Water Rat From Wind in the Willows Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. Bumper Sticker Anyone who tells you portaging is fun is either a liar, or crazy, or maybe both. Bill Mason Everyone must believe in something. What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel.
Life is transmitted to the canoe by currents of air and the water upon which it rides.
Anyone can handle a canoe in a quiet millpond, but in a rapids a canoe is like a wild stallion. It must be kept on a tight rein. The canoeist must take the canoe where he or she wants it to go, not where it wants to go. Given the chance, the canoe will dump you overboard and continue on down the river by itself. The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.