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Exhaustion
and Fulfillment: The Ascetic in a Canoe
1944 Speech - Pierre Elliot Trudeau
Source:
originally published in French in Jeunesse Etudiante Catholique,
November 1944.
First English publication in Wilderness Canada (1970), edited
by Borden Spears.
I would not
know how to instill a taste for adventure in those who have not
acquired it. (Anyway, who can ever prove the necessity for the
gypsy life?) And yet there are people who suddenly tear themselves
away from their comfortable existence and, using the energy' of
their bodies as an example to their brains, apply themselves to
the discovery of unsuspected pleasures and places.
I would like to point out to these people a type of labour from
which they are certain to profit: an expedition by canoe.
I do not just mean "canoeing." Not that I wish to disparage
that pastime, which is worth more than many another. But, looked
at closely, there is perhaps only a difference of money between
the canoeists of Lafontaine Park and those who dare to cross a
lake, make a portage, spend a night in a tent and return exhausted,
always in the care of a fatherly guide - a brief interlude momentarily
interrupting the normal course of digestion.
A canoeing expedition, which demands much more than that, is also
much more rewarding.
It involves a starting rather than a parting. Although it assumes
the breaking of ties, its purpose is not to destroy the past,
but to lay a foundation for the future. From now on, every living
act will be built on this step, which will serve as a base long
after the return of the expedition. and until the next one.
What is essential at the beginning is the resolve to reach the
saturation point. Ideally, the trip should end only when the members
are making no further progress within themselves. They should
not be fooled, though, by a period of boredom, weariness or disgust;
that is not the end, but the last obstacle before it. Let saturation
be serene!
So you must paddle for days, or weeks, or perhaps months on end.
My friends and I were obliged, on pain of death, to do more than
a thousand miles by canoe, from Montreal to Hudson Bay. But let
no one be deterred by a shortage of time. A more intense pace
can compensate for a shorter trip.
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 on a bicycle
and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe
and you are already a child of nature.
For it is a condition of such a trip that you entrust yourself,
stripped of your worldly goods, to nature. Canoe and paddle, blanket
and knife, salt pork and flour, fishing rod and rifle; that is
about the extent of your wealth.
To remove all the useless material baggage from a man's heritage
is, at the same time, to free his mind from petty preoccupations,
calculations and memories.
On the other hand, what fabulous and undeveloped mines are to
be found in nature, friendship and oneself! The paddler has no
choice but to draw everything from them. Later, forgetting that
this habit was adopted under duress, he will be astonished to
find so many resources within himself.
Nevertheless, he will have returned a more ardent believer from
a time when religion, like everything else, became simple. The
impossibility of scandal creates a new morality, and prayer becomes
a friendly chiding of the divinity, who has again become part
of our everyday affairs.
My friend, Guy Viau, could say about our adventure, "We got
along very well with God, who is a damn good sport. Only once
did we threaten to break off diplomatic relations if he continued
to rain on us. But we were joking. We would never have done so,
and well he knew it. So he continued to rain on us."
The canoe is also a school of friendship. You learn that your
best friend is not a rifle, but someone who shares a night's sleep
with you after ten hours of paddling at the other end of a canoe.
Let's say that you have to be towed up a rapid and it's your turn
to stay in the canoe and guide it. You watch your friend stumbling
over logs, sliding on rocks, sticking in gumbo, tearing the skin
on his legs and drinking water for which he does not thirst, yet
never letting go of the rope; meanwhile, safely in the middle
of the cataract, you spray your hauler with a stream of derision.
When this same man has also fed you exactly half his catch, and
has made a double portage because of your injury, you can boast
of having a friend for life, and one who knows you well. How does
the trip affect your personality?
Allow me to make a fine distinction, and I would say that you
return not so much a man who reasons more, but a more reasonable
man. For, throughout this time, your mind has learned to exercise
itself in the working conditions which nature intended. Its primordial
role has been to sustain the body in the struggle against a powerful
universe.
A good camper knows that it is more important to be ingenious
than to be a genius. And conversely, the body, by demonstrating
the true meaning of sensual pleasure, has been of service to the
mind: You feel the beauty of animal pleasure when you draw a deep
breath of rich morning air right through your body, which has
been carried by the cold night, curled up like an unborn child.
How can you describe the feeling which wells up in the heart and
stomach as the canoe finally rides up on the shore of the campsite
after a long day of plunging your paddle into rain-swept waters?
Purely physical is the joy which the fire spreads through the
palms of your hands and the soles of your feet while your chattering
mouth belches the poisonous cold. The pleasurable torpor of such
a moment is perhaps not too different from what the mystics of
the East are seeking. At least it has allowed me to taste what
one respected gentleman used to call the joys of hard living.
Make no mistake, these joys are exclusively physical. They have
nothing to do with the satisfaction of the mind when it imposes
unwelcome work on the body, a satisfaction, moreover, which is
often mixed with pride, and which the body never fails to avenge.
During a very long and exhausting portage, I have sometimes felt
my reason defeated, and shamefully fleeing, while my legs and
shoulders carried bravely on. The mumbled verses which marked
the rhythm of my steps at the beginning had become brutal grunts
of "uh! uh! uh!"
There was nothing aesthetic in that animal search for the bright
clearing which always marks the end of a portage.
I do not want you to think that the mind is subjected to a healthy
discipline merely by worrying about simplistic problems. I only
wish to remind you of that principle of logic which states that
valid conclusions do not generally follow from false premises.
Now, in a canoe, where these premises are based on nature in its
original state (rather than on books, ideas and habits of uncertain
value), the mind conforms to that higher wisdom which we call
natural philosophy; later, that healthy methodology and acquired
humility will be useful in confronting mystical and spiritual
questions.
I know a man whose school could never teach him patriotism, but
who acquired that virtue when he felt in his bones the vastness
of his land, and the greatness of those who founded it.
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