Keele River Reflections
By Erika Bailey
“Be safe. Be careful. Take care,” my friends’ words run through my mind.
I dig a wave’s crest and haul a J-stroke and stare down the next hay-bale. Foam laces its crest.
Since I was just a bump in my mom’s belly, I have canoe-tripped. My family paddles flat water. My parents love bird-watching, map-reading and packing my late grandfather’s musky, old, green canvas canoe packs that he used in the 1950s and 60s. We never really ran rapids, but contemplated swifts. We always packed lightly and followed my Poppa’s long-observed rules. It’s just who we are.
I moved out of my parents’ home. Since then, I have planned all my own trips. I married and moved to the bow seat and bought a house and sold the house and moved to Toronto and bought another house and watched my husband leave me and return and leave and return. And leave. I completed my masters degree and I changed jobs.
I also started canoeing rivers.
The next wave swamps Sarah’s waist. The boat angles towards jagged, sandy rock face.
When I told my friends I was going to Norman Wells this summer, they said, “Cool! Where is that?” I smiled, pointed north-west and said, “That way.” I really had no idea where Norman Wells was except that it was away from the city and my long work days and legal battles and empty fridge and sooty, smoggy, yellow-grey air.
A current catches our red canoe’s stern and my hips shift left. Grit grinds my knees. Ahead, Sarah points up-wave and we wobble towards the rock wall. I lean right and arc a sweep.
“I could never do that,” my friends say. “You are so adventurous.”
“I don’t really think so,” I say. When I canoe flat-water, I use my long, wooden otter-tail paddle. It delves deep and purchases more pull. The prospector canoe’s distinct keel holds a strong, straight line and I lose myself in the slow drip, drip, drip, dig, pull, swing, dripdripdrip motion. I read northern Ontario topography like a favourite, dog-eared book. There, I always know where I am going, read weather accurately, anticipate the challenges and with my canoe buddies, shape our route accordingly.
“DRAW,” I yell over the roar of waves. Sarah’s tanned, muscled arm reaches out, sun glints off her paddle blade and the river catches and splashes as she corrects our line.
These past few years, the map I once read with such conviction, clarity and complacency dissolved with each shift in my life’s landscape. With each realization, my expected future path shrouded. I booked my trip with Canoe North Adventures to celebrate, to honour and to mark the changes in my life. I landed at the edge of the remarkable turquoise Keele River in the Northwest Territory with a bag full of woollens, a mind full of worries, a pen and a journal.
Sarah whooo hooos. Water breeches the bow and hugs her shoulders. She gargles the next class-four wave. I steady my back arm and the Keele nudges my elbow. The rock face slips by. A wave fills my lap. I laugh. I dig my paddle again and Sarah bursts upwards and out of the wave. The river bends left.
Rebuilding my life, I learned, is both quite easy and quite tough. Logistics are the easy part. Trust is the tough one. I am learning to trust again, to trust others to support and guide me. And I am learning to trust myself – that I have enough and I am enough to deal with whatever faces me.
Al and Lin, the Canoe North Team, and the amazing group of people on our trip rebuilt my trust, my sense of fun. The river, the mountains, the long days and profound beauty recovered my sense of wonder in this truly majestic place.
Taking back the stern seat on the Keele River taught me to trust myself.
Sarah laughs and splutters. “I just swallowed that wave,” she yells.
Yeah, I think as I point us into the next wave train, that’s just how it should be.
Featured Adventures
- Tischu River
Our exploratory trip on the Tischu River, a tributary of the Keele River
News & Events
- Fall Newsletter November 2011
We have just posted our 2012 Expedition Program and you will see that we have offered two new winter trips including an ice-road adventure to Norman Wells! We are very excited to be offering a Coppermine River Adventure – this was my first ever arctic canoe trip when I was just 18 years old! Other [...]
- Celebrate Sahtu
On July 23rd, The Town of Norman Wells, North-Wright Airways and Canoe North Adventures will host a celebration that will showcase the wilderness of the Sahtu Region and recognize the collaboration of effort to brand the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories as a tourism destination with national and international recognition. This event will highlight the [...]
- Great Bear River Exploration
This past summer, Lin Ward, Susan Casson, Matt Casson and Karl Schiefer checked out the Great Bear River. North-Wright Airways flew them into the First Nation community of Deline on Great Bear Lake. Once canoes were loaded they only paddled a short distance out to a camp right on Great Bear Lake. Karl and Matt [...]
- The 2010 Operator of the Year Award for the Northwest Territories
The award was presented to Al and Lin by the Minister of Tourism at the Northwest Territories Tourism Gala Dinner held in Inuvik on Thursday, November 25th…
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It has been a long-standing dream of Canoe North Adventures …
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At Canoe North, we are always intrigued with the prospect of a grand adventure…
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- Exploratory Trips
In 2009, we are planning two more exploratory trips…
- New Air Services and Canoeing Base for CNA, 2009
at the North-Wright Airways float base in Norman Wells…
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