Day 29: Little boy lost

"We don't have any designated sites on the lake," she said, emphasizing the word "designated".

I guess I can't take a hint and pressed the issue. "So, free-camping then?"

"Just don't get caught!" came a voice from the back of the registration booth, and I promised to find some secretive hiding space to spend the night.

But before that, I decided to enjoy the park: Douglas Provincial Park, embracing the Qu'Appelle arm of the lake. I had a cheeseburger and a shake from the concession stand, and bought some groceries from a woman I overheard saying the lake was as high as she's ever seen it. "It's terrible," she said.

But looking out over the broken down boat launch, the washed away beach, and the undercut lakesde walkway, I was quite pleased at hearing this. My mapbooks had warned that the Qu'Appelle was frequently too low to navigate, and best traveled during the spring melt-off. But if you look on a map, you will see that the Qu'Appelle cuts almost directly east to Winnipeg, whereas the Saskatchewan River first goes into the north before you can take the long lake Winnipeg back down. High water means the Qu'Appelle is runnable, which means I can get east quicker.

I visited the interpretive center, which like all the ones I've seen in Saskatchewan Provincial Parks exuded a feeling of abandon. I went in and briefly scanned the taxidermy, then decided to check out the trails that begin here. The trail runs to an area of active dunes, which sounded like an interesting thing to check out until I had biked for an hour in the hot, humid summer air to get near there.

I had no water, and the bike would not run on the mile of sandy path before the dunes. I decided to come back on the other side of the loop. I proceeded to get lost on those cactus-riddled trails, and wandered over game trails, led by my GPS, to get back to the center, where I quickly downed a liter of water.

Back in the canoe and down the shore I found a spot that seemed as secretive as any I was likely to find there, primarily by virtue of being further down the lake than most other boats would spend time to go.

It could not wait until morning, I had to go check out the portage over to the Qu'Appelle. I figured I might as well walk along the shore, since the evening was young and I didn't think my bike could handle it, anyway.

I climbed up to the top of the bank, and walked along a closed road until I found a path back down to the beach. I follow it. It becomes increasingly entangles in trees, and I am alternating between wading beside the trees and bushwacking along old game trails towards the dam. Finally, I reach it, and pull myself up the large boulders supporting it. At the top, I look east, and see no water. If the river's there, it's hiding down in the trees. So I climb down the far side of the dam, on the left side, where my map indicates the channel picks up. I see no water.

I look down at my feet. The Qu'Appelle is a drainage ditch, and empty.

I knew this was a possibility, but I honestly didn't think it would come to this. Back at my tent, I went over the alternative routes available to me.

First, I could put the canoe on the trailer, and bike down to the Missouri River, taking up the original plan I had. But after spoending a week on a dammed lake, the series of huge lakes that comprised the modern, modified Missouri didn't seem like fun.

Another option was to bike the canoe east until I found enough water to put in again. There are certainly lakes on the Qu'Appelle, which wouldn't be empty, and perhaps I would eventually reach one that the authorities were letting drain into the river, to be nevigable. But how far would that be?

The final possibility would be to turn around, take the northern arm of Lake Diefenbaker, and take the Saskatchewan/Winnipeg route. It would probably be quite interesting and scenic. I just didn't think it would give me enough time after Winnipeg to start heading south.

I constantly shifted between the different possibilities all night, becoming sure of one, and then losing assurance and moving on to the next. I figured there was no reason to worry, no reason to leave my site until I made a decision I could be happy with, even if it took a couple of days.

Day 29 ended: 51*00.083N, 106*26.715W

Day 28: Serendipity

Lake Diefenbaker is formed by the damming of two rivers: the South Saskatchewan and the Qu'Appelle. As such, it looks like a twisted 'T' on the map, the left and right ends of the 'T' being the two dams. The inside left bend forms a sharp corner, called the "elbow", which I was approaching while wondering where I was going to stay for the night. If I pushed, I could probably reach Douglas Provincial Park before nightfall, but not with enough leeway to continue on if they had no spaces available.

