We hope you enjoy these dispatches straight from Canada. May it remind you of past adventures or connect you with those grand memories a son or loved one is making, maybe even this summer.
July 27, Day 12
We just can’t seem to catch a break. Everyone’s tent was wet after the rain last night, but fresh blueberries in the morning oatmeal served as an acceptable silver lining. Today began on the jam-packed Map 15: eleven separate rapids and falls on this map alone. With the low water, we had no idea which, if any, would be navigable. There was the potential for over a dozen portages today. The Bloodvein was living up to its reputation, and our backs and spirits were being tested.
We left Map 14 and hit the portages hard. Everyone carried two pieces of gear and cleared the portages in one trip. The boys pushed themselves and worked together. We were blasting through portages left and right! We ate lunch, peanut butter power bars, dried apples, and gorp. Later, a couple of sets had enough depth for a few exciting descents through the whitewater.
We found ourselves turning to Map 16 in the early afternoon, well ahead of our previous estimates. Just a few more short portages and we would be at the campsite! I remembered this stretch of river well. There was a large, white rock sticking up through the reeds on river left, and then a small creek trickling down from a pond that the last portage skirted around before arriving at one of my favorite campsites on the entire Bloodvein River.
We stepped out of the canoes and were greeted by . . . nothing? The campsite was gone. Completely and inexplicably gone. No fire ring, no openings for tents, no cairns lining the shore. No inviting hollows beneath the pines, beckoning tired canoeists to come and rest. Was it last year’s high water? Maybe the forest fire the year before that? Whatever it was, there was no place to camp amidst the piles of windfall and brush. We had to move on.
Each stroke of the paddle felt more challenging than the last. We were supposed to be setting up camp, sawing and splitting firewood, and taking a dip in the river before dinner. Instead, we were stuck in the canoes with an unknown number of kilometers to go. We came to the next portage on the river. No place to pitch a single tent. The portage after that yielded nothing better. We had made it over halfway through Map 16.
Weary from the day’s efforts, we pulled over on brushy, shrubby spit of land and decided to call it home. Tents went up, dinner got started on the stove, and the rain came down. As we stood in a circle in our rain gear, water slowly mixing with our mac and cheese, we should have felt miserable. Instead, I saw smiles on the faces of the tired campers standing in our makeshift campsite. Amazingly, we all felt optimistic for the days ahead. We had made it through today, a day full of carrying heavy packs, disappointment, and unexpected miles on the river. And having done that, we knew we could make it through anything ahead of us.
We talked about looking forward to seeing the sun come out. Going for a swim. Reading in a hammock. Telling stories around a campfire. Feeling refreshed after tonight’s rest. As the campers went to their tents, it stopped raining long enough for my co-counselor and I to clean up from dinner and close up the wanagans. The bugs chased us to our tent, and our last thoughts were the same at the end of a pretty brutal day: there’s no place we’d rather be.
