Coming to Grips

By Chris Weilep

This is a fictitious story about an average Joe who goes to Canada on a solo canoe trip to enjoy a vacation and he also through the course of the story Comes to Grips to many things that have happened in his life. He is challenged by the elements and he also does some deep thinking and comes to some great revelations that will help make his life better. The story has many facets. It is a survival story in the physical and the emotional. It teaches what a good camper should have on a Canada trip as well as some good morals. It is a good family book. There is something here for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514469286

Chris Weilep

I grew up in a village in rural Wisconsin. I love camping, hunting, fishing and canoeing and have spent many great days on the water in Canada as well as locally. My love for the outdoors is what sparked me to write this book. I hope everyone enjoys it.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Nine

Day Ten

Day Eleven

Day Twelve

Days Thirteen & Fourteen

I dedicate this book to one of my best friends in this

world: Bob Bauer, who got me hooked on the pleasures of

camping and canoeing in Canada over 30 years ago.

Thank you my friend!

DAY ONE

It had been a really long time since he had been canoeing in the north woods. But he was finally here now. He couldn’t help but wonder why he had stayed away so long.

He stood at the entrance point of his journey to the wilderness with all his gear packed in two waterproof bags and one military surplus backpack. His one man Royalex canoe was outfitted with two fishing poles fastened to pole mounts on one side on the inside wall, under the cross pieces and seats. Two paddles were mounted to the opposite wall, one being a standby in case he either lost or broke his main paddle. He had drilled several holes through the edge of the gunwales and had tied small loops of parachute cord for convenient places to either tie down gear or fasten carbiner snaps for the looped six foot leads of parachute cord he had attached to each bag and his axe. If his canoe got swamped, they would float free so the canoe could be righted and he would not lose anything to the bottom of a cold watered lake. He had several small eyed carbiner snaps hanging on one loop so he had access to them. For an anchor, he had a three cornered rock he had found on an earlier trip up here, tied to a yellow plastic rope that was tied to the canoe right behind where he sat. Everything he had along had to be fastened, tied or tethered to the canoe somehow so it would not be lost if he turned over.

He preferred the Royalex canoe to the lighter Kevlar ones, simply because the Royalex didn’t crack if it hit a rock hard in a rapids or coming in to shore. It was a tough and reasonably pliable plastic that gave on impact, where the Kevlar could crack and leak. The carrying weight was only five pounds more on the smaller fifteen foot one man canoes, so even where lighter weight equipment is the optimum, the extra toughness provided could make all the difference in an emergency situation. He had ridden in about every type of canoe there was from crude Indian types made of birch bark, to the older aluminum ones, to the Royalex and the super light Kevlars, and had long ago decided that even though you have a few extra pounds and they have more drag than the Kevlars, the Royalex canoe served the best in severe situations. The one he chose was called a lake canoe because it had a flat bottom and was the widest and deepest he could find as he was not a fast water canoeist. The canoes that were made for fast water were designed differently with a narrower, more rounded bottom. He had never been through a rapids, and didn’t want to ever go through one either. He only liked going on flat water trips, so this option provided better stability for what he wanted.

He had top rate personal gear. It was always on his person when he was out of camp. It consisted of a PFD angler’s vest with zippered pockets and a lot of compartments to hold survival equipment. Matches in a waterproof container, fire starter that would burn even if wet, string and wire to fasten shelter poles, three space blankets to make the shelters waterproof, a compass with a mirror, a whistle, fishing line, leaders and baits in case he lost his pole, a small sewing kit, a hunting knife, a small filet knife, some first aid items, water purification tablets, and water resistant canoeing gloves. So if in the event his canoe and gear went one way and he went the other, he had a fighting chance of survival.

In his off time in the winters he had pored over many survival books and had absorbed all he could from other people’s advice and mistakes. He had learned that this land, although beautiful beyond description, could be extremely unforgiving and treacherous at times. If he came here to enjoy its bounty, he wanted to live to tell about it. He’d never had a bad experience up here, but knew of a lot of people who had, and their misfortunes had taught him to be prepared. And so he was.

He had also gone to the sports shows that came around yearly in a big town a hundred and some miles from where he lived. He had attended several years in a row and went to many seminars on many different subjects pertaining to canoeing, camping, cooking, fishing, kayaking, first aid, and survival in the wilds. He really enjoyed these seminars, because he could draw on the collective experience of so many people. It was amazing how simple and practical most of the techniques that were needed for survival were when it got right down to it.

