Escape to the Stunning Wilderness of Ontario | National Geographic
A spirit is everywhere. Spirits in the water, spirits in the land, spirits in the animals. You know, it's not empty. There's no such thing as an empty earth, empty land, as the spirits are still learned. So that energy still learned, that life. To me, to describe it personally, it's my home. Being welcomed and invited by the First Nations people who lived here for hundreds of years is really important to me. And they chose to do that with a smudging ceremony, which gave me the blessing to be here and explore this land.
The purpose of this trip has been to explore Wahb Akemi Provincial Park. We flew in this backcountry floatplane. It was absolutely incredible looking out, how vast this terrain was. It was just never-ending lakes and boreal forests. The plane set us down so lightly I didn't even feel the water or the landing. It was a pretty wild feeling watching the plane leave and realizing that, you know, we're out here.
The canoe is like the vessel to experience and participate in all the activities you can do here. There's incredible camping, there's amazing fishing, we're seeing wildlife all around. My friend Rush Sturges, who's here during the filming, is a really good paddler. Both Eric and I have whitewater backgrounds as professional characters. It's kind of funny that neither of us have actually ever been in a canoe, and we are on the hunt for brook trout right now.
Okay, rolling on all that, neither one of us had ever really canoe'd at all.
Just to get to be in the wilderness and to travel and to camp is incredible. The dichotomy of Wahb Akemi is that not only do you have these super authentic remote campsites, you also roll into these really luxury lodges where you're completely taken care of.
To me, the thing that I appreciate the most about this place is the culture and the rich history that's here, and the completely untouched, the natural. It made the place come alive.