Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 27/99) - Otter, the refugee from Colorado who has called the rivers and lakes around Yellowknife home for the last three summers, says it's time to move on.

"I turn 58 this November," says Otter. "I'm feeling my age. My back gave out on Duncan Lake. I had to stop there."

"I wasn't going to come up this year but my canoe was here, so I thought I might as well do one more trip. My heart just wasn't into it this time."

Otter -- a former cowboy turned full-time camping enthusiast -- was hoping to make it as far as Winter Lake on his 74-day odyssey this summer. But the pain he felt in his aging body prevented him from going any further than Duncan Lake, about 50 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

"The first time I was up I did 92 portages," Otter says. "Last year, I did 50 and this year I did 16."

"It got to the point where I said to myself 'why am I punishing myself?' 'Who am I trying to impress?' So I settled a bit this year. I decided to cut down on portages and do more paddling (about 965 kilometres worth)."

Otter spent 32 days on Duncan Lake and in total, 41 days in complete solitude. The only other people he saw were another group of canoeists he passed by on Quyta Lake, north of the Yellowknife River. He contends that he is perfectly alright with this, as he dislikes what he calls the "uncivilized world" of cities and the daily rat race that comes from living in them.

"One of things about solitude is that you can't hide from yourself," Otter says. "Solitude allows you to become whoever you want to be."

Otter says that, despite his aching bones and the near-daily battles he faced fighting wind and rain, he felt healthy and strong, even after living off an almost constant diet of fish and Ichiban noodles.

"I lost about 20 pounds again, which I can ill- afford," Otter says. "I feel stronger though. I always do after a trip."

"The first time I went on a trip up here, I rode a bicycle before I left and got really lean and fit," Otter says. "I almost starved to death though because you need your body fat out in the wilderness. It's hard to get that out on the land."

Otter took to the trip fairly easy this time around but was not without at least a few minor crises.

"I nearly killed myself on some rapids on the McCrea River," Otter says. "I had gotten out of my boat and had started easing into the river, but I realized that the current was too strong.

"I started backing up but my foot slipped on a rock and the current ended up taking me and the canoe to the brink of some rapids.It was an almost comical situation because my foot got wedged between a rock and the current was dragging down my shorts. I had the canoe in one hand and my shorts in the other and I was stuck in the rapids."

Content to move on

Otter was eventually able to free himself, and hanging on to the side of his canoe, they both shot down the rapids and were able to make it to shore and safety.

It was just one of many of the "little" perils he faced in three consecutive summers of paddling the wilderness waterways of the North Slave Region. But now Otter says he is content to move on and try something else, citing that his summer journeys in the North are becoming just too difficult and dangerous.

"For me to handle the canoe alone, I had to have a heavy load in it (to keep the bow from riding too high)," says Otter. "The logistics of it all is just getting to be too much."

"I'm shipping my canoe south. I'm going to buy a pick-up and give up the hitchhiking life, too. A chapter of my life is over."

Otter says that he plans to go back to Colorado and enjoy the mountain wilderness areas there. Even though he is doubtful that he will return to the North, he hasn't entirely ruled it out either. He says he will cherish the memories of his time spent up here and of all the wonderful people he met in Yellowknife.

"The people here are the main reason why I kept coming back," Otter says. "For all the people that helped me out, gave me rides, Yellowknife is a special place."