Meditations on Canoe Tripping as a Metaphor for Life

The first step of your canoe trip is the planning, but since this is to be your first canoe trip someone more experienced than you does the planning for you. These more experienced people have a vested interest in seeing that you get the best equipment available, and a route that was easier than the one they had to go on. They hope that you will trust them in their decisions for you, and hope that they planned a route with the easiest portages and the calmest lakes. They do not want to see you fail. The map is set, a course laid out for you, your route to the end predetermined. Once everything is ready, you load your stuff into a car or van and drive to your intended drop off spot. The vehicle that transports you is warm, safe with snacks to eat before you get to the outside world where it is colder and you must fend for yourself. You sleep a little, and are restless at the same time about starting your journey. You come out of your transport a little dozy, a little confused, in a totally different spot than where you came from which is why you squint your eyes, stretch and take a good look around.

When you are dropped off and the vehicle leaves, you are out in the world on your own. This is what all the planning resulted in and where the womb was delivering you. When you first start on your trip your eyes are quickly darting from the real world to the world on the map. You are an infant orienting yourself with the world. Getting your bearings and figure out where the map is telling you to go and proceed in that predetermined direction.

There is no doubt that you will get lost a number of times throughout your route and will no doubt stop it. You have been going along with the map but are getting fed up with its linear approach to tripping. You ask yourself How can this be it? Is this really where I’m supposed to be going? It is at this time that you put the map down and trust your own instincts. Every stroke, or step you take is completely yours. You imagine yourself doing this alone, as if you are the first to come this way. You do not recognise that where you are and where you are going has been gone before. Your route has been paddled many times over no matter what way you choose. But you continue to trust yourself and only yourself to be able to navigate through the lakes and woods.

No matter where they fall in your trip, the portage is where you learn about yourself. By pushing yourself to complete the task. The portage is a tough section of your life. It will hurt you, you might feel like giving up but you have to get through the portage if you want to continue your journey. Some will take their time on the portage, stopping once in a while to catch their breath and reorient themselves, telling themselves once again why they are doing this. Others plunge through their portages, taking everything through on one determined push. Whatever way you approach a portage, the result is the same. You are able to get to a different leg of your journey and have no doubt learned something about yourself as well. Though you may not like them at the time, portages are a necessary part of the trip.

You notice too that there are others on the lake and on the portages. Some of these trippers you will pass by and not remember, some will help you through a tough portage and not be seen again, others will paddle beside you as you find that they are going along the same route for a while. Some trippers you might encounter will have almost the same route as you and you will tandem your canoe the rest of the way with your new partner.

Eventually you will get too tired and too dirty to continue your trip without a laid out plan. You think of the map that you packed away, find it, and resolve to finish your journey. Your boundless energy and pride has given way to knowledge and efficiency. You realise the value of history and those that have gone before you. You pick up the map that they have drawn for you and you use it to your will. You redirect your course in a way that makes sense to you from the wisdom that you have gained. Some decide after their days doing rapids and long portages that they will flat water their boat the rest of the way. Others use their forgotten map to push their limits and find the most hazardous course to the end. Neither way is wrong or finite. No matter, which way you choose to get there, every trip will take you to your pick up point.

The pick up point is where you are no longer able to continue on the way you have grown accustomed to. Someone greets you from your past, someone that you know but haven’t seen in a long time, and they take you away to get cleaned up and fed. Everyone’s trip lasts a different amount of time. Everyone’s trip has a different intensity. Some short and tame, some long and wild, and every mix of in between. It all depends on how much you want to challenge the map that is given to you.

Peter.Concepts.Inc.

Note: The Meditations are not wholly complete or
inclusive of all possible outcomes, nor can they be.