Continuation One:

Common loon (gavia immer)

In the morning, I set out relatively early. I did not cook any breakfast, the kitchen outfit had been stashed in its nylon stuff sack and that in turn packed in the dry bag with „hardware“ since last night. My breakfast consisted of a protein bar washed down with cold tea and it was postponed until the time, when, after a short paddle, I reached the portage at the end of the lake. Everything around here reeked of fishy smell. It was apparent that a bold eagle chose a flat granite rock outcrop as his countertop for gutting and pecking of his catch. Remains of fish heads, fins and tails in varied stages of rot that laid scattered around testified as its evidence. There was also a border marker here, in the form of a concrete pedestal with a shiny metallic cone jutting vertically up from it. The boundary was made visible here also by a recently cleared wide cutline, which laid across a low ridge separating Mountain Lake from a long and narrow Watap Lake. This followed as the next link in the chain of the boundary route. The roughly a kilometer-long portage at first wound through the cutline, then slipped into the woods on the American side and then returned back into the border cutline before its end at the shore of the next lake. Near the shore there was another border marker. Watap Lake snaked among densely forested shores as a motionless wider river. When Milena and I printed out a series of satellite maps covering the boundary route, I did not consider any need to print out any further close-up details here. The topography of this section appeared to me simple enough at the time. My negligence now cost me an almost hour-long delay, when after a while I had arrived at the false end of the lake and could not find the portage here. Only after I had fruitlessly explored every beaver slide into the water there, I turned to analyze the shoreline somewhat back from where I came. To my great surprise, I found that I had passed the continuation of the lake, which peeled off in an inconspicuous and shadow-shrouded-against-the-noon-sun little bay that I had not seen the first time. Now I paddled into it through shallow narrows, where the bottom of my canoe glanced off a rock on the bottom. The Voyageurs likely had to lighten the load off their birch bark “canot du nord” („décharge“) to safely pass through here. The new part of the lake bore a new name – Rove Lake. At the scale, in which I had printed out the satellite view of the lakes Watap and Rove, their narrow width was in many places covered over by a relatively thick band displaying the border. Only with the warning provided by the previous lapse of awareness, I noticed a second extension of the lake through an obscured narrows, which finally brought me to its real end and the beginning of an over three kilometer long portage to Rose Lake. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. Yet I knew that I would have to walk out some sixteen kilometers, of which nine and a half with a heavy load. For that I will need a greater part of a day. Now, there was not enough time remaining for that and I could not count on camping somewhere along an unfinished portage. I had to postpone it till tomorrow morning. I therefore looked for some wild camping around the Canadian side of the end of Rove Lake. I had seen a pretty spot on a point with mature pines several kilometers back, but I would not want to lose time in the morning by repeating paddling of an already conquered distance. In the end, I thus chose a really emergency type of camping on a narrow strip of a spongy, moss and low bushes-covered shore between the lake water and a thick young spruce growth. I had to use my machete to chop out a sufficient room in the spruce branches for my tent. It wasn’t cozy here, yet I took advantage of the still warm afternoon of a sunny day to have a rewarding swim in the lukewarm water of the lake. Soon after, I retired to an early rest in the tent on a bed of the deep moss, to get up the next day with a crack of dawn. The lake and my camp were shrouded in a low heavy fog. But, as the sharp rays of the rising sun started penetrating it, my loneliness was broken curtesy to a show from an otter. With a noisy splish-sloshing he weaved through the lake surface and snaked with its flexible shiny body to the left and right. Every once in a while, he thrusted its head and neck out of the water, sending at me angry looks, accompanied with ratchetty snorts. I had likely settled too close to its nest, or, perhaps, I had simply just trespassed on its sovereign territory. What must have brought him satisfaction, was the fact that I tossed my livelihood roughly into the boat and set out toward the portage. It had its beginning only a little over some hundred meters away from my camp. Only once here, I carefully sorted everything up and assembled it into the loads for the back. The first one was represented by my waterproof frame pack that contained the sleeping bag, all the clothing, the tent and a Bio-Lite stove. The stove was rather heavy – even heavier than my minimalistic tent – but unlike other typical models, it didn’t use liquid fuels, but just gathered pieces of wood, pine cones and other natural fuel. It generated its own thermal electricity that powered a fan to blow the flame into the mightiness of a propane torch. The excess electrical energy was then made available for the charging of camera batteries, cell phones, etc., from a USB outlet on the stove. It was supposed to be my backup mode of charging besides solar chargers in the case of lack of sunny weather. I must admit, though, that I hardly ever used this stove and the next time I would leave it at home for the situations, where there is need to minimize the weight. During a portage, I would add to the pack a waterproof map case, a small dry bag with electronics and one bottle of tea. I still strapped a rolled up sleeping mat to the top of the frame. The second load for the portage was made up by the hunting pack frame welded from light aluminum tubes, on the bottom shelf of which I strapped horizontally a dry bag with food. At the start of the expedition, that one represented the heaviest object to be transported. I then stood and strapped on top of the food bag a second dry bag with the “hardware”. If the tent fly was still wet at the time of packing, for the portage, it went into the top of this bag. The third load for the portage was the canoe. With it, I also carried a large lumbar fanny pack, which had besides the waist strap also a shoulder strap. In it I carried rubber sandals, the fingerless leather paddling gloves and a second bottle of tea. I also slipped the life jacket on the shoulders, but I would not zipper it up.

