September 23: Tough night

Too many people and too much mud. Explosions on the river: invisible bullets flew over through the trees. I couldn't tell where they were coming from, could not see any people bearing firearms. I alternated between trying to stay as visible as possible and hoping the banks would provide some cover.

The sun was declining, I could not find any campsites and some amplified doorbell ding-donged over the river. What song was it playing? What was setting it off? Why was it so ear-splitting?

The bend in the river past the doorbell offered a tiny inbank of mud-covered gravel. I had to bend over the weeds that grew there to provide any footprint for my tent. The site was unnatural; there was a dirt road across the river and only a neglected area of bushes and trees stood between me and the doorbell of doom.

It began to rain that night, hard. The wind picked up and so did the lightning, which came down all around me. Unlike the Saskatchewan summer storms that banged around mostly in the cloudtops, some of these strikes were close. After one flash I could not even count to one before the thunder shook the doorbell's memory from my mind. I remembered the conservation officer from Virden who had been struck by lightning; his first thought on waking was that he had died and gone to hell.

There were no trees over my tent; the brush was too thick to approach them and it was too late to move anyway. The only thing was to lie in bed.

My sleep was broken by half-awake nightmares where, still laying in the tent, I seemed to grow forked limbs and slowly grow into robotic material while a voice asked, "This is what you want, isn't it?" Deeper sleep came and went. It was still filled with nightmares fed by rain and electricity.

Fed up with the pain I woke again and again, forcing myself through the layers of the unconscious until I had woken up so often I was actually awake. I bundled up against the cold night and drank some clean water, but did not sleep again.

In the morning it was still raining and I did not have the energy to do anything but read in my tent until the storm finally broke.

Day 94 ended: 49*52.043N, 097*29.337W

Day 26: Distractions are the stuff of life

My goal was to make the lake from Saskatchewan Landing to Douglas Provincial Park in three days. I had made my goal for day 25, but that took concentrated paddling all day, and was not a performance I could repeat the next day. It was quite warm, with little wind, and I had a math problem stuck in my head all morning.

The mind is a cluttered place. People often speak of what they want, or don't want, but this is usually only a window onto the tidier sections of the mind, meant for public view. At the beginning of this trip this was quite clear to me, as the portions of my mind thatcraved adventure and travel grew increasingly excited, and those that yearned for friendship and stability tried to find an allied excuse for not going. The human mind wants a hundred things at once, most of them contradictory.

So here I was, almost a month out of Calgary, and daydreaming about solving math problems, TA'ing for a semester, and running a series of talks on the "Lives and Times of the Mathematicians". My adventurous, quest-driven parts were worn out by the hard day, and I looked back, seeing much that was good. The river is a distraction from life, they said, while my wearied parts said, no, this math is a distraction from the river. I ought to be making distance, not failing, as usual, to solve some of my favorite problems.

I put myself together again, coming up with a scheme to turn the adversarial parts of my mind to one purpose. A light tailwind would help to this end.

Paddling is out of the question, but I can possibly make distance and solve problems simultaneously. How? Sailing!

People make canoe sailing sound easy, but I suppose they usually have four hands to work with. The basic idea is to take a large sheet, such as a tarp or rainfly, wrap it around a couple paddles and let the wind push you along. That's what the bowman does. The stern, however, is as always most responsible for steering and so rudders to keep the craft moving the right way.

Like I said, this requires four hands. But I had often felt the wind tugging on my tent, and I figured that, since the top of my tent is pure mesh, and the bottom a square of nylon, I could hold the tent out in front of me with one hand, using its floor as the sail. Then my other hand could take charge of a paddle, to rudder. It's an interesting problem that all of my mind could agree to try.

But the result was of very limited success. Even in this light wind it was difficult to control the tent with one hand, and not being able to reach back with my "rudder", the canoe tended to drag to whichever side the paddle was on. As a result I had to switch the rudder and sail hands back and forth to maintain travel in the correct direction.

