Up a creek without enough patience

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/07/2011 (5444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back in the days before immediate gratification was elevated above every other Western value, people used bizarre expressions to drive home the value of patience, perseverance and hard work.

You know what I’m talking about. “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” your encouraging father may have said.

“Good things come to those who wait,” your well-intentioned mother may have said.

“No pain, no gain,” your sadistic high-school gym teacher may have said.

“You can’t make eggs without a breaking a few,” the chef behind the omelette station at the breakfast buffet may have said.

“Please stop talking to me and make me some eggs,” you might have said in return.

In the age of iPhones, Twitter and Netflix, nobody wants to wait for anything, let alone work hard for it or suffer some form of discomfort along the way. I say this not because I am old and crusty, but because I am lazy and impatient myself.

When I try something new, I want to be good at it immediately. I do not want to fail. I want to own the new experience as if I was born with the innate ability encoded into my DNA.

Which is why I am embarrassed but not ashamed to admit I recently retook the same whitewater canoeing course I took five years ago, because few of the skills I supposedly acquired the first time actually remained with me.

Two weekends ago, I spent two days on the Black River, one of the many pool-and-drop ribbons of water that flow through the Canadian Shield on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

This was no river trip, but a two-day moving-water course offered by Paddle Manitoba. I took a similar course in 2006 on the Winnipeg River near Pine Falls as a prelude to a Bloodvein River excursion that never materialized, thanks to Manitoba Conservation’s irrational tendency to shut down the eastern backcountry every time there’s a forest-fire threat.

Over the ensuing years, I continued to do a lot of paddling, but all of it involved flatwater canoe and kayak trips. I spent 10 days in Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park, a week on the Wilderness Waterway in Florida’s Everglades and a couple of days in B.C.’s Johnstone Strait, among other excursions. But I never wound up on any rivers.

The moving-water skills I thought I acquired receded from my neural and muscle memory. I couldn’t remember how turn a canoe into an eddy to avoid careening down a river. I couldn’t recall how to back-ferry across a river to better position a boat within a rapid. I couldn’t remember why I would ever need to ride a standing wave.

Although I had passed the initial course, the lessons proved useless without practice. But a funny thing happens when you retake the same instruction: You not only grasp paddling maneuvers more easily, you understand the mechanics behind the moves.

If that sounds a little Zen for a Saturday morning, it’s really just a matter of simple repetition: The more you practice, the better you get. But personal development wasn’t the only purpose for revisiting the paddling course.

On that sunny weekend in late June, I had the rare and unusual opportunity to spend a few days on the water with all seven other members of an upcoming trip on the Bloodvein. This experience gave each member a preview of the group dynamic and a chance to share our hopes and expectations for the coming trip.

If you’ve ever played Russian roulette with a large party of unfamiliar paddlers before, you can imagine the value of getting to know your peeps. But there was one more reason yet to revisit the paddling course.

In 2006, the Winnipeg River proved to be a pleasant instructional setting. But it’s very wide at Pine Falls and doesn’t resemble the narrower arteries I eventually intend to paddle east of Lake Winnipeg.

The Black River proved to be more emblematic – and a worthy paddling destination on its own.

From the bridge at Provincial Road 304, about 40 kilometres north of Pine Falls, the Black River winds only a few kilometres to Little Black River First Nation. If you find yourself with half a day to kill in cottage country, shuttle a car at either end and set off from the bridge.

River levels permitting, the route is OK for novice whitewater paddlers, as most of the half-dozen-odd rapids are easily scouted. Portage trails allows you to bypass one longer Class-1.5 rapid as well a bigger drop that only an expert in a playboat could run. Watch out in the rock gardens when water levels are low.

Part-way downstream, two of my future tripmates and fellow students expressed frustration with their paddling. “I like to do things I’m good at,” they each said at different times.

I felt the same way, of course. But any sheepishness about my instructional do-over evaporated when I realized everything I was able to get out of the weekend – the skills, the group dynamic and the destination.

All I needed to do was listen to my mythical dad, mom, coach and omelette-station guy.

 

Getting there

Black River: From Winnipeg, take Highway 59 North to Provincial Road 304. Follow it past Pine Falls for approximately 40 kilometres to the Black River. A small parking lot and put-in is on the left side of the road. You’ll need to shuttle a vehicle at Little Black River First Nation, which is accessible by road from PR 304. Rapids will be rocky when water levels are low.

 

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca