July 20th: Things Are Going to Change, I Can Feel It

July 20^th, 2008; Day 43

The Dismal Lakes
GPS: 67 deg.; 25 min. north; 117 deg. 0 min. west

Author: Emily


Picture yourself on a Saturday night, laying out the clothes, gear, and food you will need for a big race the next morning. Feel free to pick any race of your choosing: a foot race, a bike race, or perhaps the ultimate wheelbarrow racing championship. Whatever your choice of racing would be, it is an event you have trained for with dedication and passion. You have put in the time, read the training guides, and studied the race course. The past few days you have been tapering, resting your body and getting mentally prepared, only going for easy jogs or spins in the wheelbarrow. Now you have everything packed and are as ready as you're going to be. Despite all of your excellent preparation, you are a little nervous. You know that at some point during the race tomorrow you will be in pain, at some point you might doubt your capability, but that ultimately, you will get caught up in the race day momentum, laugh, and take pride in having poured yourself into your effort. I believe a great musical artist once said "Lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go."

One more important detail. This is the first time you have ever attempted a race of this type and have almost no idea of what to expect. Perhaps you and your friends decided it would be fun to try something new. As you set the alarm to wake up early the next morning, you feel a mixture of excitement, nervous anticipation, and a little confusion at why you and your friends thought this was such a good idea after all.

Wow! If you made it through that long, imaginative journey, you may have recognized an attempt at an analogy for this paddling trip. Let me explain the parallels.

Tonight we are camped on the Dismal Lakes at the point from which we will begin our Watershed to the Rae River. We have literally taken our last paddling strokes on big open water and will likely be portaging out of this campsite. Somewhere way back last fall, each of us let ourselves get caught up in the collective energy of this group and ever since we have been working to get ourselves here, to a place called the Dismal Lakes and try our hand at what for us is exploration in its truest sense. We have done what research we could about this area; we have trained our muscles to paddle and portage, and have made detailed measurements of mileage from one small lake to another to a stream to another stream and eventually to the Rae River. We have almost everything we need and are almost fully prepared to set the alarms, get up in the morning, and give it all we've got.

Essentially our last week has been a week of tapering. Since we left Rocky Defile, where Beth wrote her last update, we paddled just a touch further down the Coppermine and then turned up the Kendall, leaving behind all the logs we had been following from other previous trips and setting out on our own terms. The Kendall is a small but sizeable river flowing out of the Dismal for a brief 15 miles before joining the Coppermine. Despite the short distance, we spent 2 ½ days moving steadily up river, never portaging once, but spending our days, wading our boats upstream in waist deep water, tracking our boats from shore with ropes, as we stumbled through the willows, and occasionally paddling hard to make miles against the current. The best thing about the Kendall was that it spat us out into a gorgeous expanse of tundra that ended our flirtation with the tree line for good. The Dismal Lakes are anything but what their name implies. They are: dramatic elevation, bright purples of lupine and yellows of cinquefoils, cold open waters, constantly changing skies and tundra. Yes, we're back in it to stay and loving it. The rest of our tapering period on the Dismals has been spent packing, resting, organizing, hiking and eating, so, in effect, we're ready to do this, just waiting for one major thing.

Entertain the pre-race analogy one more time and imagine that you've managed to make it through all your training without one key piece of gear. Perhaps it has been back ordered for the last month and a half, but that it is supposed to arrive by priority mail just a few hours before the race. Say that piece of gear you are missing are these extra special, one of a kind running shoes that make you go twice as fast. Well, in the real world, those one of kind shoes translate into our dear friend and fifth pack, Karen Stanley. Having been with us in spirit for all of our training so far, Karen is flying into us for real with our resupply in a day and a half (or tomorrow), just in time to race with us, just in time to give us a new boost of energy and enthusiasm to make the next big push. So my friends, in this trip of many different chapters, part one is coming to a close and part two is just beginning. Our group of four will become five, we will leave the lakes behind in search of new rivers, and we will soak up the energy of the land that surrounds us.