The way to Killarney goes through rock cuts and over wide brown rivers, past cottage towns, derelict motels, shiny fast food restaurants and gas stations, stands of pine, washing machine graveyards, a Bobby Orr museum, frames of old billboards that have lost their posters, and farms active and abandoned. On top of the car was Todd's kayak, sitting in a special cradle and secured with straps that buzzed, drummed, and hummed strange tunes. We alternately ignored them, stopped so Todd could fool with them, and turned up the music.
My brother Todd, his husband, Shane, and their friend Virginia were going kayak camping for the Labour Day weekend, and had generously offered to bring me along and try to keep me alive in the back-country, possibly as a sporting challenge. Todd, a kayak ultramarathon racer (it exists, and it is bananas), was trying out his brand new racing kayak, a very long, light, shiny thing; the rest of us rented. We picked up camping gear at Killarney Outfitters and went down to the river where kayaks with slips of paper bearing our names were set out near the launch ramp. We pulled everything out of the car and set about stuffing the gear into dry bags and the dry bags into kayaks. Sea kayaks hold quite a lot, as long as everything can be forced through a small circular opening and rotated ninety degrees, which tents, for example, sometimes can't.
We paddled down the river into the bay and across open water into the archipelago. The southern shore of Phillip Edward Island breaks up into uncountable tiny islands of pink granite whose shores have eroded into smooth and unlikely shapes: Washboards, ridges and furrows, mounds of dough, slopes as flat and smooth as kitchen counters. The islands are all alike, all different, like the output of a prolific sculptor with a distinctive style. The whole area is (for now) crown land, and you can pull up and pitch a tent wherever you like. On the flatter and higher spots are circles of small rocks signifying good sites. It was Labour Day weekend, and busier than Todd and Shane remembered seeing it, which meant that you might spot a tent in the distance every now and then. Otherwise, you can more or less explore and claim temporary sovereignty over any island that looks promising.
We shopped around for islands, and pulled up onto quite a nice one. Todd thought it was "a bit meh". Standards are high in the archipelago. He promised that "their" island was much better, and it was: A little lagoon, a pine forest full of deadfall for fires, a fire circle to burn it in, and an adjacent chain of low, finger-like islands to explore. We landed and pulled everything out of the kayaks and scattered it around until the shore looked like a refugee camp. There were tent circles a ways down the lagoon, and here we put up the tents, weighting them down with almost enough rocks to prevent them from blowing away.
Todd, Shane, and Virginia, unfazed by a broken stove, built fires that looked like model log cabins and cooked elaborate meals on them. My idea of a camping meal is that it should be something you can boil in a bag or roast on a stick; theirs is that it should be a gastronomic event. This is not a complaint. There was ramen with maple-miso salmon, arepas, blueberry pancakes, machaga, and carrot cake with icing squeezed unappetizingly but deliciously from a Ziploc bag packed insanely into the back-country in a small plastic drum. There were cheeses I don't remember the names of. There was more; many ingredients went in while I wasn't paying attention because I was busy making unhelpful remarks or lying down with my eyes closed. And all this with food stored in random dry bags, which means ingredients aren't gotten out, they are quested for.
At night, we stuffed the food back into dry bags and stuffed the dry bags into the kayaks, which were a little way from the tents. This is a bear precaution. Bears may be uncommon in these islands; the internet contains arguments about whether this is true or not, but I liked to think it was. Actuarially speaking, black bears are roughly as dangerous as yoga balls, but I don't like the idea of them. I don't like the thought of running into one and having to remember all the contradictory, context-specific advice about bear encounters. Is it a lone male? A mother with a cub? Is it habituated, hungry, startled, predatory, sullen, relaxed, exuberant, insouciant? Is it slobbering, and, if so, is it slobbering in an aggressive way? Is it gang-affiliated? Is it stroking a longhaired Persian cat or displaying other signs of possible supervillainy?
Most of what I know about dealing with predators I picked up from a very interesting little book I have called Don't Get Eaten and from Jim Corbett's accounts of hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in India. From Corbett, I know the importance of listening to the alarm signals of other animals, staying aware of the wind direction, being an expert tracker, having incredible personal courage, choosing favourable ground, and carrying a high-powered rifle with which one is a quick and expert shot. Of these, the favourable ground one seems do-able. But this sounds like an argument for staying home and putting the onus on the bear to come to me, which would mean infiltrating a major city, finding one particular building, disguising itself convincingly enough to get past the security desk, making its way up to my floor, and then trying conclusions with me in my own habitat, where I'd be in a strong position to throw books and small appliances at it.
