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The Big Easy
Summertime adventuring, Canadian style, on the continent's finest spot for cooling your heels

By John Jerome

As you float serenely along any of the countless placid waterways coiled throughout Ontario's Temagami region, there's a question you can't help but ponder: Why on earth has our outdoor culture so giddily embraced the extreme? There is, after all, such a venerable tradition of being easy in the outdoors. "We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it," wrote George Washington Sears back in 1884, in his timeless book Woodcraft. "We go to smooth it."

Five score years and change later, truer words have yet to be spoken. And there's still no better means for soothing the spirit than a canoe. At least if you have any interest in, say, an uninterrupted string of lazy days on perfect water in a beautiful place, with high drama provided only by dawn and sunsets and maybe the occasional heron sighting. There's no need for paranoiac weight-paring. Or worrying of any kind. You're self-sufficient, but not self-supporting. You can bring whatever you want. It'll float. You'll float. The world will slip away.

Of course, for this last you must pick the right spot. A body of water that seems to exist solely for contemplative paddling. A bastion of serenity on our increasingly hyperactive continent. A place like Temagami, where a dozen big lakes, including the area's namesake, are interconnected with a thousand small ones in the woods of Canada's Near North, about five hours or so from Toronto.

The Temagami region, in my opinion, is the most perfect spot remaining in North America for recreating, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. It's a place to be rejuvenated, made anew. No charter fly-in is necessary, and no strict scheduling either. You put in when you want and take out the same way. In between, you paddle slowly through old-fashioned beaver, bear, and moose country, on the line where hardwoods begin giving way to the boreal forest of the Far North. The hills are ancient and well worn, an occasional northwest-to-southeast ridge showing which way the ice cap withdrew. The highest point in Ontario, 2,275-foot Ishpatina Ridge, is close by. Paddling farther, you can easily push on to real wilderness—or, as the Canadians say, deep bush. Extreme country, indeed. But have no doubts: If your craft is well stocked and your date book is empty, Mr. Sears would certainly approve.