Summer 2010

           Su the Dragon Lady is well along the long road to recovery from her bout with a severe Staph A infection with empyema (pus in the chest cavity) which required a five week stay in Bangkok’s amazing Bumrungrad Hospital, including eight days in ICU and eight taps to draw off the liquid. She was hit with this shortly after we flew back to Bangkok from Sri Lanka where I fixed a shoot for Les Stroud and his new show, Stroud’s Vanishing World, which débuts on Discovery Channel in the fall.

           We were medivaced back to Saskatoon March 23, just two weeks after the first Red Shirt demonstrations began. June 1 she’ll have returned to work part time and will work back into full time when she’s able. She lost 15 pounds and was only a very fit 106 at 5’3”. I tried unsuccessfully to rent her out as a scarecrow in the meantime.

           She tells everyone that life in a private Bangkok hospital blows all of ours right out of the water, and it’s true. She should know. She heads a team at Royal University Hospital here in Toontown (Saskatoon). Bangkok’s Bumrungrad was like a five-star hotel. My gawd, even the food was incredible! No pea soup! She was eating out of a Bento box! Well, when she could eat. I ate most of her meals and gained 10 pounds during February, which I spent most of which with her. It was a bit stressful, yes.

           Great hospital, all the docs were trained in the US, the nurses were all cuties and I don’t think there was one over 24.

           After living full and part time in Thailand for over 30 years, and having written four books (or parts of which) and two screenplays there, the revolt has been unsettling, to say the least. It’s to be seen if the famous Thai smile and laisse faire lifestyle can return….

           Talking about laisse, I’m feeling lazier than ever, but am formulating the theme and direction of my next book. I can only say that it’ll represent another major shift in my literary interests and direction. It should be fun to write, but then all my books were fun to write. That’s my motto: if it’s fun I’ll do it, otherwise fergit it.

           Summer will be canoeing as usual. I’m leading two small (two canoes each) brigades on the fur trade and exploration rich Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan, one in June and the other in July. One has Capt. Norm Baker—Thor Heyerdahl’s best friend, first mate, navigator and radioman on three reed boat trips—aboard for his third trip. This year, because Su is in no condition to paddle, he’ll be in my bow.
Then I’ll do a solo, which I’m looking forward to. This is the last year I’ll be putting together two group trips. It’s just too much work. I used to really enjoy this aspect of it, but it’s getting tired. A two week canoe trip takes longer than that to plan and piece together, and then there’s cleanup and equipment repairs at the end. Hell, just getting the topos (maps) together and annotated takes a full day—if not more.
Most paddlers recognize how much goes into these trips—and I’ve always been borderline obsessive about getting everything perfect and first class—but there’s always a handful who have absolutely no idea, and all one can do is chuckle at their short-sightedness. Canoeing—more than any endeavour I’ve taken part in—reveals character. You think you know someone for thirty years and then you go paddling with him or her for a week and discover you didn’t know them at all—or it explains odd events in the relationship that happened decades ago.

           You want to test a relationship? Go canoeing with him or her. That’ll sort it out faster than even going traveling together. I’m very happy to say that Su and I paddle, and travel, very well together. I’ve travelled with three other women and all those three were disasters—and in entirely different ways. Su and I become the same person when we strike out together, it’s uncanny. Those are our best times.
Anyway, I’m cutting back to one group trip—I still love leading a big group, they develop that instant “high” that is unique to canoeing and which is all about delight—and then a solo. My first solo last year taught me that canoeing solo is akin to fucking without a condom: there’s nothing between you and the full pleasure of the experience.

           Next summer the group trip will be a return to the White Cliffs area of the Missouri River. The brigade that did that one four years ago this summer has always wanted to return to that enchanting, astonishingly beautiful stretch for more exploring. We spent as much time hiking the other-worldly formations as we did paddling—and we want more of that. There were incredible stretches we didn’t clamber, crawl and climb over that we want to do.

           Oh, regarding canoeing, I’ve landed in another author’s book. Maryann Karinch is one of my US agents and a friend who I this year sponsored into The Explorers Club. She and co-author Jim McCormick wrote Business Lessons from the Edge: Learn How Extreme Athletes Use Intelligent Risk Taking To Succeed In Business. It’s on McGraw Hill. It’s something like her 15th book.

           A bit more on the writing front: Muskeg Lars Bjorck and I wrote the screenplay to Opium Dream, thus creating two screenplays based on my Lee Rivers adventurer character. We now have a franchise to sell. You’ll see that it’s posted elsewhere on this website.

           Have a great summer!