I thought about getting some bear spray or "bear bangers" (little noise bombs fired from a sort of pen-sized grenade launcher). But these would have been a) kind of expensive, b) a hassle to find, c) not unlikely to be set off accidentally by me at bad moments, and d) a constant temptation in annoying coffee shops or grocery store lineups. None of the other animals worry me very much. Being trampled by a moose would be less gruesome and more notable. Also, with the moose I always feel there's a possibility of subduing it through force of personality and maybe riding triumphantly home on it to the wonder of all. (Todd and I ran into a moose once in Killarney years ago. It was in the middle of the path, staring into the distance and chewing. We shouted and clapped our hands. It gave us a look of withering contempt and tried to recollect its train of thought.)
At night, we lay around looking at the stars — living in the city, you forget that there are more than five of them — and watching for meteorites, of which we saw maybe half a dozen, including one big fireball.
The larger islands have little pine forests, with trees growing wherever depressions in the granite has allowed organic matter to accumulate. Our island was full of fallen trees; they reach a certain size, and then their wind cross-section becomes too great for their shallow roots. Or that happens to a nearby tree, and a few go over together; I saw a line of them that had fallen like dominos, one of them coming down onto the mossy and rotten remains of an old pit toilet (which might have been useful had the pit also not long since collapsed).
On the second day we paddled through the mazy island passages to the East, past a few isolated cottages, under an old wooden bridge, and across a stretch or two of open water, breaking midway to snack and bask on some rocks. The variety of eroded granite shores is such that there's certain to be a spot that suits you perfectly, as though bespoken millennia ago and carefully carved out to your specifications by the water. It was windy, and the waves were breaking over submerged rocks in a shipwrecking sort of way. I grounded on one myself — this actually turned out to be a bit of a specialty of mine — but this is much less dramatic in a polyethylene kayak than in, say, a 16th century galleon. What mostly happens is that you have to wiggle backwards and forwards in an undignified way while trying to pole off the algae-covered rocks with your paddle. In the open water, the wind made things a bit exciting for the novice. With the stern to the wind, the kayak would surf, waves picking up the whole boat and shoving it roughly forwards. Quartering the wind or running parallel to it, the kayak would roll and waves would crash over the bow.
I do not understand how Todd's racing kayak could possibly be kept upright in anything but totally calm conditions. I took it out in the lagoon and, by concentrating intently and being quite lucky, was able to paddle it in a small, shaky circle without capsizing. Kayak design (reportedly) involves unavoidable trade-offs among a few desirable characteristics; racing kayaks were invented when someone thought, "now, what would happen if we set stability to zero?" Todd's was born knowing only one thing, which is that its bottom side should face the sun.
Returning, we picked up the tents, put them back, and put more rocks in them. Another preposterous gourmet meal and more looking at the stars.
On Monday, we left. Packing everything back into the kayaks was like reversing an explosion. It was still windy, the open crossings were rough, and Todd's new racing kayak seized its chance. I was a little ways behind him when he suddenly rolled underwater and disappeared. I paddled madly up and found him bobbing calmly in the surf. Shane came alongside, and we (me acting under carefully and slowly-stated instructions) hauled the boat out of the water upside down, put it across our bows, and let the water drain out. Then they sent me to shore while Todd somehow clambered back into his boat. Then we had cake.
The shore I'd chosen to strike out for, and had led Virginia to, was a stretch of unsheltered rock with waves breaking against it. On leaving again, Virginia and I paddled into the lagoon beside it and grounded ourselves on a rock while trying to hang about for a rendezvous with the others. I managed to shove her off, but then had to be freed myself by Shane. Then he called me back and fixed my rudder, which had fallen off. We reached calm water and moved quietly forwards for a while, and then Shane called out to casually ask whether the duct tape was packed somewhere accessible; which, I think, is hardly ever a good thing to hear on a boat. His paddle had cracked. So we landed, they cheerfully wrapped the crack in a few feet of tape, and we pushed off again.
The rest of the trip home was uneventful, except for Todd's kayak rolling twice more. The first time, he recovered with an Eskimo roll: He vanished and reappeared, as though he'd just blinked out of existence for a second. The third time, he climbed back in with minimal help from Shane. All this made the whole trip a bit interesting for me, but no one else found any of it remotely alarming, and it wasn't really — after Todd's boat dumped him into the surf, he'd be at most very mildly exasperated, like a man who's just realized he left his newspaper on the train. He'd sigh and get back in and lead us on.
