CANOE HUNTER T
TRACKING MASTER BUILDERS AROUND THE WORLD WITH WILL MEADOWS
welve months, a dozen countries and a nearly
lost art learned in each. It was a dream come true for 23-year-old Cincinnati-na- tive Will Meadows. In fall 2012, Meadows embarked on a yearlong quest to visit indigenous canoe building masters around the world and learn their techniques. He called his project Humanity’s Vessel.
“Canoes are found across the world. They lie at the intersection of human creativity and place,” he says. “They are vessels for explora- tion, artistic expression and sustenance.” Meadows set out to immerse himself in ca-
noe-building communities around the world, visiting countries as far-flung as Tanzania, Vietnam, New Zealand, Peru and Norway. This wasn’t a textbook-based program—
Meadows got his hands dirty, helping to harvest the materials and build the boats in many communities where canoes still repre- sent an important aspect of daily life, rather than a recreational activity. “I went into this wanting calloused hands,”
he says. “I didn’t want to spend my time doc- umenting, I wanted to build and to learn.” He traveled to more than a dozen coun-
tries and studied with masters of the art in each. The first six months were spent in Af- rica, the Polynesians and South America. Many of those communities were impos-
sible to reach via telephone or email prior to his arrival. “Mostly, I just showed up. On the beach, on the river or in the jungle,” says Meadows. “Yes, it was crazy sometimes, but persistence paid off. I might be a white stranger and speak none of the local lan- guage, but we had a shared interest, a com- monality—I wanted to learn from them.” During the later half of his project he traveled to Canada, to Ontario’s Canadian
Canoe Museum (CCM), which houses the largest collection of canoes
from
around the world. “That was different because the indigenous cultures are no longer active. At the CCM, the canoes became the masters.” From there, it was onto Norway, then Japan. Meadows’ project is un-
precedented. “There’s not anyone who has done a global study of indigenous vessels, no one had gone and built the boats and took part in that human heritage and tradition,” he says. Traditions are a beautiful intersection of
who we are and nature at its finest, he adds. “The materials associated with the traditions is one of the most fascinating parts—it shows resourcefulness and creativity in each com- munity,” he says. Meadows’ Thomas J. Watson Foundation
grant, awarded for independent study and travel outside of the United States to gradu- ating college seniors, ended in August, but that’s not the end of the journey for Mead- ows. He’s spent the fall in a role reversal— now he’s the master, teaching school children how to make reed canoes in Idaho. His next adventure begins in Decem-
ber. Awarded with a National Geographic Young Explorers grant, he’ll head to Tierra del Fuego to build a traditional bark canoe. It will be a different experience for Mead- ows because the indigenous masters of this art have been dead for some 40 generations. “By building this canoe I hope to tell the
story of the indigenous people who used to live in the area. But in a broader sense, that story is also what mastership means where there are no masters left.” Follow the journey at
www.humanitysves-
sel.com.—Kaydi Pyette
www.rapidmedia.com 17
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