The other day I read John McPhee's The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975) and parts reminded me of the one canoe trip I took in Maine when I was fifteen, a trip that's usually a blip on the memory timeline. Often books with grand outdoor adventures make me feel less-than for not doing that sort of thing all the time. This time I felt wistful, yet also proud of this thing I'd accomplished many years ago. Even if our windy day wasn't as severe as theirs, it was a big challenge for the members of my Girl Scout troop, and having met it, we added another layer resilience to our cores.
At first place names were the biggest memory trigger. I had it in my head that Moosehead Lake is where we paddled. And then McPhee mentions in passing a leech on someone's leg -- and that struck a deep chord. I'm not much of a freshwater person even now; to that fifteen year old, leeches were new and viscerally alarming.
Reading, I could picture a souvenir map I bought of the region. I didn't think I had it anymore, though, but I couldn't really bring to mind any snapshots of the trip, either. Or then again -- didn't I dig up a picture to post for Mary Sam, maybe when we turned 50? Where are they? McPhee of course is keeping notes for himself on their trip. A couple of the men he paddled with knew their Thoreau and his journalistic The Maine Woods (1864) and while they have a copy, they also can conjure excerpts from memory. Didn't we have BSA-issued booklets, journals for our canoe trip? Gosh, if I had that, where would it be?
As it is for anyone on a packed-out trip, food is a major theme. McPhee notes that the canoe-builder and defacto leader (despite, it turns out, having perhaps the least backwoods or tripping experience) insisted they each pack their own. McPhee and his friend have a variety of things, and McPhee waxes on about Mountain House freeze dried foods. These absolutely were about the major brand in play ten years later when I started backpacking with my Girl Scout troop. I've certainly eaten the meals they did. The canoe-builder poo-poos McPhee's reflector oven. The writer brings it anyway and they all relish the things he bakes for them. Probably, we Girl Scouts used one on my Maine trip; certainly our troops and summer camp units messed around with reflector ovens. I never became anything like expert with them and the sight of one still makes me roll my eyes.
While he focus of McPhee's narrative is the crafting of the canoes and what it's like to paddle one and care for it, we get his usual digressions into interesting natural history and character study, too. The canoe-builder comes across as a talented craftsman and a bit of a savant, but a terrible leader. While he takes charge and his companions defer to him almost always, we eventually learn that he's been on scant few long trips before this and has no idea which techniques and gear are truly useful. Not only does McPhee's reflector oven redeem itself, the flashlight he was told to leave behind is a clear necessity, too. McPhee teaches everyone (excepting the friend he brought) pray and draw strokes and other crucial paddling skills. Skills I've had since I was twelve or thirteen. Idle canoeing in the Cove at camp and preparing for the Maine trip taught me that. Everything about being in Girl Scout troops taught me leadership and consensus-building.
I found the scrapbook from my trip in the third place I looked. While I certainly would have guessed it was made by Hallmark -- Dad's mom work in an office supply-Hallmark store and kept us well supplied -- the robin on the cover was a surprise. The Instamatic photos must have been cheaply developed; they are faded and yellow-brown. The journal existed and was right there to remind me that it rained lots; that we hit about 160 miles (!); that we had not only the guide provided by the Boy Scout high adventure camp that ran the trips, but also miscellaneous adults I did not particularly remember. Perhaps I didn't have great leadership modeled to me if I don't remember them? Or is that an indicator that they were good and melted into the background? In the official photo of the bus-load that travelled from Richmond were the faces of people I remembered and people I'd forgotten til just that moment.
