One really learns about one's self on Canadian wilderness trips. 2 months before a major Quetico canoe trip, my wife had to
have major abdominal surgery. I began to take the steps to cancel the trip but she wouldn't hear of it. The surgeon cleared
her and we went ahead with plans. We had taken many trips to the area - usually as a threesome with a good buddy or the 3 of us with a selected high school student who had some camping experience. I had been surplussed and was teaching jr hi that year so a student was out of the question. A phys ed teacher offered to go. We had him over for dinner one night and from the way he talked it seemed to be an experienced camper who could live without Mickey D's for a couple of weeks.
He lied to us. He lied to himself. His extensive camping experience consisted of weekend church camps. In cabins. He wondered why we weren't taking a supply of drinking water. I don't think he had ever, uh s..t in the woods. At the dinner he said, "I'll eat anything." The first night out, smelling the stroganoff he announced, "Do I smell onions? I don't eat onions..."
His tackle was a cheap glass rod and a Zebco 202........With the drag locked up.... With who knows how old line... Needless to say, most of the fish trashed him, but the fishing was so good he did manage to hook an eater walleye. I offered to net the fish for him but he announced, "I lip grab everything." So I let him. It gnawed on his thumb like the ferret did to David Letterman on the "Tonight" show. He howled like a coyote in heat.... We all nearly died trying to keep a straight face, but I couldn't help notice the ripples the canoes made from all the shaking.
He complained about everything and yet, there was my wife, with a belly full of wire and stitches out paddling him, and, by the end of the trip carrying packs far heavier than the 25 pound clearance the surgeon gave her. The packs he was supposed to carry. He carried the paddles and life jackets over the portages. We lived communally yet he smuggled in a horde of candy bars, thinking we wouldn't notice. He hid the stuff in a pack in the sleeping tent. In bear country. About halfway through trip he got pillaged... by a ground squirrel who chewed through my tent to chew through his pack and scattered Snickers wrappers all over the camp.... He cried.
In short he was a greenhorned, PITA, but at least I got a good story to tell. You'uns be good and maybe I tell more.
fish on,
rivereddy
