Nothing to worry about...

Dock
Credit: Jeff Wells

I wondered what kind of trouble I might be in when Eddie, a well-known writer for Audubon, Field and Stream, and many other magazines, casually mentioned minutes before take-off from Miminiska Lodge that he was best-known for canoeing wilderness rivers without guides and then writing about the adventure. That feeling was compounded when I discovered that Per, the photographer, was a veteran of various Arctic and Antarctic expeditions with National Geographic. Heck, even Tim, the photographer's assistant was an endurance athlete who regularly competes in 24-hour ultra-marathons and 500 mile bike races!

As they compared the various kinds of river shoes and portaging boots they were wearing, I looked down at my old sneakers and gulped.

We took off from the wilderness lodge at Miminiska with all our gear stowed and two canoes strapped to the pontoons with the hope that we might be able to find one of the local guides from the First Nation community of Fort Hope who was out with a fishing client on the lake. No, we weren't going to ask him to come along but Eddie was interested in at least asking him to make some pencil marks on the map where the rapids were, portage trails, and potential campsites. And so a few minutes after take-off we were landing on another part of Miminiska Lake near a couple of small boats. The guide came over and with what turned out to be a level of accuracy that a cartographer would be proud of, he marked everything we needed to know on Eddie's maps.

Miminiska Lake map
Credit: Jeff Wells

And then we were off again and within 15 minutes we had been deposited on Petawanga Lake. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon when the twin otter float plane disappeared over the tree tops and we were finally enveloped in that calming quiet that you can only find in places like the Boreal. It took us about an hour before we figured out which part of Petawanga Lake we were on and then came the showers and rumbles of thunder. As we paddled, the harsh squawks of Bonaparte's Gulls would come floating in over the water from small groups feeding here and there with a few Ring-billed and Herring Gulls mixed in. From the shores there were the rising flutey songs of Swainson's Thrushes and the clear whistled "Oh-Sweet-Canada-Canada-Canada" songs of White-throated Sparrows. A Bald Eagle flew over and several Common Loons fished nearby.

Bonaparte's Gulls
Credit: Jeff Wells

We made camp on a flat section of an island where a beaver had gone crazy, gnawing down an entire stand of aspen. While looking for a good campsite we flushed two hen Mallards from nests, a Merlin called from the ridge behind us, and a Northern Waterthrush sang loudly.

That night I laid for what seemed like hours in a stifling hot tent listening to the chorus of spring peepers and the occasional echoing cries of Common Loons and thinking about the start of our adventure. For all their hardy back-country gusto, my traveling companions had made sure this particular trip was more perfect for documenting the bird life of this one stretch of a Boreal river than for risking life and limb on whitewater rapids hundreds of miles from the nearest emergency help. Not to mention that Per was carrying expensive camera equipment and I a sensitive microphone and digital recorderâ€”not equipment you want to risk seeing floating down river while you are clinging to an overturned canoe. Nothing to worry aboutâ€¦..at least until we reached our first rapids and portage the next day.

Listen to a Winter Wren recorded at Camp 1 on Petawanga Lake.

More trip pictures below!

Miminiska Lodge
Credit: Jeff Wells