The Jackman Trading Post signals you have arrived in town. This is redneck heaven. The Post has the usual tourist paraphernalia—with a grandson, I’m addicted to stuff like this – fake moose ears and the like. It possesses a Down East flea market air. Not long ago, you could still buy cassette tapes there—Roy Orbison’s greatest hits was one I think I picked up. I also recall a time when the trading post had two outhouses stacked one on top of the other. The top outhouse was labeled “Conservatives” and the one below it, “Liberals.” It hasn’t been there for some time—my local guide, the ancient Stinger, claimed the owners might have sold it.

Stinger comes from Hyde Park, but is an unofficial Jackman-nite. He’s been roving its woods perennially, gun in hand, with the regularity of Elmer Fudd pursuing Bugs Bunny, for four or so decades. He recalls the days when the region was full of woods, and the woods were full of moose and bear and deer, and the town was full of hunters and sight seers. The hunters also pursued the women of the region in the smattering of bars in town. From the 1960s people traveled freely over the border to Quebec—till the border patrol became serious in 2001. It was a hub of excitement for hunting, skimobiles (not my favorite past time), and fishing.

It’s more of a ghost town, now, however. The town once had a theater—but that went under years ago. The historical society even had the playbill for the night “Rocky” played. Now people rent DVDs from the local general markets. Jackman is a slowly dying town depending on outsiders to keep it propped up, the tourists especially.

Other outsiders include the lumber concerns. Jackman is perhaps not so much a town with a lumber company as a lumber company with a town. Jackman may have been the inspiration for the mythical village of “St. Cloud” in John Erving’s  quirky engaging Down East novel“The Cider House Rules.” Like the rest of America, the lumber companies have largely killed off the best hunting by destroying the native forests of their hardwood. Instead, they planted pine. The past few years the moose and deer are largely gone. Despite this, the locals will talk about how the demand for wood products is down….The old joke, that the food in this joint is both bad, and it’s in such small portions….All day long, the lumber trucks rumble through town on their to and from Quebec.

I The bartenders all work where they drink and everyone will tell  you they all have two or three jobs. Some left the city life for this.They are a direct bunch, a tad crude, and even the middle aged women swear like crude truck drivers with hangovers. This is life at the top of America – desperate, sad, slipping. The white haired intellectual looking owner of the Jackman Hotel—the core bar in town – can only console himself: “We never enjoyed the boom, so we didn’t get the bust and so it’s the same,” he says.

I like to shoot pool, and although both tables and sticks in the Jackman Motel bar are crookeder than Dick Cheney’s smile, it’s fine to to do so there. The Down East accent is super thick—molasses dense, and sounds like a stage affectation. If I make a good shot and miss, the locals will sagely declare: “Gud awffah” – that is, “Good offer.”

The drinking here, like life itself ,is hard. I was here for New Year’s Eve 2010. When the motel closed I wanted to walk to the lake  in center of town, the light was so bright, mysterious and lovely. I thought I’d hike on the ice – I’d been cross-country skiing in excellent virgin powder. However, walking down an abandoned boat ramp slicked with ice,  I slipped and struck my head so hard I nearly passed out. That would have made me a statistic. Luckily, it just hurt, and I made my way back to the motel to tell the tale. Jackman is what America used to be—and it is, I think what America is going to be. No particular future, nowhere to go, a bunch of part-time jobs and some friends to while away the time.

But enough of Jackman. It’s a way point for this trip. So, Ed, the adventure partner and I are up early on Sunday, feeling the excitement as we start up the Corolla to head to Canada and that other world.

The beginning in an occasional series on a recent trip to Canada

There is never anything quite like the feeling of leaving one life for another—and that is the simplest way to define a vacation.

We left on a quest to kayak amongst whales in the St. Lawrence River on August 23, requiring a drive up through Maine and then from there, to Quebec City. I hadn’t slept well the night before the trip, and felt bad my wife was unable to join us due to scheduling problems. I drove in a kind of stupor, and was apprehensive the old Corolla would somehow fail us—we’d recently swapped out the brakes and radiator, and we’d find out how solid our work was rather quickly.

On these long trips, I also feel the last post before the unknown is Route 2 on 95 North. The cost of the tow to the car back home from there is going to be more than the car’s worth….But we were fortunate. We drove on with little incident, stopping at a small turn off on Maine’s 201 to drink a couple of beers at a picnic bench. The day was beautiful and bright, and that sense of being in another country strong. It was nice, and I was pretending I was living in some other time than the current one.

It had been the hottest summer on record. The sins of mankind, America’s in particular, are catching up with it. What you sow, you will reap, and the release of carbon exhaust is killing us. It is clear we’ve sown the wind, and the whirlwind literally is behind it: How many more Katrinas do we need to prove it? Yet the senate had voted to take no action on the problem at all—the biggest of all time.

