Cliff Jacobson Regales Us With Stories.

A rollicking, ranting, and super informative episode! Cliff drops by to chat about bears, books, barrels and so much more!!

https://www.cliffcanoe.com/

https://www.facebook.com/cliff.jacobson.98/

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cliff+jacobson

Transcript

00:00 - 00:04
Hello, and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.

00:04 - 00:04
I'm Tim.

00:04 - 00:05
And we are from supergoodcamping.com.

00:06 - 00:11
We are here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy outdoor

00:11 - 00:13
adventures as such as we have as a family.

00:13 - 00:17
Today's guest is an icon of the wilderness canoeing and camping community.

00:17 - 00:22
He has authored over 20 books, is a retired biology and environmental science teacher.

00:22 - 00:27
He has worked with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on such things as outdoor ethics

00:27 - 00:29
and map and compass curriculum.

00:29 - 00:35
He has been a contributing editor for Canoe and Kayak Magazine and a consultant to the Boy Scouts of America.

00:35 - 00:40
He has spent about 30 years outfitting and guiding large canoe trips here in the Great White

00:40 - 00:43
North, a number of them well above the Arctic Circle.

00:43 - 00:48
Please welcome a recipient of the Legends of Paddling Award and a member of the American Canoe

00:48 - 00:52
Association's Hall of Fame, Cliff Jacobson. Welcome.

00:53 - 00:54
Thanks, guys.

00:54 - 00:57
Thanks for dropping by. Pretty impressive.

00:57 - 01:03
My pleasure. My pleasure. Now it looks like our canoeing season's about over now, doesn't it?

01:03 - 01:05
Especially up where you guys are.

01:05 - 01:10
Yeah. Well, it's dropped down, we started out the day at 2 degrees Celsius this morning.

01:10 - 01:12
So it's getting it's getting pretty crisp out there.

01:12 - 01:15
You know, I still can't think in Celsius.

01:15 - 01:22
I taught environmental science and biology for years and So 2 degrees, Celsius probably has

01:22 - 01:26
to be about, what, 36 Fahrenheit something? 35, 36. Yep.

01:26 - 01:26
Yeah.

01:26 - 01:26
Yep.

01:26 - 01:28
Yeah. Because that's yeah. Okay.

01:28 - 01:35
So all I remember is 37 degrees is body temperature, 98.6 Fahrenheit, something like that.

01:35 - 01:36
Right. Exactly.

01:36 - 01:37
You know, I don't know.

01:37 - 01:42
We just we just can't seem to get it together here in the US on this metric system.

01:42 - 01:49
I just don't understand the stupidity of this because, you know, in schools, we teach kids,

01:49 - 01:54
they teach kids the English system and then they teach them the metric system.

01:54 - 01:58
Well, they don't understand the English system to begin with. Okay?

01:58 - 02:03
So so to convince So then they're supposed to in their mind convert to metrics. Okay?

02:04 - 02:06
But you can't do back and forth.

02:06 - 02:09
You've gotta really think in one system or another.

02:09 - 02:15
So what we have, if you go if you walk through any school in the United States and you ask the

02:15 - 02:23
typical, say, 8th or 9th grader, how many pints in a quart? They won't know.

02:24 - 02:26
How many quarts in a gallon?

02:27 - 02:29
Maybe half of them will know.

02:29 - 02:32
If you ask them how many centimeters in a meter?

02:32 - 02:33
They don't have a clue.

02:33 - 02:38
They can't get it through their head. That centi means 1100. Okay?

02:38 - 02:42
So it's just it's it's just stupid, you know.

02:43 - 02:48
But I suppose by the same token, we have a weird dichotomy here because every time I go to Canada,

02:49 - 02:52
I'm still driving in miles, aren't I? Isn't it miles?

02:52 - 02:54
Still, it's still miles in Canada.

02:54 - 02:57
They have It's it's kilometers.

02:57 - 03:03
But we have our our, speed gauges have both miles and kilometers on it.

03:03 - 03:03
So we

03:03 - 03:04
can we can go everywhere.

03:05 - 03:07
Yeah. That's probably what they should do here. But you know what?

03:07 - 03:09
I think nobody wants to pay for the new signs.

03:10 - 03:11
So I think that's a deal.

03:11 - 03:14
But but anyway, that's good.

03:14 - 03:19
And our weight in pounds our weight in pounds and our weight and our height in 6 foot 2 or whatever. Yep.

03:19 - 03:20
Yep. Oh, I'm sure.

03:20 - 03:21
Too.

03:21 - 03:24
Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But, hey, guys.

03:24 - 03:26
It's, it's good to be with you guys.

03:26 - 03:29
Yeah. Awesome. So what have you been doing lately?

03:30 - 03:38
Well, you know, regrettably, my my trips in Northern Canada are done now.

03:38 - 03:42
I just can't do those long tough portages anymore.

03:43 - 03:46
You know, I'm 84, you know, what do you expect?

03:46 - 03:50
But I can still paddle fine around home.

03:51 - 03:55
I did learn an interesting lesson this year paddling.

03:55 - 03:58
You do lose certain things as you age.

03:58 - 04:04
Now I was pretty I was pretty good whitewater paddler when I was younger, you know, I paddled

04:04 - 04:08
sea ones and wore the wet suit, you know, the whole the whole bit.

04:08 - 04:13
And then, of course, since I got older, I got a lot more careful because you're doing these

04:13 - 04:17
strips in Northern Canada and if you crash and burn, helps an airplane right away.

04:18 - 04:25
So, there's a little local river by our house, and it's a class 1 trout stream.

04:25 - 04:29
It's, about 10 miles of solid rapids.

04:30 - 04:31
I mean, nothing's very big.

04:32 - 04:38
There it's ripples, it's class 1, it might hit low class 2 at some point.

04:38 - 04:42
But there's a lot of debris in it, especially in the spring, so.

04:42 - 04:49
And I've done this river, I would say, conservatively a 100 times over the years in my solar canoe.

04:50 - 04:56
So what happened, there was a lot of debris when we were, one this last trip we went down it,

04:56 - 05:01
and this and so I ferried to the inside shore. River's quite narrow.

05:01 - 05:05
At this point, the river's probably maybe 50 feet wide.

05:06 - 05:12
And there's a tree across it, but there's a little hole just right of center.

05:12 - 05:20
So I said, I can do so I stopped there first of all, and I was exactly where I needed to be

05:20 - 05:25
because I was on a left little beach and it's all I had to do, I had to get out of the canoe

05:25 - 05:30
and drag it maybe 25 yards.

05:31 - 05:33
Just drag it, there was enough water to just drag it.

05:34 - 05:36
But that meant I had to get out of the canoe.

05:37 - 05:41
So I said to myself, I don't wanna get out of my canoe. I can do this.

05:41 - 05:46
Because all I have to do because all I need to do is I need to back up and ferry the river right,

05:47 - 05:50
and I can get into this slot, and I can make it under the tree.

05:51 - 05:59
So I backed up, started ferrying the river right, and I didn't make it. And I capsized.

06:00 - 06:00
Oh. And

06:00 - 06:08
the and the canoe, the solo canoe, And the canoe, it's a little light Kevlar solar canoe.

