Feeding the Manly Nature on a Remote Cabin Fishing Trip

 

I was offered the opportunity to go to a remote cabin with a man that I know from my church and his two young adolescent boys for this past weekend. The dad wanted a second responsible adult with him and his boys; but he asked me anyway. Besides the rough living and the ice fishing, this trip also gave me the opportunity to spend a fair bit of time on a snowmobile; something that I have not had the chance to do for around 20 years. With about a 45-minute trek one way across the frozen expanse of lakes and forest in order to get to or from the cabin, I got a good opportunity to brush up on my sledding abilities, especially since I got into minor jams on a number of occasions due to my inexperience on a power toboggan in combination with the conditions. 

There were several places where wandering off the track by even a few inches caused the machine to tip over and you suddenly found yourself standing beside the machine in waist deep snow, which I did several times. This meant righting the machine and getting it back onto the track, but with the snow as soft and deep as it was, it wasn't always a one man and one boy job, so my friend had to walk back and help his novice snowmobile driving friend get back on track, literally. By the time we got back to the truck at the end of the trip, I had finally figured out some tricks for riding through rough terrain, just in time to forget those things before the next time that I will likely get to ride again.

I have never really been a fan of snowmobiles. Their seasonality and expense to own and operate have always kept me from wanting to ever own one. This trip really opened my eyes to their versatility though. This cabin is a fly-in cabin in the summer, but it can be accessed by snowmobiles in the winter. After having traversed the ice and snow to get to the cabin, there is no other way that I can think of to access this particular lake and cabin in winter besides a plane outfitted with skis. As far as the terrain goes, I suppose a bombadier could make the trek, but it would require a much wider path to be cleared through the bush and it would be significantly slower. Supposedly somebody has taken a quad through the bush to a certain degree, but the up and down terrain of the bogs and marshes would make that a rough and tiring trip, and I doubt a machine with tires would make it; tracks were used on that trip and I expect that they would be a requirement for anybody planning to go more than a couple of miles into the bush.

While I am not an experienced fisherman or outdoorsman, I enjoy both things and I have been blessed to be invited to join other men on such trips twice in the last year. I have always enjoyed spending time out in nature, but the extent to which I exercised that enjoyment has been occasional walks in the bush on the property that I used to own and regular camping trips with my family over the years.

Those camping trips involved a tent and all that comes with that for my wife and I before we had kids, but once we had kids, I was no longer interested in living in a tent on the weekends. I had access to a truck and then eventually owned my own truck, so a camper trailer became the preferred form of shelter for our camping trips, but I always tried to maintain at least some aspect of "roughing it" in our camping forays. This meant that 95% of the time, we did not book serviced sites. I was not interested in running the air conditioner or even having a T.V. in the camper. The stove and fridge could run on propane, so no electricity was needed or even wanted except when we would do late season camping, when I would use an electric space heater instead of propane. Hey, if I'm already paying to use the electricity, but not getting charged for how much I use, why use propane that I will have to replace once it's gone?

I really didn't know what to expect of the cabin that we went to before the trip. I asked no questions; I just expected that the water supply was going to be a bucket filled from the lake and that the heat source was going to be a wood stove of some design. I knew that there was a propane cooktop there, as I was asked to provide one meal, so I needed to know what the cooking setup was, and we could also heat food up on top of the wood stove as well. Besides that, this was a wonderfully basic shelter. It was a lot better than sleeping in a tent and cooking over an open fire, but it was also pleasantly rough.

I'm not sure what it is that is enticing to at least some men about heading out into the woods and living rough. It may be that it addresses some primal urge to pit oneself against the elements and see how one comes out in the end. I had the benefit of having gone with a man that has been going to this same cabin for about 20 years already, so he is very familiar with the setup and the location and everything that it takes to survive out there; survive being used somewhat loosely since we did pack in our own drinking water and food. Even so, how many men are able, or even interested in going out into the middle of the wilderness, temporarily eschewing the conveniences of modern life, and contending, even a little bit, with nature in all of her potential power and dangers? There may be a sort of masculine romanticism about it that draws us out there. We want to know if we have what it takes to live that way. This gives us a glimpse into that life and opens our eyes a little bit to what it would really take if we had to catch or hunt all of our own food and cut all of the wood to warm and cook for ourselves or our family.