We pressed onward: The Kennebec River is a lovely meandering stretch of water, particularly when covered in a mist, sitting gentle and mysterious between its two banks, where visible from 201. I have been driving along it for over a decade and often think about Benedict Arnold’s near lunatic attempt to invade Canada by paddling canoes up it. (Incidentally, various armies from the region called the United States have attempted to invade or harm Quebec for four centuries—it’s almost a Germany-Belgium kind of relationship, but it’s gone into dotage.)

But Maine was rather cool and I knew Quebec would be even more so. It is a sad fact, but when one goes on a long trip, one sacrifices a day at least – a day when one does very little – to the drive there. Once in Jackman, I was exhausted. Jackman’s dwellings lie at the bottom of a long hill. There is a mock police cruiser at the top put there as a joke to make everyone slow down. Jackman doesn’t have a police department—its laws are upheld by the occasional roving state trooper. The locals are more or less the law.

One of the pleasures of kayaking is that I am the fossil burning engine and even am losing a few calories when I paddle. It’s a totally green activity, outside of the gas expended to arrive at the launch site. Another pleasure is that I get to go places only wealthy people go with their sailboats or power boats or worse, jet skis.

I and the Portuguese navigator had a leisurely paddle from Wood’s Hole on Saturday. We crossed the gut-often dangerous but today quite placid. We passed Nonamesset and within range of Tarpaulin Cove, with its lighthouse. The shards of a wrecked fiberglass boat were still bleaching in the sun like bones as they had been two years years ago when we saw them on a previous trip. The Forbes family owns the Elizabeth Chain that Naushon is part of—I would think they’d want to remove the boat….anyway. We saw in the distance the faraway point of Gay Head—or for those who prefer the original native word that is less obscene sounding—Aquinnah.

Naushon is largely free of humans—there are a few houses–and has a wild rugged uncultivated landscape with scrubby pines and dense underbrush that calls to mind Scotland—and I have been to Scotland, just for the record. I hear that there are sheep that inhabit the island. I’ve never seen one. After turning around and riding the tide, we passed under the causeway sluice gate into a channel studded with sailing boats. Most seemed from Padanaram in Dartmouth—so it was all quite upscale.

In the channel under a bridge, I saw two oysters studding a rock—interesting–they resembled the rock they were attached to. Oysters, by the way, are about the most destroyed sea life in the world. We then rounded Uncatena and had a fantastic panoramic view of the mainland.

Perhaps a mile or so to the southwest, we saw Weepecket Island. Two years ago, we were lost, having rounded Naushon accidentally, and perhaps the next island over, Pasque. We needed directions and we paddled from the shore to the island to ask directions to Wood’s Hole, the same way some people pull their SUVs into a rest area to ask how to get to the Jersey Turnpike.

The view to the west was gorgeous and even inspiring. The tide carried us the entire way. I like to let Mother Nature do the work. Terry saw us from the Vineyard ferry in our orange inflatable kayak and waved—we didn’t see her. We thought she was due on the next ferry, and it’s much easier for a single passenger on a ferry to spot an orange 19-foot kayak in the middle of the Wood’s Hole channel than for us to have seen her….

After landing, we retired, like all heroes after the battle, to the mead hall. Valhalla is a lovely place.

A whale jumps on a sailing ship and that makes news. But how much news does the hunting of whales generate? Whales rarely ever move aggressively on men. The reverse is so not the case….

I was kayaking in lovely Barnstable Harbor Sunday. It was leisurely, pleasant–a nice exploration of the maze of marsh clumps and grasses. I did see quite a few oil slicks, small, floating by. We don’t really need BP to pollute is wholesale if we do it piecemeal.

Again and again, the news reads like the book of the Apocalypse. BP’s spill is not only causing the immolation of sea turtles, but is endangering another totally harmless species: the whale shark. It is the largest fish in the world, utterly without a mean piece of cartilage in its body, and naturally the first to get the Darwinian boot.

The controlled burns that BP conducts have burned up sea turtles alive. I have seen sea turtles from my kayak in Hawaii – that was considered a piece of luck. I also once snorkled with a sea turtle in Mexico. He was a grim looking fellow  with narrow eyes, and looked at me with that peculiar turtle disdain look, then swam off.  He ate the feed in the water that people tossed to the fish. He was very fast and quite elegant in  his fortress home. I couldn’t keep up with him. I pointed at him so that another swimmer could see him, but he didn’t understand the gesture and I alone got to observe the reptile.

I’ve never seen a whale shark live – and it’s looking less likely that will ever happen. Experts don’t know how many of the beasts have died – the whale sharks, like whales, to whom they are not related, sink to the bottom when they expire. Oil isn’t a cheap resource. It’s the priciest one around as it will cost us the planet. Anyone who wants to see the value of a human life versus that of oil should watch the masterpiece The Wages of Fear. But I digress.

Oil is a dead resource, both in terms of its usefulness to the planet and in the sense that it is dead organic matter that we desecrate with burning.It is also dead in that its an asset not worth recovering any longer.

Also, it will kill us as dead as it is.

While I’m almost positive there is a devil and see little evidence for a God – if you mean a decent humane one – sometimes I even have doubts in my non faith. This is one of those times. Any decision on the proposal to overturn the long standing commercial whaling ban has been delayed for at least a year. That is a start. The end of the ban is a slimy compromise that will only legitimize commercial whaling. For more, read here.