He had spent countless hours trying out new equipment in his and his neighbor’s back yards. His neighbor had more trees, so he had tried out things like hammocks and mosquito nets by stringing them between the trees that he didn’t have in his own yard. His experiments had included different tents, hammocks and sleeping gear. He had tried out several types of fire starter and cooking and camping equipment of all kinds. All had been good practice for when he went and did the real thing.

Over the years he had gone to the Canadian bush many times and had practiced building fires and making several different kinds of shelters. These had ranged from a few sticks covered by a small tarp or a couple of space blankets for shedding a rain storm, to an elaborate debris and bough hut made of sticks, space blankets, moss and boughs that could keep one warm in the coldest weather in the deep woods, to snow caves where there were no trees. He knew how to make deadfalls, set snares, improvise fishing poles, and make fish traps to capture game if he didn’t have any other food.

He viewed this like anything else a man had to do in life to get along. You had to have a good education and some experience to do a regular job, so it stood to reason that one should be as well versed and experienced to do well in the wilderness.

He had plenty of food, clothing, gear, and survival items. All the things he needed for living good for survival if necessary. And above all that, he had a good strong imagination and great improvising skills. He was well prepared for whatever he might have to face up here, good or bad.

This was an awesome place. It was so far from the cities and the bustle and the people, and the maddening distortion of habitation that we call society. Far from the gangs and the cops and the seamy life that only big cities could and did spawn. Far from the pain of the divorce and the reality that life had really fallen through at one time for him there. Distance from that life was good, he decided. This solo wilderness trip was exactly what he needed to get him back in sync. He now realized how much he had longed to be here and was anxious to get started.

He got into the canoe, pushed off and got settled on his seat. Silently he dipped his paddle into the lake and took the first stroke and began to glide across the lake. Once the canoe was fifty feet from shore, he cast out his bait and set it across his legs in front of him and began to troll for supper as he headed across the lake.

Here he was, feeling for the first time in a long time that he was home at last. He began to drink in the sights and smells he had so sorely missed. The peace of the quiet lake was contagious. It seemed to settle into his bones and warm him like a campfire on a chilly night. That sweet pine odor floated to his olfactory glands and calmed his jangled nerves. His relaxation surprised and satisfied him. This was a place where a man could enjoy his surroundings just for their natural purity and the timeless beauty. If there was ever a place that could smooth out the wrinkles in a man’s soul, this was it!

He was truly glad that some very far thinking, insightful people had set aside places like this before man could destroy them. Of course there wasn’t much here except the trees and the lakes. The granite was too far away to mine and there were not enough other minerals here to be worth going after. It was too far and too hard to get to for profitable commercial fishing. There wasn’t really much here except lakes, boulders, moss and several types of slow growing trees. Good! That made it all the better. He thanked God from the bottom of his heart that such places existed! Silently to himself, he vowed to help keep it pristine just so he and others could always enjoy it.

Growing up he had been a Boy Scout and had done a lot of camping and fishing. Later on he had come on several annual vacations in the Canadian bush, so he was at ease here perhaps more than anywhere he had ever been. And he had been in a lot of places. Grew up in a small town, went into the Air Force and was sent to Viet Nam, and had come home to a perplexing hostility that even after over thirty years he didn’t really understand. He had gone to college and gotten a decent education, married and had a good job. He’d done all the things that a lot of people do to make a life in this country. His job and his TV had taken him to a lot of places and given him the chance to observe a lot of cultures and locals, but still he liked this one the best.

Two divorces and way too much heartache had emotionally caved him in like nothing that anyone could do to him physically could accomplish. He had watched his life be flushed away twice by two other men. That old saying about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence had proved to be interesting. Both exes got a lot worse life in the end for their infidelity than they had with him. Some would gloat at that, but there was little consolation, because the pain of loss had bleached out all his desires for revenge. Of course he would rather have been married once with a lifelong commitment, but that was not to be. One thing that life had taught him was that sooner or later it all evens out. And he was glad that he hadn’t taken any revenge, even though maybe at one time he wanted to. It had been sweeter in the end to see them take themselves down. He didn’t have to lift a finger and he didn’t have a guilty conscience. That was the best part.

He thought about his girlfriend and the seemingly pleasant life that they were slowly heading toward, his son, who was his best buddy, and his job. So many things were rolling through his mind bumping into each other. He was glad he was here and could maybe finally sort them all out.

