by Adam Shoalts
Fortunately, a pool lay just beyond the dry stretch, only a hundred metres away. Beyond that, the river remained deep enough to either paddle or wade. In a few more hours I had navigated through a calm stretch that resembled a small lake, and then squeezed through another narrow gap no wider than my canoe that was choked with a rock-strewn rapid. Beyond this rapid the river transformed again—it now flowed into one of the prettiest lakes I had ever seen: clear blue water studded with spruce- and cedar-covered islands with yellow sand beaches. The islands were so picturesque that they seemed almost surreal—compared with the muskeg and swamp, they were an enchanted paradise. I made camp on a beach on one of the islands, the moon rising above me in the twilight. Taking it all in, it felt as if I had stepped into the frame of a Group of Seven landscape painting and left the nightmarish swamps far behind.
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK me, “Aren’t you afraid, going out into the wilderness all alone? Don’t you worry about something bad happening?” There are no easy answers to such questions. As William “Doc” Forgey, the guru of wilderness first aid and a veteran of many canoe journeys, once explained of his own experiences:
Somehow on long trips, the uncertainty of the next day’s travel, the food supply, the amount of time, all seem to gnaw at me…. Perhaps I’m not cut out for wilderness travel. I asked Sigurd Olson one day about this. He laughed and said he’d put the same question past Camsell at the Explorer’s Club one day. Camsell replied that he’d spent most of his adult life exploring the bush and had been scared during nine-tenths of it.
That would be the Charles Camsell, founder of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a man born and raised in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories. If a man like that was afraid nine-tenths of the time, there surely could be no shame in admitting to feeling fear. On the other hand, William Hunt, better known as “The Great Farini,” an explorer of Africa and a daredevil tightrope walker, said of his many adventures, “I have never known fear.” With others, such a claim might ring hollow—but with Farini, few could doubt it. A farm boy from the backwoods of Upper Canada, in 1860 Farini walked across Niagara Falls on an amateurishly rigged tightrope with no safety line while performing all sorts of stunts in the middle of the rope. In 1885, bored with life, he plunged into the wilds of southern Africa to explore the Orange River, scrambling and climbing over sheer cliff faces and around waterfalls with the same serene indifference he exhibited above the torrent of Niagara. If Farini had merely been an adventurer, his fearlessness could perhaps be explained away as the exuberance of a rash man with more brawn than brain—but Farini was no fool. Fluent in seven languages, he presented his expedition findings to both the Royal Geographical Society and the German Geographical Society, addressing the latter in fine German. He patented several successful inventions, authored books on such esoteric topics as techniques for growing geraniums, and despite his death-defying exploits, lived to the ripe old age of ninety.
As for myself, I am too in love with adventure and the allure of the unknown to let fear stand in my way. So, while I certainly have felt fear in the wilderness, most of the time, I ignore it. Or when I can’t ignore it, I embrace it. Fear just adds to the adventure. At least, that is the sort of thing I tell myself when I’m in a tense situation—such as when a bear is outside the tent, I’m paddling a raging rapid, or I’m caught out in the open in a lightning storm. But on the Again River, things were slightly different—I was so possessed by a mixture of curiosity, ambition, and excitement that little room was left for fear.
When the next morning dawned and I awoke on the island’s sandy shore, it was not with any sense of foreboding about what might await me downriver. After a breakfast of oatmeal, I packed up my camp and set off into the lake, heading for the distant shore. I paddled hard into a stiff headwind, riding over sizable waves and scanning the dark woods with my binoculars in search of the river’s outlet from the lake. At first nothing was visible—the shore appeared to be one unbroken wall of grim black spruce. This was puzzling—surely the river had to flow out somewhere. It took half-an-hour to paddle across the lake, battling the wind. Only then did I discover that the river’s outlet was hidden from view behind high weeds that shot up from the water. As I nudged the canoe into the reeds, an arctic tern soared above me—the first tidings of the salt water that lay to the north on stormy James Bay. I took a last glance back at the lake as the tern glided away. This was the final lake on my journey—from here, the Again River flows uninterrupted through the Lowlands, to where it eventually joins the much larger Harricanaw River, which in turn drains into James Bay. My hands were cut and scraped from the portages, my body was riddled with blackfly bites, a rash had developed on my feet from the constant wetness, and that morning the handle had broken off my water purifier, rendering the device useless. But, staring ahead at the unexplored river that awaited me, a smile lit up my face, and not for anything in the world would I have wanted to be doing anything else.
