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morning, Joven told Herb he hoped they would camp together again. Herb smiled and replied, “If I live.” It was a typi-
cal short and straight use of black humour that would not have surprised his friends. Te only record of Herb’s life after that part-
ing on the beach is written in Herb’s own hand. Te soon-to-be-published collection of Herb’s writings, Te Lure of Far Away Places, contains Herb’s journal entry from the next night. Appar- ently he had answered for himself every tripper’s unspoken question of, How much longer? In his familiar script he pleaded his case for not
having ventured seven kilometres up the Dog Riv- er to visit Denison Falls: “It seemed like too much work for this tired old man. If there is one thing that this trip has done for me, it [has confirmed] that my tripping days are over. Everything seems such an effort…” After a week on Superior, he was nearly within
sight of his car when he neared the dam-released outflow of the Michipicoten River. A southwest wind had blown across 200 kilometres of lake to form a metre-high swell that was colliding with the river’s discharge. It was here, facing the tor- mented wave action, that my hero Herb sat at the doorstep of his final minute. One thing he lacked that day was a companion
to question his judgment. On so many trips he’d done without the smiles and silliness, the bravery and wisdom, the occasional aggravation and, most of all, the safety of company. He made the call solo, the same way he had thousands of times before. Police divers found him on the lake bottom two
days later. Circling six metres above him in the eddy, his canoe and paddle had marked his jour- ney’s end, and, in patient testimony to his fatal hubris, so too circled the lifejacket he rarely wore. Herb wandered because he needed the wind
to blow over him, filling him with oxygen and light in the places we call wilderness. But, so rare among us, he wandered alone simply because, as he often wrote from even wilder places, it made him feel euphoric. No one was there when Herb Pohl died. I can
only assume that’s how he would have wanted it. —Brian Shields wrote about discovering canoe- ing with a childhood friend in the April 2006 issue of Canoeroots.
Herb longed to be in the places only canoes could reach. PHOTO: BILL NESS
C ANOE ROOT S n 35
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