Smoothwater
Tssssssschhhhhhhh!
I turned from the edge of the river, toothbrush dangling from my mouth, and saw my kettle spewing a froth of coffee grinds into my breakfast fire. Spitting the foam from my mouth, I danced my way barefoot over sharp rocks and sticks to the fire in a gangly legged panic. It was a tragically familiar scene. More of a ritual, actually.
Folding a leather glove over the handle, I lifted the kettle from the flames - there was still plenty of coffee. I smiled my relief. The grinds settled quickly now they had reached the boiling point; after a minute or so I poured myself a steaming mugful of cowboy brew and returned to the river.
Judging by the sun, it was about seven in the morning and heat from its rising was rapidly thinning the mist hovering the water. Nanook was off hunting somewhere, and as I sat by the water's edge, the coffee dispelling the last remnants of sleep, my thoughts turned to the paddle ahead of me, upstream to the legendary Smoothwater Lake.
I had spent the previous two months steeped in both the natural and mythological history of the area while doing research for a film project with a couple of other guys. Our goal was to showcase some of the region's most significant features - Smoothwater being one of them. The rest of the crew was to join me ten days from now, I was here before their arrival to clear my mind and settle back into life on the water Trail.
It was odd, having spent the best part of my summers in the region since birth, that I hadn't yet visited this iconic body of water. I remember hearing stories of its beauty, passed down by my great-grandfather, who once operated an outfitting lodge nearby. The source of the mighty Montreal River, water so clear you could see thirty meters down; pristine beaches of white sand and ancient camping grounds towered by old growth pines. Not to mention rumours of 40 pound lake trout haunting it's shadowy depths.
The stories that really had my attention however, were much older than these. Thousands of years older in fact, and had been uncovered during my research for the film. These were the stories of the Teme-augama Anishinaabe, the “deep-water-by-the-shore people”. Its original caretakers, they are an Ojibwe First Nation. The land I knew as Temagami, they called N'Daki Menan, "our land".
According to legend, there was once a great flood that covered over the earth. During this flood, a character named "Nenebuc"(who also caused the flood by slaying a Giant Lynx) built himself a raft so that he wouldn't die. As he floated he found many animals swimming to survive and invited them to join him on the raft - he wanted there to be many animals to hunt when the flood was over.
After much time had passed, Nenebuc decided to make a long rope from the roots of the trees that were his raft. These roots he tied to the tail of Beaver, asking him to dive deep into the water and bring up some earth from the bottom. Beaver dove as deep as he could but ran out of air before he reached the bottom. Dismayed but not ready to give up, Nenebuc hauled Beaver back aboard the raft and considered what to do.
Seven days later he tried again - this time however, he sent little Muskrat. Nenebuc repeated the process, tying the rope of roots to the tail of Muskrat and sending him into the water. Muskrat dove and dove until he ran out of air, the bottom still nowhere in sight. Rather than return to the surface however, Muskrat doubled up and pushing his nose deep into his fur, was able to breathe the bubbles of air that were trapped there.
Eventually, just as Muskrat had used up all of the air in his breast fur, he reached bottom. Scooping a handful of mud, he turned for the surface but drowned before he could reach it. Nenebuc pulled him up to the raft and used the mud to recreate the land, letting it only partially dry, so that some places might remain wet and swampy(it's my thought that he did this in honour of the muskrat - who love swampy bogs).
All of this is said to have taken place on the crystalline waters of Smoothwater Lake. One of the larger lakes in Temagami with mysterious depths plunging into the hundreds of feet - it's easy to understand why. Even the cave where Nenebuc slew the Giant Lynx was supposedly hidden somewhere in the hills along its western shore. Whether under the spell of these ancient stories or an actual presence in the region, each paddle stroke that morning seemed to bring me deeper into a dreamlike sense of timelessness.
After crossing a smaller lake and following the course of the river for another thirty minutes or so, I crossed a shallow sandbar between opposite points of land. I was poling along the soft bottom with the tip of my paddle, when a school of white suckers went gliding by below me on their way to gravelly spawning beds downstream. Once they would have had to run a gauntlet of Ojibwe spears and nets, giving life to human families even as instincts drove them to perpetuate their own.
The thought of the suckers running freely somehow saddened me, as if the wilds were somehow lonelier without the presence of the people who once depended on it. The melancholy didn't last long however, as the river soon opened before me into a gorgeous scene of flat water that stretched on to a horizon of undulating green hills. I had arrived - the mystical Smoothwater Lake.
Peering over the side of my canoe I watched the sandbar give way to jagged granite boulders and a bottom that dropped to ten, twenty, thirty meters before vanishing into a deep cobalt coloured void. The air was hot, dry and still. I took my shirt off and dipped it into the chill water before draping it over my shoulders, shuddering as rivulets of ice stole my breath on their way down my skin.
So far the lake was true to it's name, but a large white cross erected on the side of a hill told me it wasn't always so. After my trip, I would learn of the tragic fate of four other canoeists who were caught in a spontaneous wind storm here and drowned. Large bodies of water always demand respect, I had been caught in enough bad weather to know how easily the elements can extinguish human life.