My map coordinates were indicating I was at least half a mile on shore. But my eyes said, no, I am clearly still on the water, or at least the sailboats all around me would seem to indicate!
I pull over to decide what to do. I hadn't seen any wonderful sites on this side ofthe lake, and since I was soon approaching the branch of the 'T' I would soon need to make a crossing anyway. But neither side of the Qu'Appelle branch looked too appealing. If only there was some nice beach right here!

I looked over at the shore I had parked at. There were old footprints in the sand, leading up to an established firepit, and behind that, a flat sandy patch under a tree where many a tent had been pitched over the years.

It seemed like a nice spot. I spent the remaining hours of the day reading, writing, and working on my math problem, while wondering if anyone with a greater claim would come along to wrest this perfect site from me.

No one did. I used the half-burnt logs in the fire pit to make my cooking fire, and went to bed in my secluded site.

Day 28 ended: 51*04.789N, 106*41.270W

Day 27: Rookery

On the wide South Saskatchewan, when the current and wind were slow I would often save distance by cutting across from one side of the river to the other through its meanders, under the understanding that the shortest line between two points is the straighter one. Thus as the river turns this way and that I run straight lines between the inside curves. And so far, I used this technique on Lake Diefenbaker, which reaches two miles wide.

By the time I set out in the morning, the wind was already sweeping down the plain, opposed to my direction of travel. My experience with the Saskatchewan wind is if it's going in the morning, it will be going all day, so I had some decisions to make. I was already packed and on the water, so returning to my old campsite seemed a waste. So the question came down to whether to stay on the windward side of the lake, where the waves are roughestand try to pin you against the shore, or cross over to leeward, where the waves haven't had the opportunity to build up yet.
But this was a challenge! I looked straight into the wind and knew I could beat it. Once on the other shore I would be more protected and closer to the insides of the curves ahead.

Now a lake crossing is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a canoe. If the wind picks up while you're in the middle of the water, the waves could easily swamp or capsize your boat, and then you better hope the water isn't so cold that you can't swim back to shore.

I steadily chopped my ottertail paddle through the waves at they went past, and watched the shore behind me very slowly recede. There were times when I wasn't making any visual progress, and so I checked my GPS to make sure that, yes, I was proceeding at one or two miles per hour in the positive direction. Aiming for that point there I should make it in an hour. Forty five minutes. Twenty. It was difficult and I used all the strength I had -- if any waves I've seen were a meter high, these were. As I bobbed up and down like a rubber ducky in a bathtub, a couple of motorboats stopped by to make sure I was okay.

Okay? I was having a great time!

The next crossing was accidental. I was used to the small cable ferries that cross the smaller sections of river. So when I saw the ferry that crossed here, I was very careful to avoid it. Too careful, I guess. The waves got larger and larger but I didn't seem to be getting any closer to the ferry. I finally saw it unload, and many cars came out of the beast, when I expected only one. So it's that kind of ferry.

Suddenly I realized that, getting the scale of the boat all out of whack has meant that I'm back in the middle of the lake. It's another long, slow paddle back to shore, and something popped in my shoulder just as I reached it. I would have to stop for the day at the next available site.
Fortunately, the beach is all sandy in this area giving several options to choose from. At the first beach I relieved my hunger and bladder, both complaining during the second crossing. But this beach seemed to close to the ferry for much privacy. There must be better places ahead.

So, slowly scooting forward, I came around the corner to see a large island. It looked to me like one of those mathematical models, a cylinder sticking out of the water, with the top chopped off at an angle to show the cross-section is an ellipse.

Islands are always interesting, and I decided to visit this one even if it meant limping onan injured shoulder. As I got closer, I noticed the dark silouettes of many birds above the island. Closer still, pelicans at the base! I was overjoyed. Soon I noticed a flock of seagulls here as well.
And then the shadows on the crown of the island began to move. They were cormorants. These are the shadows of birds, pure black and silent in flight. As I came around to see the ellipse of the island, I noticed it was covered in bird shadows, some sitting up high on nests built of twigs.

