The simplicity of wilderness adventure

There was much to enjoy about the canoe trip in Algonquin Park with my daughter in August. But what impressed me most was the simplicity of how we lived those three days and two nights, and our minimal impact on Nature.

It's not that there was anything ordinary about the natural beauty around us.

We watched a powwow of four loons in the twilight, caught our breath when they surfaced a canoe's length off our starboard bow.

Two large boulders, glacial refuse, marked our campsite. They half reclined in the edge of the lake. We sat there musing in the dusk, and swam from them by day.

One evening Marian looked up and gasped, "Dad, is that the aurora borealis?" She had never seen it before and was thrilled. We paddled to the middle of the lake as the last blush of daylight fell from the West, and sat in the eerie half dark mixed with silver light from the full moon, while pink and green waves of Northern Lights shimmered across the firmament. Their pale radiance reflected in the lake beneath.

The trip marked Marian's first sighting of a moose. We also enjoyed the company of mice, frogs and ospreys.

But the thing I most remember is how we cleaned every scrap of food from our plates. Exercise does that to a body. But Nature necessitates it. Every bite we didn't eat would have to be packed out of reach and carried out later. Anything tossed away will attract wildlife.

It was a different mentality from a couple weeks earlier when we camped out of the trunk of a car. That had been a trip of pleasure, and I indulged in a few conveniences. After each meal, excess packaging, bones and unwanted vegetables could be locked safely away.

But in Algonquin Park, anything leftover was bound to attract squirrels, raccoons and black bears. The fact was vividly illustrated one evening when I cleaned up after dinner and carefully hoisted the rest of our food stores out of reach between two high limbs. But I left two mugs of instant chocolate sitting on a rock, ready to have hot water added. Marian and I went on a short paddle and swim, and wanted a warm drink before bed. But when we got back I encountered a white-footed mouse leaning over the lip of one cup, stealing mini marshmallows from the powder. He was quite delighted with those sweets, and it took some effort for me to shoe him away with the beam of my flashlight.

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