Although I could have easily paddled through and continued my journey, I still wasn't sure of where I wanted to go. With over four thousand kilometers of interconnected water routes known as "Nastawgan", Temagami had an infinite number of canoe travel possibilities. With this in mind, I elected to explore Smoothwater for a couple of days while I pored over my map and settled in to living out of a canoe once more.
Working our way west along the shore, the openness and grandeur of the forest was uplifting and inviting. Towering red and white pines stood like ancient sentinels over a forest floor of sphagnum and reindeer moss. Car-sized boulders of heavily lichened granite lay strewn across a rolling terrain and everywhere were the palmated fronds of lush, green bracken ferns, shading the last remnants of the night's dew.
As noon came on, Nanook and I found ourselves approaching a sloping rock of white and pink quartz jutting out into the water. It was a perfect landing point for the canoe and formed the nearest tip of a small, crescent shaped bay. Feeling ready to stretch my legs and re-caffeinate, I guided us in to the shore.
Stepping in the water over the side of the canoe, I took care to remove my packs without scraping the hull on the rocks. Thousands of scrapes and scratches attest to a more careless approach to landing a boat in earlier years. Time brings wisdom. I then gently lifted and overturned the canoe on the pastel slope of rock. I sighed as I looked out over my craft and the lake beyond. The slick, wet crimson of an overturned canoe in canadian shield country is a sight that always swells my heart to breaking.
Shuffling through my pack, I soon had my kettle filled with cold lake water and coffee grinds and a mound of bannock waiting for the frying pan on a flat rock. I gathered some twigs and birch bark and soon had a cheerful little flame to cook my lunch upon. Seeing that I was settling in for some time, Nanook loped off into the forest to do some exploring.
After ten minutes or so, I pulled my bannock from the fire - it was a perfect golden-brown. I pulled it into halves and watched a white puff of steam burst from it's middle before setting it aside to cool beside a cup of strong, black coffee. The cooking done, I propped an elbow and lay down to gaze out across the lake.
As I lay there, I found myself drifting somewhere between memory and dreams. I scrolled through my childhood summers and everything that brought me back and closer to the land throughout my life. My grandfather, "Hatchet", Farley Mowat. The summer in the Wikiup - that vision quest - and the inner voice that led me to do it. I could have done something else, been something else - and I would have missed all of it. All of what lay beyond the hills across the lake, what lay all around me. Most importantly, what was growing within me.
I mused on these things, and all of the peculiar happenings that led to my being exactly where I was at exactly that time and could not escape the sensation that I was being guided or moved by some hidden intuition or an external power. Then, just as I was coming to the root of all of my introspection, a faint splashing sound from across the bay pulled me back into the present. I jumped up and scrambled down to the rock point to have a look.
It was Nanook. The shock of white fur in the dark water was unmistakable. He was cutting a V-shaped wake across the wide mouth of the bay, headed in my direction. He was halfway across when I noticed something hanging from his mouth. It was bigger than his head and covered in brown fur - a snowshoe hare in summer coat. I laughed aloud when he finally staggered up to shore, looking like a drowned, white rat - exhausted from such a marathon swim. It seemed he had caught himself a lunch of his own.
After a couple snapshots of his accomplishment, I sat back down to my bannock and coffee. There are few pleasures as wonderful as hot coffee, bannock slathered in peanut butter and a crackling fire of jackpine. The only thing that could have added to my delight would have been some trout or wild game, and now and then I jealously eyed Nanook as he crunched away at his fresh kill.
I had finished my meal and was nursing the last remnants of coffee while watching Nanook work his way through the hare. He ate everything. The fur, bones, organs - all of it. The only thing he was careful to remove and set aside was the stomach and it's contents - too much greenery in there. As he munched his way down to the last hind-foot however, he did something peculiar; snipping it off at the joint, he took it up very tenderly by some loose fur and carried it to the edge of the grove on our rock point. Finding some soft soil, he dug a shallow hole and placing the foot within it, nosed the earth back over it and walked away.
Now, this of course was probably just some instinctual behaviour, perhaps the notion of saving something for later, but I couldn't help but see it as an act of gratitude. Of some ancient custom older than both of us, that somehow spoke from within; like the inner compass that had led me here, or that had inspired the legacy of my great-grandfather. My eyes grew a bit misty as I reached for my medicine bag, and taking some tobacco, sprinkled it on the embers of my dying fire - an offering of my own. Miigwetch. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed the read. These small stories, blogs - whatever they are - come from my heart; I share them out of a passion to create and see others inspired to make their own connection with the Wilderness. If you found value in your time here, and are inclined to do so, you can help keep me writing by buying me a coffee!
About The Author
A bounty of fish from a solo canoe trip down the Makobe River, Temagami.
For Clint Zold, the pursuit of authentic Wilderness experiences has led him across landscapes both far and wide. Whether paddling the ancient Nastawgan of mystic Temagami, hiking the lonely mountains of the West, or snowshoeing the hunting grounds of his trapping territory in the Arctic Watershed of Northern Ontario - Clint is truly at home in the wild.
Living off-grid on the banks of the Mattagami River; the canoe, axe and snowshoe have become his daily companions in a semi-subsistence lifestyle where food, warmth and water come from the land around him. His passion for Wilderness is only equaled by his desire to share it with others