Howling Wolves made it all Worth It

Firewood was somewhat scarce around the campsite because the sites are well used and everyone cooks over a campfire. When canoe tripping, either the saw stays home or it’s a very small one that gets portaged along with other niceties.. In our case, we just relied on what dead branches we could find and could  break into short pieces. As a result, we only kept the fire going until about 9 and then hit the hay.

With only a thin air cushion for comfort between our sleeping bag and the ground, we all had a fitful sleep. However, the good news was that we had no animal visits during the night. We had taken the precaution of hanging our packs in the trees, with special attention to the food bag being hung out of the reach of a bear standing on his hind feet.

Breakfast was delicious, with master chef Mike cooking eggs and canned meat, leaving Joe and I to toast our own bread over the fire.

We packed up and hit the water. After a short paddle across Tom Thomson Lake, we began our 2320 meter portage. The first attempt had us carrying all our belongings, but that ended after about 200 meters. Plan B, to finish the portage in 2 carries resulted in us getting there, but the whole exercise took the best part of 2 hours. Mike’s canoe weighed only 22 lbs or 10 kgs, and was clearly one of his successful home projects from a couple of years ago. I still have sores a week later from carrying Joe’s canoe, but I have to say that he made it look easy.

We paddled across Ink Lake, and through a swampy creek. We were in Moose country, but didn’t see any. We paddled on across MacIntosh Lake to a campsite and settled in.

That evening, we had steak and potatoes for dinner. We thought it was well deserved after the tough portage. Mike has the ability to call wolves, so he did as part of the after dinner entertainment, but there was no return call. Then he tried the loons, and got a few going. I think they felt threatened. Periodically, they’d wake us during the night, calling out to re-secure their ownership of the lake.

The next morning at day break, while getting the fire going for breakfast, the wolves started howling from across the lake. Mike ran for his video camera to get an audio recording, but their serenade was too short, leaving only our memories of that eerie but awesome sound.

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http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2011/09/another-call-from-nature.html