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Timeless Trip Reports
If you’re a total paddle-head, the kind who spends hours online devouring trip reports, we’ve got a rare treat for you.
Our tour has been one of daily excitement, filled from first to last with grand old forests, noble waterfalls, picturesque lakes, and cascades. A region in which an artist might linger many weeks with profit to both eye and brush, while the recuperation to one’s health by the outdoor life in the dry atmosphere cannot be overestimated.
“Canoe and Camera : a Two Hundred Mile Tour Through the Maine Forests” is a true gem of wilderness reading. Published in 1882, the downloadable book is rich with description and replete with gorgeous illustrations. Although considering the title, there are way more drawings than photos; but no complaints here.
It’s fascinating to see the ways camping & paddling have changed in the last 127 years — and also how they are still the same.
If you’re looking for a great read (for free, no less,) this is a nice way to get into the mood for the paddling season. Thanks, Murat!
UpNorthica Reads: “A Little Brother to the Bear”
Through the branches of an alder tree, our view zooms in on the opposite bank of a small river, where a female kingfisher emerges from her hidden nest. Swooping suddenly from her roost in a cacophony of warning calls, she banishes a group of ducks and a hapless frog from the pool below her home. Now satisfied the coast is clear, she summons her four offspring out of the nest. As they begin to practice their diving skills, they are each awarded a dead minnow from their watchful mother. In this “kingfisher’s kindergarten,” Fishing 101 is now in session.
UpNorthica Reads: “Snowbound” by Lisa M. Robinson
You rush to the window for a look: Every tree-top branch is traced with careful white lines, while the grass, the walk, the streets have all but been erased. The din of traffic has been swept away, replaced with an almost church-like hush. There’s a certain kind of magic to snow that transforms our surroundings this way. It causes us to bask a moment and reflect on what its heavy cover does to us as well as the landscape.
Snowbound is a meditative collection of Lisa M. Robinson’s photographs (many are viewable on her site.) Taken over the course of five winters, the images simply feature ordinary objects and places against a backdrop of snow.
UpNorthica Reads: “The Old Way North” by David Pelly
I’m always fascinated by the people and events that came together over the course of many years to create what is now known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Many times, it almost never was. We have this unique bounty of land that culminated because of numerous hearts, minds and hands.
One of those minds, Ernest Oberholtzer, may be obscure to most. I read about him quite accidentally in a book titled The Old Way North by David Pelly. BWCA lovers will appreciate knowing that he became a fervent advocate for the creation of the Boundary Waters. The beauty of that is the seed that was planted by this, his first expedition into Canada by canoe. Oberholtzer went away feeling awestruck by the value and importance of wilderness areas. That mantle of preservation never left him.
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Still Paddling to the Sea
For over 60 years, readers have traced the fictional journey of Paddle-to-the-Sea, a wood-carved canoeing Indian, across the St. Lawrence Seaway to the ocean. The children’s storybook classic is a must-have for any outdoorsy parent. So it’s great to see that it still inspires the creation of real-life Paddle-to-the-Sea boats.
The most recent report comes from White Lake, Michigan, where a resident spotted a carved paddler along the waterfront. Retrieving the object and calling the phone number written on its underside, she contacted the family who’d launched it from their Upper Peninsula town, some 220 miles away. There are some pretty cool similarities to the wind-and-current-driven course that the original Paddle-to-the-Sea took, as well as some familiar turns in its story. Stay tuned, though: Paddle’s new friends in White Lake are putting him up for the winter, so hopefully we’ll yet hear of his further adventures, come spring thaw. Via Canoeing.com.
One of these days, someone needs to slap an email address on one of those things and set up a GoogleMaps hack to track its course… anybody out there ever launched a Paddle of their own?
UpNorthica Reads: True North, by Elliott Merrick
I have a yearning for the north. Someday I plan to own a cabin, living as simply as possible (if I’m lucky, it’ll be without running water or electricity.) Like Elliot Merrick in his classic 1933 memoir, True North, I often contemplate the balance between the need to make a living and the need to truly live life. What brings fulfillment? The lichen, mirror-flat lakes and tall grasses of the north were not merely placed for our consumption, also but for our full enjoyment.
Merrick’s account centers around his two years spent in Labrador, Newfoundland as he and his wife worked at the Grenfell Mission; she as a trained nurse, he as school teacher, boat’s crewman plus filling several other roles. But his story is truly about one man’s dream to understand and fill the longing in his heart.
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