by Adam Shoalts
As fulfilling as I found such old-fashioned explorer’s work, as I paddled, waded, and portaged my way downriver, I was conscious of my desire to finally be rid of the Again. I wanted to move on to new horizons. Like a siren call, some new temptation, perhaps the promise of another nameless river, would lure me elsewhere into the wilderness. As I sat in my canoe paddling, I started to daydream of faraway places where I could explore a river no other living person had ever seen. A sudden zeal to finish my work meant that my progress on the expedition was rapid—I pushed myself hard from sunrise to sunset. When I had reached the end of the river, I paused to empty my watertight barrel of provisions and fill the barrel with a supply of freshwater. (The remaining provisions from the barrel I crammed into my worn backpack.) Then I headed down the Harricanaw River to the salt water of James Bay, where I intended to remain for a few days.
I spent my time near the mouth of the Harricanaw making short forays into the sea in my canoe—once or twice getting caught in terrifying waves far from shore that nearly swamped the canoe—and on land sketching birds, taking notes, and enjoying the solitude. But that solitude came to an end late one afternoon when I hiked down to shore to fetch some drinking water from my barrel. My eyes were greeted with an unexpected sight—a flotilla of canoes was coming downriver. I stood and stared at the canoes—it took a moment for me to appreciate that they were no mirage. There were six in total, each with two occupants. As they neared, I saw that it was a group of teenage campers, led by two adults. I stood on the riverbank, watching them as a wild animal might stand motionless and blankly stare at a passing canoe.
At the time, it didn’t occur to me that the ragged appearance of a lone man deep in the wilderness, suddenly emerging from the woods, might startle them. I had neither shaved nor bathed in weeks; my mop of hair was dishevelled by the wind, my clothes were tattered, my pants ripped nearly to shreds from the portages. A hunting knife was stuck in my belt and my army rain jacket was draped over my shoulders.
They paddled up to the bank near where I stood, beached their canoes, and began somewhat timidly climbing up the slope to where I stood watching them.
“Hello!” said the first one, apparently the camp counsellor in charge. He was a bearded, jovial looking man of about thirty.
I nodded hello.
“We thought you might be a Cree trapper,” he said, as his young charges followed him up the bank, carrying their packs. The other counsellor was a woman in her mid-twenties. “But you don’t look like one.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, warming up to the idea of being around people again. “Did you canoe the Harricanaw?”
“Yeah. We’re from Camp Pine Crest. I’m Matt.”
We shook hands.
“I’m Adam.”
“You’re not here alone, are you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I take it you canoed the Harricanaw too?” asked Matt.
The campers had gathered round me in a semi-circle, curiously examining me as something of an exotic specimen.
“No,” I said, “I came down the Again River.”
They looked at me blankly.
“It’s a tributary of the Harricanaw. Have you heard of it?”
“No,” said Matt. “All alone?”
“Yes.”
“Now that’s something,” he said nodding appreciatively. “Well, we’re going to camp here tonight. You’re welcome to join us for supper. We’ve got plenty of extra pasta.”
Some of the kids looked at me expectantly.
“Thanks,” I replied, “I’d be happy to join you,” and, in fact, I was. As much as I like solitude, it was nice to be able to talk with people that could appreciate what I had just done.
That evening, we gathered around a campfire on what was a rather cold, windy night to eat pasta and swap stories. I regaled them with tales of my travels, unexplored rivers, hidden waterfalls, and snarling polar bears. They, in turn, told me about their summer camp and their three-week trip down the Harricanaw, which they took great pride in completing. And to their credit, any three-week canoe journey is no picnic. After dinner, I was astonished to learn that on their entire trip they never once drank tea. This seemed unthinkable: tea is the traditional drink of the northern woods, and some might say it is as much a part of the wilderness experience as the haunting cry of a loon, the crackle of a late-night fire, or a silent morning paddle across misty lakes. When I mentioned that herbal tea was the one luxury I prized above all in the wilderness, the campers all wanted a cup. We boiled several pots over the fire that night. Their trip had been a vegetarian one, and the teenage boys, in particular, looking rather ravenous, were ecstatic when I gave them some bags of jerky from my own supply.
THE NEXT MORNING, the campers and I went our separate ways. They set off to paddle to Moose Factory—which in fair weather was not a problem in their large, seventeen-foot canoes. Meanwhile, I remained behind on the coast, where I was to rendezvous with some of my companions from last year and cross James Bay with them.
This time things went smoothly, without any engine troubles or unexpected delays on sandbars. We did, however, stop to gather sweetgrass, a plant used in traditional Cree spiritual ceremonies. In Moosonee, as I was loading my canoe onto one of the Polar Bear Express’ boxcars for the train ride south, a man strode up to where I was standing with an excited look on his face.
“You’re Adam Shoalts!” he said, shaking my hand.
“Yes,” I replied, a little surprised by the attention.
“You’re a legend,” he exclaimed.