The remote nature of this cabin as well as the fly-in cabin that I got to go to this past summer also adds something to the allure. There is a certain danger that we are not accustomed to with the nearest civilization an hour away or more. If something serious should occur, be it some health emergency or injury, it is not simply a matter of getting in the car and heading to the nearest hospital or calling an ambulance. At the cabin this summer, there was a satellite phone available for use, but if the call was made for an emergency evacuation, the flight time was half an hour each way, plus preparation time, assuming that a plane and a pilot were available. It could very easily take two hours to get to a medical centre at the nearest city. 

The cabin that we went to this weekend had some cell service, so there was the ability to call for a medevac plane or helicopter, but I suspect that the nearest airport with appropriate equipment was likely almost an hour of flight time away, again presuming the quick availability of a plane and pilot, making the evacuation time at least two hours at a minimum. There was also the option of getting out by snowmobile in this case, but with two adults and two young boys, if it was one of the adults that was in danger, one would have to calculate the pros and cons between having one of the boys operating the second sled and potentially slowing the evacuation, or leaving the two boys alone in the bush, potentially for up to a day, while the able adult evacuated the inured adult alone. Besides that, even after the 45 minute snowmobile evacuation, there was still a long truck ride to the nearest hospital, which, by my figuring, was up to two hours away at normal speeds.

Men were created by God to discover and conquer. Just because the vast majority of the world has been both discovered and conquered doesn't mean that the God-given urges are quelled. Mankind seems to have forgotten this. Even as we look at wars around the world, humanity seems to have forgotten that civilizations have been conquering each other almost since the beginning of time. We seem to think that we have achieved some level of evolutionary status wherein men no longer desire to overcome others and expand our dominion, so the prospect of men going to war seems almost inhumane, though we still prepare for just that possibility. Just because recreational and professional sports exist and get broadcast right into our homes, supposedly mimicking the travails of battle and emotional highs of brotherhood and triumph, this doesn't mean that our innate nature is lulled into permanent hibernation. In fact, it is possible that these things just exacerbate our own failings at conquest and stir a desire to seek some level of dangerous feat to face down and conquer.

Men, how often, either as young men or even as we get older, do we watch an exciting action movie or T.V. show and we feel energized and ready to take on the world? It's been a while for me, but that could just be that conquest is more of a young man's game. Yet I still enjoy embracing the slower paced challenge of pitting myself against nature, venturing into unfamiliar territory with an intentional lack of conveniences and testing my strength, skills and endurance against nature. Though I am dealing with some physical limitations, I am still able to enter these situations with confidence in my abilities to come out victorious, if a little tired and sore. But those physical maladies after such an adventure also mean that it was not an easy adventure and that I had to push myself beyond what my body is used to. This can invigorate a man.

I have, perhaps, never pursued this type of outlet for my own aggression because I have always been a little bit more of an intellectual. I enjoy reading and learning and problem solving, though my desire to work with my hands has taken those natural desires into more masculine realms of construction and mechanics than this description of my own traits might otherwise make it sound like I would pursue. I actually ran into a former classmate from school a number of years after graduation and he was surprised that I was working in the trades. I always did well in school, so he thought I was going to be an office worker. The thought of me working in the trades never even crossed his mind. Yet for me, the thought of being in an office for eight hours a day numbs my soul. I don't mind office work, as long as I also get the chance to get up, get out and move over the course of my day as well.

It may be a little late to try to start, and unfortunately, I have other things that are pressing on my time and energies that are more important than carving out time and finances to pursue more of these types of outdoor adventures, but there could be a release of sorts for me in this type of pursuit. And perhaps, with the relationships that I am currently building with men who both enjoy and have access to suitable locations in which to challenge themselves in these ways, maybe I will have more opportunities that will present themselves to me in the future.