The First Portage

Sept 27 2015

I learned to flip a canoe

when I was 12.

A lesson in the applied physics

of inertia, trajectory, moment.

And a lesson in faith

in myself,

tossing the canoe with no reservations

nothing half-way.

The art of jiu-jitsu

applied to canoes,

using its own weight, an economy of motion;

toss, turn, tuck

and up it goes.

12 years old,

an age

when you begin to master things,

when accomplishment

forms your sense of self.

And in the decades since

has served me well.

When the canoe

having carried me faithfully

down rapids, over lakes

through back-water swamps and glacial melt

is shouldered, and carried in turn.

Like a turtle, I travel self-contained;

a heavy pack

my own strong back

sufficient for all my needs.

The first portage

is like a thousand mile journey,

impassable

to all the good-ol'-boys, drunkenly gunning their boats,

party-girls, recklessly revving jet-skis;

their sound and fury

swallowed-up by trees.

Just a single portage, and civilization recedes

time eases its burden.

Which is worth labouring under the weight

of an 18-foot canoe,

cutting through black boot-sucking mud

stumbling over broken ground.

The perfect vessel for wilderness

is light enough to carry

on the back of a 12 year old boy.

Who, at journey’s end

swarmed by bugs, and soaked in sweat

learned the helter-skelter plunge

into cold fresh water

fully-clothed;

casting off the weight

with a practiced shrug.

The transcendent pleasure

of simple things.

The beauty of its lines

the toughness of its curves.

And waiting on shore

like an old reliable friend,

the cedar strip canoe

in turn, carries him.

 I always liked that, setting out on a canoe trip with that slightly smug feeling of self-sufficiency: as it says in the poem, like a turtle, self-contained. And the canoe is the only imaginable vessel that with which to do this: something you can carry on your back that will in turn carry you. The perfect vessel for wilderness indeed!

Perhaps it was this early accomplishment that helped me fall in love with canoes. This was at summer camp, and I think I felt like the possessor of arcane knowledge. Or perhaps it was the feeling of being privy to a secret pleasure that others had ignored, seduced as they were by the more obvious pleasures of sailing or water-skiing. And it definitely appealed to my solitary nature: soloing a canoe, going off alone. And I loved the sense of subtle command: elegantly balanced an inch from the water; feeling joined to the boat through my knees and hips; in precise control with a flick of the wrist, a slight adjustment of angle and lean.

Most of all, the canoe gives you access to wilderness. All it takes is a single portage: the most minimal effort, and you immediately weed out all the yobs and good-ol'-boys and assholes. Learn to carry the canoe, get the first portage behind you, and you're home-free.

A rough enough portage, and you wouldn't bother stopping at the water's edge, shrugging off the canoe, and setting it gently down. You'd run straight into the water with the canoe still on your back, tipping it off to one side once you're neck (or waist) deep. Because all you've been thinking about for the last half mile is massacring those damned bugs, sluicing-off the sweat.

Of course, you'd never take a back-country trip in a cedar canoe. We did, back then. But these days, it's aluminum or ABS or Kevlar. Still, the quintessential canoe is cedar-strip: steam-bent cedar ribs; wide cedar planks, nested close; and waterproofed canvas stretched over the wooden frame. Then painted red, as all canoes surely must.