Pleasure just don't make sense no more!

Imi writes... 

While Howard was hard at work setting up the camp (my sole responsibility to pitch my tent!), I decided to go for a swim. After great difficulty, stumbling on the uneven lake bottom, I wedged myself between ragged rocks, with the wavy, water level at my neck. I soon realised I was having the greatest time of my life, but it just didn't make sense. The rocks were sharp, and I could have easily hurt myself, why was my pleasure so delicious? What we think should be fun is often different from what really is fun, and visa versa.

There is fun overcoming obstacles, and doing hard things, while the supposed fun things of life are often not really fun.

You may object that if they are not fun, then why do people go for the 'fun' things in life like fast cars, fancy houses, etc, etc... People assume that just because they have the fun things of life, they really must be having fun? They get confirmation of this from most of society as well.

Here I was with very limited options for entertaining myself, and yet I was having real fun. Logic tells us it's fun to have lots of options, and not be confined to a few, but perhaps too many choices create dissatisfaction? Perhaps we humans are creatures that thrive when our horizons are limited, well defined, and simple?

There is nothing here to bolster my ego, or to massage my vanity. I stumble, fall, and struggle, and am constantly reminded of my vulnerabilities, but I'm enraptured by the sounds of eternity that surround me... Of the wind and waves. This leads us to the greatest paradox of pleasure: Those who seek to bolster their egos, massage their vanities, and to maximize pleasure, lead unfulfilling lives...

Perhaps humans are meant to have transcendent high goals...?

For more about this and 'Happiness', see the "Moosa's Challenge" page.

Early night for a REAL day tomorrow, with at least two big portages!


See Howard's blog post of the same day.  
See Imi's previous blog post.

Gently does it...

Howard writes...

Hello from Quetico!

I feel almost like we are on a holiday rather than an adventure... A holiday is where you put on weight, and adventure when you lose it! What a great day, whatever, though...

We set off from Atikoken at 7am, and reached the Stanton Bay car park at 7h30. Our first portage was about 800m down to Pickerel Lake, and Jim insisted on helping with the canoe and heavy food pack... Great, my rest day! This is apparently the easiest portage we will have, and so a good reference for Imi. Well, it was slow as he stumbled, stubbornly resisting help, but moving with purpose and dignity a few metres behind me. We finally reached the water and our awaiting canoe and food bag, thanks to Jim. Imi openly acknowledged that it was tougher than he had envisaged, and a wake-up reality check. I also had a huge wake-up reality check: These portages are going to be very slow, and unless I make them a high-intensity, personal-growth lesson in patience, they will be adventure breakers for me! The option is no option, and I'll be sharing with you how I progress as the only pupil in my class! Those who know me well will probably be muttering that these lessons are well overdue!

At 8h33, I launched the canoe with Imi in the bow, me jumping in, and soon the team was paddling with the perfect synchronicity we had last year on the Yukon. The 20+ deg C water was a real pleasant change from that icy Yukon. Swimming stuff....

As we got out into the open water of Pickerel, a strongish head-wind picked up and the adventure struggle upped a few notches as waves occasionally popped over the bow. But, gee, it felt sooooo nice to be on the water, in the wilderness, numerous densely-wooded islands around. I know this sounds passe, and many of you have experienced it but this sudden peace just came across me, as the freedom and tranquility of our expedition was now a reality.

We paddled for 3hrs, not saying a word; we both knew this was time for engaging the self and connecting back to life on the water, and valuing the sometimes-silent team experience together.

The plan was a flexible plan, but we did anticipate at least a six-hour day. Well, this trip is about exploring, and as we came around a corner and into a wind-shadowed island corridor, in front of us was this perfect campsite opportunity. The decision was easy: let's stop for lunch. Well, as we beached, it was clear it was idyllic, a Huck Fynn place, and Imi made the suggestion that maybe we should just stay here overnight! So here we are, still here, and just a perfect day of swimming, meditating, intense discussions, and a tranquil lakeside dinner.

I sense we both just wanted this easy day, as I said to Imi: no better way to seemingly avoid the capitulation step from the comforts of normal life to the pleasurable hardships of adventure life. We are now well on the way, and are both really looking forward to a sunrise start and the first real portage 4km away.

