In the footprints of Giants

  In the early 1900's Albert Bigelow Paine and Dr. Edward Breck along with 2 guides left the Milford House on a multi-day Journey along the waterways of Central Southwest Nova Scotia. They left from the beach behind the lodge and Paine recorded the story for posterity. It has become a classic tale of fishing and canoeing in the area.
  About 110 years later 2 men entered their watercraft at the very same beach, but here is where the similarities end.

  The greats of our book headed out in wool clothing in Birch bark canoes for a trip lasting many days carrying all of their gear with them. Our modern explorers were clothed in quick dry fabric paddling plastic kayaks carrying only a bit of water and granola bars and planning a morning outing.

Where our author of days gone by was interested in the number of trout, the modern day explorers were in search of geocaches. A geocache is a container left by another geocacher for those who follow to discover after downloading the coordinates to a GPS unit. No compasses for our modern day travellers.

Albert Paine was an artist with words, he would describe a scene and you would feel like you had seen it, you could smell the pine in the wind as he wove his story. Today we take a camera and capture all that we see for future reference, no reliance on paper notebooks to remind us of what we saw.

The author in the 1900's could travel for days to lakes that had seen so very few people as to be considered unknown. Today you can access any body of water by plane from a city anywhere in the world. Has our world been shrunk to fit the desires of outdoor enthusiasts.

  For all that has changed over the years and the inroads that we have made into the forests and lakes that were once nearly inaccessible, as you round a lake and see no sign of man you can feel yourself transported back in time and place yourself in the footsteps of the giants who came before and blazed a path into the forest. you can almost hear the waves breaking on the birch bark bow of the canoe, smell the smoke of the campfire as a shore lunch is fried. You can for a brief moment believe that you are alone in the wilderness, dependent only on yourself and your companions. You feel that you are master of all you survey.
  Then you hear the sound of a truck passing on a nearby road or hear the voices of children on a walk along the lake. You are transported forward by a century and are once again in the modern age and realize you are hungry and it is time to return to the campside and fire up the BBQ to make lunch.
  But for a few minutes you walked with giants.