Just reading "The Route Less Paddled: A 4,400km Expedition from Minnesota to the Arctic Ocean" in the latest WCA email. Reminded me of a similar story I read years ago.
In 1930, Eric Sevareid was 17 years old, had just graduated from high school, and was looking for some adventure. He and a friend looked at some maps and decided they could paddle from Minnesota to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. "I hadn't the faintest conception of what we were really letting ourselves in for."
The pair knew next to nothing about canoes, had unreliable maps, and people told them repeatedly to give up. But they made it, paddling some 2200 miles (3500 km).
Sevareid went on to become a CBS news reporter, covering stories around the world, including wars. When he looked back on that canoe trip, he said, "I would follow shock troops across a hundred invasion beaches before I would repeat that youthful experience of the rivers. I simply could not do it again."
The story is in his book "Not So Wild a Dream." Long out of print, but still available online.