Otter was happy. He sat in the bow of the new boat, eight days’ supplies behind him. He and the Stranger had had to cut this trip a little short because of the Bar Mitzvah, but so it goes. Now, heading out across Tulabi, Otter was pulling hard. It’s twenty plus miles to Snowshoe, and they were fully loaded, so Otter was working his kayak paddle giving plenty of lift, as the rowers say. He wanted to get in in less than seven hours so they could set up and eat before the bugs came on.

In the stern, the Stranger watched the yellow blades cut on alternate sides. At this point, the Stranger loved to paddle, plain and simple. He’d long since crossed the boundary between paddling as a necessary chore to get from point A to point B and paddling as just fun, like cycling, an enjoyable form of exercise in and of itself. While he could admire the exploits of the big trippers like Howard, or the Hide Away Canoe Club, the Stranger wasn’t kidding himself. He was in it for the fun, of which it was plenty.

The plan was to head north, up the Bird River to Talon Lake and back. It’s a great route, especially once north of Snowshoe where the river is seldom travelled. They had only seven nights, eight days, so they’d have to move every day. If they got wind stayed, that’d be that for this year. It had happened before. In fact, this was the fourth time they’d set out to Talon from Tulabi. The Stranger had this pipe dream that if they worked hard full time, they could hit Talon on the third day. Otter was fond of countering that he wanted a vacation, not an expedition, more gentleman adventurer than Jack Hornby. Well, no chance of starvation with the kit they had. The freeze dried experiment was over. Now, after the fresh meals were done, they’d live on organic short grained brown rice and curries. Light, compact, cheap, these meals were tasty, quick to prepare, and best of all, they were real food. Satisfying and sustaining. Eat like kings and still lose weight. Here they were again, pulling up to the first portage, leaving the motor boats behind, at least until the first fly-in lake. These portages south of Snowshoe saw a lot of traffic, relatively speaking, and took quite a pounding. Plenty of mud. The land in the boreal forest doesn’t come back quickly once it’s been used hard. But it was dry today, so the trail was clean. They’d leave the litter others left behind and pick it up on the way out. Lunch stop up towards Elbow, and supper in Snowshoe. They had a little tradition of stroganoff and ceasar salad first night. Joy’s recipes had plenty of beef and garlic. A great kickoff meal.

Like many of the larger lakes from here north, Snowshoe has motor boats, fly-in fishermen, usually from Chicago or Nebraska. For many years, the boys didn’t understand how these fellas acted. But, on reflection, it must have been hard for the fishermen. Drive several hours, or fly into Kenora, then pile into a little bush plane. Fly a couple more hours north, over unbroken lakes and trees, no houses or roads. Finally, landing in a northern lake, they were shown cabins and boats, and given little maps of the lake they were on. They had no real idea where they were. No topos, maybe a GPS. They were kind of disconnected from the trail of lakes and portages the canoeists followed. Probably didn’t expect to meet locals. Also, their culture was different: guns, no universal health care, no hockey, no cradle to grave socialism, no Queen, no french, no curling, a different country. People from large cities, mistrustful of others. To them, the boys were hicks, yokels, maybe dangerous. Anyway, the boys’d talk about that at night. Sometimes plan little tricks for the visitors, like "On parle que le francais", or "You’ve been had, there’s no fish in this lake", or "The road’s just over there". The fun never stops.

American paddlers, on the other hand, were like brothers. Cut out of the same cloth. The Trippin’ Tribe. Although one seldom encountered others moving from Nopiming, through the Crown lands and into Woodland Caribou, when they did do so, the reaction was generally "You’re the first people we’ve met!" as though they were surprised at this turn of events, at the emptiness of the forest. For the Stranger and Otter, this was the usual. It was taken for granted that they’d be alone once they went through that first portage north of Elbow. Maybe you’d see one other party, usually no one. Sure, in the southern reaches within four or five hours of the car, there could be others, but once out towards Snowshoe, or up near Wilson on the eastern route, there was no one. On the other hand, the boys had to recall their one trip south to the Quetico. A beautiful area, no doubt. But the first line-up at a portage was a bit off putting. Then there was the daily flotilla of canoe parties drifting through. Some days they’d seen as many as fifteen or twenty boats. And at night you could count four , maybe five fires out there ringing the lake they were on. But when they hit that lovely camp site that was posted as closed due to over usage, and it had been well and truly trashed, well, that was that for the so-called wilds of Quetico. They’d never been back, never even talked about it. Maybe they’d picked a bad time of year, or had been unlucky on the route they’d chosen, who knew?

