We Heard It Walk Away on Two Feet In An Old Growth Temagami Forest

A true story out of the old growth forests of northern Ontario.

Relaxation is the reason for vacations. A time you’ve earned from work to kick back and do your own thing. We choose to get out in the wilderness and canoe trip. I’ve being doing this for 5 years and my partner has done them all his life. We’ve done hikes in forests out west and all over Ontario. We’re used to the sounds of the forests.

When you canoe trip sometimes you end up at places that don’t resonate with you. These places can give you the creeps, or make you feel unwelcomed. It doesn’t always happen right away, but once that feeling occurs, you can’t shake it. When you have no other site on a lake in the wilderness to camp at, you do what you can until you can leave. This is my story about one of those places, far into the bush with no alternative. It’s not very often that we get unsettled in them or come across unexplained occurrences. But this time we did.

Canoeing is a way of life for us

The beauty is unimaginable. Big blue skies with huge white clouds reflected in a lake so blue, it hurts your eyes. The silence is divine. A branch snaps and you hear the animals, as they move through the woods. Glorious. No one around, so peaceful.

You ply your paddle through the glassy water, and maneuver around tight curves along the banks of a river. A beaver swims by with a log 2 times his size. As you get closer, he flaps his tail in irritation and dives beneath the water. He’s gone. The large rings of water the only sign he was here.

Yes, it’s our vacation. Trips that range from 12 to 20-days. We brave all manner of the elements. We’ve begun with rain and ended with snow. Endured the most intense thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. Been so soaked you’d swear you couldn’t get any wetter, but you did. Had nights so cold, you wore all your clothing, it wasn’t enough. Heatwaves and cold fronts are a different experience when a tent is your protection. A way to challenge yourself. Get back to the basics. We love it all.

With the pandemic in 2020, we lost out on our Ice Out trip in Quetico. Ice out is when the lakes become ice-free, and you can canoe trip again. The second week in May is the time we like to head out. Ontario Parks didn’t open for backcountry until June 1, 2020.

The issue with June is black flies. The air is thick with so many you can’t see in front of you. You swear they’ll pick you up and carry you away. Their season is from May through September. From late May to mid-July they’re voracious. We try not to canoe when they’re that unbearable.

We decided a 3-week trip in mid-July would suffice. A new destination was planned. During the pandemic, we viewed many videos on Temagami. We wanted to try it a couple of years back, but never did. We watched a series by a couple of guys on a route that was rarely used.

When you canoe trip in Provincial Parks the portages are maintained. This is not the case in seldom used areas in Temagami. When the route you travel is not clear, it’s up to you to find your way. There are old marks hacked into trees up about 6 ft high on both sides called blazes. These will show you your route. We use maps and gps tools, too.

Being 55+ and doing these routes can be tough. We like to carry everything once through a portage. It’s called a single carry. My partner carry’s the canoe and the food barrel with the paddles, fishing poles and life jackets. I carry everything else, including the electronic equipment to film it all. We each carry about 100 lbs.

Three days into our trip, we came across our toughest portage

It was 1400m called The Tundra Portage. We didn’t think it’d be that tough. We were game, after all, we trip all the time. It couldn’t possibly be that bad.

Holy snapping turtles were we wrong. It was 4 hours of sheer hell. It took all our determination and stamina to get through it. It started fine until we got to the swampy area, at about 200m. We’ve done swamps before, but this was a whole new experience. It just never quit, from the start to the finished.

It was deep, too. I know because I fell in and didn’t touch the bottom! When you have 100lbs and fall in a swamp you sink. We had to balance on thin dead trees that had fallen, trying to get to muskeg that sunk whenever we walked on it. Our progress was so hard that we had to separate our packs. My partner took the food barrel and left the canoe behind. I took the electronic case off the orange pack and left it with the canoe. We now had to double portage. That meant we had take our first load to the end and walk back to get the next load to carry it through to the end. This route now had to be completed 3 times, instead of 1 time. The only way to carry the canoe through was between both of us. That is always cumbersome.

Muskeg

Small stands of stunted and often dead trees, which vaguely resemble bonsai, grow where land protrudes above the water table, with small pools of water stained dark red scattered about. Its grassland appearance invites the unwary to walk on it, but even the most solid muskeg is spongy and waterlogged.

en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki › Muskeg

Muskeg — Wikipedia

As the watery part ended, we had a steep hill to go up. After 4 nerve-wracking hours, we happily finished. The celebration had to wait, we still had another 2 portages with a couple of small lakes to paddle through. Then there was a 2-hour paddle up to the middle of Lady Evelyn Lake to find a campsite. There was a camp to set up and supper to make upon our arrival, as well. We were fortunate that we accomplished everything before the onslaught of a thunderstorm.

The next was a rest day on the site

It’s nice when one can catch their breath. You relax and fish, wash some clothes and hang them up to dry. It really is nice. However, when a wind whips up and carries your partner’s favorite shirt off to Nevereverland. Oops, lol, I have a bad habit of laughing when crazy stuff happens. We paddled around to look for it, but it was gone. It could’ve sunk to the bottom of the lake to join all the fishing lures stuck down there. It could’ve been blown up into a tree, where the eagles fly down to see what that weird new animal is. I personally think it’s Mother Nature’s way of saying buy something new.

