Almost every time!

It’s usually an inner voice saying “yup, I think THIS will be my last trip”. I heard those words on my first trip when I did 11 portages in one day to get to that special lake only to be greeted by 36 hours of steady rain and plummeting temperatures. I heard the words on my mid-May trip and awoke nearly every morning to thick frost and snowflakes then tried to lay on sun warmed rocks during the day to find comfort. I heard the words when I tried to start a fire to get warm after an all day soaking rain in temperatures that never reached above 50F, only to discover the onset of hypothermia and wet wood was making that task extremely difficult. Only the will to not panic kept the situation from turning dangerous. I heard those words when my brother–in-law when ape $#!+  and my sons  and I actually contemplated paddling out, the 3 of us in a tandem canoe, leaving him with the other canoe and no clue how to get out. I heard the words again when I was wind bound on an island for 2 days and finally paddled off with white knuckles in 3 foot rollers. I heard the words when we ran out of food on day 5 of a 7 day trip. Again they came to me when I nearly T-boned a cow moose and her calf on my midnight drive home. None of the reasons for these thoughts to enter my mind are as severe as some stories I’ve read here, but still I have these thoughts at some point on almost every trip.

I’ve been hearing these words for about 12 years now.

Still I return.