Remembering Richly: The Rewarding Outdoors

By Gord McIntyre

Prominent outdoor writer and dog breeder, Gord McIntyre, looks back over a life spent in the outdoors in Remembering Richly: The Rewarding Outdoors.

Beautifully illustrated with woodcuts by Julie McIntyre, Gord’s daughter, this book is a contemplative ─ and at times poetic ─ look at hunting, fishing, camping,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781772570120

Book preview

Remembering Richly

The Rewarding Outdoors

Gord McIntyre

5 Leckie Lane

Burnstown, Ontario K0J 1G0

www.burnstownpublishing.com

Copyright © 2015

Gord McIntyre

Remembering Richly — The Rewarding Outdoors

Soft Cover: ISBN 978-1-77257-006-9

All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embodied in a critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca. One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

Cataloguing data available at

Library and Archives Canada, Cataloguing in Publication (CIP)

Original illustrations: Julie McIntyre

Editor: J. Karchmar

Cover and Interior Design: W.D. Clements

Published and Printed in Canada.

To my selfless brother, Robert.

There was no quit in the man.

What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousandmiles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred miles on a bicycle and you remain a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau

The Park

The wind whispers wistfully

to the barren crescent moon

behind grey scudding skies

Shadows hang dejected

from lonesome, tall trees

planted apart for society’s eyes

An open part in a city’s heart

squared by streetlights

and cracked, aged asphalt

Horns, brakes, sirens, gears:

a howling cacophony

baying a sterile oasis.

Gord McIntyre

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

The Outdoors

Lonefiring

Little Orange Radio

Canoe Camping

Poke Stick

Tenting

Little Girls Lost and Mark

Inexplicable

Temagami Memory

French Idyll

Wakami Lake

Early Spring and Sugar Shack

Voyageur Echoes

Camping Tips

Fishing

Worming

Bass Opener

Name Change; Same Game

Hunting

Bambi Revisited

Herself and Fur

Real Hunters

Uncle Bob and Sanco

Going Coonhounding

B’ar Huntin’—Tennessee Style

Bronco Willy

Bluetick Party

On Hunting

Dog Stories

Training Pup

Sam

Lonely Coyote

On Predators

Pesky Porky

Dog Feeding

Twig

Random Thoughts

Stone the Crows

Tall Tales and True

Urban Meets Rural

Dowsing?

Grey Owl

Aloneness

Moving On

Glossary

About the Author

Acknowledgements

This book is my fault. Having written thousands of words on outdoor topics over the years, I egotistically figured I should write a book to leave something behind, for whomever. I approached Tim Gordon, a publisher, who assigned me an editor, Jane Karchmar. She proved to be highly experienced and remarkably skilled in working with me. The book achieved form a nd blossomed.

Middle daughter Sally proved to be a superb typist, fortunately able to read my longhand. She also demonstrated research skills when needed. Sheand Jane worked closely together and kept me organized. Sally’s advice was invaluable and her aid indispensable.

Then my youngest daughter, Julie, joined the fray with her BFA from Queen’s University. She elected to create woodcuts to illustrate the book. Shewas happily welcomed aboard by everyone.

What began as a bit of an ego trip has become a family affair!

Prologue

Jungle, or Jim, joins me at lunch. An affable giant who saw a promising NHL career shattered by Bobby Orr knees. So he became a winning hockey and football coach of the school’s teams, and students mostly left his math classes smiling. A success in others’ eyes.

Across the lunchroom, a table of BA’s and MA’s is getting nosier as opinions tumble over each other. Jim follows my gaze as I ask, How come all those guys ever talk about is sports?

A searching look at me and, Gord, can’t you see? It’s all they have.

No self-enhancing passion, consuming pastime, ideal—or even hobby. Just spectator sports. How close are some to Marlon Brando’s opinion, Ifyou don’t know you’re living, you’re dead.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden—a must read book for all outdoor folk, and for others who want to get their heads sitting straight. Of course, were he writing today instead of in the first half of the nineteenth century, he’d have said persons instead of men. What’s sad is that his words still ring truetoday.

