Donaldson's trip quickly became more than a retracing of Mackenzies earlier voyage.

Even more than a communing with the early voyageurs; it's also a spiritual odyssey. "...-in a canoe it's the way to get to know yourself." This was particularly relevant on Lake Superior. First there was the bitter cold.The most important thing was dry socks. "At four degrees Celsius you've got to have dry socks!" Donaldson said, while recounting the trouble simply in docking and launching his canoe through powerful surf onto sharp rocks.

With wet feet, he would begin shivering uncontrollably in a matter of minutes. The next stages of hypothermia would have been lethal without immediate warmth. Donaldson wore two pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, three shirts a windbreaker and a parka while paddling the 900 kilometre length of Superior in late May. "Bitterly cold-it was bitterly cold." Then there was the fog.

Fog so thick he had to make a mental picture of the shore the night before, memorise it, then paddle by memory and compass the next day. "It's like coming across Shangri-la when finally through the gloom you catch glimpses of serrated scrub pine and see land. Even if it is a barren island of 400 raucous seagulls fighting you for possesion, and sleeping among mounds of their excrement. After hours on end in constant clammy darkness you really have to know who you are. You can quickly become paranoid."

It was during one such fog that Donaldson was almost run down by a freighter as he rounded the point at Cape Thunder. "Weather conditions on Superior, particularly fog, are much harder to take than even the fiercest of rapids"

Lake Superior