I started the portage with the waterproof backpack. With it, I also carried a waterproof fanny pack, containing items of day needs, as well as food for lunch and snacks. This I carried turned forward on my stomach. In my hands, I carried a camera and the spare (kayak) paddle as a walking cane. The path was very rough, bristling with large pointy rocks jutting out in all angles. The rocky stretches alternated with muddy sections, where one was forced to balance on the edge line between the limbs of the trail-lining tree growth and deep liquid mud in the path itself, like a rope walker. It wound and climbed through young deciduous woods, as well as through tall conifers. The trail occasionally offered a hurdle to tackle in the form a large cross-wise laying log to stimulate awakening from the lethargy of a beast of burden. The fresh morning sun made the greenery glow in vivid yellow-red hues of the autumn-turning foliage, creating a merry carnival atmosphere. In about a third of the distance, the path had a junction with a turn-off to Daniel Lake in the States. From here in the direction of Rose Lake, the trail had a long stretch of relatively smooth promenade-like walking up to a region of marshes, where beaver mega projects flooded a short spread of the passage under water. This called for a great deal of acrobatics on fallen tree trunks, bent bushes and of skirting of the deluge through thick growth. Especially, when passing through here with the canoe, there was no threat of boredom. Right here, in a tight wiggle of the path through tall marsh reeds, I almost collided with a trio of Americans, who travelled in the opposite direction with one canoe. While I still faced two more returns for the next loads ahead of me, they only had to walk once on each portage. It was a reverse proportion formula that one was bound to quickly deduce once on the way: Three paddlers in one canoe = one trip on the portages; Two paddlers per canoe = two trips; a solo paddler = three trips on all portages. The last third of the trail continued straight to the lake under a canopy of a coniferous forest, but again, over rough rocks, scattered in chaos throughout the trail. At long last, the shore of Rose Lake itself, revealed a welcoming scenic beach of coarse sand under tall mature pines. The deep blue surface of the lake glittered in the pre-noon sun with thousands of starlets of its reflections on fine waves, rippled by a westerly wind. Before I had finally slaved up my way to it also with the canoe on my shoulders, after I had circumvented the beaver flood zone bending two-and-a-half-meter birch trees under my crotch like a bulldozer, the sun had long swung past its zenith and a late afternoon set in. Sweat was pouring down my face and my weary skeleton screamed with pain. I saw not a living soul anywhere around. Hence, without long hesitation, I stripped all and gleefully plopped myself into the welcoming arms of the crystal clear waters of the lake. For a while, I frolicked in it like a happy amphibian and weaved through its surface in dolphin-like leaps, not much unlike my morning otter visitor. Once I had a satisfactory swim and I relaxed my abused muscles at least a little bit, I dressed up again, loaded the canoe and pushed off into the lake. By then, it was already around four o’clock, the evening was approaching. Like practically all the lakes on the boundary route, also this narrow lake was stretching from west to east and for me, a headwind prevailed. But now, toward the evening, it had already somewhat abated. In this part of the canoe route, where it rises through its highest altitude on the divide between the watersheds of the Saint Lawrence and that, which drains down into Hudson’s Bay, I was encountering a relatively populous traffic of canoes from the U.S. side. It is because Minnesota, as a lake country state, abounds with many bases of outfitters, who rent out canoes and the gear to water tourists with detailed descriptions of several-day canoeing loops, to which they dispatch them, sometimes even with paid guides. These encompass various lake chains of which, many partly overlap the boundary canoe route. Interestingly, practically everyone that I had met on this route, moved from west to east and so took advantage of the prevailing westerly winds. Only a masochist like myself, resolves to face the winds and waves in travelling from east to west. But this is exactly the way Canada was being discovered and this is how I want to discover it for myself.