I had encountered a few isolated cormorants before, and no doubt many passed me, invisible to my eye, but this was like finding the cormorant homeworld. Cormorants and pelicans choose islands which are too far away from shore to be reached by mammalian predators. Cormorants themselves have acidic excrement, which leaves their islands barren, and otherworldly. This has actually been a cause of some concern. It seems that climate change is allowing cormorants to expand their sphere of influence, and as they do their excrement is stripping more and more islands of their vegetation, making them all resemble this miniature Yellowtone.

So what can conservationists do? There is talk of culling cormorants to preserve isolated, forested islands in their current state. But that seems like an unnatural solution to the problem. One thing seems likely, and one reason I am glad I don't have to make this decision, is that whatever choice is made now will be the object of scorn in fifty years time. We stopped forest fires for a time, but then learned many trees need a cycle of fire to reproduce. We cut down trees that harbored a certain parasite, and then learned the relationship was far more symbiotic than we had imagined.

I had already disturbed the peace of the rookery enough, and clearly couldn't sleep there. But I could sleep at the beach across from it, to the raucus sounds of these flocks of strange birds.

Day 27 ended: 50*56.078N, 106*53.630W

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 25: The pelicans are never wrong

I have been paddling, making good progress all day on the lake, but evening and the next storm are closing in.

Now my aim was to make it to at least the regional park in this area. I don't know exactly what distinguishes these from their more grandiose brethren, provincial and national parks, but on my maps they are very small and I can't imagine them being much more than a nice, paid parking lots for campers. So while I stop at every provincial park that I can, I generally bypass these, figuring that I am not missing much by free camping on the shore instead.

Now the sun is setting, and now I have big storm clouds on three sides of me. On my left, which keeps me to shore, on my right, which wants me to stay on the lake, and behind me, pushing me onward.

Some motorboats put in at the regional park, making good fishing out of the time and the weather. But I push on. I see what look to be two large outcrops of shore ahead of me, which could indicate bays. According to my map, there is a very deep bay poorly serviced by roads, which ought to mean good camping. But there are also a number of very shallow ones, where I will be exposed to the lake.

I stare at my map and try to compare the features I see there to the ones before me. But it is hard, my Saskatchewan mapbook is an older version than my Alberta one and it does not include the topographic data which greatly aid this. My naked eyes suggest that the large bay is behind the second outcropping of land.

I turn on my GPS to try to pinpoint my position, and then find those coordinates on my map. This again suggests the better bay is further on ahead. But the wind is getting rough, and I might not make it there. I may as well peek into the first one which I must pass anyway.

And as I do, I see a flock of pelicans sitting at the far end. Pelicans are my harbingers of good camping. They sit in nice, clean locations which are relatively undisturbed by large animals, other than me. I immediately wheel into the bay and land on the soft, rocky shore. There is here a hill of mud, weathered like the badlands and bearing at least a ton of quartz, if the fragments I could see poking out were in indication. There is a beautiful, flat secluded spot in the bay and I set up my tent there as the storm nears. The wind is getting quite fierce but my place provides a little protection and I cook my dinner for the evening, and take photos of the sunset torn apart by the storm.

The next morning I pass by the next outcropping of land. There is nothing there, no deep bay, no flat spot for a tent. I do not know which is wrong, but the GPS coordinates given by my unit increasingly disagree with those given by the map in this area. But fortunately, the pelicans are never wrong.

Day 25 ended: 50*41.322N, 107*21.034W

Day 24: Three showers and a bath

"I won't recognize you the next time I see you."

So said the lady at the privately owned camp store. It is prophesy, but not a supernatural one: she is remarking on the collection of bathing supplies I have brought to the counter.

It has been 24 days on the river; 24 days without a shower; 24 days surrounded by mud and dirt, and nothing cleaner than sand that finds its way under fingernails and into creases of skin I was unaware of.

I first carefully scrape off my vagrant's beard. This process takes awhile because a few hairs overwhelm my razor, and then I must rinse the razor and reapply a spot of shaving cream to get the next few out. When this is done, I have a bald chin and lip, but still a dirty face.