06:08 - 06:17
So the canoe capsized, it's belly upright against this tree, and so I I'm down there and pulling it belly up. Okay?

06:18 - 06:26
And a guy alongshore came, kayaker behind me, who I ironically, he he capsized earlier and I helped him.

06:26 - 06:27
He came out and he helped me.

06:27 - 06:29
We got them and got I got back in it.

06:29 - 06:35
But then I started thinking, you know, I've done this river a 100 times, literally a 100 times,

06:35 - 06:39
and this is a maneuver I've done thousands of times.

06:40 - 06:46
But for some reason, I didn't have the power to exactly put it where I wanted to be.

06:46 - 06:52
And the only reason why I did that was because I didn't wanna get out of my canoe.

06:53 - 06:55
In other words, I'd done it correctly.

06:55 - 07:02
I just didn't wanna get out of my canoe and drag it 25 easy yards. Okay?

07:03 - 07:05
So I learned a lesson.

07:06 - 07:15
And the lesson is, you have to as you gauge and you start finding some of these problems, you

07:15 - 07:18
have to learn what you can't do anymore.

07:20 - 07:27
And I also learned from some previous strips, this has been coming at me, is that I can do the

07:27 - 07:32
same maneuvers I did before, and I'm still pretty good at it because, you know, if you're a

07:32 - 07:35
good paddler, you know, it's really not about strength.

07:36 - 07:41
It's about precision and knowing where where where to put that boat.

07:42 - 07:47
And, so I learned that now I have to start things a little bit earlier than I thought.

07:47 - 07:52
In other words, if I'm gonna start a ferry, I need a couple seconds more.

07:52 - 07:59
If I'm gonna do a snappy Eddie turn, I need to get into that Eddie just a little bit earlier.

07:59 - 08:07
So, you know, these are some of the things, you know, that, that I I learned in life.

08:07 - 08:13
But, you know, I so I but I have another interesting story to go with it.

08:13 - 08:19
When I first started doing this stuff, this is I was like, 30 years old.

08:19 - 08:21
I mean, when I got started doing it seriously.

08:21 - 08:25
Before that, I was boy scouts and local little rivers and things.

08:26 - 08:33
And I built my first wood strip solo canoe, which ultimately became a canoe called the, well,

08:33 - 08:37
Old Town bought it first and it was called the Old Town CJ Solo.

08:37 - 08:43
They pretty much wrecked it by taking the rocker out of it and plumbing the stems. They destroyed the boat.

08:44 - 08:50
But then later, I got the plug from them and Ted Bell, Bell Canoe Works, which became Northstar,

08:51 - 08:58
built it as the Northstar CJ, and that's really what kind of one of the prime canoes that started

08:58 - 09:01
off, the north the Bell Company.

09:01 - 09:08
So here I was I was paddling my little wood strip solar canoe in a, there was a a rapid on the

09:08 - 09:11
Saint Croix River, which is in Minnesota.

09:11 - 09:17
This is about an hour and a half, 2 hour drive from my house and it's right below a dam.

09:18 - 09:24
And it's a long section of big water class 2 stuff, right?

09:24 - 09:29
But there's not much in it in terms of rocks and things so worst is gonna happen is you're probably

09:29 - 09:31
gonna capsize and float down.

09:31 - 09:38
So I was doing any turns and pilas and just having fun, and they were putting up a slalom course with the gates. Okay?

09:38 - 09:42
They were gonna use it as a whitewater, national qualifying course.

09:43 - 09:49
So I'm playing around and then I put ashore on this young woman whose name I remember her asking.

09:49 - 09:51
Oh, is this 50 years ago?

09:51 - 09:53
Her name was Kristen Fish. I still remember this.

09:53 - 10:00
She had She had red hair, kitty pie, and she was competing in this thing.

10:00 - 10:01
And so she says, you know what, Cliff?

10:01 - 10:04
She says, I've been watching you paddle.

10:04 - 10:07
She says, you know, you're pretty good.

10:07 - 10:15
She said, I wanna she said, I've entered this in solo, but I would also like to enter it tandem.

10:15 - 10:17
She says, but I don't have anybody to practice with.

10:17 - 10:24
She said, would you go for a run with me, through the gates? I said, yeah, sure.

10:24 - 10:26
I said, you know, I can't roll.

10:26 - 10:29
She says, well, we're not rolling, just going through the gate thing. I said, okay.

10:29 - 10:34
So I was paddling about, she was paddling stern, and, hey, we did fine through the gates.

10:35 - 10:39
So afterwards, she puts a shower and a big grin on her face until he says, Cliff, you know,

10:39 - 10:41
she says, you're pretty good at this.

10:41 - 10:46
Why don't you enter, you know, why don't you enter this this event?

10:47 - 10:51
And I looked at her and I said, well, you know, Chris, I don't know.

10:51 - 10:55
You know, paddling this big water like this kinda freaks me out.

10:56 - 10:58
And she looked at me and I'll never forget.

10:58 - 11:09
She looked at me, she says, Cliff, you have more skill than you have guts. And you know what? I value that.

11:10 - 11:17
That is exactly what has kept me safe on all these Northern Canadian Rivers, more skill than guts.

11:18 - 11:21
Because if you go the other way, that's when you die.

11:23 - 11:28
So I think that's just a great share story to share with people. Absolutely. You know?

11:29 - 11:37
In fact, in that you know, on that same line though, you know, people will ask, I'm going on

11:37 - 11:44
a big trip in Canada and, you know, I got a couple guys or whatever gals or whatever wanna go with me.

11:44 - 11:49
What's the most important thing that you want to have with your partner?

11:50 - 11:55
And they're expecting me to say, gotta be a great white water paddler.

11:55 - 11:58
Gotta be a super camper. No.

11:59 - 12:04
Gotta be a nice person. Because you know what?

12:05 - 12:14
You can train a nice person, but if you have a real jerk, that person will destroy your trip. I've been there.

12:14 - 12:18
In fact, we had 1 guy, I'll never get out and say his name.

12:18 - 12:22
He was terrible paddler, and he'd been on a lot of my trips.

12:23 - 12:24
He could never get it.

12:24 - 12:27
You know, there are a few people who just can't get it.

12:27 - 12:34
And he was always they were always getting in trouble when he was paddling, but he was such a nice guy. He was so courteous.

12:34 - 12:43
He was so fun and camp that we'll just put up with him. You know? So there we go.

12:43 - 12:46
Well, and there's there's a a good segue.

12:47 - 12:51
When you were doing guiding trips up here, did you did you have, like, a sweet spot of the number

12:51 - 12:56
of people that you were guiding for, or did you do, like, a whole variety of different you know,

12:57 - 12:59
come up with 3 people or come up with 10 people?

12:59 - 13:01
How did that how did that work out for you?

13:01 - 13:17
No. Yeah. The sweet spot is paying the bills and making a profit, And that turns out to be 9 people. Why? Excuse me. 8 people. What am I thinking?

13:17 - 13:19
I was thinking Mike Bounder was.

13:20 - 13:23
That turns out to be 8 8 people. K?

13:23 - 13:29
And I did 10 once, but that's too many. But 8 pays for,

13:31 - 13:40
8 will 8 will pay for, the airplane, and a lot of our trips use real expensive airplanes, long flights, you know.

