The aluminum canoe I have borrowed from a nearby lodge squawks as I drag it over the rocks. I am making my way across the shoreline of a remote, fog-enshrouded lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, a jewel of a place about 150 miles north of Toronto. The day is going to be easy for me. I am at the peak of my guiding and survival instructor days: fit, tanned, confident. My mission? To boldly go off the beaten path, deep into the Algonquin forest, where I will find a good spot to teach survival to my students. I have already decided on the place by softly dragging my fingertip over a topographical map and stopping, index finger tapping, on what seemed like the ideal location. We wilderness adventurers are funny that way. We can stare at a map for hours on end in a kind of dreamy, euphoric state. It’s kind of like, well, map porn.
So off I paddle into the morning mist, alone and unafraid. “This won’t take more than six or seven hours,” I tell myself. “A few hours of paddling and a few hours of bushwhacking.” I’m right, and the spot is perfect: not much more than a mile into the bush, far from canoe routes and hiking trails.
If the trip in to my perfect place has gone entirely as planned, the trip out will prove to be anything but. I am tramping leisurely through the bush to my canoe when I look up to see a beautiful female (cow) moose standing majestically in a boggy area not fifty feet away. What a sight she is, grazing quietly in the shallow water, seemingly unaffected by my presence.
This is when things start to go wrong. I begin to think it would be a good idea to test my moose-calling abilities on this unexpected audience. I’m smart enough to know not to try a bull-moose call. The last thing I want to do is entice any bulls in the area to come in for a challenge, especially because it’s rutting season—or, as I like to call it, the season of love. During this time, the bull moose may well be the most dangerous animal in North America. Bull moose have been known to use their antlers like can openers to open up large trucks. So I’ll only be trying out my female call on this day.
Carefully, I cup my hands over my mouth and send forth a long, semi-vibrating groan that trails off into the quiet of the forest around me. The cow looks up at me for a bit, then returns to her eating. I try again. This time, I elicit no response at all. I guess my moose call needs more work after all! I stand there, enjoying the day and watching her eat for a few more moments before turning to walk away.
With one leg still in the air during my first step, my world becomes a slow-motion vision as I first hear and then see a thousand pounds of fully antlered bull moose crashing out of the forest—and headed straight toward me, its eyes red and bulging in anger, nostrils flared and snorting, massive hooves pounding through the tall grass and water. I search my store of wilderness knowledge for options and decide upon the best course of action: I run. I run for all I’m worth.
I’m less than a hundred yards into the chase when I grasp the severity of the situation. The bull moose is chasing me into the forest, away from my canoe. That’s when I again turn to my survival and wilderness knowledge and quickly scramble up a tree and hold on for dear life. The bull moose stays near the bottom of the tree, grunting and snorting all the while, digging furiously at the ground with his powerful hooves, and trampling small trees as if they are blades of dried grass.
As I cling to the tree, trembling, sweating profusely, my heart pounding through my chest, it occurs to me that, aside from the obvious one, I have made some very classic mistakes:
• I have told no one of my plans. When I left, no one knew where I was going. Even my wife isn’t expecting me back for three days!
• I have gone as far as possible from normal travel routes.
• I have few, if any, survival supplies with me.
As if that isn’t enough, darkness is beginning to descend upon the boreal forest. I realize I can’t stay in the tree all night, so Plan B is becoming a real necessity. After only a few minutes (which seem like hours), and as soon as the bull moose ventures just a little bit away, I make a break for it. Just like in a cartoon, my feet are spinning before I even hit the ground, and the chase is on again!
This time, though, I carve my escape path in a wide arc, trying desperately to make it back to the shore of the lake, if not my canoe. The angry bull stays behind me the whole way, until I finally reach the shore. I slip into the water and immediately try to hide myself as best as I can. I sink my fully clothed self as deep as I can into the cold September water, with only my head sticking out, and make as little noise as possible. The trick works! Once I fall completely silent, he can’t locate me.
As bad luck would have it, the moose is still waiting firmly between me and my canoe. So I inch my way along the shoreline in the opposite direction, my head just peeking out above the water, toward the part of the lake that is a canoe route. A few hundred yards later, the moose still hasn’t spotted me, so I climb onto a rocky shoreline at a park campsite
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