The Wolf Faces Backwards

'The Wolf Faces Backwards' traces a pair of long-distance, solo canoe journeys along the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. But it is much more than a travel journal, being embellished with enough memoir to reveal what drives and equips someone to undertake such journeys, together with other interludes which help to guide the reader along the trail.

Author, Peter Macfarlane, had a comfortable, if hard-working, life as a biology and chemistry teacher for the top two years of high school in the UK. He also had a part-time musical career, playing fiddle in Scottish dance bands. In 2003 he gave that up in order to emigrate to the USA to marry, and to make music his full-time occupation. But in his spare time he pursued another dream: to design and build cedar-strip canoes. His first canoe took to the water in 2007, and that was the year he first became aware of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. It took another six years for him to feel ready to tackle this trail.

The first half of the book describes his 2013 through-paddle of the NFCT, using a journal that he kept along the way as its basis. Numerous challenges came his way, described in the daily entries, as he made his way from Old Forge, New York, to Fort Kent, Maine, a distance of over 750 miles. Originally this was to be the whole book. But the lure of the trail drew Peter back five years later, this time to face a personal challenge he had set himself: to try to become the first person recorded to have through-paddled the NFCT in the unconventional direction. There were very good reasons that nobody had attempted this, and the magnitude of the challenge tested hidden depths in Peter's stamina and determination. Would they be sufficient?

The second half of the book similarly draws on a journal kept en route, and recounts the struggles as well as the joys of this second journey. The addition of the second half necessitated much rearrangement and re-write of the first half. These two journeys, which are effectively bookends, now form the two halves of this book, and a set of maps in between allows the reader to follow along, to see the daily progress, and to identify the camping sites.

'The Wolf Faces Backwards' is also a love story, not just the reason for Peter's emigration, but a celebration of the affection that he developed for a small wooden canoe that he had designed and crafted, and which carried him reliably through the rough and the smooth.