Preliminary 6th continuation of the description of my solo canoe voyage along the historical water r

Hello friends, apologies for the rather long pause in my storytelling. During the summer of 2016, my canoe travel hit a temporary snag. I will post here a preliminary account of the events, as I will write for an eventual uploading of the official version to my web site:

A solo canoe journey following the Voyageur water route from Fort Frances towards Lake of the Woods along the Rainy River (June 24 – 29, 2016)

Jan Soukup

Does it seem to you that the date span of my expedition for the year 2016 was rather short? You are absolutely right. My plans for the return to the historic water highway of the Canadian fur trade to continue along it in my lonely adventurous coexistence with the wilderness had to be under a curse right from the beginning. It started already with the long road trip in the Jeep with the canoe on top eastward across the Canadian prairies to Ontario. It was raining so violently the whole way through the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba that my windshield wipers had a hard time keeping the front glass clear even at the highest speed of their oscillating. When I happened to pass a semi, I was blinded completely. It was lucky that the Trans-Canada Highway is divided with two lanes in each direction. It hadn`t stopped pouring until the last moment, when on the second day, I arrived at Fort Frances in Ontario. It was just turning dark and I was in a stress from where I would spend the night, where I would launch the canoe into the waters of the Rainy River and where I would safeguard my Jeep. Still prior to entering the core of the town, I turned into the local graveyard and drove in the darkness to its end that was on the riverbank. My goal was to survey the access to the water from here. It was still raining hard and moving through the high undergrowth, I ended up with my boots and jeans soaked up to the mid-thigh. The usual motels and hotels were mysteriously full and I thus ended for the night in an expensive hotel in the town`s center. After I draped my wet clothing over the heating to dry, I tried to contact the Gold Star Taxi owner Doug. I had left him several messages, but I only reached him personally on the phone the next morning. As I had hoped, Doug was immediately willing to take me to the water in my Jeep. Following the unloading of my canoe and gear, he drove my vehicle to his home for safekeeping. There, it was to stay until my re-appearance in the town. A sum of two hundred dollars offered by me for his services was accepted without problems.

Full of ambitions to cover a significant chunk of the distance across Canada during the just beginning summer, I again set out relatively early. I thus finished with the canoe on the bank of the Rainy River already on the 24th of June. Unlike the last two days, on the day of my launch, the sky was azure blue and the sun was mercilessly burning right from the morning. After careful sorting out of the cargo and its meticulous loading in the boat, I spread sunscreen on my yet delicate skin and with a brim hat on my head, I pushed off. The river surface was smooth as a mirror and now, at the beginning of the summer, it was high. The water was reaching up to the dense vegetation of bushes and trees – mostly deciduous that was lining it with verdant greenery on both sides. The river was forming a border between Canada and the USA up to its mouth into Lake of the Woods. On the right bank, I was thus passing Canada, while the left bank was American. This part of the historic route of the fur trade ran off to the South from the Canadian Shield – the vast region of the continent covered with the granite volcanic outflows and with myriads of lakes and lakelets among coniferous woods. Here, the surrounding landscape was flat, to me, even boring. It had fertile loamy soil and deciduous forests. To the Voyageurs, this land represented a welcome change compared to the austere, rocky terrain, through which they had fought their way up to here. In variation to my taste, they referred to it as „pays beau“ (beautiful land), perhaps because to them, it seemed to have the potential for the, in their time standard, way of agricultural life. This area today, is indeed strongly utilized for the purposes of fertile agriculture. By the same token, it is relatively densely populated. Ever since I drove through Fort Frances two years earlier, I had a detailed map of Lake of the Woods. As a marine chart, the map even featured a matrix of marked depth measurements all over its water area. I purchased it in a local souvenir shop at the roadside along the lake. That way, I had a lot of time to repeatedly study it and terrify myself of the huge areas of open water among its multitude of islands. Even those, who knew the lake, had skeptically warned me against its sudden storms and wind gales. Ergo, I kept a considerable respect for the lake. Yet, from what I had the opportunity to see about the Rainy River, I regarded it as an easy matter. „It‘s going to be a piece of cake“, I had thought. “It’ll only be a matter of several days of peaceful, or even boring paddling to gobble the distance between Fort Frances and Lake of the Woods.” The American canoeist, Dean, with whom I met on one of the portages of the fur trade route in the Boundary Waters area during the preceding summer, warned me about its rapids, Manitou Rapids. The river was supposed to have them somewhere on it. He related to me that these rapids really scared him a lot, when he had encountered them in the past. „But that’s me“, he added. „You will not have a problem!“ judging from my description of what I had accomplished up to that point. As it would turn out, I had grossly under estimated the Rainy River. It was due to an unfortunate combination of factors, which conspired against my progress: In the first place, the river had a continuous series of private properties on its banks that turned the finding of a wild camping site into almost impossible. In combination with the high water level of the river, where the water reached into the shore growth that lined it, one had to resort to stealthy camping in an inferior emergency setting. I had to maintain very little profile and stay inconspicuously out of the sight of the land owners. Under the given circumstances, I could not dare to have a fire in my camps. Moreover, the month of the year with the longest daylight and the sun the highest in the sky, supplied an excess of energy into the atmosphere. It then turned the peaceful paddling not only into a galley slavery in the heat, but also, from the second day on, it brought a daily sudden violent electrical storm in the afternoon with a downpour and lightnings. The looming storm would force one to paddle in it till the last moment frantically searching for whatever place to put the tent down. He would then feverishly land and run through the vegetation on shore. He would put up the tent, being a target of the artillery strikes of the lightnings left and right and hurriedly crawl into it. Besides vegetation in the very peak of growth, the insect population was peeking too. As a result, after the passing of the storm, one was forced to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in the tent, in which it often felt like in a sauna.

