2004 Buyer’s Guide: Whitewater
whitewater whitewater
Why the River? W
hy do we do it? Why do we paddle remote rivers every summer, year after year? Why in February, when the snowdrifts still sit hard-
edged in the backyard and the light comes charging back, do we river runners feel the unspoken dread of a summer without a river? The new light mixes memory and desire, tumbling old friends and rivers of the past in winter reveries. Paddling partners reach out to each other, ques- tioning, proposing, easing each other’s fears of being left behind to tend some scorched and mundane bit of a gar- den in the oppressive summer heat. Perhaps travelling rivers is an excuse to dream. The
river I am thinking of this time is the Mouchalagane, last year’s antidote to urban boredom. By spring, after months of planning, we nickname it the “Mouchie”, a name well-suited to some pet that is always there to lift your spirit in the pewter-coloured days of late winter. The Mouchalagane is a tiny blue line on the map. Beginning on the high, sparse plateau west of Labrador City, it falls southward only 130 kilometres, tumbling, rocky and narrow through most of its length. For a two-week trip the pace is languorous. Our only deadline is making a float- plane rendezvous on Manicouagan Reservoir—the flooded meteor crater at the end of the river.
River tripping’s big water, bruised canoes and blackflies challenge us every year. But there’s a reason we keep coming back.
story & photos by Brian Shields The time available transforms the trip. It means that
we rarely pass a breath-catching campsite without pitch- ing the tents. And we only look at our watches to confirm why we’re hungry. Agreat deal of time is spent staring at the river, and this is seen as a perfectly normal pastime. We talk to each other and reveal the little secret things that we often keep hidden even from ourselves. Books are passed around through many hands and are mostly read as close to the river as possible, often well into the night. And the inconceivable happens: the ever-early risers often sleep late. Maybe we escape to the wilds to play hunter-gatherer.
With all our extra time, the fishermen in our small group pretend to be predators, endlessly wearing out the speck- led trout in a laughable game of catch and release. They often leave at first light, and working up or down through the limitless eddies, come back late for breakfast wearing satisfied cat-grins and carrying only their fish stories. Fishing lessons take place and soon everyone is playing the game. It seems only the fish are not having a good time. Or it may be that we simply need to feel something
different, to escape a life lived on claustrophobic acres of windless office carpeting in some highrise centre of
whitewater
Books are read close to the river
Maybe we escape to play hunter-gatherer
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