Photo credit: Sparky Stensaas/ thephotonaturalist.com
I never knew my father very well. He was killed in the car accident that rendered me a paraplegic when I was thirteen. I knew him as a child knows a parent, a wildly incomplete picture at best. I was lucky because, as the youngest, I got to spend more time with him than my two older siblings. He had passed the ‘test’ of financial success and was beginning to realize that he didn’t need to work 70 hours a week. This translated into more catch in the backyard, more hoops in the driveway, and attendance at most of my athletic events. Still, I didn’t really know him.
He loved to canoe. He especially loved canoeing trips in the B.W.C.A. (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) in northern Minnesota. When I was physically strong enough to carry a pack and paddle (around 8 years old), my dad starting taking the whole family on canoeing trips. Each successive year, he wanted to go for longer and longer periods of time. Once up there, he would tease that we were staying an extra week. He was very convincing. He loved riling us three kids up. My mom would bite her lip and smile. As kids, we had important lives you know…baseball games, friends to see, our bedrooms to stare at…you know, important things. We always came home from these trips as originally scheduled. My dad would finally acquiesce but he would be sullen, his feelings a little hurt, and I never understood why. Such were the places in him I never fully knew.
My father died when he was forty-seven. As I write this, I am fifty. Somehow, I have seen more life than he did. I know why he teased us. It was about him, not us. He grew up as a son in a poor, farming family. He went to college, then law school, then landed his first and only legal job at 24. My sister was born when he was 26. On those trips into the outdoors, he wanted to escape. The American dream of a middle-classed life had found its hollow point. My dad’s spirit wanted a different adventure, one that was more akin to the boy in him who loved being outside and who was not afraid of hard work. One thing about a canoeing trip in the B.W.C.A. is that everything is earned – the maps, the compass, the paddling, the portaging, the packs, the pitching of the tent, the gathering of firewood, the boiling of water, and the making of dehydrated food.
Do you know the feeling of carrying your pack over a portage, of repacking the canoe, and then launching it? There is a quintessential moment. The canoe packed, the carefully getting in, and the pushing off of shore. There is a sound of aluminum vessel beginning to cut and glide through water, the sound of wooden paddle entering the blackness, and the sound of water drops falling from paddle back into lake as it moves for the next stroke. In this moment, you are an explorer, starting a new adventure, moving from land into an unknown expanse, with only your wit and the strength in your own body as your guides.
I was sitting by water the other day, thinking of my dad as it was recently his birthday. I was remembering the sensation of him launching our canoe onto the next lake and toward the next campsite. I know now that this was his best escape while living, while being responsible for the family he loved. I lament not being able to be a true companion. I could do it now though. I know what he was trying to escape. I know the feeling of his spirit yearning for something different, something quieter, and something simpler – the sound of wood paddle pushing through pristine lake. I could look him in the eyes and nod. I could revel with him in the sound of expansive freedom surrounding us. I could smile and say, “Where to next dad…I am right here.” We would paddle off quietly without words. I might even stay that extra week.