Goodbye to a piece of personal history

My next post was to have been another in the series of Scotland to Iceland adventures but today was important and deserves comment. So here we go.

I wouldn’t say we’re trying to downsize as such but we are taking a close look at what we have and asking ourselves if we are likely to use certain items again. Among those things is the canoe that we built ourselves and all the river gear we accumulated during our years of wilderness canoeing. Over time our interests changed and at some point we stopped canoeing and started cycling instead. I can’t remember the last time we had the canoe in the water and if we canoe from now on it will be in a rented canoe on a nice tame river or lake. We have offered the blue canoe to several people. One person said two years ago that he would like it but we have reminded him of it 3 or 4 times since to no avail.

The blue canoe

Today someone came who wanted the canoe and was prepared to take it immediately. I rounded up all the gear except our old life jackets, which nobody would want anyway, and we packed it all into his truck. When it came to moving the canoe it was so much heavier than we remembered. I swear it has gained weight just as we have over the years! I can’t believe that we blithely put it up on our shoulders and portaged it for over a mile in some places.

I told the new owner that there was a high price to pay: he had to look at the photo album of our trip down the Nahanni in which the canoe features prominently. He was very gracious about it as we sat in the shade and swapped river stories. Before taking his present job he was a river guide for different rafting companies and he has rafted down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. I enjoyed talking with him about our trip and he enjoyed seeing photos of a river he has never been on. We both marvelled at how far river gear has come.

As he drove away with the canoe strapped to his truck I felt lighter knowing that he would refurbish it and it would again find its way onto rivers. That, after all, is where canoes belong, not sitting in a backyard next to a fence for years on end. I hope this is the start of parting with a number of things that are relics of wonderful adventures that we have no desire to repeat. We don’t need repeats: there are enough new adventures waiting just around the next bend in the river.

Paddles, barrels, and bags