The Appeal of a Long Wilderness Trip?

I like the solitude I find in Canada. Many consider Canada to be too expensive but to me the solitude is worth it. There were 6 of us on the most recent trip last month. But we often traveled and camped separately. We had a great group fish fry on a Friday night just like at home in Wisconsin.

I will be 76 in a few months and intend to take these trips as long as I am physically able.

I just finished my second month long canoe trip a few weeks ago and I can’t wait to do another (even though it will be years until I can). For me the appeal comes from being able to completely dissociate from the idea of the trip coming to an end, forcing me to be completely present in each individual day. Also the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing one of these trips is unlike anything I have felt before.

jdeerfoot said:

I like the solitude I find in Canada. Many consider Canada to be too expensive but to me the solitude is worth it. There were 6 of us on the most recent trip last month. But we often traveled and camped separately. We had a great group fish fry on a Friday night just like at home in Wisconsin.

I will be 76 in a few months and intend to take these trips as long as I am physically able.

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I feel it is challenging to do extended back country trips in the US, but it is quite easy to do so in Canada. We just do not have places like Temagami, Wabakimi, Woodland Caribou, or La Vérendrye (not to mention the limitless number of long-distance undeveloped rivers all throughout Canada). I would love to find more wilderness canoe camping alternatives in the US, particularly down south or mid-Atlantic for winter tripping. The thought of going until next summer to head back to Canada is like a weight on my chest!!!

JohnSand said:

Glenn, it's not very dangerous. The worst risks at sea are collision and severe weather. The boat he sails has AIS, which shows us commercial traffic including course and speed. We'll have an EPIRB, satellite communication and weather, and for the worst case a liferaft.

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All that electrical stuff can fail, and if some Charybdis has eaten your big sailboat, how much safety will a little life raft provide? But you're a sailor; I'm not. I simply have no desire or even mental capacity for being hundreds or thousands of miles from land on the open ocean.

JohnSand said:

I readily agreed to do the Caribbean trip, I'm less sure about this one. It's longer, colder and with no close landfalls to bail out or stop over. It means a month at sea with no heat

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One of my best paddling friends with whom I paddled class 3-4 whitewater throughout the 1980's and 1990's, all over the East from northern Maine to West Virginia, got married late in life, bought a used sailboat, fixed it up, and lived on it for more than 10 years in the Caribbean with his wife in his 50's and 60's, sailing and anchoring from port to port to yet another gorgeous port. He made that life sound almost appealing to me. But the north Atlantic? ((shiver!!!))

For me, the appeal of a long trip is the amount of time spent in the 'sweet spot.' Not thinking about what you left behind, not thinking about what you're going back to, but having an extended amount of time living 'in the moment,' taking each day as it comes. My experience is the longer the trip, the bigger the 'sweet spot.' After awhile, the 'real world' falls away and the daily pattern of wilderness travel becomes the new normal. Also, on a long trip you tend to get trail hardened, able to deal with wind/rain, etc. more easily than on a short trip.

This thread came to mind recently when I finished another sail voyage.
I opted out of the trans Atlantic trip. The boat is too small, the trip too long. The skipper was unable to find any other crew for that crossing. He started planning to sail to Bermuda and back. I accepted an invitation to crew a 44' sloop from West Palm Beach Fl to Port Jefferson NY. We did that trip in just over six days, stopping only once for an hour to refuel and water. The crew was good, the vessel sound. We had no storms nor bad squalls. The entry through NY Harbor was complicated by extremely dense fog, and was one of the most challenging navigation exercises I've experienced. That required getting very little sleep the last 24 hours, and a couple of days to recover. We did have some glorious sailing under a full moon or bright sun, and plenty of good comradery. But the challenge of sailing 1100 miles was enough, standing watch four hours on, four off maybe too much, even for only a week.

For me, I was running from a long line of just things that weren't sitting right with me in life. I was handling it, but wasn't happy. I saw no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel. Just left my job one day, cleaned up a divorce and took off for 3.5 months of paddling and backpacking.

I highly recommend everyone do that at least once.

The challenge, the natural beauty, the reset you feel and the freedom to go and move when Mother Nature allows or sit through some "forced relaxation" did me a lot of good.
However, there was one stretch in LES/Obabika Provincial Park where I didn't see another human for 9 days. That got weird. LOL