You Can Always Live on Rice and Potatoes

The Cream of Wheat Situation

• Posted on June 19, 2009 at 12:08 AM
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(This is my continuing blog on getting ready for our Missinaibi River trip, which starts this Saturday)

We're ready. Just about. Pretty much.

The bags are packed and all the little debates are settled. Sandals or neoprene boots? How many forms of pre-cooked bacon is it safe to eat in one 10-day period? Do we really need the Audobon field guide to plants and trees? What the hell is cream of wheat?

We've read our "don't forget this stuff" list so many times our eyes have crossed. The only thing to do now is drive 12 hours and realize we forgot something.

Sean passed out about half an hour ago and Janine just hit the bed with an audible thump. I really should be waxing lyrical about how excited I am to get up north again; to be enclosed by the pines, to be lulled to sleep by the tune of the river rushing by our campsite; to be slowly eaten alive by the blackflies.

But I'm so, so tired. I'll just let Grey Owl do my talking for me:

I have traversed the black swamps and the vast, reeking muskegs of the Abitibi, gone hungry in the bleak sterility of the distant, unknown North, and hacked my way through the impenetrable cedar jungles of far-off Temiscouata... Riding Mountain... the spruce-clad lowlands of the upper Saskatchewan.

Each of these districts has its special claim on the imagination and every one of them is imbued with the fantastic lure of the unknown that, like some all-powerful enchantment or magic spell pervades the unpeopled places of the earth's surface. But they all, to me, lack the austere magnificence and the rugged grandeur of the highlands of North Ontario, with their bold, romantic scenery, uncounted and uncountable deep-water lakes and wild rushing rivers...

jm