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When he was finished repairing Hawk’s canoe, Hal proclaimed nonchalantly, it would be more durable than it was before the accident. Just in case, however, and in light of the fact that there were plenty of treacherous rapids and nasty waterfalls up on the Hayes River—the leg of the Sevareid route running some 500 miles northwest from Lake Winnipeg—he offered to sell me a patch kit that could be deployed easily in the backcountry.

“It may not look pretty,” he explained, “but this stuff will firm up hard as nails over any puncture.” I promptly paid for the kit, and agreed to return for the salt barrels and Hawk’s canoe.

Ten days passed before Hal called to say that the canoe was “ready to paddle to the end of the Earth.” It was a time of intense negotiation. After battling my ex-wife for 50 percent custody, I was asking our kids to stay with their mother for at least a dozen weeks while I inched up the globe in a canoe, a notion that prompted considerable indignation. Our two youngest kids, 6-year-old Malcolm and 13-year-old Martha, protested with particular vehemence. Only Gemma, our second child, encouraged me to go.