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So once with one of our trips, it was a 400 air miles in. Okay?

13:46 - 13:52
So, you know, unfortunately, you can't do it for less than 8 people.

13:52 - 14:01
I mean, if you're running, a program where you gotta pay the bills and you gotta pay the guide.

14:01 - 14:05
And right now, it's even more expensive than that because now you gotta have insurance.

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See, I did all these trips before they had all these rules and stuff.

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You gotta have insurance, and insurance is 1,000 of dollars a year.

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So, you know, nobody's hardly doing these trips anymore because you can't, it's not profitable.

14:21 - 14:23
You know, but I mean, if you wanna talk about trips,

14:29 - 14:36
yeah, no. That's I'm trying to put this, politically correct. Okay?

14:37 - 14:48
The thing is is, there's 1 I think there's there's 1, maybe 2 major canoe tripping companies in Canada. Okay?

14:48 - 14:51
There are none in the that I know of in the United States.

14:51 - 14:56
I mean, there are some that do some, you know, local stuff where they'll do going down the,

14:57 - 15:03
Rio Grande or, the Snake River in out west or something like that.

15:04 - 15:05
But there are only 2.

15:05 - 15:12
But when I was leading trips, I didn't think it was an issue because even though we were from

15:12 - 15:16
the States, we dropped a lot of money in Canada.

15:16 - 15:24
I mean, we had one air bill alone was $21,000 and this was 20 years ago. Okay?

15:24 - 15:29
And then we had the motels, and then people would go into Yellowknife and they'd spend another

15:29 - 15:31
500, a $1,000 on stuff.

15:32 - 15:34
So we left plenty of money in Canada.

15:35 - 15:43
But then what happened was we pretty got ruled out of running trips in Canada without a Canadian guide. That was the issue.

15:43 - 15:45
You had to have a Canadian guide.

15:45 - 15:50
But what actually happens when you require something like that is is 2 things.

15:51 - 16:00
Number 1, if you have a Canadian guide, the people who are signing up here in the US, they don't know that person. Okay?

16:00 - 16:03
They wanna go with somebody they know and trust.

16:04 - 16:10
Now this doesn't mean that Canadian guy isn't excellent, he or she probably is.

16:10 - 16:14
But Americans don't know him. Okay?

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So as a result, they they may not sign up. Okay?

16:18 - 16:20
So that's the first thing.

16:20 - 16:26
So if you if you you do it do a trip like this where they go with an American guide and also

16:26 - 16:33
a Canadian guide, which can be done, I've done it that way, then what happens is the money pot

16:33 - 16:39
gets fractionated out to where nobody gets much out of this, see?

16:40 - 16:46
So now actually what's happened with the there's there's some strange things I think that have

16:46 - 16:52
or actually been happening in in in Canada as far as trips for foreigners is concerned.

16:52 - 16:55
One of them is the guide license.

16:57 - 17:05
Now, the way a guide it's you apply for a guide license on a river, say you wanna do in Canada.

17:05 - 17:07
I did this once just to try it.

17:07 - 17:09
And here's how it works out.

17:09 - 17:16
I I can't even remember the river I I applied for, but was one of the, one of the sub articles

17:16 - 17:21
that flowed into the, into the ocean.

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And so I waited for about 6 weeks and I called them on the phone.

17:31 - 17:38
And, they said, well, I'm sorry, your permit hasn't been processed yet because what it has to

17:38 - 17:46
do, it has to go to every, indigenous village along that river

17:46 - 17:47
Great.

17:47 - 17:49
Yep. And be okay by each one?

17:51 - 17:59
That's a tall thing to ask because maybe you got a half a dozen of, native communities.

17:59 - 18:05
So it goes to one native community and those guys are all out caribou hunting, and they don't

18:05 - 18:07
get to it for a week or 2. Who knows?

18:07 - 18:11
And then when they get to it, maybe they pass it on, maybe they don't.

18:11 - 18:19
Or maybe the guy says, hey, I got a couple of Coleman canoes here that I can rent them. No.

18:19 - 18:22
They're not using their boats, they're gonna use mine.

18:23 - 18:26
Or maybe it goes through 2 or 3 approval and the 4th one doesn't.

18:26 - 18:30
In the meantime, you're sitting back here trying to plan a trip.

18:30 - 18:36
So the net effect of this is it sounds real good but it becomes impossible.

18:37 - 18:43
So what happened with me after 6 weeks, I called, they said they're still working on this. Okay.

18:43 - 18:48
About 2 months later, I called them again. Still didn't have it.

18:49 - 18:53
And, they said, I'll never forget the voice on the end of the phone.

18:53 - 18:57
I said, what was that river?

18:57 - 18:58
I can't remember which one it was.

18:58 - 19:01
And I said, oh, well we have it here for the back river.

19:02 - 19:05
I said, well I didn't ask for a permit on the back.

19:05 - 19:10
Oh, well, I guess maybe there was a mistake at our end.

19:10 - 19:13
I said, well, you know what? It's too late now.

19:13 - 19:14
I can't run this trip.

19:14 - 19:20
I said, we're within about 6 weeks of of of flying out of there.

19:21 - 19:26
So there's some things that, that don't work very well.

19:27 - 19:33
I mean, of course there's another thing that doesn't work very well that Kevin and I have talked

19:33 - 19:35
about for a long, long time.

19:36 - 19:40
No, Kevin really is a guy who knows what's going on out there, Okay?

19:40 - 19:48
Not the, not the people who manage those wilderness areas because and I can say this with some

19:48 - 19:50
authority because I have a degree in forestry.

19:51 - 19:59
I used to work as a forester out in the big timber country of Oregon. I know those guys. They're wonderful people. They really are.

19:59 - 20:03
They wouldn't have gone into this if they weren't wonderful people. But you know what?

20:03 - 20:06
Most of them don't spend serious time in the woods.

20:06 - 20:10
Most of them wanna camp out in motels or pickup trucks. Alright?

20:10 - 20:14
They're not thinking the way we wilderness people think.

20:14 - 20:20
And one of the things that they're not thinking about is this Crown Land camping fee in Ontario,

20:21 - 20:24
which we have lots of stories about. Okay?

20:24 - 20:32
One of which was Gary McGuffin at one time told me that he had some friends from Germany or something who came over.

20:32 - 20:37
He wanted to take them on a canoe trip, and they got busted or something.

20:37 - 20:39
They didn't have a permit for them.

20:39 - 20:41
I forget what the deal was.

20:41 - 20:44
Kevin has been Kevin agrees with me on this.

20:44 - 20:52
So the problem with this Crown land camping thing is it applies only to foreigners. K?

20:53 - 20:55
Doesn't apply to anybody else.

20:55 - 21:05
And, you know, it's not a matter of paying a fee, it's a matter of, it's a nightly charge, first of all.

21:05 - 21:11
So every day, you say, okay, you're gonna you're coming into Ontario, how long are you how long

21:11 - 21:13
are you gonna canoe these rivers?

21:13 - 21:15
I would maybe say say 12 days. Okay.

21:15 - 21:20
So they give me they give me a certificate for 12 days, whatever the case might be.

21:20 - 21:23
But if I say 13, I'm in violation.

