Born with a paddle in my hand in northern Minnesota, near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), I come by my love for canoeing honestly. It’s in my genes; it flows through my blood. For some people, their continuity of life is etched in tattoos on their bodies; their past self imposes its desires and passions on their future self, ensuring that a space-time continuum carries them forward into the uncharted future, anchoring to the past. For me, canoeing flows through my veins; it is who I am. The paddle might as well be tattooed on my right bicep, the dominant power arm on the right side of the vessel. Every time the canoe is launched, my selves—past, present, and future—all connect in the universal experience of gliding through the water. Time and history stand still.

The sweep of the paddle neck brushing the canoe side sends the knocking sound of wood paddle neck against aluminum, fiberglass, or Kevlar, reflecting the three types of canoe composition with which I have plied the waters. The rhythmic J-stroke and feathering on the return reduce wind resistance on the flat blade preparing for each new stroke. Momentarily, I can feel the blade surfing in the wind with every slight twist of the wrist—like hand surfing on the wind rushing past the backseat car window on a warm day. The occasional spray of water when the wind picks up, hitting my face, with the sun drying it almost instantly. The constant push to the left or right when going crosswind at a slight angle prevents a person from getting lazy, keeping a straight line to the far shore or keeping to the middle of the stream or river.

Occasionally, a moose appears, maybe with its youngster, munching on water lilies in knee-deep inlets, warily looking up to check out humans floating by with big sticks in their hands. A multitude of seagulls dive bomb the surroundings looking for handouts, the occasional eagle perched high in the trees rips apart the day’s catch. The loon, with one of its four distinct calls, invokes in children (and adults) the compulsion to imitate the sound with hands cupped together just so, thumbs positioned against lips directly, the blowing out whistled through, with the outside hand flapping open and closed like playing a harmonica to get the right warble. Ah, yes, it’s in my blood.

I inherited my grandparents’ love of the paddle; my dad also had a bit of it, spending a summer working for the U.S. Survey Administration charting the boundary waters. I’m not sure what he did, but living for the summer in the forests and on the waters of the north country was about as good as it could get for a young man.

I would abscond with a canoe and explore at every opportunity that came my way. My first canoe trip on my own came right after college, at the ripe age of 21. I had done some camping, hiking, boating and canoeing as a boy scout during the early to mid-1960s (middle to early high school years). My destiny was calling. Dave Hoffman and I set off for a week, crossing from Buffalo, New York, where I had moved from Oregon State University at Corvallis, Oregon, into Canada, up past Toronto, to the famed Algonquin Provincial Park. The five to six-hour trips became very familiar to me in the coming years, but this first time was exciting. The two of us early-20-somethings passed through Toronto, and the traffic and population eventually thinned out. At the edge of the Muskoka Lakes region, we passed through Barrie and Orillia. On further was Bracebridge and then Huntsville, where the smell of pine trees and clear air of the lakes and nature at its finest began wafting in our windows. By this time, we were close. A stop in town for our grub for the weak gave way to our final push past the park gate and the Highway 60 corridor traversing the lower flange of the park.

“The essence of Algonquin is in its vast interior of maple hills, rocky ridges, and thousands of lakes – 7,635 square kilometers of forests, bogs, lakes and rivers.” (That’s about 3,000 square miles). It is now a multi-use park, with logging, recreation and habitation for those cabin/cottage owners grandfathered in from the old days. So well maintained is the park that in a canoe you would never see the logging operations or hear the trucks. The water was pure enough in the 1970s to drink from, and with practice, the skill of paddle drinking could be mastered –where you paddle into the water, quickly lift it at an angle above your mouth and direct the water drips down the length of the shaft and into your mouth. Refreshing!

Mornings always began with a dip in the water. Depending on the time of year, mosquitoes (bad), black flies (worse) or horseflies (worst of all) were waiting. The first sucked your blood, the second swarmed around any warm body and the last would bite large chunks of flesh. Various remedies could help: the store-bought stuff was marginally helpful, my grandpa used a grease mixture of some sort, the recipe of which died with him. In my later years, I ingested garlic pills which helped by secreting an odor that kept the flies at bay. Some suspicion exists that the garlic also kept other humans at bay, which is not generally a problem in the wilderness where body smells don’t carry much social stigma like in civilized society (although daily swimming in the lakes was an excellent deterrent for lasting scents).

As for bears and other animals, we sometimes hung our food in the trees. More often, we put the food in our canoe and anchored the canoe about 20 feet offshore from our campsite—praying that the wind wouldn’t pick up and drag the rock tied with a rope connected to the canoe across the lake. Fortunately, I never lost a meal, but if a bear were to swim out there to eat our food, well, more power to him for making an effort—better than eating us!

No description of canoe tripping is complete without the famous portage. My father felt the Canadian pronunciation of the word (“pore-taaaauggg”) with accent on the last syllable was an odd way of saying “poretudge” with accent on the first. The term goes back to the days of the French Voyagers who plied the waterways from the Hudson Bay along the Canadian and U.S. border in search of beaver pelts for European fashions. A portage (as a noun) refers to a place where you get out of your canoe and carry it and your gear overland to another lake. Hard work, to be sure, but it is part of the journey of canoe tripping. In modern times, it is a means to reach remote areas where people are too lazy to go. The farther you portage in (using the verb form, which is spelled identical to the noun form), the less people you run into. Over the years, I trekked along portages that were up to two miles long.

Typically, a portage involved putting on your backpack (preferably a large Duluth pack), lashing your paddles and life vests into the canoe, and then hoisting it over and upside down onto your shoulders. Your head is inside the canoe, with the front end balanced upwards so you can see ahead of you. While the voyagers back in the day had huge canoes and canvas everything, these trips were arduous and required many men to carry the canoe. But in more modern times, one man in his prime can carry a lightweight canoe of Kevlar or Fiberglass and his pack full of gear by himself. The other partner could carry his own pack plus miscellaneous gear, which constitutes the surrender to at least some lavish creaturely comforts, like air mattresses for those who stray from the ideal manhood of the voyagers. One of the rewards of portaging is the jump in the next lake to wash away the sweat and the relief from insects that wait on the trails for human flesh.

In the evenings, as the fire died down and the sun lowered across the lake silhouetting the far shore tree line, the insects began to settle down, and the loons began their nighttime serenade. If there is not a place in heaven (or new earth—depending on your eschatology) like this, then there will be something better!

Fifty years later, I am still canoeing and plan to do more. It is who I am; it is what I do. Not kayaking, not paddle boarding or surfing, not sky diving nor rock climbing. Yes, I’ve done some of those things, but it is to the canoe that I return. Yet, despite this love of the paddle, I have a greater love. It is my greater identity. I am a follower of Jesus Christ; that is who I am, that defines me. In my canoeing, I honor Him for the ability, my background, and the love passed on from my grandfather and my father to me. As Eric Liddell, the missionary and famous Olympian runner and the main character in the movie “Chariots of Fire,” said, “When I run, I can feel God’s pleasure.”

When I paddle, I too, can feel God’s pleasure as I enjoy His creation in the wild backcountry, where all I have is the clothes and food in my backpack, my paddle and canoe, away from all else. My secret prayer is that when the Lord comes for me, I will have a paddle in my hand.