Privileges of the First Man Up
Throughout a moonless night in the forest all objects are indistinct charcoal gray-shapes. Silence is profound, broken only by the faint rumble of a jet airplane passing miles overhead, or perhaps by the soggy footfalls of a meandering moose. There is no background noise, none whatever. When, from inside my sleeping bag, I can begin to distinguish the color of my tent I know it's about an hour before dawn. In a few minutes it's light enough to see the numbers on the little alarm clock I keep in my shirt pocket. I hold before my face: it’s eight minutes after four.
I forget whatever I was dreaming and feel the cool air waft across my face. I reorient: This is the "Flaw's Bogan" campsite, a clearing at the mouth of Foss Brook. The small section of the sky that I can see from my tent looks clear this morning. It didn't rain yesterday, so the water-level in the river will have dropped. I remember the clearing where we're camped, the dry firewood stashed under the table, what's planned for breakfast. I imagine the scene outside: the disarray of metal dishes and variety of bottles on the table, rabbits browsing on the dewy grass, the glassy surface of the river below the steep bank.
I sit up, unroll the wool shirt I used as a pillow and pull my arms through the sleeves. Sitting on my mattress pad, I turn around to face the door, unzip the bug netting, and pull damp sneakers over warm socks. The chill penetrates my feet as I lace up.
The comb I run through my hair dislodges several dead black flies and small crispy flakes of dried blood, leftovers from yesterday. I cover the mess with my old Stetson. My mouth is dry, and my muscles stiff from yesterday's unaccustomed exercise. I congratulate myself on having the foresight and good sense not to have a hangover this morning.
I stuff my sleeping bag into its sack, then I back out of the tent, careful to keep my damp sneakers off the tent floor.
From the scattered tents, the soft sounds of snoring drift across the clearing, which is an old logging camp and landing grown to grass and encroached by raspberries. Out back, amid the sinewy roots of black spruce are pieces of steel machines and the outlines of a few foundation holes. The lumbermen arrived here just before the First World War, quit just after the Second. Soon all evidence of their hibernal tenure will be sunk into the black soil. A cool and abundant dew covers all - the tents, the grass, the blue agate coffee pot I take down to the river's edge to rinse out last night's grounds and refill for today's first pot. My old pot is soot-blackened and smells without of sour softwood smoke and of oily coffee residue within.
The dew wets my sneakers
and the chill air drives out the warmth of sleep.
The firepit yields no glowing coals as I poke the fluffy ashes. I'll have to start a fire from scratch. Reaching under the waterproof cover of my packbasket I find the single stick of dry, straight spruce culled from the yesterday's wood supply that I stashed before retiring last night.
The helve of my kindling axe is wet with dew. I wipe it dry with my bandana, then drape the bandana out of my back pants pocket to dry. Carefully I set the knife-sharp edge of the axe on the center growth ring of the stick and tap it until it sinks into the wood. The stick splits into two neat halves when I strike it on a log. Then I split the results until I have sixteen more-or-less equal little splints. My pocket knife reduces one to shavings that curl away to form a fuzzy fiddlehead in the middle of the splint. This I set in the fireplace and build a tepee of the remaining kindling over it. A yellow flame flares up quickly when I hold my Zippo under it. I get bigger sticks from under the table and carefully nurse the little fire until it snaps lustily and throws a flame two feet into the air. I hang the coffee pot over it.
This
is one of the serene moments of the camper's day, a privilege of the first man
up. A chore has been faithfully accomplished, hands and feet are warm
once again, songbirds and a rosy sky foretell the impending sunrise. Not
a ripple disturbs the stretch of dark river I can see
from this high bank. It’s
When the fire begins to crackle, the next man moving about is Rus, who generally serves as chef de cuisine and who therefore will rummage in the food chests, utensils, and coolers to organise breakfast, but not before pausing in front of the fire, taking note of the atmospheric conditions, and conferring on any old or new business. The water in the coffee pot boils furiously. I remove the pot from the fire, add a measure of ground coffee (pouring directly from the coffee can), and hold it again over the fire until it churns and threatens to boil over. Then I set it aside to brew for a few minutes.
Let's say that today's breakfast includes bacon and pancakes. While Rus stands over his old cast-iron frypan, separating pieces of sizzling bacon with a fork, I again half-walk, half-hop down the steep bank, avoiding the muddy slicks that could precipitate my slide into the river, this time with a stainless steel mixing bowl and a plastic bag of home-made pancake mix. Dipping the bowl's edge under the water, I mix the batter.
Rus has heated a Dutch oven to keep the bacon warm, freeing the frying pan for cooking pancakes. Soon the production of corn-meal pancakes is added to the bacon, and the oven begins to fill up.