A beautiful trip that has made me think that maybe I should be outdoorsy. I already own one checked shirt and am seriously considering buying another.
My brother Todd, his husband, Shane, and their friend Virginia were going kayak camping for the Labour Day weekend, and had generously offered to bring me along and try to keep me alive in the back-country, possibly as a sporting challenge. Todd, a kayak ultramarathon racer (it exists, and it is bananas), was trying out his brand new racing kayak, a very long, light, shiny thing; the rest of us rented. We picked up camping gear at Killarney Outfitters and went down to the river where kayaks with slips of paper bearing our names were set out near the launch ramp. We pulled everything out of the car and set about stuffing the gear into dry bags and the dry bags into kayaks. Sea kayaks hold quite a lot, as long as everything can be forced through a small circular opening and rotated ninety degrees, which tents, for example, sometimes can't.
We paddled down the river into the bay and across open water into the archipelago. The southern shore of Phillip Edward Island breaks up into uncountable tiny islands of pink granite whose shores have eroded into smooth and unlikely shapes: Washboards, ridges and furrows, mounds of dough, slopes as flat and smooth as kitchen counters. The islands are all alike, all different, like the output of a prolific sculptor with a distinctive style. The whole area is (for now) crown land, and you can pull up and pitch a tent wherever you like. On the flatter and higher spots are circles of small rocks signifying good sites. It was Labour Day weekend, and busier than Todd and Shane remembered seeing it, which meant that you might spot a tent in the distance every now and then. Otherwise, you can more or less explore and claim temporary sovereignty over any island that looks promising.
We shopped around for islands, and pulled up onto quite a nice one. Todd thought it was "a bit meh". Standards are high in the archipelago. He promised that "their" island was much better, and it was: A little lagoon, a pine forest full of deadfall for fires, a fire circle to burn it in, and an adjacent chain of low, finger-like islands to explore. We landed and pulled everything out of the kayaks and scattered it around until the shore looked like a refugee camp. There were tent circles a ways down the lagoon, and here we put up the tents, weighting them down with almost enough rocks to prevent them from blowing away.
Todd, Shane, and Virginia, unfazed by a broken stove, built fires that looked like model log cabins and cooked elaborate meals on them. My idea of a camping meal is that it should be something you can boil in a bag or roast on a stick; theirs is that it should be a gastronomic event. This is not a complaint. There was ramen with maple-miso salmon, arepas, blueberry pancakes, machaga, and carrot cake with icing squeezed unappetizingly but deliciously from a Ziploc bag packed insanely into the back-country in a small plastic drum. There were cheeses I don't remember the names of. There was more; many ingredients went in while I wasn't paying attention because I was busy making unhelpful remarks or lying down with my eyes closed. And all this with food stored in random dry bags, which means ingredients aren't gotten out, they are quested for.
At night, we stuffed the food back into dry bags and stuffed the dry bags into the kayaks, which were a little way from the tents. This is a bear precaution. Bears may be uncommon in these islands; the internet contains arguments about whether this is true or not, but I liked to think it was. Actuarially speaking, black bears are roughly as dangerous as yoga balls, but I don't like the idea of them. I don't like the thought of running into one and having to remember all the contradictory, context-specific advice about bear encounters. Is it a lone male? A mother with a cub? Is it habituated, hungry, startled, predatory, sullen, relaxed, exuberant, insouciant? Is it slobbering, and, if so, is it slobbering in an aggressive way? Is it gang-affiliated? Is it stroking a longhaired Persian cat or displaying other signs of possible supervillainy?
Most of what I know about dealing with predators I picked up from a very interesting little book I have called Don't Get Eaten and from Jim Corbett's accounts of hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in India. From Corbett, I know the importance of listening to the alarm signals of other animals, staying aware of the wind direction, being an expert tracker, having incredible personal courage, choosing favourable ground, and carrying a high-powered rifle with which one is a quick and expert shot. Of these, the favourable ground one seems do-able. But this sounds like an argument for staying home and putting the onus on the bear to come to me, which would mean infiltrating a major city, finding one particular building, disguising itself convincingly enough to get past the security desk, making its way up to my floor, and then trying conclusions with me in my own habitat, where I'd be in a strong position to throw books and small appliances at it.