After a while, I met a pair of canoes with American tourists, who had despaired that all the campsites on the American shoreline were already occupied. They were asking, if it was possible to camp at the end of the lake, whence I came. When I had assured them of it positively, they in turn expressed concern about, where I would be able to camp. I replied that I would be looking for a wild camp site on the Canadian side. I reaped a smile from them and a silent admiration with a “V” of two raised fingers as a sign of a wish for victory. Not in the least, though, was I sure that I would really discover any campsite on the Canadian side. Not until past the half-length of the lake, when I had already become uneasy from the lengthening of the evening shadows, I suddenly noticed, what looked like very inconspicuous descending steps from the shore to the water, with seemingly worn and regrown again grass cover. Rather skeptically I halted here, stood up in the canoe to look and “Voila!” – A beautiful little meadow shaded by a grove of young birch trees, whose snow-white trunks surrounded it. There were signs of its prior usage, which included a rock fire pit. The whole area was overgrown with tall wild oats-like grass and thus, perhaps, yet unused this year. But in a flash, my tent stood here, flames licked the bottoms of the kettles and I was enjoying another refreshing swim, before the water would start boiling. It had already once again become my home and an oasis of the chances to regenerate my strength and the hope for the success of my continuing journey.

To the west of my camp, Rose Lake markedly narrowed down and wound in between woody shores shallow, with a muddy bottom. Already Alex Mackenzie, the prominent explorer for the Northwest Company and the first man, whose team reached the Pacific coast by canoe across the continent in 1792, notes in his journal that the shallow end part of Rose Lake had a strange effect on their canoes. It allegedly imposed drag on the canoe movement, as if the shallow muddy bottom sucked on them. I do not know, if I experienced something similar, but the fact of the matter is that the next morning, my water craft did not develop any racing speed here in spite of my vigorous paddling. This was partially due to the fact that every once in a while, I poked the paddle into the soft bottom and could not perform a proper stroke. I was passing here the iconic Canadian loons, whose haunting wails, or a hysteric laugh periodically pierced the silence of the misty morning ambiance above the surface of the lake. Yet my interest was piqued mainly by a family of pure white large trumpeter swans – two adults and a near adult youngster – who aristocratically arched their slender long necks in elegant bows.

