How to Build Resiliency
Wet boots, Canoes, Portages, and Learning to Carry Heavy Things
After a few hours canoeing across Smoke Lake in Algonquin National Park in Canada, my family of six has reached our first portage.
Our task: to carry four backpacks (two 120 Liters, one 95 Liters, one 75 Liters), one barrel that contains all our food for five days and weighs the most, and two 3 person canoes across 700m of trail to the next lake.
Besides our food, the bags contain our pots and pans, camp stoves and fuel, two tents, sleeping bags, minimal clothing and toiletries, a few books I couldn’t leave behind, an extra pair of shoes each. We also have canoe paddles, life jackets, and water bottles.
We have hired two guides for our first day so they can help us get the lay of the lakes and get us to our first campsite.
After helping us decide which shoes to pack, one guide named Paige tells us:
The first thing you need to do when you get out of the canoe is stick your feet in the water, boots and all. Your boots will be wet the entire time. Get used to it. That’s why you bring extra socks and shoes—so you have something dry to wear in the evening around the campfire.
When we get out of the canoes at our first portage, we gamely shove our feet into the water and muck, grimacing as they squelch.
The guides—long-time camp counselors at a famous boy’s camp that sends kids off on 40 day canoe trips—put the smallest backpack onto my eight year old.
I do my mother thing: I bend down to his level and ask if he’s ok with the weight. Paige politely waves away my concern with a “he’s got this” smile.
He does “got this.”
From behind, he looks like an ant: all you can see are his skinny legs, the attached life jacket and water bottles that swing as he walks, and the two canoe paddles he uses as walking sticks.
I feel like I’m following a little hobbit across Middle Earth.
Preparing our stuff the night before at the Outfitters, my face starts to warm and I have to fight back tears seeing all our stuff laid out on a long table. I take a break in our tent cabin and cry.
I’ve followed my outdoorsy husband around campsites, hiking trails, and adventures for 18 years now. But this, I realize, is far out of my comfort zone.
Plus, I’d just spent the last few weeks trying to schedule tests for the tingling in my feet and hands that has lasted for weeks and affects my sleep. How am I going to carry that bag across multiple portages? What will that do to my shoulders? Will I collapse the first night?
When they tell me I’ll probably be carrying one of the 120 Liter bags, I can hardly lift it off the ground.
Paige lifts the large green pack onto my back for the first time.
I take a deep breath and my legs begin to shake. Each step is a chore. My breathing is labored. This is the heaviest thing I remember carrying besides the weight of my babies. In fact, it might be equivalent to all the weight I gained with my last pregnancy.
After several rests on fallen logs, I make it across the first portage and when I get to the end and drop the bag, I feel like I’m floating.
Two more portages and hours of canoeing, and we reach our campsite.
There are smiles all around. Jubilation. We set up our tents, unpack our gear, say goodbye to our guides, and change into our swimsuits. The lake feels like bathwater.
My daughters and I shout into the echoes of the lake corners watching the sun set behind boys as they fish from a canoe.
Over the next five days, our teenage son carries a canoe across his shoulders, dropping it at the end of each portage and returning to the beginning to help with another pack.
My ten year old—who hates hiking—alternates carrying the smallest pack with our other son. She hardly complains.
Our teenage daughter steers a canoe from the stern, doing perfect J-strokes, learning the ebbs and flows of the lakes.
My hobbit son, bouncing on his toes despite the heavy pack, periodically runs back to me—I am the slowest of the group—telling me how close we are, welcoming me to the end of each portage, pointing out how you know its the end because you can see the blue sky peeking through the trees.
Matthew and I talk a lot about helping our children build resiliency. Maybe it’s small in the grand scheme of things but I suppose that dragging them across lakes and portages in the Canadian wilderness could be one way.
But the truth is, I am learning alongside them.
On the third day, I decide to carry that barrel of food—it’s gotten lighter as we’ve eaten but it’s still the heaviest pack.
I realize that the tingling in my hands and feet is gone.
It might come back. Of course it will. Aging—life itself—leaves none of us unscathed.
But right now, I am stronger than I thought I was. And that’s all I need to know to face the next challenge.
A book release announcement:
This week The Women’s Devotional Bible: The Message releases into the world.
I have the joy of being one of many women to contribute writing to this devotional. With topical devotionals and profiles written by women of diverse backgrounds, vocations, and ethnicities, this devotional seeks to highlight the stories of women often overlooked in the Biblical story.
It’s a beautiful book and I’m honored to be a tiny part of it.
Book recommendations:
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. A baby is born in Philadelphia. She is an alien sent from her dying planet to take notes on humanity to see if Earth is hospitable. For anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t belong and longed to discover that they were not alone.
All the beauty in the world by Patrick Bringley. A former employee at the New Yorker leaves behind his office job to become a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, offering touching meditations on grief, beauty, and what it means to be human.
If you want to check out more of my writing, I’m the author two books on the mystics and other miscellaneous writing:
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It's good to catch up on the adventrues of the Peterson clan. And this brings me back to many memories of summers spent at Camp Mishewah on Round Lake, north of Killaloe, ON. ((Not far from Algonquin Park) But I have never been brave enough to do a multiple day canoe trip with portaging! (I hope you learned the proper pronunciation...saying things the French way surely makes things lighter!) Anyway, my undying admiration for taking on this trip with your family.
Your way with words is such a gift. So blessed that you share it with all of us.
I'm in tears reading your view of your trip, especially because it is from your momma perspective. Your love for your family shines through in so many ways. I love this family!