Missinaibi River Day 2 - Settling In

• Posted on June 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM
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Back at the Missinaibi Lake put in yesterday, Dave, the park ranger had told us that the forecast for the next few days was heat, heat, heat. "Sun and 31 degrees," he said cheerfully, behind a curly black beard and glasses.

My shoulders sagged at the thought of that kind of heat on a buggy portage. "How bad will that make the black flies?" I asked him, swatting away a small cloud of them with one hand.

"Oh, that kind of heat will burn'em right off," he said confidently.

We liked the sound of that.

And so it was with anticipation that I woke up this morning, and slid out of my blue sleeping bag - clammy from the last night's warm, wet weather - to peel back the tent door and look at the sky.

Grey. Misty. Hard to see across the river.

I crawled back into my sleeping bag like a child who had thought to see Santa downstairs, but only seen dad nursing a gin and tonic.

Eventually, we go up anyway and made our way to the bug tent for breakfast. There, over bowls of cream of wheat and tea that tasted vaguely of last night's pasta, we agreed that a grey sky did not by itself constitute reason for a rest day. We packed up the tent, made a mental note to use more soap in the dishwater tonight and pushed off in the tugging current.

Most of the C1 rapids were washed out by the high water. But with our heavy load, even their light haystacks were fun to run and we stopped several times to bail out excess liquid. The fishing was lighter than hoped, but we still managed to catch a couple of pike, one of which (I won't say who caught it since I write the blog and Sean sucks) was enough to feed all three of us for dinner.

Along the way, we passed the time talking about the kind of random things that pop into your head while paddling - favourite teachers, favourite Indiana Jones movies, favourite flavours of Skittles. The river banks flowed by in a succession of dense cedar and spruce groves. Duck families swam anxiously away from us when we rounded a corner. The ducklings paddling furiously, their mothers barking encouragement and occasionally feigning injury in order to draw attention away from the young.

The flies continued their assault whenever we left the canoe. But, sure enough and just as Dave predicted, when the sun finally burnt through the clouds in the early afternoon, they seemed to willt and then dissipate. By the time we reached camp at the end of a rolling kilometer long C1 rapid, the insects had significantly diminished and we enjoyed a peaceful late afternoon sit, supper and, in my case, swim by the shore without need of the bug tent..

It's amazing what a difference a day can make. In our case just a few hours of sun has considerably improved our spirits. Our clothes and gear are dry. We're clean and well feed. Sean is contentedly whittling a stick into shavings. Janine is contentedly reading the label of the inect spray to figure out the science of its claim to kill bugs for thirty days after application.

The forecast for tomorrow is positive.