a campfire, boil water in a birchbark bowl, and most importantly, how to blaze a trail where there was none. He told us that most people look but don’t see and that’s how they get lost in the woods. Being lost terrified me.
Charlie took us across the cottage road and into the woods to look for a stand of birch trees some distance away. He went about marking trees with a small axe. “A blaze,” he would say in quiet commentary “on both sides of the tree so you can find your way back, wassakwaigaso mitig.” He blazed the trees with a deft swipe of the axe, one downward cut, then a right-angled chop to sever the wood chip, revealing the white meat underneath. Sometimes the trees would bleed sap, which was a good thing Charlie had said, because it protected the tree from infection, like a scab over a cut. He blazed the trees at fifty-foot intervals, and when there were no trees, just saplings, he broke one and bent it in the direction he was going (or returning), leaving it pointing like an arrow. Charlie said we’d never get lost as long as we kept our eyes open and remembered what we’d seen, and turned around every so often to see what it would look like on our way back out. “Look at the clouds!” Charlie exclaimed. “Feel the wind,” he would say with a sweeping motion of his big hand. “They’ll talk to you and show you the path.”
Look. See. Pay attention to detail —the art of seeing. The outdoors was like a classroom; you didn’t get your knuckles rapped with the pointer when you weren’t paying attention, but the natural world did hold you accountable for your actions. I was only six years old then but the time spent with old Charlie, the Anishnabe woodsman, triggered something in my own head that stuck — a bit of old magic that helped me peer into a whole different world.
The best thing about moving north out of the city and into the country was the collection of trails near our house, like the Silver Birch Trail, and it didn’t take long for me to explore every one within the first week. I learned that there were absolutely no boundaries, that there would always be a trail somewhere that would lead to someplace I hadn’t been before. And when there was no visible trail, I would remember what old Charlie had told me — that the path always appears ahead of you as soon as you put one foot in front of the other.
This anthology of stories is about the wilderness trail, both in the physical sense and, perhaps, as a metaphor for a different path of life that leads us away from the familiar. A trail always leads somewhere, regardless of whether it was human or animal in design. A beaver path up a slope, which I have often mistaken for a portage trail, usually ends abruptly no more than fifty metres from the shore. To the beaver, the trail terminates at a copse of prized birch trees, and the clear path back to the water means a quick retreat from predators — a wolf, perhaps. For me, carrying a heavy canoe and pack over my shoulders, it was a mild annoyance, but it served its singular purpose well for the beaver.
Deer paths through the forest often take advantage of gutways, bench-cut ledges, and areas of light undercover; basically, following the path of least resistance. I have often built trails along deer runs for this very reason; however, unlike the deer, skiers and hikers do not require a clear, straight trail for the purpose of escaping predators.
In the low-lying wetlands, moose will leave a visible trail between ponds and lakes, evidenced by hoof-trough, browse-cuts on willow and alder shrubs, and bark-rubs from antler and teeth marks. These trails are often used as portages and have never required the hand of man to keep clear, save for the occasional removal of a deadfall tree brought down by wind, age, or snow load.
Within the treeline areas of the Far North, caribou leave trails with little apparent care for linear predisposition. Pathways often braid in and out of spruce groves but eventually do arrive at a common river-crossing point or funnel onto a sandy esker — the latter being a sand ridge left by retreating glaciers that now serves as an elevated trailway for both caribou and their predators, the tundra wolf and man. The Sayisi Dene of northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, unlike the woodland Nations to the south and east who travelled by canoe, followed the sinewy eskers on foot and crossed rivers at strategic locations, usually in pursuit of the caribou. They would bury their dead atop esker trails because it was the only place the summer sun would thaw the permafrost deep enough to enable them to excavate a hole. Thus the trail defined the life essence of the Dene in finite terms — their struggle for survival oftentimes amorphous, dependent wholly on the harmony and reliability of the trail.
The Ojibwa, or Anishnabek, of the eastern woodlands used an interconnecting webwork of summer and winter trails called the nastawgan. These ancient trails still unite heart and soul with the spirit of the landscape. And it is with this landscape that most people are vaguely familiar and where a great majority of adventure-seekers find recreation and solace. And yet there are those who continue to defy the natural order of things. Nature — the wilderness — in all its resplendent beauty and magnetism remains intractable. Entering its realm with an imperious attitude shrouds our ability to enjoy fully the benefits celebrated in an untouched world. Living harmoniously is unachievable and life becomes an act of mere survival … and survival is for angry people.
Survival is the art of staying alive. Whether we are in our familiar environment or attempting to find connection with Nature, survival knowledge is essential but not necessarily the mantra that leads us to nirvana. Survival skills comprise but a small percentage of what is actually needed to live comfortably in the wilderness. It all depends on what trail you want to follow; the path is not always a clear one.
There are many ways to die in the wilderness. In an age where “survival” shows dominate the airwaves, we tend to fixate on our relationship with Nature in a purely combative way. The true meaning of the “art of survival” and ultimately our aspirations of “living” comfortably within the confines of Nature, of wilderness, are muddled by our perceptions as defined by television and its hedonistic personalities. Not that I have all the answers. I do, nonetheless, have stories to share that may help to affirm that Nature can be neither beaten nor tamed — that our place in the wilderness is simply a logical adjustment to a simpler lifestyle. The correlation between the wilderness trail and our actions eventually becomes our destiny.
The simple reward of the day is a beautiful sunset and sheer exhaustion.
PART ONE
A TRAIL LESS TRAVELLED
The trail through the forest was rough and long unused. In spots the mosses and ground vines had so overgrown it that only the broad scars on the tree trunks, where the lumberman’s axe had blazed them for a sign, served to distinguish it from a score of radiating vistas.
— Charles G.D. Roberts from “The Heart of the Ancient Wood,” 1900
When you make a pact with yourself that you will never take a job that doesn’t entail some sort of wilderness travel, it narrows your options down considerably. It also compromises your ability to make decent money — if that’s what’s important to you. For me it was the quest for adventure, the open trail, and no boundaries. Money would eventually trickle in somewhere along the way. Survival had a dual meaning — surviving in the bush and surviving in the mainstream. Unfortunately, my wilderness skills evolved quicker than my ability to adjust to civil living.
It’s one thing to seek out adventure for personal recreation and satisfaction, but when you make a vocation of it, the dynamics change considerably. Suddenly there are clients to look after, and responsibilities and expectations, and it’s no longer a vacation. Well, it is and it isn’t; you try to make it as enjoyable as possible, sometimes against incredible odds. The one thing I’ve learned along the trail is that you will encounter the unusual, the
