the portage. But we did ponder their fate around the campfire that night. My sister-in-law (bein' the only paddler of the female persuasion in our group) speculated that John would make amends by taking Jane to a nice hotel in Paris or St. John or Maui for their next vacation. Eileen liked that make-up-and-ride-off-together-into-the-sunset sort of ending to their saga. The rest of us presumed that there wasn't gonna be a next vacation for these two, leastwise not a vacation spent together. We figured Jane drove home alone in a rental car and mailed John his toothbrush and spare socks in a box cushioned with used shaving cream. But you never know.
Well, I have heard that it is possible to paddle tandem and stay married. But I'm beginnin' to suspect that it takes a rare talent to pull it off. So, if you're goin' on a long canoe trip with your spouse (or whatever other variety of best beloved you have in mind), you'd best plan on paddling with someone else most days or pack along a pocket marriage counselor. At the very least, take along someone else to share the blame. And gentlemen, if you're takin' your sweetheart into the Great Outdoors, don't try to make a True Man out of her. You'll neither one of you be happy with the results.
* * * * *
Well, 'til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Mickey McBride, 8191 Belden Blvd., Cottage Grove MN 55106 or mickeymcb@worldnet.att.net. Let me know whether backcountry paddling has ever fanned the spark of passion for you or if it has merely sent your romance up in flames. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so no one would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even potential, future paddling partners.
