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I was feeling low and not emotionally prepared for the canoe trip I was about to take. It was on the Chochocaune River in Quebec, 200 miles northwest of Montreal. I had made arrangements with a French Canadian to drive me to my drop-off point. I showed him my topographical map and tried to make it as clear as possible that the road hadn't been used for quite some time, and that it was used for logging and not in very good shape. He seemed to understand and said this was no problem! The next day he showed up in a brand-new red van. Everything was going all right until we reached our first dry riverbed. I thought I heard him begin to mumble in French. We made it across with a few serious bumps. My French-Canadian friend was no longer saying "no problem"; as a matter of fact, I'm not sure what he was saying. I was getting nervous and started to laugh--especially when the road began to narrow and the tree branches started scratching his new van. I hid my face behind the topo map, trying to hide myself. We got to another dry riverbed, and I could tell that he had had enough. He refused to continue. Swearing, I'm sure, in French, he helped me unload my equipment in about two and a half minutes, and he was gone. He wasn't being polite about his anger at this point. My driver was gone, and I was in the middle of nowhere. There was a stream, however, and I checked it out on my topo map. It looked like it might be right, it felt like it might be right, and it turned out that it was right. I was feeling kind of low, actually feeling sorry for myself. I wanted someone to give me a gift--anything. I put my canoe in this very clear, narrow, slow-moving stream, knowing that it led into Chococaune, still wanting a gift. It took about 15 minutes to get my gift. As the boat glided into the main stream, a moose was eating about 200 yards downstream. The sun was sparkling on the river, and the wind was on my back. As I approached the moose, he slowly walked out of the river, and the gift was delivered. The river, the sun, the moose were all gifts to me, and so was the storm that was about to follow.
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