The next morning, we headed over to Sugar Lake Conservation Reserve. The portage into Goodfish Lake though 1300m took us less than 30 minutes. It was well used and maintained. We didn’t have to guess why they named it Goodfish Lake. We caught so many fish we were almost bored. We did a short portage into Angler Lake where I missed my moment to capture a photo of three graceful Sandhill Cranes, resting in the long grass. A night spent on Angler Lake concluded with major thunderstorms that sent us to bed earlier than normal.

The day after, we headed down to Sugar Lake to camp, where the fishing wasn’t bountiful. I heard things run by our tent overnight. I cuddled up closer to my partner, while I shoved my toque over my ears to block out any further sounds.

We had a mother and baby otter tell us we were in their space as we hunted down the portage, the next morning. Up and over another big hill, towards Isbister Lake, we headed into the Muskego Wildlands. We got lost because of major blowdowns from the storms. Sometimes when you make a misstep you see things, we saw a massive great old pine tree. It’s so cool to see how big the old growth trees were. My partner found the portage and marked it. The progress was slow.

The final portage of the day had us headed up the side of a huge hill. We barely had enough room to land and get our packs on before we headed almost 90 degrees straight up.

We never worry too much about animals in the woods, as we walk through them. I’m quite sure they hear us from miles away. Plus I’m too tired. As well, with my pack on it sits above my head. Its size would intimidate most bears. I’m sure if anything knocked me down the wee Irish lass inside of me would rail like a demonic being. Besides, it’d never be able to get to me with all that stuff on. I’d be covered by the pack and probably have my face planted in the mud. I’m just saying it’d need to be one heck of a brave bear, or whatever.

Into Isbister we go, the site was on a bit of a hill, with a gully down the other side. It hadn’t been used in a while. We walked around to the back of the site towards the portage and found a mound of old beer cans from the 1960s and 1970s. There were a bunch of birds squawking at some Blue Jays, while we set up camp. I could hear termites gnaw inside a tree. I assumed woodpeckers would be around soon.

We went out to fish and look for the portage we were to take the next morning. It wasn’t far but once again it was on a 90-degree angle straight up, it looked short though.

We headed to bed after a few games of dominoes, and had a very peaceful sleep. Up early the next morning, we had a quick breakfast, packed up and headed on our way. Eager to get to our destination at Barter Lake.

It was touchy at the portage, it took all our strength to steady the canoe while we unloaded. A fall in the water would suck. We carried our canoe and packs up over a cliff to get up to the short hill. Once there we had a short hike and a couple of small ponds to cross. We had three small portages over to the main portage. The same problem ensued at the next big portage. Another 90-degree incline, with little room to maneuver as we disembarked. Fortunate we didn’t fall in the water. Straight up the incline and over to the right, we went. Signs of the portage dwindled away from there. We hunted high and low, as we searched for the blazes. We left our gear at different spots along the way. After an hour, we decided to go back to the start. We never got far into the woods. Though we saw a tree that still stood erect but barely connected to its trunk. It had been chewed by a beaver so much that it threatened to topple over, if you tried to lean on it. It was incredible. On the way back to the start of the portage, we noticed an overgrown bush that had covered the portage. It wasn’t even 30 feet up the hill and went to the left.

Once we were on the right path it was mere minutes until we came to a field. We crossed the field to a rocky ledge, as we climbed up the ledge we saw the rest of the portage down by the little river. My partner crossed the moss-covered rocks on the river. As I stepped across, I slipped and did a face plant in the mud. Thankful I still wore my sunglasses, which twisted but saved my eye. Ten minutes later we were on Barter Lake.

Barter Lake hadn’t seen people for awhile. It sounded interesting. It was wonderful when we reached this goal. Even though there was a ways to go on our trip, this was a definite milestone. We paddled around to see if there was a campsite on the left shore, to no avail. We paddled to the one the previous paddlers had stayed at. We set up camp on a point and looked around, it was an odd campsite, but it would do.

When we explored the site it felt different

Another pile of old beer cans and liquor bottles under the overgrown grass was discovered. The fire pit was grown in with small trees and no signs that anyone had camped here this year. While I finished with the organization of the tent, my partner explored further. He checked out the other side of the point and found an old boat and tools. He saw very old trap lines set up in trees and even found a fresh human footprint, he figured was made that day. It was pretty strange, as there’s only one way in and one way out of that lake. You could fly in, but we hadn’t seen or heard any planes that day. There’s a cottage but no one had been there.

We fished for a couple of hours. We made dinner afterwards and as we finished eating, we heard something as it walked in the bush towards us. My partner yelled for it to stop. It stopped right away. That was when it turned around and walked away with a stomp, stomp, stomp on two legs. It unsettled us.

We went out for a paddle around the lake and saw the Neowise meteor. We wanted to see which way to paddle out of the lake in the morning. We came back to our site and heard it again, it was much more forceful this time. It crashed a tree over as it stomped away when we yelled at it again. It happened another time that night. That was it for the night.

In the morning as I was packing up the gear in the tent, I heard it rush the tent. We yelled at it and told it we’d be gone soon. It didn’t leave, we could hear it hover around until we left. It pushed trees over and stomped around as if it was on two feet. It became even more forceful as we pushed off in our canoe to paddle away.

We’re not sure what it was. At first, we thought it might be a moose because it of the way it broke the trees down behind the tent. And bears had never hung around, whenever we yelled at. them. The sound it made as it stomped away on two feet made us think it was something else.