At the put-in, my fantasies were assaulted
by a cloud of blackflies. Te bugs made the first portage part backwoods blood donor clinic, part primal therapy. Going solo means there’s nobody to share the pain… I picked up my pace and forged on.
Spurred on by the flies and an increasing angst I had yet to notice, I blazed through the first day of my route in a matter of hours and reached my scheduled campsite by lunch. Tat’s where things started, impercepti-
bly, to unravel. I had imagined it would be hard to do all the camp chores myself. So I had planned a short route with more time than usual to do all the tasks that are nor- mally shared among a group. I had also allowed time for the quiet con-
templation of nature’s majesty, since every- body knows that’s the great reward of solo tripping. Bill Mason likened the wilderness to a church, and I expected the solo expe- rience to be a kind of rapture that I would want to revel in. My leisurely schedule worked well. Too
well. It completely backfired, in fact. Eating lunch at my first campsite, I faced the chal- lenge of what to do with the remaining 10 hours of daylight. Might as well continue paddling—just a little bit further. Before long I arrived at the campsite I
had planned for night two. Tis time I set up camp. I chose the site carefully—an is- land that was too small for bears—and set my tent right by the fire pit. I laid out my sleeping bag and my clothes. No, the clean underwear over here, next to the flashlight and the toilet paper, and a jackknife in the right tent pocket. Tat’s right. Ten I unpacked my food and cooked some pasta, washed my dishes and put them away and hung up my food. I gathered a pile of firewood and looked at my watch. It was only 4:30 p.m. and the sun was still
high. It was one of the longest days of the year. Better make sure I’m ready for dark. So I gathered more firewood and broke
it into foot-long pieces. Ten I stacked the pieces into piles sorted by diameter. Ten I sat down and settled in for some of that quiet contemplation I’d been looking for- ward to. Ohm. Which is when I discovered that my skit-
tish 17-year-old mind had no interest in quiet contemplation.
Te lack of protein was hell.
I discovered that my skittish 17-year-old mind had no interest in quiet contemplation.
Te wilderness was like a church all right.
EXACTLY like a church, like a huge creepy vastness haunted by an otherworldly still- ness. I might as well have locked myself up in an empty Notre Dame Cathedral with a “do not disturb” sign on the door. Te thought of five more hours of ear-ringing nothingness, to be followed by more of the same in total darkness, felt to me like being slowly asphyxiated by silence. I am going to die. And so I panicked. And then an impul-
sive, subconscious calculation told me what was clearly possible if I just kept moving. Within 20 minutes I had broken camp
and was back on the water, now entering the territory of day three. Another portage, a few more klicks of paddling and I was back to the car. I threw my still clean gear into the trunk and tied the canoe down in a fly- addled frenzy, then sped away with the win- dows down to blast away the bugs. By nightfall I was exiting the drive-thru,
a Big Mac warm in my palm, and before midnight I pulled back into the driveway at home. My parents were asleep and I found my sister on the couch watching Te Arsen- io Hall Show. Just act natural. I walked in and sat down. When she asked
me what I was doing there, I said, “I finished my whole route. So I decided
to come home.”
TIM SHUFF eventually slowed down and enjoyed a solo trip of 25 days, measured by time, not distance.
w w w. c a n o e r o o t sma g . c om n 31
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