Do you ever think that maybe we know too much? Besides the information we choose to consume, just the availability of it all is so much more than we’ll ever need. In my Canadian news feed do I really need a story about a Florida man who picked up a gator?
I thought about this as I read Adam Shoalts’ book, Vanished Beyond the Map; the Mystery of Lost Explorer Hubert Darrell.
If you’re new to Shoalts, he’s a Canadian adventurer who has written best-sellers about his treks. This time, he set out to discover what happened to Darrell, who disappeared in the Northwest Territories in 1910. Darrell had built a reputation for leading expeditions on thousands of kilometres of rough terrain over a wide swath of Canada’s north and beyond. On one of these, he actually went ahead of sled dogs to pack the snow with his snowshoes so the dogs’ paws wouldn’t fall through. He also made many months-long journeys through unbelievably harsh conditions on his own. And he created maps that were said to be more accurate than those drawn by government cartographers.
A Legacy Almost Forgotten
In the early 1900s, Darrell had many friends and admirers. He got along well with Indigenous peoples and sometimes joined them on their journeys. He wasn’t afraid of almost unbearably cold and dangerous weather. At times, he’d hunker down in his canvas shelter (you couldn’t really call it a tent) for days at a time until a storm passed. Even then, winters were brutal and the going was tough. But he loved it and when he visited his brother’s Manitoba farm, he couldn’t wait to get back to the north.
One of the tasks Darrell took was to deliver mail. It would take weeks for letters to get to their recipients by snowshoe. It made me think back to anticipating a letter or another piece of mail. Now it seems charming and quaint but there was something to be said for the excitement of knowing that something was on its way to you. Now, with instant shipping, email, and 24/7 news, we get everything in a flash. And I have to wonder how necessary that is in most cases. It’s trained us to be impatient and demanding.
There were cases back then when quicker communication would have been helpful. One excursion involved Darrell walking hundreds of kilometres to report on ships stuck in ice in the far north. The men aboard those vessels could do nothing but wait weeks for some kind of assistance. Help would come in the form of another slow-moving crew trekking north again. With no maps, planes, or ATVs, it was the best they could do.
Gone With Few Clues Left Behind
Until Shoalts launched his investigation, Darrell was mostly forgotten in Canadian history. There were letters and notes left behind here and there but only a couple of people still alive who personally knew of him. There’s only one photo of him left. Shoalts and an adventurer pal literally followed in Darrell’s footsteps to uncover new bits of information and determine what happened. Darrell was smart, experienced, and knew how to keep himself out of trouble. But misadventure (and hungry animals) can happen to anyone.
To me, there’s nothing romantic about freezing nights and frosty days slogging through Canada’s north. Even a careful and experienced person could fall through ice into a lake or river that hadn’t been mapped. If you got sick or something broke, you were on your own.
But there is something nostalgic and soothing about not knowing every little tiny event as it occurs. Waiting for the newspaper, mail delivery, or even a top-of-the-hour radio newscast is something I look back on with fondness. Stretches of time in between getting information were gentle on the brain and nervous system. Now, we play a game of mental ping pong where we have 17 paddles constantly batting away the stuff we don’t want or need to know. It’s exhausting. Maybe not as exhausting as walking 1,800 kilometres by snowshoe, though.