Still in a Daze at the Cottage

by Ross, James 1744-1827;

  “Can’t you see I’m busy,” she says.

  Dejected, I wander off in search of my youngest daughter. I find her by swim rock with her grandma, weaving birch and cedar bark into elaborate napkin holders. I watch for a time as they soak the bark in the lake and then tear it into thin strips, before weaving it in tight patterns.

  “Do you like the bracelet I made?” my daughter asks, holding her arm towards me.

  “Beautiful,” I respond. “Hey, if you’re almost done, do you want to play a game of crib in the cottage?”

  “Nah,” she says. “Grandma and I want to get these napkin holders done before supper. Grandma, what’s a napkin holder anyway?” I hear her asking, as I head back to the dock.

  Along the way I pass my two dogs staring up a big maple. They have been gawking up the same tree all day, something I put down to yesterday’s rum. I clap my hands and try to get them to chase me. I fancy a little game of hide and seek, so I race around the cabin and duck behind the wood shed. The huskies never pass up a good running game. After waiting for what seems like an eternity for them to come loping around the cottage, I peek out and see them still looking up the tree. They, too, seem to have their own little cottage hobby, perhaps wanting to pin a certain chipmunk to a corkboard.

  Oh well, nobody wants to play with me today. I decide to occupy myself with the only logical hobby left for me. I head down to the boathouse where our fishing gear is stored.

  A short time later, all the hobbyists, including the hungover dogs, stop what they are doing to stare, horrified to see me chasing around a colourful butterfly with my fish net.

  Who Stole My Balls?

  I have some good news, and I have some bad news.

  The good news: My wife has finally given up on me ever becoming a cottage handyman. I’m no longer expected to spend an afternoon in the workshop trying to fashion some gimmicky cottage craft. No longer do I fear when the latest copy of Cottage Life gets jammed in my mailbox and I have to clip out the puttering and workshop pages before my wife gets hold of the magazine. I no longer hold a deep personal contempt for the master of cottage handiwork who writes the how-to articles for the said magazine. After all, how many cute little projects and crafts can you put together at the cottage before the place starts looking a little busy?

  The bad news: I was out golfing with the guys the other evening at one of cottage country’s beautiful courses. I had gone through my usual ridiculous stretching routine, had windmilled my driver around in a pretence of practising, and had done my best to disturb my opponents as they teed off on the first hole. Then, as I reached into my golf bag, I was shocked to discover that I was ball-less. How could that be? Just last week I had made a major investment in Nassau One, high tech golf balls guaranteed to fly on their own, farther and faster and somewhat straighter than the space shuttle. My golf bag was empty. The other members of the foursome chipped in, donating glowing orange bank-sponsored balls that flew crooked or cracked range balls that didn’t fly at all. I played distracted; my own special golf balls had gone AWOL.

  The real bad news: My wife had decided that it was she, and not me, who was the true handyperson at our cottage. She had started watching the “Workshop” segment on Cottage Life television, and then she would disappear for hours on end into our garage. Late into the night I would hear sawing, drilling, and hammering. She would play with all of my power tools. Not that I put them to much use, but now I felt totally inadequate. It did explain the whereabouts of my missing balls, however.

  Showing up at the cottage were flower boxes, side tables for the gazebo, chests for storage, and a new outdoor game for the family called Ladder Ball.

  Bocce ball, washer-toss, lawn darts, horseshoes, and croquet have all had their time in the limelight as traditional cottage favourites. Now there was a new fad. My wife had learned from the aforementioned cottage handyman guru how to build the game: a self-standing wooden three-rung ladder and six dangerous bolos — certainly more dangerous than the long-banned lawn darts. The bolos were essentially strings with two golf balls attached — my golf balls. Players took alternating turns tossing the bolos at the ladder with the objective of having them wrap themselves around a rung for points. It was a little like playing horseshoes without the heavy equine footwear, or the steel poles sticking perilously from the ground.

