ST,

Well, I suck at taking pictures... though you all will have to admit it was a neat trick HOW I took that picture of myself (& my reflection!) on that first page of the story, eh?  I KNOW I suck at taking pictures because Stu TELLS me I suck at taking pictures & asked me to BEG KF & dd to send something his way!  Fortunately, KF did so.  I am ALSO technically-challenged, so I would have to work at figuring out just how to load my lousy pics into the Inukshuk Gallery.  Maybe I can pull that off this weekend.

Actually, one of my pics really wasn't all that bad.  Just like the one attributed to me in the BWJ, it was taken by my son, Ben.  It is an interesting shot taken from inside of the cave on Aegean Lake, looking outward.  Blue sky & sparkling waters are framed by the mouth of the cave.  I really figured Stu would have used THAT pic.

You know, Stu actually "deleted" the very best part of my story, IMHO.  It WAS my next to the last paragraph (& certainly helped the last paragraph to make a whole lot more sense than it currently does!).  Anyway, in that paragraph I recounted my discussion with the old Ojibwe driver who trucked our stuff back to civilization on our way out.  He was telling us how 25 completely non-experienced youths from some Toronto inner-city program just went into the park with 2 completely non-experienced adult supervisors (early 20 somethings).  This bunch insisted upon doing things "the old way".  What does that mean???  No GPS, no maps, no matches, no fishing equipment, etc. & so on.  They had asked the Ojibwe - an elder in his tribe - a lot about how to make snares for food, etc..  After an hour or so of their crash course in wilderness survival, apparently they felt ready for their month-long adventure.  The old Indian was quite worried & pleaded with them to take him along as a guide... even if only for a few days.  They declined.  They wanted to "experience" the wilderness   By the way, they were ALSO anxious to try their hand at whitewater canoeing in their kevlar canoes.

So, the way my story REALLY ended was with my putting this question to the Ojibwe driver: "So what do you think is going to happen to that youth group?"

He paused, reflected, then solemnly replied, "Hey, even WE don't do things the 'old way'.  I think somebody's gonna die!"

Anyhow, a much richer account of that conversation got deleted from the tail end of my story.  Someday, maybe I'll ask db to put the unedited version up on the QJ Stories page.  The "unedited" versions of many of my BWJ stories are in there (including my personal favorite example, the last page of "Inukshuks & a Stroll through the Park"... deleted by the conservative Stu for use in his BWJ).

Hey, I'll see what I can do about pulling together my lousy pictures & getting them posted.

Jimbo   8-)