21:24 - 21:30
Now first of all, that violates what wilderness travel is all about.

21:31 - 21:37
That puts a ding in the freedom to travel, okay?

21:37 - 21:40
That's the first thing that it does.

21:40 - 21:46
The second thing is Ontario doesn't get much money out of it, not from canoeists.

21:46 - 21:50
They get probably get plenty of money from power builders but they don't get much from canoe

21:50 - 21:53
because we have a little deal that we get going here.

21:53 - 21:55
And a little deal looks like this.

21:56 - 22:02
You go if you're flying in, you're taking an airplane from some place. That's an outfitting service.

22:04 - 22:06
Or you can just go to an outfitting.

22:06 - 22:08
We've done this many times.

22:08 - 22:17
You go to them and you say, well, I'd like you to rent me a tent for the 2 weeks that I will be there.

22:18 - 22:26
I'll tell you what, I'll pay you 5 I'll give you $500 if you'll rent me a tent. Okay.

22:26 - 22:31
I don't want the tent, just give me the certificate that says I rented the tent. They do that.

22:32 - 22:37
Now if I get stopped, I will show them the certificate and I'm fine. Why?

22:37 - 22:44
Because renting shelter qualifies as under the permit thing.

22:44 - 22:50
So the the result is is the local outfitters, if you're knowledgeable, Patton and all, this

22:50 - 22:51
is how you do it.

22:51 - 22:54
And if you're a knowledgeable outfitter, why would you say no?

22:54 - 22:57
Because all you gotta do is say a certificate and you made some bucks.

22:58 - 23:06
So it's the people who wind up paying this are the, really the the rule that's put in place,

23:06 - 23:15
I think, to tame the bad habits of fishermen who show up in these big armies and stay for a

23:15 - 23:24
week and are not very environmentally conscious for much of much of much of them. That's fine. They're in motorized vehicles.

23:25 - 23:28
But the other thing that happens is this, it's an environmental thing.

23:28 - 23:38
There's been so many trips in Ontario I've done where we've come into a camp that has been trashed by fishermen.

23:38 - 23:40
And we've cleaned it up.

23:40 - 23:48
We've disassembled furniture that they built, threw it back in the woods, got rid of it.

23:48 - 23:51
We do that because it's the right thing to do.

23:51 - 23:58
But what happened then with the Crown Land camping fee changes something in your mind.

23:59 - 24:06
You come to a campsite where there's trash, and instead of picking it up, you say, you know what?

24:07 - 24:10
I had to pay $14 a night to be here.

24:11 - 24:12
Let them come in and do it.

24:12 - 24:13
Pick it up themselves.

24:13 - 24:15
This is a bad example to set.

24:16 - 24:25
And, that's why I say the people who are making those rules are not are not don't spend enough time in the woods.

24:25 - 24:35
They might say they do, but there's a reason why guys like Kevin and I are so opposed to this. Okay? Oh, well.

24:35 - 24:37
I am sorry about that rant.

24:37 - 24:42
Absolutely not. That's one of the things I love about you is you you're quite happy if you if

24:42 - 24:43
you have an opinion about something.

24:43 - 24:45
You just just let her let her go.

24:45 - 24:48
So I I'm good with that. That's that's just fine.

24:49 - 24:52
Well, I wish we had Kevin on the show because we would have a good time together.

24:53 - 24:58
Well, you know what? So so just to just to put it out there now, because we're a shorter format

24:58 - 25:03
than a than a lot of shows that are out there, we won't be able to discuss all the things that

25:03 - 25:04
I would want to talk to you about. Oh.

25:04 - 25:09
So we'll get we'll get you to come back again, and we'll bring Kevin at the same time.

25:10 - 25:11
That'll be a fun one.

25:11 - 25:11
It will be a

25:11 - 25:12
fun one.

25:12 - 25:16
I'm sorry I went into those rants like that. I shouldn't have.

25:16 - 25:18
Absolutely not. No. That's the

25:19 - 25:23
I'm I don't know. I I just don't know what prompted it, but I know.

25:23 - 25:31
Maybe just looking back over the years and seeing how things were and how they are now, you know, but No.

25:31 - 25:37
That's it's fine. Now One one of my favorite things was, again, I couldn't tell you.

25:37 - 25:43
I it was it was after a canoe show on your side of the border.

25:43 - 25:48
You and Kevin and a couple other gentlemen were sitting here in a motel room, and you went off

25:48 - 25:51
about whether to hang your barrels or not.

25:51 - 25:54
And it was it it wasn't particularly long.

25:54 - 25:57
I I would say it's, you know, like, 5 minutes or something, but that's one of my favorite.

25:58 - 26:03
I I love that video just because you're you're like, it's it's 15 feet.

26:03 - 26:08
Now that's only 14 feet 9 inches. That's not acceptable. It it was perfect. It was perfect.

26:09 - 26:16
Well, you know, you've heard, you know, about the new rule and the that new, rule and the boundary rules. You know?

26:16 - 26:23
But, you know, the forest service just I just saw something recently. They're real happy. They're bragging.

26:23 - 26:30
They said they only had 10 bear incidents this year when usually they have about 40 per year,

26:30 - 26:39
and they're blaming it on, blaming or attributing it, to the new, food law. I'm not sure.

26:39 - 26:44
One of the things they said was, you know, they had a lot of rain this year, and, you know,

26:44 - 26:47
we had good berry crops and things, you know.

26:47 - 26:49
You don't just look at 1 year when it goes down.

26:49 - 26:56
So, but, you know, my view on that is I think what's actually gonna happen is this, people are

26:56 - 27:01
gonna use those bear bear resistant containers and they're gonna say, hey, it's resistant.

27:02 - 27:03
I'm not worried about it.

27:03 - 27:06
They're just gonna stick it right out in the middle of a can somewhere.

27:06 - 27:11
And they're still gonna still plenty of odor, and that's what's, you know, drawing these animals in.

27:12 - 27:16
And they're gonna get bears and they're still gonna get bears and camp, and they're, eventually,

27:16 - 27:20
the smart one's gonna figure out how to get into one, and then it'll be history.

27:20 - 27:24
But, anyway, that's a subject for another time, and we can

27:24 - 27:27
talk about it. It's it's fine.

27:27 - 27:29
I I I can't we will talk about it.

27:29 - 27:31
I can't say I disagree with you.

27:31 - 27:37
I I have historically always hung my barrels simply because, somebody at some point said that's

27:37 - 27:38
what you do, so that's what you do.

27:39 - 27:47
But I know that, our eldest son and I did a trip on the French River, and that we found at least

27:48 - 27:51
3 sites where it hanging wasn't an option.

27:51 - 27:52
There wasn't there was no point.

27:52 - 27:55
There wasn't a tree that was big enough, didn't have a long enough branch, or would support

27:55 - 27:56
the weight of our barrel.

27:56 - 27:58
So it's like, you know what?

27:58 - 28:02
I'm going way the heck back there, and I'm gonna put the barrel there, and hopefully, it won't

28:02 - 28:03
be ripped open in the morning.

28:03 - 28:05
That's how that's gonna work.

28:05 - 28:08
Yeah. And I mean, it's, you know, it's to me, it's very simple.

