Howard's wrap-up

Howard writes...

Firstly of this lastly: I want to take you back to probably our toughest day, and from what you read you maybe you wonder why it was the toughest…..? I’ll solve the mystery!

As we all know, often things happen for a reason, but this time it took me getting back to civilization to connect the reason! I sensed that there was something ’wrong’ with the ‘Big Day, Blog 7 posting you guys were reading: Dominique was alluding to a gap in my story, the missing seven huge portages, yet she had received Blog 7 and with the virtual communication/internet ‘blindness’ I had out there, and sat phone confirmation that the content had been sent, I couldn’t fathom things out. I need to point out that working with email and a sat phone require a level of patience that tests me to the limit almost more than each adventure! (A typical blog takes about 20 nail-biting minutes, to send via sat phone!) Anyway, a long story short, I realize now that half of Blog 7 was cut off in the sat phone transmission.

That was a big day’s story, and I felt Imi’s words on ‘Freedom’, were priceless in the context of his step off the cliff and our thoughts while immersed deep in a challenging canoeing/portage day. Fate has decided that the missing part of that Blog is best kept for the end, as almost a great summary of our adventure… They captured so well the essence of our adventure and who the conflict of the struggle and the wilderness solitude was internalized. So here is that missing piece from Blog 7:

“………Virtually as we left and started paddling , the rain started pelting down, and we were back in Mother Nature’s heaven for us today! We both agreed that even with the rain there was something very special about being out here remote, exposed, and yet alive. We both ‘ticked off’, without doubt, we wouldn't right now swap places with 'someone' in a cosy London, Sydney, big city, secure home, dwelling... In these seemingly atrocious conditions, were we lying to ourselves, we really didn't think so... In fact Imi, made the insightful comment: "When in the wilderness, naked in front of nature, you are never in a prison, you are freed by your self sufficiency, nakedness, and the sheer simplicity. This rang so true for me, as I thought back to my solo nakedness on the South Pole, sailing alone, cycling alone, and suddenly this freedom rush hit my system, as I thought about Siberia, alone, in a few weeks.

The portages were all challenging in their uniqueness, and I've covered this aspect in my previous blog, but today they felt real remote; I think we are in an area of the park where we were the first trail blazers for the season. For the first time I saw a lot of bear scat around, and in my one search for a portage route, I repeatedly shouted the precautionary "Hey bear" call to warn any unsuspecting bear of my approach. But no bears were seen... Maybe tomorrow... Please, Mother Nature?

We had two 'portages' where we got out the canoe and controlled its passage through a series of rapids walking alongside, sometimes waist deep, in the fast-flowing water. Imi did amazingly, especially considering his crooked knee, stumbling along the uneven, rocky river bed. We both agreed that it was better than lugging canoe and gear on a normal portage, though!

The end of the last portage, a long one, was this real, ocean-like, sand beach, with a wonderful 'holiday resort' type campsite setting. Any thought of 'booking in', was dashed by Mother Nature's biggest and most deadliest squadron of mosquitoes. We wasted no time in getting in the canoe and escaping their attack. It was relentless, and stopping a few hundred metres out in the lake, scratching every part of our ravaged bodies, we both agreed that that attack was the worst we had experienced to date. Another hard, but satisfying 6-hour day and we had reached our target overnight campsite, in now great, sunny weather. With the great weather I decided, swimming was more of a priority than tent building, but within 45 minutes I was almost regretting my prioritisation, as only with lightening fast tent building did I just manage to slip into my tent before the heaviest rainfall to date hit us. Gee, this is a wild weather place, and seemingly totally unpredictable. I'm now sitting outside with an ABSOLUTELY perfect sunset. Just the sound of loons, crickets, and the occasional, trademark, violent, beaver ‘tail smack’ on the water nearby.... Just bliss, but who knows what we will wake to....

That's it from me till two day's time...

H

Here is Imi's thought for the day, crooked knee and all!

REAL Freedom

Real Freedom does not consist merely of freedom of speech and expression. Real Freedom means you are free to live as you please, to build the community that furthers your peculiar value system/scheme. But if people lived as they pleased, that is tantamount to anarchy, hence that world is free where maximum disorder and anarchy can exist without jeopardizing human survival. That is only possible if a vast wilderness exists where people can build their own individual lives and communities, without hampering others.

