This is a copyrighted original work. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed without the exclusive written permission of this author.
Many thanks to BlackRandi for the fine editing work and including me in the
Surfing with the Alien
writing event.
*****
She's a summer love in the spring, fall and winter. She can make happy any man alive.
-Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
*****
Years ago, when I was eighteen, my parents demanded that I join them for two weeks at my uncle's cabin way the hell up in northern Ontario. I'd been there many times, but I knew that there would be no one else my age there. Bottom line -- they didn't trust me at home by myself, even though I was going to be off, for the first time, to university in less than six weeks.
Aside from fishing and playing Nintendo there was basically nothing for me to do. My parents read the whole time. There was a television, but only one channel and you had to keep the generator running for electricity.
The cabin is on a lake and river system I'll not name for reasons which will become obvious, suffice it to say that it flowed and drained northward towards Hudson Bay. The lake is fairly small (about two miles long) and shaped more or less like a tall 'C' with the south river coming in at the south-east corner. This lake is just one amongst a chain of lakes in the river system. The south river, as we called it, is about a half mile along from the previous small lake with rapids all the way down and a narrow five foot high waterfall half way along. Below the waterfall was where I would launch the canoe and dodge rocks all the way down just like the voyagers of old. Occasionally I'd smack into a rock or get swamped but it was never a biggie. The north river is completely different. It is shallow and slowly meanders along as a combination of bogs and beaver dams, one after the other. On the west side of the lake is a private gravel roadway coming from the northwest which leads to the only five cabins on the lake, the last of which, the southernmost, was ours. The east side of the lake is dominated by a huge granite mound that had been ground down by previous glaciations. The locals referred to it as Blueberry Hill. In fact, blueberries grew everywhere, not just on the hill. The north-east corner of the lake is swampy; the rest is fairly rocky.
Aside from the road access to the lake, access by the river system was not impossible, but never done.
We knew that the other four cabins were currently not occupied. My parents and I were the only ones up that week.
It had been drizzling earlier that particular morning when I decided to entertain myself in the afternoon by running some mini-rapids down the south river with my uncle's twelve foot fibreglass canoe. There was an entry point, just below the water-fall.
It was a tricky portage, uphill all the way, with the canoe balanced on my shoulders and limited vision. Nevertheless, I'd done it many times.
That day I fucked up big time.
I banged the front of the upside down canoe on an overhead limb, knocking me sideways. I dropped the canoe, twisting my left ankle. I felt myself sliding down a steep twenty foot, wet, lichen and moss covered rock with the canoe tumbling next to me. I banged my left knee against a tree, then broke my fall with my right wrist and slid into the water feet first, miraculously not banging my head on a rock. I was carried down the rapids right behind the canoe which I could see was damaged and somehow bent in half. I caught hold of the canoe, made it out of the river's current and miraculously grounded myself and the wrecked canoe on a bit of a gravelly beach, just around the point on the east side of the lake. There were lichen covered rocks and trees behind me.
It was not at all a good situation.
The canoe was buckled in half, bent at the aluminium gunwales with the fibreglass split across the hull. The paddle was gone. I could see the life jacket bobbing away way out in the middle of the lake.
I didn't know if the canoe was fixable or not, but right now it was full of water and completely useless. I managed to drag the thing up on the shore.
My left ankle, left knee, left hip and right wrist were really sore but I didn't think anything was broken.
I truly fucked up. I was literally up shit's creek without a paddle or a floating, working canoe for that matter.
There was only one way of getting back to the cabin. I had to swim across the south river and hopefully not get carried out too far into the lake by the fairly strong current. Then with a sore left side and sore right wrist, I had to scramble along the rugged water's edge for the better part of a mile -- as the crow flies.
Going back up the south river and finding a place to cross was practically suicidal, even to my then eighteen year old - I'm going to live forever - brain.
The other way across, over Blueberry Hill and around the swamp at the north east end of the lake had to be at least ten miles. I'd have to use dead reckoning to find my way through the woods that I had only seen from the swampy water. I knew I could scamper across probably the very first beaver dam and eventually find my way back to the gravel road. It would be dark before I made it home. I didn't have a flashlight.
