Since the summer days of my Canadian childhood, I have loved to canoe across the dark mirror of northern lakes, paddling with an inside flick of the blade, leaving a trail of twisting whirlpools in my wake.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Boating on the lake is one of my favorite summer activities.
I once paddled a canoe the length of the Mississippi River all the way from Itasca to New Orleans.
Whether being battered by the surf or swimming through the gentle undulating surface of lakes, I find inspiration in the movement of water. Sometimes I think about the journey the water has traveled, reconnecting me to the larger cycles of nature.
I was a hunter and fisherman, and many a time I have slipped out into the woods and prairies at 4 a.m. and brought home plenty of game, or have gone in a canoe to the cove and brought back a good supply of fresh fish.
It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went to sea.
My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.
The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.
I love to watch the movement of light on water, and I love to play in rivers and lakes, swimming or canoeing. I am fascinated by people who work with water - fishermen, boatmen - and by a way of life that is dominated by water.
'Ghost Canoe' takes place on the storm-tossed tip of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where I spent a lot of time hiking and exploring.
I used to waterski on the Niagara River.