So it is off to the showers. These require you to push a button for each minute of water. I don't know how many times I hit that button, but I do know that I took three consecutive showers. Each time shampooing and rinsing my hair, carefully washing my face, and down through the shoulders, the knees and the toes and everything in between. Places that ordinarily don't require much attention are luxuriously washed and rinsed under the shower, and I hit that button again and again, as I undergo the entire shower ritual three times, until I feel clean. I change into my freshly washed clothes, and I am for two hours a clean man, who does indeed go unrecognized by the camp store lady, the next time I am around.

I proceed to get lost on the hiking trails in a brief sprinkle, and my aura of cleanliness lost a portion of its luster.

But coming back to the campsite that evening, I see that the waves came up during the storm, and carried my boat away from where I had left it -- not too far, fortunately! It was tied up, at least. But the canoe is swamped and everything in it has become drenched. My little boat has had a mudbath while I was out, and there is nothing to do but wash everything out. I am fortunate that nothing was lost or broken. My method of securing my items must be sufficient.
A hard wind comes up to help dry off my articles, and lights splash around in the sky. A girl from a neighboring site warns me there is a tornado watch in effect in our area. This storm is no worse than the others I have weathered so far, so I continue cleaning out my boat while the sky goes crazy.

Day 24 ended: 50*41.278N, 107*55.400W

Day 23: Homeless

I have reached Lake Diefenbaker. There is no longer any current and the speed and direction I go depends solely on the wind and my paddling. And I have paddled hard all day, stirred on by a wind which tries to pin me to the lefthand shore. I reach Saskatchewan Provincial Park's beach about three hours to sunset.

I wondered about abit before realizing that the park was too big for me to get anywhere by walking. So, it was back to the boat to pull out my bicycle. I ride down to the registration office, and ask for a spot on the lake, so I can be by my canoe. The girl in the office is quite accomodating, and says I could set up my tent near the beach where I am already parked, or on in the Lakeside campground quite aways down. I take the latter option, thinking that would get me a head start when I wanted to go.

She then asked the standard questions when paying for a campsite: what is your address and telephone number? And the truth is, I have neither. I don't tell her that, I just give her my old address and old telephone number, knowing that this information isn't really used for anything anyway.

But it does hit home. I am officially homeless. At this point, I have been on the river more than three weeks and my face is shaggy with an unkempt beard. My face, which has not been washed for more than a week, has been attracting gnats and flies. All of my clothes are covered with dirt and mud.

At this point I am worn out from a day of paddling, and slow of speech from hardly talking to anyone for three weeks. The counter girl hands me a packet of something, and I try to figure out what it is. Instead of asking her, I just stare at it until she tells me, "It's Off. Bug repellent." Homeless people are rude.

A singular event comes to mind regarding an interation I once had with a beggar. I was in Boston, visiting my brother. We are going to get some bagels after some church service. I was not actually going to be paying for any of the bagels, mind you; I was just standing in line to give an order so my dad could pay.

A guy comes off the street and singles me out. He asks me to give him money for a bottledd water, with a sense of entitlement. Feeling threatened and put upon, I refuse. He becomes so angry that he storms up to the cashier, where he gets a free cup of tap water. So there!
I was completely befuddled. He got his revenge on me for not paying for his bottled water by... just getting free water? And why is he begging for water when it is free all around us, anyway? This is North America.

I think I can begin to understand part of his attitude, now. A bottle of water is not such a great cost to me, so why shouldn't he have it? And he is so used to being lied to, and treated as scum beneath contempt, that he does not know what to do when I refuse. Anything, in a blind search for dignity.

During this trip I have a couple of times, outside of the canoeing context, received the "scum" treatment. A person has a way of saying you don't matter, you are beneath me. If you are talking to scum it is okay to lie, because you can only "lie" to a person, and scum hasn't quite risen to that level.

And what can you do? You walk away, thinking of all the clever things you could have said or done to throw it back in the person's face. Anything, really.

Day 23 ended: 50*41.278N, 107*55.400W