Bear Paulson on Canoe Tripping with Young Children
13-minute read
Bear Paulsen (General Manager of Minnesota-based Northstar Canoes, co-owner of Paddle and Portage and lifelong wilderness canoeist) feels strongly about the benefits of starting children in canoes when they’re young.
Bear Paulsen with his son Dash on the Upper Iowa River
Bear and his wife Claire have been taking their now-6-year-old son Dash on multi-day wilderness canoe trips since he was an infant. We wanted to hear more about that and pass it along to Bending Branches followers who wonder: “Can I take my young kids along with me canoeing and on canoe trips?”
Bear’s answer is a resounding Yes!
Sometimes, all parents need is someone to share with them what’s possible. We hope you’re inspired by our conversation with Bear Paulsen:
BENDING BRANCHES: How did you and your wife introduce your son to canoe tripping?
BEAR: We jumped right in! My wife likes to joke that when she was on maternity leave, I said, “Well maternity leave—that’s kinda like vacation, right?!” Of course, her hackles went up a bit, but she agreed that if she was feeling good, we could do a Boundary Waters trip.
So when Dash was 29 days old, we did an 18-day Boundary Waters trip. He was born on the 9th of September, so he went into the BWCA for the first time on the 7th of October. It went really smoothly.
It turned out to be one of the coldest and snowiest Octobers in recent memory. But we are both winter campers and we had brought a tent with a stove in it. We got snow nine out of the 18 days! We got three inches one night.
One of the things I would say is both members of the couple have to really want to travel in the wilderness. It can’t be just one partner. In our case, my baseline is “We’re going to do this. I’ll figure out how and I’m willing to do everything to make it happen.” Because especially on those first 2-3 trips, I did everything related to camping, since nearly all of Claire’s time was devoted to Dashwa.
The next two summers we went on long canoe trips. On the first one, we paddled to Hudson Bay on the Hayes River. On the second one, we started from Rainy Lake and paddled back to our house in Chisago City.
We brought reusable diapers. They weren’t quite cloth, but we used the same diaper covers. Claire washed them daily when we stopped for lunch.
Claire in the bow and Dash asleep on the Hayes River
BB: Those are long trips!
BEAR: It’s unlikely most canoeists will be able or even want to approach what we’ve done with Dashwa. My wife loves to travel outdoors and as long as I’m the one saying, “Let’s do this,” she’s ready to go.
We talked about it a bunch before he was born. I’m an old father and one of the long discussions we had was making a commitment to keep doing extended trips and getting into wild places. I’ve changed certain things, of course. We’re not going to run big whitewater with him, only gentler rapids.
I think a lot of people sell kids short on what they can do. I hear it routinely. If you do anything outside the norm you’re going to hear about it—especially when you’re talking to grandparents! Even Claire’s parents who’ve done a ton of backpacking were a little uncomfortable with us taking their 3-month-old grandson winter camping.
Everyone has their own criteria for what’s safe and what’s not safe. Part of that has to do with experience and comfort level, and part of it has to do with risk tolerance.
We’re fortunate to have a reasonably risk-averse little boy. If you have little risk takers, you’ll spend more time paying attention to them and what they’re getting into. But it’s amazing what kids can get into and not have it be an issue.
You can’t render everything completely safe, but kids can understand when we tell them not to do something because it’s not safe. We don’t give them as much credit as we should from that perspective.
BB: “Building familiarity” is something you brought up frequently in our chat. What do you mean by that?
BEAR: I think one of the biggest mistakes parents make is waiting until their kids are seven, eight, nine years old to start them paddling, thinking it’s just going to be too hard. I dealt with an endless parade of people who said, “Why are you doing this with him? Why are you taking these risks with him if he’s not even going to remember it?”
That’s correct in one sense, but completely wrong in another sense. Memory stems from what you’re used to. What you’re familiar with. If you’re familiar with being outside and hearing the wind through the trees, that’s what you’re used to. If you’re familiar with watching TV all day, that’s what you’re used to.