28:08 - 28:13
I mean, if if Bear can't see your food or smell your food, he's not gonna get your food.

28:13 - 28:17
Now these very resistant containers people get, that has nothing to do with odors.

28:18 - 28:22
They gotta build an odor proof system into that thing if they want it to.

28:22 - 28:27
Otherwise, they got the same odors they had before, so they they are gonna get animals in camp that way.

28:27 - 28:31
Now whether the bear can take it apart or not is another point.

28:31 - 28:34
He may just drag it off somewhere, you know.

28:35 - 28:39
But, you know, it's like peep people don't get them.

28:39 - 28:44
If you canoe and you get into Northern Ontario, the trees are getting pretty tiny.

28:45 - 28:48
You get into Saskatchewan, they're getting really tiny.

28:48 - 28:53
You hit the northwest territories or none of it, goodbye trees, period.

28:54 - 28:56
So, you know, there's bears there too.

28:57 - 28:59
See, how come we don't have problems there?

28:59 - 29:01
We must be doing something right.

29:01 - 29:06
I mean, I'm I've been doing this for over 50 years.

29:06 - 29:09
I've never had a bear problem.

29:09 - 29:12
I've had a lot of bears in camp. Okay?

29:12 - 29:13
I talked to a lot of bears.

29:13 - 29:21
I've never had a bear get a single bit of my food in 50 years of camping at Knut, neither has Rob Kessel read.

29:23 - 29:28
So the people who spent tremendous amount of time out there don't have problems.

29:28 - 29:32
So the question they really ought to be asking is why don't they have problems?

29:33 - 29:37
Instead, what the feds do is they make a law.

29:38 - 29:40
Making the law will fix everything.

29:41 - 29:45
God forbid we'd have some education here. K.

29:45 - 29:49
Nobody wants to teach anybody how to do anything.

29:49 - 30:00
What they wanna do is either make a law, okay, or give them a piece of equipment, we'll fix their problem. That's my sorry.

30:00 - 30:01
That was another rabbit hole.

30:02 - 30:04
That's that's the best part.

30:05 - 30:07
So a lot of bears in camp.

30:07 - 30:09
I'm curious about variety of bears.

30:09 - 30:11
Like, we here, we get, like, black bears.

30:11 - 30:12
Black bears. Yep.

30:13 - 30:16
Have you you've encountered others types, I assume.

30:17 - 30:22
Well, you mean, what kind of bears have I've had all of them.

30:22 - 30:28
Black bears, grizzlies, once. 13 polar bears going across the shore. That was interesting.

30:30 - 30:33
Been chased across the river twice by a polar bear.

30:37 - 30:45
Black bears use when you get that when you get away from civilization, I call it civilization,

30:46 - 30:48
like the boundary waters is civilization.

30:53 - 31:03
Is civilization. People think that if a feather falls from a tree, a bear can smell it a mile away. No. Come on.

31:03 - 31:10
What happens is, on any lake where there's a lot of canoeists, okay, you're gonna have bears along.

31:10 - 31:16
Some of those bears might be, I don't know, maybe, 100 of yards away, quarter mile away.

31:17 - 31:26
You think they're smelling your freeze dried chicken tetrazzini a quarter mile away? No. They're smelling you. We stink.

31:27 - 31:29
They've learned that where there are people, there's food.

31:29 - 31:30
It's as simple as that.

31:31 - 31:35
So if they're so they're gonna go to a campsite that's occupied and then they're gonna look

31:35 - 31:37
around and they're gonna see what they can find.

31:37 - 31:45
Now they can't smell any food or see your food because, you know, they've learned.

31:45 - 31:48
They've learned that food comes in certain things.

31:48 - 31:57
They've learned it comes in packs, barrels, okay, tin cans, they've learned that, bears from

31:57 - 31:59
dump the first time they bite into a tin can.

31:59 - 32:06
I've seen them bite open, I've seen them in the old days, I've seen them bite open film cans

32:08 - 32:16
because it's a canister, you know, I've seen them take apart packs that never had any food in them at all. Okay?

32:16 - 32:26
Because the problem with bears are people don't people cannot comprehend that we have an animal that is extremely smart.

32:27 - 32:32
So smart, it teach it can teach their children. Seriously,

32:34 - 32:42
are you guy you guys must be familiar with that, the, the the true story about yellow the yellow

32:42 - 32:44
yellow bear in the Adirondacks.

32:44 - 32:46
Are you familiar with that?

32:46 - 32:52
Is that is that where the the mama figured out how to get into a barrel and then taught her kids?

32:52 - 32:53
Yeah. It wasn't a barrel.

32:54 - 32:59
It was a it was a a government approved,

33:02 - 33:03
bear can. I have one downstairs.

33:03 - 33:05
It's called the Bear Vault 500.

33:06 - 33:06
Right.

33:07 - 33:13
K? She learned to get into that and then told all of her friends, pretty soon every bear in

33:13 - 33:15
the Adirondacks could open the thing.

33:16 - 33:20
So they contacted Bearbult and they said, we need an improvement.

33:21 - 33:27
Their improvement was a second latch that was similar to the first one, but it was a double latch.

33:29 - 33:35
She figured that one out in about a day, and again, told all of her friends.

33:35 - 33:40
Now she obviously was a genius bear, but, you know, I'm sure there are other genius bears.

33:40 - 33:51
But just for interest, when I do my bear show, I have that's probably my most popular show that I do. It's my bear show.

33:52 - 33:57
I have a bear vault 5 100, and in that Bear Vault, I put an autograph book.

33:57 - 34:01
And the instructions for opening it are on the top of the Bear Vault.

34:01 - 34:07
So I cover that with tape, and then I tell people, I say, what I want you to I'm gonna pass

34:07 - 34:08
this out to the audience.

34:09 - 34:13
And I want you you can spend about a minute or so playing with it, and if you can't figure it

34:13 - 34:15
out, send it on to the next one.

34:15 - 34:20
I said, the instructions are at the top and I've covered them because bears can't read. Okay?

34:21 - 34:29
And so usually what happens is with adults, it goes to around a dozen people before they can open it.

34:29 - 34:31
And then whoever opened it gets the book.

34:32 - 34:36
With teenagers, it's the first three.

34:38 - 34:45
So that's probably from, you know, we could say about this business about being on, playing

34:45 - 34:46
these video games and stuff.

34:47 - 34:50
That's probably why they're able to do this so quickly.

34:50 - 34:59
So it's not all bad, you know, but but the point is is that the average person, not given the

34:59 - 35:04
directions, has a lot of trouble figuring out how to open this thing.

35:05 - 35:07
And this bear could figure it out.

35:08 - 35:17
So people just don't give these animals enough credit. They think they're stupid. They're not.

35:17 - 35:20
I think some of these bears are actually smarter than some people.

35:21 - 35:24
That's I'm I'm positive you're right on that one.

35:24 - 35:27
Well, speaking Well, anyway okay. I'm sorry.

35:28 - 35:34
Speaking of books, your autograph book, I was kinda going through the list of of your books.

35:34 - 35:39
Is there do you have a favorite one, or do you have, like, a couple that you you really Oh, yeah.

35:39 - 35:42
Are really proud of or you know what I mean?

