Wednesday:
Tim says he has a picture of me standing over one of the camp stoves while he was cooking toast. You can’t see my face, but I’m wearing a hat, my wild hair is poking out of it in different directions—mostly sideways—and I’m wearing a red flannel shirt. It’s probably a good thing you can’t see my face. He says I look like I’m ready to pounce on the toast as soon as it comes out of the pan. My famous phrase that week was, “Is it done yet. How about now?” He thinks the picture’s funny.
I don’t really like toast that much, all I remember was after Wednesday I was really hungry, and usually tired and sore. Wednesday was the day we canoed through Trafalgar Bay.
The bay is at least a two mile stretch of open water, more like Lake Michigan or the Gulf of Mexico than anything we had seen up to that point. Everything else before then had truly felt like a lake. Here it was wide open, and canoeing out into a body of water like that can really be an overwhelming, dwarfing experience. The water became rough and choppy, and in bad weather it could be dangerous. Fortunately, we were given another day of clear skies and mild weather, except for a stronger headwind.
Because of the waves, we also had to paddle differently in the rougher water. If we had used the long, smooth strokes here that we had been using in calmer water, the paddles would have knocked us or left our hands. Instead we used shorter, quicker strokes, and kept the shoreline nearby. We still felt the rhythmic rise and fall of the canoe as it plowed into a crest, then dipped down into the trough, crested, then dipped again.
Shortly into this we spotted another group, our first sign of other people since we had crossed over into Canada. It was a youth group, in six or seven canoes, and all of these seemed to be paddling well, except one struggling canoe in a cove. Tim and I had been working out during the summer so we were pretty fit, and Don was a strong paddler as well, so we came up on the canoe at the end of the group first. Tim and I wanted to keep paddling, catch up with the rest of the group and sail past them. Maybe we didn’t want to be bothered. Maybe we just wanted to beat everybody else. “I think we should stop,” Don said.
We resisted. It would be a lot of work. We’d probably get tired. Why didn’t the other canoes take care of their own? Don acknowledged all this, then repeated, “I think we should help.” He was always doing that, reminding us of the more important things, teaching us lessons even though he let us lead the trip. And we finally agreed.
We entered the cove and came alongside the other canoe. A middle aged woman and high school girl were in the boat, paddling in opposite directions and rotating the boat pretty well in a circle. “Need a hand?” Don asked. I don’t think they swooned, but they looked up, smiled sheepishly, and admitted defeat. Tim and I were still grumbling to ourselves, but soon their canoe was tied to ours with a rope (Don just happened to have one), and we began canoeing. At first the women helped, but the more they helped the harder it was to paddle. “We can go ahead and paddle,” Don said. “Go ahead and rest.” The women put their oars in a few more times, then allowed us to tow them.
The other canoes had pulled away from the rest of us, so the race was on. Tim, Don, and I paddled hard, and before long we saw the other canoes again, passed one, then another, then another. The lead canoe looked across the water from a hundred yards away, and we could see they were thinking the same thing. They paddled faster. We paddled faster. Both sides matched stroke for stroke, plowing through the water at the same speed, but the other canoe couldn’t keep going at the pace we had set for each other and began to fall behind. A little further ahead we all decided to stop for lunch, and Tim and I went swimming. We ate sandwiches, rested and talked, then canoed a few more miles.
By late afternoon we were beginning to feel the results of our struggle with the lake. Our arms were heavy, the paddling seemed more labored, and we were out of sorts. I had turned silent, moody, and began to feel out of place as Tim and Don related stories of past canoeing trips or pored over the map together, or knew exactly where to stop, how to paddle, and what we needed.
We found an island further ahead, away from the youth group, but even at that we could hear their voices and bits of conversation carry across the water. Tim and Don set up camp and began cooking while I rowed the canoe away from the island to fill our water bottle. I needed some time alone. The rhythmic pumping of the water filter gave my hands something to do while my mind wandered, allowing me to think dark thoughts. Tim had led the trip, but Don had been there for support, fading further into the background as Tim began directing more of the course. The more Tim led, the more I resisted. I didn’t want to be told what to do; although it’s not easy to admit, I wanted something to happen that would shake his confidence. In short, I wanted him to fail.
We ate dinner mostly in silence. Earlier Don had told stories when we had stopped, told us how he and Candy had met, how he had worked so much at one time that he had three uncashed checks sitting in a desk at home because he didn’t have time to go to the bank to cash them. He told us of his powerlifting workouts, and judo, and how his dad had been an alcoholic and he didn’t want the same life for himself, his family, or his children. He wanted good relationships for Tim and me, and we joked about women falling from the sky with ribbons tied around them (and little else), gifts with our names on them, intended specifically for us. Don’s eyes lit up as he unfolded the stories. He was a natural, and smiled easily. We began to devour his stories as eagerly as we ate the food.
Shortly after dinner we got in the tent and fell asleep. During the night we awoke to the sound of scratching and snuffling outside our tent, something larger than a cat, but none of us wanted to see what it was. It got into what remained of our supper, the unwashed dishes, and rattled the pans and snuffled around looking for food. Eventually we fell asleep again, too tired to notice.
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