Back in Canada for about three weeks. My wife, having been denied a UK visa to go there with me earlier this year, suggested that I come here for my stepmother’s 90th birthday without her. The prospect of applying for a Canadian visa and not getting that either, despite paying for the privilege/insult, was too much. Plus, she had the Svaneti guest house to run in my absence… with local help on call as needed. She did let me know, however, that this should be the last time I left her alone in summer while we continue to run the house: too much! I get it.
After delightfully surprising my mom near Edmonton, having a super party for her with about 70 guests, I also returned to my haunt from 1977-81, Thunder Bay, to catch up with my two best friends from that era. One of them, Glenn, with his wife, hosted me in his spacious home. The other, Richard, took me camping.
Now, this part of Canada has been hard hit this summer with hot weather and many wildfires. The actual place Richard had booked for us to canoe to and camp in was simply gone, erased by the apocalyptic burning. So he had to scramble to find a replacement location, months past the date when such are usually completely booked up. I suppose the wildfires were causing many cancellations, because he managed. We wouldn’t canoe there, just drive, so I could take my suitcase and all my camera gear.
Now, camping has come a LONG way since my youth, when the family drove and camped from Thunder Bay to Canada’s west coast twice and east coast once. Then, tents were mostly much heavier affairs, with steel poles and canvas material. I suppose much lighter ones were available even then, but we never hiked to our campsites. We either drove straight to them or put everything onto two canoes and paddled there. So weight was not the primary concern. Comfort was.
Richard has honed his set of equipment over many years’ iterations, buying new when necessary and second hand when possible. A Kevlar and epoxy canoe, at about 44 pounds, was light enough for me to carefully put onto my shoulders and walk with: I tested this. The tent we shared, a four-person job, is super-light, suspended from elastic-connected aluminum poles so as to keep a space between its walls and the equally light flysheet or rain cover. This really helps keep rain from running into the tent itself (in this case, a mostly mosquito-mesh affair), as we discovered on our first night.
It DID rain, quite hard, after midnight, but not for too long. We stayed high and dry, as did the campsite’s picnic table, similarly covered with its own flysheet.
Richard had prepared me months in advance with a list of things to take, as well as what he would bring. Did I want the canoe? Yes, please, it having been some 40 years since I had paddled in one! He took care of all food and cooking, and we ate sumptuously, including steak our first night and sausages our second, with no breakfast for me and a no-cook lunch, plenty of snacks and drinks, even some proper ground coffee per my request.
The campgrounds themselves are very well put together, with large numbered sites, each with flat ground, picnic table/benches and firepit/grill surface. The latter was off-limits due to the total fire ban, making this the first time I have ever returned from camping not smelling of smoke. Richard has a gas stove and bottle, though.
Canoeing on the local lakes was delightful and, though I have a bit of a sore shoulder for some positions at the moment, I returned to paddling like I had never left it. Although I did try a dip in a lake, and could have stayed in longer than I did despite its being a bit cold, my usual breast stroke was bothered by the shoulder, so I gave that up.
If Georgia ever gets such wonderful campgrounds set up, paid for admittedly by people’s taxes, it will lure ever more campers, who for the moment at least have a huge amount of freedom to try their luck in proportionally much more space, either asking for permission or begging forgiveness. Each version has its pluses and minuses.
The main thing I came away with from Thunder Bay, though, was the most precious gift of all: TIME to hang out with my childhood friends, catch up, reconnect, and move our relationships forward. For this, Glenn and Richard, I think you from the bottom of my heart.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
