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In the beginning |
No one's quite sure of the origins of the legend of Blazing Paddles. The facts behind the story are as obscure as the landscape of a mist shrouded September morning; mystery and intrigue colour any tantalizing insights that have been revealed over time. However, through countless interviews with paddlers and campers, we've pieced together a narrative which probably comes as close to the real story as anyone will ever be able to get. A long time ago, in a campsite far, far away, a man crouched over the smoldering remains of a fire. His face was dirt-streaked and haggard, lines of worry etched as though chiseled in stone. His clothes were in tatters and his posture suggested that he was resigned to the circumstances in which he now found himself. Down by the water, barely recognizable in its twisted form, covered in duct tape, was the battered remains of his canoe. Once a proud and nimble craft, it had not fared well on this trip, barely surviving the near-fatal encounter that was responsible for the man's current plight. While he was concentrating on his maps, trying to find where he was in relation to some rapids just downstream, the man let his canoe drift with the current. With his head bent in concentration over the charts, he didn't notice the danger that the current was relentlessly pushing him towards. There in the shallow water, directly in front of the canoe, a bear was rummaging for food and so intent on the morsels it was discovering that it was completely unaware of the danger drifting ever closer. Unless bear or man interrupted their concentration, their destinies would soon collide with completely unpredictable results. But we're getting a little ahead of the story. Behind the man, set back into the shelter of a wind-swept pine, was a crudely fashioned shelter made from the remains of his tent. Barely able to keep the mosquitoes at bay and reasonably secure against all but the strongest of rainstorms, this humble structure had been his home for more days than he cared to remember. Dangling from another nearby pine, suspended from a crudely fashioned rope made from woven strands of the roots of a spruce tree that had been boiled soft and carefully split with a pocket knife, hung a bedraggled pack which contained the meager remains of the man's food. What had seemed like an ample supply of food at the beginning of his trip had slowly dwindled away until all that remained were a number of cans of pork and beans that his wife had insisted he pack, "just in case". The beans were causing him some concern. He hated beans. They gave him gas and he disliked the taste of beans more than any food he'd ever eaten. The thought of having nothing left to eat but beans was beginning to cause him more stress than the thought that he'd never be rescued. As he contemplated his plight, a dark new cloud of worry crept over him. If he did get rescued, he'd probably spend the rest of his life being reminded that the beans had pulled him through. Suddenly he was no longer sure if he wanted to be rescued. |
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To avoid thinking about the beans, he thought back to the situation that created his problem and wondered again for the millionth time why he had let himself get into his current situation. Neither he nor the bear became aware of each other until it was too late. When the current pushed his canoe silently downstream, it finally came to rest with a sharp bump against the rump of the distracted bear. What happened next will never be quite clear because it happened so quickly and with such explosive force that even if there had been witnesses, they'd have been hard pressed to accurately reflect the events as they unfolded. With a mighty roar, the bear reared and spun to see what had attacked him. It took the bear but a second to realize that it wanted no part of the man and his canoe. Flexing mighty muscles and splashing water in all directions, the bear churned the river into a murky brown sea of mud as it scrambled to reach the cover of the woods. For his part, the man was caught completely off guard. When he looked up from his map to see what the ruckus was all about, his eyes turned to saucers and his jaw nearly fell to the ribs on the bottom of his canoe when he saw the bear. The mad scramble to avoid the bear had the net result of overturning the canoe and depositing the man and his camping kit into the river. Before he could gather his thoughts, the man became aware of a roar and was concerned that the bear had come back and was about to attack. Spinning in the water to face the source of the roar, his face turned ashen with fear. In the flash of a moment, it came back to him with a sudden, sinking feeling; the recollection of what he'd been doing before encountering the bear - looking for the rapids. He'd like to be able to describe the heroic efforts he took to avoid disaster and recover the situation. The truth of the matter is that the ride through the cascading river was a blur and his only recollection of the ride was his weakened struggle to gather the battered and broken remains of his outfit from the circulating pool at the base of the rapid. After drying out what he could, he took stock of his situation. Most of his gear was battered and damaged, but he'd managed to recover almost everything. The only thing that was hopelessly lost was his paddle. This presented a significant problem for him and he'd spent his days camped by the pool in the river, hoping to be rescued, eating his meager supplies and trying to find ways to get back to civilization. |
