This is a wannigan, an old-fashioned piece of canoeing kit, not unlike myself. Made by my brother 37 years ago out of 3/4 inch plywood, it has curved bottom corners to fit the canoe’s shape and has accompanied me on my expeditions. The cost was under fifty dollars and includes a shelf where I keep a jumble of useful, everyday things. I refer to the shelf as ‘my chaos’. The two horizontal black lines are metal strapping put on at a sawmill binding the box to give it extra strength. The brown leather
strap around the box is a tumpline, an even more ancient piece of equipment used the world over to carry stuff. Rivets hold the line together. The headband is wide, preventing the leather from digging into your forehead. The tump is secured around the box with half-hitches that allow the leather to be tightened, or loosened, without undoing the whole thing. As you portage, if your tump is too short, your neck is cricked back. If too long, your head is bent too far forward. However you carry it, the wannigan remains a Medieval form of primitive torture. The flat wood hits your spine and can rub it raw. Your neck is as compressed as your spine. There is nothing like putting it down at the end of a portage. I feel a rising sensation, as if I’m about to fly, and, for a moment, my vision is sharper. I might even kick it once.
I’m laughed at in the modern canoeing fraternity for using a tump and box when there are many newer ways, less painful ways, of carrying things, but memory plays a part in choosing what we do. My first experiences canoeing, and subsequent summers at a canoeing camp in Ontario called Wabun, ingrained using wannigans and tumplines. Memory and repetition create desire for more. Isn’t that true about most things? Just seeing a tumpline makes me remember times using my body, being outside, on water. I wasn’t supposed to adopt canoeing as a life-style. As my father commented, “Canoeing is desert, not the main meal.” It helped that PBS and Channel 4 in the UK began sponsoring my adventures. They are now on YouTube under my name.
Why do I love a wannigan? Let me count the ways.
- It regulates supplies. I keep a week of food in it. If I eat all my granola in three days, I have to wait until the week is up to take more from the supply duffle.
- It’s easy to see what you’ve got when you look inside. It carries the kitchen, all the awkward items.
- The top acts as a tray. The tray can protect the tent floor, if I have to run the stove in the tent in bad weather.
- The top acts as a cutting board.
- The box makes a great seat.
- It’s a windbreak for the stove, or a weight to hold things down.
- The inner shelf is easy to search for small, fiddly things you need. Again, easy to see what’s in there.
- In the canoe it sits directly in front of me and is a flat surface to put a map on, or lunch.
- It’s harder for a bear to get into than a fabric pack.
- You can keep large pieces of paper flat along the inside, if you are doing watercolors. The paper won’t wrinkle.
I’m reminded of my mentor, Horace Kephart, who wrote Camping and Woodcraft, originally published in 1916. All the old ways (that still work) are in his book. In his day, camping, you slept rolled up in a blanket. He was asked to try a new-fangled sleeping bag, and concluded they were uncomfortable, awkward, and strange compared to his blanket. Besides, he concluded, when you get home, you can use the blanket on your bed. In my conclusion about the wannigan, I’d say the same: 11. You can use your wannigan as a side table back at home.
The longest portage on the Great Fish River is a mile and a half: the Beechey Lake portage. It’s a bitch. Younger, I made a thing of not putting down my loads, including the wannigan that might weigh 60 pounds. On one portage I saw a miracle only because I was carrying the wannigan. With my head tilted forward in the tumpline, and bent over thinking this would lighten the load if it sat higher up my back, I saw a vision I’d never have seen carrying a pack because I’d have been looking out and forward. On the trail, among the small willows, I walked past a potato. I stepped past it and then realized it was a potato. It was still hard. That night I made french fries. Amazing. There had to be someone ahead of me on the river. Back in Yellowknife, at summer’s end, I went around the float bases until I found who had flown him and gotten his name. I wrote and told him about the potato and how good it tasted as french fries. He wrote back a postcard saying, “I wondered where that potato had gone.”
There have been other unusual things, but you have to look to see them. You have to appreciate what you are looking at. They are not blatant like lightning, or finding a twenty dollar bill. The prize for me was finding a goose print in a piece of muskox dung. Several things had to come into play. For this to happen, the muskox had to shit and the goose had to step in it before it dissolved, or became too dry to take the impression of his webbed foot. Then, I had to see it as I passed, marvel at the coincidences, and take it home. A too aggressive cleaner could throw it out without a thought, and sadly, when I die, it will be tossed, along with so much else that makes a life.