And the rate of travel was not terribly impressive. It did not seem to be a significant improvement over letting the wind drive me, sailless, just using the paddle to correct my direction. So I tried to put the tent away, still sitting on my canoe, and got it hopelessly wet before it was apart.

I had to stop not long afterwards to let my tent dry out and my thoughts refocus. My site for the evening offered a dead cow and a little shack for controlling the power lines.

My subconscious energies came together as I slept. I dreamed the little power shack was a portal to other places and times, and walked through it to my old bedroom, where I grew up. Every thing was there, every toy, every item of clothing, practically every thing I had ever owned, stored there in boxes. And I told the new owner of the room to throw it all out, to give it all to Goodwill.

My mind wants many things, but apparently it does not want much.

Day 26 ended: 50*47.798N, 106*59.884W

Day 6: South by South-East

I was still tired by my "reserve adventure", but it is hard to get enough sleep at these latitudes in the summer. The sky maintains some vestige of light long after the sun goes down, and then brightens again a short time later. While this light may force me awake, I am usually quite comfortable in bed until forced out by the needs of the toilet. The first of these is quite simple, and can be done nearly anywhere, even over the side of the canoe. The second may be a bit more mysterious to those who have never needed to practice it.

While I'm sure our roaming ancestors did not too much trouble about how they did this, in modern times there are certain guidelines to follow when making deposits in the wild. First, it is considered best to bury them in politeness to your successors, who do not want to smell or step in your stuff. Burial also improves the rate at which they degrade into dirt, which is especially important near heavily used sites. Authorities vary on the size of hole for this purpose. One book suggests a six-inch cube, which seems overly large to me, and certainly not always possible given the soil one sometimes has to work with. On the other extreme, I read a touring cyclist who claims he digs a "cat-hole" with the toe of his shoe, which makes me think he must go very frequently to use such small holes.

From the fact that I have not encountered another soul on the river since leaving Calgary's halo, I assume my campsites are very rarely used, but still try to bury them appropriately. Lacking a shovel, I dig my holes with my axe. I don't seem to need any greater width than the length of the axe-head, about three inches. I then do make the holes about six inches long, which is certainly necessary if I've had a lot of starch recently.

It is then essential to pack out the toilet paper, which apparently does not degrade rapidly enough. This is just one of many reasons I'm happy whenever I find some place I can dump my garbage.

After taking care of business, I begin to pick up my tent, starting with the sleeping bag and pad, and then taking down the tent. Since I've seen little rain, I usually prefer to do this before eating breakfast, since this keeps the camp neater. Less stuff out makes it less likely I will forget anything or, I suppose, draw attention. Then I put everything in the canoe, push off, and set out.

On this morning, however, I was interrupted while going about my morning routine by a small plane, perhaps a crop duster. It came in fast and low, buzzing my tent, and I was terrified as I saw it flopping around on the wind, heading toward the bluff ahead where the river turned right. I'm not sure how he did it, but he managed to pull out just in time, and continued down the river.

A strange thing, I thought, to tour a river in a plane, but I suppose he was having a gand, terrifying adventure as well as I was.I go down the river, apparently dosing off for short periods. There are no rapids, no debris, and generally no dangers whatsoever to be found on the lower Bow, but I was a couple times jerked awake at the sound of water rushing over a larger rock, or around a branch. With the current generally being so slow, and the water so smooth, a boat is unlikely to capsize unless intentionally. More disturbing to me were the waking dreams I had, including at least one brief conversation with my boat-mate, Jack. There was another in which I was discussing some film I was going to make with a friend, but one of my suggestions was rejected as being too "carile" (pronounced "care-isle") which is apparently the proper adjective to describe a monster in a horror film being less effective due to having eyes which are too cute. I was unaware of this word and the need for it, and suppose that now I have it, should this need ever arise.

If these kinds of dreams had continued the next day or been of increased intensity, I suppose I would have needed to call the whole thing off. But that night I was finally able to get enough sleep to fully recover from my night out on the water.

Day 6 ended: 50*25.630N, 112*15.348W