If the boys were going to drive eight or ten hours, they’d head north to Leaf Rapids or Pukatawagon. They were spoiled and they knew it.

Living in a minor urban setting on the edge of the boreal forest had done that. A city that was within three hours drive of a put-in, door to lake, allowed a real wilderness experience any weekend. There were years that the boys were in the woods every weekend between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving. A week off meant a ten day trip. Not huge expeditions, but plenty satisfying. The real limiting factors were ice and snow. Hard to paddle in the ice, dangerous too. The November 11^th trip had shown that. When the Stranger looked into that ice covered water and imagined himself coming up under the ice unable to break through from beneath, well, it hadn’t been a comforting feeling. With two others in the boat, very likely someone wouldn’t have survived an upset in that water. He agreed with James Raffan, that trip leaders are absolutely personally responsible to bring ‘em back alive. So, that set the rule: no trips after Thanksgiving no matter how warm it seemed. Dr. Giesbrecht from the university had shown that even in frigid water a person’s survival times were longer than had previously been thought, 30 to 40 minutes, not 5 or 10. But you can’t breathe ice. The annual Thanksgiving long weekend that the Stranger took with Joy could be a late autumn idyl or a howling blizzard with two feet of snow. No matter, it wouldn’t freeze the lake, latent heat being what it is. Actually, the blizzards were fun, stimulating, and whetting the appetite for winter camping, which is a whole ‘nother story.

Snowshoe Lake is on the border between Manitoba and Ontario, marking the end of Nopiming Park and the beginning of the Crown land. Although the boys had begun tripping in Nopiming, most of their trips were on Crown land. They were quite surprised to learn that there was a park on the Ontario side, a little north of Nopiming. The old topos they’d bought years ago, or inherited from the Chief’s brother Tam, didn’t show any park. They’d been going in and out of the park for years without knowing it. Then DNR put up the signs at the entry points. The Stranger was surprised, too, to find that there was a camping fee to travel there. That was hard to get used to. It seemed sort of unCanadian, user fees being a retro way to tax. Too conservative. But the boys are good citizens, so they now ensure they’ve got the necessary permits to cover their time in Woodland Caribou.

Once through Snowshoe, it gets wilder. Scarcely travelled, the portages are floored in green and often hard to follow for their lack of use. Lots of blowdown that isn’t cleared, too. It can make for monkeybar portaging, clambering up, over and around, but that’s the charm of it. How bad can it be? The animals are not used to seeing people there either, so proceeding silently often brings huge rewards in sightings. By this time, the boys had the portages memorized, ending in the little split island where the Bird splits in two to go around a beautiful small isle, falling over rocks and singing on both sides. From that spot it’s a half hour to Lantern Lookout in pre-Chase. Then it’s a fifty meter walk to Chase, which links to Midway and Eagle. From there, the route goes northwest to Irregular, due north up the Bird, or northeast into the Talon River. There are fly-ins in Chase-Eagle. Eagle is also the southern boundary of Woodland Caribou.

Once the boys had stopped in Eagle, they were three days from the put-in. Next day would decide if they’d get to the beach at Talon this year, or not. The only thing that’d stop that would be a strong north/west wind. They were excited. They’d been in Talon before, but on a Beaver’s wings. As they sat around the fire that night, the Stranger and Otter revelled in the anticipation. Jim Hegyi had called this a different world for canoe travellers. For sure it’s the best, most fun one if you like the wide open solitude.

Next morning dawned perfect, a light southeast breeze and brilliant sunshine. The boys jumped to, packed the kit and set off for Talon. The little river is a beauty paddle, with a small falls to be heard at Dowswell Creek, a gentle meander and a larger, more energetic falls at Talon itself. As usual, the Stranger lost scale perspective and made the paddle up Talon Lake way more exciting than it had to be. In the end, as they neared the beach/cabin site, they passed a couple swimming from one of the islands nearby. They hadn’t come up the Talon River, the mud had only had animal prints, so where’d they come from? They were gone next day, presumably headed north to Aegean. It hadn’t been Scott & Kathy Warner, but so few people are seen in here, the Stranger wondered where from, where to?