Transcripts

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it. And the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees, it's part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores. In a canoe, a man changes. And the life he has lived seems strangely remote. Time is no longer of moment or has become part of space and freedom. What matters is that he's heading down the misty trail of explorers and voyagers, with a fair wind and a chance of a good camp somewhere ahead.

The future is other lakes, countless rapids and the sound of them, portages through muskeg and over the ledges. When he's traveled for many days and is far from settlements of his kind, when he looks over his cruising outfit and knows it's all he owns, that he can travel with it to a new country as he wills, he feels at last that he is down to the real business of living. And he shed much of what was unimportant and is in an old polished groove of experience.

Life, for some strange reason, has suddenly become simple and complete. His wants are few, his confusion and uncertainty gone, his happiness and contentment deep. There is a satisfaction in reaching some point on the map, in spite of wind and weather, and keeping a rendezvous with some campsite that in the morning seemed impossible of achievement.

In a canoe, the battle is yours and yours alone. It's your muscle and sinew, your wit and courage against the primitive forces of the storm. That is why, when after a day of battle, your tent is pitched at last in the lee of some sheltering cliff, the canoe up and dry and supper underway, there is an exultation that only canoe men know.