“Not quite,” I laughed.
“I’ve read all about you. I’ve done a lot of canoeing myself, but you know, nothing like what you do.”
“Where do you canoe?”
“Around here mostly, the Moose River. I live in Moosonee,” he explained. “I used to be a professional cyclist, but I gave that up and moved here with my wife. I love the outdoors—hunting, fishing, all that stuff.”
“That’s the life,” I said.
“I gotta ask you,” he said eagerly, “to show me your canoe. You’ve got to have some awesome gear.”
“Not really,” I gestured to my canoe lying in the open boxcar.
A horrified expression came over the man’s face. He was apparently expecting to see something state-of-the-art. “That’s your canoe!?”
“Yes.”
“How did you canoe here with that? That’s not even an ordinary tripper canoe. It’s so small. How does that thing get through rapids?”
“I bought it second-hand. New canoes are expensive,” I explained.
“But you must have sponsors throwing themselves at you?”
“No,” I laughed. “Not yet, anyway.”
When I returned home I discovered that the media’s interest in my expedition hadn’t died down. I had received more requests for TV appearances, magazine stories, and radio interviews. I accepted a few, but otherwise attempted to maintain a low profile. Wes had mentioned that he and his family were heading to Algonquin Park on a camping trip, and invited me to come along. I could never refuse any opportunity to strike off into the wilderness, so I happily joined them and forgot about the interviews. At night around the campfire, I entertained his young nieces and nephew with tales of man-eating bears and sasquatches lurking deep in the woods. I taught them how to make different types of tea from various wild plants, and I found myself wishing that I could remain in the forest and forget about the other side of life as an explorer—the paperwork.
Of course, that wasn’t possible. I had several hundred unread emails in my inbox, maps to create, and my expedition report and photographs to submit to the Geographical Society. In my absence in the wilderness, some outlandish claims had circulated about the Again River. Someone had claimed that the falls on the Again River were already mapped—but that proved to be a simple case of cartographic illiteracy. Another person, with no background in exploration history, geography, archaeology, or common sense, claimed t
hat the 107-kilometre, rock-strewn, rapid- and waterfall-choked course of the Again River, which terminates in a swamp, was actually a “major trade route.” Of the hundreds of rivers in the Hudson and James Bay watershed, no more than a dozen or so could be said to have ever constituted a major trade route—and they were well known. The Again was emphatically nothing of the sort.
I fully expected, and regarded as inevitable, that in an age of internet anonymity, someone somewhere would claim to have previously canoed the Again River. Of course, such a claim would make no material difference to my expedition. But, to my surprise, despite the intense media glare focused on the river, only a single person emerged who claimed to have previously canoed it—a testament to its utter obscurity. The lone individual, a seventy-one-year-old man, claimed that he had been part of a team of geologists who had canoed the Again in 1961 under contract for the Quebec government. The other geologists, he said, were now dead. When I spoke to him on the phone and asked why the Quebec government would hire geologists to canoe a river that was mostly in Ontario, he admitted they had only explored the lower, more tranquil half of the river, beyond most of the dangerous rapids and all the waterfalls. Back in 1961, he had been a nineteen-year-old summer employee, and he had only spent that one summer in the area. He explained that the group had been dropped via helicopter at the river’s halfway point and that it was just one of several they canoed. His memory, after fifty-two years, was rather hazy—he couldn’t remember which river the Again flowed into and didn’t recognize any of the waterfalls from my pictures. However, he insisted, the expedition’s leader, the geologist Jerome Remick, had documented all their findings and work in an official report. I was sure that I had read Remick’s dry report five years earlier, and that it said nothing of the Again River. But, to be certain, I obtained copies of it, both in English and the original French, and reread it. As I suspected, the report made no mention of the Again River, nor did the Again appear on the maps that accompanied it. Their work had focused on the rivers in the upper part of the Harricanaw’s watershed, well south of the Again. Of course, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that they had canoed the lower part of the Again and for some reason failed to mention it—but this seemed unlikely. I could only speculate whether this claim was an honest mistake—after all, it had been over half a century. At any rate, it was immaterial to my expedition and made no difference to me personally. I had done what I had set out to do five years earlier when I first began to dream of the river in my cluttered, map-lined study, and beyond that, nothing much mattered.
A few months after my return from the Again, to my surprise I received notice that I had been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for “extraordinary contributions to geography.” To be elected a Fellow was to join the company of such explorers as Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir Francis Younghusband, Percy Fawcett, and Charles Camsell—all of whom had been elected Fellows of their respective geographical societies on the basis of their expeditions. In comparison to them, I had done next to nothing to deserve such a distinction. The rivers I had explored in the Lowlands were small waterways, of no great importance in themselves, and my expeditions, while difficult and to a degree dangerous, were still only minor affairs.
