Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts

Author:Adam Shoalts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2019-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

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The wind continued fierce and cold the next day, coming as it did from the Arctic Ocean, but I splashed and waded along against it, reaching by early evening the little tributary I’d been seeking. Known as Sandy Creek, it’s a little creek that, as might be guessed, is rather sandy. In places, the stream is surrounded by high vertical banks that make it impossible to see the land beyond them, but on the positive side, they provide shelter from the strong winds.

I towed my canoe with a rope up Sandy Creek, wading through the water ahead, which was easy to do now; there were no longer any rocks to bump into in the clear water. The creek forked and grew steadily smaller, but still I splashed on. It was imperative that I push as far up the stream as possible, tracing it to little more than a trickle. Once I’d left the creek I’d be embarking on the longest portage of my entire expedition—right across the great divide that separates the huge watershed of Great Bear Lake from the Coppermine River, in order to link the chain of waterways I needed to complete my journey. Draining into the Coppermine are the Dismal Lakes, and these wild lakes would be where I needed to get to in order to resume paddling.

It was a portage that I expected to take days to complete, with the total distance, given all my loads, totalling a fearsome amount, perhaps forty or fifty kilometres. Generally, in canoeing terms, anything in excess of five hundred metres is deemed a long portage. And as Bill Mason, the Canadian canoe expert, put it, “Anyone who says they enjoy portaging is either a liar or crazy.”

After a few hours of wading up the stream, I came upon a large sandy bar on the creek’s eastern bank that I recognized as a place where Chuck and I had camped the previous year. A big rack of caribou antlers lay in the sand, right where I’d left them. No one, it seemed, had been to this lonely stream in the time since. It was here at this beach where we’d left our canoe and barrels behind, before beginning the long, arduous trek overland to the Dismal Lakes with only our backpacks and the bare essentials.

The hike had been long and wearisome, with plagues of blackflies nearly the whole way aside from when the wind was stiff. Chuck, in his considered opinion, had deemed the notion of trying to haul a canoe, two barrels, and a backpack across such a huge stretch as mad. He was wise like that.

One thing perhaps not immediately obvious is just how much more difficult hiking, and especially portaging, becomes when there’s no trail to follow. Not only is it a matter of having to simultaneously navigate and lug a heavy canoe over your head or struggle under the weight of a heavy barrel, the real issue is the lack of solid, level ground to hike on.

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