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The Big Easy (cont.)

The next lakes over from Temagami have equally marvelous names: Lady Evelyn, Anima Nipissing, Wanapitei, Obabika. Each leads on to several others. The Sturgeon, Montreal, and Temagami Rivers are occasional linkages, but more often you use a smaller lake, with a portage on each end, to connect your dots. The conventional trips are loops. For example, Lake Temagami to Red Cedar, Cross, and Jumping Caribou Lakes, returning through Wasaksina to Temagami's Shiningwood Bay. That particular loop covers 60-plus miles. It'll take five days if you push, more if you're reflective. You get a look at and a dip (paddle, fishing line, full body) in 14 lakes large enough to be named, plus a lovely stretch of the Temagami River, with a couple of moderate rapids. It's a good route for intermediates, or for novices if they portage the rapids. The longest of the 21 portages is three-quarters of a mile, the shortest a 25-yard lift-over. Put-in and take-out are at the end of the Lake Temagami access road, which saves 11 not very interesting paddling miles down the northeast arm of Lake Temagami (and avoids the bustle of the lake's main body).

My wife and I did that loop on our very first trip to Temagami. The various lakes have since become a blur as far as names are concerned, but as we retrace the trip on a map, each conjures up some vivid memory—usually a dawn put-in or a gaudy orange sunset, in any case a great outdoor quiet, carrying with it a sweeping wave of gratitude: to be in this place, to be allowed here. An incomprehensible privilege.

The Temagami-to-Jumping-Caribou Lakes loop is Route Number 5 in "Canoeing in the Temagami Area," a useful overview map put out by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (705-475-5550). The map indicates campsites and suggests no fewer than 23 different loops. Some are day trips; some require three weeks or more. In my experience, the longer, the better.

You should also invest in regional topo maps to help you pick your way from one bay to the next and to locate portages. Topos indicate cottages as well, so you can choose which lakes to head for and which to avoid. On our last trip we easily made our way, in one day, to a lake with no cottages at all and in three days there saw a houseboat at the limit of binocular vision, plus two passing fishermen's outboards, and not another soul.

A limited supply of topo maps and other last-minute necessaries is available in the very small town of Temagami, where there's also an outfitter or two who may be able to rent you a canoe and other gear and supply food. Or may not.

You're better off planning ahead. On the drive north, an hour before Temagami, lies the small city of North Bay, where there's a wider selection of supplies, particularly perishables. (There's no grocery store in Temagami itself.) At North Bay or Temagami, non-Canadians are supposed to register and pay a user fee—$10 Canadian per person per night—but the last time we were there no one would take our money. We tried to pay in three different locations. Everyone shrugged us off. They'd run out of the forms, they all said.

Canoeing here is, in other words, a fairly informal enterprise. You don't have to get a reservation months in advance, as you do for more tightly controlled canoe-tripping venues. You're expected to practice low-impact camping—and you will, because the place is so lovely and you won't want to spoil it—but you won't be policed into it. You'll be treated as an adult. One more reason to love the Near North.

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