The adventure is about to begin... An early start sets the pace

Howard writes...

Two days ago I left the high-spirited atmosphere of a London celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and its inhabitants, enjoying a four-day partying long weekend.  


Landing in Minneapolis, it was very emotional seeing Imi standing there waiting for me, all dressed in a very suave blue shirt, clenching his white pole, oblivious to my approach. I yelled, "Hey, Imi”, and he immediately turned to me, and shouted “Howard, how good to see you, man”, and we exchanged a very warm hug. I commented on his great shirt colour, and visibly surprised at my interest, he asked me what colour it was? I told him how good it looked on him, and then he admitted that a secret admirer had taken him shopping and picked it out for him, know that it was, ‘just him’. Makes you think about what this ‘outer stuff’ is all about, hey. Imi doesn’t even know, nor care what he puts on, for him it’s only about the ‘inside stuff’, he doesn’t have an option!

Our adventure began the following day, three days earlier than anticipated. Imi has a car that hadn’t been driven since he went blind six years ago and, in anticipation of this trip and the eight-hour drive to Quetico Park, he decided to have it serviced and ready for me to drive us up there. It had been three weeks since the service and, having a busy day planned in his home town, River Falls, we walked out to the car in the garage, hoping to head out for the day. Oops..., I noticed a flat tyre on the left hand side, but then as I walked around the other side, I discovered both tyres flat that side too. With three flats, there was no way we were going anywhere for the day, and the challenge became getting the guys responsible for the service to firstly take responsibility and then agree to help us out of the serious bind we were now in...   Imi felt real bad that he hadn’t checked the car, but once again the reality of his situation hit me...   If I was like him, and didn’t drive the car, I wouldn’t come out every day and check the tyres were fully inflated. Anyway, crisis management took over, and the tow truck was at his house by 9am and the problem solved by 4pm, and I ended up getting a bit fitter and knowledgeable of River Falls, and completed all our shopping items.  

 

Two days later, and I’m sitting here in the very appropriately named ‘The Outdoorsman’ restaurant in Atikoken, the small town of 3 300 people, that is the gateway to our adventure playground tomorrow. Lying just in Canada, and over the Minnesota / Ontario, international border, its authentic Canadian heritage is such an obvious change from the more commercial and populous towns across the American border where we came from yesterday. 

I say, "I’m” sitting here, because, yeah, I’m at a table on my own doing this blog, and Imi is sitting on his own, three tables in front of me, taking on a serious personal challenge:  He is trying to hand write his section of this blog in an attempt to make this blog posting process more efficient from a team perspective. (Last year he dictated to me, I wrote down on a notebook, and then typed, with a stylus into the small PDA, that sends the content via satphone email.)  Always wanting to help in improving the team effectiveness, he came up with the idea that he will try and write, and then I’ll just type it into the PDA. When I asked him if he had ever written on paper since going blind, he started his all too familiar mumble, humming and hah-ing that tells me he has been caught out trying to be too optimistic! He then admitted:  “No, he hasn’t ever handwritten a relatively lengthy article, and this would be a real challenge... Oh well, as usual he is approaching the challenge with passion and a conquest mindset, and I’m sure some form of success will be the outcome. What we as sighted people take for granted, hey?

The only other table occupied in the unique Main Street restaurant is a table of six local guys, complete with jeans, suspenders, the mandatory baseball cap, and they have talked the last thirty minutes about their gym routines - the repetitions, the weights they use, their favourite exercises, etc. The one guy explained what triceps are, seeming surprised that the others didn’t know, and they then went onto discussing the muscle strains and operations they have had...  All quite intense and of course one of the guys had to be ‘The Man’, being the ‘expert’ and others mostly listening in awe, to his hardened gym stories...  Around the walls of the restaurant are replicas of record fish caught in the surrounding lakes.

A few hours ago we finished final tasks for the canoe expedition, with a plan to head out of Atikoken at 7am tomorrow, Sunday 10^th June, for our start at Stanton Bay. Planning for 13 days of self-sufficiency, and making sure everything is in waterproof backpack bags that we can carry for the portages has been quite a challenge. The food bag alone weighs some 70 kilograms, and this will be carried by myself. Every portage will involve unloading the canoe, and then  two trips each, to get all the gear and the canoe from A to B.  Added to this, going through our planned route with Jim Clark of Canadian Canoe Expeditions, highlighted the seriousness of the challenge, we face ahead.  Jim has many years of experience in this area, and explained some of the portages in, ‘spirit breaking’, detail, but then reconnecting us to the vast rewards of the beauty of the wilderness, that is soon to be our backyard for almost two weeks.  

The unknowns of us as a team, and how we are going to deal with the numerous portages along our route, is my biggest concern. Imi and I had a very frank discussion earlier this afternoon that helped lift some of the cloud of apprehension that we both admitted was preventing us really seeing the wonderful sunshine that clearly also lies ahead. These discussions are important, and we went through a typical portage and how we will split the packs, and manage the challenges of steep, rocky, and uneven portages. As usual, talking through these things helps, and then  I found this description of Quetico Park, that connected straight into my adventure spirit. I had to share it with Imi, and as I read it out to him, I sensed both our moods changed from being apprehension-dominated to connecting to the essence of adventure, the challenge, and the excitement started kicking in. It was noticeable how we had both turned the corner and the adventure was ready to begin!  Here is that quote: 

QUETICO PARK: HEAVEN OR HELL?

Robert Beymer describes two views of Quetico Park in his introduction to A Paddler's Guide to Quetico Provincial Park (3rd Ed.) (W.A. Fisher Co, 1994):

"Words cannot do justice to Quetico Park. Mention the word 'Quetico' to a hundred individuals who have paddled its crystalline waters and you will have conjured up a hundred different images - the eerie wailing of a loon at dusk, the gentle lapping of waves against a granite shore, a fresh breeze against one's face on a warm day in July, a chain of exquisite waterfalls, a majestic bull moose in a quiet cove, a heart-pounding struggle with a small-mouth bass, a tiny island campsite shrouded by fog in the still dawn of a crisp August morning, white clouds reflecting in a glassy lake that is just too blue to be real, or the tantalizing aroma of a succulent walleye, caught only moments before, now frying to perfection over a hot bed of glowing coals. . .

"If this sounds like Paradise, well, at times, it is. Quetico Park sometimes shows another face, however, and the would-be visitor must also be willing to accept her in that mood. Life there is a constant challenge and not all people are suited for it. To the disgruntled former visitor, the name "Quetico" might conjure up entirely different images: hordes of voracious mosquitoes and black flies viciously attacking every inch of exposed skin and even penetrating thin clothing, violent thunderstorms leveling tents and drenching sleeping bags, frustrating winds that barely allow a canoe to inch across a white-capped lake, sinking up to the knees in deep mud that smells like a thousand years of rotting sediment, rugged portages that are difficult to climb without any gear and nearly impossible with it, biting insects that are too small to see but leave welts all over the body, several days of bone-chilling drizzle that renders the wood supply noncombustible, bog-lined creeks that are too shallow to paddle through and too muddy to walk through, seven days of fishing without a single strike, or the only wildlife witnessed in ten days being the rear end of black bear dragging the only food pack into the darkness. These, too, are accurate images of Quetico Park - at times."

I really look forward to sharing with you our stories from this truly amazing Park.

Howard