Every day is a new year

How cliché and cop-out it would be of me to write a reflection on all the great things that happened in 2006. Since so many publications are doing that, and this counts as a publication, no matter how smalltime bitches, I will resist. I will do a normal entry that has nothing to do with the fact that 2007 is coming in a couple of days. Let it come, I don’t care. It’s all semantics any way. Time is such a relative thing. So few of us believe in Christ, and those of us who know anything about history knows that even most of the catholic church concedes that he wasn’t born on January 1st in the year 0, or 1 for that matter. Anyway, because of that I see the new year (although this is an exaggerated point of view) as relatively arbitrary thing to celebrate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for spraying champagne at my friends and screaming, but I think the fact that at every big new year’s party without a TV people count down about 3 times on average. The first time is some jackass who wants to start the countdown early cause that seems funny when you’re hammered, the second time is someone who thinks their watch is exactly on time, and the third one is the one the crowd believes to be accurrate. This is a microscopic analogue to what actually happens on a grander scale. As the world turns, timezone after timezone ring in the new year. We wait for the sun to be exactly on the other side of the planet before we say it’s midnight, but then we let it err by the width of whatever our arbitrarily defined time zone happens to delineate for us. So since you will never exactly be able to know when it is one year since the last sloppily-determined new year’s eve, what’s the point? Have some drinks, reflect on the last 365 + ¼ days and enjoy. But don’t take it too seriously. Don’t make resolutions that will start on January 1st, why would you do that? Today it is exactly one year since exactly 365 + ¼ days ago, so what better time to make a change? You are as different now relative to a year ago as you will be on new year’s eve relative to the last one. On top of that, the earth is spinning circling an ever changing sun, what could be more dynamic than a roiling mass of nuclear fusion fire? Also, the galaxy moves through the universe at blinding speed, so to speak of the earth as being in the ‘same place’ as it was 1 year ago is just plain wrong. It looks to be in the same place as the sky, that’s about it. But a lot of good that does us, last year I’m pretty sure there was snow on the ground, this year I’m thinking maybe it’s a good time to re-open the pool at my parents’ place. I was pretty hot after our walk today, I could’ve used a dip. . .

Okay so apparently I went against my resolution not to talk about the new year. And now, perhaps, for a double entry. This has literally NOTHING to do with this. I’m going to make a random selection from my trip archives and tell a little story. . .

This will be a prime example of bullheaded stubbornness and laziness on my part, because I may have blogged this before, but I’m too lazy to check on this dial up-laden laptop deal. . .Please do me the courtesy of reading it again even if you’ve seen it before. It is work translating my shaky “laying on my stomach in the tent in a storm” scrawl. But I do it for you, because I heart you.

This is an excerpt from a Magnetawan river trip I did with Stu Holden this past summer, my first trip after being back from the Attawapiskat. The river was at a 30 year record, twice the average summer flow,20 portages in 7 days (instead of the usual 5), at the time of this writing I wasn’t aware of what we were in for. The river was absolutely wild and raging, I’d never seen anything like it. . . here’s how the caper went down
Ever watch the cartoon COPS?

Day 1

Stu Holden and I are camped at the usual 7 day Mag Day 1 site. The weather looks like it is going to be nice. Patches of blue sky shine behind blazing cotton candy streaks of sunrise clouds. I know: I was out there looking at it. Why was I up so earlu? Because I have some catching up to do. Our good position did not come without effort yesterday. Here’s what happened:
From the minute the bus dropped us off, I knew the river was high. I’ve been to this spot 6 or 7 times in my life, and that’s plenty. One glance at the hydraulics churning out from under the dam and down the chute that forms Knoepple’s rapids and I knew we were in for it. We put in with a quick portage, paddled along and did some practice paddling. The boys picked it up for the most part fairly quickly. Immediately I could see the signs on the river banks: ferns and trees were submerged. There were sets where there were usually only swifts, and wavetrains where once only ripples existed. Each V was followed by sharp eddy lines, the kids absolutely whipping in and out from their force, and almost tipping when they forgot to tilt. We came across sets I used to run that were now torrential, All little class I’s and II’s now upgraded to II’s and III’s. Every trickling waterfall was now a thunderous torrent, and we had to portage almost every set we came to. Morale ground down as it almost always does on Day 1 of this trip. The sky would either drizzle or rain cats and dogs on us, and just as Stu and I decided to run the boats down a set that I used to let the campers just drag down, the thunder hit. Bolt after bolt from every direction. We ran down the last 2 boats as it started, the campers walking through the woods to meet us. We were trying to give them a rest from portaging as we had been bushwhacking all afternoon. The flood conditions meant pulling off high up before sets, where portages did not exist. Some trails are just under water as it is right now. The weather closed in further as the boys tried to haul what they could. After hours of work we’d finally reached a portage that after an extra 400m of bushwhack would connect with the portage that led into our campsite. They’d made it as far as they could before losing the trail (it turned and went under water) so our things were piled in a spot in the darkening woods. The sky became a dark green, bathing everything in the light you might expect to find on a lake bottom. It became difficult to see in the woods even though it was 6:00 in the first week of August. We struggled to the site, up slippery granite steeps and through poison ivy infested creeks. As we were headed back for more the lightning became so severe that I rapidly explained lightning drill procedures to Stu and sent him back to the site to set up shelter with the kids. I told him to turn away any others looking to go back for more. I ran through the bushes along the shoreline, almost submerged in water. I was nervous because of my exposure on the riverbank to the open sky, which was now beyond furious. Furious is when the sky is angry with dark clouds – this sky was so dark green and rainy that it was 1 colour only, lit just by the lightning strikes behind it. It sounded to me like an intergalactic war was going on over my head. Echoes of distant explosions and close ones raged ever closer. I picked up the pace, trying not to duck into the woods for shelter, as time was of the essence. After about five or six minutes I mad it to the boats Stu and I had run down. I emptied the many litres of water that had accumulated in each and then pulled them up safely on shore, then flipped tem. Some of the lightning strikes were deafening now. I ran back to the pile of gear in the woods to see if anything essential was there. Map case, wannigan containing our kitchen, and raingear. I strapped it all together and dragged it, swearing and cursing through the woods. The wannigan slipped out of its harness completely, several time, and almost tumbled into the river. I finally arrived at the site, barely carrying it at this point, slipping on the needles, roots and wet granite under my feet, and feeling like I was going to overheat though the rain was pouring on me still. To make things even better, when Stu and I looked into my tent at night, before moving in, we noticed it was soaked inside. The fly had completely leaked! Irritating. How does a tent loose its waterproofness? We cooked burgers over a shitty fire and didn’t get to bed until 11:30. Today we need to go and get our boats. Hopefully the set next to our site is runnable. I’ve yet to go scout it. Also, we are somehow missing both water jugs. We’ve been purifying our water in an open bucket – GONG!! As if the river is trying to show us a sign, there is a fill metal motorboat flipped upside down and pinned, barely visible in the chute next to our site. We get the message.

I’m appending this now: the set next to our site was hilarious. It curved around a corner, with no eddies on the side. There was a small patch of trees and bushes right in the middle of the damned river, and one of our boats followed the current right into it. It’s not every day you see a boat of kids stuck dangerously in a patch of small trees in the middle of a river. I’d have to say the lack of any real eddy behind a feature like that made the rescue pretty fucking interesting. . .

Happy New Year

And I say that today because one year ago today it was exactly a year ago – today.

Love Marcus