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BUTT END


GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. PHOTO: IAN MERRINGER


Lost and Found


A SPARE PADDLE IS FINALLY PUT TO USE BY KEVIN CALLAN


I LIKE TO KEEP A RELAXED PACE when I trip, but that afternoon we couldn’t get our dawdling daugh- ter through the portage quickly enough. The curious black bear seemed as interested in us as I was in it, and to add to the anxiety a column of storm clouds was col- lecting upwind. Our push-off from the portage


was hasty. It wasn’t until we were halfway around the lake, losing ground to the storm, that I discov- ered our spare paddle was missing. I knew exactly where I had left


it—tucked into the marsh grass in the muck that sucked at our boots as we hurried into the canoe—but I wasn’t going back. Alana and I had our two-year-old daughter with us, and you have a maximum of an hour-and-a-half of grace time while paddling with a two-year-old. We were already in too deep.


46 ■ C ANOE ROOT S spring 2008 Besides, the storm would soon


be on us, and the bear was prob- ably licking his lips in a carefully selected ambush spot near the paddle. So I left it. Alana questioned the decision,


but I assured her I’d put out a re- quest for the paddle on some ca- noe website chat forums. I remem- ber being surprised she thought that would work. It took me a while to post the


message, but I received a response the very day the notice went up. A maintenance crew had found my paddle and handed it over to an outfi tter.


After a moment of marvelling at


how honest, close-knit and web- addicted canoeists are I called the outfi tter. He told me he had been handing it out to clients to use as a spare paddle. I had to wait for the last group to come back before I could retrieve it. I admit I was worried to hear oth-


er canoeists were abusing my pad- dle. But then he listed the trippers who had used the paddle already: a mother on her fi rst trip with her two teenage daughters, environmental- ists campaigning to save a stand of old-growth forest and a solo pad- dler trying to escape reality (didn’t


I marvelled at how honest, close-knit and web-addicted canoeists are


work). That’s when I saw the bigger picture. I may have lost a paddle but I had found a way to gain a wider perspective on the reasons people take paddle in hand to canoe. To me the stories of why the canoeists ventured into the wil- derness were more valuable than a spare blade. In the end I told the outfi tter to keep handing out my paddle to his clients, but only if he would report back to me about the paddlers who had used it and why. Who knows what will come of it:


a book idea, an immensely lucrative magazine article, or just enough positive energy from other paddlers to remind me to paddle as much as I can—spare paddle or not.


KEVIN CALLAN refuses to disclose his Internet chat room moniker.


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