..or How that nectar of the bush makes life worth living in the Bush.

From time to time, in order to fulfill the machismo requirements of being a man, I will take a canoe trip down one of the northern rivers. In this case, we're talking the Snake River in the Yukon.

Since I have no friends, I am forced to pay an exorbitant amount of money to a local outfitter to be part of a group which will be guided down the river.
Don't get me wrong...these guys do a pretty good job.
They know a lot more about river travel than I do, I manage to complete the trip more or less in the same condition as when I started.

A very important factor in everyone getting along is the quality of food and drink. Instead of eating reconstituted chickpeas from a plastic sack, guests are treated to cinnamon buns, bacon and eggs, pancakes for breakfast (on different days of course) and roast beef, potatoes, salad (or similar stuff) for supper.

And coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Or else heads will roll. No cream of course, but "whitener" (also referred to as "an inedible oil product") and sugar and hot chocolate powder which makes you a kind of mocha.

And none of your organic beans picked on a sunny hillside in Iceland by Nordic Maidens who have yet to see their 16th summer. Nope, pre-ground, generic Arabica/Robusta material suitable for drinking or stripping paint.
But let me tell you: at 47 years, facing the prospect of two weeks' worth of nights sleeping on a Thermarest, eating 3 meals a day under a tarp to keep out the wind and rain and wearing several layers of DEET to keep off the mozzies, I better have my coffee plentiful and hot or someone's gonna die.

On this trip, 6 of the guests were German, only two of whom spoke decent English.
All of them were over 65.
This is not necessarily an impediment to river travel, but the married couple, Ursula and Dieter had one good hip between the two of them.

They ended up in the inflatable raft. Besides me, the only other guest was an American lawyer whom I'll call "Fred". As he spoke a form of English close to Canadian, he ended up in my canoe in the stern; where all the steering takes place.
I should mention at this point that part of the reason for taking these guided trips lies in the sad fact that my only real contribution to canoeing is brute strength.

I lack skill and judgement. But when it comes to making a canoe go fast, my nickname should be Evinrude. Fred thought of himself as a pretty good canoeist so anything that didn't go well was my fault.
The Snake is shallow and twisty-turny at its head waters and this meant that we kept grounding the canoe on the gravel bars. Having to get out of the canoe every few minutes to drag it back into deep water gets to be old after the first 20 times.

Like the Germans, Fred was also over 65 so he was just old enough to be my Dad. I don't know if any of you have had to do something difficult with an impatient, short tempered perfectionist, but let me tell you, my younger years were hell for that very reason.
Being with Fred took me back to my early teens and I was ready to wet my pants...if they hadn't already been wet from climbing into the river every few minutes.

After about a week of travel, our guides told us that we had a particularly tricky section of river to run and we would have to stop and plan how to get through it.
I've done enough of these trips to know that the guides aren't worried about themselves; they've done this type of thing more often than I've had hot meals.
No, they're worried about losing a client to the river while trying to provide an adventure for soft city-dwellers.
And this section is a little spooky. After a fast run in, the river makes an abrupt left hand turn because the canyon wall turns left. At the end of the canyon, there's a big rock you have to avoid. I know my limits and this little section gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Fred was all set to go, however. We had a plan, we knew what we had to do. All that was required was some intestinal fortitude and we'd be fine. I confess that I almost bailed at this point.

All I could see in my mind's eye were the shattered bones of my right arm protruding through the skin after I tried to stop the canoe from hitting the canyon wall when we hit it at about 15 mph.

That doesn't sound very fast, but imagine an object weighing around 700 pounds moving at the speed. Trust me when I say you don't want to get in the way.
But in order to maintain my macho standing, I had to hop in the canoe and head down the river.
The plan worked....for about 1 second. Rule #1 is don't hit the wall. We broke that rule almost immediately, smacking side on into the rock. One's natural inclination is to lean away from danger, but (Rule #2) you shouldn't do that on fast water as the river will work against the greater surface area of the canoe and flip it over faster than you can say, "Whup".
Which is what happened. Our canoes have spray decks on them to prevent water from swamping the canoe.

The downside is that you are actually sitting with a spray skirt (a nylon tube) around your waist. The skirt keeps you dry, but it's tight and when you have to get out in a hurry, say when one is travelling at 15 mph upside down in water that comes from a glacier, one tends to get a bit panicky. As

I had failed to realize my nightmare of a shattered forearm, I was now thinking that a good smack of my head on a river rock would be perfect end to a perfect day.

As it happened, I bobbed to the surface, sans canoe, sans paddle, just in time to see the canoe, upside down now, go smoking past me with Fred hanging on to the stern shouting at me to ask if I was OK. So we both got to shore OK.

We spent some time bailing out our canoe without too much damage to our personal gear and food (when they say "Dry Bag" what they mean is "Mostly Dry Bag"). So this is one eventful day on the river. And I paid to do this.

Next year I'm going to stay home, sit in the tub with the shower running for 2 weeks and eat soggy corn flakes. Oh, and lots of coffee with a little hot chocolate powder for flavouring. I'll be just as uncomfortable, but I'll save a ton of cash.