When Megan Mayhew Bergman was mansplained adventuring, she decided to tackle a historic canoe route. Instead of revenge, she found a touch of transcendence
‘I don’t need to feel like I’m dominating something in an adventure. I want to feel reverent, or at peace.’‘I don’t need to feel like I’m dominating something in an adventure. I want to feel reverent, or at peace.’ive years ago, while on assignment in the Adirondacks – a New York state park with 2m acres of protected land – an over-confident outdoorsman attempted to dazzle me with his recent adventures.
Although I’ve spent over 20 weeks of my life camping in the Adirondacks, I’ve never been the kind of woman to confidently lasso a canoe to the roof of a car alone. But I have been steadily upskilling. There is power in risk-taking and mobility, and these days I crave more of it.ow, five years after deciding I would complete the Seven Carries, I had the boat, but not the navigation skills. I mentioned the trip to a close friend, Els, a capable outdoorswoman.
My early morning alone on the pond’s edge was an unexpected gift. The sun rose from behind a silhouette of evergreens. Thrushes called from the woods, flute-like. A family of loons swam across on the flat water. I had a chance to inhale the landscape and let it settle me.Els biked in a half hour later. We organized our gear, consulted the map, picked our direction and found our rhythm on the water. It was so quiet that it felt wrong to shout to one another across the pond.
Both of us suffered a little as we carried the boats down slim, well-worn wooden planks until we were standing in the most beautiful marsh area I’ve ever seen. We eased the canoes off our shoulders and onto the water of the Saint Regis Pond. I felt content out on the water in the wilderness with a friend, as if I were entirely present for the first time in months. Most of my preoccupations were drowned out by physicality, exertion and beauty.t Middlebury College, in Vermont, I teach a class about depictions of women in outdoor literature. We talk about why we adventure – what do we hope to achieve Adirondack adventurerwrote about the “fierce delight” she felt when slinging her backpack into a canoe.
I used to love the architecture of Great Camps, but right now, as we begin our final paddle through the Upper St Regis, Spitfire and Lower St Regis, seeing the physical manifestation of great wealth of industrialists feels unnerving. In the face of staggering wealth, it still feels wise to consider the privilege of adventuring at all – owning a boat, taking time off, feeling relatively safe in the wilderness.
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