The reality of a wilderness journey is this is all there is and what you have to do is put the boat first, because that’s your means of getting home

It always takes a couple of days to settle into the journey, muscles need to acclimatise to the demands of paddling, and the body and mind must adapt to the river. Once you’ve tuned in you can paddle for weeks

The more you immerse yourself in your surroundings the more you get out of a journey

One of the things I like about bushcraft is that hidden in amongst all of these skills is something else and that is the business of never giving in, and I think that that’s what these things teach; it’s not just about lighting a fire on the ground, it’s about lighting a fire within

With the canoe more than anything it’s the journey and not the destination that matters

[Pierre Trudeau] said that what sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other; travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute, pedal five hundred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically bourgeois. But paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature, I couldn't agree more

The canoe is the most magical way to see the wild, to get close to wildlife. You really are communing with nature when you travel in a canoe. I really enjoy it… It’s also a great panacea for the world we live in today, when you paddle a canoe, you learn to move at the pace of the water and the sooner you accept that fact life becomes so much easier and simpler

RAY MEARS

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