35:42 - 35:43
Like like, that you really enjoy doing.

35:44 - 35:53
Yeah. Canoeing Wild Rivers is by far, my is by far my favorite, and, I would say you'll never

35:53 - 35:58
see another book like that again, for a lot of reasons.

35:59 - 36:06
One of them is hardly anybody does what I do, and then nobody does that anymore.

36:06 - 36:09
Now, they go to parks, and they canoe for a few days.

36:10 - 36:15
I mean, a 2 week canoe trip is like, you know, nobody nobody does this anymore.

36:15 - 36:22
And there's another reason too, which is a little obscure that nobody that nobody would ever think of anymore. But, you know,

36:24 - 36:33
at least in this country, we are so sue conscious that everybody's gotta be protected from everything.

36:34 - 36:38
I know it's a lot like that in Canada, but I don't think it's quite as bad.

36:39 - 36:43
So here's actually kinda what is happening now.

36:44 - 36:52
Let's say you're, Tim, you decide you have a bunch of photos that you've taken over the years

36:52 - 36:54
of canoeing and so forth.

36:54 - 36:58
And then somebody comes to you one day and says, Tim, we'd like you to write a book on canoeing.

36:58 - 36:59
You say, oh, that's great.

36:59 - 37:02
I got all these photos from all these years.

37:02 - 37:08
And then you get a little note back from the publisher that says, you need two things.

37:09 - 37:13
Number 1, you need a photographer credit for every photo.

37:13 - 37:16
Oh, that's no problem, I took them all. Okay?

37:16 - 37:18
But you also need a model credit.

37:19 - 37:20
Well, what does that mean?

37:21 - 37:28
That means that you need to contact everyone in those photos and get their permission to use it in your book.

37:28 - 37:33
And then you say, I don't even remember who half these people were.

37:34 - 37:36
And that's where we are today.

37:36 - 37:42
And that's why, like, a book like Canoeing Wild Rivers will probably never be able to be done

37:42 - 37:47
at least in the states again because you don't have the photos.

37:47 - 37:50
I mean, you can't you can't find these people.

37:50 - 37:51
You don't know who they are.

37:51 - 38:00
You never planned on writing a book in the first place. So it's plus, anyway. Yeah. That's my favorite.

38:01 - 38:07
And, you know, I have some others that have, you know, done really much better in terms of the

38:07 - 38:09
amount of money they made, like Knott's book.

38:10 - 38:18
My publisher once told me excuse me, so Cliff, whenever we get a little tight for finances around

38:18 - 38:20
here, we bring out another knot book.

38:21 - 38:24
Now I don't know what it is with knots in people.

38:24 - 38:32
I don't know why people think they need so many knots because, you know, basically you need 3. You can go 4.

38:33 - 38:35
You can argue for 5.

38:35 - 38:41
Beyond that, you're never gonna use them unless you're a rock climber or an old time sailor

38:41 - 38:45
that's I mean, you're, you know, otherwise you're never gonna use them. You don't need them.

38:46 - 38:49
But that seems to be what sells the best.

38:49 - 38:56
But my my personally, my second favorite is my teen book, Justin Cody's Race to Survival.

38:57 - 39:04
And I I don't know if you have the time for me to tell you the story of that book, but maybe

39:04 - 39:06
that's you want me to? Yes, no?

39:06 - 39:07
How about her?

39:07 - 39:10
Alright. Well, I I you know what I know what it looks like?

39:10 - 39:12
Let me just grab one just to show you for just a second.

39:12 - 39:16
That's what it looks like. Okay? Alright.

39:16 - 39:18
So so but a little bit of history.

39:19 - 39:21
This was about 3 years ago.

39:21 - 39:26
I, I started becoming my and they're right. No. I'm backwards.

39:26 - 39:32
I started becoming concerned that there were no young people going to the wilderness.

39:33 - 39:35
And I'd taken a lot of kids to the wilderness.

39:35 - 39:42
So there's we had an outdoor, program, through our our school, and so we took them to the Boundary Woods.

39:42 - 39:45
We actually took them some to some trips in Ontario.

39:45 - 39:49
We took them down the Steele River in Ontario and the Copco River in Ontario.

39:50 - 39:53
We brought them in by train, via rail.

39:53 - 39:57
We brought them in by, float plane. It was great.

39:57 - 40:00
I still have those still those kids are still in touch with me today.

40:00 - 40:05
So I started thinking to myself, how do we get young people involved in the wilderness?

40:05 - 40:09
You go like to the boundary waters, everybody's got gray hairs. No.

40:10 - 40:12
We're not getting any young people involved. Okay?

40:13 - 40:18
And the thing is kids don't know whether they like outdoors or not because they got all their

40:18 - 40:25
they got their head stuck in their iPads or phones all day long. They don't go outside.

40:25 - 40:27
I got a grandson just like that.

40:27 - 40:29
I love him, but he's just like that.

40:30 - 40:32
So I decided I would try something unique.

40:33 - 40:39
I'd always kinda wanted to write a teen book, but I decided what I was gonna do was I was gonna

40:39 - 40:46
come up with a riveting, high adventure novel that would drag him in.

40:47 - 40:55
But really, I wanted it to be a how to book in disguise, how to canoe, how to camp, okay, and so forth.

40:56 - 41:00
So I thought it's, actually, it's gonna be a how to book.

41:00 - 41:07
Because I said to myself, kids who like the outdoors, they're reading everything in print just

41:07 - 41:09
the outdoors just like I did.

41:09 - 41:14
But the ones that don't know if they like the outdoors, they'll love the high adventure story,

41:14 - 41:17
okay, and they'll learn how to camp and canoe.

41:17 - 41:23
So that that's how I wrote this book, and it teaches them how to build, you know, how to build

41:23 - 41:27
a 1 that's fire, how to use a map and compass, how to rig a storm proof camp.

41:27 - 41:29
I mean, how survival stuff.

41:30 - 41:32
And the and the list kinda goes on.

41:32 - 41:37
So then I started saying to myself, you know, I've written about 15 books or so, this should

41:37 - 41:40
be easy getting this thing published. Mhmm.

41:40 - 41:44
Well, my publisher Falcon didn't even wanna read it.

41:44 - 41:46
So then I started sending it out.

41:48 - 41:53
I made 40, 40, I kept track of them, queries.

41:54 - 41:59
Some went to fiction publishers, some went to non fiction publishers.

42:00 - 42:05
The non fiction publishers came back and said, we don't publish fiction.

42:06 - 42:10
The fiction publishers came back and said, we don't publish non fiction.

42:11 - 42:13
They couldn't see outside the box.

42:14 - 42:20
Ultimately, we're the only one who was willing to publish it with some place in England, that

42:20 - 42:23
was a a a kind of vanity publisher.

42:23 - 42:27
I said, no, I'm not paying you guys to publish my book.

42:28 - 42:32
And so, that was kind of the story on that.

42:35 - 42:39
And right now, but it's it's it's a fast, riveting read.

42:39 - 42:44
It's very much like, I don't know if you're familiar with Gary Paulson.

42:44 - 42:47
Gary Paulson wrote a book called Hatchet.

42:47 - 42:50
Every young person I don't know.

