accomplishment. It felt as if half the point of the expeditionâexploring the area fully from the groundâwould be unfulfilled by doing things in this manner. Still, if this was the only way Wes could join me, Iâd consider it. Since a helicopter was beyond my financial resources, I made inquiries with bush pilots about taking us, our gear, and our canoe to one of the lakes in the upper part of the Again Riverâs watershed. The response wasnât encouraging.
The chief bush pilot in Cochrane, who made his living flying hunters and fishermen to remote wilderness lakes, had never heard of the Again River and wasnât familiar with any of the lakes in its watershed. By now, I was familiar with this response. The bush pilot was uncomfortable flying to a lake he didnât knowâit might after all prove too shallow or rocky to land onâand suggested that we fly to one of the lakes he did know and content ourselves with paddling some other river. As far as our purposes were concerned, he proved unhelpfulâhe wouldnât fly us where we wanted to go, so that option was quickly dropped. There was no way thenâgiven Wesâ time constraintsâto explore the Again that summer. Since I had come to regard the Again as the special shared ambition of Wes and me, it didnât seem right to explore it without him. With much regret, I resigned myself to waiting another year to explore it.
Wes and I had to content ourselves with some minor adventures and exploring of a different sortâsuch as searches on the wooded hillsides of our rural countryside for giant puffballs, an oversized mushroom that resembles a volleyball (or as I like tosay, a dinosaur egg), which we collected and ate. But the failure to explore the Again left me restless and more eager than ever to hurl myself into new challenges. Perhaps I was compensating for failure, but, regardless, I needed more adventures, more questsâto live a more satisfying existence. That autumn, I worked on my survival skills in the northern woods. I also made arrangements to spend the winter in Ottawa writing articles and doing research for Canadian Geographic magazine and the spring in the Amazon rainforest on a scientific expedition. These new challenges, which broadened my horizons, actually helped dissipate my interest in the Again. I half told myself to forget about that obscure river and to turn my attention elsewhere. The Amazon had long exercised a spell over meârare is the explorer who isnât interested in exploring its exotic, otherworldly jungles, where species unknown to science remain to be discovered and Stone Age tribes still live. I also longed to explore the Arctic and the northern reaches of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the home of earthâs largest land carnivore, Ursus maritimus , the polar bear. The Again, in contrast, was in the southern part of the Lowlands, outside the range of the great white bear. I was eager to undertake bigger expeditions farther afield and convinced myself that the cursed Again had become a sort of millstone that was weighing me down. I told myself that one day I would undoubtedly explore it, but that it could wait for the time being.
That winter, Wes and I were snowshoeing and tracking wolves north of Lake Huron when he suggested that we canoe the Florida Everglades. Such an adventure sounded like a suitable warm-up for the Amazon jungle, so I started making plans for an Everglades canoe trip as soon as we returned from thewilds. But just days before we were to depart, Wes abruptly cancelled. He had decided instead on a trip with his girlfriend to a resort in the Caribbean. I was disappointedâconsidering the time that I had invested in making arrangements for the Evergladesâand began to wonder whether his thirst for adventure was drying up. It certainly seemed like he was becoming domesticated. I shuddered with horror at the thought of such a thing ever happening to me.
ON MY
The chief bush pilot in Cochrane, who made his living flying hunters and fishermen to remote wilderness lakes, had never heard of the Again River and wasnât familiar with any of the lakes in its watershed. By now, I was familiar with this response. The bush pilot was uncomfortable flying to a lake he didnât knowâit might after all prove too shallow or rocky to land onâand suggested that we fly to one of the lakes he did know and content ourselves with paddling some other river. As far as our purposes were concerned, he proved unhelpfulâhe wouldnât fly us where we wanted to go, so that option was quickly dropped. There was no way thenâgiven Wesâ time constraintsâto explore the Again that summer. Since I had come to regard the Again as the special shared ambition of Wes and me, it didnât seem right to explore it without him. With much regret, I resigned myself to waiting another year to explore it.
Wes and I had to content ourselves with some minor adventures and exploring of a different sortâsuch as searches on the wooded hillsides of our rural countryside for giant puffballs, an oversized mushroom that resembles a volleyball (or as I like tosay, a dinosaur egg), which we collected and ate. But the failure to explore the Again left me restless and more eager than ever to hurl myself into new challenges. Perhaps I was compensating for failure, but, regardless, I needed more adventures, more questsâto live a more satisfying existence. That autumn, I worked on my survival skills in the northern woods. I also made arrangements to spend the winter in Ottawa writing articles and doing research for Canadian Geographic magazine and the spring in the Amazon rainforest on a scientific expedition. These new challenges, which broadened my horizons, actually helped dissipate my interest in the Again. I half told myself to forget about that obscure river and to turn my attention elsewhere. The Amazon had long exercised a spell over meârare is the explorer who isnât interested in exploring its exotic, otherworldly jungles, where species unknown to science remain to be discovered and Stone Age tribes still live. I also longed to explore the Arctic and the northern reaches of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the home of earthâs largest land carnivore, Ursus maritimus , the polar bear. The Again, in contrast, was in the southern part of the Lowlands, outside the range of the great white bear. I was eager to undertake bigger expeditions farther afield and convinced myself that the cursed Again had become a sort of millstone that was weighing me down. I told myself that one day I would undoubtedly explore it, but that it could wait for the time being.
That winter, Wes and I were snowshoeing and tracking wolves north of Lake Huron when he suggested that we canoe the Florida Everglades. Such an adventure sounded like a suitable warm-up for the Amazon jungle, so I started making plans for an Everglades canoe trip as soon as we returned from thewilds. But just days before we were to depart, Wes abruptly cancelled. He had decided instead on a trip with his girlfriend to a resort in the Caribbean. I was disappointedâconsidering the time that I had invested in making arrangements for the Evergladesâand began to wonder whether his thirst for adventure was drying up. It certainly seemed like he was becoming domesticated. I shuddered with horror at the thought of such a thing ever happening to me.
ON MY
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