In The Old Days, Canoes Were Made For Romance—among Other Things

For Bries, though, the romance is missing from Phase Three, which began in the 1970s. "Today the canoe is a better paddling boat," he says, "but has lost a lot in terms of construction and appearance. There's one canoe out now called Outrageous. Well, Outrageous is a very fast boat, but esthetically it is horrendous looking."

In the mid-'70s, Heinzen and Bries checked out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison ahead of schedule. A graduate student in microbiology, Heinzen had taught electron microbiology and had worked summers as a carpenter. Bries had floated from one undergraduate major to another without acquiring a sustaining interest in any. So they dropped out of school. In a more southerly latitude, they might have moved into the hills and made mountain dulcimers and mandolins. As it was, they traveled north to Canada 's soon-to-fail Chestnut Canoe Company to watch rib and plank canoes being made in the old manner. When they returned, Heinzen and Bries settled in the Baraboo Hills to build wooden canoes.

They bought the dairy barn in 1975 along with nine acres of hilltop and a log farmhouse, where Heinzen and his wife and son live. Bries and his wife rent a house down the road in Denzer. "The inside of the barn was caked with manure," Bries recalls. "We had to tear out heifer pens and stanchions, pour a new concrete floor and put in insulation. On a damp day the barn still smells like hay."

At first Heinzen and Bries built canoes not much different from the Chestnuts they had watched being made in Canada . Gradually they branched out, reaching back into canoeing's halcyon days for designs. They constructed a lapstrake solo canoe and modern versions of a W.P. Stevens sailing canoe and a double-ended Rangeley pulling boat. They built whatever caught their fancy, and if a customer showed interest, the boat was added to their catalog.

It didn't take long for Freedom Boat Works to fasten onto the flowing designs of J. Henry Rushton, onetime shoe clerk and premier canoe builder of the nineteenth century. Out of Rushton's boat shop in Canton, N.Y. came sailing canoes and guide boats that were the apogee of the Golden Age. Rushton's avowed purpose, as put forth in his 1882 catalog, was "providing the canoeist with a suitable craft where with to explore the many devious and beautiful water courses intersecting our broad land."

Perhaps Rushton's most publicized boat was a solo lapstrake canoe weighing less than 18 pounds. He built it on special order for the woodsman and writer, George Washington Sears , who, under the pen name Nessmuk, wrote for the most influential sporting magazine of his age, Forest and Stream. Sears was a slight man, 5'3" and 105 pounds, and he was nearly 60 years old when he wrote Rushton asking for a canoe light enough to paddle and portage by himself through the Adirondack lakes without the aid of a guide. In all, Rushton built five different Nessmuk-style canoes for Sears , the lightest just under 10 pounds. One Adirondack guide observed, "It don't weigh more'n a stovepipe hat."

The Deans own two Nessmuk-style canoes, one a genuine Rushton that they wouldn't dream of putting in the water. The other is a Solitaire from Freedom Boat Works, built along the same lines but lengthened by two feet and with two inches more sheer height. Both are beautiful boats, what Jeff would call "esthetic objects."

It takes Bries about 125 man-hours to complete a Solitaire. He builds the hull upside-down on a form, first laying the white oak keel and spruce stems. The keel has been rabbeted—square cut—to receive the garboard or bottom plank. In all there are eight cedar planks to a side. Each plank, or strake, has been beveled to lap over the next plank, and the laps are clench-nailed with brass tacks. Then the hull is pulled from the form, and steamed quarter-inch oak ribs are nailed inside. Inwales, thwarts and decks of contrasting cherry wood are added, and the inside gets a clear coat of Deks Olje marine finish to show off the grain. The finished canoe looks real pretty.

Bries, however, rejects the notion of boats as objets d'art. "Canoes aren't furniture," he says. "They're meant to be utilized. A car's finish is more delicate than a canoe's, but that doesn't stop you from driving to the K Mart."

One sunny day last summer, Bries lashed his own Solitaire and double-bladed paddle to the roof of his Ford and drove down the hill to Seeley Lake. The lake, an impounded creek owned by the North Freedom Rod and Gun Club, regularly does service as one of the devious and beautiful water courses intersecting our broad land.