The Manitou Rapids announced themselves with a distance-muffled thundering already some kilometer in advance. The river had markedly narrowed here and upshots of frothy water, visible from a distance beyond its threshold, really intimidated me. A small road led to them from the Canadian side as an extension of the main street of a small community, which was a part of the Indian reservation Manitou Rapids. Besides a few indigenous anglers, who were apparently taking advantage here of the nature’s boost to their fishing luck, a stage fright was imposed on me also by a small bunch of white pelicans in the roles of witnesses to my indecisive acting aimed at overcoming the rapids. Right up to the last moment, as I was slowly nearing the brink of the white water slope studying it from a standing position in the canoe, I had considered it necessary, to land and carry prudently around it. Yet then, in the moment, when it would have been a high time to head for the shore to land, I noticed that if I moved tightly along the American shore, immediately after entering the throat of the rapids, I could leave their „V“ by prying left with the paddle and pull the canoe into the back eddy under their left side. Having successfully done this, I was able to skirt around the whole turbulence from here and have it all behind me. I felt pride that I had overcome the rapids without stopping and thus managed to maintain my dignity in view of the audience of witnesses. I also had gained a feeling of peace and safety into the continuing voyage, assuming that ahead of me, there was now only a quietly flowing river without any great surprises. As it would turn out though, the rapids consisted of two parts. That second one surprisingly introduced itself with a thundering rumble after about ten and a half kilometers. The geysers of white water beyond their lip again roused me up from lethargic dreaming and once again, they put fear into my outlook. It was already quite late. I had paddled long that day with the goal of covering as much distance as possible, while the going was good. And so, when simultaneously, an opportunity availed itself to camp at the mouth of a small tributary from the Canadian side about three hundred meters above the rapids, I resolved to stop here for the night. I considered it wise to sleep on the conquering of the rapids. The daily thunderstorm came luckily late that evening. It was only after I could safely crawl into the erected tent. Yet, when I carefully approached the rapids the next morning, again standing it the boat, similarly as their yesterday’s first part, also this one could be navigated tightly close to the American shore without problems. This time, my successful performance could only be appreciated by pelicans, who were strategically poised here to catch fish from the boulders of the entrance into the white water. After this, I had definitely been convinced that I should only have a quiet river ahead of me with all its pitfalls safely behind me all the way to Lake of the Woods.

