Spring 2010 Vol. 37 No. 1 Quarterly Journal of the Wilderness Canoe Association The Spirits of Chapleau-Nemegosenda Text by Gary Storr Photos by Gary Storr and Graham Bryan “Have you ever read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? ” It was past midnight when our vehicle lurched into the I deadpan when people ask me how the trip went. Of course Chapleau Crown Game Preserve east of Lake Superior, there was no Kurtz, no embodiment of mystery and evil for towing a rickety trailer laden with packs and canoes. We whom we were being sent—there was only the river itself. peered out the windshield searching for a sign that would There were no ivory traders whose exploits sullied hu - point us to Racine Lake. The plan was to camp there and in mankind’s lofty moral expectations. We had only the spirits. the morning meet up with our driver who would shuttle us to the river. No sign. Above the forest single-minded intent was to blast the campsite. It was a tame creature, canopy the sky was starlit yet inky through as much whitewater as we completely without guile and it filled black; below it, our headlights deep - could, maybe spot a lynx, and enjoy me with a sense of optimism. The nat - ened the shadows—trees leapt at us eight uninterrupted days on the river. ural expression of a fox is a smile. from every bend. We stopped on the We figured on four days to Elsas, a This was our charm, a sign of good road to discuss our options and from former mill town on the Canadian things to come. the quarter points of the vehicle re - National Railway line at Kapuskasing After breakfast, we were delivered lieved ourselves, subconsciously mark - Lake, then four days back on a quiet to a spot partway along Island Rapids ing our territory. Lions and tigers and swamp known as the Nemegosenda by an affable fellow named Sylvain. I’d bears, oh my! Then we climbed back River, finishing at Westover Lake. found Sylvain earlier, hairy and shirt - in and carried on. Eventually we found it—a small, less, at a trailer site strewn with empty We’d come to paddle the Chapleau hand-lettered sign tacked to a tree at a beer cans. He cheerfully drove us up a River, a scenic waterway that forms dark intersection: Racine Lake . logging road, then pulled over and an - the eastern boundary of the Chapleau Minutes later we were at the camp - nounced, “This is it!” A bridge Crown Game Preserve as it courses ground. We quickly pitched our tents, spanned the rapids and the road bi - northward from the town of Chapleau tossed back a celebratory beer, and sected the portage. Leaving us to our to Kapuskasing Lake. There were four sacked out. task, he waved and disappeared behind of us: Dan Bell, Graham Bryan, Ross In the morning, Dan and I arose a billowing cloud of dust. Robertson, and Gary Storr, and we ahead of the others. We were preparing The rainy season had extended well were planning to do this trip during the our morning brew when we noticed a into summer and we soon discovered first eight days of August 2008. Our fox sitting expectantly at the edge of the trails didn’t dry up before the next 2 NASTAWGAN SPRING 2010 downpour moved desultorily over the obliged us to portage, but a few mo - across the water, never quite grazing river. There is a decided incongruity in ments of exhilaration were ample pay - the surface. We supposed it was har - plunging from a dusty, elevated log - back for the effort expended in getting vesting dragonflies, all the while indif - ging road into a wet, northern rain for - there. With raised spirits we paddled ferent to our gaze. (Our supposition est, but in our eagerness to start pad - into Shewabik Lake and began to look was based on the fact that we were fre - dling we thought nothing of it. We for a place to make camp. quently shrugging dragonflies from lugged our gear down to the riverbank, Shewabik Lake is a work in pro- our shoulders.) These revitalizing loaded the canoes, and pushed off. gress—it offers a rare opportunity to glimpses of life’s tiny wonders are It’s like coming home, those first observe an active shoreline. An island gateways to a world of simplicity and limbering paddle strokes that bring partway along was bridged over time unencumbrance. We drank in the scene you to speed, then glide you quietly by wave action and is now a pebbled until satisfied, then took up our pad - past myriad waypoints alongshore. spit sweeping out from shore. dles and dug in to the north. Your other self melts away and you be - Rounding