We’ve built so much familiarity into Dash’s life for canoeing that he just drops right into a trip because he’s done it so often. It’s what he’s familiar with.
Of course, there’s parental responsibility with it, but I think most parents do themselves a huge disservice in not showing their kids the outdoors at a young age and assuming they have to wait.
When we told people we were going to paddle the Hayes River to Hudson Bay when Dash was nine months old, they said, “That’s not safe!” But we said, “Yes, it is. We can make it safe.”
Family canoeing on Lake Superior near Duluth, Minnesota (with diapers drying)
It’s very much about the fact that people have such absurd fears about what the wilderness can do, therefore they choose not to take their kids out into it. The result is when they do take them at seven, eight or nine years old, they’re not used to it and don’t have a good time.
They’re not familiar with discomfort, or being wet or cold. They want their TV, their screens, whatever. Because whatever they get used to, that’s what they want.
At this point, Dash has no second thoughts about it. If we say we’re going canoeing, he says, “Yay!” If we say we’re going winter camping, he says, “Yay!” If we say we’re going backpacking, he says, “Yay!” Because it’s normal for him.
A big piece of normalizing is frequency. And it doesn’t have to be 21 days to York Factory or 38 days paddling back to your house. It can be every week on a river that’s two miles from home, paddling for a few hours. That accomplishes the same thing.
BB: How does canoeing together add value to family life?
BEAR: What does a kid love more than anything else? Time with Mom and Dad. And if it’s time with Mom and Dad where there are no distractions, that’s gold.
The challenge, of course, is that we’ve all got phones on us and we all look at our texts. We all check our email and everything else. From a kid’s perspective, “You don’t pay any attention to me in that stretch of time.” They’re used to seeing it and that’s why they want their own. And I’m just as guilty about being distracted, just being in a rush.
The best thing you can do is take a kid to places where that stuff doesn’t exist. You can put your full attention on them.
BB: Why is it so important to include the whole family in canoeing adventures?
BEAR: Well, if you don’t, you don’t get to go with your family. Again, it’s truly a self-perpetuating thing.
At Northstar [Canoe], there’s an endless parade of single males because that’s the biggest demographic for solo canoes. But it’s the women, too. They show up and say they’ve got nobody to paddle with. Sometimes they’re resigned to it, and some choose it. A lot of these men have gone with their buddies a whole ton of times, but they didn’t go with their wives or kids.
I don’t make many trips with other people. It’s almost exclusively family time, Especially with one kid, I put a high value on the time I get with him.
Everybody says I’m raising the next Grizzly Adams. But the reality is he might become a New York fashion designer. I have no illusions. I can’t control what he does once he’s 18. But until then he’s stuck doing the stuff we do. My goal is to inspire him to want to continue it on his own if that’s something he chooses to do.
Every study shows that kids who eat dinner with their parents are less likely to get into trouble. In regular life, it’s a challenge to do that together. But guess what you do on every canoe trip? You eat every last meal together.
Those studies show that simply being together matters. Guess what? Being together all the time can drive each other nuts, too, but even that’s not bad. Claire will sometimes feel like she’s not being her “best parent.” But I think that’s OK. What matters is time together.
A lot of parents really struggle because they’re used to being able to drop kids off at daycare and have a host of other ways to occupy their child for a chunk of the day. Then when they come together, they want that time to be the best possible. And all of a sudden, it’s 24/7 [on a trip]. Well, there’s no way it’s going to be possible.
The consequence is they feel guilty, or they don’t go in the first place. But in the grand scheme of things from the kid’s perspective, time with Mom and Dad is great.
Bear, Claire and infant Dash on the Zumbro River (photo by Bryan Hansel)
BB: Why is inspiration important?
BEAR: I’ve taken high school kids out a lot—backpacking, paddling, winter camping. I remember going with one of the teachers and there was a checklist of all the different skills. Fire building, lighting the stove, setting up the tent. Every kid had to go through and meet the things on the checklist. That’s great for building skills, but it’s not very inspiring.
