Day 24

We rose with the sun this morning. 6:30 our time. The tide was rapidly on its way out, and so we rushed to finish breakfast and get on the water. We paddled out and rafted up. We spun slowly till we faced the rising sun, quietly drifting. Bill read us a poem his father used to read to him on trips when he and his brother were boys. The poem is about living each day to the fullest and so living a full life. It is appropriately called The Salutation to the Dawn. We broke apart and paddled on, the 7 k to Attawapiskat. As soon as we pulled up amongst the flags and tipis, a man drove down in a pick up truck. He introduced himself as Joseph, the organizer of Cree fest – which was the reason for the flags and tipis nestled along the shores of the reserve. It is a festival for the coastal communities of Hudson and James bay. Joseph offered us his assistance, and we gladly accepted. We loaded our gear into the truck. Mackie and I rode with Joseph as Bill and the boys portaged the boats. We dropped off our things at the airstrip -a small collection of building with a gravel airfield, and we turned back for more. Joseph took Mackie anf I to an in that he runs, and offered the group coffee and some chairs to sit on. We kindly told him we’d take him up on it. He drove us back to the take out where we picked up the remaining 3 boats, perched them precariously sideways across the flatbed, 3 paddles propped up the back of the tailgate to keep them from sliding off. Locals stared as joseph slowly inched along the grave; roads of the 2800 person First Nation reserve. I was amazed the boats didn’t fall off, especially since they almost clipped a few telephone poles as he drove along. After we dropped them off we thanked him and left. After a bit of hanging out, checking out the airstrip, we headed to the inn for coffee and tv. We sat and relaxed, and Joseph headed to the store. We wrote him a thank you note and left. Finally, at the airstrip, our cargo plane arrived. We loaded it up and waited, and a couple of long hours later our Dash-8 finally arrived. We excitedly took off, and the view was stunning. Endless greenery for hundreds of miles. Roadless and marshy in every direction, right to the horizon. As we flew over the Attawapiskat, majestic in it’s width as it wound into the endless ocean, we could spot that morning’s campsite. At the mouth of the river we could see the large island which was part of Nunavut territory. On our way to Moosonee, where we reside now, we flew over two other explorer rivers: the Albany and the Missinaibi. We finally touched down in Moosone, and we cabbed it to the train station. After a couple of trips to the local Northern, and standing in the cold rain on the platform, waiting for the crowd to clear after the arrival of our train, we ate our dinner. Our train is finally free. After some sweet talking with security, we scored ourselves our very own boxcar. So here we are, tents pitched in a train, sleeping inside our boxcar. We’re laughing our asses off because we’d figured it would be a quiet night in here, but we’ve never heard so many train noises in our life, as freight train after freight train rumble through the station honking horns, ringing bells, switching tracks, coupling and uncoupling locomotives. Good luck to us getting a good sleep for our day off. Oh – also I forgot my earplugs: idiot.