Pour le Pays Sauvage...

Rivers and ther contemplative flat sections and passages of heart-stopping, moving water have been my most influential teachers. The riparian world is a world that breeds in journeyers humility, knowlegde and enduring principles about the fragility and sanctity of all life.
-James Raffan

I read those words a while ago, but they make a bit more sense now. Raffan was a smart guy, and a wicked good writer, as you can see. A few days have passed, and we are preparing to get back on the trail. Most of the gear has been repaired, recovered, or replaced, and a ideally when we head north tomorrow we will find our canoe sitting peacefully in an eddy. This is pretty unlikely, to be sure, but we may yet find her safe. If not, we have a few tricks up our collective sleeve.


Alexander Ross was a Canadian historian and scholar that lived and wrote mainly in the first half of the nineteenth century. His subject was that of many Canadian scholars: the fur trade and the voyageurs, with their cry of "Pour le pays sauvage!" (for the wild country!). In 1855 he wrote a book called "The Fur Hunters of the Far West." It is written in an older style, but still appeals to any student of Canadian history or the culture of the canoe. While he traveled, researching his subject, he encountered an old French 'coureur de bois' (runner of the woods), the proto-voyageur. The man related his life story to Ross; here is one verion of what that old Frenchman said:

"I have now been forty-two years in this country. For twenty-four of those years I was a light canoeman. I required but little sleep, but sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me; all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground till I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw. I pushed on - over rapids, over cascades, over chutes; all were the same to me. No water, no weather ever stopped the paddle or the song. I was once possessed of five horses and six running dogs trimmed in the first style. I was then like a bourgeois, rich and happy. I wanted for nothing. Five hundred pounds twice told have passed through my hands, although now I have not a spare shirt to my back nor a penny to buy one. Yet, were I young I should glory in commencing the same career. I would spend another half-century in the same fields of enjoyment. There is no life so happy as a voyageur's life; none so independent; no place where a man enjoys so much variety and freedom as in the Indian country. Huzza, huzza! Pour le pays sauvage!"

Whether it was a rapid, cascade, chute, or all three that dumped us does not matter: the water will not stop the paddle or the song. It has slowed us, but wiser, more cautious, and with better maps we return to set paddle to water and see what we can do. The water in the Saranac has dropped 1000 cfs since the 29th, and tomorrow we will see it again. Thank you to everyone that has called or wrote to check in on us and offer help. We are lucky boys in many ways: that we had the opportunity to attempt this trip in the first place, that we've had the support to see it through this far, and that we now will be able to continue.

Huzza, huzza- pour le pays sauvage-