Ode to Scratching the Snot Out of Your Canoe

Years ago, I worked for a guy who had an obsession against setting a canoe on the ground. He believed there were two places for a canoe. One was in the air not touching the ground, and the other was in the water. He’d wade out into the water, place the canoe on it and then proceed to load the canoe while standing in the water. He’d do it just to make sure he didn’t scratch the bottom of the canoe. He went so far as coming up with an eye-rolling but pithy saying about it. Then he printed t-shirts with the saying.

That’s not how I am.

I like to take my canoes and kayaks into areas with rocks. It’s challenging. It’s fun. Without doing so, there’s no way to explore the seldom explored.

And guess what, you are going to scratch your canoe.

Guess what? I scratch my canoe and I don’t care.

If you are doing it right, you are going to scratch your canoe. That’s what they are made for.

When I see something that looks like the image below….

I want to do this in my Northstar Firebird…

I’ll try to paddle as far as I can, but something there isn’t enough water. If there isn’t enough water or the path is blocked with trees and brush and you can’t go further, then it’s time to portage. When there’s no portage trail, sometimes the only way through is like this trip that I did on the Vern River…

It’s so worth it, because when you are tired and sick of carrying, dragging, lining the canoe, you’ll often find a little piece of perfect to stop at. You can break for lunch, pull out the goodies from your Cooke Custom Sewing Rucksack and do this…

Sometimes when doing crazy stuff like this, you end up in places that you had no idea were there. In this case, we found this…

And sometimes, you find locations that look like this…

Sure, if you are worried about a little (or big scratch), you’re going to portage it. But when a rapid and the 100 yards of rapids above this are runnable, why not run them?

It’s a lot more fun! While I don’t know about you, I do know that exploring tight rocky locations brings me to amazing places that I wouldn’t have experienced before. Often it brings me to places that are seldom visited. Sometimes, I you find amazing places. It always results in an adventure, joy and a smiling face…

I’m so glad that I’m not worried about a little scratch (or big one for that matter), because I’d miss out on so much.