  As I was still mad about having my space-age golf balls absconded, I decided to teach my darling spouse a lesson, so challenged her to a game. I had been watching our kids toss the bolos, and figured it was simple enough. In early play, it became quickly apparent that I possessed certain talents that nobody else had. First, my balls were always getting tangled, which hindered my play. Second, my flying bolos would often ring around the ladder dowels and come sailing back towards me like a boomerang. Since my opponent refused to allow me my rightful five points for ringing my own neck, I went down to defeat.

  Thanks to my wife, the cottage handyperson, we have a new game to enjoy at the lake, and when the kids bore of the play, they might put the bolos to a more traditional use. Bolos were once used by Spanish gauchos to capture running cattle, by throwing them at the beast and entangling their legs. I notice that whenever I play the dangerous game of Ladder Balls, especially when the bolos come whirling back in my direction, my son is watching intently. I know what he is thinking. He has discovered a new technique to use against his sisters during a fun game of manhunt. This takes me back to my younger days when I had used the similarly hazardous lawn darts to pin down my sister — until wise parents everywhere lobbied to have that game banned.

  Upside Down on the River Noire

  Perhaps it should have been our first clue. “I had to rescue four grown men last week,” the outfitter stated matter-of-factly. “The water was just too high for them.” He paused, and looked us up and down, four middle-aged dads with their thirteen-year-old sons. We had checked in at the Auberge de la Riviere Noire and had hired John the outfitter to shuttle us, our four canoes, and our gear five hours upriver to the put-in. He seemed to be overly insistent that we settle up front.

  While John’s colourful anecdote of the dramatic rescue only a few days before unsettles a couple members of our group, it doesn’t seem to faze our fearless leader, Pat Morris, who is either a supreme optimist or has a death wish. I mean, I think Pat would canoe down the Niagara River picking up speed towards the falls, stand up in the stern to give the rushing torrent a quick read, and then pronounce calmly, “It looks like there is a nice downward ‘V’ centre-right — get over the lip, then a quick backward ferry in mid-chute, and I think we’ll be all right.” Pat had planned and organized our trip, and felt us all capable, so who were we to argue.

  The River Noire carries the reputation as a wild ride, especially in high water. It is a river where, as the renowned Canadian canoeist and author Hap Wilson noted, “You’ll find a long set of fun ‘n games.” We were tackling the torrent in mid-May, and facing us were rapids called “The Wall,” “Canyon Staircase,” “Fifty-Fifty,” “Targie,” “Rapides de l’Islet,” and “Mountain Chutes.” It seemed the perfect paddle for four young teenage boys, always intent on excitement, and their four dads who, themselves, refuse to grow up.

  The Noire, named for its dark colour, is a beautiful stretch of water, from its headwaters below La Verendrye south to its final destination, where it dumps into the Ottawa River near Pembroke. It flows through Quebec’s portion of the Canadian Shield, and so is marked by sections of rocky rapids alternating with meandering stretches through sand valleys. It is more obscure and far less travelled than other rivers in the area, including its more famous sister river, the Dumoine, but boasts the greatest length of runnable whitewater, the shortest total distance that must be portaged, the best opportunity for viewing wildlife, and the least chance of seeing other paddlers. The river, in fact, is quite undeveloped, except where a few cottages dot the shore along the last thirty-kilometre run to the Ottawa River.

  All these factors led our sm
all group to choose it for our annual spring father-and-son adventure, a ritual we had been carrying out for several years now. Besides our confident leader, our group included Backwards Joe Goodwin, who seems prone to tackle rapids stern first, and Paul Gabourie, someone who has earned the moniker Nemo. Paul’s nickname was bestowed upon him for his “outside the box” thinking that canoes should be submerged rather that floating atop the water. Parts of our River Noire trip would become known as “Finding Nemo” or “Finding Nemo’s Canoe and Paddles.”

  Truly, the first two days of our five-day trip were warm, sunny, and fun. We played in the chutes, holes, and high-water haystacks, avoided the walls and ledges and most of the scattered boulders, and got blasted by a few icy sheets of water. We were thankful that we had all purchased light-weight wetsuits, and our experience meant that we were well-geared with waterproof packs and food barrels. The forced portages around falls and jagged ledges were mostly short, and for those portages of moderate length I was pleased that, as I was losing my strength with age, my young son was getting stronger — the great balance in the circle of life. Perhaps, on some trip soon, he will carry the canoe and heavy pack and I can carry the paddles.