So a pagan community that worships the moon, that has its own wild dances and rituals, that creates its own brutal, competitive game can go on the rampage without worrying about the world. That is true Freedom.

Our world is so consumed with servicing human needs, that it has to impose strict order and systems to be viable. In fact very soon, humans will have to manage the entire planet, because eco-systems and nature have to be disrupted in order to create affluence. New possibilities of living that go against the strict norms can just not be permitted.

This is a universal law: Servitude is the price of comfort and affluence,

Freedom is always only for those who fight and struggle for it.

Imi

With that mystery solved I’d just like to close my part of this fulfilling adventure, with the following:

Having been living closely with Imi in the past three weeks, when I read out his wrap up words, they almost brought tears to my eyes. Every day I could feel the struggle, his inspiration, his fight against servitude, yet his huge appreciation of my role, and his words capture this sometimes conflicting cauldron of emotions, but I know that we both have come out of this amazing human experience bigger people, both individually and as a team.

Early on in the last day of paddling we passed this island where a group of five ‘early fifties’ guys were sitting at the lake edge, enjoying their wilderness breakfast experience. After the one guy’s courteous “Hi”, coffee mug in hand, we pulled in to chat to them. They explored our seemingly strange, 13 day, endurance experience motive that clearly for them seemed to lack their obvious social and fishing element. In our exploring of their motives and experiences, they sheepishly looked at each other, admitted too few fish, and moments of boredom, moving them to evening drinking entertainment, with a few hints at stories shared, and then lots of loud laughter.

I couldn’t help think that their picture was a fairly clear stereotypical one: Five buddies managed to negotiate 5 days off from their wives and kids to have a good ‘boys talk’ fishing trip ‘escape’.

Imi and I were so obviously different! It was almost how I feel when I meet motorcyclists when I’m touring cycling, or motor boaters when I’m sailing… On paper being in the wilderness, and with canoes, we should share so much in common, but in reality as we shared our individual experiences, it became clear that we are quite different variants of the human species, with actually little soul overlap!

They were lovely, down-to-earth guys, we had a few laughs at their inter-friend banter, but as we paddled away, I knew that what I had experienced in the past 13 days was extremely valuable to me, and was not possible of being achieved in ‘a team’ of more than two, but also not one of less than two! In amongst the inevitable complex committee decisions, they would no doubt have had great boys’ jokes, shared their past and present fishing stories to the last passionate detail, one or two may have bravely explored solutions to their current work/relationship/or financial challenges. But I sense that largely the conversation would have stayed at the not-too-serious, holiday-escape, superficial fun level, stories being the basis for building their five-member team friendship… They would have probably concluded we were too serious and on an adventure where fun was a virtual impossibility. Gee, how different things can be seen by the beholders, hey…?

I may have got it all wrong, but I do know that often we feel that more is better, where more often than not for me, actually less provides more, and the focus and challenge of a well defined adventure can enable one to go way beyond the often-uninspiring superficiality of life. This Quetico trip had definitely done that for me!

On a lighter note, when we got back to Atikoken, the seriousness of the adverse weather we had been through became truly apparent, and some were even surprised we had managed to complete the route we had: We were told of record rainfalls, cyclone warnings in the park while we were there, huge unprecedented floods in the nearby city of Duluth that actually flooded out the zoo, allowing all the seals and the solitary Polar bear to escape. Nature fights back, rescuing it’s suffering prisoners!

And now FINALY, I just want to publicly acknowledge the amazing achievement of my sight-impaired, adventure buddy: “Imi, you were blood amazing, mate, a true inspiration for any time that I think I have things tough and can’t rise to the challenge! Thank you for giving me the wonderful human experience you did!” The team will no doubt be back next year, taking on some new challenge, still to be defined!

That’s all from ‘Vision Quest’ for this year, and thanks for your support in making this an even richer experience for both of US. We have thoroughly enjoyed having you along!

Howard

See some pictures from the trip.

Read Imi's wrap-up blog post.

Read Howard's previous blog post.