Some days you're the antibody, some days you're the antigen - D14

Just floating on through. . . Think I might be heading back up to camp next week for yet another looper.  There's no way this one's going to be desert oasis weather like the last one was.  The children are going to freeze.  I will no freeze though, because I did that once five years ago and I bought a lot of cold weather paddling gear since then.  It's amazing what loosing the function of your legs will do to you, even if it's on a three day trip around the muskoka area.  I figured if that happens down there, what's going to happen on a cold day on the 53rd paralell?  Yikes. . .   Want to know something funny?  I'm gazing out my window right now looking at this plant my parents planted.  That's not the funny thing, bear with me.  So years back my parents were hiking point pelee or somewhere down there.  There's a transition zone there to some carolinian type forest that doesn't really exist in many other places except maybe the carolinas.  They found a beautiful vine with blood red leaves (in the fall) that was clambering up a tree, and they thought 'let's take that with us'.  So they found a small one and dug it up.  They planted it at the base of the aerial ladder next to our house.  My parents don't like the look of fences and ladders and other unsightly latticeworks, so they have a habit of planting climbing plants at their bases to consume and aesthetically improve them.  Now, years later, we have this vine that just climbs the side of the house, obscuring the ladder.   Right now it's a beautiful shade of yellowpinkred.  You know what I mean.  It's funny because my mom broke out in some sort of rash this last year, around the neck area.  For the last decade or so my dad has also been getting some kind of strong reaction that only the strongest prednisone pills can kill.  It comes at roughly the same time of year each year, but no one knew what it was.  My mom went to the doctor with her neck rash this year and the GP told her without much tentativeness that it was poison ivy.  My mom had never had this before.  After weeks of sleuthing and drawing up mental timelines in a CSI type fashion, the boring and double-backing, step-retracing, concept-repeating details of which I won't bore you with, they came to a conclusion.  The carolinian forest posesses a special type of poison ivy, which grows in the form of a vine.  It turns a beautiful blood red in the fall, like most poison ivy.  I'm telling you though, this thing is mammoth . . I'm going to take a shot of it right now, remember I'm on the second story and this thing goes up to the damned roof.  Anyway I didn't know this, even though I wade through the stuff all summer, it's never the viney kind. . . and though I wade through it I try not to actually touch it, so I guess I wade around it.  Here's hoping I don't get it.  My mom is so paranoid now she tells me to keep my window closed, as if the vapors might kill me in my sleep.  I think she thinks I can catch it by looking at it.  They're going to spray round up on the bastard after the leaves drop this fall. . .  bye big poisonous vine.

Classic parents move eh?

So in the Moisie log you may notice the mountains starting to crop up.  this is where things got out of hand, scenery wise.  I wish I wasn't so damned tired at the end of every day or I'd've written more.

D14

                So today is two days in one.  We hit last chance eddies and ran chutes the width of our boats between boulders the size of toolsheds.  We carry loaded and unloaded boats over bog and granite, and we power out 13 k in an hour 15 more into moonlight to make it to Berny’s cabin.  Rapids in the dark.  Spiritual moment describes the feeling of these silent granite sentinels looming against the night sky, guarding the widening of the river Berny’s is nestled in.  We walk in, 

starved, cold and tired, but are not disappointed.  We will pit here.