Day 4. Sat. July 16. White Whale Point, 57°03’20” N, 76°34’15” W

On which our protagonist gets too big for his britches.

I wake up in what’s left of a cabin and practice what will be my last yoga series for quite a few days. I’m nervous. It’s portage day. The morning weather is decent, but I’ve got my rain gear handy.

Remember portage training from back home, I tell myself. I need to haul all this gear that I refused to weigh up to 500 feet above the sound. All my lessons come flooding into my head: Walk with brief glances forward, but keep your eyes mainly on the ground you’re about to step on. Take a compass bearing, then walk to a landmark. Rinse, repeat. Don’t move quickly.

All this proves to be good advice. I do forget one lesson, though: Never think you are smarter than the map.

My route is simple in principle: Paddle 1km north of White Whale Point, then head inland up the valley at bearing 105. When I land, however, I find a waterlogged area with lots of small streams. Discouraging, especially considering how heavy my gear is. I also don’t see the valley walls from shore, but further north I do see what I think is an Inuit tent, its canvas bright white against the green and gray backdrop … I remember from my research that this route has been known to the Inuit for generations, so I figure maybe the locals know something I don’t.

I paddle several hundred more meters northward. Seems to be … just a goose blind. No one’s there.

By this point, though, I’ve convinced myself I am in the right place.

I carry my gear ashore and tie two long ropes to the bow of my kayak so — if needed — I can wrap them around my shoulders like a harness and drag the boat like a mule. I start inland around noon and make the happy discovery that I can move the boat with some gear aboard on one shuttle and backpack everything else on another, meaning only two trips instead of the three or four I’d feared. That psyches me up and distracts me from my navigation error, and I go uphill for a few hours, slogging but smiling.

Part of the reason I’m smiling is because I have managed to fit three weeks’ worth of store-bought dehydrated provisions into my rear dry compartment. This is far more than I’ve ever fit on previous trips. My big light-bulb moment was realizing the envelopes that contain the food take up a lot of volume, but that I could remove the powdery contents from their envelopes and repack them carefully into thin Ziplock plastic bags. (My apologies, Beth.) Two identical meals went into each bag, requiring me at every meal to measure out half and pour it into an empty envelope. I brought along a few empties for the trip, intending to use each one of them repeatedly. Although I was perpetually worried about dampness ruining my meals, my bagging approach worked: I fit 24 days of food into two large drybags. I would carry one of these in each hand on portages, putting most of my smaller drybags into the dry backpack and redistributing them back into the dry compartments before getting back on the water. A slower process than a canoeist toting a barrel would need, but I figured I’d soon get a lot of practice.

By 3:30PM or so I could tell that nothing looked right. It wasn’t the “flat thoroughfare with animal tracks” that Tija Luste’s trip report in Nastawgan described, nor did it fit the map’s topography. I was near a deep ravine just to my north that contained a sizable stream, and there was a single knobby peak just ahead. I climbed it for a look and felt completely disoriented. Fortunately it was a clear warm day and I could still see W.W. Point, even the roofs of the cabins. Gradually it dawned on me that I was far more than twice the Point’s 500m length north along the shore, and the only thing to do would be to hike southward. I went perhaps 750m by bushwhacking and marsh crossings, till I climbed another hill and … voilà. There was my valley and my route. Couldn’t have been more obvious.

My annoyance and frustration were obvious too. These emotions conspired with my adrenaline and the fine weather to tempt me to continue right away, though it was past 7PM when I got back to where I’d left the boat. After one bad decision early in the day, I decided not to make another, and I set camp. I slept, happy to be too tired to stay worked up over a mistake.

My last feelings are of gratitude: I am still healthy. I know where I am now. I built days into the trip for contingencies. Be thankful and rest.