Before its very end, the route was leaving the lake in a short portage – perhaps only three lengths of a canoe long – over a small rocky ridge into a short Rat Lake. Soon after I reached the next portage at the end of this lake, a party of young Americans in three rented canoes also arrived. While carrying on the portage trail, I mingled with them. During the ensuing small talk, I was pleasantly surprised that one of the young man recognized the Czech flag in the decal on the stern of my canoe. He must have been an educated university student. We instantly became friends. As to the experience and the optimized physical style in paddling, they were badly lacking, though, and I was thus way ahead of them on the next lake, just shortly after leaving the end of the portage. The next lake was South Lake. This lake was long and it was the last one in the chain of the Boundary Route, which still drained into the watershed of the Saint Lawrence River. The portage out of it, sometimes called „The Height of Land Portage“, into the next lake was already surmounting the ridge of the divide into the watershed of Hudson’s Bay. Its start was situated on the north shore of South Lake, roughly in two thirds of its length. The next lake on the Hudson’s Bay side was North Lake. The crossing of the divide used to possess a great significance. By crossing it, the „pays d’en haut“ – the upper country - was officially reached and the new recruits of the Northwest Company underwent a ritual similar to the christening by Neptune on the occasions of crossing the equator at the sea. The newbies were patted with wet cedar boughs, which officially installed them into becoming the „Homes du Nord“ (Northerners) and, of course, yet another reason availed itself to crack open a keg of the “high wine”. I arrived at the Height of Land Portage on a rather choppy surface of South Lake shortly after noon. On the portage, I met an interesting trio of Californians from San Diego – two young men and a very athletic young woman – who traveled in the opposite direction and this on stand up surfboards. At the time of our encounter, they had been facing a rare to their direction of travel headwind, while I for change enjoyed a wind in my back. I could not believe that they also transported large rubber packs on their surfboards, but they insisted that this had not been a problem. In my opinion, though, especially the standing up position on the board must demonstrate itself as a major unsuitability of this mode of travel for the lake wilderness where there is high incidence of headwind and waves.

By the time I pushed off from the portage into North Lake, it was already past four o’clock. I first sought camping on the Canadian coastline. But a narrow sandy beach, which only looked promising, turned up abused in the past by untidy fishermen, who left the bush behind it disgustingly littered with scattered garbage. I therefore focused my attention across the lake, to its American side, where in about a kilometer distance, I suspected signs of a campsite, marked on the map. Nowhere on the lake, could I see anybody. The lake landscape appeared to be deserted. As I neared the intended spot, a vividly green stripe on the small length of a bare beach under it rose a worry in me that I was looking at a green canoe pulled up on shore and that the site would consequently be occupied. But with the further approach, the stripe turned out to be just lusciously green strip of tall grass. The campsite was free, waiting just for me. This was the first time, when I used a campsite on the American side of the border. I enjoyed the comfort of a leveled spot for the tent here, a log seating configured into a square around a cast iron grid fire pit and I admired the plastic commode of a toilet deeper in the woods. Thanks to the lasting warm weather of the Indian summer, I again enjoyed a nice swim in the small sheltered bay of the camp’s landing. The only disadvantage of the site was the lack of firewood. Everything in the near vicinity had its dry wood supplies thoroughly picked out. In a serene moment, while I savoured gulps of delicious Drambuie from a light flask on the palate to celebrate my crossing of the divide, sitting on a log by the fire a family of Ruffed Grouse – a cock with four hens - all of a sudden emerged from under the surrounding growth. Just like domestic chickens, they started peacefully pecking the ground right around me, making almost inaudible clucking murmur. Then they slowly moved off to have a drink from the lake. It is possible that some of the visitors of the site before me might have fed them here.

As I had reached the start of about a fifty-meter portage by paddling to the end on the deserted lake the next morning, the water, flowing out of it through a narrow winding channel reminded me that from North Lake on, I will be descending along the Boundary route chain – traveling downhill. I had not expected a portage, hence only with contempt, I went to survey its path. In the morning, before the launch, a dramatic sky in the east seemingly threatened with heavy rain-laden clouds and I therefore stretched the spray cover on the canoe. Now, I was reluctant to remove it again after such a short while for the sake of such a short portage. The inconvenience from this point of view on one hand outweighed the danger of a risky operation on the other hand. That is that I had started to study the narrow channel of the outflow from the lake. The truth is that this was only about a meter and a half wide and it snaked in three serpentines among large rocks, yet…”Shall I try it?”… I planted myself firmly in the canoe, I wrapped my hands around the paddle with a wise-like grip and I slowly shifted towards the sucking maw of the lake outflow, constantly analysing the structure of the current in front of me, deciding what maneuver would be required where. The current set the speed, I just tilted the blade of the paddle in flash movements and I stabbed with it left and right as needed with a lightning speed. In a few seconds, my canoe shot into the wide calm water of the lower lake. I had not even just touched with the hull on any rock. A great pride spread over my shoulders from the significant saving of time and from eliminating the need to portage.

