The idea for the canoe trip to the Arctic came from a simple moment in which he watched a majestic peregrine falcon fly outside his front window.
When Adam Shoalts found himself staring into the eyes of a giant muskox barely five feet away, he did the opposite of what most people would do.
He sat back and enjoyed the view.
“I was definitely nervous,” said Shoalts, in a phone interview from his home in St. Williams, a half-hour drive from Port Dover, where he lives with his wife, Alexandria, and two sons, ages 2 1/2 and four months.
“But I let it know I’m here and I didn’t want any trouble, and he moved on.”
There is a good reason why Shoalts felt such a high comfort level facing off with a large hoofed mammal that looked like something from the Ice Age. At 37, he is a professional explorer who has completed numerous challenging solo adventures, from trekking through the Amazon rainforest to braving the high Arctic.
His epic adventures have earned him the title of Canada’s Indiana Jones, courtesy of the Toronto Star. In 2018, he was named Explorer-in-Residence by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
The wildlife he’s encountered, which includes polar bears and grizzlies, are often the least of his worries compared to the physical challenges of portaging with heavy packs while dragging a 27-kilogram canoe, fighting gale-force winds and plunging into freezing water.
But he’s had lots of practice, having taken his first solo trip when he was only 13 and embarked on a weekend camping trip — him and his Swiss army knife.
“I hiked as far as I could into the wild and felt very confident until the sun went down,” Shoalts recalls.
“Then everything became an entirely different world. My imagination ran wild and it was frightening, but I didn’t chicken out, and when the dawn broke, I was hooked.”
That weekend is when Shoalts fell madly in love with the wide open spaces and the abundance of nature. Today, more than two decades later, he is still filled with the same feeling of wanderlust and driven by a passion for adventure.
“I love the natural world, the lakes and rivers. You have to be excited every morning to put wet socks on and paddle down a river and down a lake. You have to love what you’re doing,” said Shoalts, who turned his adventures into bestselling books.
They include: “Alone Against the North”; “A History of Canada in 10 Maps”; “Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada’s Arctic”; and “The Whisper on the Night Wind.” A documentary on his journey across the Arctic called “Alone Across the Arctic” is on Amazon Prime.
His latest adventure saw him canoeing, hiking and portaging 3,400 kilometres from his home on Lake Erie to the Arctic. He documented it all in his newest book, “Where the Falcon Flies,” which was released Oct. 3.
The idea for the trip came from a simple moment in which he watched a majestic peregrine falcon fly outside his front window. Knowing that falcons migrate to remote arctic mountains every year, he hatched a plan to follow their route.
“In that moment, I thought to myself about how everything is so interconnected. All of Canada’s wild places have these connections. I thought, you only live once, why not put my canoe into the water and my backpack on and follow these falcons, see the transitions of forest to the tundra and polar bears and blue whales,” said Shoalts.
This trip was like no other he’d ever attempted as he had to portage around Niagara Falls, which meant dealing with sidewalks and tourists, and weave his way from Lake Erie down the Niagara River and under the Peace Bridge.
Navigating through the Great Lakes was difficult because they can be stormy and can easily swamp a canoe.
“There was a whole series of challenges I wasn’t used to, like trying not to get run over by giant freighters,” said Shoalts, who was born in Pelham. He earned his Masters and PhD at McMaster University.
Sometimes, the hardest part was finding a place to land his canoe. In the wilderness, you can land anywhere, said Shoalts. But, on the Great Lakes, the breakwalls can make conditions worse. During some portages, he had to trek back and forth four times.
The first time is always the hardest, he says, because he had no trail or path to follow and he had to pay careful attention to every landmark and watch for swampy areas and loose rocks.
Shoalts hopes his books will encourage people to appreciate the outdoors and understand the urgent need to preserve our wilderness. He conducts nature hikes to teach people how to identify trees, plants, and mushrooms and was encouraged by the decision to reverse the Greenbelt lands after a flurry of opposition.
“All of these wild places are interconnected. I think the most important thing is for Canada to prioritize saving these wild places while we can still do it,” said Shoalts.
Source : The Hamilton Spectator