I’ve been following with interest the fate of the Sea Shepherd Peter Bethune, now facing 15 years in a Japanese jail for having an environmental conscience – albeit one that was, shall we say,  highly flamboyant. He had a lovely high tech trimaran, the “Ady Gil,” that looked like it had zoomed out of a Batman movie. It was  fast, invisible to radar ,and had lots of cool toys to frustrate illegal whalers. Said whalers clearly didn’t like it, because they cut the vessel in two – watch here.

I decided enough was enough and started a firm stroke back,  moving at a diagonal to avoid the brunt of the wind. Didn’t help. I just kept paddling till my back ached so bad I was ready to hop in the water for a minute to stretch the muscles. I started to get really tired. I tried every conceivable position in the kayak to paddle to distribute the burden to other parts of my body besides my arms and to relieve my back.I was paddling with just  my shoulders, then just my hips. And the wind gusted again and again – 20 knots per hour, maybe. If I stopped my stroke to rest, I’d lose two or thee feet.

This was not good. I just kept aiming diagonally for shore and screamed curses because I didn’t think I could get the kayak in. I was in sight of houses on the shore and the people there had no idea I was fighting possibly for life. Then, the nipple on the paddle – it inserts into an O and holds the two blades in place when you paddle – slipped and the two parts of the paddle were turning and not remaining firm in the water.  This was making me expend even more strength to keep the blades in place to catch the water. If I let myself go, I would have spent the late afternoon and possibly the night sitting on the St. Lawrence drifting. I hadn’t brought enough whiskey or beer for that.

After an hour and a half of paddling almost sideways to the wind, I could see the cross on the church at Grandes Bergeronne and aimed at it. No, I did not have a conversion, but it was a good landmark.  Finally, slowly, I got close enough to land so that it acted as a drag on the wind and sheltered me. I was exhausted as I pulled into the harbor and got out and staggered to the shore. I had never been so frightened on the water in my life. I don’t  want to repeat that. It took everything I had to get back. I never thought land looked sweeter in my life. It is a good experience to remember and I don’t intend to repeat it. One could argue I picked a bad time to go out. Sure. Is there a good time? Look at Scott at Antarctica. The problem was, I couldn’t wait for ideal conditions – I wasn’t going to be there for long and I was willing to take my chances. Hell, if I had died, it was doing something I loved to do.

I drove back to Tadoussac….was assured I was going out that night to dinner!

I spent years trying to see a blue whale in Quebec – and I plan to return this summer for more of the same. Paddling in the fjord at Tadoussac – the Saguenay River – is really eerie, as it’s 900 feet deep, dark, gloomy, and full of spouting whales. It’s also the most spectacular place I’ve ever seen – even more than the Golden Gate.  A geologist might find it an especially  interesting place because of the theory of its creation: some think it had a catastrophic origin – possibly a tectonic plate shift or earthquake that created it. They know mere erosion probably wouldn’t have.

Anyway, it was maybe four years ago I put out from a place called Grandes-Bergeronne, 40 miles east of Tadoussac  and the Saguenay. There is an enclosed harbor there, and I knew that this would be my only – remote thought it was – chance to see a blue whale from a kayak. I had seen a blue the day before from a zodiac and wanted to experience the whale from my boat. The grim-faced harbor master had warned me to be careful.

He’d a good reason. There, the St. Lawrence is 26 or more miles wide – it’s perhaps the widest river in the world and has shipping lanes that see a lot of traffic. At 26 miles, you are often quite far from land, or rather the closest land is straight down.  Imagine walking that distance. So do you think 10 miles is near land if you had to walk it? It takes six inches face down of water to drown….The winds were blowing off-shore, which means they’re great if you’re paddling out, but on the return, worse than facing a bill collector.

The water here is cold in August – like 50 degrees and will kill you very quickly and I wore a wetsuit and gloves in a feeble gesture at self preservation. The water is also deep, and lacquer box dark colored, and eerie, and you can’t see down more than a foot or two. You know there are all sorts of whales and other creatures swimming underneath you can’t see. I’ve paddled up there four or five times and sometimes being alone there is unnerving. I’ve watched whales swim right within a few yards of me – then  dive below my inflatable nine-foot kayak and I can’t see them.

In any case, Grandes-Bergeronne offered a chance to see a blue whale. Keep in mind the place creates optical illusions – not as much as the Arctic, but there are tricks to the eye. Things can appear big on the water there and they aren’t. Your eyes are compressing things over 26 miles and you don’t see everything….and the sounds are deceptive. You hear whales spouting and they could be miles away and you think they are close to your kayak.

So anyway, I saw a whale in the distance through my binoculars and was paddling towards it. I’d been out an hour and a half. I noted that I was moving more quickly than I  wanted from shore,and I was maybe two miles out. The wind was starting to pick up and then it gusted. And gusted some more. I was in an ebb tide and moving very fast out to sea.