I now moved on a narrower water body – almost as on a wide river – between low shores, lined with areas of reeds. A low ridge was rising on the north side, covered with a coniferous tree forest consisting of many pines, both the majestic Eastern White Pines, as well as by the red pines. The left bank contained a low green growth with thinly scattered bare masts of tall trees burnt by a forest fire. This was Little Gunflint Lake. After some distance, the lake narrowed further and paddling through thin reeds and water lilies, I slipped twice with the canoe down the overflow of beaver dams, the only spots, where there was a discernible current. When it already seemed, as if I had reached a dead end, where the lake ended, a narrow right-angle turn around a sharp point of red sand appeared. I ascribed it in an elegant move, tilting the canoe and I emerged into a vast open surface of the large long Gunflint Lake. On the right a long beach stretched here of red sand. The setting appeared to be an ideal site for a camp, but it wasn’t even ten in the morning. Towards the west, about an eight-kilometer length stretched out in front of me of the lake, the end of which was hard to see in a misty distance. It was over a kilometer wide. The lake had a road access from both sides, the American, as well as from the Canadian. As a result, motor boats appeared here and even cottages. At first, I moved along its right – Canadian side, aiming in a straight line to a place on the right hand shore near the end of the lake, where an inconspicuous narrow channel was supposed to usher one into the lake of the route’s continuation. This lake was called Magnetic Lake. As the day progressed, a steadily strengthening wind blew, which gradually shifted from the south-east to the south-west. Firstly, the wind was sending its component as a headwind against my face and secondly, it was whipping waves, which grew in size across the width of the lake. At the north shore, there was already surf like at a sea. This forced me to traverse across the width of the lake to its left – American – shore and then paddle in its lee all the way to the lake’s end. Only then, I again had to cut across to the sought narrows of its outflow. Magnetic Lake was surrounded with cottages, hence it did not offer me any chance of camping. I hurried to paddle across it and enter its narrow outflow in the form of the Pine River. Here I ran into a waterfall Little Rock Falls. It was preceded by a short chute through a rock ledge, which I shot with a pounding heart and a white-knuckle grip on the paddle – again without a touch. I shortened the portage in this way, but I had to carry around the waterfall itself. It was already rather late and I was by then thoroughly exhausted from the paddling against the wind on Gunflint Lake. I was hesitating, if I should not set up an emergency camp somewhere before the portage, but there was only rough and uneven rocky surface. In the end, I opted for a portage and looking for a wild camp somewhere beyond it. The carrying around the waterfall was really rough. It was bordering on rock climbing, as it traversed a steep side wall of the falls’ canyon. A real challenge came mainly when I was carrying the canoe, as its length would not yield to the sharp wiggles between the rock wall and trees. In several spots, I had no choice, but to hold the canoe on shoulders with only one hand, while I had to hang around tree trunks with the other. The continuing river Pine wound crookedly between granite rock banks, varying in its width from some twenty meters to seventy. In its character, it was really a lake that was filling a long fissure in the granite crust, where there was no discernible current. Its shores were covered with low young growth, above which loomed bare skeletons of sparse tall trees burnt by a vast forest fire of 2007. Several islands appeared in the river. One of them, picturesque with its silhouette of unburnt mature pines on top of its granite platform of merely some ten meters in diameter, I finally approved for my camp of the evening. According to the map, the island was situated on the Canadian side of the border. It was nice here. At one side, it was possible to dock at the rock edge with the canoe and under the canopy of pine branches, a shallow rock saddle, lined with a bedding of moss, offered a cozy spot for my tent. Soon, flames of a fire of pine cones and dry sticks blazed under the kettles, while once again, I slipped from a granite edge into the water and had a swim, already in the dusk.