I was to have the honour of presenting the Society’s flag that I had carried on my expeditions to Canada’s governor general, His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston. At the ceremony in Ottawa, I marched down a red carpet holding the carefully folded blue flag in my hands, rows of seated dignitaries on either side, stepped onto a stage, bowed, and presented the flag to the Queen’s representative, feeling a bit like an explorer from an earlier era. When he shook my hand, His Excellency mentioned that he would like to join me on an expedition—if I promised to travel at a slower pace and do most of the paddling.
Gratifying as it was to be recognized in this way, the truth is that when my exploration of the Again River was finally complete, it wasn’t as if I felt a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I had gained the knowledge that I had sought about a river that had previously been an enigma, but many other unknown rivers remained to be explored—and I couldn’t resist them. I felt nearly as restless as ever in my obsession with seeking the world’s last unexplored rivers, and I still had an almost overwhelming compulsion to push myself to the limit to explore such places. The Again, like all the other rivers I had explored before it, seemed only to increase my appetite for greater challenges. And besides, I had the example of other Geographical Society Fellows to live up to. Within days of presenting the Society’s flag to the governor general, I had resolved to undertake a new expedition that would surpass all of my others in terms of risk, hardship, and geographical remoteness. I had, with Canadian Geographic’s encouragement, set my sights on the unexplored reaches of the High Arctic—the most extreme environment on earth where canoeing is possible.
The morning after the ceremony with the governor general, I attended a meeting at Canadian Geographic’s office to discuss these plans. The magazine was interested in an Arctic expedition, and they thought I was the man for the job—if I wanted it, and of course I did. Canadian Geographic stipulated that any expedition I dreamed up take place north of the Arctic Circle—a line of latitude that runs around the top of the world. Everything north of this line has at least one day of continuous daylight in the summer and at least one day when the sun never rises in the winter. Beyond the Arctic Circle lie the vast, nearly uninhabited Arctic islands—an immense archipelago of frozen wilderness stretching over 2,400 kilometres from east to west and consisting of 36,563 islands, of which only ten are inhabited. It’s a barren land of glaciers, featureless tundra, windswept mountains, and frigid lakes.
The canoe was never meant for the icy rivers of the High Arctic. The Inuit—who first colonized Canada’s Arctic islands about eight or nine hundred years ago—relied on dogsleds for transportation for most of the year, and when the ice briefly melted in summer would travel in kayaks made from animal skins, which they used to skirt the rocky coastlines. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that the first intrepid explorers attempted to canoe High Arctic rivers—no easy task, given that the Arctic is actually a cold desert that receives very little precipitation. As a consequence, most rivers in the Arctic are shallow, rock-strewn streams that are unsuitable for canoeing—aside from when the snow melts in July, which transforms these streams into raging torrents. The difficulty of canoeing in such a place is appreciable: besides all the usual hazards such as drowning, smashing one’s head on a rock, or getting crushed by an overturned canoe in a rapid, the icy water and cold air temperatures mean that merely capsizing or swamping in a river is liable to prove fatal. To add to the difficulties, the region has no trees to speak of, nothing in the way of natural materials like spruce resin or birchbark with which to repair a canoe, scarce shelter from the merciless winds, few wild edibles of any value, and of course, polar bears with no fear of humans. Even in mid-summer the wind chill is often minus ten Celsius, and snowstorms are possible.
As I left the meeting in the editor’s office and headed back down the hallway to leave, I couldn’t help but step into the boardroom to see Sir Francis Younghusband’s sword mounted on the wall. Three and a half years earlier, the sight of it had filled me with an irresistible yearning for faraway, unexplored lands. And now, seeing his sword again and having just received my orders to devise a new expedition, I felt once more the inexpressible allure of the unknown, the romance of adventure, and the thrill of exploration.
AFTERWORD
He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.
—George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1874
EVERY YEAR THE WORLD gets a little more crowded, a little less wild, a little more settled. We are fortunate to still have vast areas of wilderness and some unexplore
d territory. But what remains is unlikely to last long in the face of an evergrowing human population coupled with an insatiable thirst for natural resources. Wherever I have ventured, from the Amazon to the High Arctic, including even the Hudson Bay Lowlands, I have found that the quest for natural resource extraction is never far behind—whether it be fossil fuels, minerals, or new logging frontiers. We are losing the natural world faster than we can explore it. In the world’s tropical forests, entire species go extinct before they ever become known to science. When forests and wetlands are converted into farms, shopping malls, highways, or cities, we lose more than just the world’s magnificent bio-diversity—that bewildering blend of animals and plants that makes our world such a fascinating place. We also lose something that’s deep in our collective psyches—the vast, forbidding, but enchanting world of untrammelled wildness, those critical “hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.” It has been my privilege to experience some of these last remaining realms of mystery on the earth. I have tried to tread as gently as possible in these places; I look upon them like a pilgrim does a sacred site. It is my deepest hope that they are preserved for future generations, so that it remains possible to hear the call of faraway lands, of untouched wilderness and the unknown. We all lose when it becomes impossible to find such a place.