In the morning we see bear tracks in the mud. All through our camp. Huge, deep prints, with five toes and sharp claw marks. I was right!
“Grizzly,” Dad declares. “Check out the size of the tracks.”
I think of the lost Boy Scout and a shiver runs through me.
We start building a fire for cooking, looking around every few seconds for last night’s visitor.
It’s warmer today, and swarms of mosquitoes emerge from the shadows. They buzz and whine. We swat and yell—as if yelling will do any good—and race back to the tent. Dad gets out the bug spray. He pulls off his shirt and shrouds himself in a mist of repellent. Then hands it to me.
I wonder if it would repel grizzlies, too. Take that! Pssst! Pssssssssst!
When the sun strikes our camp and the breeze picks up, the mosquitoes fade away and we get breakfast going. Dad fries eggs and bacon and boils coffee, while I use a small hand pump to filter the lake water, so I can fill our water bottles for the day.
The bacon’s burnt but I like it that way. There’s no milk for the coffee but I drink it anyway, with lots and lots of sugar, while I look at the map.
“Aaron!” Dad claps his hands together. “We’ve got to get this camp shipshape, and weigh anchor. Pronto!”
“Geez, Dad! You sound like Roger and Willie, all rolled into one!” Roger with his pirate talk. Willie with his cowboy drawl.
He snaps me with a towel. I grab it and almost pull him into the fire.
He almost laughs. Not quite.
“Seriously,” he says, all business now. As usual. “Our little spill lost us a day yesterday. We should’ve made it across Indian Point Lake by last night. And we have a long uphill portage just to get there. And that’s after we paddle across the rest of Kibbee Lake!”
The day’s just begun and he’s already barking orders at me.
“I’ll take care of the tent,” he says. “You do the dishes and douse the fire. And be sure to scrub the frying pan good.”
“How about I take down the tent and you scrub the frying pan?”
He folds his arms across his chest and glares at me.
“Fine!” I grab the pan and a pot, plus my dishes, and head down to the water. Actually I like dousing the fire. I like the way it sizzles and steams up. I like to watch the last embers shrivel and die. Pzzzzzzzzzz.
We’re back out on the lake within the hour. I’m in the stern again. I release the rudder line by hand so the rudder plops in, because we’re making a beeline for the far end of the lake and a strong breeze is shoving us sideways.
There are small waves but we slice right through them. I love being low in the water. In a canoe you sit well above the surface, but in a kayak you feel like you’re inside the water, a part of the boat.
We get into a rhythm. We both paddle with strong, smooth strokes, and never clash. We’re totally synchronized now.
If only our lives we’re in sync like this, Dad and I would be models of the perfect father and son.
But we’re not. Not in sync. And not models.
And yet, while we’re plowing through the waves, I get a glimpse of how it could be.
And I don’t hate it.
No more sign of bear. No movement on shore. No wind. No waves. All is still and silent, except for the soft, steady paddle-splashes we make as we glide across the pure mirror reflection of the sky.
Kibbee Lake “accomplished” (Dad lingo), an hour later and we’re portaging the 1.2 miles to Indian Point Lake. Even with the cart it’s hard work. We don’t speak. We sweat.
To forget the pain, I let my mind wander. I wonder who the Indians were here, or the First Nations people, as they’re called in Canada. And if there are any still around here. I wonder if they made dugout or birch bark canoes, and if they portaged them upside down, on their shoulders with their heads inside. Or if they used a travois to drag them along the ground.
I bet they wished they had portage carts like we have, and I’m glad that Pam, the pretty park ranger, talked Dad into using one.
Small birds flit and flicker between the trees, chipmunks chuckle, and sweat drips down my sides. The sun’s straight up and there’s no shade. We’re trudging steadily uphill. My legs feel like lead pipes.
When we finally arrive at Indian Point Lake—which tapers at the far end and looks calm at the moment—we plop down on the shore and eat a snack of gorp and guzzle filtered water. I gobble two energy bars.
As we sit there, everything changes. I can feel it. It’s ominous. A huge dark cloud blocks the sun now. A cool breeze slides down from the mountains and makes me shiver.
Out on the lake the sky continues to darken. No big thunderclouds, just a solid gray, like the underbelly of a whale.
Dad doesn’t need to say, Put on your spray skirt, Aaron. It looks like rain.
I put on my spray skirt all on my own, wash down the energy bars, and we’re ready to push off. Me in the back again. The boat at my command.
By the time we’re halfway down the length of Indian Point Lake, it begins to rain. A light, steady rain. Since I have my spray skirt on, attached to my cockpit, I have to release it to grab my poncho, which I keep tucked behind my back as a kind of cushion.
While I do that, we start drifting with the wind. “Stay on course!” Dad snaps, yelling over his shoulder.
“I’m putting on my poncho!” I yell back. “Calm down.”
While Dad gets into his poncho, I use my paddle to adjust our direction, lining up the bow with the tallest tree at the end of the lake. Soon we’re a team of two again.
Barely.
That’s when I see something along the shore. It’s dark brown, and it’s large. From here I can’t tell if it’s a moose or a grizzly bear, but—from the safety of our kayak—I aim to find out.
I pull up the rudder so I can change course and stroke wide on the right side till the nose swings around toward the left, and we begin heading toward whatever it is.
“Aaron! What the—”
“There’s a moose or a bear, Dad! Over there against the shore. I want to see it. Okay?”
Dad wants to see it, too—whatever it is—as much as I do. I can tell by his posture.
As we get closer it gets bigger. And then we know what it is.
“Bull moose!” Dad yells. Nuzzling the lake water, Moose stands up to his knees in the sedge grass sprouting from the shallows.
He’s a hundred yards away.
Seventy-five.
Fifty.
He lifts his great flat rack up and water pours off like miniature waterfalls from his antlers and the duckweed in his mouth. He keeps chewing, chewing, watching us with beady eyes.
I paddle harder toward shore, into the duckweed, as Dad yells, “Hold up, Aaron! Not too close!”
But I keep paddling.
Dad back-paddles just as hard—away from the moose.
It’s a standoff.
“Aaron!”
“I’m not going to run him over, Dad! I just want to see him better.”
“He’s gonna run us over if we get any closer, Aaron! Moose can be more dangerous than bears! Unpredictable!”
“Chill, Dad! We’re not hurting the moose, and he’s not going to hurt us!”
“I told you to back off, Aaron! Listen to me! I’m telling you!”
You’re trying to control me again, but I don’t say it. I keep paddling.
We’re still far enough away from the moose. It’s not like they can swim, after all.
I’m wrong! Suddenly the huge bull moose comes crashing toward us. In no time he’s swimming, and he’s swimming fast: knees working like pistons, hooves churning, nostrils flaring.
And all of a sudden I’m back-paddling with Dad. I plunge the blade in the water near the stern and we pivot on a dime. Then we forward paddle so fast we churn the water with our blades like a paddleboat.
Away from the moose.
“Paddle, Dad! Harder!”
I glance over my shoulder. The moose is just a paddle length behind us! He’s snorting like a demonic horse, snot flying out of his huge nostrils. We had trampled his duckweed . . .
. . . and now he’s gonna trample us!
