weeks. Even in the first few kilometres, we can see the water dropping. It is pos- sible to see a faint high-water mark etched on the shore grass, now that there are no rains to wash it away. As the days pass, this ever-rising line on the grass urges us on as the earth raises its bony fingers through the surface of the river. In spite of the nagging reality of the water draining from under our canoes, the North French is not a river to be rushed. In July, the banks are lined with roses, lilies and even orchids, and the black spruce grow to giants, half again as tall as anywhere else so that the upper river winds its way through a deep and shaded spruce canyon. Every day moose greet us with long stares that come with their first sighting of humans. We begin to think of this river as an unspoiled garden, our Eden, where everything we see vibrates with health and life. It is a river of great beauty, truly the hidden jewel of all the southern James Bay rivers.
The early spring water levels have left debris high in the trees and stacked bleached driftwood piles to totter over river rock islands. We imagine early season travel at such awesome levels, helped by our trip notes from some long-ago, high-water May descent of the North French’s many falls and ledges. The notes are more of a planning tool than a guide to the real- ity of our fading river, but there is a kind of comfort in knowing what is coming around the next blind corner, or more often, what is not. At the more dangerous rapids, described in the trip notes using exclamation marks and heavily underlined cautions, we end up picking precise and delicate lines to thread our way through the rocky puzzle. With so little water, we paddle to the very brink of waterfalls and then portage down the centre of the spring water path, leaving the sucking, biting bugs back on the unseen portages. On the ebbing North French, the eddies turn nasty. Normally eddies are somewhere to rest, catch your breath, and look over your shoulder at what’s ahead. But the receding water leaves just-sub- merged blades of granite—boat-ripping horrors from canoeists’ nightmares. Our whole river-running technique is reluc- tantly turned on its head; instead of find-
ing comfort in eddies, boat safety is now found in the deep water crashing through the waves. Eventually, low water-swept islands begin to emerge,
rocky but blissfully flat, offering somewhere to pitch a tent without the laborious cutting of trees to clear tent sites in the solid wall of jungle on shore. The river opens into the lowlands, flat expanses of shallows with only the vaguest of channels. We walk in the water beside our boats for hours, jumping in and out, pulling and pushing, search- ing for just enough water to float our weight. Here, the North French is no different than any of the other rivers draining into James Bay. These daylong flatwater stretches, like the bugs, are the price we pay for the days of flowers and rapids behind us. The North French spills into the Moose River. On the Moose the sky gets bigger, opening into an enor- mous flatness, and we imagine we can see the ocean as a thin watery horizon line to the north. Behind us lies just what we asked for: another river to add to our lifetime jewel box, a precious adventure in a fleeting window, and another opportunity to travel across this magnificent granite land.
Brian Shields lives and eats well. 2005 Annual 45
But the receding water leaves just-submerged blades of granite —boat-ripping horrors from canoeists’ nightmares.
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