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Up |
His biggest problem now was the lack of a paddle. Without one, he couldn't travel any distance to escape from the river. While he was waiting for rescue, he'd been spending his time trying to fashion a usable paddle with his pocketknife from driftwood gathered from the river. Unfortunately, his skill with the tool wasn't up to the task and littered around the campsite were piles of wood shavings and badly misshapen and completely useless paddles. Gazing around at his failures, the man slumped his shoulders in disappointment and resolved that perhaps it was time to open another dreaded can of beans in the hope that a meal might help him try one more time to get it right making a paddle. After punching a few holes in the top of the can to allow steam to escape, the man had placed the can directly on the coals of his smoldering fire to heat up the beans. Squinting his eyes against the circling tendrils of smoke, at first he didn't hear the faint, new noise above the sound of the river. As his subconscious mind drifted in and out trying to casually place the faint but familiar sound, the man grabbed one of his misshapen paddles to use as a prod to shift the can into a better position on the coals. As the useless paddle blade neared the can in the fire, the man's arm froze in mid reach. Straining to understand what was going on, his mind was racing with the thought that leapt into his mind and consumed his attention. His rigid arm began to tremble when the realization of what he'd been hearing burst in blazing colour to the forefront of his consciousness. An airplane! Yes, that was what had been nagging him. Over the gurgling, muted roar of the river, he could now clearly hear the sound of a motor as an airplane was coming closer. As quickly as the elation at the thought of rescue came, it was replaced with the crestfallen realization that his sheltered campsite would be hard to spot from the air and there was a good chance that the plane would fly past and not spot him. What to do, what to do? Looking around his campsite in panic for an idea to escape from his dilemma, a sly smile soon crept across his face as a vengeful thought entered his mind and presented the perfect solution to his problem. Racing with the fury of one possessed with a demon, he gathered together and armful of the wood shavings that littered the campsite from his failed paddle-making attempts and heaped them on the fire. Scooping up the one battered dinner plate left to him after his river ordeal, he used it to fan his smoldering embers into a heartwarming little blaze. Once he was sure that the fire would not go out, he scrambled to gather all the paddles he'd been labouring over for these many days and placed then on top of the fire. Within moments, the paddles erupted into a blazing fire that would easily be visible to the plane headed in his direction. The pile of blazing paddles would be his salvation. |
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All's
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As he lay recovering in his hospital bed, he considered with apprehension the first visit from his wife. She'd sounded relieved to hear his voice when he'd called after settling in to his room. He told her that the doctor said that a few days rest in hospital was all that was required to set him well on the road to recovery. He'd said that it wasn't necessary for her to come to visit him, but she'd been insistent on coming. Now that she was on her way, he was worried about "the lecture". She'd laughed when he'd described how his futile attempts to carve a paddle had finally paid off when the plane spotted the burning paddles from the air and radioed the position in for help. He was worried that he'd be lectured about his handling of the situation. Even worse, he was worried about the beans. Would she rub his nose in the fact the dreaded beans had saved his life? The low smoldering fire that he'd reluctantly kept burning to heat the dreaded beans had made it possible to quickly light the blazing fire which made his rescue possible. The sound of the door opening broke into his thoughts and brought him back to the present. After a moment of concerned appraisal, his wife's worried look was soon replaced by a warm smile as she realized that he'd manage to pull through his ordeal without injuring much more than his pride. Instead of asking about the beans, the first words from his dear bride's lips were, "well there blazing paddles, maybe next time you'd better take a course before heading out into the wilderness". Reluctantly, he had to agree. |
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This story is purely fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. If you've heard another version of The Legend of Blazing Paddles, please feel free to drop us a line - kraiker@bconnex.net We'd be most interested in other camping stories (real or "embellished") and we'd be please to post some of them on the Blazing Paddles web site. Search BLAZING PADDLES |