Last year I delved into the book Kon Tiki, a book everyone's heard of but relatively few today have read. It is an incredible water wilderness adventure of a group of men who crossed the Pacific Ocean on a primitive raft in the 1940s. It's a must read for all wilderness sojourners such as ourselves.

Fifty years after Heyerdahl's epic voyage the film Cast Away has been front and centre in the popular culture of today. It was wonderful to see and truly "adult" movie. Mature in theme, thoughtful not exploitative. And very insightful about being locked into the wheels of society's time as the Tom Hanks' character was and suddenly being thrown completely out of the time machine and stranded on a deserted island.

Hanks' character Chuck Noland (get it?) is returned to the modern world with great subtlety and poignancy. In one scene, he picks up a lighter and flicks it on and off, amazed - for the first time in his life - at the ease of making fire. We had seen what a powerful and difficult task that was in his primitive island world. And what an important one. We have so much and take so much for granted.

It re-enforced in my mind one of the reasons we take canoe trips. I have told the story of being briefly amazed, as Chuck was, when I felt hot water come out of a tap in Coppermine after being a month on the river and knowing how much effort to make water hot - even with a lighter. Many of us need a reminder of that perspective and a bracing wilderness trip gives up that in spades.

Speaking of wilderness trips we are happy to have a wonderful story by Peter Church on one of Jim Abel's Arctic canoe-flogging trips. I have heard about Jim and his annual 70-day journeys across the Barrens. He's the first one out and the last in and it's great to get an in-depth look to see what we were missing. (Whew!)

I am currently knee-deep in sponsor letters and research for the next Oriver.Online HACC trip. We are heading to Labrador this summer and I will tell more about it next issue-once we get our sponsors nailed down. Technology has certainly added to the task of trip prep. My incredible Epson 1270 printer can produce superb colour photos and printouts to send to prospective sponsors. E-mail greatly speeds up communication and I can burn CDs containing loads of info and photos.

But I'm still occasionally amazed by hot water and lighters.

Michael Peake.

This story first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 103 in 2001.