The Big Easy (cont.) | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Travel >> The Big Easy (cont.)

Today's Question
Where should I camp in Switzerland with my kids? answer

What's the best volcano to hike up in North America? answer

How can I plan a trip around riding the biggest, fastest roller coasters? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine

Page:

The Big Easy (cont.)

In touting Temagami and its kin, I'm not suggesting that this is some remarkably undiscovered paddling jewel. The Near North has drawn water lovers for more than 5,000 years, ever since the Teme Augama Anishnabai first launched their dugouts here. Some portages have by now been used so hard for so long that they've become deep U-shaped troughs. Captains of the Clouds, with Jimmy Cagney as a bush pilot, was filmed at Temagami Lake in 1941, typecasting the place as the quintessential north woods paradise.

But as the outdoor zeitgeist has moved on to more exotic locales and more strenuous, treacherous, louder pursuits, Temagami and its sister lakes have fallen off the outdoor-sports radar screen. Good news, because it means, in effect, that you can rediscover this area if you go now. For a place of so much beauty and so much accessibility, it's still remarkably unspoiled, silent, the ideal spot to just float.

Trip guides assume you'll cover 10 to 15 miles a day, at the rate of about three miles per hour. That makes for maybe three to five hours of paddling per day. When I tell some of my more driven friends this, they invariably ask, "But what do you do the rest of the time?" To them I reply, "Don't take up canoeing." Those who wonder about filling their days are not the type who would be at home on Temagami.

Because in my experience the days are jam-packed. You paddle. You stop. You slip off your clothes, you slip over the side. You float a bit. You splash. You drop beneath the surface and eye a walleye or two. Then you pull yourself back on board, break into the food stores, and watch for moose as you munch fresh bread and apples. Later still, you drop a line over the side and contemplate the enviable existence of the local sturgeons, most of which are much too wily to be caught by the likes of you.

Next day, repeat. Paddle and swim and eat and sleep. Then paddle and swim and sun and eat. Dangle your arm over the side. Watch the sun strike sparks off the surface of the lake. And count yourself among the lucky. What you want from a summer vacation is golden days, isn't it? They come no more golden than this.