I pulled my paddle through the water, drawing the canoe into the current of the river, eager to see what lay beyond the next bend. There was, it turned out, a nearly endless stretch of rocky rapids. I ran as many as I dared, but more often than not I had to climb out of my canoe, plunge into the water, and guide the boat forward with rope to get around jagged rocks. Sometimes I would be in ankle-deep water, only to take another step and find myself waist-deep in a hidden pool. In places, I had to lift the canoe over serrated rocks, and my hiking boots would sometimes become wedged in crevices concealed beneath the dark water. By the afternoon the sun had disappeared behind rain clouds, which didn’t trouble me much, as rain would raise water levels and help spare my canoe from the rocks that lined the river bottom. Hopefully, it would also put out any nearby forest fires.
The river was strikingly different from the Little Owl River I had explored the year before, or even the Kattawagami. It had a more southern character, with a greater variety of trees and higher banks. At places the landscape resembled Algonquin, with granite rock outcrops along the shore covered in caribou lichens and blueberries, as well as juniper bushes and wild rose. The tall jack pines that overlooked the river reminded me of one of Tom Thomson’s paintings. In more tranquil stretches, beavers swam in the river and noisily slapped their tails on the surface of the water as I passed, a warning to their friends that a strange intruder was drawing near.
That night I camped on a slab of granite overlooking the river beside a large rapid. The blackflies were atrocious until I got a fire going to keep them away. Beyond the rock outcrop, the forest was thick with spruces, their spindly branches interlocking to form a barrier that precluded hiking inland. In the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of a violent thunderstorm, which made me rather uneasy. I was surrounded by tall trees, and there was not much I could do to minimize the risk of a lightning strike. I simply had to hope my luck would hold—it was, after all, the thirtieth or fortieth thunderstorm I had endured in a tent.
IT WAS A cold, miserable day with steady rain. Clad in an old army rain jacket and wearing a helmet, I spent all morning running whitewater rapids and occasionally wading through dark, swirling water. Grey boulders the size of small cars loomed out of the river, which I weaved around in the canoe. The river was narrow most of the time, less than forty metres wide, and while it included the occasional deep stretch, most of it remained shallow. Small hills and, in a few places, granite cliffs enclosed its course. I shivered as I paddled along, chilled from frequently wading in the water and pulling the canoe to avoid damaging it on the rocks. Given how shallow the river was, it appeared that I wouldn’t encounter any terribly dangerous whitewater.
Ahead, the river curved sharply around a narrow bend. I edged along the left bank, trying to see what lay beyond the bend—more small rapids, from the look and sound of things. Cold and tired, I paddled into the bend. Suddenly the current became extremely swift—propelling the canoe into a frothing set of rapids, beyond which seemed to be a larger drop. It was too late
to try to backpaddle, and I couldn’t grab hold of anything on the shore of slippery granite rocks. I plunged through the first set of rapids unscathed—but now I found myself hurtling toward the larger drop, which looked like a big, steep rapid. I was on my knees in the canoe, ready for whitewater, my muscles tense and my paddle angled like a rudder to steer the canoe.
An ominous, almost deafening, roar from downriver struck fear in my heart. Something big was beyond that first drop, and I was racing toward it. In a flash, I plunged over the first chute, managing to keep the canoe upright as the bow vanished beneath the furious waves and the vessel filled with water, but directly ahead the river disappeared entirely.
A waterfall.
In an instant the flooded canoe and I were flung over the fall. In the drop, the vessel pivoted sideways and dumped me into a frothing cauldron of wild water, sucking me down under. I was tumbled and pulled in all directions, as if I were trapped inside a washing machine. The crushing force of the falling water held me under, despite my lifejacket, for what felt like an eternity. I was running out of oxygen—but at last my head broke the waves and I breathed in a life-giving gulp of air while I was swept along downriver in thunderous rapids.
