All stories, good and bad must start somewhere. I pondered not too long, nor not to hard for that matter of where to begin. I could start 450 million years ago when a meteorite more than twice the size of a football field strikes the earth, 360,000 MPH with an equivalent shock of 250 Megatons of TNT, creating the Brent Crator, just north of where our voyage begins. That could be just a little too dramatic, and cataclysmic for a story about a seven day canoe trip through a wilderness section of Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.

Better that I set the story a few million years later and a few hundred miles south, to a community called Trumbull, Connecticut USA. Just joined Boy Scout Troop 64. Meets every Friday, 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM at a location called the "Old Town Hall". The building was just as the name denotes: It was one of the oldest buildings in our town, built in 1880, used as a municipal town government building until a new town hall was built up the hill in 1957.

Scout troops in and around Trumbull, would meet in church halls or basements. We were quite privileged to have use of the second floor of a spacious structure, to conduct our business. We were sponsored by the Trumbull Lions Club and established as a scout troop, since 1929. Every Friday, my friends and I would look forward to the scout meetings. We played games, sung songs, chanted cheers, learned hiking, camping and first-aid skills. We also had fun, an epoch, we thought, would never end.

One winter meeting in 1973, deviated slightly from the predictable agenda. Some of the older scouts were going to give a presentation. I had no idea what they were going to present. All I know, is that they appeared to be a race of giants, for I was only thirteen at the time; they were fifteen, sixteen and even seventeen years old. A screen was erected in front of the main table, a slide projector placed on a back table. The lights in the room went off, we cheered!, then were yelled at for being too boisterous. We quieted down, the first slide flashed on the screen upside down, we again cheered!, were told to be quiet, again yielded once the sides were rearranged.

What the older scouts presented to us, was a set of slides with their own narrative of a seven day wilderness canoe hike in Canada, done in the Summer of 1972. Suddenly! the entire troop was quiescent, as we were all captivated by their adventure. A rich color slide projected on the screen would freeze an image. An image of a vast outdoor world of lakes that seemed endless. Woods that stretched across a continent. Trails that might lead to the ends of the earth. While we viewed each color graphic, the older scouts. would begin to tell their story. They talked about carrying all of their gear up narrow trails, with a 100 pound canoe on their backs. Camping on an island in the middle of an uninhabited lake. There was excitement and misadventure when they told of their encounter, with the Allen Rapids. There was a two mile portage around the Allen Rapids, but they decided to shoot the rapids. One canoe swamped then capsized. Once they got to dry land, they discovered, that the trail-chef (cooking equipment) was not tied down. It was lost!, somewhere beneath the Allen Rapids. From that point on, they were unable to cook meals. They ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with raw spaghetti, powdered eggs and pancakes along with cold-hot chocolate.