The Pine River zig

zagged through the granite crust, occasionally dropping by a fall, or a wildly cascading rock staircase. Twice, I had stuck out my neck to the fate, when I shot through an initial chute of a rock threshold and by that I shortened the portage around the rest of the obstacle. Several times, the earth crack had opened wider and the water had filled it into smaller lakes. Only upon them, the wind mattered a bit, while otherwise, the incised narrowness of the river, yielded a reasonable wind shelter. I absolved four portages that day, which, at the time, represented my utmost accomplishment for one day. The evening had caught up with me before a next portage. Neither time, nor energy in me remained for it. I was finding myself on one of the smaller lakes, this one called Granite Bay. I was forced to look for a wild camp on the Canadian side. A hilly terrain, surrounding the lake, was falling off steeply to the water and to a very uneven, marsh grass and bushes-covered shore line. The sad deserted landscape was littered with burnt black trunks, laying among the fresh greenery of a new growth and above it, jutted up blackened skeletons of trees that still stood, like raised fingers threatening with a revenge for the crime, committed on this corner of the wild nature. Following a while of break-neck climbing uphill and over black trunks, I erected the tent on the crest of a hill, among thin broken mast-like stumps and I quickly fulfilled the chore of cooking. I had left all the rest of the load down on shore at the boat.

In the morning, I pushed the canoe from the spongy shore, with an unkempt tangle of dead sticks and branches even in the water, under an azure sky of a sunny morning. The start of the next portage happened to be only some hundred meters from my harbor, but first, I wanted to have a look at the outflow from the lake, which was only a little bit farther. As I neared it, I could hear a violent rumble of the water. I prudently floated closer, to see the whole length of the channel. It seemed that I could paddle through the first part of the narrow passage in the boat, then stop, disembark the canoe and lead it through the rest of the channel length walking in the water. For that I needed to change from my socks and hiking boots into rubber sandals. Yet, when after stopping in mid channel, I was looking for the sandals in vain, I realized that I forgot them on shore at my last camp, where they were drying up since yesterday. I had to pay for my error by dragging the canoe back up the current, carefully stepping bare footed among the sharp rock edges at the bottom and then paddle back to pick them up. But when I returned to the outflow again, already changed into the sandals, a sudden surge of courage allowed me to shoot the whole length of the channel without stopping and disembarking from the canoe. And this again, without touching the bottom of the canoe on a rock. With the gained self-confidence, I then descended down several more drops of the river during the day, where the name of the river, according to the map, now changed to the Granite River. One portage then brought me to Gneiss Lake, followed by Devil’s Elbow Lake. The route around the “Devil’s Elbow” offered here a shortcut by the way of a portage over a narrow neck of land. For my case, though, however long a loop of paddling on flat water, while sitting in the canoe, is shorter, both, time-wise and hardship-wise, then a five-times walked out portage. The river that had narrowed again, led straight north now over two more drops. I portaged here around “Horse Tail Rapids“. And then, “Saaaganaaaga!!!!” resounded my victory yell with an echo of a happy “Yee-haw!!” from the people less wooded horizons, when I had finished carrying around Saganaga Falls and I dipped the paddle in again, to finally enter into the vast Lake Saganaga. Its native name means “a lake of many islands”. From the map, I was aware of an American campsite on an island immediately at the mouth of the Granite River into the lake, but, as I approached it, a green canoe, pulled up on shore betrayed right away that the site had been already taken. I had no choice than to continue along the route, which now wound among the lake islands and look for a wild camping spot on the Canadian side. It was high time. The lengthening shadows signaled arrival of the evening.

