forest floor is covered in a thick layer of pine needles. Tendrils of wintergreen and golden thread weave across the ground. Every so often I see small clumps of translucent white Indian pipes poking up through thick mats of sphagnum moss. Small birches, balsam and ferns line the path. Huge tree roots snaking across the path create a natural staircase up the steep parts. However, it’s the gigantic trunks of the ancient pine giving me the sensation I’m an ant beside an elephant that I love most about this trail. Written in that deeply furrowed bark is a
history as old as the Hudson’s Bay Company. These giants have seen the wanderings of nomadic people, the Europeans come and go and even Grey Owl himself. I drop the canoe at a trail junction to signify
to the others the proper route to follow to the lake. Returning for my pack, I meet Ray carrying the cedarstrip with ease. Not far behind is the crew’s writer, Oliver, red-faced, sweating and straining every muscle. It’s his
In just a few short days with Ray, I’ve
become a believer that teaching traditional bushcraft skills would go a long way to preserving campsites, conserving firewood, preventing forest fires and instilling a great deal more respect for the land. This is real no-trace camping. On this final evening of our trip, Misabi
Elder Alex Mathias pays a visit. He is wearing his traditional Anishinabe costume; a leather fringed coat with beadwork and an elaborate red and white headdress of eagle feathers. It’s wonderful to see my old friend. He and Ray get along famously. Alex has brought old photographs and
a fresh-caught lake trout to share, and he regales us with stories of his early life living on the land and traveling by canoe and dogsled, before his family moved to Bear Island. Our small group speaks of the beavers, ancient pines and Temagami’s nastawgan. Alex’s visit is a reminder of all that could
“And the mountains looked on in stony calmness; for they knew trees must die and so must men, but that they live on forever.”
very first portage. When I offer assistance, he declines with a grin. “I feel at last that I am really walking in Grey Owl’s footsteps,” Oliver tells me. As we approach Kokomis-Shomis, the
Grandparent Rocks, the cliff is in shade. The red ochre figures are faded but easy to spot on the east side of Lake Obabika. We speculate about what the long-ago artist was thinking. Of the paintings’ symbolic meaning, we can only surmise. I leave tobacco. We beach the canoes at Fire Ranger Point, named for a long-gone wooden fire tower that once overlooked the lake. It is a beautiful spot with views in all directions. Near the lake where we camp, a circle of small stones marks the fire ring everyone uses. Ray takes the few dead branches we’ve collected and places them in a star shape. Three longer pieces are joined to form a tripod, which he centers over the fireplace. Then he selects a birch branch and deftly slices it off with his knife. He twists and twists until it forms a hook onto which he hangs his kettle, which is suspended from the tripod. “It’s more efficient, safer, cleaner and
you use a lot less wood,” Ray says of the technique.
48 | Canoeroots
have been lost and all that has been saved by conservationists like Grey Owl. “Grey Owl put his message out into the
world, but to my mind he also handed out responsibility to the future,” says Ray. The day before, Ray had drawn out a dog-eared original of Grey Owl’s 1937 book, The Tree, and thumbed to a favorite passage. “And the mountains looked on in stony calmness; for they knew that trees must die and so must men, but that they live on forever.” “The message is simple,” concludes Ray. “Despite us, the land will survive. We have the choice to live in beauty or not. And that’s still the case today.”
Joanie McGuffin is the co-author of In The Footsteps of Grey Owl, a conservationist and explorer. Find her current projects at www.
themcguffins.ca.
j DIGITAL EXTRA:Click here to watch the documentary filmed during this trip, The Path of Grey Owl, at
Rapidmedia.com/0504 or get the digital edition of Canoeroots on your desktop or device.
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