Reach Out and Touch a Rock

“It was over twenty years ago, but it seems like just moments, or maybe it was a lifetime, since Ken and John barged into the tavern and dragged me away from my girlfriend and a cold pitcher of beer, tossed me into the tiny little caramel Datsun and off we went, Ken behind the wheel raving like a madman about high water and sun and we’d get up there tonight, sleep in the car and set out in the morning, and he drove into the night, up to the northern reaches of New Brunswick, up to where the wild rivers crash and careen through deep canyons in vast woodlands where none but bears and Dungarvon Whoopers have set foot.”

So begins the foreword to “My Secret River: Canoe Trips and Campfire Tales, New Brunswick, Canada” by Ken Corbett and friends. I have the honor of being one of the friends; in fact, I wrote the foreword.

I’ve been canoeing with Ken (aka Nanook of the Nashwaak) since the late 70s, though not so much in recent years, time and circumstance being cruel to my yearning to hear quick water rippling through the tent walls and watch sunbeams flicker off wavelets like white fire in the early evening. But over the years, we launched many a beer-laden canoe into the mystic rivers of New Brunswick.

The first, the one where Nanook and John stole me from beer and girlfriend, was the Northwest Upsalquitch. It was about as North as you can get in New Brunswick, and about as far away from civilization as you can get in most of North America. It was a wide peaceful river that flowed through steep canyons and unblemished forests. The water was shallow and swift, thoroughly leeched of mud and flotsam so that the rock bottom glittered like a bed of giant emeralds, rubies and sapphires.

I was lucky to remember these things given that our quota of beer back then was “a flat of beer per person per day” in keeping with Fang’s First Law of Canoeing: You never have too much beer. But I do have many other memories, scratched out of the debris of my beer-sodden mind, from trips down river after river, some whose names I’ve forgotten … memories of bear and deer, eagle and beaver, and the haunting call of loons across the eerie water of Kilburn Lake. I remember looking up in awe at tall waves just before they crashed down – freezing and bone-wet – onto my head.

And what a thrill it was when I opened the pages of “My Secret River” and saw those memories preserved in ink, proof they weren’t just beer-induced hallucinations. There were even pictures, pictures of the people, the water and those canoe-eating rocks that Nanook is so partial to reaching out and touching.

“My Secret River” is taken mostly from Nanook's web site, probably the most valuable online repository of New Brunswick canoeing lore in existence. Both the book and the site contain river trip reports from Nanook and people from across the continent who have canoed the province’s rivers. The book even has a healthy dose of Nanook’s lilting river poetry.

For anyone interested in the canoeing rivers of New Brunswick, or just interested in the outdoors, this book is well worth checking out.

Buy the book at http://www.cafepress.com/canoenb

Visit the web site at http://www.nanookofthenashwaak.com/index.htm