Permission is given readily and, after dropping the canoe and gear, we park in one of the rows of employees' cars. It's easy to get away from the immediate stench of the smokestack as the wind mercifully blows not exactly downriver. But the river itself stinks from the sulphurous effluent and this aroma will be noticeable even on the following day. Islands of scum float lazily in the current, eventually breaking up and to form again at the next rapid. The ugly brush that accompanies human spoilage of a northern site soon gives way to black spruce, birch and poplar and so, after a while, the mind accepts that we have started a wilderness trip.
Rocks are black and often well-hidden by the dark water.
We sneak up to within 50 ft of one of them, before he notices us. He is a big guy, who first strains eyes and brain as he realizes that we don't belong here, but then something seems to click and he huffs into the bushes to escape. A motor boat comes upstream and stops beside us. The two men have been sampling the water for dissolved oxygen further down the river and they chat with us. Such talk is a way to be sociable and but also elicits information about what we are doing.