Day 10

Today was our last day of lakes for the rest of the trip. We woke up to a beautiful clear sky, the smoke having blown out days ago. The sun burned away the cold and we set off. We made good progress and encountered some brief confusion of map reading brought on by myself. The cabins we see have become fewer and far between, and bald eagles have become proportionately more common. We saw about 6 today. Our campers cooked us delicious lunch and dinner today, and it’s nice to see things start to roll smoothly. We sailed the last 5 k today, and we have become proficient at sailing at angles to the wind. About 45 degrees – an impressive thing for a raft of canoes. We hit our campsite early and the boys had time to relax, prepare dinner, and get into survival stuff a bit. We’re camped on the end of lake Attawapiskat. We can hear our first set from where we lie, drifting into sleep – just behind the vouces of some of the guys who are still awake. We’re camped on a point just at the head of the South Channel – we are excited for the uncertainty of tomorrow. I will fall asleep with the funniest picture in my head: Tom – bearded and shirtless, flowing pony tail – fighting an invisible enemy with a pole as he tiptoes on a fallen birch trunk which he uses as a balancing beam. His training is nearly complete.