morning. Despite the early wake-up, it takes nearly two hours for them to organize themselves and hit the water. We still aren’t in the wilderness — that won’t come for another couple of weeks — but the further from Hawkesbury we travel, the more fields and silos appear, broken up by small villages with stone churches. The river, once nearly two miles wide, narrows as we pass one of three car ferries that link the two provinces between Hawkesbury and Ottawa, which are approximately 70 miles apart. We eat lunch on a peninsula just past the Québec town of Montebello. The cold rain has left me shivering and uncoordinated, so after a quick bowl of coffee and some gorp, Hannah and I shove off while the boys continue munching on the second course of their midday meal. On a day like this, you have to paddle hard to keep yourself from freezing. Despite our head start, five boats soon overtake us. It occurs to me that, in addition to their muscles, the guys are fueled by the adrenaline of finally being on the journey they spent three years planning.
T
he idea was hatched in 2009 when Johnny Clore, Jeff Chandler and Souser spent a day off from camp hiking in the Adirondacks. Frustrated that they never spent time with one another outside of camp, they talked about organizing a four-day, counselors-only trip at the end of the summer. Within half an hour, the plan had grown far more elaborate. “By the time we stopped formulating this idea, it had become an expedition all the way from Vermont to James Bay where we built our own canoes,” Souser says. As the crew expanded from six to 10, so did their ambitions: They received the backing of the camp and, in return, turned the expedition into a fundraising mission. To date, they have raised more than $200,000 for camp scholarships — much of it from two $75,000 gifts. They secured sponsorships from gear manufacturers, built the canoes with a master craftsman, and talked fellow counselor and film student Kyle Sauer into graduating a semester early so he could serve
as trip videographer. After quitting their jobs and explaining themselves to anxious parents and girlfriends, they set off on their journey. Ahead of us now, the day’s designated navigators investigate a spongy, swampy campsite in national parkland on the Québec side of the river. After we beach our boats and set up our tents, a ranger drives up a road we had not noticed and tells us in broken English that we cannot camp here. Defeated, we take to the canoes and paddle into a driving rain. The wind picks up as we cross a vast stretch of open water. With 21 miles already behind us that day, we now paddle three more — though it feels like 10. Finally, our navigators settle on a horseshoe-shaped island just outside the nature preserve, and we set up camp again. In our boat, Hannah and I had debated whether the boys would have the pep and spunk to set up a campfire in the rain, bake bread and sing. Sure Dude North
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courtesy of expedition2012.com
SEVEN DAYS
grandparents met on Lake Dunmore and who has spent 15 summers at Keewaydin. The crew sets up camp with impressive efficiency. Each has a designated role for the day as delineated by a complex spreadsheet hammered out in advance. The arrangement assures that no one is paired with the same partner in any of the five rotating tasks: Two are assigned to build and tend a fire; two bake bread and dessert; two serve as leaders and navigators; two “roamers” help out where help is needed. The least desirable of the roles is “walloping,” which is Keewaydin jargon for doing the dishes. Time-honored tradition has it that one is to giggle while one wallops. To Hannah, all this talk of summer camp is utterly foreign. She shoots me a look when the guys wax nostalgic about summers past or launch into song. Having grown up in Vermont hiking and paddling with her family, she finds it odd the way these flatlanders come north from New York and Boston to wallop in the woods in organized groups of boys before heading back to their prep schools and liberal arts colleges. Me, I’m conflicted. I myself spent eight summers at a different boys’ camp on the other side of Vermont from Lake Dunmore. Some of my fondest early memories are of canoe trips to the Rangeley Lakes and the Adirondacks — not walloping, but certainly singing camp songs. Nevertheless, I stopped working as a summer camp counselor nearly a decade ago, and I can’t help but wonder when — or if — these guys ever will. “Keewaydin inspires lifelong loyalties in a lot of people,” Souser tells me later. “So it’s not weird to be sitting here at 25 or 26 saying, ‘What am I doing still at summer camp?’ when there are people who have families that come up every year for summer camp who have been doing this for 30 or 40 years themselves.” Try as I might, I cannot help but think of these 10 men — most only a couple years younger than myself — as the Lost Boys paddling north without their Peter Pan. It’s raining when, at 5:15 on Saturday morning, the call comes out that a breakfast of pancakes and bacon is ready. In matching blue-and-white Expedition 2012 rainsuits, the boys around the fire are oddly chipper for such a miserable