Grey Owl's Cabin
By Dave Yanko
Archie Belaney was a fraud, a bigamist, a drunk, a scoundrel and a liar. And like thousands before us, my brother and I were about to set off on a 20-kilometre hike to his former home in the wilderness of Prince Albert National Park.
We weighed into the forest at 4 p.m. on a hot and breezeless day in late August, arriving around supper time at the Chipewyan Portage campground on Kingsmere Lake. We pitched the tent at fast-forward speed and rushed to the lake for relief from the heat. After several invigorating plunges, we sat down on the sandy bottom with all but our heads submerged in the calm water. And we relaxed.
The silence was full and splendid - it would be more than an hour before we’d hear our first loon. To the west in front of us, elegant "swan" grebes floated in silhouette amid the shimmering vista of Kingsmere at early evening. Behind us, golden reflections twinkled across the jack pine shoreline like frisky northern lights on a crisp autumn night.
But most striking of all, from our periscopic perspective, was the remarkable transparency of the water around us. So clear was Kingsmere that Paul could not resolve its surface when he later knelt down on the short wooden pier to retrieve our evening drinking water.
Were Archie Belaney present, he would have smiled contentedly at the misjudgment. Archie, a transplanted Englishman who gained worldwide attention in the 1930s posing as the "Indian" nature writer and lecturer Grey Owl, dedicated his life to preserving Canada’s pristine wilderness areas. In Prince Albert National Park, his success is evident.
There's only one trail to the cabin and it's well posted. You can't get lost.
The journey to Grey Owls "Beaver Lodge" cabin is a mildly rolling trek through spruce, pine and aspen forest that begins in a parking lot 30 kilometres from the park village of Waskesiu. Park officials recommend taking two days for 40-kilometre, round-trip hike, overnighting at one of the northern lake-side campgrounds along the well-posted trail, and then hiking to the Ajawaan Lake cabin and back to the parking lot the next day.
Due to our mid-afternoon arrival, we chose to camp two nights on the trail, the first at Chipewyan and the second at Sandy Beach, situated at the 12.7-kilometre mark of the trail. The campgrounds are appropriately spartan and very clean - backpackers haul out their own garbage. In each of the grounds, there’s a raised-platform food cache to deter the black bears, at least one outhouse and a good supply of firewood. The park deliberately limits access to the trail to preserve the wilderness experience, but group camping is available by arrangement. Chipewyan, for example, contains only two campsites, a single and a double.
After our soak in the lake, we finished setting up camp and grabbed a bite to eat. I then set off for the shoreline, about 70 metres from the campsite. As I neared the point where the campsite path intersects the trail to Grey Owl’s cabin, I spotted a silver fox approaching the same crossroads about 30 metres to my left. I froze, hoping for a better view but fully expecting the wild creature to flee.
His fixed stare and oversized ears measured me for danger - we had surprised each other. But he boldly continued towards me in the same light trot, apparently anxious to return to his den with the gray squirrel that dangled lifelessly from both sides of his delicate, pointed snout. Head motionless and eyes still focused sharply on me, he glided close enough for me to see clearly the dark grey coat and silver guard hairs so prized by trappers of old. Three or four metres away he slowed, glanced away for just an instant and then, resuming a now pivoting gaze, cut a discreet semi-circular detour in front of me and regained his trail and speed to my right.
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