That will all be tomorrow's story!

With the sun now 'set' behind our backdrop forest, I hear the unmistakable call of a loon as I prepare myself for Imi's blog dictation. Sadly, his writing project last night did not achieve the immediate success we had both hoped for, so we are back to the dictate-and-then-type process.

Here is the result. 
See Howard's previous blog post. 

Friends on the move... Are we not all also on the move?

Imi writes...

It is a great pleasure for Howard and I to meet as old friends again – a great pleasure to reconnect, a great pleasure to venture on a new expedition again. Very different is the pleasure from the one we shared in the Yukon last year. Then we were strangers, somewhat unsure and yet hopeful we could be friends.

For all the pleasure at us meeting, there has also been much preparation, planning and postponement of wishes. (Notice all the ‘P’s)  We have been busy planning the trip, Howard has been busy executing the plan, and we have postponed for the time being the pleasures and joys on intimate conversations and of solving all the problems that plagues humanity.

But hey, are we not all deep in our own worlds, preparing, planning and postponing our wishes? We  huff and we puff, we groan and we moan, and toil our lives away, so that one fine day we will see our wishes fulfilled?  Yeah, one fine day, we will smile and be really happy! Never has mankind developed so many means to fulfil human desires. But never have humans had so little leisure.

But for me and Howard, planning, preparation and postponement of wishes will come to end soon. Yeah, we will really start living from tomorrow...  Hopefully...!

Imi

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

Beginning at the end

We begin our trip at the end of the last, with Imi's reflections on the Yukon Blind adventure, posted on July 6, 2011:

I have just undergone a defining and significant event in my life. What exhilaration to know that severe visual impairments need not have to come in way of relishing the wild and roughing it. My gratitude to Howard is immense. Let me first say a few words about Howard, before discussing my overall experience of this canoe trip.

Two strangers meeting on a lonesome road few miles out of a small town of River Falls becomes the start of a great adventure. He was willing to try out taking responsibility of a person seriously handicapped on a potentially dangerous expedition. And I had to make a decision to put my life and safety in the hands of a man whom I hardly knew, and whose river skills, canoeing experience and ability, I had not witnessed. Here I for the first time had to confront an aspect of my character, that actually was a weakness, but that I had till now believed was my strength. I wanted to always be self sufficient, self reliant, in control of my own destiny, and never in need of others, but nevertheless enjoying of other’s company. I guess I have always been somewhat a loner, though I am affable and in good terms with all around me. But now I will have to seriously depend on another human being for my safety and wellbeing. This trip has taught me that it is strength to put trust in other humans and to let oneself be beholden to our friends. It is strength to tell your fellow being: “Brother, I need your help. And without you I could never have had this great experience!” It is a testament to Howard’s generosity and adventurousness to make this daring journey with me.
And what a journey it has been!

How I relished the vast openness and wildness of Yukon! Blindness has four potentially debilitating drawbacks, and this adventure acted as a remedy to each of them:

Firstly, blindness constricts. Vision of far-reaching spaces gives one the feeling of vastness and of immensity. But in this trip I gradually built a conception of vast spaces, of openness and of immensity. In the sounds o the wind, of the many seagulls, ducks and crows, and the constant rippling of the great river I experienced vastness.

Secondly, blindness isolates. Just as eyes are a window to human souls, so also are eyes the windows to the glorious world of color and of the vast and variegated world. But in this trip I was pulled out of my own self by the sounds and sensations of wild and free nature.

Thirdly blindness can be alienating. It is difficult for a blind person to fully participate with what is happening all around him. Never have I felt so much at home as when I was camping and canoeing on the Yukon River.

Fourthly, blindness is discouraging and demoralizing. One is always conscious of the limitations imposed upon us by low vision, especially in a world so visual as ours. What inspires and encourages humans is consciousness of one’s power. I pitched my own tent, packed my own stuff, and did my share of hard canoeing. I faced the hardships, and did it well.
In summary, this trip reminded me of what I could do, and not what I was incapable of doing.

Thanks to all of you for your amazing support, I was overwhelmed.

Imitiaz.