Not before I had paddled about two further kilometers around a large island with unsuitable shoreline, did I spot a site, about half a kilometer across the water on the next shore, which carried promising signs. It was a point with a flat rock platform under thin grouping of tall pines. I set my course to it. My speculation proved true. There was a campsite here, likely relatively frequently used, if apparently by untidy fishermen. A rock fire pit was here with a square configuration of logs for comfortable sitting around it, there was even a sort of a kitchen counter built near it. Yet the counter was partially burnt and tossed around were several soot-blackened grills from frying of fish. Behind my tent, I later discovered a shallow pit, where they poured spent frying oil. A thought flashed through my head that this campsite must have been known to a local bear. Yet I was happy that I had found a place to lay down my head just before darkness and anyway, I had never had any problem with bears during my entire canoe journey along the voyageur route from Montreal. After setting up the tent, I quickly readied myself to cook supper. For that I had to remove things from the dry bag with food to make an inventory of food items, of which I had known that they had been put in, but I had not seen them so far. I laid out the whole contents of the bag on a rock platform, to have a good view of everything. I gratefully found a baggie of dehydrated tropical fruit, which I tore open right away and rewarded my neglected taste buds with a sizeable plug to chew. The dried fruit smelled heavenly, similarly to the smell of the chocolaty protein bars. Mixing with it were the aromas of spices, garlic and jerky. I could smell all those goodies from three meters away. I chose a package of a rice meal with mushrooms, quickly unpacked the kitchen, collected firewood and started cooking. In the meantime, I was running from the canoe to the tent and back to place items in their proper places and to finish unloading the boat.

Somebody else must have smelled my goodies from up to five kilometers away. After some while, I could occasionally overhear a suspicious sound from behind a young spruce thicket, which surrounded my campsite from behind. This sometimes sounded like a step, another time like rubbing through the branches. Yet, when I raised my head from work to listen, there was always silence. “I heard the similar sounds around my campsite yesterday and still, nothing came out of it”, I comforted myself. I ate my supper with a healthy appetite and saved half of the mushroom risotto for tomorrow’s cold lunch. When I returned to the canoe, looking for an empty zip lock bag, the moment of revelation arrived. I sensed as if somebody just stepped out of the spruce thicket and perhaps even said something. I looked up in the direction of the sound and … I froze. The evening was darkening and I was not wearing glasses, but I could clearly see that in front of the thicket stood a big black bear, daringly looking straight at me with its head lowered between his shoulders. “This is just what I needed!” In my head, I feverishly started developing strategies. There was no way that I could back out of the place somehow. It is going to be dark in a few minutes and I would never be able to find another campsite. The bear stood with his rear still just inside the thicket, some ten to fifteen meters from me. “I will surely scare him away!” I declared hopefully. I started shouting at him, as one would at a nosy dog, while I swung my arms in pushing away motions. Yet, the bear advanced a step closer to me. I grabbed the paddle and I started accompanying my yelling with noises of slamming it against the trunk of the nearest pine tree. The bear advanced another step with a stiff ruffled nape, his muzzle of a reddish tan aiming straight at me. Now, he reinforced his threat with a rapid clicking of his teeth. “This expresses an aggressive challenge in them”, I recalled from some Nat Geo TV program. Just yesterday, I pondered over the usefulness of my belt with the attached items of protection against bears. “I have been carrying that bear spray, bear bangers and flares with me on the various expeditions in the wilderness for some twenty years now and never in my life have I had to use them. The next time, for trips where weight matters, I will leave them at home!” Now, I quickly leaped to the belt, which happened to be still at the canoe, extricated a bear banger from its belt pouch and tried to screw it onto a pen-shaped launcher. The bear banger had a fine thread in plastic and this was steadfastly cross-threading as I struggled to attach it in vain. “Finally!” The bear banger rested on the tip of the launcher. But now, the trigger wouldn’t work in turn! I repeatedly pulled the spring of the trigger down and let go, but nothing was happening. “The bear banger must be stale – too old?” After about the fourth attempt, the strike of the hammer finally fired off the banger. It made a big bang, but I had not known how it in fact worked. With the bang a bright crimson flare was also launched. It described a steep ballistic arch and, as I held the launcher in a random aiming, it fell into the spruce thicket, about twenty-five meters away from me and about thirty degrees to the right of the direction to the bear. The landed flare immediately ignited the dry undergrowth. The threat of causing a forest fire rose a greater fear in me than the bear. Without a second of hesitation, I sprinted to the fire and, barely in time, managed to stomp it out. When I returned to my layout of food on the rock platform, the bear was yet another two steps closer to it, steadily clicking his teeth. I did not need an explanation. I knew exactly, what was the matter of issue to the animal. He had an irresistible desire for my laid out food and was challenging me for it to a duel. He was hoping that I would give up without a fight and run away. “Had he not verified for long enough that I was just alone?” Yet, I had no choice. “I must stand my ground!” I extricated another bear banger and I screwed it onto the launcher. This I now carefully aimed. Not directly at the animal, I did not want to cause him injury. I felt self-confidence that this would work without violence. The banger exploded and the burning flare landed five meters to the right of the bear and a little in front of him. It again ignited the surrounding parched growth. Terrified, I again sprinted to the fire and I feverishly stomped it out. I was happy that I had succeeded. Only then, my attention returned to the bear. But he was now suddenly gone. He must have finally got scared either by the flare, or, possibly, by the fact that I daringly darted practically directly against him, when I hurried to put out the fire. He must have come to a conclusion that I wouldn’t be easily intimidated.

