Later, I ask one of the senior guides, S, who has done many journeys with his partner, journeys more arduous than ours, across the Andes, into the jungle, deep into the Rockies in winter: What’s the secret to doing this as a couple? For though J & I have known one another for two years (after a 30-year hiatus), we will spend 7 weeks in close proximity to one another—merely half a metre apart, 24 hours a day. S replies: Always serve each other. It is the best advice I’ve ever heard. From that moment on J & I serve one another continually. Even our happy hour (1700 hrs), the last hour on the river each day when we prepare to finish, I pour him a glass of beer as he rows or sails, and he pours me a small canning jar of wine. 4 I ask B, a major trekker, a hunter, how to feed J because J is expending so much energy rowing and I don’t know how to fuel him. ‘Cashew butter in dates. Lots of butter. Lots of fat and good meat. Good vegetables. Beef jerky. Salmon.’ This too is some of the best advice I get on the river. On our next provisioning trip I will get all of these. I aim to put 15 lbs. on the lean rower by the end of the trip. (I only manage to put 10 on him!) Moorage: Devil’s Elbow, upper reaches of the North Saskatchewan River Camp dinner with the kids We bid the kids farewell. Their leader gives us oranges and muffins and feeds us breakfast. He says, Pay it forward. Help someone else out on the river. The kids write us pages and pages in our journal with good advice for the river and our journey. The river keeps giving and giving as we head out into the deep blue channels, through rapid after rapid. Morale is high. Moorage: Somewhere on the North Saskatchewan Dinner: Murray’s stew Day 11 ? August (who knows days of the week or dates, who cares?) Rocky Mountain House N 52° 23’ 1” W 114° 56’ 46” Steele: EMERALD CITY! EMERALD CITY! We’ve been on the river almost two weeks 4 We serve each other for the entire journey and only have one moment of conflict when I lose one of his galoshes, integral to keeping the boat clean of the thick river mud that collects whenever we go ashore. Postscript : I found his galosh the next day where the river depth recedes several feet. Day 9 Devil’s Elbow Suzanne:
and we’re feeling like dirty river rats. Our clothes, our hair, our bodies despite bathing in the river at night. The boat’s keel has been damaged by the rocks and rapids and we’re muddy and filthy inside the boat and outside and I’ve got an infection and am miserable and have to see a doctor. We’ve run out of fresh food. We’ve left behind the upper reaches of the river. We miss it already. It was so clear and clean. The people so incredible and happy. Everybody happy. Especially all the teenagers at Devil’s Elbow who wrote us messages and words of advice: Thank you for sharing your stories, your talents, and your time with us. May the purpose and meaning of this journey fill you up. Enjoy our land, our water, our big sky (especially the prairies!). We are all so blessed to live in this land! Travel well! ~ Karel, St. Albert Don’t be a liability! Thanks from the Hela crew. Thanks for a good time and have fun. ~ A young guide in training who had dumped his canoe earlier that day! And now we’re heading into the Drayton Valley. Oil country. And I feel grungy and dispirited. We see on the map that there’s an RV camp, Riverside, ahead. It has showers and a laundromat and I begin to think of it as the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. There are no amenities for boat people on the river and this camp is right beside the river. I have high hopes. I need to get well and I need to get clean. Hilberry: Woke up, quinoa for breakfast because there’s nothing else to eat. It’s great. Took down the mast because I didn’t want to worry about getting under the next bridge after we lost the Windex and almost damaged the mast at the last one. Underestimated the height of us and it. We were planning at stopping at Riverview campground as it has full facilities. Overshot the campground by 500 metres which means motoring back up the river against quite a strong current. We managed by crossing from one side to the other, and ferrying across. Our little Smoky did the trick. I was quite happy about this as this was why we brought it along and after my failure the night before, hitting the rail bridge with our mast because I hadn’t used the motor before, I was able to see some positive use for it. The campground turned out to be everything Suzanne hoped it would be: clean, nice showers, laundry, the proprietors a nice young Dutch couple
who had bought a run-down trailer park and turned it into a thriving business. Suzanne calls the place The Emerald City because in her fantasy, as in the Wizard of Oz, the streets would be paved with emeralds! See! she said when we walked up from the river and into the park, It IS Emerald City and she pointed at the manicured lawns outside the fifth wheels and RVs. I had good luck hitch-hiking the 100km back to our truck at Nordegg, our first portage. Picked up by a conspiracy theory guy who was obsessed with chemtrails, cellular towers, smart meters. A second ride was by some happy campers who let me ride in the back of their truck as inside was stuffed with happy kids. Moorage: Emerald City Dinner: shitty little restaurant Day 20 Somewhere on the Alberta/ Sask. border N 53° 46’ 11” W 110° 31’ 11” Steele: Depart 0930 hrs. Cloudy, cold. A hard row for J to begin with, then, at one point we go through what he describes as Mordor. He thinks perhaps it is tar sands we are going through because of bleached hills; it is disgusting and dirty. Oil country. It is very cool, not quite cold and I have layers and layers on and am afraid I did not anticipate any real cold temperatures. I’d imagined lazy days drifting down the North Saskatchewan while J plays guitar. The reality has been a tough journey where both of us need to be vigilant at all times because of the low water levels, the sharp and exposed rocks, the shallows and the sandbars. I head into the cabin to do some writing and suddenly J sails! He has waited almost a month for the winds to turn westerly. There is enough wind for Miss Moose to gain a little speed. 6.5 - 7 knots per hour! The channel is very wide and straight and sometimes becomes shallow, but not too much that we bottom out right away. The wind appears to be at an angle that allows J to sail hard into it if he has the keel all the way down and the main sail on. But then the keel bottoms out and I have to scramble out of the cabin and crank it up while he pulls at the mainsail and the Genoa. Miss Moose sustained some big hits when J took the rapids and hit two huge submerged boulders. I was inside the cabin and called out, What the fuck was that?
51 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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