  Our nights were spent camped out on the rocky ledges that hedge the upper Noire, setting our tents on pine needles and forest moss beds. We cooked supper over a riverside bonfire while looking up into a clear, starry night. The energy and excitement of the day’s paddle and the soothing sound of the rushing river had us crawling into our bedrolls early.

  Mountain Chutes loomed as our first major obstacle, one we reached at the end of the second day. We set camp at a picturesque site that marked the beginning of the thousand-metre portage along a stretch of rapids above the roaring falls. As canoeists, we have often called a portage “the portage from hell.” You know, when we struggle over the roots and rocks of a particularly arduous trail with a canoe held aloft over our heads while blackflies or mosquitoes buzz around our ears because they know, instinctively, that our hands are not free to smack them. We roll the canoe down to the ground or slip off our heavy pack at the end and exclaim, “Well, that was the portage from hell.”

  What we have here at the Mountain Chutes isn’t just a nickname we have given to a particularly strenuous carry, “Portage from Hell” is the official name given on the map. In fact, Hap Wilson, in his trip notes on the Noire published in Rivers of the Upper Ottawa Valley, describes the portage this way: “It is the longest and most ridiculous of portage trails.” What it is, really, is a one-and-a-half-kilometre hike over a mountain, with a steep slope down to the put-in that one needs to rappel with a rope. This is hard enough without adding an eighty-pound pack on your back and gravity pulling you down towards the turbulent river and rocks below.

  Wilson adds in his trip notes, “For the more daring, or should I say adept paddlers, this long portage can be whittled down to a single 200-metre carry around the sucking vortex of the chutes.” “Employ EXTREME CAUTION,” he adds in capital letters, “especially during high water conditions, because the entrance to the take out is directly in the down-current at the head of the falls.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” exclaimed Pat. We had gained confidence by the hour and by the rapid, and were happy to follow our leader down any raging torrent he felt we could conquer. We woke early and sent our four young and energetic sons over the hellish portage with their heavy packs, while we adept — or daring — fathers set off down the chutes to shorten the length of our canoe carry.

  We bumped down the upper rapids and approached our own portage pull-out with caution, hugging river left, not wanting to miss it and tumble over the twenty-foot falls. With this brief run, we managed to shorten our carry, but we found that the two-hundred-metre portage was more suitable for mountain goats. We wrestled our canoes straight up over rocky ledges and across crevasses. Then we had to tie off our canoes and rope them down a rock precipice to a small put-in. Here, with room for only one canoe at a time, we took turns launching ourselves out into the raging chute below the falls.

  Pat headed down first to where the kids waited at the put-in at the end of their carry. Nemo left next. The boys saw his canoe and paddles go by first, and then the legend himself. He got his leg stuck between two rocks, a dangerous predicament, but managed to roll himself over a boulder and clamour up on shore, much to the merriment of the on-looking youngsters. Backwards Joe went by next, watching where he had been, and then I brought up the rear, unaware of any misadventures, simply enjoying the ride down the swiftly flowing current of boulder alley.

  We caught up to Nemo’s abandoned vessel seven hundred metres past our intended pull-out, and then had to line our canoes back upstream, struggling against the ferocious current. I am not sure that these were the “fun and games” that Wilson was referring to in his river notes, but nobody was hurt, and new stories were there for the telling. We gathered up the packs and kids and set off again.

  We paddled for the next two days in a steady rain, picking up missing paddles as we went. Neither the rain nor the misadventure managed to dampen our spirits and, besides, there were more exhilarating rapids to run. While the campsites on the upper part of the river tend to be rock, toward the lower river the sites and lunch spots were more spacious sandy beach havens. There was also more wildlife to be seen along the slower stretches: moose, deer, beaver, otters, herons, kingfishers, and mergansers.