Out of the corner of my left eye I caught a glimpse of the canoe, lying overturned in an eddy, apparently destroyed. But I had no time to worry about that or digest what had just happened. Farther downriver my gear—the backpack and plastic barrel—were being swept away through more rock-studded rapids. Gasping for air and weighed down by my drenched clothing and boots, I swam to shore as quickly as I could. I had to recover as much of my gear as possible. Once on the slippery rocks, I immediately dashed along the shoreline, leaping precariously from wet boulder to wet boulder, racing downriver in an attempt to salvage what I could.
My waterlogged backpack snagged on some rocks in the middle of a rapid; I threw myself back into the river to grab it as fast as possible. It seemed to weigh a ton, but I pulled it out and tossed it onshore before running after the barrel, which was still being borne downriver. A desperate dash back into the swift water brought me to it; I quickly scooped it up and got back onshore. I managed to recover my paddles too. Then, dreading what I might find, and panting heavily, I turned around and sprinted back upriver to fetch my canoe.
My heart sank when I saw it—it was floating in an eddy upside down, the hull crushed in. I scrambled over some boulders down to the river’s edge, waded into the water, reached out and grabbed hold of the overturned canoe, and hauled it onshore. I flipped it over to inspect the damage. The oak gunwales were shattered, the front seat was broken, a few bolts had popped off from the side leaving gaping holes, the bow was damaged, and the hull was pressed in and misshapen, but not punctured. My fishing rod, a pair of moccasins that were sitting in the canoe, and my hat—the old fedora I had worn for years—were gone, swallowed up by the river, never to be seen again. Fortunately, when I went over the waterfall, I had been wearing my helmet and, unlike the canoe, I had emerged without injury—other than my wounded confidence.
Once I had a chance to take a good look at the waterfall, I saw that it consisted of an upper and lower drop squeezed in a narrows between granite rocks. The upper drop, where I had managed to keep the canoe upright, was only about a metre and a half high, but the second drop was about six metres, and in that fall my already flooded canoe and I had toppled over sideways. The river narrowed at the waterfall to only seven metres wide, which concentrated all the water into one raging, seething torrent and created a deep, frothing pool at the bottom.
Despite this unexpected mishap, I wasn’t going to abandon the exploration of the river. To quit—to accept defeat, to admit the river had beaten me—was out of the question. I would paddle a raft of logs all the way to the ocean if I had to. But determined as I was to continue, the shock of being swept over an unknown waterfall did not leave me unfazed. I had to face the reality of the situation—if my head had been smashed on a rock, my leg wedged underwater in a crevice, or my body pinned under the flooded canoe, it would have been game over. Realizing how close I had come to disaster, I made two vows as I stood shivering on the riverbank beside the roar of the waterfall. First, I vowed that if I survived this journey, never again would I go alone on an expedition into unexplored territory. It was just too risky. Second, I vowed that once I had the canoe repaired, I would proceed downriver with extreme caution, no matter the delays this would cause. I would stop to carefully scout all whitewater and restrain myself from attempting to paddle any large rapids. These vows reassured me and soothed my anxiety about the days ahead. As it happened, I would eventually break both vows, but I didn’t know it at the time.
Cold, wet, and shaken, I set about to repair the canoe. I could do little about the shattered gunwales or the broken seat, but I hammered and kicked the hull more or less back into shape and used duct tape to patch the holes in the side where the bolts had been. The canoe wasn’t a pretty sight, but it seemed serviceable enough. The repair work finished, I figured it was best not to dwell too much on what just happened, so I repacked the canoe and resumed paddling downriver—alert for more surprises.
Downriver from the waterfall, a forest fire had charred the area, transforming once-lush woods into a desolate wasteland of barren rock hills that overlooked the waterway, a scene made even bleaker by dark skies and rain. While the river had a few calm stretches, myriad whitewater rapids remained the order of the day. At one point, a narrow canyon enclosed the river, which was churned into a fury of impassable rapids that I didn’t dare try to paddle in the battered canoe. Protruding from the middle of this seething cataract was a small rock island, waves crashing loudly against it. I paddled to the shore just above the canyon’s entrance, resigned to yet another arduous portage. The route overland was blocked by charred deadfall, which I had to scramble over with my gear and the canoe.