this feature opens a lake –The following morning we broke come “Frontiersman,” the guy you’d be vista to the north, and tucked behind camp and paddled under sunny skies if you could do it all over again. We the spit is a shallow bay that for us out of Shewabik Lake. Dan, from the approached the landing to the next cradled a bit of magic. Here, a solitary bow seat, noticed a rainbow in the mist portage after only a few minutes, Bonaparte gull fluttered on the breeze, to our left. It paced us until the mist abruptly cutting short the reverie of gliding up then swooping unsteadily burned off, at which point we found self-abandonment. “Pack mule,” by contrast, bites. The Chapleau and Nemegosenda rivers tumble across the Canadian Shield along parallel fault lines so what lies primarily underfoot is gran - ite. And granite means challenging carries. Toss in a thunderstorm and not only are the portages potentially crip - pling, they’re saturated. Mud, mosqui - toes, thickening undergrowth—it all adds up to a route that appears to be seldom travelled and with the passage of time, grows wilder. I wouldn’t rec - ommend it to novice paddlers. That said, there are few places as beautiful. At the base of the second, un - runnable rapid we took lunch under towering cedars and watched the river burst through the final bend into the calm below our vantage point. Our sole objective was to cover twenty kilometres each day, but after two hours of portaging, eighteen remained. We needed to hustle. What we didn’t know was that downriver a dearth of campsites would necessitate lengthy forced marches—long days awaited us. Twenty kilometres wouldn’t be an issue. After paddling a placid expanse of reedy shoreline, we at last cut our teeth on a bouldery stretch of white - water. It was an easy run but it was enough to soak us through and whet our appetites for more. Two short rapids followed including one that NASTAWGAN SPRING 2010 3 ers, whose caprices we were forced to contend with over the remainder of the trip. Soon after re-entering the river, granite walls rose at our flanks and we found ourselves faced with another daunting carry, this one bypassing a waterfall. We dragged the canoes out of the gorge from the still water near the brink, then muddied our backsides slipping down into the fault below the cataract. Royalex trips, Kevlar dreams. The waterfall cascades through a crook in the bedrock and is hidden from view. The current pushes strongly out from its base but we drove against it in our canoes to see what we’d been made to skirt. Resting in the damp air below the falls we basked in its energy, then ferried across to a rock face etched with faded pictographs. ourselves the epicentre of a magnifi - precariously from behind and break Grace Rajnovich explains in her cent sun dog mirrored in the lake. over its deck, don’t preach of atmos - book, Reading Rock Art, that the circle From beyond our bow and stern all the pheric pressure and lunar tides—those is the basic shape in Algonkian sym - colours of the spectrum arced away to are the gods of meteorologists. I pre - bolism—it provides the form of the the west. fer to imagine the horned lynx, medicine wheel. Within the wheel are Indigenous peoples believed rain - Mishipezheu, making tempestuous the the four realms of the spirit world: sky, bows were bridges to the spirit world. water with giant sweeps of his tail. The earth, underground, and underwater. At a time in life when every wilder - rumble emanating from dark clouds The base of the rock face where we ness excursion kick-starts my inner overhead is Thunderbird vomiting up bobbed in our canoes is a sacred site, Grey Owl, a belief system comprised his enemy, the Serpent, and lightning, one where the realms meet. Not only is of many deities offers an appealing the act of flinging Serpent to the it a place of spiritual significance, it’s tack. When whitecaps push my canoe ground. It was these spirits, and oth - the perfect canvas upon which to con - vey one’s beliefs. Barely discernible on the lichen-encrusted wall are ani - mal figures and the circle itself. Learning to shoot rapids is three parts book-learning and ninety-seven parts calamity. With all due respect to Bill Mason, when I stare at the photo - graphs in Path of the Paddle , I might as well be holding the book upside down—it only begins to make sense when I climb into a boat and start ca - reening off boulders. The point of the exercise, of course, is to not bounce off rocks.