42:50 - 42:52
Just about everybody's read Hatchet.

42:52 - 42:59
When I was teaching environmental science, during the winter, every Friday, I would read a chapter

42:59 - 43:01
from that book to the kids.

43:01 - 43:02
They loved being read to me.

43:02 - 43:04
These were 8th 8th graders.

43:04 - 43:12
And it the it's the story of a kid who's divorced, parents, and he's flying to meet his father

43:13 - 43:21
in some place in Canada, and the plane crashes, and he has to survive off the land for a year

43:21 - 43:23
or 6 months, something like that.

43:23 - 43:28
Well, my book's a little bit in that vein, but it's quite a bit different.

43:28 - 43:37
It involves, there's a grandpa involved, the kid's doing fur in school, He's failing through subjects.

43:37 - 43:43
He has a grandpa who's a wilderness guru who makes a deal with the school that he'll take him

43:43 - 43:50
on a month long trip in Saskatchewan and straighten him out, and he can take pictures and write

43:50 - 43:55
in his journal, and maybe they'll pass him then in English and social studies.

43:55 - 44:04
And grandpa disappears along the line, because there's a mysterious drone that runs on water

44:04 - 44:10
that crashes, and, there's a mafia involved, and it sort of goes on and on.

44:10 - 44:14
And so but that's basically, you know, kinda like the story.

44:14 - 44:18
And I have a daughter, My daughter Clarissa, she's a screenwriter.

44:18 - 44:22
She's, she's got a movie in production now.

44:22 - 44:33
She's written a short, a short film called Lunch Ladies, which is probably the long one of the longest living shorts.

44:33 - 44:35
She just wrote a screenplay on this.

44:35 - 44:39
So hopefully, she'll get the soul that read the screenplay. It's it's it's awesome.

44:39 - 44:41
It'd be a great movie for kids.

44:42 - 44:44
But anyway, again, I didn't mean to ramble.

44:44 - 44:47
I just get carried away on this stuff.

44:47 - 44:52
So but thanks for asking. That's totally fine. This is excellent.

44:52 - 44:59
This is I've this this is what I basically this is what I basically live for.

44:59 - 45:04
This is other than my like, I have to do a job, but this is my favorite part of all the things that I do.

45:05 - 45:08
What do you do what do you do what do you do for a living, Tom?

45:08 - 45:11
I'm building manager. So it's super attendant.

45:12 - 45:15
Oh, really? Okay. So just because I know it's just looking.

45:15 - 45:19
You got some pretty high-tech equipment there.

45:20 - 45:23
I can see those fancy microphones and things.

45:23 - 45:29
So you do you've got you're really serious into stuff, big time.

45:30 - 45:34
Yes. Not in a not in a making a living off of it or anything. It cost us

45:34 - 45:34
a No. No.

45:34 - 45:38
No. Fortune to do, but but, we love doing it, man.

45:38 - 45:39
Like, this is And for

45:39 - 45:40
how it happened.

45:40 - 45:42
Yep. This is the best.

45:42 - 45:52
Your your your was it Mishner who said because this is the same thing with anybody who does art, which means writing,

45:55 - 46:04
writing, speaking, music. He said, you can make a fortune writing, but you can't make a living.

46:04 - 46:05
That's a good quote.

46:05 - 46:09
You know. Yeah. I think I would say I may be wrong.

46:09 - 46:13
I seem to think I read somewhere that you're you're done writing.

46:13 - 46:16
Are you are you going to continue to put out books or no?

46:17 - 46:18
No. No. I'm done. Yeah.

46:18 - 46:20
I'm done with the books. Yeah.

46:22 - 46:27
You know, you can always I've said everything that I think I can say.

46:27 - 46:32
And again, nobody does nobody takes camping seriously anymore.

46:33 - 46:39
I mean, if the weather's bad, they just get in their Volvos and drive home. You know?

46:40 - 46:46
You know, when we did this stuff, you better know what you're doing, especially when you get above the tree line.

46:47 - 46:50
You get winds of 50, 60 miles an hour.

46:50 - 46:51
You can go for days.

46:52 - 46:58
You know, if you don't have everything really perfect, you can be in a lot of trouble.

46:58 - 47:04
And, you know, that's really kinda, kind of kind of the thing that people understand because

47:04 - 47:13
I get a lot of feedback from people about how they argue with me over the the, the ground cloth inside the tent.

47:13 - 47:16
They argue with me over the the bear thing.

47:16 - 47:20
So I like to tell them this little example.

47:21 - 47:27
I like to say, let's say you have a friend who is a NASCAR race driver. Okay?

47:27 - 47:35
And you are in your 10 year old Buick driving down the road, and he's sitting right next to you.

47:36 - 47:42
And you start going around the curve, and you're going a little fast, so you hit the brakes.

47:44 - 47:50
So your race car driver friend turns to you and he says, you know, John, you don't wanna do that.

47:50 - 47:53
You don't wanna hit your brakes in the middle of a curve.

47:53 - 47:58
You wanna break before you go into a curve and you wanna accelerate out of a curve.

47:59 - 48:03
And you turn to him kind of indignantly, and you say, look.

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I've been driving for 40 years.

48:06 - 48:07
I've never had a problem.

48:08 - 48:14
And then your friend turns to you and he says, try that at twice the speed.

48:16 - 48:24
So I guess what I'm saying is, when you read these techniques in my book Canoeing Wild Rivers,

48:25 - 48:37
which by the way includes the input of about 30 other top shelf people, most of which I might add are Canadians. Okay?

48:38 - 48:47
You you realize that there are certain things that you have to do just right when you're in

48:48 - 48:53
a much more shall we I don't wanna use the word savage environment.

48:53 - 49:00
It's not savage, but a much when you're in a place where you screw up and you can die. Okay?

49:00 - 49:02
Yeah. Un unforgiving. It's unforgiving.

49:02 - 49:05
Yeah. So you you gotta prepare for that.

49:05 - 49:12
But if but the problem is is most of the people who question these ways, these recommendations,

49:13 - 49:15
they've never gone twice the speed.

49:16 - 49:19
They've been to the boundary waters.

49:20 - 49:22
Maybe they've even been to Quetico.

49:24 - 49:31
If they But if they paddle a technical class too rapid, they crash and burn. Okay?

49:32 - 49:36
And in Canada, those are around every bed.

49:36 - 49:40
And so are the threes and the fours and the fives and the sixes.

49:40 - 49:49
So you gotta you gotta know what you're doing and and and you can't get away with stuff that

49:49 - 49:51
you can get away with in the boundary waters.

49:51 - 49:54
But see, they haven't had that experience so I don't know.

49:56 - 49:57
So there you have me.

49:57 - 50:05
Yep. I hear you. So, I mean, I I think I'm a pretty decent canoeist, but I know what my limits

50:05 - 50:11
are and and doing, you know, class twos, threes. No. Not this guy.

50:11 - 50:12
Well, then you're like me.

50:12 - 50:19
You have more more, skill than gut.

50:19 - 50:22
But routinely, we'll I'm sorry.

50:22 - 50:23
No. No. No. Yeah. You're right.

50:23 - 50:26
More more skill than than than guts, for sure.

