Fundamentally, ST, I agree with you.  But I have to say that at this point in my paddling career I don’t go looking for adversity … I know it will find me.  This past year’s trip into WCPP was a case in point.  My wife and tripping partner has made it abundantly clear that travel days shall not be more than 6 hours and include no more than 5 portages in a given day.  So I planned a route that adhered to that as much as I could.  But if you want to go from Carroll Lake to the Haggart River, for example, then there is going to be a string of 8 or 9 ports, albeit short ones and no way around it and no place to stop. 

Then too, you can never tell; what looks like a hop, skip and a jump on the map can turn out to be the portage from hell.  Our first two travel days were among the most grueling I’ve ever done – 8 to 9 hours under a blazing sun of absolute thigh deep bog slogging through marshland and, oh while we’re at it, lets throw in a few beaver dams just in case we’re feeling bored.  I’m definitely not looking for that sort of thing but I also have to say that we loved it; loved working together and dealing with it.  But other than two days of that, our other travel days were pretty much according to plan – 5, 6 hours and no more than 5 portages – and we like that too, thanks very much! 

When I was younger: longer, tougher, more challenging was what I was all about.  But my baby has educated me about taking the time to smell the roses (or the swamp gas as the case may be) and what baby wants, baby gets!