One by one our companions emerge from their tents, shirttails and shoelaces flapping, hair matted and eyelids crinkled with sleep, often with a roll of toilet paper in hand to saunter out back to the plywood outhouse before returning for salutation and the morning's first cup of coffee. A second pot, Rus's old black agate pot, has joined the frying pan over the fire. We'll consume two, maybe three, pots before shoving off this morning. The coffee pot will be the last piece of equipment to be cleaned and packed.
All
meals on our canoe trip are formal, in the sense that all sit around the table
(or at least more-or-less together if there's no table). No one eats
until the food is ready for all. This is not by conscious design, and no
one would bother to say "excuse me" if he got up for some reason, but
it's taken for granted that a hot meal constitutes a discrete social
occasion. And so, when everyone's poured a cup of coffee and the
irregular collection of metal and enamel plates, left overnight on the
dew-covered table, has been warmed and dried by the fireplace, all sit down and
apply butter and maple syrup to the pancakes. Among many possibilities,
some topics are inevitable, such as today's itinerary, weather, and water conditions.
Since our trip has no designated leader, this discussion is important to make
sure that the day’s plan is understood by all -- where we'll first stop for a
break, where we're likely to eat lunch, and where we'll plan to make camp
tonight. These latter plans can be changed, of course, but it's important
to know exactly where 
we'll meet up after we
leave this campsite. Underway on the river, it's an anxious realization
when you haven't seen some of your companions for a few hours and you're not
sure that they know where you're next supposed to meet.
Most parties we see on the river have leaders and followers, and therefore some persons more responsible than others. On club trips or camp trips, two experienced trippers will take the lead and sweep positions when the party is under way. On guided trips, the guides know the itinerary, and the sports perhaps do not. The leadership of such a trip is often felt as a burden, and for the followers the following is likewise, for each role requires relinquishing a measure of independence, such as the prerogative of stopping to explore or to cast for fish on an impulse. Of course, there's much to be said for the sponsored or guided trip; most are happy, no doubt. I merely note the difference.
The day's plan, then, is settled around the breakfast table. I had not thought of this aspect of the canoe trip until I began to write this, for no one ever says "let's plan the day." Rather the plan eventually works its way into the discussion with one asking another whether it will rain (the prudent answer always is "yes") or what's for lunch or should we stop to fish at that first set of rapids two or three miles down the line.
You might imagine that when a fellow takes a week to travel by canoe along a big river known for its wild brook trout he'll be able to fish to his heart's content. This seldom seems to work out. Doing justice to the fishing potential of a likely trouty-looking place takes time, and if you stopped at just a few of them every day, and spent a mere hour at each one, you could easily fail to reach the next campsite by sundown. And there are periods of bright sunlight when the fishing's no good, and so you paddle past inviting pools and inlets knowing that you'll be miles away when the shadows fall and the trout there begin rising to mayflies. So you stop to fish at a few places where you've had luck in past years, cast for a few minutes, and feel fortunate to pick up two or three trout as you travel along. Until you arrive at the day's campsite the miles left to travel, perhaps the empty rumble in your stomach or a darkening cloud cover, distract you from the enjoyment of leisurely fishing. Fishing for trout is ipso facto leisure, and can never be forced or hurried.
My favorite time to fish is after supper, when the day's chores are done, and the lingering northern twilight lingers.
On a river like the changeable Saint John there are few spots where trout can be found with any consistency, but there are many settings, like the inlets of larger brooks, for getting picturesquely skunked, and that’s fine for me.
After the last pancake is consumed, one volunteer brings the dirty dishes to the river’s edge to scrub them bright with a wad of grass and mud, clean enough to rinse with hot water and call it good.
The previous day’s mud and last night’s damp are sponged from the canoes before they are packed. Packing activity is unhurried, accompanied by numerous refills from the coffee pot that rests over the expiring fire. Care is taken to push any half-burned sticks into the fire's center to leave as neat a fireplace as possible. When the time comes to leave, there will be no messy embers to douse with water, just a dry and uncluttered firepit that will be carefully stirred and inspected for any remaining heat. The folding saw is unbolted and tied in a neat bundle. The axe head is wrapped tightly and safely between pieces of cedar shingles.
Each man looks over the nearly-vacant camp before he departs, just to be certain that a knife, or match case, or some other valuable small object hasn’t been mislaid. Then the first canoe departs, soon disappearing around the bend amid the wisps of last night's fog.
If there’s hot coffee remaining, we’ll pour a cup to sip as we glide through the long deadwater that begins our day's travel.
I'm
the last to leave. Balancing my warm cup of coffee, I carefully push off
the grass and mud bank, taking care not to track mud into my canoe. I
settle into the comfortable paddling position of kneeling on two boat cushions
while sitting back against the edge of the stern seat. I have brought
three paddles, an old clunker and two “good” ones. I select the lighter
of my two “good” paddles, a solid piece of maple with lots of spring and a
blade cut delicately thin for steady deepwater work. The canoe pushes a
small wave of water with each stroke. It's