Within a few hours of being swept over the waterfall, my patience for wading through cold, rushing water and portaging around chest-high deadfall was exhausted, and in spite of my vow, I took to paddling larger rapids again. This may have been risky, but without risks an explorer is unlikely to make any progress. Fortunately, the damaged canoe didn’t leak and I paddled the rapids without much trouble.
After a last spate of rapids, the river’s fierce current slackened and I entered a wide, calm stretch that allowed me to relax for the first time in hours. Half-hidden in some tall alder bushes onshore was a young moose. It was reaching down toward the water’s edge with its long neck to eat some shrubs. The moose looked at me for a few minutes as I photographed it while drifting in the canoe, but it seemed more interested in its leafy food than me.
The tranquil stretch of river didn’t last long. Shortly after passing the moose, I thought I could hear a distant roar. Was it the wind? I cocked my head to the side and listened as I continued to drift downriver—it was not the wind. There was no mistaking the noise now—it was the sound of crashing water; a terrifying roar that chilled me to the marrow after my last encounter with an unexpected waterfall. When I rounded the next bend, I looked ahead and saw the river disappear over a vertical drop.
This time, no rapids concealed the waterfall, and I paddled as close as I dared before putting into shore and climbing out to inspect what awaited me. The ancient forest here had escaped the path of the forest fire, and I was back in a green world of towering spruce and tamaracks, swaying and creaking above me in the wind. After climbing onto the bank, I tied my canoe to a nearby spruce, then set off to investigate the waterfall. The thickness of the woods along the riverbank forced me to hike inland up a blueberry-covered hill, until I found an opening in the brush where I could push through to glimpse the waterfall.
It was a spectacular sight—a roaring, mist-shrouded cascade some eight or nine metres high that hurled furious waves of destruction against boulders and rocks. I doubted I could have survived a plunge over this violent fall. I stood there, in the rain, almost spellbound—mesmerized by the sight of
a nameless waterfall that in all likelihood no other living person had ever seen.
When the government cartographers had created their maps of the Again River in the 1960s, they hadn’t marked any waterfalls on its course. That was because they had neither canoed the river nor explored it on the ground. Those imperfect maps had been created on the basis of grainy black-and-white aerial photographs, snapped high above this vast wilderness, in order to make a rudimentary survey back in the 1950s and 1960s. Evidently, the aerial photographs had been too limited to reveal the river’s waterfalls. Google Earth’s low-resolution satellite images—which unlike better-known locations, were all that existed for this obscure and forgotten piece of geography—were likewise too indistinct and blurry to distinguish waterfalls. Here they had remained, hidden away unknown to the outside world. Back in 2008, when I first began my study of the river, I had suspected that it might contain some waterfalls, and now I took pleasure in finding this to be true—even if I had found out the hard way.
Arresting as the sight of a previously undiscovered waterfall was, it meant another difficult portage through thick woods to safely transport the damaged canoe and my gear to the other side. To reach the water beneath the fall, I had to scramble down a steep embankment and over wet, slippery boulders with the canoe. This portage was made even more difficult by my wet boots and clothing.
After completing the portage, I decided to press on downriver, navigating more rapids before stopping for the night. Unfortunately, there was virtually nowhere I could pitch my tent—the whole area was a criss-crossed pile of fallen trees, felled by a fire that had cleared the forest as far as I could see. I had to settle for sleeping on a comfortless rock outcrop beneath a few ghostly cedars.
THE AGAIN RIVER had hidden its secrets well. As it turned out, more waterfalls were waiting to be discovered. But reaching them was no easy matter. The river flowed through a kaleidoscope of different rapids of all sizes and descriptions—cascades, smooth ledges, abrupt drop-offs, foaming cataracts, rocky rapids, staircaselike steps, and impassable channels. I portaged around the rapids that couldn’t be paddled safely, snacking as I did so on the wild berries that flourished in the direct sunlight—a result of the fire that had levelled most of the surrounding trees. At one place, the river forked around an island with steep rock faces—on one side was a cascade waterfall splashing over a sloping granite crag and on the other was a narrow channel of ferocious whitewater. Neither side could be navigated in the canoe, so I gingerly paddled above the falls, putting to shore at the rocky island, where I would have to scale the steep granite sides and hoist my canoe up and over them.
