The following images are from a four-day canoe trip down the North Saskatchewan River with Les and Sarah. We kicked off from the shore just east of Abraham Lake and finished in Rocky Mountain House. This was my and Celine's first river canoe trip and as someone who is not fond of being immersed in water, I was quite apprehensive. To Les's credit, he did a superb job at ensuring we were technically prepared for the journey. We had an abundance of food (to Sarah's credit most of which was tastier and healthier than what I'd normally eat), a mental list of paddling techniques, and terminology for how to best communicate on a noisy river. With all this reassurance it still did not stop the relentless mental imagery of us flipping over, helplessly floating through monstrous rapids or slamming into a log jam. With every protruding tree, known as sweepers, I imagined myself getting helplessly trapped, and every rapid we bobbed over I could feel my anxiety escalate. Cognitively I knew we were in good hands and my co-paddler (Celine) was confident and excited about the excursion but my psychological risk aversion persisted.

Although my time on the river was mostly filled with internal trepidation, there were many highlights, which all happened on dry land for me. The first morning was especially notable. As I emerged from our tent I was greeted by a comforting blanket of fog spanning over the entire river valley. Alone with my camera, the swooshing river, and a mountainous forest ecosystem backdrop, I tried a multitude of compositions from the shoreline. Once I was satisfied with the images, the reasonable next course of action was to read the poetic words of Wendell Berry while perched on a nearby log. This moment of calmness provided the time to reflect on the goodness of our natural world and every created thing. The serenity of the morning, contrasted by the previous and foreboding exhilaration I experienced on the water was emotionally perplexing. This is when I created the image for March and undoubtedly my state of mind played a role in how each image revealed itself.

More highlights are listed below the images.

Reflection:

The feeling of being grounded currently escapes me. I'm unsure of the precise reason but it may include my change of geography and relationships. That is not to say the sense of grounding is not possible in my current context, however, I think a deeper knowing of the people and place is required for such stability. Both of these simplistic requirements likely require vulnerability to new relationships that have access to such traditional and cultural knowledge. Newcomers frequently overlook relational or neighbourly vulnerability, and it seems to result in the exploitive taking or mismanaging of a place. This pandemic of ignorance is rampant in our nomadic, jet-setting cultures that I am now complicit in. 

This was such a memorable trip so I want to note a few additional highlights.

• Listening to Les's wealth of knowledge in regards to navigating the river, identifying plants, and gripping stories from his innumerable trips as a river guide.

• Seeing a huge grizzly 200m from our campsite

  • Also, my first time using our bear banger kit and unknowingly equipping a flare instead of a bear banger. As a result, I started a small fire and had to run toward the bear to stomp it out...

• Seeing a Lynx scale the shoreline across from our campsite.

• Getting caught in an overly aggressive rain and hail storm.

  • At this point, we all huddled under a tree to make some lunch while moderately shivering.

• Rolling over a rapid the wrong way with only millimeters from flipping or submerging our entire canoe.

  • Not so much a highlight but a terrifying moment worth noting.

• Seeing where a landslide had fallen into the river and how the water carved a new path.

• The photo with all four of us is Saunders Ledge, a rapid we avoided at all cost.

• The last night offered some dramatic light and a rainbow, seemingly symbolizing that we were going to make it out safely.