“The first battle has been victorious” I patted myself in a self-praise. “But when it gets dark and everything is quiet, the bear will undoubtedly be back!” I feared. “Yet, I have nowhere to go! What choice is there remaining for me, but to wait the night out in the camp?” I immediately collected and stowed away all the food items back from the rock into the vinyl dry bag, and I hermetically sealed it by rolling its top and snapping the corners together. Then I grabbed the rope off the bow of the canoe and tied a rock to its end. With it, I tried to throw the rope over a high branch on a leaning pine tree. I finally succeeded on about the tenth attempt. I attached the food bag to the end carabiner of the rope and tried to hoist it by pulling on the rope over the branch. It did not work. The friction of the rope on the branch was too high. Only after I lifted and pushed the bag up with my right arm as high as I could reach standing on my tippy toes and simultaneously pulling down on the other end of the rope with my left arm, the bag ended up about two and a half meters above the ground. Thanks to the tilt of the tree, it also hanged almost two meters from its trunk. Allowing that the result might not have been ideal, I did not think that I could do any better. “It will have to do, even if bears are known to sometimes perform surprisingly acrobatic feats.” I then decided that I should better eat the saved rest of the supper and I packed the kitchen into the dry bag with “hardware”. Having brushed my teeth and packed away the items of personal hygiene in it, I carried the bag away from the camp – to the very tip of the rocky shoreline point, some twenty meters away. Then I returned to the tent. I marked my territory around it by multiple peeing on its perimeter – the language that the wilderness understands. I then lied down to sleep, my head sandwiched with a bear pepper spray on one side and the machete and a hunting knife on the other. For a long time, I would not sleep, but listened. I was waiting for, when the cracking of bear’s footsteps on dry twigs would betray his return. If I had fallen asleep several times during the night, it could not have added up to even a third of its length.

The bear, however, had not returned. Or at least, if he had, I did not know about it. In any case, he had not succeeded in taking over my food supplies and so gain an easy way of developing sufficient fat reserves to survive another winter. Nothing in my camp had been disturbed. This had thus far been the only camp, since my leaving Montreal, where I would have to hang my food supplies on a tree. Otherwise, the food bag had always lain near the shore under the overturned canoe. Besides this time, I had never experienced any bear problem during my entire voyage.

Tábořiště mého střetnutí s medvědem na jezeře Saganaga Lake. Pytel s potravinami jsem zavěsil na borovici.