Canadian Shield

Read this story online as it was published in the South China Morning Post.

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“This sure doesn’t feel like October,” my brother says, standing knee deep in lake water, squinting up at the warm afternoon sun.

Our yellow canoe is pulled up on a narrow beach, perpendicular to the deep hoof prints left by a passing moose. The birch and spruce forest leans over the beach, as if reaching for the sunlight that glitters off the water. Most of the leaves have already fallen and the trees are naked and white.

“The water’s a bit chilly, but the sun makes up for it,” I say as I wade ashore after a quick plunge in Lake Kilvert, in Ontario’s Eagle-Dogtooth Provincial Park.

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It’s one of thousands of lakes carved out of the 4 billion year old rock. This is the Canadian Shield, the largest mass of exposed Precambrian rock on earth, the exposed continental crust of North America, where ancient mountains were flattened and lakes carved from rock during the Ice Age. Eight million square kilometers of it, igneous rock born from volcanoes that grew into tall mountains which were then worn down to rolling hills and a thin sifting of soil by monstrous slabs of ice.

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Right now, that much ice, or even snow, is hard to imagine. We’re enjoying some late season warmth on the first day of our canoe trip. This park, only a 2.5 hour drive east of Winnipeg, has five meandering canoe routes through moraines, boggy beaver ponds and pine forest ecosystems. We gambled with a late-season trip and it paid off as we have the lakes to ourselves. Everyone else has already packed up their boats for the winter.

We hoist our canoe and trudge one and a half kilometers through the forest to Gale Lake, where we drop it with a sigh. I stretch my neck and shoulders as we walk back to retrieve our bags and a food barrel. This is just one of seven portages we’ll make on our 51.5 kilometer route, the price we pay to paddle across these remote lakes.

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Once we’ve portaged all of our gear we set up camp in a stand of tall red pine on the western shore of Gale Lake, a small tear-drop shaped body of water that pinches off into a narrow creek in the north. There’s plenty of wood for a fire, and I mix up a batch of bannock, the unleavened Native American bread. I fry it in a pan, seasoned with wood smoke and raisins.

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The Canadian Shield is the home of Algonquian nomadic hunters, who paddled these lakes in birchbark canoes, but the wide expanses of bare rock, poor soil and frequent marshes made it difficult for early explorers and fur traders to push westward into the continent. On the other side of this rock wall are the Prairies, Canada’s wheat land.

Eventually the European colonialists blasted a rail line through the Shield, which opened it to prospectors who found gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, zinc, copper, iron ore and, more recently, diamonds. This is also where Canada has built massive hydroelectric dams to feed cities to the south. The Shield, both past and present, looms large in Canadian history and culture, and canoeing these waters is a rite of passage for many Canadians.

Our good weather holds for exactly two days. Just long enough for us to grow smug, congratulating ourselves for setting forth while others stayed at home. Then, during the night, the temperature drops. We pull out our thermal underwear and stoke the fire as rain spits from a leaden sky. Now, suddenly, that Ice Age seems more feasible.

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We’re watching the change of the season, when the benign summer is replaced by the unpredictability of early winter. This winter won’t wear down mountains or create a new lake like a true Ice Age, but it will put the land to sleep for the next six months or more.

Luck never changes in half-measures, and the wind that brought the cold air blows heartily from the southwest, straight on our bow. A day earlier the lakes were so still the rippled wake of a loon traveled a kilometre across the water, and now the grey water sloshes into our boat as we claw our way upwind.

“Do you still have control of the boat?” I call back to my brother, who is steering from the stern and who I’ve only heard grunts and curses from for the last few minutes. He is the more experienced canoeist, so surely he will know if we’re pushing our luck. We’re trying to round a point of land that has compressed waves and wind and I’ve just taken on a lap full of cold lake water.

“Yea, but we’re on the edge,” he shouts. “Just keep paddling, hard.”

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We make it, but once we’re in a protected bay we rule against risking further miles in these conditions. Along a low, swampy shore on Dogtooth Lake we find a forest clearing created by gnawing beavers and set up camp to wait out the storm. Every few hours we walk to the edge of the woods to see if the white caps that race across the lake are becoming smaller. They are not.

But the view is great. Tall cliffs left behind by glacial erosion, topped by scraggly jack pine and poplar. Massive round boulders have been dropped by the retreating ice, like marbles left behind by a child. Speckled alder and red maple still sport a few blazing leaves, beacons in the grey light.

Our last morning begins before dawn. We’ve promised friends and family to reemerge from the wilderness at a certain time, and in order to do that we need to make up the distance lost to the storm. We stop once, mid-morning, to boil up some coffee, and then push on. The wind has died, leaving behind a cold mist that blankets the quiet lakes.

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I’ve had something on my mind, but I’ve been afraid to say it. I didn’t want to jinx things. But then we round a corner and I can see our truck and the end of our canoe journey. I double check, squinting to make sure, but I can see no one on the shore.

“We haven’t seen another person in five days,” I finally blurt out. “Not a boat, no people outside their cabins, no one at all.”

“If there was anyone else out there they were warm and dry in their cabins,” my brother says. “Probably looking out of their window at us paddling past in the mist and thinking, ‘Those poor buggers’.”

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Raja Ampat

Earlier this year I went on a kayak and dive adventure in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Here is the story that ran in the SCMP, and a photo essay on the Canoe & Kayak website.

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There’s the muffled rattle of floorboards as someone walks across the platform you’re living on. Parrots, hornbills and a score of other exotic birds chirp and trill overhead. There’s the hiss of waves hitting the shore and maybe the splash of fish. But other than that … silence.