The day, 27th June, 2016, was especially hot. I paddled stripped under a hat that had to protect me from a sunstroke. During that, I had drunk almost the whole supply of my drinking fluids. Yet still, after noon I continued in a dopy lethargy from the heat, as I was passing the luscious greenery-covered banks. Out of it, poking out showed recreational cottages, mansions and farm houses in regular intervals. Sometimes around half past two, the Northwest skies turned dark. It was ominously obvious that the storm of that day was arriving early. Yet, I was just moving along a shore, where it was impossible to camp. I thus frantically paddled studying the shore, to discover some camp spot – any spot before the storm would trigger. Nothing was showing. When circles had already started forming on the water from rain drops around me, I spied ahead of me about a ten-meter high bank with a hay field on its top. Just below it, I spotted a kind of bench in the waist-high growth of grass and weeds. I aimed a freakish race pace towards it. But by then, it was already pouring. I shot with the canoe through a jumble of flattened wood, I hauled it quickly out of the water, freed out the waterproof back pack with the tent, sleeping bag and clothing, and I overturned the canoe over everything else, to protect it from the rain. With the backpack in my arms, wearing my shorts and rubber sandals on bare feet, I then raced through the shore bushes onto the grassy slope and I quickly identified and foot-flatened a level patch in its wavy terrain. I immediately unpacked the tent and I frantically started erecting it in a pelting downpour. By then, the lightnings started to explode. They were hitting the ground all around me like a targeting mortar fire. I had the tent standing in a blink of an eye. Yet, when I crawled into it, everything inside was wet – mainly from my wet body. I completely stripped right away, threw out the wet clothing and drew in the semi wet towel to dry. When the storm had passed and the sun came out, I was lying on the wet foam mat, waiting for things to dry. It did not take long and the inside of the tent felt like a sauna. Contrary to my hope, instead of drying, I was sweating. Yet outside, there buzzed hoards of biting insects and it did not make any sense to come out. The storms followed in waves that then marched one after another in hourly intervals until darkness. When it cooled off at night, I finally slipped into the sleeping bag. But for the whole night, my legs were itching from the knees down. I blamed for it mosquitos and black flies. A wind had come overnight from the west and when I left the tent at six in the morning to start packing for setting out, it was so strong that it was bending trees and it drove whitecaps up against the current of the river. It would make zero sense to try paddling against it. I thus continued to sweat in the tent for the whole day and I only came out to drink the rain water from puddles in the grass with a filtering straw. My legs were itching more and more. They started to turn red. In the morning, I got up with the day break. I couldn’t wait to push off onto the river again. The wind was still blowing, but now, it had a changed direction. It blew from the side. I descended the slope to the water with the packed tent and sleeping bag in the waterproof backpack and I froze, gaping in a shock. The water level in the river had risen by half a meter! The canoe that had originally been on shore covering the gear, was floating bottom up in the water and around it were floating pieces of the load. It was only by luck that the floating items were held captive by the interwoven mess of the deadfall that was now also floating. Crushing was my view of the cardboard tube containing a full set of special topographical maps. It was now, soaked throughout and also floating. I emptied the canoe, loaded it with the wet cargo and pushed off. It seemed useless to stretch on the spray cover. Everything was already wet anyway. I just hoped though, that it would not rain anymore and that the dark morning sky would clear up during the day. Yet, as soon as I rounded the bend of the river, I could see a wall of rain in the distance ahead of me that was mercilessly moving straight against me. My spirit hit the bottom. On top of everything, my legs were insanely itching and strange sores started showing on their skin. I was just passing a private lot with two houses on it, which had a paved boat launch ramp down into the water. I returned back to it and I skidded the prow of the canoe to be captured on it by friction. I had a signal, so I called Milena on my cell phone. I had to discuss with her my immediate urge to pack the things in. She warned me to weigh my decision very carefully, so that I would not regret my action later. But when I described to her the mysterious affliction of my legs, it was decided. You cannot risk a secondary infection from the water and impurities somewhere far away from a possible medical help. When the home owner lady noticed me as she was leaving for work in a vehicle, she drove down to me sitting in the canoe. “Is everything O.K.?” she asked. “Can I help you in any way?” I asked for a permission to unload the canoe onto their property and return for it in my Jeep. She immediately generously and willingly agreed, but herself, she already had to leave. The road was about half a kilometer from the river here. I called Doug in Fort Frances, to bring my Jeep and I started marching on the road to meet him. According to the latest news from Doug, the succession of the storms had allegedly had a hard impact on the whole vast area. In Thunder Bay, people were allegedly to had paddled canoes on the Main Street.

Shortly after I had returned to Edmonton, I had to head to the Emergency. My lower limbs were swollen like the legs of an elephant and red to black-violet. On the insteps, around the ankles, on the shins and calves they were covered with bloodshot blisters and they itched truly insanely. I worried if this was not a leprosy, or some kind of flesh-eating bacteria. Our family doctor, however, quickly diagnosed the problem as an allergic reaction to a Poison Ivy, or Poison Oak. As I have learned from the web later, this kind of vegetation is found predominantly in this general part of the North American Continent and it grows especially along the rivers. I must have run through this plant, while looking for the emergency campsites. Conceivably, the poisonous oil from their leaves could have even soaked into the trouser legs of my jeans the very first evening in Fort Frances, when I walked in them to the river at the cemetery. Never before had I encountered any problem of this kind and never had I worried about this danger. I thus did not even know what such plants look like. The affliction did not seem to have any end in sight and I abhorred possible resulting scars. But about a month later, the blisters finally disappeared, the skin peeled off several times and not a trace of the malady remained. Well, I am now again a bit wiser and more experienced. One must know the dangerous plants in the wilderness and must be able to avoid them. If he is still hit with this kind of danger, the only wise decision remains to be really the abortion of the expedition and seeking of medical help. In the least, it is necessary to give the wound a chance to pass through its cycle of healing in cleanliness. The secondary infection of the disturbed skin somewhere in the middle of nowhere, could potentially bring much more serious consequences.