50:26 - 50:35
No. Yeah. No. I mean, routinely, I on trips in Canada, you're gonna pass a class 3 a lot in,

50:35 - 50:37
you know, in Northern Canada. You are.

50:37 - 50:45
The alternative is you're gonna be carrying that canoe a lot and it's not necessarily gonna

50:45 - 50:48
be through a it's not gonna be a groom and pour a jeep.

50:48 - 50:50
It can be really, really bad. Bad.

50:50 - 50:55
And sometimes you can't line a canoeing, and sometimes you're in situations where you can't

50:55 - 51:01
do that either, and sometimes no matter how good you are, you just screw up.

51:03 - 51:14
And screw ups can be I mean, I remember one screw up that was could have been so bad, but we lucked out.

51:14 - 51:18
That was on the Seal River. That's in Manitoba.

51:19 - 51:25
And I remember we we were running water was high, so we were running a lot of streams of some real big rapids.

51:26 - 51:33
And we had covers, full covers on our boats, but and one of my friends was real top notch whitewater power.

51:33 - 51:39
And, you know, after you're leading for a while, you start getting kinda like, Jesus, I don't

51:39 - 51:43
because the responsibility of being first is always there. Okay?

51:43 - 51:47
So I asked my friend, Herb.

51:47 - 51:50
I said Herb, will you lead a while? He said, okay.

51:50 - 51:55
So I dropped back to about I was I don't know.

51:55 - 52:02
I dropped back to near near the end, but I was there was, what, 4 cones, I think, so I was by number 3.

52:03 - 52:09
And so we came around the bend and all of a sudden I see Herb quickly ferrying over the river left.

52:10 - 52:12
And all the canoes quickly follow.

52:13 - 52:19
And I'm looking ahead and say, what's going on? I don't see anything. What's going on here?

52:20 - 52:26
And so they're all ferrying over the river left and we're getting closer and closer and then

52:26 - 52:30
all of a sudden I see it, falls right in front of me.

52:31 - 52:33
So I yelled to Susie, back down hard.

52:33 - 52:38
He backed so he managed to ferry over to a pickup truck size boulder.

52:39 - 52:47
So we're right right in that eddy in the boulder, and the water is rushing both sides of us going over this falls.

52:47 - 52:51
So we're sitting there for a long period and she goes, I don't know what to do.

52:52 - 52:58
I said, we can't back out of this, that we're too close to the falls, we're just gonna go over.

52:59 - 53:01
I said, we just might have to go over this falls.

53:02 - 53:04
I don't know what to do.

53:04 - 53:10
So we we said, well, let's get out on this boulder and take a look.

53:10 - 53:16
So we get out on the boulder, we pulled the canoe up on it, and we start we walk over to the

53:16 - 53:22
edge of it, fully expecting, oh, god. Look down. Oh, my god.

53:23 - 53:25
The runout goes on both sides.

53:26 - 53:31
It's a nice eddy down there, and then the run out goes like that.

53:31 - 53:39
Hey, it's all we have to do is pull this canoe over the top of this big boulder, hang on by

53:39 - 53:49
the tail on, let her drop down in there, and then, Susie you hold the boat, I'll climb down

53:49 - 53:54
and as soon as I get in there I'll just back her up and you can climb down and we get in.

53:54 - 53:55
So that's what we did.

53:56 - 54:01
So we did and we just floated right out the bottom and then we waited 30 minutes for those guys

54:01 - 54:03
to complete the portage around it.

54:03 - 54:06
It was a real rugged, neat portage, you know.

54:06 - 54:11
So that was just pure luck, but stuff like that happens, you know.

54:13 - 54:20
I could go on with there's so many stories to tell and, you know. Yeah.

54:20 - 54:24
I'm this is gonna be my last year of doing presentations too.

54:24 - 54:30
I'm I did one last show that I'm going to do.

54:31 - 54:36
It's, I have it put together now, and now I'm gonna do that in the spring.

54:36 - 54:43
It's gonna be called my last picture show, remembering a lifetime of canoeing wild rivers.

54:43 - 54:52
And it starts off when I'm, like, 2 or 3 years old and how things got to be where they are today.

54:52 - 54:57
So Alright. Cool. Maybe maybe I'll have a hitch a ride with Kevin and and and come down to one

54:57 - 55:02
of the one of the shows and and check that out. What is it no.

55:02 - 55:04
Did they just name it?

55:04 - 55:07
They used to be it was Quiet Water Symposium, wasn't that? Yes.

55:07 - 55:11
Yes. It's called Quiet Adventure Symposium. It's a lovely show.

55:12 - 55:18
And I think I I don't think you're not that far from it in Toronto. It's in Lansing, Michigan. K?

55:18 - 55:20
Yep. Something bad.

55:20 - 55:28
And it's just a one day show, and you would think that one day would be, you know, not enough. But it actually is.

55:28 - 55:35
And what's really kinda delightful about it is it's all volunteer show. It's not commercial.

55:35 - 55:42
So everybody's, you know, volunteered their time, and the emphasis is really on, the love of,

55:43 - 55:48
you know, the love of wilderness and, you know, going safely and confidently.

55:49 - 55:54
And, yeah, there's stuff for sale, you know, there has to be to support a show like that, but

55:54 - 55:59
the real emphasis is on the camaraderie and talk to Kevin about it.

55:59 - 56:03
We always, you know, and then right after that, the week after that, we traditionally go to

56:03 - 56:07
Kanukopi and that's another big blast of the show too.

56:07 - 56:17
That's a 3 day show, but it's, for most people, it's you gotta try to find a place to stay with sissle pack.

56:17 - 56:23
They're both wonderful shows, but, you know, I think you would since you're so close to Lansing,

56:25 - 56:28
I think you guys might really, really enjoy it. You

56:28 - 56:29
know? Cool.

56:30 - 56:34
Okay. Thank you. But before you do that, let me just can I just say one last thing?

56:34 - 56:35
Absolutely.

56:35 - 56:42
Before you do, I do wanna thank you and your country, seriously, for, the number of years that

56:42 - 56:47
you allowed me to spend canoeing your wild rivers.

56:48 - 56:57
I hope you can preserve them better than we've preserved ours, because they're a legacy that

56:57 - 56:59
that that that needs to last forever.

57:00 - 57:01
But anyway, thank you, Cliff.

57:03 - 57:04
You're so welcome.

57:06 - 57:07
Alright. That's it for us for today.

57:07 - 57:11
Thank you so much to our special guest, Cliff Jacobson, for joining us.

57:11 - 57:15
And please do reach out to us if you have any questions or you'd like to reach out.

57:15 - 57:17
You can always reach out to us anytime.

57:17 - 57:22
You can email us at hi@supergoodcampaign.com. That's hi@supergoodcampaigndot com.

57:22 - 57:24
And we are on all the social media.

57:24 - 57:28
We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and subscribe to us there.

57:28 - 57:31
Oh, and Cliff, your website is cliff canoe.com?

57:32 - 57:34
Yeah. Yeah. Perfect.

57:35 - 57:36
Check out cliff at cliff canoe.com.

57:37 - 57:39
And we'll talk to you again soon. Bye.

57:39 - 57:40
Bye.

57:40 - 57:41
Thanks, guys. Appreciate