I've got a objective, to build my own, plywood skiff. Nothing at all awfully complex, a little straightforward one sheet skiff, or possibly a canoe. Some easy plywood skiff plans would come in handy right now. Inside my dream, the previous few centuries have slipped away, and it's really a good looking early summer day somewhere from the North-East of what has grown to be called The modern World, perhaps on St. Lawrence river, or among the many Great Lakes, or among the many waterways that criss-cross the Canadian Shield.

My plywood skiff plans are sketched on the few sheets of worn and creased foolscap, or perhaps parchment. The craft of stitch and glue boat building, learned through the native Algonquins and employed by them to build their great war canoes, I now put to some more restful use. The stitching cures within the strong summer sun. This is the sturdy boat, and take me long and far.

Early in the day I glide out from this tiny settlement, gliding silently inside the stillness, listening to the swish of river reeds about the sides of my boat, the soft splash of my oars within the water. Casting a line in the water to catch my meal. Through the night, the smell of smoke from my campfire and the noise of crickets chirping, and the following morning, onwards once again.

This is the world the proud and independent fur traders made theirs. Men with a taste for adventure and a calling towards wild locations, these people negotiated with the native peoples for that lavish bounty of this prosperous surreal nature, heading back towards the settlements as well as trading outposts for extra trade things, provisions, powder and ball for the musket. Then returning to the river.

Within my dream, it is my world. I paddle by way of a extensive, primeval wilderness, across the uncounted and uncountable rivers. Through gorges coupled with rapids, past sheer cliffs as well as islands choked by fir along with spruce, and stair-like waterfalls, dipping my blade inside mirror-flat lakes while the call off all the loons echoes within the far distance.

That is certainly my dream, anyway. How realistic can it be? Not likely, I guess. For one thing, I can't travel back in time three hundred years. For another (and if you know anything regarding boat building, then you noticed this), the art of stitch and glue boat building is really modern development, not the process learned from the Algonquins, not something that they had within the time of Radisson and Groseilliers and also the voyageurs . So please forgive my little anachronism. Remember, it is simply a dream.

And in a way, that makes my dream very likely to come true. Building your special boat is much, easier today than it has ever been previously. No, it's not possible to amass wealth off of the fur trade, but those primeval forests criss-crossed and dotted along with a thousand rivers and lakes continue to be out there. You can still recapture that feeling, that sense of adventure. All that's required to get started is a boat...