Ober's journey, week 9

Oberholtzer Foundation

Week No. 9

Aug. 10-16, 1912

Readers find Billy Magee and Ernest Oberholtzer paddling toward Nueltin Lake, and by the end of this week they will have arrived there. It is striking how very different this canoe journey was from what is now a more common process. Today, travelers buy a map or two or six, plots out the days or weeks of the journey, plans food and back-up food, pulls together clothing and camping gear and off they go. Then, the canoe trip itself is essentially one of meeting one’s expectations, day after day. Have we come as far as we thought we’d come by Tuesday? Is the map accurate on this lake, this river? Did we bring enough food? The traveler is constantly measuring against expectations. 

In Ober and Magee’s case in the far north in 1912, however, expectations are distinctly different, or missing altogether. “We… found the lake extending for several miles north north east… Having failed at first to find the river, we had breakfast in sound of a waterfall on a shallow rocky isthmus…” (Aug 10) “From this point the river expands easterly for a quiet mile, then with a slight current turns southeast between low wooded sandy shores, where we… stop to drink tea…” (Aug 12) Clearly they are finding the route as they paddle. And just as clearly, Ober is documenting this as if for future explorers who might someday use his journals to find their own way. 

The northland is beautiful here, south of Nueltin, and Ober misses few details. He writes like a biologist and poet all in one: “Below this rapid the banks are low and well-timbered with tamarack and spindly black spruce. On one little sand-bar, where the white tufted cotton grass looked like wet snow, I saw five large black geese… We also saw innumerable flocks of ducks, many mothers of a dark brown variety in particular piloting their broods round at great risk to their own lives.” 

Meanwhile, Magee may be out of his home territory, but he still knows more about the wildlife or Indian life than Ober does. In many occasions, Ober writes, “Billy says…” and then he teaches us what he has learned from his Ojibwe partner. “There were also three old shelters and signs of fires, where boys had fasted in their desire to become ‘medicine’ men. Billy says they do not begin to practice what they have learned until about 35 years old.” And later, “Billy walked down to the rapid for himself and reported that it was narrow but straight and that, if we avoided a big rock at the bottom, we could run it. This we did without trouble. Half a mile farther we ran another and then a third, where we had to use the rope at the end.” It is heartening to read of this interdependency between the two, both extremely capable, canoe-men. It is what will bring them home, still almost three months hence. 

To follow Ober’s journey, purchase “Bound for the Barrens” available at www.lulu.com.