Chapter 14
Half an hour later, an overcast dawn found us partway up Red Lake, paddling steadily into the wind. It was a big canoe, and stable, but the wind made for hard paddling.
We kept close to the shore, which was lined with basalt rocks and driftwood. The odd cardinal flower still surprised with its intense red flower, bright against the black rock. Once I saw a mink, no bigger than a squirrel, nosing among the driftwood looking for crabs and clams. He looked up, then ignored us, paddling into the waves.
These many small lakes sit on a land that’s almost as old as the planet. Raised as mountain ranges more than once, the land was finally ground down by time to a knobby plain. Four ice ages left lakes between the hills.
When Europeans got here, many of the lakes had long since become swamps and beaver ponds. When they took the beaver, more lakes became swamps. Then they came for the tall white pines that covered the province, and started building dams to make the swamps back into lakes again. In the winter the lake surface would be covered with pine logs, and in the spring the men would make a hole in the dam and let the water, logs and all, out in a rush. Many of the small lakes still have dams made of boulders at one end.
There were no cottages along Red Lake. Any lake that has road access has a number of cottages, but few of the others do, There was a small hunting cabin along the north shore, but it was empty, awaiting the deer-hunting season.
The phone rang. Samuel set his paddle into the canoe, reached behind him, and hauled the phone out of his pack. I kept paddling, but the canoe stopped moving forward.
“Hello,” Samuel said into the phone. “Sure, right here.” He turned. “It’s for you.” He put the phone onto the floor of the canoe behind him, then gave it shove. It slid down the canoe till I could grab it. It must have been a little noisy at the other end of the phone line.
Samuel kept the canoe pointed into the wind as I picked it up.
“Win here,” I said. The voice came through against the headset, tinny and far away. I don’t know how much of my conversation came through, what with the wind in the mouthpiece. It seemed to be Seth, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
“Hey,” I said. “We’re out on the middle of Red Lake, and there’s quite a headwind. Can you phone back in ten minutes or so? We’ll find a place out of the wind.” I didn’t hear anything more than “okay” before I put the phone under the seat.
At that point Samuel stopped paddling, and we started drifting backwards and sideways. Sideways isn’t good; the canoe tends to rock with the waves.
As I worked to get the canoe facing into the wind again, Samuel reached into a jacket pocket and flung a handful of something into the air. They made an arc as the wind caught them, spreading them out as they hit the water. One hit the thwart of the canoe, then rolled down to my feet. I picked it up. It was a .22 cartridge, one of the tiny “long rifle” type, with a soft nose for hunting small game.
Samuel looked at me. I looked at him. I tossed the cartridge into the water. Ned’s rifle worried me a lot less after that.
It took more than ten minutes to find a sheltered spot along the shore of the lake, but we got in behind a rock face and Samuel grabbed onto the nearest cedar branch. It had been a hard paddle, and we both stretched as much as we could, then waited for the phone to ring again.
When it did, I found it was, indeed, Seth on the line.
‘Where the hell are you,” he asked.
“I’m in a canoe on the shore of Red Lake. Samuel’s in the canoe with me.” Samuel was staring at the rock face.
“Can you talk?” he asked.
“Far as I know,” I said. “Red Lake’s a more direct way to the lodge,” I said, “but there’s a lot of portaging.” I felt I had to explain that I was coming home, not running away to hide for life somewhere or being hunted like a mad dog. Or whatever.
“Where are the others?”
“Far as I know, Kele and Ned and Patrick went back to Cedar Lake to come back the way you did.” The canoe drifted a bit and I leaned forward into a flurry of cedar needles.
“And you’re in a canoe with Samuel Small Legs?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He paddles pretty good for an old guy.”
“Hey,” Samuel said, “I’m probably younger than you.”
I said into the phone, “He’s hanging onto some cedar branches right now, to keep us from drifting back down the lake. I don’t know how long he can hang on there.”