Thoreau’s New England was a land of hardscrabble farms requiring long and back-breaking labour to eke out a bare subsistence. Its factory workers toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week for poverty-line wages, with no compensation for injury, illness, or unemployment, and seldom prospects of a pension. For most, life was as described by Hobbes: poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

How can it be, with our present cradle-to-the-grave social safety net, that so many of us still seem to be leading lives of quiet desperation? That stress and meaningful are buzzwords of our time? Materially, most of us have never had it so good; yet the ranks of psychiatrists continue to swell to meet the demand for their services, and lifestyle cults—movements like New Wave—and fundamentalist churches proliferate like guppies.

Is it perhaps that while the people of Thoreau’s time suffered material poverty, our poverty is of the spirit? In a song that mirrors the emptiness of many, Peggy Lee sings of the memorable things she has done, then asks, Is that all there is?

Saturday’s Toronto Star always has a section on travel; one or two more on Wheels; and every edition has a section devoted to each of sports, fashion, and entertainment. Does that mean that escapism, passive entertainment, and status symbols are now what many of us areall about?

Heaven forbid. Few or none of these provide recreation—or, more correctly, re-creation, whereby we re-create ourselves by cleaning out our heads and putting our hearts where they ought to be.

However trite may be familiar axioms, they’ve endured because they are true: Bored people are boring people. Play at your work; work at your play. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. If you don’t know you’re living, you’re dead. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may… Expressions like these reflect our need for satisfying leisure time activities: whatever winds our passion clock and leads to a joy of—or lust for—life.

For an uncle of mine, leisure time activities were his church: vegetable garden, playing the stock market, books, and golf. He shot his agein the latter at eighty-two, and died peacefully shortly after as he satreading.

For me, they are nature, conservation, canoe camping, hunting, fishing, reading, and writing. I’m told that a number of surgeons sculpt. Others of us take joy in flower gardening, gourmet cooking, pigeon-racing, music, cabinetmaking, birdwatching, photography, our church, club or service organizations, community volunteer work—whatever.

Without a passion for some hobby or avocation, we have only free time; never leisure time. Free time is dead time. It lies there like an empty sack. Filled with activity that provides your life with meaning and satisfaction, it is leisure time.

To live the complete, self-actualizing life is to combine your vocation with your avocation, as did persons like underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau or a Class A, car-crazy mechanic. But few of us are so fortunate, or lack the necessary courage. Our job is how we earn our living. Our hobbies or avocations are for living.

Those with leisure time seldom have enough hours in the day to satisfy their passionate interests. It’s those who have only free time who lead lives of quiet desperation.

Louis L’Amour said, "If we remember richly, we must have lived richly."

The Outdoors

Lonefiring

Lonefiring: a seldom-used word for going it alone in the back of beyond, by canoe or backpacking. Only alone can you achieve total harmony with the natural world that surrounds us: a state of grace in a timeless continuum. Louis L’Amour said, Most men never discover what they’ve got inside.

A couple or so portages in, or miles hiked off the beaten track, and in afew days your identity and ego fade to nothing as your being melds with nature’s flow: the croak of ravens, the song of a hermit thrush, gulls with their raucous cries, and bird sightings that send you scrambling for your binoculars and your Roger Tory Peterson.¹ There’s that swimming beaver with two kits riding high and dry on its back; the cow moose who allowed you to paddle within a few canoe lengths; maybe grouse, muskrat, or mink. Depends on thehabitat.

Likely you’ll never see a lynx, fisher, or wolf, but that was definitely a marten that crossed your path on the second of three portages here… and the otter family playing in the river that gave you their raspberry snorts for invading their space. You take what sightings are given you, and your sense of wonder is renewed.

There was the time when the bear came snuffling around the tent in mid-morning; curious or hungry or both: an intruder, and you suggested where it could go.

Then the time you bent over your little tackle tray to select yet another fishing lure, and there beside it, wonder of wonders, was a small arrowhead.

At night, there’s the lost-soul lament of a loon; a night sky unpolluted by urban lights and filled with the silent twinkle of untold numbers of stars; owl calls; and the grump of a bullfrog down the lake. If it’s August, the northern lights will likely flash-dance across the sky, and if you find the right tune, you can hum along to the dancing flames.

The campfire’s flickering fingers of light probe blindly into the darkness, shadows loom tall, and flames blank conscious thought to evoke dimly perceived ancestral memories harking back across countless generations, tohunter-gatherer forebears. There’s a mystery here to be received, but neverunderstood.

Lonely? Nonsense. You’ve got yourself.

Or frightened? Of what? You’ve the needed outdoor skills and experience; the really dangerous part of the trip