I thought about getting some bear spray or "bear bangers" (little noise bombs fired from a sort of pen-sized grenade launcher). But these would have been a) kind of expensive, b) a hassle to find, c) not unlikely to be set off accidentally by me at bad moments, and d) a constant temptation in annoying coffee shops or grocery store lineups. None of the other animals worry me very much. Being trampled by a moose would be less gruesome and more notable. Also, with the moose I always feel there's a possibility of subduing it through force of personality and maybe riding triumphantly home on it to the wonder of all. (Todd and I ran into a moose once in Killarney years ago. It was in the middle of the path, staring into the distance and chewing. We shouted and clapped our hands. It gave us a look of withering contempt and tried to recollect its train of thought.)
At night, we lay around looking at the stars — living in the city, you forget that there are more than five of them — and watching for meteorites, of which we saw maybe half a dozen, including one big fireball.
The larger islands have little pine forests, with trees growing wherever depressions in the granite has allowed organic matter to accumulate. Our island was full of fallen trees; they reach a certain size, and then their wind cross-section becomes too great for their shallow roots. Or that happens to a nearby tree, and a few go over together; I saw a line of them that had fallen like dominos, one of them coming down onto the mossy and rotten remains of an old pit toilet (which might have been useful had the pit also not long since collapsed).
On the second day we paddled through the mazy island passages to the East, past a few isolated cottages, under an old wooden bridge, and across a stretch or two of open water, breaking midway to snack and bask on some rocks. The variety of eroded granite shores is such that there's certain to be a spot that suits you perfectly, as though bespoken millennia ago and carefully carved out to your specifications by the water. It was windy, and the waves were breaking over submerged rocks in a shipwrecking sort of way. I grounded on one myself — this actually turned out to be a bit of a specialty of mine — but this is much less dramatic in a polyethylene kayak than in, say, a 16th century galleon. What mostly happens is that you have to wiggle backwards and forwards in an undignified way while trying to pole off the algae-covered rocks with your paddle. In the open water, the wind made things a bit exciting for the novice. With the stern to the wind, the kayak would surf, waves picking up the whole boat and shoving it roughly forwards. Quartering the wind or running parallel to it, the kayak would roll and waves would crash over the bow.
I do not understand how Todd's racing kayak could possibly be kept upright in anything but totally calm conditions. I took it out in the lagoon and, by concentrating intently and being quite lucky, was able to paddle it in a small, shaky circle without capsizing. Kayak design (reportedly) involves unavoidable trade-offs among a few desirable characteristics; racing kayaks were invented when someone thought, "now, what would happen if we set stability to zero?" Todd's was born knowing only one thing, which is that its bottom side should face the sun.
Returning, we picked up the tents, put them back, and put more rocks in them. Another preposterous gourmet meal and more looking at the stars.
On Monday, we left. Packing everything back into the kayaks was like reversing an explosion. It was still windy, the open crossings were rough, and Todd's new racing kayak seized its chance. I was a little ways behind him when he suddenly rolled underwater and disappeared. I paddled madly up and found him bobbing calmly in the surf. Shane came alongside, and we (me acting under carefully and slowly-stated instructions) hauled the boat out of the water upside down, put it across our bows, and let the water drain out. Then they sent me to shore while Todd somehow clambered back into his boat. Then we had cake.
The shore I'd chosen to strike out for, and had led Virginia to, was a stretch of unsheltered rock with waves breaking against it. On leaving again, Virginia and I paddled into the lagoon beside it and grounded ourselves on a rock while trying to hang about for a rendezvous with the others. I managed to shove her off, but then had to be freed myself by Shane. Then he called me back and fixed my rudder, which had fallen off. We reached calm water and moved quietly forwards for a while, and then Shane called out to casually ask whether the duct tape was packed somewhere accessible; which, I think, is hardly ever a good thing to hear on a boat. His paddle had cracked. So we landed, they cheerfully wrapped the crack in a few feet of tape, and we pushed off again.
The rest of the trip home was uneventful, except for Todd's kayak rolling twice more. The first time, he recovered with an Eskimo roll: He vanished and reappeared, as though he'd just blinked out of existence for a second. The third time, he climbed back in with minimal help from Shane. All this made the whole trip a bit interesting for me, but no one else found any of it remotely alarming, and it wasn't really — after Todd's boat dumped him into the surf, he'd be at most very mildly exasperated, like a man who's just realized he left his newspaper on the train. He'd sigh and get back in and lead us on.
A beautiful trip that has made me think that maybe I should be outdoorsy. I already own one checked shirt and am seriously considering buying another.
