The Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee

Author:John McPhee
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Henri Vaillancourt once had a dead bear in his room at college. This emerges as we move north on the northernmost arm of Chesuncook Lake. Between the canoes, idle conversation is for us what the chansons were for the voyageurs. Up at six, we have been on the water since seven-forty-five. The wind has not yet come up for the day. The canoes tend to separate. One or the other moves wide or falls behind. The gap extends until it reaches a kind of psychological apogee, at which moment binding forces begin to apply, and the two canoes—alone on hundreds of acres of water—draw slowly together until they all but touch.

Rick Blanchette says to Henri, when the gap is narrow, “So. How are you?”

“Fine. How are you? Still working down at the plastics shop?”

“Yes. Still building canoes?”

“Yes.”

“How are the wife and kids?” Henri has no wife and kids.

“Fine. How are your wife and kids?”

Rick has none, either, but this ritual occurs at least twice a day.

I have told them they sound like Kordofan Arabs, who say to one another:

“God bless you.”

“How is your health?”

“Thanks be to God, well.”

“God bless you.”

“How are your camels?”

“Thanks be to God, well. How are your camels?”

“Thanks be to God, well. How are your cattle?”

“Thanks be to God, well.” And so on through any living thing in sight or mind.

And now Henri says to Rick, “How are your camels?”

And Rick says, “Thanks be to God, well. How are your cattle?”

And—to put a stop to it—I say, “God bless you. How is your dead bear?”

Henri explains that it was a cub and did not take up much space in the room.

“A cub!” Warren Elmer says, and his paddle stops.

“Someone had shot it, and my roommate got it from a butcher. I wanted to have the skin.”

“I’d like to have the skin of the person who shot it,” Warren says, and with his paddle rips a hole in the lake.

“If someone shot it, you know, someone might as well make use of it,” Henri says, with a dismissive shrug. The gap begins to widen again. He takes the lead. He likes to be in the lead. He crosses our bow—so close that we have to stop to let him pass.

There has been an inordinate amount of talk this morning about Mud Pond Carry, which is only a mile or so ahead of us, and which comes back into the conversation now as we make the first portage of the trip—although “portage” is hardly the word for it. A scant fifty feet separates Chesuncook Lake from Umbazooksus Stream, across the low remains of an earth-fill logging dam. The topographic map indicates that Mud Pond Carry, two miles long, is a straight walk with a gentle rise of seventy feet followed by a gentle drop of sixty. There is tension, though, in Henri’s voice when he talks about it, and in Rick’s as well—a lot of verbal flexing and dancing around, with tremors at the mention of the name. I don’t understand why.

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