By AL MERLE
The wall of evergreens that ringed Little Clear Pond stretched their needled fingers into the water, staining it a rippling green. We had just put in ten minutes ago and were poised to make our first portage, eager to push farther and farther from the boundary of the road. Pack on my back and barrel strapped to Jackson’s, we hefted our canoe up and over our heads and started down the trail. I didn’t begrudge the weight, though it was crushing. This vessel was our cradle and it would carry us across 45 kilometers in the next four days, but the relationship was reciprocal, and now it was our turn to carry it. We continued like this for most of the day, paddling along the shore of various ponds and then portaging between them. Situated in the stern of the boat, it was a joy to steer. It rang intimate, getting to know the boat and becoming attuned to its idiosyncrasies. It was connection without vulnerability, no fear of reproach. It was a safe trend of trial and error, combining strokes to track straight, learning and anticipating how the canoe reacted to my paddle. Pulling our boats up on the steepsloped shore, trying not to drop them and slip back into the water, we set up camp for the night. The site on Bear Pond became our brief home. Then Caper, Kate, Jackson, and I arranged ourselves in a circle, gathering around the ghost of a Summer 2022
fire, needing no external source of warmth as the four of us laughed and regaled with one another about our wild canoe conversations. Curls of vapor rose off the glass surface of the pond. It was almost a shame to set our canoes in the water and see our ripples break that limpid calm. A total and irreplicable peace. We paddled out anyway, losing the other canoe as it disappeared into the mist. Almost immediately that rare sense of surety was again at my fingertips, curled beneath them as they guided the motion of the paddle. Now there was a second step, an added layer to the closeness between me and the canoe. It was realized as Jackson and I began to communicate on steering. It became obvious when I started calling “hup” to switch sides. It was trust. It was familiarity. It was partnership. That reassuring connection felt between canoe and paddler, created by the need to read and adjust for the boat, affected both partners, necessitating us to extend that link to each other. Suddenly it became a human connection without the looming dread of reproach, without the threat of ridicule or the fear of revulsion. A security that was the stuff of fairytales, the canoe had fashioned us into brothers for the time we were in it and offered us friendship on the waters of Upper St. Regis Lake. This is the magic of canoes. The lessons of the wild.
PLACES WORTH SAVING
Photograph by Brendan Wiltse
(Provided photo —Steve Maynard)
The magic of canoes
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