My goal, rightly or wrongly, has always been to give the kids a trip that inspires them. This goes for high school kids and for Dash’s friends and other things down the road. If a kid chooses not to light a fire, it’s not a big deal. I’ll encourage them to learn, but if they resist, fine. It’s not a gym grade.
I want to develop you as somebody who says, “That was really cool! That trip felt so good to me.”
I believe inspiration matters more than anything else when it comes to getting kids out. It’s getting to see cool things. It’s time with Mom and Dad, in the case of younger kids. It’s that feeling of success as an older kid.
BB: What is it important for your son to learn through canoe tripping beyond the practical skills?
BEAR: One of the things I love talking to Dash about is focusing on what needs to be done when you’re uncomfortable. We’re about to take our summer trip into the worst bug area on the continent.
So I’ve been talking to him about bugs that way: “You know, one of the things you need to do is not let them bother you while you’re trying to do something. You have to finish what you’re doing instead of allowing the bugs to bother you.”
That lets you step outside what you’re experiencing. It lets you divorce yourself from, we’ll call it your emotions. It lets you separate and say, “It’s really important that I finish this, otherwise I’m gonna get more bug bites.” The same is true of work, or jobs, or anything else. I have to learn to tune out the noise because this is what’s important.
That’s one of the big skills. When you’re in a place that’s not completely comfortable—you’re cold or wet, or you’re hungry—and you can divorce yourself from that for a short period of time and deal with whatever it is that still serves you in the long term.
If a kid can learn to delay gratification, it bodes well for all things in life. The outdoors helps prepare us for ways we can be successful in “the real world.”
“Gunwale flamingo” on Little Indian Sioux River
BB: What’s your advice to parents who want to take their kids paddling but don’t have the experience themselves?
BEAR: Foremost is to get the parents at a basic level of comfort with the canoe. The suggestion I always give people is to just go out in the canoe in shallow water on a warm day. Start leaning over and eventually tip it. Just get comfortable with how the boat works.
Claire and I are completely comfortable with all this stuff. But it’s a struggle for a lot of parents who want to do it as a family but don’t feel entirely safe and comfortable yet.
Do things a bit below your ability level with your kids. If you’ve never canoed on moving water, do flatwater first. If you’ve been comfortable in limited whitewater, do moving water but no rapids. Parental skill level and comfort is a barrier but just go one level below where you’re at.
Another big plus with small kids is the ratio of adults to children. On that first 18-day trip we struggled to travel with two-on-one (two adults to one infant). But my sister showed up for five days and all of a sudden we could travel easily, having two free adults.
While we love long trips where we move every day, most people are just going to choose to base camp, which is great. You may choose a route that doesn’t include portaging. The easiest camping for someone who doesn’t have a high skill level, without question, would be to stay at a state park and paddle during the day on a local lake or slow river.
Traveling with our 9-month-old was a cakewalk. As an almost 2-year-old or almost 3-year-old, that was harder. Partly because of food and partly because he was mobile and could express himself more and not taking as many naps. All those things start to matter more.
It’s important to plan your trips around these kinds of things. Don’t assume this year will be the same as last year because your kids have changed since last year.
Dash paddles the bow on the Pelly River in the Yukon
BB: Do you have any last words for parents?
BEAR: If you ask a kid what they want to do, they’ll frequently choose to play with their friends or toys inside, because that’s easy and comfortable. Ignore them.
Take them out into the wind, rain, and snow. Let them get wet and uncomfortable. Let them play. When they’re ready to stop have dry clothes and snacks ready.
Doing this every day on a trip is harder than at home, but not that much. You won’t have to pull them away from the toys and friends every day on a trip. You just have to bring more clothes and be prepared to dry them out.
Thanks to Bear Paulsen for his time with us! Northstar Canoes is a Minnesota-based company that designs and manufactures top-quality wilderness solo and tandem canoes. Paddle and Portage is a Minnesota-based media company that specializes on being a “voice of the Boundary Waters.”
(All photos courtesy of Bear Paulsen)
