But paddling is not really the point.  

Don’t get me wrong - gliding effortlessly across the water at sunset in total silence, the forest and sky reflected in its surface, is to discover where the earth meets the heavens.

But for me, the canoe is the greatest form of transport ever invented because it is amphibious: running rapids for the adrenalin was never the main point. Fun yes - but there are things I prize more:

Downtime. Peace and solitude. Exploring deep into the forest on a long portage. The emotional rollercoaster and sense of achievement getting kit and canoes across difficult terrain. The small untouched worlds you pass through as the landscape constantly re-arranges itself, every swamp and lake a different personality.

And then there’s campfires, floatplanes, carpets of pine needles, creatures and plants, rocky shores, deserted beaches, and forgetting what day of the week it is.

The boreal forest is my happy place (especially if there’s a sauna involved). But you have to know how to stay out of trouble in it. A combination of skills beyond paddlesports are required.

Canoe tripping is about the whole journey: the preparation, risk management, navigation, paddling, field craft, wilderness medicine, emergency planning, communications, making camp, cooking together and settling into the rhythm of living in what the Finns call “Erämaa” - quite literally, ‘wild land’.

I have spent more than ten years planning, organising and leading challenging canoe trips overseas, primarily in the Inari and Saimaa regions of Finland, and Temagami in northern Ontario, Canada. I have found places that I love returning to, routes that I know well, and many more that I still want to explore.

I guide because I enjoy sharing those places with people who want to experience them properly.

Not to conquer them.

Nor to tick them off.

Just to travel through them, live in them for a while, and see what happens when everyday life becomes a distant memory.