Waterway Rambling
Part 2—Back to the Future
By Farwell Forrest
farwell@paddling.net
A Note to the Reader
The premier article in this series was "Making
Connections." The next will go on-line on February 12th.
January 8, 2002
When the first recreational canoeists took to
the water in the second half of the nineteenth century, wilderness didn't
exist. Yes, it's perfectly true that a lot of North America hadn't been
surveyed and properly mapped then, but this didn't mean that the country that
wasn't on the map wasn't already home to tens of thousands of people. Even the
great expanse of the Canadian North was the center of a bustling commercial
empire, dotted with factories—the headquarters of "factors," or Hudson's
Bay Company agents, and not manufacturing centers, though many were
that, too— and crisscrossed with highways. Most of these highways were
waterways, of course. They followed rivers and traversed lakes, but they were
highways nonetheless, and they spanned the continent, from Montreal on the St.
Lawrence to Fort McPherson on the Mackenzie Delta.
South of the border, in the United States, everyday commodities ranging
from wheat to rum to petticoats moved along rivers and canals in a bewildering
assortment of craft, including barges, scows, flatboats, and river steamers.
America's waterways were the arteries of nineteenth-century enterprise. To be
sure, the railroad and the internal combustion engine changed all this, but
these changes still lay in the future.
Europe was no different. When, in 1865, John ("Rob
Roy") MacGregor first dipped his paddle into the River Thames, he was no
runaway orphan boy intent on lighting out for the Territory. Not at all. He
was the very archetype of the Victorian gentleman: a barrister, a
philanthropist, and a Protestant evangelist. And the sport that he promoted
with tireless, evangelic zeal attracted well-to-do professionals like himself,
along with many Oxbridge undergraduates. Not surprisingly, most of his
converts were men, though a few bold women defied the conventions of the day
and took paddle in hand. Both men and women found MacGregor's "romantic
voyaging" to be a simple and satisfying recreation, and it enjoyed immense
popularity. As described by Arthur Ransome,
You took your canoe…by train or diligence [stage-coach] or farm cart
to the upper waters of your chosen river, and then descended, with current,
tide, and tiny sail to help you, finding lodging for the night ashore.
What could be more straightforward? And MacGregor led the way, exploring
rivers from the mercantile Thames to the holy Jordan in a succession of decked
"canoes" (his boats would be labelled "kayaks" today), then publishing
enthusiastic accounts of his travels immediately on his return to London.
The fad crossed the Atlantic, where it quickly surmounted barriers of class
and income. Popularized by a ne'er-do-well
cobbler who wrote about his Adirondack trips under the pen-name "Nessmuk,"
canoeing struck a sympathetic chord among sportsmen. Before long, canoeists
were as common a sight on America's rivers and lakes as they were on the
waterways of the Continent.
New York's "Northern Wilderness" got more than its share of this traffic.
In truth, however, Nessmuk's Adirondacks weren't much more of a wilderness
than was MacGregor's Europe. The little cobbler was no glutton for punishment.
"We do not go to the…woods…to rough it," he wrote, "we go to smooth
it. We get it rough enough at home." With this in mind, and though he carried
a minimalist camping kit in his tiny, open canoe, Nessmuk preferred to spend
his nights at Adirondack hotels. And he had plenty to choose from. In 1880,
when he made his first trip into New York's mountains, the Adirondacks were in
the middle of a tourist boom. Heavily-travelled wagon roads led from one
settlement to another, guides and outfitters competed for the business of
wealthy "sports," and most larger lakes boasted a resort hotel or two.
Nessmuk couldn't afford to hire a guide. Indeed, so deep was his
poverty—and so great his hurry to return to his beloved
Adirondacks—that he sometimes left his wife and children without the
means to feed themselves. (Perhaps this was why he found it "rough" at
home.) But he soon discovered that he could often talk his way into a hotel or
a guide's camp, whatever the state of his purse. It became even easier after
his articles began appearing in Forest and Stream.
Still, although Nessmuk slept under canvas only when he had to, he preached
the gospel of the open-air life. And his ringing words continued to echo in
the ears of the generations that followed in his wake. For many (if not in
fact most) modern canoeists and kayakers, paddling means camping out in
wilderness parks or making day-trips to favorite whitewater rivers. While
cyclists and cross-country skiers eagerly embraced "inn-to-inn" touring,
paddlers were reluctant to revisit the roots of their sport, let alone explore
its pleasures and possibilities.
I'm not sure why this was, but it remains true even today. On the other
hand, camping out has fewer attractions than it once did for a growing number
of paddlers. Age is one explanation, I suppose. Sleeping on the ground is easy
when you're twenty. Most fifty-year-olds, however, find that the ground has
grown harder over the years. Geology has yet to explain this phenomenon, but
it appears to be nearly universal.
It's not only creaky old fossils who find camping to be a bit of a chore,
of course. People of all ages are disappointed when they discover that popular
campsites—even "wilderness" campsites—frequently bear an unsettling
resemblance to refugee camps or recent battle-fields, particularly in the
summer season. The soil is compacted to concrete, stumps of recently-felled
saplings threaten to slash open the calves of unwary walkers, and little
cairns of human turds (each one crowned with an origami garnish of toilet
paper) march off into the woods in every direction. And then there are the
boom-boxes and barking dogs, not to mention the occasional paint-ball
marksman. The list is as long as it is depressing, and it's a far cry from
Nessmuk's "cool waters and calm shades." After a few such wilderness
experiences, even the most enthusiastic camper may start wondering if it isn't
time to take up stamp-collecting.
Happily, there's an alternative to philately: all we need to do is emulate
the founding fathers of the sport. MacGregor and Nessmuk were very different
men, but they had a lot in common, too. Each sought beauty along
well-travelled waterways. And though they both went prepared to camp out, each
preferred more comfortable accommodation than the average tent site afforded.
It's not as easy today as it once was, of course. Most of the resort hotels
and travelers' inns from the nineteenth century are long gone. And while
commercial traffic is now almost unknown on many rivers and lakes, canoes and
kayaks must compete for space with a growing number of motorized recreational
craft, all of which move a lot faster. Still, there are very few places where
a careful and competent paddler can't venture safely, and rural redevelopment
programs have resulted in more and more reasonably-priced tourist inns and
bed-and-breakfasts opening for business along North American waterways.
Then there's the Internet. Sites like Paddling.net welcome inquiries
from would-be waterway ramblers, as do recreational newsgroups and
mailing-lists. All of these can help you make connections. If you're
interested in a particular river or lake, chances are good that you'll find
someone on the Web with exactly the local knowledge you need. And who knows?
You might even be invited to stay the night when your route brings you into
town. So whether your journey takes you from friend to friend or inn to inn,
canoeing's nineteenth-century pioneers have shown all of us the way back to
the future—with just a little help from twenty-first-century technology.
Now it's up to you.
Copyright © 2002 by Verloren Hoop Productions. All rights
reserved.