Raja Ampat, an archipelago in the Indonesian state of West Papua, is less densely populated than the Western Sahara, but this undeveloped, remote corner of Asia is home to the greatest diversity of marine life and coral reef ecosystems on Earth.

Scuba divers have been exploring this marine paradise for a few years and live-aboard dive boats are a common sight, but for land-based tourists, the region’s back-to-basics homestays are the best way to immerse oneself in Papuan life.

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A 35-hour string of flights, ferry rides and car journeys from Hong Kong deposits us at Mando’s, a homestay built typically of bamboo and palm fronds on stilts over the sea. Home life in Papua takes place on wooden platforms, each having several rooms or huts on it, for cooking, eating and sleeping. As at most homestays, meals at Mando’s are served family style.

The dive industry here is largely operated by Indonesians from other parts of the country, but homestays are owned and operated by Papuan families. They form a bridge between the life on the sea that is so central to Papuan culture and the wild, forested islands that provide wood, food and fresh water.

Mando’s is on the main island of Waigeo and within driving distance of Waisai, the grimy little capital of Raja Ampat and the only place on the island where you can buy supplies. The views from the dining room – a table under a grass roof – make for disjointed conversations.

“So after that we caught a flight to … Oh look!” a traveller exclaims. Everyone around the table cranes their neck. “A school of dolphins.”

Or a jumping manta ray, a fish leaping from the water, a surfacing turtle, an exotic bird soaring across the sky. After a few days, dolphins are no longer newsworthy, and the challenge becomes catching sight of a leaping manta ray. All I ever see is the splash.

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Waigeo is home to the rare Wilson’s bird-of-paradise, a red and blue beauty that can be spotted on a morning hike in the jungle. At night, glow worms ( Odontosyllis enopla) flicker bright green in the sea as they pump out bioluminescence to attract a mate.

Many homestays are in remote locations and neighbours may be 20km down the coastline or across the open sea. Island hopping takes planning, patience and time. There is practically no scheduled inter-island transport and few of the islands have roads, making privately hired longboats the most convenient mode of travel.

Longboats also allow you to see the karst topography, and explore small islets so undercut by waves they look like mushrooms. We weave through the islands, staring down into the crystal-clear water at endless coral reefs, schools of colourful fish and small sharks.

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Raja Ampat’s coral reefs have shown greater resilience to the bleaching caused by rising sea temperatures than others around the world, and conservation efforts have greatly increased fish populations in the protected areas, but the flourishing marine life attracts poachers.

The Indonesian government has taken a strong stand against commercial fishing and created large protected areas, but this region is also rich in other natural resources. The largest gold mine and the third-largest copper mine in the world are nearby, and the Papua region is Indonesia’s largest source of tax revenue. That has attracted a large military presence, and many activists have disappeared, been killed or been jailed.

The Raja Ampat Research and Conservation Centre is one of the best established community development groups in the archipelago, and a key local partner of many international conservation organisations. The centre trains Papuans to build boats and then guide tourists on kayaking tours in those boats – the same development plan used for the homestays – provides research facilities and operates educational programmes.

“Our goal is to support those living in this beautiful and fragile ecosystem to have better, healthier lives and make them stewards in protecting this natural environment,” says Tertius Kammeyer, who heads the centre’s kayaking operations.

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Tourism is growing rapidly and new homestays are popping up on every island, but outside of peak seasons, when domestic travellers come to Raja Ampat, there’s a good chance you’ll have one to yourself.

Time loses its meaning when you’re living in a grass hut. There are no clocks or timetables; meals are served when they are ready.

Circumnavigating the island of Gam makes for a pleasant three- or four-day trip by motorboat from Waisai. It is not one of the “regal” islands – Raja Ampat means “four kings” – but Gam is near the centre of the archipelago, and has plenty of small bays along its coast. On a clockwise trip around the island, a first night might be spent in Arborek Village, on a sandy spit of an island just off Gam.

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In Arborek, there is a daily reminder of passing time; the village bell – an empty fuel canister – is rung at dawn, gently awakening the village from its slumber. After breakfast on the beach, we paddle to nearby Manta Sandy, a sandbar where mantas come to feed on plankton and allow fish to clean them of parasites. We slip on snorkel gear and drop into the water, and within moments mantas with wing spans of several metres appear out of the blue. Watching them glide effortlessly through the water makes our boat travel seem a lot less elegant.

Yet there is no other way to get to Warikef, an isolated homestay in a quiet bay near the Kaboei Passage, a narrow, winding stretch of water that separates Gam from Waigeo. Strong tidal currents in the passage offer divers and snorkellers an exhilarating underwater ride among the fish and coral fans.

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Warikef backs onto a steep, forested cliff, just below a cave that supplies a steady stream of fresh water. The sea beneath the platform teems with life, and just because we’re not in the water, doesn’t mean we’re not considered part of a food chain. I feel a splash of water on my foot as an archerfish mistakes me for an insect and shoots a carefully aimed stream of water between the planks. A book left on the floor gets soaked as the fish make repeated attempts to capture it for lunch.

As the sun sets, the jungle surrounding Warikef falls silent and the glassy sea reflects the last light of the day. I can hear the muted voices of the host family chatting as they cook our dinner. There is the hiss of a gas stove and rattle of pots, the entire platform swaying gently as they move about.

The generator is broken, and the only light comes from a flickering oil lamp. I lay on the decking and watch the stars come out, forgetting for a moment that a less-tranquil world exists.

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