“Well,” said Seth’s voice, amid a bit of crackling, “is there anything more about the shots someone fired at us?”
“The other guys think it was probably just rabbit hunters or something like that.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Pretty flukish to have a bullet get that close to us.” I was still kneeling on the bottom of the canoe, and my knees hurt more than my head. “Can I tell you all this when we get back to the lodge?”
“Look,” Seth said, “the coroner says George may have burst a blood vessel in his head, so it may have been an accident. If there’s nobody out there trying to kill people, then I won’t have to call out the forces. I can wait till you get back to the lodge.”
“I think you can wait till we get back,” I said. “I’ve been waiting all morning for a float plane full of Special Forces to take me back to the lodge.”
“Getting lazy?”
“Paddling upwind is no joy,” I said.
“See you at the lodge,” Seth said.
I slid the phone back to Samuel. He let go of the cedars and stuffed the phone into his pack as the canoe floated away from the shore.
Wind flows over lake lands like a series of rivers. When a current of wind reaches a lake, it follows the lake, one way or the other. When a west wind meets a lake that runs north-south, it has to decide whether to flow north or south. It’s a tough decision. Years of research have taught me that that decision is made entirely dependent on whether or not there is a canoe on the lake. If the canoe is heading north, as we were, the wind will blow from the north.
Just thought you’d want to know.
We reached the narrows at the middle of Red Lake and took a breather out of the wind in behind some trees. We could see whitecap waves crowding into the narrows from the north.
A bit of sun would have helped, but it remained steadily overcast, with dark clouds rolling over us from the west.
“You forgot your lawn chair,” I noted. There was no food, but we had a bit of water left.
Samuel, still facing away from me, shook his head. “I figured the place needed a lawn chair.”
What could I say? I have a white man’s silly notion on maintaining the pristine, natural quality of everything wild while my compatriots rip up the rest. But there are often relics left from previous campers. I’ve called damnation on people who left trash. I’ve shaken my head at those who left metal grates. At one site I counted seven rusty metal grates, all obviously taken from fridges or stoves.
But I’ve never been able to condemn people who leave lawn chairs at campsites. At least, not usable lawn chairs.
The north section of Red Lake wasn’t any improvement over the south end, except that it started to rain off and on, and I changed my fantasies from strawberry milkshakes to hot chocolate and warm apple pie. And, of course, those fries at the lodge. I kept my mind on the fries as I counted. Two hundred strokes, take a break, two hundred more strokes, keep my mind on the fries.
Don’t let anyone tell you paddling into the wind is worse than a bad portage. Paddling into the wind is probably better than a good portage, and the portage from the north end of Red Lake to Hawk Lake wasn’t a good portage.
Most of the lakes are linked with creeks, but these are almost always uncanoeable. In fact, most of these creeks, even if the map uses the word “river”, won’t float a canoe, let alone a canoe with people in it.
Lining a canoe from one lake to another is possible on bigger rivers - you walk along the shore
and float the canoe in the water. A rope keeps you and the canoe together. But even on bigger rivers, this is difficult.
On the smaller creeks that join the lakes, there just isn’t enough water. The typical creek is at the bottom of a V-shaped ravine filled with angular black boulders. In dry months, the creek may be ankle deep and as wide as the canoe. But it jags back and forth around each slippery boulder, spreads out in three channels, rejoins, and pours over a tiny dam. All within the length of a canoe.
And the whole channel is littered with the corpses of trees that were carried there in the spring high-water days.
Occasionally, however, the creek enters a marsh at one end of a lake. Then it spreads out among the cattails, and wanders in loops until it gets to the lake. You can take a canoe down one of these sections of creek, using your paddle as a pole, and pushing through the shallow parts.
Normally, though, a portage is the only option. It’s a path, of varying visibility, linking one lake to another. Often it parallels the creek. Sometimes it’s almost invisible. At other times, in popular areas, it has wide and smooth portions. Just as often, in popular areas, it has sections that are muddy boot-suckers.