His thoughts were jerked back to the present by a tug on his pole that he had cast out only a few minutes before. He gave his pole a jerk to set the hook. It didn’t take long to land a nice small walleye. It was about twelve inches long. Swimming candy! That’s what they used to call the smaller fish. They always tasted far better than the big ones. The big ones were more suitable for the wall than the fry pan. He put it on a stringer and cast out again, continuing his trek across the lake, and had another one on before he had taken six strokes with the paddle. This one was a little bigger, maybe fourteen inches. Cool! He had supper.

These two lake dwellers would taste mighty good filleted and diced in the reconstituted chowder mix he had along in sealed bags in his pack for the evening meal. Speaking of supper, it was now about 3:00 in the afternoon, and it was time he started to look for a camp site. He was almost at the west end of a long narrow lake, and there was a small island up ahead to check out for a place to camp for the night. Above the water, about ten feet along the east end of the island, he saw an open ledge maybe thirty feet long that looked promising. It had a few jack pines growing along the sheer edges on the side, but the ledge was bare. The western two thirds of the island was heavily wooded and sloped gently to the water level. He paddled around to the west end of the island, looking for a place to land and climb up to look things over. He preferred islands to camping on shore. He always figured if anything was headed his way he’d prefer to hear the splash from several yards away compared to the brush snapping just outside his tent. In reality, it didn’t really matter, animals had easy access to islands too, but he simply felt safer on an island just the same.

He found a nice flat rock to land against and got out and pulled the canoe up out of the water. Taking his axe along, he walked into the jack pines and dodged and weaved his way to the higher ground and ledge. There was no trail. He used the axe to cut a few limbs to help get through as he went stepping over small dead trees, and weaving between trees and boulders to get to the open spot on the island. As he stepped out into the open spot his eye caught some movement to his left across the water on the north bank of the lake. There. Maybe one hundred and fifty feet away, standing in the stunningly beautiful light of an afternoon sun that can only be seen in the boreal north, was a caribou. The sunlight illuminated her light brown silhouette strikingly against the grey and green background of the shore. She was knee deep in the water drinking and looking around comfortably. She must have stepped out of the bush just after he went around the island to find his landing spot.

He almost always had a camera hanging on his neck when he was up here, so he was ready. He popped the lens cap off, disabled the flash, aimed, zoomed, and took three great pics of the cow. Each one made a little closer by the zoom feature of the camera. They would be great additions to his collection of wilderness memories. He stepped out to the edge of the flat spot and zoomed in even further and took three more. She caught his movement and headed for shore. She wasn’t in a hurry, but he could tell that she was on guard. He saw her tail flip as her rump disappeared into the brush. That was fun! It really charged him up to see such natural beauty. Some of his favorite parts of his trips to the bush were observing God’s critters in the wild.

He surveyed the site and decided that he was in luck. It had plenty of room for his gear and a tent and a fire. So he turned and broke a better trail to the canoe, returning twice with the branches he had chopped off the trees, and some of the small deadfalls to make the trail. They were all dry and would make good starting fuel for the fire. He was careful not to take too many, because he didn’t want to disturb anything more than he had to. For the next hour and a half he busied himself carrying gear, pitching the tent, gathering firewood, and getting a nice fire going. Just outside the clearing, back in the trees out of sight, he had found a nice deadfall that was suspended mostly off the ground by its branches, so it was really dry. He used his axe to chop off the small branches, and retrieved and assembled his folding saw from one of the waterproof bags to cut the body wood to length for the fire. When he was done, he had quite a stack of firewood and kindling. More than he needed for one night and morning. But that was ok, because this was the starting and ending lake on the loop he was taking this year, and it would be nice to have a pile of firewood ready and waiting for the last night of his trip in the bush. He supposed that he would be tired, so it pleased him to make the pile now for his return later on. He also piled it low so no one would see it if they came by on a canoe. They would have to climb up to the clearing to find it.

He had to carry some good sized rocks up from the landing to tie the tent down, because the stakes were useless on solid rock. He knew that most of the weather this time of year came from the southwest, so he made his camp accordingly and set the tent on the west end of the clearing, to keep it out of the wind if it started to blow later on. Using parachute cord, he then hung his tarp partially over the tent and stretched it more to the east, so he had an awning over the tent entrance out to the edge of the fire bed. Now if it rained, he would stay dry. Not that it looked like rain, but the weather can change in a hurry up here, so he wanted to be ready, just in case. He used parachute cord strung between the trees growing on the edge of the clearing to fasten the tarp and suspend it over the tent to the edge of the fire area.

