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Matt in the Community Center in Norway House
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Matt with Leon and Rosa, fishing guides who accomodated us on their tiny island in the bush
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Matt's reflections (Entry by Matt)
(Aug 26th, 2005) I guess this is my space and time to reflect on my two months as bowman. And to quote a semi-cheesy movie, “I guess in the end, you think about the beginning.”

I was excited to begin an “adventure of a lifetime,” but I was equally depressed to leave Many Point Scout Camp, and moreover, to leave my girlfriend of two years, April, there. In our last few hours, we each held back tears. The day I left, she turned 18, a birthday overshadowed by the situation at hand. Deep in our hearts, we knew I may never come back, wrecked in a rapid, stranded with nothing but what I carried on me every day in addition to my clothing: my knife, a tube of lip balm, and any food I had left for the day. It is a thought that passed through my mind when we made our one and only mistake. Thankfully, we did not pay for it with our lives.

My mother cried when I told her I my plans. She asked me how dangerous the trip was. My answer, “Well, it is a trip through the wilderness.” I avoided telling her I may not come back alive.

She cried again before my parents drove away. My father, to whom I owe my initial introduction to Boy Scouts (rather, Tiger Cubs, in 1990), stayed strong, holding back any emotion, providing a shoulder for mother.

When we first put on the Red River on June 30, I could not fathom the trip the lie ahead. And so it began.

Throughout the last two months, I have seen winding rivers, water farther away than my eyes could reach. My eyes have picked lines through vicious rapids and examined shorelines for campsites long after the sun has gone down. My arms have pried, drawn, cross-drawn, pulled, pushed, eddy-turned, pealed-out, ferried and back ferried our canoe but mostly, my arms just paddled.

And now, at the end, I am honored to have been asked to take up Todd’s paddle, and journey to Hudson Bay with Scott. There was an adventure around every river bend, every lake point and past every rapid. Eventually reality set in, how fragile my life was in comparison to the power of nature, a reality that smacked my forehead on our first day on Lake Winnipeg, when we rode parallel to 4 foot waves. It hit again when we were wind bound in Granite Quarry Cove. And again when the first standing waves smacked me broadside running our first rapid. This trip was an adventure of a lifetime. No other words can adequately describe our experiences. I may struggle the rest of my life to make such a description.