  We spent one last rainy river night on a grassy knoll above the water, and then set off in brilliant sunshine for the run home. The final day featured an exhilarating fourteen-kilometre roll down the Boulder Raceway, fun C1–2 rapids that stretched all the way back to the Black River Inn.

  What we had discovered in the River Noire was an idyllic canoe and camping river, with an almost creek-like charm. The fast current, tight turns, and numerous whitewater runs offered us excellent playtime, though in turn it might have spoiled our boys and blinded them to the joys of flatwater paddling. The more technical rapids tended towards pool and drop, offering a good challenge. The peaceful, lazy paddles between rapids helped balance exhilaration with quiet serenity, while the ever-changing landscape that attracts one to river tripping alternated between Canadian Shield rock and sand.

  As for spills and mishaps, we only had the one. In fact, outfitter John seemed both surprised and relieved to see us as we pulled up on a gravel bar below his inn. Adventure and some hardship leads to memorable trips. You feel like you’ve accomplished something. We will have a few more tales to tell around the evening bonfire. “Remember Nemo, the man who wanted to be a trout?” My son and I managed to stay upright. All of the boys gained valuable respect for a river and the power of water, and honed the skills necessary to tackle those obstacles. I had a new tale to write, and it’s always better to be the writer of the story than its subject.

  The Ninja Warrior

  He is like a chameleon, fully suited in a black, skin-tight nylon one-piece bodysuit, hugging a balsam tree and blending in with its mottled bark. As I pass towards the boathouse bunkie carrying a coffee for my wife, I catch only a peripheral glimpse of this obscure creature leaping towards me. I jump with a start and spill the hot coffee down my front as my brain tries to assimilate the situation. (Crazed mother robin? No, too big and no beak. Dreaded pine marten? No, no sharp white teeth. Cat Woman? If only....)

  The phantom attacker thwacks me on the back with his boffer, a foam-covered wooden sword, and then, with four bounding, chicken- legged strides, he disappears silently into the shadows. I shake my fist in his direction, but have to chuckle at the absurdity of his appearance. The Ninja Warrior strikes again!

  You’re aware of the “Green Men?” Those two Vancouver Canucks fans who dress in the tight green suits and harass opposition hockey players who are banished to the penalty box. They’re generally witty and funny, and their antics often even amuse those they are teasing. They wear full bodysuits of the kind that I’m familiar with when shooting movies, the type that appear to make people
disappear when in front of a green screen.

  Well, the antics of the Green Men caught the fancy of my thirteen-year-old son, who went online to research and eventually order what is called a morph suit. His would be in black, however, as he reasoned that, not only could he head over to the local arena in winter to harass those tossed into the sin-bin, but he would also be able to don the sinister dark apparel at the cottage and skulk invisibly around the shadowy forest, perfect for a game of manhunt or murder with his siblings and cousins. Ideal, too, for scaring the wits out of all of us.

  You knew it whenever the invisible warrior struck. There would be a scream from one of his sisters. Then their voices would trail after him as he made his escape into the underbrush, “You’re such an IDIOT!”

  You just never knew when he would show up. He’d jump down from a tree branch as you walked the forest trail, suddenly hang down from the porch roof as you sat quietly enjoying a good book, or lurch from the unlit corners of the cottage or bunkie, always testing the heart and voice of his victims.

  “You should get one of these, Dad,” he says. I imagine myself in this tight bodysuit — men wearing tights. While he cuts a somewhat humorous lean and strapping figure, what I picture in myself is a grotesque and laughable sight.

  “No, son, my ninja days are behind me I think.”

  “You’re never too old for fun,” he philosophizes, before vanishing into the thick trees as if he had only really been an apparition.

  Never too old — he’s got a point. We are amazed most of the year with the level of maturity that our son has reached, the discipline of hockey and school sees him changing from a boy to a fine young man. We marvel with pride at the transformation. Now, here at the cottage, he becomes a kid once again. This place allows us to act somewhat immaturely. I know I take part in games and pranks and childish antics that I would never consider doing back home. I guess that is why we love the place; it is our great escape!