Tumpline “WHAT SEEMS TO US BITTER TRIALS ARE OFTEN
BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE.” — OSCAR WILDE PHOTO: KRISTIAN OLAUSON
[TUMBLEHOME] Walk This Way
When you’re thigh-deep in muck on some godfor- saken height of land, most paddlers would agree that portaging is right up there with toxic seafood and celibacy on their list of least favorite things. That is, until you stop to ponder who might
have walked the same trail. There lies the magic of carrying your gear through bogs and over steeps from coast to coast to coast. The beauty of living in a continent of lakes and riv-
ers is that it is still possible to put a boat on the water almost anywhere and, with enough hard work and sufficient time, arrive at almost anywhere else. Though the waterways witnessed the march
of history, the water itself is as modern as we
are—swelled by today’s rains, runoff and
melting glaciers. The portage trail is another matter altogether. Change flows faster through dynamic river sys-
tems than it does over granite and dirt. Treading these ancient nastawgan, it is more than an idle dream to think that we’re walking—literally—in the footsteps of our forebears.
20 | Canoeroots
Why the portage trail, not the river, connects canoeists to the past However memorable the carries around can-
yons, rough water and falls may be, it is the ar- duous trails across the heights of land where ca- noeists have always lingered—whether for want or difficulty. At the highest ground, waters flow, however
slowly, in two directions. Invariably, that means to cross from one watershed to another is to travel through swamp. The boon of soggy feet is to come as close as a traveler possibly can to those who have come before. Height of land trails are not traveled nearly as often, the number of foot prints between ours and our ancestors is vastly smaller. It’s on these marshy portage trails that history
comes most fully alive. In the west, along the continental divide at Gib-
bons Pass, crossing from the Missouri to Colum- bia rivers or vice versa, you can still feel Lewis and Clarke, more than 200 years gone. Further north along the Great Cordilleran spine of North America, at Athabasca Pass, you
can walk with David Thompson or Sir George Simpson. You can follow their journals word for word and step by step from the east-flowing Whirlpool River over the crags and down to the mighty Columbia. To the east, there is the legendary 19-kilometer
La Loche Portage in Saskatchewan, connecting rivers flowing to Hudson Bay with Arctic waters. Here walked Sir John Franklin, on his way north to the Coppermine River in 1820, and Alexander Mackenzie, on his way to the Pacific in 1793—12 years before Lewis and Clarke. Perhaps the best-known place to wet your feet
crossing a divide is at Grand Portage, crossing from Atlantic to Arctic waters, where the trails still ring with the silent cries of the voyageurs heading to and from the pays d’en haut. The DNA of these men—their blood and sweat
and struggle—lingers in the soil. Water flows and the river changes, but the portage trail never washes clean. JAMES RAFFAN
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