Beyond The Paddle
By Garrett Conover
8 1/2" x 11" softcover, 100 pages, $17.95
Tilbury House Publishers
The Boston Building
132 Water Street
Gardiner, ME 04343
207-582-1899
Reviewed by Bob Hicks
November 1992 (Wooden Canoe Issue #50)
So I read it and did enjoy it. The essence of the book is detailed instruction on how to make progress in a canoe when paddling is no longer successful, and the means presented include poling, lining, portaging and using an ice hook. An introductory chapter on choosing an appropriate canoe quite understandably suggests that the northwoods type of canoe such as the Jerry Stelmok built E.M. White model that Garrett and his wife Alexandra use in their fulltime Maine guide business is your best bet. This is not entirely a matter of loyalty to friends Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow, for the canoe originally functioned as a wilderness travel vehicle, and those made today that adhere to the acquired knowledge of those earlier times when the canoe HAD to get you there would be the best choice for where Garrett proposes that you go "beyond the paddle."
The techniques described in this book were developed to surmount obstacles so that continued progress could be made on a chosen trip. Today, with no commercial motivation to inspire the struggles involved much of the time in using these techniques, the motivation, according to Garrett, has to come from a desire to truly get way back into the wilderness, beyond obstacles that stop less determined paddlers. Only poling, the first alternative when paddling ceases to do the job, offers a skill that can be viewed as recreation. Lining, when poling fails, is a chore, and portaging, when lining wonÕt work, is even more so. And the use of the ice hook, while not fatiguing, comes into play during the seasons when simply being out there on the water as it freezes in fall, or thaws in spring, can be dangerous.
Garrett is a master at showing us how one can carry on despite all sorts of difficulties, not just with heroics, but by using techniques that at least minimize the struggle and labor. His narrative is supplemented with excellently drawn illustrations of various techniques, and his wry humor keeps surfacing, almost as if he realizes that, come on now, he's trying to sell us on how rewarding it can be to work very hard to canoe somewhere often while not even afloat.
The chapter on lining was the least rewarding for me, lots of discussion and illustrations on setting up the lines connecting the canoe out there in that turbulent, rock-strewn, fast-moving river with the crew on shore attempting to haul it upstream, or even downstream, through impossible water conditions for paddling or poling. I appreciate how the geometry for the lines arrangements work, but didn't attempt to understand every detail on setting up for all sorts of situations.
Poling, on the other hand, is a very appealing concept to me, for being able to make headway against current too strong for paddling to work, still involves being in the canoe on the water, battling uphill as it were through the canoe's natural environment. The fact that one stands up in the canoe in very rough waters to do this is duly impressive to me, I have seen poling on the placid pond at the Bean Canoe Symposium and greatly admire and respect Alexandra Conover's facile grace in jumping about in that canoe making it do just what she warted it to, whereas I would be carefully seated so as to minimize any chance of capsizing what I viewed as a tippy craft.
Portaging did not lend itself to any sort of romanticizing as a technique for bypassing an obstacle. When one ceases to be carried by the canoe and instead begins carrying it, along with all its burden, it's just plain work. Garrett has a lot of neat tricks for making the work as easy as possible, but even he cannot pass it off as anything more than a real tiresome chore. His best shot was to say how he "enjoys" portaging mostly because it feels so good when one is completed and the loads are dropped from the back, shoulders and head
On the matter of the ice hook, suffice it to say, it's nice to know how to deal with getting to and from the water over ice if one ever faces such a need. It's the peril of falling in that looms largest here, not only the hypothermia potential, but the matter of getting out of the water at all, surrounded by thin ice.
The charm of this book, which is really a technical manual, is in Garrett's wonderful enthusiasm for, and belief in, the old ways that worked when canoes were the only means of transport far into the North American wilderness. To be able to go anywhere in your canoe is indeed a marvelous capability, and in Beyond the Paddle, Garrett Conover tells you, with much insight and good humor, entirely free of egocentric posturing and machoism how this can be done. He emphasizes that it takes much practice to achieve mastery of the skills he details. But he also extols the rewards of carrying out a canoe trip over several wilderness rivers and their intervening watersheds, reaching places still wild because they are so inaccessible.
And if you'll never do this sort of thing on your own, you can always join Garrett and Alexandra on one of their expeditions, of which I have heard nothing hut rave reports about. Even the ones to Labrador in mid-winter!
The big 8-l/2" x II" softcover book of about 100 pages sells for $17.95. If your local bookstore or paddling shop does not have it, you can contact the publisher. Tilbury House Publishers, The Boston Building, 132 Water St., Gardner, ME 04343, (207) 582-1899.
The Conovers operate their Maine guide service with a number of scheduled canoe trips on remote and wilderness rivers, as well as winter snowshoeing expeditions, as Northwoods Ways, RR2. Box 159ÑA, Willimantic, Guilford, ME 04443. (207) 997-3723.
[WCHA Home Page] [Table of Contents] [Member Book & Video Reviews]