When I was 17 years old, the summer before my senior year of high school, I built a canvas canoe from a kit, and with my friend Greg W., traveled to Babine Lake in British Columbia. We canoed into an abandoned logging camp. After a steady rain for three days, we discovered a bear had ripped open the canoe looking for food. We stayed on for another two weeks, eating squirrel and freeze dried provisions, until a local indian took us out in his dugout -- in trade for one of our paddles.
