Electrical fingers probed and kneaded my back in a rhythmic pattern. I lay face down on the physical therapist’s couch, hoping the muscle spasms would “forget” to attack when I attempted to rise. Soon the end-of-session buzzer beeped its warning on the juiced-up “tens” unit delivering controlled electrical shocks to the terminals pasted to the skin on my back.

The therapist removed the terminals and said, “Tighten your belly muscles and use your arms and legs, not your back.“

It worked, more or less, and I was able to sit up without the devastating spasms returning. This therapist visit happened a week after Linda and I returned from our two-week trip from Virginia to Canada. I had driven all the way home but had some spasms in my back at the motel in Wisconsin and again in Ohio. Hot showers had loosened my muscles enough to let us go on and we were able to get to Virginia. During the trip I found myself many times wishing for an automatic transmission instead of the five-speed manual, especially coming through the hell of Chicago rush hour traffic. I calculated two years of normal wear and tear on my clutch and brakes just to get from one side of the windy city to the other. We usually avoid Chicago but thought to try it this time. Never again. 

This is a trip we like to take every year sometime during the summer months to do a bit of fishing and relaxing at our camp west of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The summer of 2005 had proved to be incompatible with our plans in this regard. When the spring of 2006 approached, we were anxiously looking forward to making the trek to the great northland once again.

However, this was not to be, as I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and an operation was scheduled for early June. It took a month to recuperate, then Linda’s work became a higher priority.

Just when it appeared that we might be cleared to leave, my right hip “decided” to act up with bursitis. I think this condition was the result of the medically imposed inactivity. In any case, it was painful and all my attempts to rehabilitate it (doctor and chiropractor visits, antibiotics) were not productive. 

Labor day approached and with it the last opportunity for the trip to Canada. We decided to load up the pickup truck and go, pain or not. Loading the pickup was no simple task, as I wanted to take a large outboard motor, a generator, a 45 watt solar panel kit, loads of fishing gear, and all the clothes for two people for two weeks that might offer hot, cool, cold, dry or wet weather, or combinations of all. We also needed to acquire enough food, water and gasoline once we got to Thunder Bay that we would not have to return to town during the eight days or so we would be at camp. More than one round trip of that last forty-five miles of very bad road would not be tolerable. So, 1456 miles from our home in Virginia, we found ourselves back in our camp on Lac des Mille Lacs (Lake of a thousand lakes), Ontario, Canada.

Ah, Canada! She had tried hard to take back the clearing in the wilderness we had carved out two years ago. Button willows eight feet high had pushed into the driveway, choking the last hundred-yard passage so that soft limbs scraped the truck on both sides. The clearing in front of the trailer was grown up in tall grass, wild raspberry vines, balsam fir and cedar seedlings and sprouts. It turns out that most of these can be pulled up with little effort and we spent a few hours restoring the new forest to ground zero. Mice had also visited the trailer in our absence, but had not wreaked the havoc that we had found on our trip of two years ago. It only took a couple of hours to clean everything this time.

My belly still had knots in it from the surgery earlier in the spring, so I dreaded a couple of tasks I would have to accomplish if we were to be able to fish and tour the lake. My deep V aluminum boat still rested upside down on the dock and my 100 plus pound outboard motor rested in my truck, about fifty yards from where it needed to be on the boat. Fortunately, my neighbor came by and offered to help. Soon my boat was floating and tethered to the dock with the motor attached and I owed Lawerence a big favor.

But of course, that isn’t the way it works. Personal favors don’t always get traded tit for tat. He added to his favors to us by inviting us to his place for a fish fry. Linda made a bowl of potato salad and we joined Lawerence and several other neighbors for quite a party. The only rain we had while we were in Canada popped up that night and wouldn’t you know it—we had left suitcases and other items outside. No major damage, though. Just had to dry out a sleeping bag, a couple of articles of clothing and clean up some tools.

We used the minnows that Lawerence and another neighbor gave us to catch several walleye, which we cooked and ate for lunch a couple of days later. Yummy. If there’s anything better than fresh fried walleye fillets and Boston baked beans I don’t know what it could possibly be.

This trip there were no confrontations with bears, no exceptionally incredible rainbows in the sky, no extra large fish caught, no bull moose trotting down the road in front of us. There were just crystaline azure skies, cool, crisp mornings, silvery bright moonlit nights punctuated with calls of owls and loons and deep, deep silence. We cleaned the site up a little and did a bit of dock work. There was not even a problem crossing the border in either direction. We showed driver licenses and answered origination/destination questions and were ushered through without hesitation. We enjoyed it all and I left the pain in my hip somewhere on the shores of Lac des Mille Lacs.

Lawerence would be coming by to help with the boat and motor on our departure date. But I felt strong. I had everything else loaded. I would take care of the motor by myself. I wrestled it out of the boat and onto the dock. I began carrying it up the dock toward camp. After a few rest stops, as I picked it up I felt something pull in my back. The motor seemed to quadruple its weight—would not come off the ground.

Now I would wait for Lawerence.     

© 2006 R. Leland Waldrip