He opened his backpack, took out the cooking kit and went to the water for a panful to make supper with. Then he dug out the chowder mix and went about getting the ingredients of the chowder soaking in the pan. Next he went down to the canoe and paddled to a spot along the shore on a flat rock to the south across from the island. There he cleaned the fish and left the remains for the sea gulls and eagles to dine on tomorrow. They had to eat too. He had a habit of always cleaning his fish away from camp so he didn’t attract any unwelcome visitors, like bears or wolverines. They could really make a mess of things. He had never had any trouble like that, but had seen firsthand what they and other hungry critters could do in camps where people had been more careless in their fish cleaning and securing their food. He was very careful to keep his food so it couldn’t be detected by the really fine senses of the predators.

He paused for a minute and focused the camera on his island camp site, and took a few shots, zooming in as he did. One of them he decided would be a good memory shot too. The different hues of blue of the tarp and the tent stood out against the green backdrop of trees and the brown and black brackish shades of the rock ledge in front, and made for a sharp looking contrast. The pictures could probably be used in a camping magazine. His camera always took good, sharp, almost professional quality pictures, so anything was possible. Maybe when he got home he would submit some of them to a few magazines and see if he would get anyone to use them. Lord knew that he could always use the extra cash.

He took a few things out of his pockets that he didn’t want to get wet and took a swim for a little while. He swam the two hundred feet to the island and back to cool off, bathe, and do his laundry at the same time. The lake was his Canadian laundromat, he chuckled to himself.

There was still enough sun hitting this rocky spot for him to lie out for a while to let the water evaporate from his body and out of most of his clothes, so he sat there quietly for a spell. This was really relaxing and he almost fell asleep. His belly growled a hunger-warning rumble at him to remind him that it was time to eat, and he gathered up his stuff and paddled across to the island to get supper going. Starting the fire, he diced up one fish and added it to the pot and set it on to boil. The second fish he put in a plastic bag and put in the small collapsible cooler down by the canoe to be saved for breakfast. While the chowder was simmering, he changed clothes, strung a clothes line across the fire end of the tarp and hung the gear he had been wearing out to dry. By morning, when the sun hit them for an hour or so, they could probably be put away.

Supper was awesome! Fish chowder with carrots, peas, potatoes, celery and onions in a milk broth, with butter and salt and pepper made a great meal. He had also mixed up a quart of lemonade in his water bottle for a treat and had a couple of candy bars for desert. He had dined in the finest restaurants in the world, but could recall no finer meal anywhere. It must be the ambiance, he chuckled to himself. Couldn’t be anything else!

The sun was going down behind the tree line and the chill of the shade falling over the camp made him put on his Gortex jacket. Military surplus, the best you could have up here for the diversity of the weather. It kept one dry in the rain, warm in a chilly wind, and cool in hot sunlight. Yes, one could buy more packable, lighter, more expensive weather apparel to use up here. But he had found that military surplus was the best and most durable. Why not? The government had learned to outfit its help with the best products in the world. If it was good enough for our troops to wear, it was more than adequate for him.

After relaxing and lounging back for a while to settle his supper, he decided that a little fishing was a great idea. So he went down to the canoe, got his pole and worked his way around the north side of the island a ways by stepping on some rocks that nature had placed perfectly to give him room to cast his baits without snagging the brush behind him. He began to cast in the general direction of where the caribou had stood. He saw a swirl in the water, and bang! He had one take it on the first cast. He set the hook and the fight was on! It turned out to be a really nice northern pike. He got it up to shore, took out his tape measure and measured it, took a picture and let it go. It was a nice one. Thirty-six inches long, and maybe weighing fifteen or sixteen pounds. It wasn’t as deep bellied as some fish he had seen, but it was a nice fish just the same. He gently put it in the water to let it go and watched it disappear toward where it had come from. Three more casts brought in two more smaller ones which were also unhooked and released. He was just having fun and not looking for anything for the fry pan. Catch and release was something he had learned to like. These beautiful creatures were fun to catch, but even more fun to watch has they swam away. Usually they were in no hurry, so catching them seemed to leave no trauma that he could see.

He moved back around by the canoe and sent six or seven more casts there without any action. So he moved around the south side of the island toward the foot of the clearing. He walked out onto a narrow