Day 2

At 11:30 AM we had our boats and gear in the train. It is now 7:00 AM the next morning and we are still barreling deeper into the wilderness. Towns are becoming fewer and further between. Yesterday heavy cloud cover rolled in and made the scene outside beautifully bleak. Grasslands with rivers winding through, dark green and wet, flanks of black granite draped in lichen, and black spruce, straight as candles reaching toward the sky all around. We slept in whatever nooks and crannies we could find, and now we are awake. There was a beautiful sunrise and everything is alight. We’re disoriented, trying to figure out what town we’re in, and if we’ve crossed a time zone or not (rumours are circulating of a time difference).

This river has spirit. At about 9:30 AM (8:30 local time, the rumours were true), we rolled to a stop. A gravel road sidled up next to the rail cars to form the stop known only as Savant Lake. In the early morning mist and humidity, the sun just starting to become hot, we stepped outside into the Northern Wilderness and unloaded our gear. An old short school bus with trailer pulled up, and without exchanging too many words we loaded it with our gear. We assumed correctly that is was Canoe Frontiers, the company designated to pick us up. 166 km on to Pickle Lake took us to their basecamp, an airfield flanked by black spruce as far as the eye could see. We picked up some duct tape, took some pictures, and hopped back in the bus. An hour or so later we were at our put in. We set off and were immediately in awe of the width of the Otoskwin, which is a small tributary of the attawapiskat. Bill, Mackie and I ran our first few sets like clockwork – we have a good dynamic going and our decisions were safe. We could feel the spirit of this place as we paddled. Not a sign of civilization after the first set; trails overgrown or non-existent, campsites grown in and scrubby. The forests here are enchanting. I took a walk through the woods this afternoon to look for potential camp sites. I broke through the dense shoreline growth to find that these black spruce stands actually consist od very widely spread trees on a bed of endless 2 foot deep moss. The floor is eerily carpeted, as logs that fall are quickly consumed by the moss. The soft green sheet conquers all. We had a fantastic fist day, warm with brief rain squalls and an encouraging tailwind. Our campers are eager to help and are not phased by the grubbiness our site, which is a firepit in the woods that was marked “nice site” on the map. We will enter STD (tripper time) tomorrow, after we get used to this 4:45 sunrise, as predicted by the GPS.