WoodNCanvas
LOVES Wooden Canoes
In honour of the 4th of July, some thoughts from American paddlers:
Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. –Henry David Thoreau
Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing. – Henry David Thoreau
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures
the depth of his own nature. - Henry David Thoreau, from the chapter “The Ponds” in Walden
It is wonderful how well watered this country is…. Generally, you may go any direction in a canoe, by making frequent but not very long portages. - Henry David Thoreau
Water reflects not only clouds and trees and cliffs, but all the infinite variations of mind and spirit we bring to it. – Sigurd Olson
The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores….There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past, and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known. – Sigurd Olson from The Singing Wilderness
My two old canoes are works of art, embodying the feeling of all canoemen for rivers and lakes and the wild country they were meant to traverse. They were made in the old tradition when there was time and the love of the work itself. I have two canvas-covered canoes, both old and beautifully made. They came from the Penobscot River in Maine long ago, and I treasure them for the tradition of craftsmanship in their construction, a pride not only of form and line but of everything that went into their building. When l look at modern canoes, of metal or fiberglass stamped out like so many identical coins. l cherish mine even more …Sixteen feet in length, it has graceful lines with a tumble home or curve from the gunwales inward …No other canoe I’ve ever used paddles as easily … The gunwales and decks are of mahogany, the ribs and planking of carefully selected spruce and cedar… - Sigurd Olson, Tradition
Such vivid awareness is swiftly lost today, but if it can be held into adulthood it enriches and colors all we do. How often in the wild country of the north I have been aware of the spirits of the voyageurs, the shadowy forms that once roamed the rivers and lakes. Often at night it seemed I could hear ghostly songs coming across the water, the rhythmic dip of paddles and the swish of great canoes as they went by. - Sigurd Olson
As long as there are young men with the light of adventure in their eyes or a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)
The mist was all gone from the river now and the rapids sparkled and sang. They were still young as the land was young. We were there to enjoy it, and the great machines seemed far away. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)
I remember long trips in the wilderness when food and tobacco were running low, when the weather for a week or a month had been impossible, and the joy that coming back meant in the satisfaction of long-thwarted hunger and comfort. In the light of reflection, that was the real harvest, something to remember whenever the going gets tough.
And that, I believe, is one of the reasons why coming home from any sort of a primitive expedition is a real adventure. Security and routine are always welcome after knowing excitement and the unusual. We need contrast to make us know we are really alive. – Sigurd Olson, from Contrast
In travelling great rivers and lakes, there are times when islands fade, hills and headlands recede, the water merges with the sky in a distant mirage of shimmery blue. These are the open horizons of the far north.
If it is calm, the canoes drifting through reflections with nothing to break the vast silence but the hypnotic swish of paddles, there are moments when one seems suspended between heaven and earth. If it is stormy and the lakes alive, with whitecaps and blowing spume, each instant is full of battle and excitement. When, after hours and sometimes days, the misty outlines of the lake take form again, islands slowly emerge and float upon the surface, headlands become real, one passes through a door into the beyond itself and the mystery is no more.
Life is a series of open horizons, with one no sooner completed than another looms ahead. Some are traversed swiftly, while others extend so far into the future one cannot predict their end. Penetrations into the unknown, all give meaning to what has gone before, and courage for what is to come. More than physical features, they are horizons of mind and spirit, and when one looks backward, we find they have blended into the whole panorama of our lives. - Sigurd Olson, from Open Horizons, 1969.
I can still see so many of the lakes (whose shores and hills are forever changed after the storm): Saganaga, Red Rock, Alpine, Knife, Kekekabic, Eddy, Ogishkemunicie, Agamok, Gabimichigami, Sea Gull. It seems like yesterday… the early-morning bear on Brant Lake, that long portage from Hanson Lake to the South Arm of the Knife, that perfect campsite on Jasper Lake…. – Sigurd Olson
The canoe was drifting off the islands, and the time had come for the calling, that moment of magic in the north when all is quiet and the water still iridescent with the fading glow of sunset. Even the shores seemed hushed and waiting for the first lone call, and when it came, a single long-drawn mournful note, the quiet was deeper than before. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness
I would paddle out swiftly onto the open lake if the moon was shining down its path. It never failed to come to me when going down that brilliant shining highway into space. Most completely of all would I be taken when lying on my back looking at the stars. The gentle motion of the canoe softly swaying, the sense of space and infinity given by the stars, gave me the sense of being suspended in the ether. My body had no weight, my soul was detached and I careened freely through a delightfullness of infinite distance…. Sometimes the night cry of the loon would enhance the illusion. For long periods I would lie, having lost track of time and location. A slap of a wavelet would jerk me back into the present and I would paddle back to the glowing coals of the deserted camp fire, trying to fathom the depths of the experience I had been through. - Sigurd Olson, in his Journal, Jan. 20, 1930
The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition “Be still and know that I am God,” and knew that without stillness there can be no knowing, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness
The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons….It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past. – Sigurd Olson
Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. - Aldo Leopold
…perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters…glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. - Aldo Leopold
The good life on any river may… depend on the perception of its music, and the preservation of some music to perceive. — Aldo Leopold (American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist, considered to be father of American wildlife management)
Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. –Henry David Thoreau
Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing. – Henry David Thoreau
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures
the depth of his own nature. - Henry David Thoreau, from the chapter “The Ponds” in Walden
It is wonderful how well watered this country is…. Generally, you may go any direction in a canoe, by making frequent but not very long portages. - Henry David Thoreau
Water reflects not only clouds and trees and cliffs, but all the infinite variations of mind and spirit we bring to it. – Sigurd Olson
The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores….There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past, and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known. – Sigurd Olson from The Singing Wilderness
My two old canoes are works of art, embodying the feeling of all canoemen for rivers and lakes and the wild country they were meant to traverse. They were made in the old tradition when there was time and the love of the work itself. I have two canvas-covered canoes, both old and beautifully made. They came from the Penobscot River in Maine long ago, and I treasure them for the tradition of craftsmanship in their construction, a pride not only of form and line but of everything that went into their building. When l look at modern canoes, of metal or fiberglass stamped out like so many identical coins. l cherish mine even more …Sixteen feet in length, it has graceful lines with a tumble home or curve from the gunwales inward …No other canoe I’ve ever used paddles as easily … The gunwales and decks are of mahogany, the ribs and planking of carefully selected spruce and cedar… - Sigurd Olson, Tradition
Such vivid awareness is swiftly lost today, but if it can be held into adulthood it enriches and colors all we do. How often in the wild country of the north I have been aware of the spirits of the voyageurs, the shadowy forms that once roamed the rivers and lakes. Often at night it seemed I could hear ghostly songs coming across the water, the rhythmic dip of paddles and the swish of great canoes as they went by. - Sigurd Olson
As long as there are young men with the light of adventure in their eyes or a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)
The mist was all gone from the river now and the rapids sparkled and sang. They were still young as the land was young. We were there to enjoy it, and the great machines seemed far away. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)
I remember long trips in the wilderness when food and tobacco were running low, when the weather for a week or a month had been impossible, and the joy that coming back meant in the satisfaction of long-thwarted hunger and comfort. In the light of reflection, that was the real harvest, something to remember whenever the going gets tough.
And that, I believe, is one of the reasons why coming home from any sort of a primitive expedition is a real adventure. Security and routine are always welcome after knowing excitement and the unusual. We need contrast to make us know we are really alive. – Sigurd Olson, from Contrast
In travelling great rivers and lakes, there are times when islands fade, hills and headlands recede, the water merges with the sky in a distant mirage of shimmery blue. These are the open horizons of the far north.
If it is calm, the canoes drifting through reflections with nothing to break the vast silence but the hypnotic swish of paddles, there are moments when one seems suspended between heaven and earth. If it is stormy and the lakes alive, with whitecaps and blowing spume, each instant is full of battle and excitement. When, after hours and sometimes days, the misty outlines of the lake take form again, islands slowly emerge and float upon the surface, headlands become real, one passes through a door into the beyond itself and the mystery is no more.
Life is a series of open horizons, with one no sooner completed than another looms ahead. Some are traversed swiftly, while others extend so far into the future one cannot predict their end. Penetrations into the unknown, all give meaning to what has gone before, and courage for what is to come. More than physical features, they are horizons of mind and spirit, and when one looks backward, we find they have blended into the whole panorama of our lives. - Sigurd Olson, from Open Horizons, 1969.
I can still see so many of the lakes (whose shores and hills are forever changed after the storm): Saganaga, Red Rock, Alpine, Knife, Kekekabic, Eddy, Ogishkemunicie, Agamok, Gabimichigami, Sea Gull. It seems like yesterday… the early-morning bear on Brant Lake, that long portage from Hanson Lake to the South Arm of the Knife, that perfect campsite on Jasper Lake…. – Sigurd Olson
The canoe was drifting off the islands, and the time had come for the calling, that moment of magic in the north when all is quiet and the water still iridescent with the fading glow of sunset. Even the shores seemed hushed and waiting for the first lone call, and when it came, a single long-drawn mournful note, the quiet was deeper than before. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness
I would paddle out swiftly onto the open lake if the moon was shining down its path. It never failed to come to me when going down that brilliant shining highway into space. Most completely of all would I be taken when lying on my back looking at the stars. The gentle motion of the canoe softly swaying, the sense of space and infinity given by the stars, gave me the sense of being suspended in the ether. My body had no weight, my soul was detached and I careened freely through a delightfullness of infinite distance…. Sometimes the night cry of the loon would enhance the illusion. For long periods I would lie, having lost track of time and location. A slap of a wavelet would jerk me back into the present and I would paddle back to the glowing coals of the deserted camp fire, trying to fathom the depths of the experience I had been through. - Sigurd Olson, in his Journal, Jan. 20, 1930
The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition “Be still and know that I am God,” and knew that without stillness there can be no knowing, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness
The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons….It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past. – Sigurd Olson
Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. - Aldo Leopold
…perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters…glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. - Aldo Leopold
The good life on any river may… depend on the perception of its music, and the preservation of some music to perceive. — Aldo Leopold (American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist, considered to be father of American wildlife management)