You might think that a set of wheels would be a good idea. And you can buy such things: carriers that sling a canoe between two-wheels. Algonquin Provincial Park finally put a ban on wheeled canoe carriers - too many were being abandoned, broken, along the portage trails.
People who enjoy portaging a canoe should be locked up, for their own protection.
Simply getting the canoe up onto your shoulders risks tearing muscles that were never designed for such contortions. After you’ve managed to get the canoe onto your shoulders, upside down, and braced your legs and contemplated hernia operations, you start off with a bit of enthusiasm that belies memories of previous portages.
That lasts till the first hill.
With your head stuck inside the canoe, your visibility is limited, and you’re watching your feet. So it is that you walk into trees occasionally. The first few times this happens, you try to use a variety of explicatives, but eventually you settle down to the same set every time.
When you’ve got tired and need a rest, you contemplate how difficult it was getting the canoe onto your shoulders, so you go on. Eventually, you start looking for a canoe-leaning branch. That’s one you can set the front of the canoe onto. Then you can step out and see if your shoulders will ever move again. When you’ve rested, you can step back under the canoe without having to pick up the entire canoe.
Unfortunately, you really need a horizontal branch for this, and nature doesn’t really like horizontal branches in deep woods. Often, you set the front of the canoe into a notch in a tree and step out from under it. Then the canoe usually twists its way free and rolls onto the ground.
Then you look at it, and say, breathing heavily, “Okay, Samuel, it’s your turn.”
There are light canoes and heavy canoes. Hawk Lake Lodge rents heavy canoes, built wide and stable and solid enough to withstand the abuse of people whose first knowledge of a rock is when they hit it. Even then, the lodge reinforces the front, since many people like to hit the shore at full steam.
That makes for a heavy canoe. Maybe the lodge wants to make sure people don’t portage too far and get lost. People who portage into the interior have learned to bring their own canoes. Lightweight canoes.
So it was with a light heart and shaking legs that I let Samuel take the canoe, while I took the packs, paddles, lifejackets, and legally-required bailing bucket.
I led, warning Samuel about low-hanging branches, slippery slopes, and oozy places where rivulets crossed the path. And I followed the path, which ranged from barely visible to not visible at all. We lost the path a lot, found it a lot. A series of ridges separated Red Lake from Hawk Lake. Steep-sided angles of rock, as hard going down as coming up. Between the ridges water had pooled into swampy soil or had been made into beaver ponds.
In a birch forest we came into a storm of falling yellow leaves. It was nice, while Samuel carried the canoe.
Samuel carried the canoe at least as far as I did, then I took my turn for a couple of eternities, and so we took turns until we eventually reached the shores of Hawk Lake.
I set down the canoe. I looked at Samuel, who was surveying the water. “Say something profound and spiritual, medicine man,” I said.
“Holy fuck, that was a miserable portage,” Samuel said.
We’d come to a bay that required us to paddle downwind a ways, away from the lodge, round a bend, then back upwind. It started to rain, then stopped, and we came in sight of the lodge pushing our way into rolling waves.
“Keep paddling,” I said, digging the phone out of Samuel’s pack. “What’s the number of the lodge?”
I eventually got Pica on the phone and made sure the café at the lodge had the French fry cookers heating up.
We came up to the docks at Hawk Lake Lodge bone-tired. It was early afternoon. Pica, in a yellow rainsuit, met us and helped tie up the canoe. Samuel and I staggered down the docks to the café.
“You want fries?” I asked. Samuel nodded and we ate fries and drank hot chocolate for a while. I like lots of vinegar on my fries, but Samuel is a ketchup man. Vinegar makes my right big toe ache. The doctor calls it “gouty arthritis” whatever that is. Must look it up again someday.
My car was out in the parking lot, so I went out, put the seat back, put on a tape of flute music, and covered my eyes with a folded-up facecloth. I was asleep almost at once.